RISE AND FALL OF ANGLO-AMERICA – IMPORTANCE OF CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS

RISE AND FALL OF ANGLO-AMERICA  – IMPORTANCE OF CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS

 

I was recently reading a review of Professor Eric Kaufmann’s important book about why the White Anglo Saxon Protestant ascendancy in the United States has been displaced. 

 

The theories about this usually focus on the numbers of immigrants, in particular of Hispanics, coming into the United States across their southern border and the consequential cultural overwhelming of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (“WASP”) and also of their traditions which founded America. 

 

Professor Kaufmann has however an interesting point to make, which is that something within “WASP” liberal culture which was fatal to its continuing dominance.  You can see his theory below. 

 

It seems to me that you can see something similar happening in

earlier times, for instance in Ireland.  The Anglo-Irish Ascendancy of English origin families, by the late 18^th Century, owned most of the land of Ireland and held most of the political power.  This dominant position was then frittered away by members of the Ascendancy themselves. 

 

Consider the following:- 

 

1.    The 1798 rebellion of the “United Irishmen” led by Wolfe Tone who was a “WASP”. 

2.    The consensual handing over of the Irish Parliament to incorporation into the UK Parliament under the Act of Union 1801 was led by the Ascendancy itself. 

3.    The subsequent granting of voting rights to Irish Catholics was spearheaded by the leading Anglo Irish ascendancy figure, the Duke of Wellington in 1829. 

4.    The vigorous campaign for land rights and Home Rule by the Home Rule League and Irish Parliamentary Party led by Charles Parnell. 

5.    There were also significant numbers of the Ascendancy who supported Irish Independence.

 

All these moves were opposed on the other side by Empire Loyalists, but the fact remains that there was an enduring strain of liberal thinking amongst the English in Ireland and indeed liberal English thinking in England which was against the interests of continuing the dominance of Ireland by English families. 

 

This made me wonder what might have given rise to this type of thinking, which I do not think is found amongst other peoples around the world. 

 

It seems that English people don’t like injustice and unfairness to other groups, perhaps thinking that if such treatment is removed the people concerned will want to become part of the English way of doing things.  As history has repeatedly shown this is delusional but it keeps recurring and is now happening in England.

 

One possible explanation is that the English were particularly prone to the idea that everyone else wants to become English.  This may be due to our unusually long period of Nationhood from England’s unification of 927 under King Athelstan.  By contrast many European nation states only came into existence in the 19^th Century.

 

It could also be part of the unique form of Reformation that we had under Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell led by the Crown, or it could be a consequence of the division within English society traditionally caused by class consciousness. 

 

There is also the impact of Traditional English moral conformity around sexuality.  In this regard it is interesting that the English traitors of the pre-war Cambridge spy network were mostly young men who were gay and therefore felt themselves in rebellion against the prevailing moral and legal codes even before they were recruited by Soviet Spy Masters to the cause of communism and worldwide revolution.

 

All of these were fractures in the English Nation’s sense of itself as a unified body which may be the root of what is certainly an interesting phenomena.

 

Here is the review of Professor Kaufmann’s book:-

 

Rise and Fall of Anglo-America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2004. ISBN 978-0674013032.

 

Here, Kaufmann offers his views on how the Anglo-Protestants, the founding stock and once dominant ethnocultural group of the United States of America, lost its status of dominance. He rejects the conventional view that this is due primarily to comparatively low fertility rates, large-scale international migration, and the growth in cultural prominence of ethnically diverse newcomers. Nor have the Anglo-Protestants maintained their dominant status by incorporating other groups of European descent into their midst, Kaufmann argues. Rather, the fall of Anglo-America is a consequence of the characteristics that have come to define this group, namely expressive individualism and egalitarianism, which are antithetical to maintaining dominance.

 

Historically, the early Anglo-Protestant settlers in the seventeenth century were the most successful, creating numerous surviving written records and political institutions that last till this day. For this reason, they became the dominant group, culturally, economically, and politically, and they maintained their dominance till the early twentieth century. Commitment to the ideals of the Enlightenment meant that they sought to assimilate newcomers from outside of the British Isles, but few were interested in adopting a pan-European identity for the nation, much less turning it into a global melting pot. But in the early 1900s, liberal progressives and modernists began promoting more inclusive ideals for what the national identity of the United States should be. While the more traditionalist segments of society continued to maintain their Anglo-Protestant ethnocultural traditions, universalism and cosmopolitanism started gaining favor among the elites. These ideals became institutionalized after the Second World War, and ethnic minorities started to gain rough institutional parity with the once dominant Anglo-Protestants.

 

What do you think?

 

Here is the link >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Kaufmann

 

 

 

DESPISED – WHY THE MODERN LEFT LOATHES THE WORKING CLASS BY PAUL EMBERY

 

DESPISED – WHY THE MODERN LEFT LOATHES THE WORKING CLASS BY PAUL EMBERY

 

I have recently been reading the very interesting book ‘Despised’ by a Labour Party member in which he tries to explain why Labour has come adrift from its working class roots.  The book is well written and a good read. 

