This is a guest post by Tariq
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Having listened to the two young ignoramuses put forward by the BNP to represent them on BBC’s Radio 1 last week, I began to think of a debate I had with some of my friends a few years ago.
You see, all my life up until then I had never considered myself British, I had always seen myself as English. My argument was that since I was born in England, spoke English as a first language and displayed a culture that was distinctively English, and different when compared to a Scottish, Welsh or Irish identity, I had a right to identify myself as English. This right should be extended to my children, my children’s children, and so on regardless of the fact that my parents were born in Zanzibar.
For my two white friends, however, this assertion caused problems. In the most amicable of terms they explained to me that, whilst they understood that I was a “British national”, the fact that I was both black and a Muslim meant that they believed that I was not even ‘ethnically British’, let alone ‘English’. “You wouldn’t call a Chinese person living in Africa African would you?”, one of them said, and it did make me think.
Now I know my friends are not racists, the worst that can be said of them is that, at times, they go too far in trying not to offend my racial sensitivities! I managed to somewhat bring them round to my way of thinking by using the examples of Black English footballer players, and why, for some reason, the public so readily regard them as English when they represent our country on the pitch and sing our national anthem. And also the fact that so many people in our school had French or Jewish sounding surnames, yet we would never dare question their Englishness or Britishness. Why the double standards with Black and Asian Britons?
So you can imagine my surprise listening to the BNP activists on the radio the other day, as I realised that my friends actually shared identical opinions with “Joey”, who we now know is Joseph Barber, the pleasant chap who runs the BNP’s record label ‘Great White Records’, and is apparently its “leading artist”, for anyone who dares to listen!
You see, “Joey” also agrees that I am only “Civic-ly British”, and any suggestion that I am British or English is an attempt at “denying (his) heritage” for “it would be an awfully long time before someone”, like me, could become “ethnically British”, (whatever that actually means). This is something that the BNP have argued about before. Earlier this year Nick Griffin caused outrage when he suggested that the term ‘Black Briton itself does not even exist’. Instead, we should be called ‘racial foreigners’. My attempts at assuming the English identity was an example of a ‘bloodless genocide’ that is currently taking place which, with the so-called Islamification of Europe, means that for Griffin both my racial and religious identities are trying to wipe out White Anglo-Saxon Protestants! No guesses as to who would be their main targets of persecution were they to get into power!
Now I wasn’t shocked at the views expressed by the BNP, they were to be expected. I was more shocked at the fact that they shared similar sentiments to my close friends, and many of the people who commented on the issue, such as those commenting on the Mail on Sunday’s online article. What they were basically saying is that although you may talk like us, dress like us, and act like us in every manner, you will never be truly ‘one of us’. What is even more ironic is the fact that these are often the same people that, whilst arguing that people of colour cannot be described as British or English, also criticize Black and Asian Britons for not trying to integrate and assimilate.
Now, due to my personal certainty that I feel English (way more than I feel African, Arab or even British) I have a particular take on this debate- this should be enough. I am sure that there are many people out there who would agree with me, as well as others who would disagree. And I think it is important to debate whether those who disagree with me have a point.
Is my claim to being English or British as ridiculous as saying that ‘an Englishman living in Hong Kong is Chinese’, as Nick Griffin argues? Do you have to be white to be truly considered English or British? Is there a difference between being ‘ethnically British’ and being ‘civically British’? Why is it easier for an Asian Scotsman like Hardeep Singh to call himself Scottish, whilst it is harder for me to call myself English? Will Black and Asian people ever be able to call themselves English, or British, in the same comfortable manner that people of French or Polish ancestry do so? And lastly, is the so-called ‘indigenous population’ of England ready to accept people of colour as being ‘ethnically British’.
With the BNP appearing on Question Time next Thursday these questions seem ever more important, and need to be discussed openly.
119 Comments
Thank you for this Tariq. It’s an undeniable fact that there are many Brits out there who share your friends’ (and the BNP’s) ideas about the vague concept of being “properly British”. If we don’t have a genuine discussion about this topic then we play into the BNP’s hands by allowing them to be uncontested in their attempt to lead debate on what it means to be British.
We must not make the mistake over British identity that was made for a long time about immigration – those in Westminster with reasonable views on the topic refused to touch it so the general public found that it was only the extremists who were prepared to address their concerns.
If one is born in England and grows up in England, then one is English and also British, as England is an integral part of Great Britain.
Ones skin colour is irrelevant, I have pink skin, you have black skin, I was born in England, you were born in England, I am English and you are English, we Tariq, me and you are English, end of story.
Great Post Tariq.
I think if you flip the question around then the confusion becomes a bit clearer.
We are all familiar with the concept of ethnic minorities, and the idea that people cannot ‘convert’ from one ethnicity to another. So what is the ethnicity of the majority of white people in this country, into which they are born and which others cannot simply become by choice? What is this ethnicity called? If it is “British”, or “English”, then it automatically excludes other ethnic minorities from these civic and national identities. If there is another name for it that is in common usage, then I haven’t heard it.
I don’t blame people from the white majority for wanting an ethnicity of their own: it is a logical consequence of multiculturalism. Maybe American-style hyphenated identities are the answer.
Instead of describing nationality by ethnicity, can we formulate a conception of nationality based on common shared heritage and culture? If so, then what about communities, some south Asians for example, who describe themselves as British and have a british/english etc culture but also keep aspects of their south asian cutlure – which culture would be described as home? should it be described as home? Should 2nd generation immingrants shed all aspects of their particular asian cutlural heritage to be fully British? Is it possible to keep the cultures of both worlds and say I am British? Or would it have to be British-Asian? But to describe oneself as British-Asian does that mean they are not fully British?
i personally wouldn’t have a problem with “white british”, or even “white english”. isn’t that what they put on ethnicity questionnaires?
b’shalom
bananabrain
Now I wasn’t shocked at the views expressed by the BNP, they were to be expected. I was more shocked at the fact that they shared similar sentiments to my close friends, and many of the people who commented on the issue, such as those commenting on the Mail on Sunday’s online article.
That the BNP are regarded as having the same open-minded feelings on British identity as your average white friend is their current stalking horse and it is very important that we call their bluff on that as often as possible.
It is correct to say that one cannot be ethnically English even if one were born in England, just as someone isn’t ethnically Kuwaiti if they were born in Kuwait. But it is possible to be “English” or “British” by adoption of values, tastes and behaviour and these discussions are definitely worth exploring. And it is this inclusivity which makes Great Britain great, in my opinion.
But that isn’t what the BNP are prepared to do. They have no intention of granting anyone who is not *racially* white the idea that they can be British no matter how British they may be in every other sense.
Not only do they think Ashley Cole is a “racial foreigner” they also think he is racially inferior. That’s a very different matter to having long, comfy fireside chats with your white mates on civic identity – and I hope they are prepared to understand that as well.
I think part of the problem is that there isn’t yet a clear formula for describing individuals who are descended from people who have lived (or are regarded as having lived) in England for tens of generations. This is despite the fact that, as Dave Rich points out, the present multicultural system fundamentally depends on categorising people by race, religion or ethnic/geographic orgins. i.e. as black British/British muslim/south Asian/Scottish/Irish/Afro-Caribbean etc etc. Describing such people as ‘English’ alone seem inadequate as this runs up against the ‘but Ashley Cole plays for England’ issue while ‘white british’ doesn’t quite work as it would also include naturalised Polish immigrants and others. Other categories such as ‘indigenous’, ‘Anglo-Saxon’ etc all have their own problems. It would be nice to think that such categorisations for what might technically be called ‘native’ or indigenous’ English people are not necessary but, in practice, with other groups having to define themselves in order to access government funds, community representation etc the lack of such an identity will inevitably seen as a handicap under the present multi-cultural system.
It is also creating a vacuum and potential sense of grievance that, as we can see, groups like the BNP and the EDL will be quick to exploit – much as Islamists have been able to exploit the identity crises affecting many second-generation Muslim immigrants.
Thinking about it further, I think that the euphramism that goverment and the media generally use is “white working class”.
Good post, but one point.
You cannot be ‘ethnically English’. Englishness denotes nationality; as said, if you were born in England you are English (unless you choose to pursue your parents’ nationality if different). That says nothing of your ‘ethnicity’, your ‘race’ – which is becoming a pretty meaningless term. Your culture and religion may be different again, so the whole thing becomes a fantasy built on a false premise. In fact we all move through a series of what Irven Devore spoke of as ‘faces’, different role and personality registers in different circumstances. These may refer to any of our ‘identities’.
The London borough I worked for had so many ‘ethnic categories’ (in fact a mishmash of ethnic and national identities and cultures) that they became meaningless. Especially when you could choose to define yourself differently from any category. My favourite was Native American/Welsh.
I was born in London just after the end of WWII to parents, also both born in London.
That being said, it would be logical to assume that not only am I British, but most certainly English. And for a long time I too made that assumption.
What I left out, however, is that I am also Jewish, and as the years passed, I came to understand that that made it impossible for me to be English, but I was what was considered as British (or ‘other’ on ethnicity forms).
Now I have discovered that I am not even that. Does my passport lie, and how about my birth certificate?
And please, could somebody tell me what I am now?
You are however you describe yourself to be chairwoman, and if you want to be English, British then you are!
Tariq, you’re English. As am I. I’m also Lancastrian, and oddly proud of that despite not living in Lancashire for the last 30-odd years.
Chairwowan, you’re English, and always have been. Don’t let the identity-politics obsessives distract you.
We have different heritages and (maybe) cultural practices, but we’re all English. It’s not a bad thing to be.
