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Wednesday 20 June 2012

WHY THE LEFT JUST CAN'T GET TO GRIPS WITH 'ENGLISHNESS'?

Here is an EXPRESS COMMENT which is well worth reading -
WHY THE LEFT JUST CAN'T GET TO GRIPS WITH 'ENGLISHNESS'

Saturday June 9,2012


By Theodore Dalrymple.
(Here is the original article >>> http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/325402)

ED Miliband’s recent speech in which he tried to rehabilitate Englishness in the minds of his supporters illustrates the Left’s perennial difficulties with patriotism and national identity, particularly when they are English.

The Left doesn’t like them because they weaken the class antagonism upon which their own potential power depends.

But there is no doubt that there is a problem with Englishness in a way that there is none with Welshness or Scottishness.

Part of the problem is that the English national flag has until recently been so rarely displayed, unlike the Scottish or the Welsh flags.

Unfortunately, English national identity became associated with beer-gutted, T-shirt-wearing, foreigner-hating, shaven-headed football hooligans who chanted Ingerland, Ingerland! while the national football team was playing and generally losing.

And the fact is that most English people did not want such an identity; it is not something to be proud of.

Therefore, when asked their nationality they would rarely say that they were English; they would say they were British, even though for most foreigners – for example, the French – the word “English” covers all the nationalities of these islands.

And, of course, there is a British identity. When I am abroad in a remote place and meet a Welshman or a Scotsman I feel an immediate identification with them that I do not feel with, say, a Greek or a Swede; and this is reciprocated.

THE very idea of Englishness has been attacked, particularly on the Left, because national identity, if it is English, is believed to be inherently intolerant, xenophobic and bigoted.

However, this is not so; when Rupert Brooke famously referred in his War Sonnet to the “corner of a foreign field that is for ever England” he was not actually decrying foreign fields.

It is possible, after all, to love one’s country without hating other countries and to revere its traditions without despising other people’s traditions.

Affection is not a zerosum game, so that if you love one place you must hate another.

The other way of attacking Englishness has been to say that the English are divided between north and south, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, and so forth. But this is not true only of the English: it is true of every human group.

I am, for example, a member of the medical profession, members of which have never been entirely like-minded.

Some doctors are politically conservative, others politically radical; some have wide interests, others are narrowly focused on a small aspect of their profession.

But despite the variation the profession has an identity.

Indeed, if this argument against Englishness were valid – that the English vary greatly among themselves and therefore there is nothing distinctive about them or their culture – then no human group whatsoever could have an identity because the same could be said about all groups and we would all then be left as isolated human molecules floating in a social, psychological and cultural vacuum.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Englishness has traditionally been so disliked by the Labour Party is that, without Welsh and Scottish votes, there would never be a Labour government.

That explains Gordon Brown’s sudden conversion to Britishness; between the Conservatives in England and the Nationalists in Scotland the Labour Party might be condemned to perpetual opposition if the Union broke up.

I write this in a Shropshire town where there are buildings of several centuries, each one of which could be nothing but English.

They form a graceful assembly and are something to be proud of; likewise the surrounding countryside (a human achievement by the way, not a free gift of nature) is characteristically and uniquely English.

To say this is not to decry, much less to despise, anything else; but I feel especially attached to it because it is my own.

This is an almost universal human phenomenon which is why, when the Left tries to discount or discourage patriotism and national feeling, it always in the end has to make concessions to them.

There is no reason why the English should be any different in this regard. The fact that our identity is mixed – English and British – is not unique, or even unusual.

Bavarians, Saxons and Prussians are very different but they are all Germans.

(The East Prussian Bismarck once famously defined a Bavarian as a cross between an Austrian and a human being, a witticism that no one would dare make nowadays.)

ATTEMPTS to define a phenomenon such as “Englishness” often founder, though foreigners have less difficulty than the English themselves.

The foreign-born art historian and critic Nikolaus Pevsner, who ended up being knighted in the land of his adoption, had no difficulty in writing a book The Englishness Of English Art. Indeed, it is not easy to define art itself but like Englishness it is easy enough to recognise.

All national traditions have their strengths and their weaknesses.

No one, I suppose, would claim very much for English cooking. (I do not remember in all my travels ever having seen an English restaurant abroad: that way bankruptcy would lie. Indeed, few restaurants in England itself advertise themselves as English.)

But man does not live by restaurants or cookery alone.

The English national identity has existed for a long time and never really disappeared, even if it was rarely paraded in public.

