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Has anyone ever thought about the parallels between prohibition in the US and Brexit in terms of the politics that made them happen? Decades-long disinformative grassroots campaigns. The tactics of Wayne Wheeler are also very similar to Nigel Farage. /1
Wheeler was the leader of the Anti-Saloon League and maybe the person most responsible for convincing politicians to back the 18th Amendment, which introduced prohibition. His tactics were clever and unscrupulous. /2
He would make seemingly contradictory arguments: to workers he would argue that alcohol kept them under the control of capital; to capital, he would say alcohol made workers unproductive, for instance. /3
Most notably, Wheeler never entered public office. His method of single-issue advocacy focussing on moving politicians to his cause became known as Wheelerism. It essentially is the blueprint for what Farage’s pressure politics... /4
All of this will be familiar. Though Brexit was never really a salient issue to the wider public and there was overwhelming support for EU membership among elected politicians, Brexiteers used media and the threat of bleeding the two major parties of support... /5
to push them to adopt either increasingly hostile or ambivalent positions regarding EU membership. Some politicians began to fear being openly pro-EU and Cameron, in fear of the right of his party and UKIP, called the referendum. /6
This fear also led to lukewarm campaigning for remain by the leadership figures in both major parties. They hoped remain would win, but that they would not sully their eurosceptic credentials in the process. /7
Brexiteers like prohibitionists also used contradictory ideas, of Global Britain, a free-trading open country, but also of Little England, a nostalgic theme park with closed borders. Whatever works for you. /8
And, of course, we all know the dumpster fire that prohibition turned out to be. It was eventually ended at federal level by the twenty-first amendment in 1933, 14 years after its introduction. I will say no more. /END
P.S. another parallel occurs. The 18th amendment mentioned only the prohibition of the sale, manufacture, transport and importation of *intoxicating liquor*. Many who backed the amendment assumed that meant harder liquors, not beer for instance. /1
However, the Volstead Act, the legislation that gave effect to the 18th amendment, defined intoxicating liquor as anything containing anything over 0.5% alcohol. So, the soft prohibitionists lost out to the hard prohibitionists. 2/2
PPS: I really should plan these threads.