I’m white, probably ‘ethnically’ English – although I’m adopted and have been told several times that I don’t ‘look English’. My brother’s white/Pakistani and I have wonderful, inspiring close friends of Chinese and Indian Muslim parentage who were born in England and whose children have now been born here,work colleagues of differing heritages but all born here in England – the usual life-enhancing mosaic. If ‘Englishness’ cannot encompass my brother or my friends or their children or my colleagues, then those who concern themselves with such the primacy of such low-minded ideas as ‘ethnic English’ can frankly shove them as far as they will go. I want no part of their reductive, blinkered, frightened world , and will continue to define myself by my humanity and by the passions, ideas, beliefs and quirks that I believe go to create the ongoing mish mash of my self.
The meaning of the word ‘English’ needs to change to reflect the reality on the ground – because at the moment it is fast becoming irrelevant. The blending and reshaping of ethnicities into constant new formulations that defy (unless one is determined to be obsessed with such things) categorisation, will surely transform the concept of ‘Englishness’. I think we’re witnessing the death throes of its old limitations, and the birth of what it could – or rather must mean – is becoming increasingly visible on our streets every day.
Well said Pete.
Here’s my thoughts:
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/10/15/glad-to-be-english/
Tariq, You should write an essay for What England Means to Me
Good article, Tariq. It is good to see that you have seen past the alarmist attitude the BNP seem to unfortunately generate, and witness for yourself that these are the views of most of your everyday-to-day people in Britain.
As for my opinion, I firmly consider you as a British person. You state you were born here and feel like an English citizen. The British label is a label bestowed upon us through the political union of multiple nations. (I should say those nations are very closely knit together by genetics and cultural ethnogenesis). Anybody who is born in Britain and/or immigrates here and settles in and doesn’t wish to transform the “nation” around them with their alien culture are welcome.
You, Tariq, are a British citizen. Just as I am a British citizen. Where we differ is that I am ethnically English whilst you are (hopefully when England is given an English parliament and political nation) a Civic-Englishman, or an English citizen.
There is no such thing as ‘ethnically English’.
Oh really? So what do you call the people who are from England long before the arrival of the Normans?
Celts – mostly; oh, and some Picts.
You are aware that the mythical foundational king of the West Saxon kingdom, Cerdic, has a Celtic name, not Anglo-Saxon?
Even the Anglo-Saxons were not very sure who they themselves were, in point of fact; and they were not too hung up about it either.
Would it not be a better nickname for yourself, Grendel:
Com on wanre niht scrithan an sceadugenga.
Haha! Facetious nature on this blog I see.
No, it isn’t the Celts. Celts are long gone from this world (if they ever existed as one homogeneous ethnic entity) and only survive in the imagination of romantics and the racially insane.
///Even the Anglo-Saxons were not very sure who they themselves were, in point of fact; and they were not too hung up about it either.///
I suppose the Anglo-Saxon chronicles was an imaginary book then?
I would like to hear more from these “Anglo-Saxons” who you believe to be not to bothered.
Of Grendel, from Beowulf.
Anglo-Saxon is a language, not a people. All the archaeological and linguistic evidence points to a smallish incursion of West Germanic speakers into a late Romano-Celtic society.
The Venerable Bede, writing in Northumbria, mentions Britons (Brythonic speakers) living amongst Anglo-Saxon speakers in what is today North Yorkshire quite late on. No Celtic genocide, rather assimilation of the various groups in the area.
Equally, landscape archaeological work shows great continuities between Romano-Celtic settlements and later so-called Anglo-Saxon settlements.
One theory, worked from records like the ASC (which, incidentally, was not called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at any time during its constant formation, redaction, distribution and presence) suggests that war-bands already linked to late Romano-Celtic Germanic mercenary levies in Britain used such familial links to make inroads into the post-Roman British political and social scene. The whole story of Cerdic and his nefa Snuf and Witgar may be a vague recount of how local already-long settled Germanic speakers left by the Roman retreat in Britain incited or invited relatives (in this case his sister’s children, his nephews) to the opening up territories of Romano-Celtic Britain.
Oh, and you may also find diverting the fact that good Anglo-Saxon prose and poetry was often heavily influenced by Celtic. In Court West Saxon dialect you can usually tell whether the writer was trained at, for example, St David’s in Wales by a typically Celtic obsession with using rare words and loan words. Later on, you see similar influences in Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon made by Old Danish and Old Norse.
The wonder of the so-called Dark Ages in what became England is a story of immense and subtle complexity. Adding a thread to this story are many different peoples – let this continue.
Tell me, do you regard this as facetious?
Incidentally, are you seriously suggesting that Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic, Manx and Cornish and Breton are not Celtic languages?
Alternatively, you could just feck off to your BNP meeting – you must be running late, already.
Are you insinuating that I’m some sort of monster = Troll?
///Anglo-Saxon is a language, not a people. All the archaeological and linguistic evidence points to a smallish incursion of West Germanic speakers into a late Romano-Celtic society.///
LOL! One of Oppenheimer’s crew then?
///Incidentally, are you seriously suggesting that Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic, Manx and Cornish and Breton are not Celtic languages?///
Not what I said. Celtic is a culture, not an ethnicity.
///Alternatively, you could just feck off to your BNP meeting – you must be running late, already.///
You may wish to reread my opening lines where I congratulated Tariq in seeing over the BNP rhetoric.
“Alternatively, you could just feck off to your BNP meeting – you must be running late, already.”
Why don’t you? They’ll share your belief in a romanticised fictional ‘celtic’ identity. You’ll get on great. They won’t share your “any identity as long it’s not English crap of course but you can’t have everything.”
“Incidentally, are you seriously suggesting that Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic, Manx and Cornish and Breton are not Celtic languages?”
By your brilliant logic Jamaicans are German. Or do they do not speak a Germanic language?
Saying ‘English’ is an ethnicity is like saying ‘Canadian’ is an ethnicity. The British isles have wave after wave of immigrants from mainland Europe and the Nordic nations.
No. Just someone whose thinking about Dark Ages society did not stop at about 1920 like yours.
Anglo-Saxon is a language, not a people. The notion of national identity is an extremely late one. It is anachronistic to contemplate people who lived over a thousand years ago in such a manner. This is generally understood.
Actually, you said no such thing. You argued that the Celts are long gone. I did not disagree, or agree. I argued about Celtic languages. Languages are quintessentially cultural items.
No, I suspect that you would go along quite a lot with the BNP, especially when they kick off on their “cultural nationalism” jag, which appears to be quite your thing too.
Incidentally, I note that you do not actually address a single substantive point I raised. So, yes, I do rather think you are a troll – Grendel, of course, was not.
It is a shame English nationalists are so poor at comprehension, Sarah. I was writing about the late Roman society which is generally known as Romano-Celtic. This epithet in no way leads you or anyone else to assume that I hold to some fictional, romantic or otherwise mythical status for Celts or anyone else. Calm down.
Stop being obtuse. English is defined by linguists as a West Germanic language. This is not a statement about ethnicity, or regional identity. Stop confusing language and ethnicity – I am not doing so. You are.
What is extraordinary is that the Little Englanders want to argue that other peoples who occupy the British Isles have absolutely no rational reason to describe themselves as – for example – Celts because, putatively, Celtic identity is an entire fabrication. So it may be. This was never my point.
However, we learn from these same sources, that being English is entirely a matter of ethnicity. Yet, when challenged about the very background of this supposed ethnic identity – when it is shown to be itself an absolute tissue of myth and legend – one is immediately accused of… cough … supporting myths and legends about the seemingly loathed Welsh!
So the English are” allowed” to have an “ethnic” basis for their identity – and no-one else is… especially if they are Welsh, or Irish, or Scottish, or…. or….
In point of fact national identity has nothing to do with any one feature – ethnicity, or language or any other universal feature you might want to point to and demand “THAT is what makes her English.” There is NO definition. Actually, there does not need to be.
People are in danger of confusing questions of self-identity with nationalism as an ideology – and the latter I loathe, reject and suggest has absolutely nothing to do with the question at hand.
You speak a lot of words but hold no substance to them, Abu Faris.
You claim to be up to date and past the dinosaur age that was the 20′s, so what is your position on population genetics?
///So the English are” allowed” to have an “ethnic” basis for their identity – and no-one else is… especially if they are Welsh, or Irish, or Scottish, or…. or….///
Where was it said they couldn’t? The Welsh, Irish, Scottish and Cornish can gladly claim their ethnic identity, and rightly so. Just if they are going to start claiming it as some post 1707 romanticist nonsense, then…well, we evolved laughter for a purpose.
P.S. I’m not too sure if you’re attempting to exact Godwin’s Law or reduce the conversation to a common reductio ad Hitlerum? Perhaps both.
Stop trying to run away from the fact that you outright denied that the Welsh and other Celtic-language speakers are not entitled to ethnic identity, whilst simultaneously claiming that the English had such a right.
It was to this contradiction – and to the inherent “ethnic” identity politics to which you were laying claim – that I objected.
I am glad that you have at least now attempted some sort of retraction of your earlier deliberate misreading of my position. A shame you cannot address any of the substantive points I raised.
I find all nationalism nauseating. And yes, I cannot help but make a connection between nationalism and fascism in Europe (and to me that includes UK).
I might *write* a lot of words, but evidently you understand but a few. That is a shame and deeply convenient from your perspective, of course.
I have no position on population genetics – I would not dream of entering into a debate on this subject. Are you a geneticist? Youa re evidently no historian.
Goodnight.
Which should, of course, read:
My bad. Put it down to a broken wrist and appalling toothache.
Possibly also the cause for confusing you with a Nazi – very bad. Not nice. Reasons, not excuses. Apologies. Think I will go and lie down for a while now.
///Stop trying to run away from the fact that you outright denied that the Welsh and other Celtic-language speakers are not entitled to ethnic identity, whilst simultaneously claiming that the English had such a right.///
I never did deny them that. You have my permission to go back over my comments and repost the relevant comment made by myself if you so wish.