No Welshman or Scotsman ever had any difficulty identifying the English; perhaps the time has come for the English to stop pretending they have such difficulty in identifying themselves.

23 comments:

  1. Robin; alot are frightened to show the flag and show patriotism in a forward way.The English have been downtrodden over the years with all sorts of false accusations of racisism,arrogance,elistism,dictatorial etc etc we cannot win with the British politicians and some people of course the " left " they love all this! along with some jocks,paddys, taffys who want to just put the boot in keep ENGLAND DOWN !they are all so jealous of our achievements and success ! This will never go away UNTILL THE ENGLISH STAND UP !

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  2. Englishmen were so confident in their identity that they took it for granted. Things that are taken for granted are very easy to take away.

    The left is entirely different to the Labour party of the sixties. Then it was about fairness, the working man and his legitimate claim to be rewarded properly.

    Now it is a perverted Marxist entity that has contributed as much to the de industrialisation and dimunition of workers rights as Margaret Thatcher. Under this doctrine of economic determinism, national identity must be eradicated as people can not be properly commodified whilst having loyalties to nation, race or, come to that family, that might breed dissent.

    Nations fight, they don't do as they are told and they cleave to one another.

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    1. Thanks for finding the word I have been looking for in these comments for weeks, namely commodified. People are to be rendered a commodity like goods and services, credit slaves, consumers, pawns. The link I am trying to find is between Marxist socialism and international capital. Apparently a new book has come out exploring Obama's past as an international socialist - and muslim to boot. Many of us suspect that the link is there, that Obama is the visible face whilst behind him are the bankers, financiers and major corporations; but who will ever prove it - and live; remember JFK.

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    2. Surely Milliband and Clegg must be puppets as they are so dim and wet that they cannot really have ideas of their own. As for Cameron, he is smarter in a streetwise, evil sort of way but merely the City of London's spokesman in parliament. Pleased he slipped up regarding his late lovely papa and tax evasion. I never did think a mult-millionaire stockbroker could be quite so saintly. Ed the Red has just apologised again for having got it wrong over immigration. Goodness me, can't think how we did such a silly thing. It is a bit like a kleptomaniac saying he has got it wrong and apologising when walking out of the store with his pockets full. I don't know what I was thinking about, I must have been away with the fairies. Is that where you and New Labour were Ed?

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  3. Some of us are not beer-swilling and foreigner hating but rather have lived in several countries on the continent and speak several European languages, appreciated the good points as well as the bad of those countries and the common European Christian history culture that binds Europe together. But I still want England to remain ethnically and culturally English. It wasn't broke, in fact it was wonderful, so why did they think they had to fix it? In like measure I want the same for all our neighbouring countries on the continent and in Scandinavia. What the multicultural obsessives are determined to create is a continent that is no longer European at all nor will there be anything specifically English about England, French about France, Norwegian about Norway etc. Why do they want to smash the cultural mosaic that was Europe and replace it with something that is not European at all? Do they want to do the same to Africa, to India, to China, to Japan; no!! It is like a student on dope jumping up and down on a Roman tessalated pavement to produce nothing but rubble and dust. These people think they are so cultured and educated because they are not "xenophobic" but they appear to have no love of European culture and history at all, just a desire to smash it all to smithereens.

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  4. The Prangwizard, of England21 June 2012 at 08:31

    I have read Theodore Dalrymple's articles here and there,and they are usually excellent, but I do wish that those who write pieces about Englishness and identity, maybe for the first time, would not slip into cliched journalism. Maybe he felt his audience needed it, but surely it is not really necessary, now that the debate is maturing, to preface commentaries with the same old references to beer-gutted, shaved-headed etc., etc.. Do we have to be dragged back to this image, before anything can be said?

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    1. Unfortunately it is a pre requisite of being a 'journalist' these days to slander the English as a matter of course, it is some sort of Common Purpose neural linguistic programming that has successfully conditioned the concept of Englishness with the Trotsky concept of racism.

      The most even handed of observers in the press submit to this dogma either wittingly or unwittingly, with the result of continued reinforcement of the lie above all else.

      If anyone is unsure about the press and its neutality, look at the NUJ's rules about reporting crime and the positve spin it must lend to the multicultural project. These rules in no small part have contributed to the scandal of the muslim paedophile rapists and murderers being free to propser without real censure, as the Lawrence killers didn't.

