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Lording it over history can get out of hand

A Facebook friend of mine put this on her timeline, and after asking, she said I could post this here. I am sure Samizdata readers will appreciate the sentiments.

Since banning and toppling is now the lockdown activity de rigeur, I didn’t want to be left out, so have decided to add to the list:

– The Colosseum – hotbed of slave suffering and anti-Christian persecution. Turn it in to a car park, I say. Whilst we’re at it, the Pyramids and Acropolis didn’t build themselves, so send in the JCBs.

– The Guardian newspaper – founded by a man whose fortune was made on the back of the slave-intense cotton trade. Naughty.

– The Labour party – one of the founding organisations was the Fabian society, which, in the early 1900s called for eugenics and forced sterilisation. Off with your heads.

– Jeeves and Wooster – we all remember how they blacked up as minstrels in one of their episodes? Silence them.

– Most of Southern Spain – conquered and occupied by the Moors for over 300 years, around 1 million white Europeans were sold IN to the African slave trade (well before European colonialisation, Africa had booming slave markets). The historical legacy is everywhere, not least in those colonial place names (Al-Andalus, Al-Meria, Qurtoba) – abolish the lot.

– Scandinavians – what were they up to, sending their vikings over and enslaving our tribes? Actually, add the bloody Normans to that too.

– Mongolia – rapist-in-chief warlord, who had more slaves in his tenure than ever existed in the Western colonial slave trade, and killed 40 million people during his rampages. Apparently, there are 16,000,000 living direct descendants of his wayward penis. No yurts for you.

– Ghandi – Had a few unsavoury things to say about black Africans. No more blacked-up Ben Kingsley for you.

– All of us – that’s right, there is virtually no one alive today who is not the product of what is today considered paedophilia. Women were often married off as children, and started giving birth at 12 or 13, so we should no-platform ourselves and our ancestors.

OR

We could just grow the fuck up and consider that man has evolved faster in the last 3,000 years than any other species on this planet. We have gone from cave dwellers to sending humans in to space in a period of time that is barely a blink in the cosmic scale.

To apply our 21st century morality on our ancestors is so completely ridiculous, as to defy morality or reason. To educate our youth fairly and equitably on our progression is a far more powerful tool than to deny our pasts. This attempt to pretend that Britain has a history only to be ashamed of is not only factually incorrect, but so counter-productive and divisive, that we will make whatever problems we think we have, far, far worse.

Everyone calm down.

27 comments to Lording it over history can get out of hand

  • Alan Peakall

    Perhaps a good way to encourage the necessary growing up would be to put up a statue to Pytheas of Massalia honouring him as the Discoverer of Britain without any tedious scare quotes. I am sure a nice site could be found on the Jurassic Coast and the Greek President and Mayor of Marseilles might be prevailed upon to unveil him.

  • APL

    Johnathan Pearce: “Scandinavians – what were they up to, sending their vikings over and enslaving our tribes? Actually, add the bloody Normans to that too.”

    Aren’t Normans, just Norse men who settled in France? Then invaded England and spent the next thousand years using English mercenaries to fight their dynastic wars in France?

    Johnathan Pearce: “The Guardian newspaper – founded by a man whose fortune was made on the back of the slave-intense cotton trade.”

    Had a quick look at Wiki, oddly, there is no mention of his business activities, nor how he made his fortune.

  • Arkus

    Don’t forget Mohammad…. Slave owner, slave trade and shagger of pre pubescent girls.
    Surely he should be cancelled.

  • Zerren Yeoville

    How about a memorial to the white victims of the Barbary corsairs, kidnapped from English and Irish coastal communities and taken away to slavery in north Africa?

    We could put it up by the harbour in a West Country fishing village, and then demand that the heads-of-state of present-day Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco come to lay wreaths and ‘take the knee’ in front of it.

    (… and then present them with a bill for the ‘reparations.’ Sound like a plan?)

  • GregWA

    I think it’s sweet how most here seem to think that facts, perspective, reason, logic, wisdom have anything to do with the current culture wars. The other side is irrational, mad as hell, and it ready to turn this cold war hot. Hotter I should say: Antifa in Seattle asking for men with rifles to man the barricades in downtown.