As it was, what I actually said, and perhaps you failed to understand correctly, (and I shall expand where necessary for you to do so) is that the term ‘Celt’ is not an ethnic identity. ‘Welsh’ is an ethnic identity. ‘Scottish’ is an ethnic identity, as is ‘Irish’ and ‘Cornish’ too. Unless you want to argue that Celts did exist as a commonly used blanket term for all the people from the tip of Ireland to the ends of Galatia?, then please go ahead and argue the point.
///I am glad that you have at least now attempted some sort of retraction of your earlier deliberate misreading of my position. A shame you cannot address any of the substantive points I raised.///
Regards to what I previously said, you talk a lot of words, but not any sense. One second you confirm the English are a distinct ethnic identity by ways of referencing well known sources, to then denying in another comment your previous assertion that they aren’t. You then get all defensive about the Welsh, Scots and Irish being supposedly denied their ethnic right by me and blow your cover which all trolls are adept and doing.
///I have no position on population genetics – I would not dream of entering into a debate on this subject. ///
I suggest you do so and come to realise how fruitless and inherently naive your current position is.
///Are you a geneticist? Youa re evidently no historian.///
I’m not, no, but coming from a man who thinks books can sail across the North Sea to invade England, I don’t really need to be.
And a goodnight to you, sir.
No. That was not my point, either. My point was simply that the peoples who inhabited the British Isles included people who presently self-identify as belonging to a language group known as Celtic. They are also, in part, descendants of people who were resident in the British Isles when possibly a very few people from what is today the pointy bit of Germany migrated to the British isles at some point in the late 4th to early 6th Centuries.
My popint has always been to deny that there is any *necessary* ethnic component to national self-identification. I fail to udnerstand why this is so difficult to understand.
I hardly get “defensive” about the Welsh, Scots or anyone else. I am pointing out that you cannot uphold ethnic identity for one group (the English) and deny it fully for another. I get annoyed by such blatant special pleading, actually.
Are you enjoying yourself? What on Earth are you writing about? I actually suggested that a small number of people came across. I now must assume that you are simply trolling. It is perfectly clear to a blind man riding backwards what I meant. I can only sympathise if you are struggling with a language for which you evidently feel you have some sort of ethnic affinity.
Do you actually have any evidence to support your ethnic-identity thesis, other than claims to be aware of genetics… that you don’t need to be… seemingly…. because you chose to misread?
Don’t you find this sort of trolling, finally, rather sad?
So the troll is calling me a troll! Wonderful.
The part I was referring to is this little beauty by you.
///Anglo-Saxon is a language, not a people.///
I was just wondering how it is you think a pile of books managed to sail across the North Sea to what is now England.
Get reading on those population genetics, dear sir. After you have read enough to understand, then, (and I sincerely hope that you do) will you begin to realise your folly in denying the English their rightful ethnic identity and will abandon all this nonsense about AS elite invasion nonsense.
As an aside question, could I just pick your opinion? If I was to move to Japan and have a son with my wife (who is English) in Japan, would my son be able to claim a Japanese ethnic identity? I could add factors like length of stay and level of education, cultural assimilation, etc, etc, so on and so forth, but let’s just start from that initial question.
Language is more than books. Quite clearly.
Or do you only read and write?
Since I do not think “ethnic identity” has any part to play in national self-identification, this is a non-question. You are repeatedly confusing two distinct issues, to my mind.
I would also contest that your depiction of “ethnic identity” is at best crude, at worst false.
I have already stated this, however.
What makes someone a national is not dependent upon any one single factor. Indeed, the factors which together make up such a self-identification are fluid and not fixed.
As you and I are approaching this problem from two completely distinct and different angles, is there much point in continuing, I wonder?
///Language is more than books. Quite clearly.///
It certainly is. Languages are the result of a ethnogenesis. To deny that the language has a claim to a people, and vice-versa is simply delusional.
///Since I do not think “ethnic identity” has any part to play in national self-identification, this is a non-question.///
It isn’t a matter of whether you consider it to be pertinent. I would concede that a national self identification isn’t strongly reliant upon an ethnic identity (more so in today’s multicultural world), but the fact still remains that an identity has a beginning. At this beginning, the English were a homogeneous population.
Again, read up on your population genetics.
///I would also contest that your depiction of “ethnic identity” is at best crude, at worst false.///
Mere opinions. I’m not interested in opinions, I am interested in facts and educating people about them.
///As you and I are approaching this problem from two completely distinct and different angles, is there much point in continuing, I wonder?///
I’m enjoying the discussion. As long as the childish remarks and insinuations are kept out of it, I am freely willing to continue on with our discussion
*Yawns*
And the comment about books sailing across seas was *not* childish?
Utter crap. No language is so built (if built is a useful way of describing the development of languages). Language is most certainly *not* tied to an ethnic group in such a one-to-one manner, either in genesis or latter development.
Your comment about disagreement being delusional is both rude and ill-informed. You assert you are interested in facts – and yet everywhere give your opinions.
No. You are engaged in instruction, not education – else you would be interested in opinions. Your view is that you are right and in sovereign control of facts and that everyone else is wrong and engages in “opinion”.
You are very confused.
This is an utterly false statement. Not even the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) speakers considered themselves a single people.
I’m sorry you suffer the delusion common among outsiders of believing themselves English. Allow me to help.
First ‘British’ is not an identity. It is a cloak of anonymity enemies reach for when trying to divert from English accomplishment. It is used to suggest burdens shared more or less equally throughout these islands, masking the damage being inflicted on England by its enemies. Is immigration really ‘British’? Or is it almost exclusively an English curse ? You know the answer. I couldn’t care less about ‘Britain’.
Nations are not the product of the political convenience they serve. Nations are special. The etymology of the word could not be less equivocal. Nations are peoples related by blood. Countries are not nations. Countries are geographical spaces occupied by nations. For a thousand years England, comparatively isolated from mainland Europe, enjoyed one of the most settled populations in the western hemisphere.
I am a nationalist. Since I am a nationalist, and in view of the meaning that properly attaches to the word ‘nation’, I believe nationalism without an explicitly racial component to be a waste of time.
Racialism advocates separation on the grounds that biology overwhelmingly determines capacity and capability. It is therefore the surest means of preserving true human ‘diversity’. This has nothing to do with ‘hate’. It has nothing to do with ‘supremacism’. It is far from something to be ashamed of.
I submit that racial identity is integral to national identity. I submit that race and culture are indissolubly linked, that one is a by-product of the other. These two, indeed, ‘cannot be separated….(for) only the people who created a culture can sustain it. If immigration changes the face of America – and of Europe – nothing else will remain unchanged’ (McDaniel, G. & Taylor J., A Race Against Time, New Century Books 2004).
And since English culture is European culture and European culture necessarily white, racial awareness is nothing short of vital if the English, my people, are to survive .
It is by setting the borders at race that we protect who we are. If you are not white, you are not English. We should assert this with vigour, and for two reasons. First because it is true historically, and because the moral right of a people in their own homeland to define themselves in whatever way they see fit is no-one’s damned business but their own.
Second, and crucially, because biological egalitarianism, the notion that human differences show only superficial variation between individuals and groups, is a lie. It is a lie carefully cultivated by internationalist propaganda for reasons of political advantage. It is a lie nonetheless. The English are who they are, their culture is as it is, in part because of biology. Defend biology and you defend the nation.
Sorry Ashley.
Jews know these natural principles and remain loyal to them, while the Japanese repudiated long ago the phoney ‘diversity’ derived from suicidal immigration laws. So why aren’t whites accorded the same freedom? Demands for ‘inclusivity’ are never aimed at black Africa or Asia – only at white countries.
Born here you may have been Tariq. But had you entered the world in Tokyo, had Japanese been your first language, would that really have made you Japanese? I suspect an average Japanese citizen would fall about laughing at the very suggestion. He’d be entitled to. It’s his country, not yours.
Very prosaic Mr Stone. But in your thesis of racial nationalism being fundamental to the idea of nationhood, how do you understand the nationalism of North American nations (both Canada and the USA)? And by that I mean, which North American race is the appropriate one to couple to your ideas of biological nationhood? White European? Indigenous Pre-Columbian North American? And what about Australia? I’d like to know, because if you apply your thesis to Europe, it doesn’t bear the reverse-engineering you need to put it through in the case of those nations, does it?
“Second, and crucially, because biological egalitarianism, the notion that human differences show only superficial variation between individuals and groups, is a lie. It is a lie carefully cultivated by internationalist propaganda for reasons of political advantage. It is a lie nonetheless. “
From that notion, it is a short hop to qualitative variations between one race and another. And you must have some sort of league table of these racial variations tucked away somewhere. From that, can you give us an idea on the variation of IQ differentials between say White European Caucasian, Japanese Mongolian and Ashkenazi Jews?
Harold – I’m sorry if you suffer from the illusion that viking invaders and Roman conquerers think that they are English, because your not and never will be.
Your sense of ethnic pride, whilst admirable, is mis-guided on so many levels.
British is an identity and has been for quite a while, deny the obvious if you like. Britain has been recieving wave after wave of migrants for thousands of years, Vikings, Normans, Romans etc etc. So it is not a homogenous ethnic group in any sense.
Your understanding of ‘nation state’ is so outdated and 1920 Europe. National idenities are increasingly constructed along the lines of citizenship in our globalised world not blood. Yes people have a right to define themselves and they have. Luckily the vast majority of English people don’t define being British as being ‘white’. Since you are not adhering to this consensus I take it you are no longer English. And what exactly is ‘white’ anyway? Are Italians White? Are Albanians White? Are Turks White? Some Afghans have very light skin, are they white too?
Then you throw in some conspiracy theories about racial diversity without evidence, please provide details of studies that have proven your point and no Jenson 1930s studies that were used to justify the holocaust don’t count.
