Fascinating times on the Twitter yesterday, after I posted a remark about the incoherent racism of the “indigenous population of Britain” component of the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory and attracted a lot of very angry people with English flags in their handles. One suspects they’ve been conducting broad searches for the key terms ‘indigenous population’ and ‘racist’, since none of them looked like the sort of accounts who would normally be looking for random thoughts on Thucydides and jazz composition.
Posts Tagged ‘racism’
The Glorious Land
Posted in Musings, tagged Britishness, identity, racism on December 16, 2020| 6 Comments »
Classical Associations
Posted in Musings, tagged Enoch Powell, immigration, racism, Thucydides on April 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »
There’s been a minor flurry of references to Thucydides in the context of the BBC’s bizarre decision to give Enoch Powell’s notorious 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech the historical monument treatment. It’s an interesting variant on the argument put forward by opponents of ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ and similar campaigns to protect the legacies of racism and imperialism, that something can be simultaneously incredibly important for historical understanding (and so must be preserved) and yet absolutely separate from contemporary concerns (and so shouldn’t be attacked). The claim is that Powell’s speech matters because of its role in history (so celebrating it now has nothing to do with contemporary politics, honest, and we’re going to be really critical of it), and yet the only reason anyone pays any attention to the racist pronouncements of a failed politician is the persistence of such racism as an undercurrent in British society ever since, with the increasing tendency of mainstream political parties to treat it not as a problem and source of shame but as Very Real Concerns that Should Be Addressed. A healthy, modern society would be one in which Powell’s speech was of purely historical concern – in which case this anniversary would be of interest only to a tiny number of specialists. Ours clearly isn’t – but that doesn’t mean the BBC should be pandering to such tendencies. (more…)
The Original Shithole
Posted in Musings, tagged migration, racism, Thucydides on January 12, 2018| 2 Comments »
Accordingly Attica, from the poverty of its soil enjoying from a very remote period freedom from faction, never changed its inhabitants. And here is no inconsiderable exemplification of my assertion, that the migrations were the cause of there being no correspondent growth in other parts. The most powerful victims of war or faction from the rest of Hellas took refuge with the Athenians as a safe retreat; and at an early period, becoming naturalized, swelled the already large population of the city to such a height that Attica became at last too small to hold them, and they had to send out colonies to Ionia. (Thucydides 1.2.5-6)
There’s a low-level but persistent Twitter meme that Thucydides shows the dangers of immigration and failure to assimilate. (more…)
Diversitas et Multiculturalismus
Posted in Musings, tagged classics, historiography, racism, Roman Britain on August 2, 2017| 49 Comments »
This isn’t the Summer of Love; it may be the Summer of Bad-Tempered Arguments About Classics and Racism. Over in the US, Sarah Bond‘s articles on the ‘white-washing’ of classical statues – that is, why do we think of them in terms of gleaming white marble when they were actually painted? – have provoked a furious backlash from the far right, including death threats.* In the UK, an alt-right blogger objected to the fact that a BBC educational cartoon on life in Roman Britain included black people – “I mean, who cares about historical accuracy, right?” – and was carefully schooled by @MikeStuchbery_, Matthew Nicholls from Reading, Mary Beard and others – with the result that Mary, at least, now seems to be spending six hours a day responding to people on Twitter about this.
What is surprising about these two arguments is that the substantive issues – ancient statues were painted, the Roman Empire (including Britain) was ethnically diverse – are such old hat. (more…)
Damnatio Memoriae
Posted in Musings, Uncategorized, tagged Cecil Rhodes, heritage, history, imperialism, memorials, politics, racism on January 8, 2016| 2 Comments »
There’s a great scene in the 1990s Welsh teenage drama series Pam fi, Duw? [Why me, God?], where everyone has gone to London (can’t remember why) and the indomitable grandmother insists on dragging the family across the city to visit the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square – to their utter bemusement, as she’s a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, but you don’t argue with Mamgu. When they finally get there, she sticks up two fingers at it and says something to the effect of “That’s for Tonypandy, you bastard!” (more…)
Sphinx 