[raxxorrax]

There was the argument of sovereignty for example which was aggressively shot down as xenophobia, although it is pretty much true. Nobody within the EU ever denied that it to be a reality, it was openly talked about.

The argument was that there is a larger scope that is also relevant for international policy, but that wasn't even mentioned anymore.

So people were directly and obviously lied to and their argument was misconstrued and people just didn't buy it. If the lie wouldn't have been created, maybe the EU would be larger today.

Perhaps it wasn't a smart move to leave. But the advertising for remaining in the EU was extremely incompetent. To reduce it to xenophobia is still reductive like that.