It is not just ‘white’ countries that have recieved immigration. People migrate primarily for economic reasons not because they like white skin. Pakistan has been the largest recipient of immigration in recent years. Historically Brazil, Turkey, Egypt, India and many other nations have recieved economic immigrants.
Your understand of politics and grasp of history reminds me of Islamists. You should really seek them out, you will find you have much in common.
Faisal and 264u,
With you I completely agree.
The notion of “race” is an entirely discredited one – and it is a wonder how (but not why) some people still cling to this idea.
Let us assume that one even wants to classify people according to their skin pigmentation (and I take it that for Stone et al, given their obsessions about White people, that skin pigment is important somehow), the question is does this classification by skin colour have any usefulness at all? Is it connected to any other factor that might usefully distinguish between people?
The answer is a resounding “No”. Time after time, seeming differences in ability (which might seem a litmus test) have been shown to have been either culturally or by some other non-genetic factor driven. The whole notion of racism is as ridiculous as the suggestion that ginger cats are naturally better climbers than tabbies.
Vitally, the racists (and I love the spurious introduction of the adjective “scientific”, or the retagging of racism as racialism) persistently conflate notions of ethnicity with notions of membership of nations. In order to do this they prop up their truly steam-driven theses with ahistorical allusions to “folk”, ethnogenesis of language and other entirely fictional props.
Those people who self-identify as Arabs (and are recognised by other self-identifying Arabs as Arabs) are not restricted to a single ethnic group. In terms of colour, there are White Arabs, Brown Arabs, Black Arabs and every shade in-between. Clearly African peoples of states like Sudan consider themselves Arabs and are considered by other Arabs as Arabs. One might be drawn to conclude that to be an Arab is to share in a number of cultural practices, pivoting around first language use of the Arabic language (in one of its many, sometimes not mutually intelligible dialects), that are shared in practice by others who also self-identify as Arabs. Where is “race” or even ethnicity in this? Nowhere to be seen.
Evevn the notions of national or regional identity are not fixed, or even linked in some sort of gluey bond to one factor or another. In Sudan, self-identification has shifted both historically and in terms of the uses required by people today.
100 years ago, the term “Sudani” was restricted to Southern Sudanese. It was used to indicate those peoples who came from those areas in the south of the country who did not self-identity as Arabs. Today the term is used by self-identifying Arabs and non-Arabs alike.
In Darfur (and elsewhere) the term used to self-identify shifts – someone may, even in the same sentence, self-identify as Arab, or non-Arab, Darfuri, Sudanese – these terms are not mutually exclusive and do not rest in some sort of fixed way with notions of ethnic origin or other specious “racial” identity.
Above, the White nationalist, Beonwulfwer, argued that language is offered into the world by ethnogenesis. Briefly, the entirely unlikely thesis that languages are tied to particular ethnic groups. Yet the English, for example, are not – and have never been – a specific ethnic group (indeed, it is next to impossible to actually discover such groups anywhere “unsullied” – as such White nationalists doubtless want – by admixture or interaction with others). The whole history of the English language is determined by its interactions with other more or less related languages (and this effects not just its word-list, but its syntactic and semantic layers). The notion that a language emerges somehow “unsullied” and then gets inscribed by other languages is false.
The attempt to smuggle in fundamentals of racist discourse into this discussion has to be resisted – hence my interest in conversing with people whose views I otherwise find utterly repellent. This is not to lend their views credence, but to seek to undermine the false, self-serving and authoritarian bases of their irrational and finally anti-human values.
I have not read the more recent posts made by Abu Faris, nor BeornWulfWer, so perhaps my argument is late and perhaps now irrelevant. I feel the need, however, to get it across anyway.
To me, ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ is not a genetic construction, but instead a social construction. As time passes, ethnic groups and ‘races’ create themselves based on a shared set of values, beliefs, ideas, language, culture and so on.
The Anglo-Saxons came to England and laid down the foundations of the English language, the foundations for the English law system, and defended this land from their settlement until their defeat during 1066.
Wether or not the English people are composed of entirely Anglo-Saxon Germanic genetics or not, if the Anglo-Saxon peoples are what the English want to show their affiliation towards, then so be it. I don’t understand why, or how, there is anything wrong with that.
Without the Anglo-Saxon peoples, the country known today as England, would not be known as England.
I think It’s only fair that the English people are allowed to show a connection with the people who built their country.
There’s a small town in north Canada where the Viking peoples had landed for no significant length what so ever. It is doubted that the people living there have any genetic relation to the men who where there so long ago, however they are allowed to show a connection with them people and display it vividly on a day to day basis. Why not are the English, who’s connection with the Anglo-Saxons is far greater in substance?
It is to me, clear disregard for the significance of English identity.
The Welsh are allowed an identity, the Scotish, and the Irish, why not the English?
Perhaps the English do not want to grasp at Celtic history and identity, perhaps they feel a stronger connection with that of the Germanic people.
There is nothing at all wrong with that.
To be something of an agent provocateur, could the commentators here please tell me if they believe that Han Chinese who have moved to live in Tibet in recent years are just as Tibetan as “ethnic Tibetans”?
Roger,
Yes – if they want to so self-describe.
Ethnic self-identity is neither sufficient nor necessary for national self-identity.
And if these Han Chinese self-identify as Tibetan, but then argue that Tibet should have closer ties with Beijing, that there should be more Red Army forces in Lhasa, and that more Han Chinese should move to Tibet… Would you still consider them to be just as Tibetan as any other Tibetan?
That is an entirely distinct issue, Roger.
If Han Chinese identified as Tibetan nationals, they may support closer links with other regions of the PRC – then again, they may demand greater autonomy, or even full independence.
The political demands of people are not necessarily determined directly by their ethnic (or even national) self-identification.
If the people of Tibet (of whatever self-identifying ethnicity or nationality) are given the free choice as to belong or not belong to the Klingon Empire, that frankly is their right.
Thanks Abu Faris. So, in other words, it’s still all about self-identification – rather than people’s ethnic origin, where they were born, how recently they arrived in that place etc? It’s about what people call themselves, not about what others might call them?
@Abu Faris
///Utter crap. No language is so built (if built is a useful way of describing the development of languages). Language is most certainly *not* tied to an ethnic group in such a one-to-one manner, either in genesis or latter development.///
Well the onus is upon you to prove your statement then, Mr. Abu Faris.
It’s an accepted reality that the English language came into existence through the very ethnogenesis of the English people. Are you trying to suggest otherwise and claim that the English language was already present within the land to become England? How is it you think the English language came into existence?
///This is an utterly false statement. Not even the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) speakers considered themselves a single people.///
The Germanic invaders of England were a closely related group of people. To say that they didn’t identify as one people is to exaggerate the complexities of tribal warfare and contention of authority, and leastwise to deny that the people who fought at Stamford Bridge and the Battle of Hastings considered themselves as disparate groups of people.
///The notion of “race” is an entirely discredited one – and it is a wonder how (but not why) some people still cling to this idea.///
Whilst I firmly agree with the fact that “race” is a discredited terminology with which to use, it still remains that populations are discernible by genetics. The PC-fication of the science of racial politics has been rampant (and rightly so in some cases), but it has forgotten to tell the actual genes this little secret. “Race”, for want of a better word, is a viable realistic scientific reality.
///Above, the White nationalist, Beonwulfwer, argued that language is offered into the world by ethnogenesis. Briefly, the entirely unlikely thesis that languages are tied to particular ethnic groups.///
Very fun that you have no resorted to petty epithets and buzzwords to try and sully my name, Abu. I suppose you actually believe that anyone who disagrees and dares to evoke a different opinion from yourself is nothing short of racist? How deluded you truly are. For the record, I am not a White Nationalist. No such nation exists to be nationalistic about.
///Yet the English, for example, are not – and have never been – a specific ethnic group (indeed, it is next to impossible to actually discover such groups anywhere “unsullied”///
Wholly incorrect, Abu. Please, if you are wanting to comment upon genetics, at least get some grounding in the science. To openly deny the English are not a specific ethnic group is to deny a science outright.
///The whole history of the English language is determined by its interactions with other more or less related languages (and this effects not just its word-list, but its syntactic and semantic layers). ///
So you’ve basically just admitted that the English language is an ethnic language? So you agree that the English language was formulated by the interactions of the culturally and genetically similar peoples that populated England?
@264U You seem to be confused as to the striking difference between White Nationalism and Nationalism.
///British is an identity and has been for quite a while, deny the obvious if you like. Britain has been recieving wave after wave of migrants for thousands of years, Vikings, Normans, Romans etc etc. So it is not a homogenous ethnic group in any sense.///
You’re mistaken of course. What you mean to say is that the Island of Britain has received wave after wave of cultural invaders.
Ancient Britons/Celts/Picts: R1b
Romans(largely central European auxiliaries): R1b
Germanic peoples: R1b
Vikings(includes Normans): R1b
Now, we go onto the haplotypes of current immigrants then you should hopefully spot the difference.
Polish: R1a/N
Middle East: The myriad J grouping.
Africa: E1b1b
This is obviously a very simplified example of the differences between populations, but it certainly sticks out to refute the erroneous claim by yourself that because Britain has been receiving migrations in the past, it should do so today. These invasions pre-1066 have been of the same population grouping. The invasion had been one of a cultural incursion, and not immigration.
Roger,
More or less – however this is not to deny that factors such as ethnic self-identification, or date of arrival might effect this self-identification.
Beonwulfwer
I am hardly in a position to make comments on genetics. As you also comment that you are not a geneticist, neither are you. I make no comments about genetics. Please avoid projecting your own obsessions onto my remarks.
I make no assertion that English is an “ethnic language”. As someone involved in the study of languages, I am at a loss to grasp exactly what you want by such a weird terminology. I would certainly not want to be associated with its use (whatever you mean by it).
You write:
You keep doing this. I made no such claim, nor does any such claim necessarily or sufficiently follow from the remarks I did make.