    Keep your powder dry and save these arguments for a future (hopefully!) where there are actually multiple sides willing to talk about the issues.

    Or am I over-reacting to mobs all over the world tearing everything apart, police abandoning their posts, elected officials refusing to enforce the law?

    Maybe it’s all a massive, brilliant gun industry conspiracy? Their sales have already gone up, notably by Hollywood types now fearing their neighborhoods might be next. And there won’t be any cops coming. I plan to further help gun sellers’ bottom line soon.

  • Nullius in Verba

    “The other side is irrational, mad as hell, and it ready to turn this cold war hot.”

    An irrational enemy is always better than a smart one. They make mistakes.

  • Ferox

    The other side is irrational, mad as hell, and it ready to turn this cold war hot.

    They aren’t mad, they just like to loot and pillage. Look at all the smiling faces in the pictures, in the videos.

    They don’t care about the war; nor about promulgating any policy; they just want to loot and lynch people whose race they dislike. It’s time to get some free stuff.

    And it’s endlessly amusing to them to watch their enemies grovel and kneel. As it would be for anyone, I suppose.

  • thefat tomato

    https://order-order.com/2020/06/10/guardian-must-fall/
    amazing 😳 😳 😳 😳 😳 😳
    my favourite for cancel culture is still the BBC
    “I really admire the way Hitler has cleaned up what looked like an incipient revolt. I really admire the drastic actions taken, which were obviously badly needed.” John Reith, founder of the BBC.
    I do not admire the BBC or Reith, for clarity.

  • bobby b

    “Upon the news of President Lincoln’s assassination, the Guardian described the president’s time in office as “abhorrent” . . . “

    Well, he was one of those repellent Republicans trying to end slavery. So they were just establishing their character early.

  • Flubber

    This is the just the latest iteration of the year zero project.

    If the Khmer Rouge are any guide, it wont last that long, they’ll soon be onto the mass murder phase.

    Anyone up for a sweepstake on how many millions are for the machete?

  • bobby b

    “Anyone up for a sweepstake on how many millions are for the machete?”

    Saloth Sar established his Utopia against a poor mostly unarmed agrarian society.

    This ain’t Kampuchea.

  • Rich Rostrom

    “Women were often married off as children, and started giving birth at 12 or 13…”

    This is a myth. Child marriages were occasionally performed or reasons of state, but almost never consummated. Betrothals wre fsr more common. Women of any rank rarely married before their late teens,and many were not married until their 20s. For one thing, marriage required a stable place in life and some kind of family income, which few teen boys could provide

    As for child bearing – the age of female puberty was significantly higher in the past. Most girls were not fertile till their middle to late teens. While there were notable cases of early marriage and motherhood, it was also widely recognized that it could have bad consequences. Margaret Beaufort bore Henry VII at the age of 14 – and had no other children. Shakespeare’s Juliet was not yet 14; when Paris sued for her hand, old Capulet said “too soon marr’d are those so early made [mothers]”.

  • No-one ever ‘calms down’ when they are winning. And make no mistake, they ARE winning.

    Because there’s no effective opposition.

  • Johnathan Pearce (London)

    APL, for enlightenment about how the Groan got off the ground, look at this: https://order-order.com/2020/06/10/guardian-must-fall/

  • decnine

    The Koran has some passages that are a bit pro-slavery. Should be banned. Likewise, the Bible is a bit pro-ethnic-cleansing in parts…

  • APL

    decnine: “The Koran has some passages that are a bit pro-slavery.”

    The Hadith are at great pains to point out how white the founder of Islam was. Hints of white supremacy, if you ask me.

    They also document the murder of a slave because he helped himself to the spoils of war.

  • lucklucky

    The author apparently fails to understand that fabricating sin is a tool get power from so constructed sinners, nothing more.
    Those that feel guilt usually present no resistance. That is what matters to the Marxists.

    There is no morality here only power seeking.

  • Shopkeepers within Seattle’s Capital Free Zone are claiming that the local Antifa thugs have been around with a “Request for a donation of $500 in cash or bitcoin”.

    So their version of Freedom includes the freedom to extort money. I notice that despite claiming to be “outside the United States” they seem happy to accept it’s currency.

    I’m sure the irony is lost on these idiots.