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    2. The PrangWizard, of England21 June 2012 at 12:45

      For the avoidance of doubt, and in case I am misunderstood, I think the article is a good one, except for the aspect I mentioned, I would rather it had been omitted.
      We should be more positive and be happy to say 'England', 'English' in our conversations. We should look forward, not backward, and use powers of persuasion that being English is something to be happy about. We are where we are and we should make the best of it, we can only change the future, and to do it successfully we must feel content about ourselves.

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    3. As things become rarer they become more precious. The Satanic UN/EU project has recently further emphasised its need to destroy ethnic states and national borders and identity - apart from in Israel of course.

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  5. Unfortunately, Englishness is associated with an identity that those in power are determined to bury for good. Englishness is something that pre-dates the British Empire and hence the millstone of guilt that they are determined to hang around our necks so that we accept and voice no protest about multiculturalism or ethnic cleansing which is what it is. Englishness links us back even to before the Norman Conquest and a country that was even more homogeneous than it has been since 1066 where we became divided into masters ( the Norman/British Aristocracy and serfs ( the Anglo-Saxons deprived of their thanes who had fled to Scotland and abroad and hence became the working classes ). This is why they are determined to keep the English down until they are a minority in their own country. I came across a book in the library today about the English propensity for bloody revolt. The last was the miners' strike, the previous the near revolution of the 1920s. They know that the earth is beginning to shake again and an English parliament would be the catalyst for open revolt. This is why the Olympic Games have been a godsend for them. It is strange that in Peking the Games were the opportunity for the Chinese to boast about their four thousand year-old civilisation, their cultural and racial unity. But here they are not England's games but the world's games where all races and cultures can feel at home in a city and in a country that belongs to nobody any more, most of all the English. In this connection I read a comment from a Nigerian living in my nearest big city who enthused that the Games were a chance to celebrate multiculturalism and the world becoming one big global village. Strange, I don't recall Nigeria being very multicultural and a global village apart from the Muslims killing the Christians on a daily basis. Much like most European and American cities now, the heart of the village that is Europe and America is now multicultural but the suburbs are still black, brown and yellow. And they say that only Europeans engage in ethnic flight.

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    1. If one needs further convincing of parliament's treason, the media's and the extent to which the extinction of the British in general and English in particular carries on apace, read some of the outbursts of the muslim rapists in the north west to the juries, the police and white Christian society in general and see if it is not a race and religious war against us prospered by our leaders and with the willing assistance of the muslims in the execution of jihad.

      Shabir Ahmed opined on the receipt of conviction for another 30 rapes declared in this among many other outbursts:

      'We are a civilised society. We are the supreme race, not these white b######s (pointing at the police).

      Throughout his trial unrepentant as with all the other accused they have blantantly racially and religiously abused our society.

      We have had no reports of this and no moral outrage, no repudiation of their behaviour from the millions of so called moderate muslims that have the benefit of living in our country.

      Read and weep for you grandchildren and their children.

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    2. There is a lengthy comment elsewhere on this site opining that islamism is the answer to all divisions of class, race and culture. I am not sure whether that was the commentator's personal opinion or whether he felt it was the motive behind the actions of others. It would of course necessitate us all becoming muslims and would explain the fact that the political elite have allowed the muslim hordes to invade Europe. If islamism is viewed as egalitarian then this would explain why the looney left in the forms of the mentally unhinged George Galloway and Ken Livingstone have suddenly espoused it. It is the supposed egalitarianism that appeals to them and they are able to turn a blind eye to the homophobica, misogyny, paedophilia, honour killings etc. As for the coming generations of indigenous English, our local secondary school no longer goes on trips to the continent but spends all its time saving up for trips to South Africa. They and their teachers have been brainwashed into thinking that Mandela's rainbow nation is heaven on earth. So they will embrace the multicultural utopia that is about to engulf their historic homeland until they are a white minority like the white farmers of the Transvaal when they will be picked off one by one. The One World propaganda machine is now so enormously powerful and all embracing that it completely obliterates rational thinking or questionning but then schoolchildren of the last 40 years of Marxist education have not been taught or encouraged to have enquiring minds but just to learn for exams. Perhaps it is my misfortune that not only was I at grammar school in the 1960s but was born with a mind that would not rest when things did not add up. But we are probably too few and far between now to save England. One encouraging thing is that I have been unable to find many in the North of England who are actually interested in the Rainbow Olympics. I wonder if it is because it is such a Multi-Culti Fest in the burgeoning South Africa of the northern hemisphere; but if you were to ask them they would surely deny it. Careless talk costs lives.