There is little point in continuing this discussion as you are simply engaged in distorting or deliberately misreading others’ comments for your own purposes.
Goodbye.
Thanks Abu Faris. So, in other words, it’s still all about self-identification – rather than people’s ethnic origin, where they were born, how recently they arrived in that place etc?
The notion of self-identification cuts both ways. Oh I’m sure the Vikings’ ethnic origins were very important to them. Do you think they regarded themselves as English as soon as they landed on the shores of Northern England, prior to the looting and rampage they then got on with?
What ethnicity was important to white Europeans when they started to ethnicaly cleanse North America of it’s indigenous races? Did they adopt Red Indian cultural practices?
In both cases, they proceeded to project their own imported identities on their adopted national identities, forming a hybrid thereof.
It strikes me that people on this thread who wish for some abstract notion of cultural purity which they like to think crystallised into existence in some perfect form completely of itself and which has thereafter been sullied and corrupted are just talking out of their “racially pure” backsides.
@Abu Faris
///I make no assertion that English is an “ethnic language”.///
But then you previously said:
///The whole history of the English language is determined by its interactions with other more or less related languages (and this effects not just its word-list, but its syntactic and semantic layers).///
Who are these people you speak of and why is it they interacted?
Yeah, whatever, Beonwulfwer – get over yourself and move on.
As it happens, Dawood, I completely agree with you:
So other than calling me every buzzword under the sun ie: BNP member, racist, White Nationalist, etc…to disparage me in this conversation, you now just stop the conversation when I point out to you your blatant contradictions.
Bye then, and good luck with trying to disprove the English are an ethnic grouping, btw.
i am not a nationalist – at least not in terms of any decision that views the modern nation-state to be the logical unit of representation for any “nation”. i think the nation-state is a transitory state that we have yet to outgrow – the idea that geographical borders should be used as cultural borders and the sole determinant of spheres of authority and belonging. we already have an example of an environment that laughs at such notions and you’re looking at it right now using a browser. geographical borders have their uses and they are, with very few exceptions, limited in their application. you will note, perhaps, at this point, that i am jewish and consider myself a zionist, for a given value of “zionist” that i would rather not spend a lot of time on defining right at this moment, but certainly not one that considers the modern state of israel to be anything more than a similarly transitory state in the historical progress of the jewish “nation” (by which i do *not* mean the state of israel) to which i belong. consequently, i would not want the state of israel to be a state *only* for jews and would aspire for all of its citizens, jewish and non-jewish to have full civic equality in all respects. in this case, nationalism with an explicitly racial component would do us irrevocable harm if it was ever enacted in the way in which, say, lieberman proposes. i note this particular post earlier:
no, you completely misunderstand and misrepresent what judaism does here. judaism does not set the border at race. i am not the same colour as my wife, my children, or vast numbers of other jews with, say, blue eyes, red hair or black skin. judaism is not defined by race exclusivity. you can join judaism by converting to it. that is a distinct, bounded process, in which race does not enter. you become *socialised* to judaism by living a jewish life, in a jewish community, by doing jewish things. you don’t sign a certificate and become jewish. anyone can do so as long as they can agree to do the things which make you jewish. nobody is prevented from becoming jewish on racial grounds and, once converted, you are no different from another jew.
nationhood, for us, involves a process of socialisation – i would argue that it is probably the same for englishness; the border to it cannot be defined exclusively by accident of birth, having been born in the right place (in jewish terms, of the right mother) but by the things which make one english, which are far less easy to define, but would probably include those things which, in a gathering of jews in another country, mark me out as english, for example, my mother tongue, my accent, my use of language, my civic pride as a londoner, my sense of humour, my individualism, my attachment to liberty, free speech and democracy, my sense of history, my manners and other social markers like an inability to be rude to waiters and a sentimental attachment to oak trees, robin hood, cider, king arthur and marmite. these would mark me out within british society as well – i would stand out as an english jew in a gathering of scottish jews, for example. british, i would argue, is a more civic definition, not defined by race, but decidedly by administrative fiat. thus, one can become british overnight but not, i would submit, english, by virtue of the very things that mark me out. also, those things definitive of englishness have of course changed over time. englishness would mean something very different any time you stopped if you hopped back in time 100, 200, 300 or 400 years. perhaps a different way of distinction might be accomplished by some sort of nationalistic version of the “turing test” – that’s if you can find a non-biased way of applying it, of course. and, of course, if i was discriminated against on the basis of my englishness, i would expect to be able to have redress for it. what i consider an offence against englishness, however, is the idea that it should be linked to the nebulous concept of race. culture i can deal with, but i do not and will not accept the only idea that people like the bnp peddle, that culture is a product of race and race alone. there’s a proud english word for that:
BOLLOCKS.
as for this ridiculous deification of the “anglo-saxons” (the angles being one lot and the saxons being another – and, frankly, i think the jutes and the vikings are getting a bit of a bad deal here too!), i think you’re forgetting the ancient britons, who were there before the celts. you may spot them from time to time in wales, cornwall and ireland. they’re not all descended from shipwrecked sailors from the spanish armada, you know. genetically, however, you will find a lot of markers there from iberia, which date back to the time the phoenicians traded here for tin, i believe. and, also, you’re being a bit as far as the linguistic stuff – abu faris, hah! kudos for quoting actual anglo-saxon. that did make me smile.
b’shalom
bananabrain
@Bananabrain
///you will find a lot of markers there from iberia, which date back to the time the phoenicians traded here for tin, i believe.///
It pre-dates that time frame. You are looking at tens of thousands of years for those markers, not the era of initial Phoenician trading.
bananabrain
Thanks for getting across what I was actually trying to explain.
That’ll teach me for quoting Old English… next up, “The Dream of the Rood” and (my favourite), “The Seafarer”.
@beornwulfwer
i don’t pretend any expertise in genetics, nor much in history. all i know is that the bnp are the scrapings from the boot sole of englishness – if their idea of “indigenous” is “was on the losing side at hastings”, then they’re an even bigger bunch of idiots than i thought.
b’shalom
bananabrain
You were trying to equate ethnic English with a Abrahamic religion, Abu?
@Bananabrain
///all i know is that the bnp are the scrapings from the boot sole of englishness///
Surely you mean Britishness? One is different than the other.
/// if their idea of “indigenous” is “was on the losing side at hastings”, then they’re an even bigger bunch of idiots than i thought.///
They don’t think that. Where did that come from, if I may ask?
As a thought, but who do you consider to be the indigenous people of America?
Abu Faris – Did you ever read an Anglo-Saxon poems called ‘The Ruins’ or something like that? – it used to be one of my favourites – about some Saxon dude wandering about the ruins of an old roman town, saying ‘oh ar, here be giants’.
Obtuse, Beornwulfwer.
The commune proverbe is sooth, that good conseil wanteth whan it is moost nede.
I’m sorry, Abu. Were you making an argument or simply pouting in the corner?
Al-Qanaas
Yes. Some people think it is a reflection on the ruins of Roman Bath.
In a lot of it there is a haunting sense of the transitory nature of life – this lean life – as a Middle English poet expresses it – as water before the driven flood – in the words of an earlier Old English poet. You catch it later too, for instance in Larkin – perhaps most well-known in his “Arundel Tomb”. Writing of a medieval tomb with its reclining figures, I find it rather apposite to this discussion:
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would no guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-littered ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigures them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
Whatever you like, Beornwulfwer. You bore me.
You find me boring because you know I’m right and you are wrong. You may well have got away with your virulent anti-English racism in the past, but it seems you have failed to spread your hate successfully here. Thus why you currently pout.
Very nice. Not bad for Larkin!
Beornwulfwer
I am English.
Please leave me alone. You are extremely tiresome.
Al-Qanaas,
Wha???? Not bad for Larkin????
I see, revenge for my calling Nancy Ajram a singing Chipmunk!
Racism occurs irrespective of ones skin colour, race, creed, religion, etc…
The fact that you are English (how English we do not know yet) and have consistently lied and denied accepted facts in order to further your anti-English racism clearly shows the lengths at which racism extends, and how much work that needs to be done in order to stamp it out forever.
Get lost, Beonwulfwer – you are fooling no-one.
Will you please leave me alone, Beornwulfer. I find your views offensive. I find your manner obtrusive and obtuse simultaneously. You have been systematically bitch-slapped by virtually every other commentor on this thread. Now, kindly take the hint.
Bugger off.
I should really have described Larkin as a “singing chipmunk”!!
LOL
A friend of my family’s once approached Larkin as the poet was sheltering under an umbrella at a bus stop in Hull. It was raining sideways (as it does in Hull) and Larkin was looking as usual lugubrious. My family’s friend congratulated Larkin on his latest collection of poetry. Larkin looked up and said: “Don’t think you are getting under this bloody umbrella.”
I’m offensive??? I know racists are supposed to ignorant to the reality, but this is taking the biscuit.
If I was to exclaim to the world that their existed no such thing as an Inuit or a Zulu or a native American; if I was to outright ridicule the idea that an Australian Aborigine was not native to Australia and the true ethnic Australian and should stop exclaiming their rights toward an alien government and people, or perhaps the same also with the Maoris and so on around the worldd, I would be rightly called out and condemned as a racist.
You say the English do not exist as an ethnicity. I call you out and condemn you for the racist you are. Pout and shrug it off as much as you wish, Abu.
Beornwulfer – what do mean by ‘how English you are’. Do you have chart which illustrates different levels of Englishness?
You really are rather ridiculous, Beornwulfer.
I am a racist because I deny the… cough… putative raciall roots of Englishness wanted by a White nationalist racist like you?
Pitiful.
You are hilarious. You are trolling, right? Because I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so bloody thick.
