Sick of extreme right views

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I'm older than you so I can tell you that In the old days people wore their political allegiance on their sleeves. Rich folk openly voted conservative. The working class voted for left wing parties. From the late 1980s when immigration from Asia started really ramping up something strange started happening. People who voted conservative refused to tell anyone who they were voting for. You started getting working class people quietly and secretly voting for the conservatives.

Isn't it funny when you fast forward to Brexit and Trump's victory in 2016 you could walk the streets and never find a normal person who would pipe up and disclose they voted or (for that matter) why they did it.

The people I know who voted for Brexit done so because they didn't like the direction the EU was heading. It became a bit cult like.

First, I'm absolutely sure my sample group of young-ish impoverished art school graduates is extremely biased, and therefore not representative.
And the one who did stand by her pro-Brexit choice told me how she found it incredibly frustrating that the whole issue had become so hijacked that any reasonable conversation would end in an argument and occasionally, ostracism.
I do find her argument valid, though - just, not under a tory government and with the city functioning as Europe's money laundromat.

Overall, it does seem as if most people didn't benefit by Brexit economically.

I can understand why some people in the UK want to be at least somewhat independent of the EU. It's a matter of some sort of "national pride."

Imagine if it was proposed that the Pound be dropped, and replaced with the Euro?

There are of course multiple geo-political and economic factors relating to having more control over Britain's autonomy from Brussels. But, here's the thing. Britain is no longer an empire that is self-sustaining based on their capacity to extract resources from their colonies. they are a typical post-colonial western European economy that relies heavily on the EU and the integration into the EU has subsequently been demonstrated to have been detrimental to the UK's future prosperity.

Secondly your friend's reasons are unlikely to have occurred in a vacuum. As with those "normal" folk who voted Trump it's implausible they were not aware of the actual reasons that was broadcast in stereo in the media. For brexit it was immigration and for Trump it was the Mexican wall and his blatant conspiracies. The best I can offer for people like your friend is that if they had a moral compass then they temporarily compartmentalised it when they went to the voting booth.

I have only been to the UK a couple of times in the last few years, but the whole issue was portrayed in such a completely mad way in the media that I'd suggest yes, compartmentalization - but not necessarily of the moral compass. She really tried to make an informed decision and I think got completely overwhelmed by the contradictory information, the madness, the impression of remainers being both uninformed and acting morally superior, and eventually she bridged her cognitive dissonance by picking one valid argument (regardless of side) and stuck with it. - she's also anti-covid vaccine, because she tried to evaluate *all* the information. Basically, she is the kind of person who thinks she can do "her own research", which is theoretically a good attitude, but were living in times of hybrid warfare, and part of that is to create as much random information as possible and steer the chaos in a desirable direction. Anyone honestly trying to evaluate the information, but without the necessary education, will just get swept away by the tide.
That's how democracy works now, in times of facebook. For complex decisions, you'd have to trust some authority - but undermining trust is what information warfare is all about.
With Trump, I think it's different, because people didn't vote on any proposal - but they voted for the person.

And here too, I think there are reasons that could justify the decision, but they would have to get weighed against the blatant racism and sexism. There definitely were a lot of reasons to not vote Hillary or Jeb!, and for some, these were important enough to ignore the racism. That would be the moral compartmentalization you suggested.

Your Reaganomics amounts to giving a hotdog to one dog and expecting him to share it with the others. Trickle down economics has done nothing but transfer the wealth of millions of Americans upward, leaving those below more and more impoverished. The fact that America's middle class flourished at a time when the super rich were heavily taxed and organized labor ensured a good wage and benefits should tell you Reagan's voodoo economics since has been a failure.
And no poor person has ever provided anyone with a job? Every hour put in at a workplace, and every consumer purchase, grows the economy, meaning that that poor person has helped along the way.

I am sure there are millions of people (like your friend) who are strategic in voting for Brexit. They picked 1-2 reasons and stuck with it. What i have noticed is those voices who called for brexit on megaphones are now mysteriously missing to answer questions on what the cost has been for the UK.

The “undemocratic” argument re: the EU simply isn’t a very good one. Anyone who was old enough to vote in the referendum should be old enough to remember voting in the European elections to elect MEPs.

The Council of Europe is literally the democratically elected heads of government, while each country’s head of government appoints their commission member. So all three institutions are at least as democratic as the member states - and the EU only allows democracies.

I do accept that someone could believe the EU is undemocratic due to ignorance rather than actual malice… but it’s not a form of ignorance I can be sympathetic towards, because it’s easy to check and so removed from the truth.

This underpins the "I voted for Brexit or Trump because I believe in (Insert neutral reason) not because I agree with everything Nigel Farage or Donald Trump said"

This seems to be the stock standard answer you get when pressing an erstwhile normal person why they had a brain freeze at the electoral booth

Back around the time social media was rising around 2003 comedian Dave Chappelle made a joke how white people get offended when you ask them who they are voting for. Curiously in 2005 you had Jonathon Major winning the UK 2005 election which was the first of many election results that stumped polling companies as it didn't fit the algorithm. Subsequently they didn't predict a number of election results not just in the UK but also the US and even here in Australia.

When Trump won in 2016 everyone knew race was a major reason he won on social media. But nobody would admit that on camera that was the reason they voted Trump. It's a taboo in western culture to say it. But I think people used the elections as a form of spite against the social progress of the late 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s.

We've certainly had posters brag about their political leanings being largely motivated by their spite for others.

Sorry, I'm with Yanis Varoufakis and Martin Sonneborn on this. The EU is highly intransparent and there is very little democratic control. It desperately needs reforms to not lose legitimacy.

Decades of naked contempt and gaslighting has a tendency to bring that out in people.

LOL, did you just cite Boomers on FaceBook as a source?

For the umpteenth (but likely not the last) time, Trump was elected to spite white liberals, the smug, condescending, arrogant midwits who couldn't grasp that working class people didn't like having their culture and values sneered at and had been lying to them for decades. I know you have this fantasy of sweaty hicks in confederate apparel flaunting their trucknutz alongside their AR15s as you can't seem to stop yourself from posting pic after pic of them (I'd hate to see your targeted adds), but Trump was put over the top by people who'd previously voted for Obama, not exactly the demographic you're imagining (thirstily).

I think social media has been an effective tool for the right. Voters who were on the fence have clearly been swayed by social media and have become increasingly attracted to politicians further right on the political scale. The issues online that are pushing them are always the same, mass Immigration, non-white people refusing to assimilate (this is a lie as they don't want them next door or marrying their daughters), minorities (insert group) getting too much rights. A big selling point is that hate speech has been conflated with freedom of speech. Middle class white men who might have voted left have also been suckered in by the right wing trolls pretending to be journalists. Spite is a far more powerful motivator here than common sense.

How about both?

The right has become a broad church
The usual assortment of confederate sympathisers. the Klan and rural militia are never going to vote democrat anyway.

I am talking about precisely the group you identified (your words)
Working (middle) class (white) people didn't like having their culture (white) and values (white ethno-nationalist identity) sneered at

I know, I saw it all happen before my eyes. A lawyer friend of my fathers who had come from working class stock who had always voted for Labour Party suddenly stopped voting for them around 2004. When pressed he looked both ways and then whispered he was sick of minorities getting too much. Coincidentally that was when Prime minister John Howard suddenly started his anti-immigration platform and anti-Asian platform. The Labour party lost the famous "unlosable election" because Howard ticked a box that was troubling white voters. Interestingly John Major used the same tactics to win the UK 2005 election.