> The same argument has been heard from Trump and his followers. Stolen votes, manipulated people.
I wasn't complaining about stolen votes. Nobody was suggesting election fraud had happened with the EU referendum.
Manipulated people, sure. But there is evidence of that with many of the claims made during the campaigns being proven false (like the Brexit bus slogan and like many of the ads reported here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44966969). There is actually a lot of documented evidence about the misinformation that happened during the referendum on both sides of the debate (https://constitution-unit.com/2016/08/23/fact-checking-and-t...) but it didn't seem to make any difference because you'd often see the same FUD repeated (both for and against Europe) when chatting to people -- be it social media, TV/Radio call in shows or regular face to face conversations with family and friends, etc.
The question of our EU membership was such a complex one that even many experts were littering their statements with caveats and disclaimers. So it wasn't really a topic I'd have expected the layperson to be informed enough to make a good judgement of. And the targeted ads on platforms like Facebook, plus the aforementioned deliberate misinformation campaigns did little to help the situation. So I do think it's fair to call out the result of the referendum as being within a margin of error.
I do agree there have been parallels between the EU referendum and Trump's campaigns (both of them in fact). But you also do need to be careful not to dismiss the credible claims of bad practice because some egotistical oaf also happened to make wild made up claims too. There's definitely a sliding scale of misinformation where some items aren't technically inaccurate but are worded in a way that intentionally misinforms the reader (a practice often seen in click-bait headlines) but on the other end of the scale you'd have statements that are very clearly bullshit (like the Hillary child sex ring "scandal").
It's fair to say the last 5 years has been a real low point for my trust in the democratic process.
> What we need is respect for democracy.
I agree but that respect has to be earned from the campaigners rather than blindly given by the voters.
He also made repeated claims of "large scale voter fraud" in the lead up to the presidential election of that year.
I also feel there's a real difference between "we have evidence Russia's been up to something, and think Trump may be involved" and "Everything that goes against me is stolen! You can't trust anything!"
> I'm not American so I've not been following it that closely.
Neither am I, but from what I can tell the Mueller report came back saying it didn't have enough to pursue, or really link Trump, but something was definitely up. Various Trump supporters went to jail over that report IIRC as well, having lied. Very murky dealings.
What we need is respect for democracy.