 

The following extract particularly caught my attention and I think will be of interest to any English nationalist:-

 

“The sense of national dispossession that has taken root over years in … in England beyond the cities shows no sign of dissipating.  A feeling of disenfranchisement began to take hold around the turn of the Century, with the advent of devolution in Scotland and Wales solidified into a more general resentment at being “forgotten” and then the emergence of a new sense of Englishness, with large numbers of people beginning to identify as English rather than British.  There was a clear mood developing among the English: We are sick and tired of being ignored. 

 

In the EU referendum, this mood manifested itself in the clear rejection of the status quo, with over 70% of those who identified most strongly as English voting Leave. (A similar percentage of those who identified the least strong voted Remain).  The writer and campaigner Anthony Barnett, has illustrated how much of the Leave vote was driven by distinct sense of grievance among the English.  Comparing the towns of Wigan in North of England and Paisley in Scotland, it explained how they were similar in the sense that both were “once thriving centres of imperial industry… now grappling with impoverishment” and “social and economic equivalents”.  Yet in the referendum, Wigan voted 64% for Leave and Paisley, on an identical turnout, the same percentage for Remain.  Barnett concluded that it was the national factor at work. 

 

In 2018, a poll for the Centre of Towns Think Tank showed that the towns in which people identified most strongly as English – often places which had undergone fundamental social and economic change – were most inclined to feel that Westminster did not reflect the concerns of their part of the country. 

 

As this sense of English discontent grows, it does so outside of normal political structures and institutions – principally because it has no other choice.  Neither the Conservative nor Labour Parties, for example, maintain a specifically English section; and there is no major party, assembly or parliament representing solely England.  English voters also see the obvious democratic imbalance of having MPs representing constituencies other nations of the UK vote on laws affecting England while, thanks to the devolution, their counterparts representing English constituencies have no corresponding right.

 

A YouGov survey for the BBC in 2018 highlighted the extent to which English identity had become a feature of peoples’ lives, with 80% of respondents saying they identified strongly as English.  This feeling had taken hold particularly in coastal and former industrial towns, with two thirds of respondents in those places saying they felt a sense of English pride.  By contrast, less than half of respondents in the major cities felt the same thing. 

 

Labour has a particular problem with England, not having beaten the Conservatives in the share of popular vote there since 2001.  It is widely accepted that worries among English voters that undue SNP influence over a future Labour government played a crucial role in helping the Tories achieve a majority in the 2015 General Election.  Out of the 60 seats lost by the Labour Party at the 2019 General Election, 48 were in England.  This was, in large part, the vote that the Party had always taken for granted, with many of the losses occurring in traditional working class heartlands – the so-called “Red Wall” and non-metropolitan seats – where the sense of patriotism and “being English” was heightened.

 

A post-election report by the English Labour Network showed that more voters in England were likely to identify as “more English than British” than the other way round, and that this group was instrumental in delivering victory for the Conservative Party.  Among these voters, Labour won just 10 votes for every 27 won by the Conservatives.

 

The authors, who included former Cabinet Member, John Denham, concluded that Labour’s failure to promote itself as a patriotic party or even to mention England in any of its political messaging, as well as its lack of any plan to devolve power within England, had alienated voters who emphasised their English identity.  And on the contentious issue of immigration – unquestionably a significant factor on the doorstep – they wrote, perceptively; “These voters have been disconcerted by mass immigration.  Their strong sense of identity and community has been disrupted by changes they were not expecting.  While some of this reaction is based on racism and for the most it is more (a) sense of uncertainty and loss of a stable community.  At least some Labour figures and activists have stereotyped anyone who is not actually in favour of large scale migration as bigoted.”

 

In its disregard for the growing sense of English dispossession, Labour has repeated a catastrophic mistake it made in Scotland – a failure which led to its virtual wipe-out there – of not paying due attention to the politics of national identity.”

 

Paul Embury then goes onto talk about the idea that Labour could become patriotic.  He is of course writing from the perspective of a member of the Labour Party and formerly a senior trade union official in the Fire Brigade Union (from which he was unfairly dismissed by its Europhile leadership for his support of Brexit). 

 

Then in his chapter setting out “What is to be done?”  In which he sets out what Labour should do to recapture the English vote, he suggests:-

 

“In particular, the sense of national dispossession of disenfranchisement felt by the English must be addressed. One way of doing this would be to grant them direct political representation through the creation of a parliament for England to take its place inside a Federal United Kingdom”. 

 

For my part I am happy to say that I think that it is highly unlikely that a Labour Party whose leadership would take the knee in support of the Marxist Black Lives Matter Group, would even for a moment contemplate adopting the camouflage of being a English nationalist party. 

 

In these circumstances I think Paul Embery is usefully identifying a gap in the political market for English nationalism.  It is our job within the English Democrats to organise ourselves so that we can place our party in that gap!