BWW:
i haven’t seen any “virulent anti-english racism” from abu faris.
yes, i know. actually, i dithered for a while over which i should put and then i thought “you know, they talk about being the BRITISH national party, but what they mostly complain about is that the english don’t seem to be able to be english like the scots can be the scots”, so i decided that what they really cared about was englishness and, of course, they have that the wrong way up and inside out into the bargain. of course, if you read my post, you’d have noted the quite detailed way i differentiated “englishness” from “britishness”. unlike some, perhaps, i think being english is something worth being and, insofar as i understand what it is, i think i am. i don’t think i’ve got the only way of being it, but certainly being a middle-class londoner is no less english than being an east anglian ruralite or someone from the black country, they just have different components. mine is a just bit more urban, literary and cosmopolitan, and a bit less coalmining or farming. englishness, like english accents, has many microclimates. being able to distinguish between them is another part of being english.
someone, i think it was harold something or another, mentioned it further up the thread, he seemed more aligned to literal bnp-ness. i thought it was instructive in its wrongheadedness.
don’t really know – where in america are you talking about? it’s a big place. also, how far back are we talking? i think with certain exceptions (say, the aborigines of australia) there are very few nations on this earth whose indigenousness (if that’s the word) would bear scrutiny beyond a few thousand years. i mean, look at my lot, you only have to go back to the bronze age and there you are in canaan and the place is wall-to-wall canaanites, amalekites, girgashites, jebusites, ammonites, hivites, hittites and the like. in the final analysis, i’m not sure “we were here first” is much of an argument, which is why i think the idea of the “indigenous” is completely barking up the wrong tree. for the same reasons and those outlined above, i think “ethnic englishness” is a complete non-starter as a concept.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Beornwulfwer,
Are you in fact one of Griffin’s little men?
The definition you offer of anti-English racism is straight out of the Griffin hymn book.
You opine that “we” do not know enough yet about my Englishness. If I fail whatever twattish test you have in mind, will I be forced to live in a ghetto and wear a special badge?
Perhaps you could run some sort of test? If I fail do I get to live in a ghetto and wear a special badge.
I have lied nowhere, Nazi-boy.
Oh, do one, you annoying bore.
@ Abu Faris.
///I am a racist because I deny the… cough… putative racial roots of Englishness wanted by a White nationalist racist like you?///
You are a racist because you deny the existence of a distinct ethnic grouping contrary to reasoned and accepted anthropology and genetic science.
///Are you in fact one of Griffin’s little men?
The definition you offer of anti-English racism is straight out of the Griffin hymn book.
Or are you simply a card-carrying twat?///
Keep the insults coming, racist. I am neither a member of the BNP or a voter for the BNP. Perhaps you may wish to condemn me for supporting and voting Liberal Democrat?….no?
@264U
///Beornwulfer – what do mean by ‘how English you are’. Do you have chart which illustrates different levels of Englishness?///
Did the previous comment addressing your previous point fall on deaf ears? Go back and read what was written. Come back slightly more educated than you currently are.
@ Bananabrain
I understand your view, but do you not think you have confused being culturally English and ethnically English? I said at the very beginning that I was very warm to accept people as Englishmen by both their ethnicity and by their acculturalisation.
///where in america are you talking about?///
I meant specifically the North at that point, but you could also consider into your answer the central and southern American indigenous peoples.
Who is this moron? Does anyone know?
@ Abu Faris.
///Perhaps you could run some sort of test? If I fail do I get to live in a ghetto and wear a special badge.///
Don’t be silly. You are still whatever you identify with. The crux of the discussion is allowing people to correctly identify with their ethnic roots.
///I have lied nowhere, Nazi-boy.///
Really? So you could explain why it is you have go full head against accepted wisdom and denied the English their rightful ethnic identity and their rightful claim to the formation of their language?
///Oh, do one, you annoying bore.///
No. No Pasaran and all that. You racists shall not be allowed a platform uncontested and free to spread your pseudo and revisionist BS.
What a knob.
Are you on medication?
I’m not the one spouting out-of-date race-theory. You are.
Please take it elsewhere. I would suggest Stormfront.
What is out of date about recent population genetics?
EDIT: https://www.23andme.com/
My God! Look at this oh so antiquated racist website.
No. This is your projection onto a discussion which was a bit more subtle (clearly, too subtle for you to grasp) as to what it meant to be English. Not a discussion of your freakish antediluvian race-theory, freshened-up with a smidgin’ of half-understood genetics.
Because your views are NOT the accepted wisdom about the formation of ANY language.
Because the so-called ethnic identity argument is exactly what was being called in to question, you dolt.
What next? You are going to call me a rootless cosmopolitan, perhaps? Maybe a touch of the old Abrahamic Bolshevist?
You are coming over loud and clear, now, thanks.
No it didn’t fall on deaf ears it went off on a tangent about chromosones or blood types. Maybe I need to get a masters in genetics before a continue a conversation with you.
Beornwulfwer,
You have linked to a site that sells DNA kits… and your point is?
I want to find out if person X is my mother, or I am person Y’s child. I want to find out if I carry the gene for a certain condition.
You are reaching, sunbeam.
What is more, you got that site by googling for “The Spittoon” and clicking on the wrong site. Ridiculous.
Basically your saying the English are homogenous because all previous waves of immigrants were all R1b types. Well even that is bullshit. The Italians are only 33% R1b so it is likely that most Romans were NOT. The Vikings were also only 40% R1b, hailing from Denmark. Afghan Hazara’s are also 32% R1b and Pakistanis are 7% R1b. So I’m afraid your attempt to baffle me with science failed once again.
@ Abu Faris
///No. This is your projection onto a discussion which was a bit more subtle (clearly, too subtle for you to grasp) as to what it meant to be English///
Yes, and if you read my opening comment, you can see I clearly understood that and contributed. My bone of contention was the assertion that the ethnic English do not exist. I am fully accepting that there exist English people irrespective of their ethnicity, race, whatever.
///Because your views are NOT the accepted wisdom about the formation of ANY language. ///
Really? Still waiting for that proof. Second time of asking now.
///What next? You are going to call me a rootless cosmopolitan, perhaps? Maybe a touch of the old Abrahamic Bolshevist?///
Learn to take a tongue in cheek reference.
@264U
///No it didn’t fall on deaf ears it went off on a tangent about chromosones or blood types. ///
Where did I go off on a tangent? The reply was on topic. And where the hell did I post blood types or chromosomes???
///Maybe I need to get a masters in genetics before a continue a conversation with you.///
Perhaps, but a general avid love for genetics (or if failing that, a simple intelligent perusal of the in and outs of genetics) would suffice. It isn’t rocket science to understand the science. Of course to actually put hands on…well, that would be a different story.
No, sorry I find your sort of old-hat anti-Semitism and Woe-is-me English nationalist racism less than amusing and very telling, actually, Beornwulfwer.
@ Abu Faris
///You have linked to a site that sells DNA kits… and your point is? ///
The point is it is not the creaky old science you hilariously believe it to be.
@264U
///The Italians are only 33% R1b so it is likely that most Romans were NOT.///
I suppose history stopped after the Romans? Did the Italian peninsula not suffer numerous invasions from both the north and the south? It won’t take a rocket scienctist to figure out the reason for the low percentage.
///Afghan Hazara’s are also 32% R1b and Pakistanis are 7% R1b. ///
And why do you think this is? Think about it. Whilst you’re contemplating this, I may be found reading a history book about…Oh, I don’t know…perhaps Alexander the Great?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
@ Abu Faris
///No, sorry I find your sort of old-hat anti-Semitism and Woe-is-me English nationalist racism less than amusing and very telling, actually, Beornwulfwer.///
LOL I’m an anti-Semite as well now? Haha! I shall convey your suspicions to my Aunty’s family when I next see them.
Fucking Anti-Semitic lol
“Some of best friends are Jews, eh?”
Now, where have I heard that one before?
God, you are so predictable.
I can’t be bothered with you any more.
Friends? At what point did I mention I had Jewish friends? I said I have Jewish relatives.
Christ, you can’t make these people up.
LOL. I may not be a genetics expert like you but I can spot bullshit when I see it. The Hazara’s hail from central asia and came to Afghanistan with Ghenghis Khans descendents. Nothing to do with Alexander. In fact, the descendents of the Macedonians still exist in Pakistan, they are known as the Afridi’s. So that was just nonsense you made up on the spot.
As for Italy. do you think 67% of current day Italians have roots outside of Italy and Western Europe. There have been invasions but not that many. Face it the English are not a homogenous group.
Boringwulf
It’s a turn of phrase, used to express ironic lack of surprise when a racist defends themselves by arguing that they have relatives/friends/neighbours who are of the offended against group and that (somehow – it’s always been a mystery to me how) this gives them sort of carte-blanche (ironic, eh?) to so offend.
Why am I explaining this?
@ 264U
///The Hazara’s hail from central asia and came to Afghanistan with Ghenghis Khans descendents.///
Really? You may wish to tell scholars who are still debating where they came from that. Whilst you’re at it, you may tell the researchers who studied and mapped them that they are wrong.
///In fact, the descendents of the Macedonians still exist in Pakistan///
Thank you for backing up my assertion that that is where they received the R1b.
Anymore up your sleeve. You may wish to confirm that it gets wet when it rains? Your choice.
///As for Italy. do you think 67% of current day Italians have roots outside of Italy and Western Europe. There have been invasions but not that many.///
How many invasions do you think is needed? One? Two? Perhaps three to be sure?
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2009/01/north-african-male-legacy-in-southern.html
You really should read up on history as well as genetics.
@ Abu Faris
///Why am I explaining this?///
You’re explaining it because you feel the need to justify your wild accusations. You know they are false and untrue, but then I honestly can’t see why you called me it in the first place, seeing as I haven’t made one anti-Semitic comment here. Even when we were blessed with the presence of a Jewish male from Israel.
You are floundering, Abu. You have used nearly every buzzword in the book.