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    3. One visit to South Africa would be enough for anyone. The Boer diaspora has been documented by Mike Smith on his 'disappeared' website that has, like others,told the truth about the return of the formerley first nation state to the stone age by its black masters. Before it disappeared I watched a film on it recounting the reflections of SA emigres in America and their sadness at having to leave that beautiful country. The main reason for leaving cited was safety and following on from that the opportunities for their children in a land crashing back to an archetypal corrupt African state.

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  6. Has the English Democrats ever seen the footage of Barbara Lerner Spectre if not then you must and then you will know who is behind this genocide of England and Europe.

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    1. Point me in the right direction and I will have a look at it. Somebody on here did have a link to a gentleman in America who is telling everyone that the world will be a better place once the European race is extinct. His left-wing white liberal audience seemed to agree screaming "O yes, bump us all off". I think his ancestors had suffered too many pogroms at the hands of Holy Russia, now post-marxist and we don't know where she is headed. If she were to join forces with the growing anti-globalisation movement in China then they could save us from all this. I wonder if Russia and China are pro-Assad because American oil barons ( and a few French oil companies ) are possibly behind the Arab Spring and to stop the islamists seizing power? They say the darkest hour is just before dawn but can it really get much darker? I am beginning to understand how the Anglo-Saxons felt in the years following 1066. In Germany, however, there is a feeling abroad that Frau Merkel is now getting the Bundestag to rubber stamp things in much the same way that Hitler did. In America meanwhile earnest liberal whites are apologising to non-whites for being so privileged. Hang on, which race worked its backside off to become so privileged? Nothing to stop the Africans, Asians and Arabs doing it.
      It all smacks of masochistic white middle class do-gooderism i.e.please come and seek revenge on me for being so evil. The manipulators have managed to brainwash vast swathes of the "educated" white population into thinking that way and switch off the instinct for survival; just not me, buddy. I'm going to go down fighting!!

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    2. Anthony Levitta Blair,one the richest liars in Britain and contender for the biggest traitor on a very long shortlist,tool of the central banks,and Satan's right hand man has just spoke on the bbc about how Europe will change and Britain must be part of it and how mass immigration was a good thing etc.

      He pointed out that the revolution in Arabia would continue throughout the region until all the evil dictators were removed....

      He was hardly challenged and alone that no one might cross him.

      God help us.

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    3. Have found a video of Barbara Lerner Spectre speaking in Sweden on how Europe must be multiculturised (obviously Tony Bliar is a mate of hers - in any case Murdoch forced him into the war in Iraq!?)and the Jews will be at the forefront of this. 6th June was Sweden's national day and the Crown Prince announced that anybody with Swedish nationality was a Swede and it was nothing to do with blood or culture. Their political leaders have said there is no such thing as Swedish culture and what there is is rubbish ( does that sound familiar ). So the Swedes are possibly further down the road to extinction than we are ( a shame about the Swedish blondes going, who now have to dye their hair black to avoid being raped by cultural enrichment). They will be outbred in decades. On Swedish tv three New Swedes were asked what they liked about Sweden and they laughed and one said the Swedes were cowards for not fighting Hitler. Is obvious now that a large number of non-European immigrants to Europe now regard Europeans as naive fools, spineless wet do-gooders who are quite happy to hand their countries over to them. As for the Crown Prince, once there is a non-ethnic Swedish Christian population there do you really thing the New Swedes will care about him being king? The Marxists want all the old monarchies gone so they can have their European President who, the way things are going, will one day probably be chosen from the Muslim Brotherhood as Egypt's has been. I see William Hague is very pleased with the outcome there. Now then Tony, what about the evil dictators in Europe who are pressing ahead with the creation of a totalitarian police megastate with little that is European left about it. One thing I don't understand; if Barbara Lerner Spectre's people are behind this then why do they want to rule white countries that aren't any more but are coloured and third world and probably muslim to boot. How are they going to keep that lot from rounding them all up and chopping their heads off. Jews are hardly Muslims' favourite people. They are meant to have the highest i.q.s but some brain cells must be missing somewhere, perhaps it is the common sense bit.

