A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
Daniel Defoe (1703, h/t Sullivan who has the rest)
Pat Buchanan’s rant on the passing of WASP-supremacy has attracted no soul-searching whatsoever as far as I can tell. As Serwer say, ‘good riddance’, and very well said too, but Robert Farley’s response I thought was more interesting, for reason I will come to.
Meanwhile the BBC’s decision to invite Nick Griffin of the British National Party onto Question Time has led to a huge rumpus in Blighty, with much posturing all round.
This was all brought about through the BNP’s successes in the Euro elections in the Summer, yet as Nick Robinson pointed out at the time, the BNP attracted fewer votes than the previous cycle and sneaked in largely due to the collapse in the Labour vote. The BBC were much criticised for giving Griffin this platform, yet the director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, was quite right that he had no choice.
Now as Appleyard says, unlike Buchanan, Griffin is an oik, yet claims to the Churchill mantle have some force. As Griffin said, his father faught in the RAF while Jack Staw’s father avoided service (note, I would act as Straw senior did in his situation) and the younger Churchill had some very reactionary views, and even the War-leader 1931-Churchill entertained some mighty patronising and uncharitable views of Ghandi. Indeed the young Churchill’s reactionary views went even further than Griffin was prepared to own, as Clive Ponting reported in his biography of Churchill, he had a keen interest in eugenics and was a proponent of forcible sterilisation. In a private letter to Prime Minister Asquith at the time of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, 1904 (quoted in Ponting, 1992, p. 23):
[It is] not the very severe cases which are the most dangerous: it is the mild cases, which are capable of being well veneered, so as to look, for a time at any rate, almost normal, against which there is most need to protect society.
I do find Griffin’s views on Islam especially ignorant, and given their malignant attacks on a vulnerable minority, offensive. Yet, suitable moderated, he may not be speaking for a minority. So it is really easier for everyone concerned to strut around and parade their indignation.
This mess came about because Jack Straw pandered to our intolerance and ignorance in putting veiled Muslim women in the national stocks, trying to recover Labour fortunes after his war contaminated the Labour brand, inflamed the Islamic world and the aftermath isolated domestic Muslims. Gary Younge’s analysis is spot on.
This has been New Labour’s problem all along. While they have long recognised that racism is a problem, it never seemed to occur to them that anti-racism might be the solution. This should not obscure some of the positive things Labour has done – most notably the Macpherson report and the Race Relations Amendment Act. But in the words of the late African American writer James Baldwin: “What it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took back with the other.”
The BNP’s victories are a product of our politics. Its defeat, when it comes, will necessarily be a product of a change in our politics. But since New Labour’s politics enabled the BNP, it is in no position to disable it. The BNP is a bottom feeder. But the system is rotting from the head
In this case, I think that Buchanan is invoking a genuine sense of loss of entitlement on the part of a substantial portion of white America. This isn’t to defend or justify the white privilege that created this entitlement entailed, or to justify Pat Buchanan’s nostalgia for it. Nevertheless, I think that Buchanan is pointing to something that’s very real, or at least as real as any sociological fact. White America, as the construct exists in the mind of many Americans, is disappearing, even by some objective criteria; it’s retreating deeper into exurban communities, and it’s very, very slowly ceding political and financial power. Moreover, the idea of America is changing; Buchanan has a very definite vision of what America is, and is smart enough to understand that his vision is losing traction. In this context, it’s hardly surprising that the response is a combination of rage and raw panic. That the ideological structure that supports White America is racist and has a disturbing narrative of American history is academically relevant, but it’s also not the central point. Those who hold Buchanan’s vision (and many do, although often not in terms as explicit as Pat is willing to put forth) really do find themselves under siege, and pointing out that these beliefs are both crazy and immoral has very limited effect.
And so I don’t really begrudge Pat the platform to make this argument. Rather, I think that it helps to clarify the source and meaning of much of the rage on the right, especially coming as it does from a long term advocate of movement conservatism. It’s altogether more readable and interesting than most of what rolls down from the Weekly Standard or the National Review, in any case.
This kind of realistic approach is rare indeed, yet it is the right one. The results are as predictable as they are unhelpful for anyone wishing for an open, tolerant and harmonious country. Griffin feels as if he is being singled out for special attention, for representing the views of the people that voted for his party–because indeed he is–and he is making good use of the hyped up atmosphere to keep the attention on himself, lodging a complaint with the BBC for his treatment on the show and claiming that London has been ethnically cleansed. The BBC has received over 400 calls and emails on the show, the majority of which were critical of Griffin’s treatment, and the discussion forum for the show were flooded with people critical of his treatment on the show.
Clarity of thought shown by Younge and Farley are indispensable for good ethics. The hypocrisy and posturing, the meeting of abuse with abuse are not helping.
A True-Born Englishman
—
Pat Buchanan’s rant on the passing of WASP-supremacy has attracted no soul-searching whatsoever as far as I can tell. As Serwer say, ‘good riddance’, and very well said too, but Robert Farley’s response I thought was more interesting, for reason I will come to.
Meanwhile the BBC’s decision to invite Nick Griffin of the British National Party onto Question Time has led to a huge rumpus in Blighty, with much posturing all round.
This was all brought about through the BNP’s successes in the Euro elections in the Summer, yet as Nick Robinson pointed out at the time, the BNP attracted fewer votes than the previous cycle and sneaked in largely due to the collapse in the Labour vote. The BBC were much criticised for giving Griffin this platform, yet the director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, was quite right that he had no choice.
Now as Appleyard says, unlike Buchanan, Griffin is an oik, yet claims to the Churchill mantle have some force. As Griffin said, his father faught in the RAF while Jack Staw’s father avoided service (note, I would act as Straw senior did in his situation) and the younger Churchill had some very reactionary views, and even the War-leader 1931-Churchill entertained some mighty patronising and uncharitable views of Ghandi. Indeed the young Churchill’s reactionary views went even further than Griffin was prepared to own, as Clive Ponting reported in his biography of Churchill, he had a keen interest in eugenics and was a proponent of forcible sterilisation. In a private letter to Prime Minister Asquith at the time of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, 1904 (quoted in Ponting, 1992, p. 23):
I do find Griffin’s views on Islam especially ignorant, and given their malignant attacks on a vulnerable minority, offensive. Yet, suitable moderated, he may not be speaking for a minority. So it is really easier for everyone concerned to strut around and parade their indignation.
This mess came about because Jack Straw pandered to our intolerance and ignorance in putting veiled Muslim women in the national stocks, trying to recover Labour fortunes after his war contaminated the Labour brand, inflamed the Islamic world and the aftermath isolated domestic Muslims. Gary Younge’s analysis is spot on.
Which brings me to Robert Farley’s piece on Pat Buchanan.
This kind of realistic approach is rare indeed, yet it is the right one. The results are as predictable as they are unhelpful for anyone wishing for an open, tolerant and harmonious country. Griffin feels as if he is being singled out for special attention, for representing the views of the people that voted for his party–because indeed he is–and he is making good use of the hyped up atmosphere to keep the attention on himself, lodging a complaint with the BBC for his treatment on the show and claiming that London has been ethnically cleansed. The BBC has received over 400 calls and emails on the show, the majority of which were critical of Griffin’s treatment, and the discussion forum for the show were flooded with people critical of his treatment on the show.
Clarity of thought shown by Younge and Farley are indispensable for good ethics. The hypocrisy and posturing, the meeting of abuse with abuse are not helping.