Language matters

J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author, writing on her website, labelled the referendum rhetoric “uglier than I can remember in my lifetime” as she urged voters to reject the depiction of the EU as a faceless monster. She wrote that the EU referendum campaign has been “one of the most divisive and bitter political campaigns ever waged”. She said: “I’m not an expert on much, but I do know how to create a monster,” citing her creation of Lord Voldemort as “simultaneously inhuman and superhuman and that is what frightens us most … For some on the leave side, the EU is not merely imperfect, or in need of improvement: it is villainous.” She also wrote, “The union that was born out of a collective desire never to see another war in Europe is depicted as an Orwellian monolith, Big Brotheresque in its desire for control.”

Rowling said she did not believe that all who supported Brexit were racist bigots, calling that view “shameful”. However, she said it was equally nonsensical to pretend that racists and bigots were not flocking to the leave cause, or that they were not, in some instances, directing it. “For some of us, that fact alone is enough to give us pause,” she wrote. She cited the poster promoted by UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, that showed a queue of refugees under the heading ‘Breaking Point’, saying that it was “an almost exact duplicate of propaganda used by the Nazis”. She characterised the Leave campaign as “embrace the rage and trust your guts, which Nigel Farage undoubtedly hopes contains a suspicion of brown people, an unthinking jingoism and an indifference to the warnings of history”.

Rowling also said that she had been worried by strident nationalism across Europe and the US, and that Donald Trump was “fascist in all but name … [he has] the temperament of an unstable nightclub bouncer, jeers at violence when it breaks out at his rallies and wears his disdain for women and minorities with pride”. For a while there has been a generalised disdain for politicians within the mainstream that populist leaders, including those in the Leave campaign, have been ready to use for their own advantage. Jonathan Freedland noted in the early stages of the campaign that ‘In this era of post-truth politics, an unhesitating liar can be king.