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    4. "The EU should “do its best to undermine” the “homogeneity” of its member states, the UN’s special representative for migration has said. Peter Sutherland told peers the future prosperity of many EU states depended on them becoming multicultural. He also suggested the UK government’s immigration policy had no basis in international law. He was being quizzed by the Lords EU home affairs sub-committee which is investigating global migration. Mr Sutherland, who is non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former chairman of oil giant BP, heads the Global Forum on Migration and Development, which brings together representatives of 160 nations to share policy ideas. He told the House of Lords committee migration was a “crucial dynamic for economic growth” in some EU nations “however difficult it may be to explain this to the citizens of those states.
      It’s impossible to consider that the degree of homogeneity which is implied by the other argument can survive because states have to become more open states, in terms of the people who inhabit them. Just as the United Kingdom has demonstrated." Is it just a coincidence he works for Goldman Sachs - is their hq in the UN building? Also the United Kingdom is not going to survive you wally and that's the bloody point and good luck to other countries who resist being pushed down the same road to extinction. Could he ask his bosses at Goldman Sachs to speak to Mr Netanhayu about the need for Israel to become fully multicultural to survive as well, please?

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  7. All sounds very dispressing! Right! It is. We have been Brainwashed since the 50's I would say. We were sold the Creed/Greed of having more and more, and didn't want to trouble ourselves with the bad changes that were happening! Now a little too late some of the older generation are waking up! At the same time saying they are too old to do anything about putting things right! What a lot of Useless People they have been and still are!
    I tell people about the ethnic cleansing of the UK and find they have reach the same conclusion! yet say they
    are too old to help the situation. I now reply Well, why didn't you do anything 10 years ago? They have no real answer. They won't/can't admit to being Brainwashed! I feel however we must keep pushing the truth and concentrate our message to the Young! During the run-up to the Queens Diamond Jubilee I spent my time encouraging people and organisations to hoist the Union Jack. It took a lot of effort to wake people up to do anything! Mind control over the years has made them so scared to be anti- P.C. that they took the easy option of ignoring their own flag.

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    1. If it is of any comfort you should read my comment above about Sweden. Undoubtedly Norway, Holland, Belgium, Denmark and France are going the same way. The new French president is finding jobs in his government for more and more muslims. I wonder if Peter Sutherland is talking about Germany. Well the best of luck, mate, they have problems enough with their Turks and if anybody is going to resist your full-blown multicultural agenda then they will. I was never brainwashed. 30 years ago I decided something was wrong and reached the conclusion that our days were numbered. I was told I was paranoid; but I am sure the lady who made that remark must now realise I was right. As regards Goldman Sachs, 30 years ago I was told that international financial interests were behind it all but thought it too far fetched then. The Anti-Christ is now living in some glass tower in Manhattan and I sometimes wonder whether the increasing violence of the world's climate is a reflection of the rise of evil. However, if the white race, responsible for ove 90% of the world's inventions and for the founding and continued maintenance of the modern world eventually vanishes; and it does prove to be all down to their genes; then what sort of a god damn awful mess of a world does the Anti-Christ think he will be ruling over? It doesn't make sense.

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    2. Here is some mind bleach for you old son, why are our armies clearing out the middle east,a safe haven for the quakers?

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  8. Ethnic Swedes are now down to being only just above 80% of the population and are estimated to being down below 50% in 30 years' time with a muslim majority shortly afterwards, making them the EU's first muslim country so cheer up,we have got until 2066 to catch them up.

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  9. Sometimes when I go to bed, I hope to wake and find that it has all been a bad dream and that England is still the England of the 1950s when we were the English not just the white community, the EU was just a stupid idea in Jean Monet's head, Norway and Sweden are blond and nordic and Holland is full still of people in clogs, France is annoyingly but in other ways attractively French etc. Instead I wake to find the bankers' one world nightmare goes from bad to worse with all those countries destined to be de-europeanised within decades. William Hague celebrates the Muslim Brotherhood's victory in Egypt, a party involved in the daily rape and slaughter of Christians and now alining itself with Iran. As for Scandinavia where a Danish journalist described the multiculturally obsessed politicians of the Swedish left as lunatics, Anders Breivik's trial in Oslo, a bit of a multicultural dump now, has concluded with his repeating his warning about multiculturalism. Just because he is mad ( or is he? ) doesn't mean he is wrong. At the same time we learn that European security networks have identified a Norwegian convert to islam who is on his way back from a training camp in the Yemen with orders to blow up a train in Norway. They are trying to get to him first. Further multicultural slaughter for the poor old Norwegians possibly; like England once a peaceful, happy and low crime country. Why has a continent that used once to be so strong, civilised and powerful descended into this limp-wristed apology for a civilisation. I suppose it is because those who are steering Europe towards the abyss from their glistening skyscrapers in New York have promoted the appeasers and demonised anybody who dared to suggest that strong fences make strong neighbours and that turning the other cheek might have been Christ's ideal but that only muscular Christians survive, the monks of Lindisfarne didn't stand a chance.

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