  • llamas

    John Galt wrote:

    ‘Shopkeepers within Seattle’s Capital Free Zone are claiming that the local Antifa thugs have been around with a “Request for a donation of $500 in cash or bitcoin”.

    and the rotten hateful little bastard that resides inside my brain immediately thought ‘Sure – pay it. In counterfeit $20s’

    llater,

    llamas

  • Runcie Balspune

    The Hadith are at great pains to point out how white the founder of Islam was. Hints of white supremacy, if you ask me.

    On that subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxOM4GrqElw

  • Lloyd Martin Hendaye

    Long-standing trogbrain attitudes, swarming primitivists’ nostalgie de la boue, betoken a root psychosis traceable to genuine physical debility. In this regard, we cite Trump-hating endoctrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig, a garden-variety UCSF collectivist/Statist currying Benedict Barack Gangrenous and MzBill: “Persistent stress filters cortisol and dopamine into one’s pre-frontal lobes, inducing fear-and-loathing as directed … (this) prefrontal cortical dysfunction has attended all society’s traumatic behavioral problems –mass addiction, anxiety, depression, irrational hatred and passive/aggressive syndromes– infecting [radical agitators] these past 50 years.”

    Regarding Pres. Trump, der grosse Herr Professor Ludwig indulges his own infantile-regressive displacement and projection by imputing to America’s duly elected Chief Executive, thereby his 63-million vs. Rats’ legitimate 54-million constituents, precisely the psycho-dynamic attributes so perversely affecting his own scuttering rodentia. Come this November 3rd, Dr. Ludwig’s obsessive-neurotic “cortical dysfunction” will have driven lemming-like retros off the political cliff.

  • bobby b

    JuliaM
    June 11, 2020 at 7:51 am

    “No-one ever ‘calms down’ when they are winning. And make no mistake, they ARE winning.”

    Dissent. We’re watching one of the most sweeping self-immolations in history. The further left into hysteria these people try to take their side, the lower their societal support drops. What support they do have certainly does get louder and more fervent, but it’s also getting narrower.

    We never know from day to day what new inanity they’re going to get up to. Whether it’s burning down cities that have been monolithically controlled by their own people for decades because of systemic racism in those cities, or calling for an end to the police on the very day most of the world is asking for more police to counter that burning, or taking over parts of Seattle with their governor’s and mayor’s help, they just keep on alienating more people.

    I suspect that there’s a good reason Trump has taken a retiring position on current events here in the US, and I suspect that that reason stems from the old saying:

    “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

  • mickc

    Quite! And Boris and his crew aren’t going to provide any!
    Like Cameron, he wanted the bright shiny toy of Premiership but never a clue what it was for, or what do with it! A majority of eighty…wasted.

  • llamas

    +1 bobby b. I only wish that the media would spend more time covering their own creation – specifically, the ‘autonomous zone’ that’s sprung up in Seattle, but any of the ever-crazier foolishness we’re seeing would be fine. Every hipster soi-boi demanding free vegan pizza and decrying white supremacy is another voter for Trump – the untold millions of ‘undecided’s in the 99.5% of the rest of the country outside the tiny enclaves where this nonsense is happening are looking at the screen and thinking ‘the lunatics are taking over the asylum. What’s our best chance to stop it?’

    llater,

    llamas

  • Used to be Banned

    Plenty of statues to fall in Ulan Bator where the Rapist in Chief Warlord is still regarded as Mongolias national hero and Father Of His People, which he was, come to think of it.

  • I suspect that there’s a good reason Trump has taken a retiring position on current events here in the US, and I suspect that that reason stems from the old saying:

    “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

    Especially since he can always fall back on the 10th Amendment as an excuse for inaction. I mean the Democratic Mayor and Governor both say they don’t want nor need Trump’s help, so…let them burn.

    Let’s see what the voter’s say in November. I can hardly imagine that any of this farce will see Creepy Uncle Joe Biden in the Whitehouse.

  • Paul Marks

    The post misses the point.

    The endless screaming about “racism” and “slavery” is not sincere.

    These are just tactics in the struggle to exterminate “capitalism”.

    This is not difficult to find out – movements such as BLM do not really hide their Marxism.

    And they could not give a toss about George Floyd – any more than they care about David Dorn.