Here’s an interesting fact about the Hazara – they are apparently quite a mixed bag genetically, but mostly seem to descend from peoples from the Altai Mountains and the environs (like the Mongols). Yet they mostly speak a branch of the Persian language group, which is an Indo-European language group, with nothing whatsoever to do with the Turkic languages.
So much for the ethnogenesis of languages, then.
Next.
Actually, darling, it is you who have been caught trading in half-baked “theories” of genetics, revealing your criminal lack of knowledge of the history of the English, revealing your complete lack of grasp of linguistics, fabricating “evidence” to support your weird “ethnic” (read, racist) theories and trading in ludicrous accusations of others being anti-English racists…
Are you seeing a doctor on a regular basis. Can I recommend one?
Beornwulfwer -
Dustani joni man – man dar farkash nest!
@ Abu Faris
///So much for the ethnogenesis of languages, then.///
I never suggested one was present.
Next!
///Actually, darling, it is you who have been caught trading in half-baked “theories” of genetics///
Okay. Example?
///revealing your criminal lack of knowledge of the history of the English///
Example?
///revealing your complete lack of grasp of linguistics///
LOL! Don’t need no example for that. It is you who retains this pseudo-linguistic belief that the English language was not formulated through ethnogenesis. Terrible education. Terrible grasp of reality, too.
///fabricating “evidence” to support your weird “ethnic” (read, racist) theories///
Example?
///and trading in ludicrous accusations of others being anti-English racists…///
I accused only you. As it stands, the evidence of your racism is undoubted. You have again and again refuted the truth that the English are an ethnic reality. That is class A racism, Abu. Sorry.
That was such a daft response Beorn. Most scholars agree that the Hazara hail from central asia, the dispute is where in central asia. I don’t think any of them believe that they have anything to do with Alexander. My point on Alexander, which you deliberately took out of context, was not that his descendents exist but that they are a distinct ethnic group in north Pakistan, Gilgit area to be precise, and relatively homogenous. But they are very small in number. Pakistan has a population of 170 Million for 7% of that is about 12 Million people who have R1b. Now there certainly are not anywhere near 12 million Afridi’s.
Your response to the Italy point make no sense whatsoever. It must be painful for you to watch to ‘englishness’ theory falling apart. Your pathetic attempts to keep it alive do remain a source of amusement for all us at Spittoon. Keep it up.
Well said, Harold Stone. I’m glad someone is bringing some well-considered, thoughtful words to the thread, rather than the usual stuff you hear from the liberals.
Tariq is not, and ever will be, and Englishman.
Additionally, all of the racial liberals here should take note of what has happened in this thread, and in doing so they will see why the ‘far right’ has been given no platform in this country and why the far left spends so much time trying to disrupt them. The left simply doesn’t fare well against informed nationalists. Never. Not anywhere. The pattern is the same wherever you go where nationalists are allowed to speak.
What pattern? Foot -> Mouth -> Put?
@beornwulfwer:
no, i don’t think so. i think what i am doing is saying that englishness is a cultural identity with a porous border, whereas jewishness is a cultural identity with a clearly defined religious border, whereby you can be culturally but not religiously jewish, as well as “ethnically” but not religiously jewish according to people who care about such things (usually their only purpose in caring about such things is oppression). i don’t accept ethnic identities as hard and fast because there is no clear way of defining where one ends and another begins. hence, for me, there is no such thing as “ethnically” english in any meaningful sense, the same way that there is no meaningful way of being “ethnically” jewish, whatever genetic markers you want to start playing about with – that simply isn’t the way we do things and, more to the point, is nonsensical in terms of englishness, because the only “border” to englishness is the civic border, which is controlled by civic britishness.
i must have missed that bit, perhaps because i disagree so fundamentally with ethnic definitions – if my father is white, born in ireland and catholic and my mother is brown, born in england and jewish, but i myself look like a sort of male version of catherine zeta jones (which i don’t), what am i, “ethnically”? surely there’s no possible answer to this? when i look at the mess that is my family tree, i could be “ethnically” anything. who’s going to analyse it? what are their criteria? what are their qualifications? have they been peer-reviewed? i accept that you may feel that if enough lack of mixing is present, that ought to constitute some sort of “ethnic” englishness, but in my view that is surely as incidental as my mixed background. if one must have an “ethnic group” (and why, i really don’t see) i don’t see anything wrong with calling it “white british” or even “white english” if you feel you have to be distinguished from the scots, welsh and northern irish. i can’t accept the label of “ethnic english”, however, because it is as nonsensensical (and exclusive) as this point you appear to be making about indignenousness.
well, my answer is this – the word “indigenous” is meaningless. human beings are not long enough anywhere in evolutionary terms for it to make any difference that makes any odds. we evolved in an environment something like the african savannah; that is how we are configured as far as i know. yet, we have clearly moved around a fair bit since mitochondrial eve. i mean, my ancestors were in baghdad in 586 BCE as far as i know, does that make them iraqi, or arab, or babylonian, or what? they were presumably in israel before then, does that make them jewish, or mesopotamian, or what? where am i “indigenous” to? how long do i have to be somewhere before i’m “indigenous”? it’s nonsensical.
james:
now you, sonny jim, can feck *right* off. “The left simply doesn’t fare well against informed nationalists?” well, perhaps. but i am not a leftie, but simply someone with a brain – and i haven’t met an informed nationalist yet on this thread.
b’shalom
bananabrain
FAISAL – “Very prosaic Mr Stone.”
Oh I do hope not.
FAISAL – “But in your thesis of racial nationalism being fundamental to the idea of nationhood, how do you understand the nationalism of North American nations (both Canada and the USA)? And by that I mean, which North American race is the appropriate one to couple to your ideas of biological nationhood? White European? Indigenous Pre-Columbian North American? And what about Australia? I’d like to know, because if you apply your thesis to Europe, it doesn’t bear the reverse-engineering you need to put it through in the case of those nations, does it?”
Why should there be but one? All kinship relations provide a basis for nationalism. Indeed I am a proponent of the very ‘diversity’ communists insist can only be created by stealing white people’s lands and appropriating the civilization they built. It is people like me who understand the ‘other’, his love of home and hearth, wherever that may be, not the homogenizing one-worlder. Of course a concommitant point here is also the most obvious – that all nationalisms are competitive. I was sad to see the back of the Hottentot Venus myself……
FAISAL – “From that notion (biological variation or ‘inequality’), it is a short hop to qualitative variations between one race and another. And you must have some sort of league table of these racial variations tucked away somewhere. From that, can you give us an idea on the variation of IQ differentials between say White European Caucasian, Japanese Mongolian and Ashkenazi Jews?”
I argue for the existence of variation. I imply no qualitative judgement. It is communists who justify cultural and racial genocide against whites by arguing from a position you presumably share yourself. I merely counter that specific point.
I do find it interesting nevertheless to observe white people being pilloried as ‘supremacist’ for referring to IQ measurements that – and as we never try to conceal – leave Asians well ahead of us (the point you are clearly anxious to make since Ashkenazim are themselves Asian and have no link to real Jews that I am aware of).
But since white civilization is the greatest in world history – judging at least by the approval rating of Asians and Blacks, who couldn’t get by without it – you will understand why I do not concede all the insights attributed to this form of analysis.
Disparities in intelligence between negro and white, and between sub-Saharan blacks in particular and the rest of us, are obvious enough without recourse to ‘science’, and this is why IQ measurements are often denounced as ‘racist’. My reply is: why then don’t blacks develop their own?
Finally ask yourself this Faisal: if environment is all, and how you are reared is the beginning and the end of the story, just what truly extraordinary force or set of circumstances combined to create the magical white environment – you know, the environment responsible for producing civilization-building whites – in the first place?
Tricky eh?
264u – “Harold (Mr Stone might be nice since we haven’t been introduced) – I’m sorry if you suffer from the illusion that viking invaders and Roman conquerers think that they are English, because your not and never will be.”
I am not Englisc – or the Romans and Vikings were not Englisc…or thought they were…or thought they were not….or I implied they were and am mistaken? Does an illusion make me delusional – or a delusion make me illusional? Extraordinary the implications of single sentence, what? You are educated, self-evidently, though perhaps uneducated in the self-evident.
264u – “Your sense of ethnic pride, whilst admirable, is mis-guided on so many levels.”
Only to those it threatens to expose, who use politeness to mask implacable hostility.
264u – “British is an identity and has been for quite a while, deny the obvious if you like.”
But not ours. Our part of the British Isles are Englisc. It ceased to be ‘British’ when the british or brythonic peoples were driven into Wales and Brittany. The Germanic war-bands responsible came to identify themselves as Englisc. They named the country. They gave it a history.
They also had – have – a strong sense of themselves, as historians from Dorothy Whitelock to Nicholas Howe readily agree. The Anglo Saxons were still praising and poetizing their ancestors’ conquest of ‘Englalond’ six hundred years after it began. Like your friend Sabu, what you dream of being true is not. And you say I entertain illusions?
Your mistake extends to modern Britain as well. The state is not the nation. I have all ready covered this distinction, though you might remember too that ‘British’ is not an identity Scots or Welsh want any part of. Under the terms of a union they claim to reject in every particular (save the financial) these nations are no more and no less ‘British’ than the Englisc. Would you deny us what you are probably quite happy to grant them?
264u – “Britain has been recieving wave after wave of migrants for thousands of years, Vikings, Normans, Romans etc etc. So it is not a homogenous ethnic group in any sense.”
Ah that old chestnut! As homogenous as the Scots, certainly, who are never subjected to these ‘mongrel’ allegations. The Englisc controlled – and populated – Lowland Scotland for centuries. David Hume, that nation’s most celebrated philosopher, described the language of the region as ‘German’. He said everyone knew it too, counselling readers against trusting the ‘fabulous annals’ of Scottish historians. Then there are Irish, Norwegians, Normans, Norman Vikings, Picts (like the modern ‘Scots’ a variant of the Spanish fisherman genetically and geographically). Had enough?
