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Comment by bob_bob_bob | Hacker News Reader

Getting people to vote leave because they don't like some foreigners (Turkey or Syria) is quite literally the definition of xenophobia. This is especially true when Turkey is not even close to joining the EU.

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But the ads are not about “not liking foreigners.” They are about a country with very different beliefs and attitudes joining a bloc where they will have voting rights in bodies that have legislative power over people in the UK. That is a completely different thing. And Turkey applied to the EU in 1987, has been a full candidate EU member since 1999, and since then has been in active negotiations to join.

> But the ads are not about “not liking foreigners.” They are about a country with very different beliefs and attitudes

People with very different beliefs and attitudes exist in the same voting blocs everywhere. Should people in Portland Oregon complain that people in Jon Day get to vote in the same elections? Rural people tend to be far more religious and have very different beliefs and attitudes.

Most of those ads aren't about Turkey's beliefs, but rather it's mere proximity to another country with different beliefs.

That's a process the UK, as a member state, used to have veto over. Not sure if they have lost it yet, but now or in the near future they'll just have to live with whatever the rest decide. That is, unless they want to leave the single market, which doesn't look very likely.

The subtext May be xenophobic, but the ads are specifically about the wage gap between the UK and Turkey/Albania, and the explicit message is that you will lose your job, or wages will drop. That’s not xenophobic.

> you will lose your job, or wages will drop

Which didn’t happen in any country so far nor in UK with the “invasion of the Polish”

Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro population is negligible. Turkey will never get in EU.

I respect the choice of the English people but the ads were pure scaremongering

I watched some vox pops on the Guardian during the campaign and there were quite a few testimonies from workers who stated specifically their wages had dropped due to competition from eastern European workers and in one case the guy could name the exact amount of the drop.

So whilst you may believe nobody felt under wage pressure, that would be a rather odd belief given the basics of supply and demand, and it wouldn't match the beliefs of quite a few voters.

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