The England-haters use contradictory propaganda tactics in their quest to undermine any attempt to give England a political voice or any other point of national focus. They argue that England is too large to be given a parliament because it would be overly dominant in what would be a de facto federal Britain (Ken Clarke). They say that the English cannot be trusted with power because they are a violent people (Jack Straw). They rant that English nationalism is dangerous (Gisele Stuart). On the obverse of the Anglophobe propaganda coin they argue that there is no such thing as Englishness, no such people as the England, that England is simply a geographical expression (John Prescott). The two positions: that the English are dangerously nationalistic and there is no such thing as the English cannot both be sustained, because if the English do not exist they cannot be dangerously nationalistic and if they are dangerously nationalistic they must exist.
The anti-English camp can rely on Britain’s national politicians to decide whether or not England has a Parliament and a government devoted to her sole interests. Other points of national focus such as England’s dominant role in world history and her sporting teams are more problematic because , unlike an English Parliament and government, they actually exist. The Anglophobes deal with the history problem with a two-pronged attack.
They ensure that English history is barely taught in schools and such history as is taught is slanted to cast the English (and British) in the role of historical villains, most notably in the case of the Atlantic slave trade, the British Empire (although little is taught about the Empire beyond the message that it was a case of colonial exploitation and that it was that exploitation which made England/Britain rich, a claim which at best is simply wrong – it was the industrial revolution which made England then Britain rich – and at worst a politically motivated lie. Teaching the history of the Empire in any depth would of course run the risk of those being taught beginning to think what an amazing thing it was for a country on the edge of Europe to have created such a political and geographical edifice and from there to begin to think that only an extraordinary people could have managed such a feat.
As for institutions such as England’s national sporting teams, there is nothing the England-hater likes more than to see such teams being regularly beaten. To this end virtually unfettered access to England’s top-level sporting club sides by foreign players and coaches is permitted. This results in fewer and fewer opportunities for English players even in the most popular English game, football, where less than a third of the players who start in the Premier league each week are English. This smaller player pool also gives national selectors the excuse to try foreign players who have qualified for England through very lax qualification rules to play in England sides, a fact that drives the Anglophobes to paroxysms of delight for the more than an England side is one only in name, the happier they are for it satisfies their desire to both have a side which is less and less attractive to the English and one which represents their fantasy of a “diverse England”. For the same reason of “diversity” the Anglophobes also energetically urge the selection of English born blacks and Asians at the slightest provocation. Let an Asian take five wickets in a County Championship match or a black score a couple of goals in the Premier league and he immediately becomes in the eyes of the politically correct an England prospect.
Political correctness is the other great Anglophobe engine. By making “discrimination” the supposed test of fairness for any situation, the politically correct have made it impossible for any perceived favouring of the English, even if this is merely to extol the merits and accomplishments of the English, to occur without squeals of racism, xenophobia, English arrogance and English nationalism rising from the white English-haters and their ethnic minority clients. Mass immigration allows this type of mentality unlimited rein.
The Anglophobe desire to dilute Englishness as a concept can be seen in two recent media stories. A film of the Hobbit is to be made in New Zealand. When Hobbit extras were being selected an Asian woman Naz Humphreys, was initially rejected by the casting manager with the words ”We are looking for light-skinned people. I’m not trying to be – whatever. It’s just the brief. You’ve got to look like a Hobbit.” (Daily Telegraph 29 Nov 2010). Ms Humphrey’s inanely commented ”It’s 2010 and I still can’t believe I’m being discriminated against because I have brown skin.” (ibid). She then complained to the director Peter Jackson whose spokesman came along with the routine crawling pc response, describing the casting director’s words as “an incredibly unfortunate error” and insisting that no one at a senior level would ever “ issue instructions of this kind to the casting crew. All people meeting the age and height requirements are welcome to audition.” (ibid). The outcome will doubtless be a sprinkling of what Dame Edna Everidge calls “tinted folk” amongst the extras in what is a quintessentially English tale which shock horror! was conceived as being entirely white. How do we know this? Tolkein tells us . Here is his description of Hobbits: “Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked with mouths apt to laughter and to eating and drinking.” (From the prologue of the Lord of the Rings.) It is instructive to compare the politically correct response to an Asian playing a white part with the hostile reaction to white person playing Othello when the squeals of politically correct rage are unending.
But we do not have to rely solely on a physical description of Hobbits. Tolkein’s stated intention was to create an English myth:
“I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths- which I would dedicate simply to: England; to my country. It would possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our ‘air’ (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the east), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elsuive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be ‘high’, purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land now long steeped in poetry.”
He wished to do this because: “I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own, not of the quality that I sought, and found in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish, but nothing English, save impoverished chapbook stuff.”
Englishness is also attacked more obliquely. Take the latest film in the Narnia series, “The Dawn Treader”. The C S Lewis books from which the film adaptations are made are both very English in character and tone, but they are also built around a resolutely Christian theology. England is not a Christian country in the sense of most of its people being worshipping Christians, but Christianity is woven into its historical and moral fabric. It is part of the English cultural skeleton.
In the Narnia books represents Christ or if you prefer Christian values though the lion Aslan. Lewis described Aslan as ‘ “ an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question: “What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia?”.’ (Daily Telegraph 04 Dec 2010).
In “The Dawn Treader”, Aslan is voiced by the Irish actor Liam Neeson. After its release Neeson said: “Aslan symbolises a Christlike figure, but he also symbolises for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries.
“That’s who Aslan stands for as well as a mentor figure for kids – that’s what he means for me.” (ibid)
Walter Hooper, Lewis’s former secretary and a trustee of his estate, commented “It is nothing whatever to do with Islam. Lewis would have simply denied that. He wrote that ‘the whole Narnian story is about Christ’. Lewis could not have been clearer.” (ibid).
The intent of comments such as Neeson is to reduce the world to a multi-cultural soup which remove works such as Narnia away from their English roots.
Such behaviour is not trivial because these two examples of the deracination of Englishness are just that, examples. This type of behaviour is commonplace and the steady drip, drip of the propaganda does have an effect. It should be vigorously resisted on principle.