264u – “Your understanding of ‘nation state’ is so outdated and 1920 Europe. National idenities are increasingly constructed along the lines of citizenship in our globalised world not blood. ”
Your view is framed by the ideology of progress – a typically modern (and modernist) error. ‘Progress’ means fashionable sentiment. Fashionable sentiment obscures truth.
264u – “Yes people have a right to define themselves and they have. Luckily the vast majority of English people don’t define being British as being ‘white’.”
How do you know? What evidence have you of ‘vast’ support for your position among the population at large? And ‘lucky’ for whom? All people define themselves racially in some sense, since race is integral to identity. Blacks are positively encouraged to. Is that ‘unlucky’?
The difference here (as if you didn’t know) lies in the suppression of white opinion, which must be expressed privately because fear of the truth is so great among the liberal elite that laws subject ‘racists’ (an exclusively white attribution) to arrest and prosecution should they brave the state’s displeasure and object openly to being stripped of their inheritance.
264u – “Since you are not adhering to this consensus I take it you are no longer English.”
What does this sentence mean?
264u – “And what exactly is ‘white’ anyway? Are Italians White? Are Albanians White? Are Turks White? Some Afghans have very light skin, are they white too?”
A long and complicated subject. There is no ‘pure’ race – a straw man, like the very important difference between the terms ‘racist’ and racialist’ your friend Sabu thinks it makes him sound clever to attack, appearances being more important to him than anything if I am any judge – and there are blue-eyed, blonde-haired whites who are not actually white. To be honest I can’t be bothered. I’ll simply quote from a man now gone from us and rightly described as a ‘much missed friend and teacher’. His name was Robert Frenz:
___________________________________________________________
(QUOTE) – ‘One does not ascertain the quality of a sweater by only examining the fibers. D.N.A. analysis is great for some interpolations but is useless when it comes to extrapolation. The race-mixing zealots……would have us believe that a 1% solution of potassium cyanide is nearly identical to a glass of spring water since they both are 99% “equal.” My senses tell me that there is a vast difference between myself and AIDS Johnson of bouncey-balley fame. God gave me my senses and college never quite succeeded in depriving me of my ability to discriminate. (If this word gives you trouble, then try using a dictionary.)
Acetic acid, methyl formate and glycol aldehyde are 3 vastly different substances. At room temperature, the aldehyde is as hard as a rock while the other 2 are liquids. The formate will boil when placed upon the skin and acetic acid is a solid if the temperature is below 62 degrees Fahrenheit. Physically, these substances have as much in common as a goat does with a prune pie. Chemically, that is behavior-wise, the substances are even further apart. This, our senses inform us of in no uncertain terms. However, if we apply the current “DNA logic” to our examination, we’d end up dining with the Queen of Hearts. These three substances are empirically identical for all the molecules contain 2 atoms each of carbon and oxygen, and 4 of hydrogen, arranged somewhat differently.
To lower things to yet another level, consider run-of -the-mill, everyday, common, equal opportunity carbon. Carbon atoms bond (join) with other carbon atoms to produce substances quite varied. One form is lamp-black, or soot. Another is diamond. Yet another, coal. And again, charcoal and graphite. Graphite and diamond — both crystalline substances — are 100% carbon. Talk about being equal! Only a minor difference in the way the atoms shares electrons makes a gigantic difference in the physical properties of the substance. It’s the little things which count the most. By the way, these various forms of carbon are called allotropes and in the above set of 3 compounds, isomers. There are also some good examples of enantiomorphic isomers, but the point is made.
All life, from the syphilis spirochete to the old oak tree, have the same DNA arranged in different patterns. A tiny — very tiny — alteration in the AGTC sequence causes major differences in the characteristics of the organism to which it belongs. In the 3 substances I above mentioned, only a slight difference in the bonding arrangement is needed to invoke major differences both in appearance and behavior. It’s those damned differences which should concern us! (END QUOTE)
__________________________________________________________
264u – “Then you throw in some conspiracy theories about racial diversity without evidence, please provide details of studies that have proven your point and no Jenson 1930s studies that were used to justify the holocaust don’t count.”
I struggle to know what you mean sometimes. And why do people use ‘conpiracy theory’ pejoratively? Think about it. Conspiracies are secret. They are secret by definition. That is what a conspiracy is. It follows that evidence of its existence is going to be abnormally hard to find, and that what there is of it will probably not convince those who set ludicrous proof conditions in order to protect a cosy way of life or opinions they don’t want challenged.
I said ‘diversity’ was aimed exclusively at white countries. I stated this because we are, as you say, being ‘globalized’. You do not understand what this entails however. Let me explain. Internationalism is economic. It is concerned with permanently entrenching the controlling interests of a few hundred families across the globe. It has nothing to do with being ‘nice’ to the less fortunate. It has still less to so with ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’.
This is a trans-national impetus that requires white civilization be wound down and Europe placed on the same competitive level as the rest of the planet. Chiefly responsible for affecting these changes has been the weapon of mass immigration into our white homelands. In England’s – not ‘Britain’s – case a homogenous population the character of which underwent no radical change in its make-up for a thousand years prior to 1945 has been forced to absorb a steady influx of yak-herders, ju-ju men and itinerant day-labourers with entirely predictable results (collapsing health service, social security fraud, urban race ghettoes, rampant criminality, the re-appearance of ‘eradicated’ diseases etc).
I fail to see what Arthur Jensen has to do with this. Jensen, until persuaded by evidence he was able to replicate, was a confirmed ‘throw money at the problem’ liberal when it came to differences in race achievement. Now you are accusing him of ‘holocaust denial’?
264u – “It is not just ‘white’ countries that have recieved immigration. People migrate primarily for economic reasons not because they like white skin.”
Imagine we abolished inverted commas. I wonder what conventions people would then invent to define us out of existence on the written page? Anyway two of these propositions are true. That non-white countries ‘receive’ immigrants is demonstrably the case. That ‘People migrate primarily for economic reasons’ is also true. But you forget – where there is white skin there is white science and white technology, which of course non-whites hate us for, and which they consider a standing rebuke to their own inadequacies.
So if they don’t come here ‘for white skin’ then certainly for what white skin stands for. And it stands for much. Why do non-white males choose our women over their own? Wealthy black footballers could have their pick, yet they all chase – and marry – white girls. Forty years ago no self-respecting white woman would have been seen dead associating with blacks. Now, lived in genuine Talmud-vision and defined for us by the boob-tube, our lives are so enriched by cultural and racial diversity we are unable to tell a spring from a sewer outlet.
264u – “Pakistan has been the largest recipient of immigration in recent years. Historically Brazil, Turkey, Egypt, India and many other nations have recieved economic immigrants.”
What has this to do with anything? All that matters for the purposes of this discussion is that white people don’t go there. You talk as if people moving around the globe were an intrinsic good, or that an intake of white Europeans and one of Hmong tribesmen amount to the same thing because they’re all ‘immigrants’. Is this the best argument you have?
All your examples are basket-cases anyway. ‘Asian Tigers’, remember, rely on shifts in western corporate investment strategy. Money is pouring into India and China precisely to effect the economic equalization which bankers hope will put Europe on the breadline.
Yes India is rich. It has graduates. It has a burgeoning technocracy. It’s got satellites and nuclear weapons. Pretty soon – keep practising! – your newsreaders will look no different from our newsreaders. But none of this will take India out of the stone age. None of it will alleviate the subcontinent’s widespread poverty. None of it can. None of it is intended to. India is ruled by an elite that traces its origins back to Aryan times. That elite is cultured, civilized – and exclusive.
The immigration (and consequent race-mixing) you approve of takes its toll on the teeming millions, not those with the freedom to keep themselves to themselves. The same applies in Brazil, where the privileged see themselves as white European, and some are. Sadly Brazil’s former colonial master Portugal exemplifies the error you lot would have the rest of Europe makes so you can take over. Having allowed – even encouraged – racial inter-marriage (including among the aristocracy) while at the height of her maritime power Portugal was a backwater within a century and a half.
264u – “Your understand of politics and grasp of history reminds me of Islamists. You should really seek them out, you will find you have much in common.”
These attempts at condescension are really rather tiresome you know. I’ve tried to help, to prise the scales from your eyes. Unfortunately you and your friend Sabu think affecting an air of lofty disdain makes you the drawing-room Englishmen you secretly admire and want to be, when all you do is embarrass yourselves.
Politeness being the national curse it is I doubt anyone’s had the heart to tell you until now. But there is reassurance in how clever we think we are (Sabu’s a little anxious to draw attention to himself as an intellectual isn’t he poor lad). After all not everyone joins in. For all we know someone read what you’ve had to say and was impressed by it. I’d planned to cover economics in my next lesson but I rather think we’ve gone as far as we can.
I am truly amazed at some of the ignorant comments made here.
This is not about racism but ethnicity.
A black /brown/yellow person can never be truly English,anymore than an ethnic English person would be considered Chinese just because they happen to be born in China.
The Ashley Cole question is a pure red herring ,as sportsman & woman are nowadays allowed to represent a country on the most tenuous basis.
An African elephant born in Regents Park is still an African elephant.
Black people born in this country are Black Britons,they never can be and never will be English.
Race is everything to do with it. Whites have started prattling about ‘ethnicity’ because they’re terrified to mention the ‘r’ word. They think it will get them off the hook. But nationhood is about blood. That’s what the word means. And it is blood – race – which determines that broad confluence of thought, of cultural outlook, which puts us at ease with our with our neighbours and which even in the realm of social dislocation makes us instinctively prefer our own bad apples to anyone else’s. Before the nations and culture came the race. Non-whites have no entitlement to a ‘British’ identity (that doesn’t exist anyway) for precisely that reason: if you’re not white you’re not from around here….