There are a ridiculous amount of Facebook groups (such as this one) and pages dedicated to telling me that the police have banned people from wearing England shirts, and flying England flags, incase it offends foreigners. An example, of one of the comments in that group, shows just how perfectly English and proud of their culture, history, and especially their language, they truly are:
“England till i die… And know 1 will tell me what to do with my flags or tops to wear, fuck the pakiz!!! Dont try and take over OUR country OK.”
“know 1” will tell him what to do with his flag!!! Know 1!!!!
It is obviously bullshit.
Every year, people tend to shout, pathetically; “OMG THE MUSZLIMISTS R TRYNA BAN CHRISTMAS CUS ITZ OFFENCIVESE N STUFF!!!11”. It is rubbish. It always amazes me that the majority of people in those facebook groups who claim to be “standing up for England“, manage to quite effortlessly rape the entire language. Or, of course they claim St Georges day is being banned, because it might offend people who are either gay, muslim, black, or anything that doesn’t fit into their narrow vision of what makes one “English” (which apparently, is simply limited to being racist, angry, ignorant and supremely illiterate). For example, I have decided for the next ten seconds, I will embrace what it means to be English, as perceived by a very select few idiots:
“DER WEL BAD!!!!11 TRYNA BAN ENGERLUND FLAGS N TAKE OUR WOMAN N DEY DONT EVAN TALK ENGLUSH ON DA FONE OR ANYFING. WERE GUNNA LOOSE SHACKESPERE TO DA MUZZIES!!!!11”
Sadly, ignorance is pretty damn easy. I might get used to it. Let me just let off some steam first.
No one, anywhere, has ever told you that being proud of England, is racist. Never. What I will tell you is, if you claim you’re proud of England because it’s for white people who aren’t muslim, then yes, you’re a racist. I find it ridiculous that people try to define what it means to be an abstract concept. I find it even more ridiculous that people will join groups like the EDL, thinking they are defending their weak and rather ugly version of what it means to be English. I didn’t realise it was “English” to join violent racist groups of hooligans, who threaten Journalists for printing negative columns about them. What amazes me, is that EDL and BNP supporters, can actually read.
The NUJ recently showed that a few journalists received death threats from the EDL. The police are currently investigating it.
One of the EDL’s chief strategists is a man called Alan Lake. He advises the Sweden Democrats on immigration policy. His immigration policy isn’t simply “extremists are evil”, it’s “anyone who isn’t like us, is evil”. Much like the EDL, who claim to be anti-extremist, yet will sit protesting outside mosques, that have no connection to extremism whatsoever. It’s just a group that people can say “LOOK! A SIKH JOINED!!! THAT MEANS WE’RE NOT RACIST!!!”
I don’t particularly care if they suddenly become non-violent (which is impossible, far-right organisations have a bit of a history of violence). They are still vicious, nasty little shits.
It is one of those groups, that appeal to the stupid, by using “clever” language to manipulate political and social discourse, make people feel they are a part of something, and to sustain itself, there must be an “other” an enemy, who they can direct their hate at. Muslim extremists, Christian extremists, and now Nationalist extremists are doing the same thing. And if people fall for it, so be it. I’m proud that i’m not as idiotic as them.
I also notice the BNP put up some wondrous candidates for MP and council elections this year.
Ken Booth, who referred to Auschwitz as a holiday camp for people, much like Disneyland.
Lynne Mozar, who when confronted by someone who simply questioned her economic policy, replied “fat slag”
Mathew Tait, who said that the the Equality and Human Rights Commission court case had forced the BNP to accept “people who we would wish to not have in our country really to be members of our party”. Damn them, for making you accept black people.
Mike Shore, who left the National Front in 2003, to start up a British version of the Ku Klux Klan.
Richard Hamilton, the BNP said they’d suspended him because he is a known Hitler supporter, who hates “niggers“. Apparently they didn’t suspend him for long.
Chris Beverley, refused to condemn Hitler, and said he doesn’t dislike him.
Ian Meller, fined £400 after being caught with a chair leg, threatening a gay guy, simply for being gay.
Barry Bennett, who said recently “I believe in National Socialism, WW2 style, it was best, no other power had anything like it,” ‘he wrote. “The ideology was fantastic. The culture, nothing like it. If it was here now, I’d defect to Germany.”
Tess Culnane, was National Front candidate until 2008.
Jeffrey Marshall, when asked about David Cameron’s son who died, said “We live in a country today which is unhealthily dominated by an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive. No good will come of it.”
The Nation State is very much a part of this whole Nationalist debate, something that goes back over four hundred years.
The Nation State came around about 16/17th Century. It actually evolved through Protestantism. As Henry VIII started to question the legitimacy of the Pope, the Parliament of the day granted full power over the Nation of England, to the King. Something that hadn’t ever been done before. Thomas Cromwell was the key to it all. It was his legislation. He also completely reformed the way politics was conducted, by introducing a sort of bureaucracy and departmental governing and National institutions, which had never been done before. Protestantism was the basis for an emerging Nation State. To build that Nation State among the minds of the Kings subjects, required building a sense of National unity. Which was odd, given that Kings and Queens of Europe were marrying and producing children who were half English, half Spanish. Or Half French, half Italian, and so on. It was also odd, given that whilst the King and the Nobles still lived in luxury, the majority of the people, including the army, lived shit lives of squalor. The King and Court didn’t seem to give much of a shit about their people for most of the time. The problem was, that most people felt a sense of connection with the rest of Europe, due to their Catholic roots. They felt a strong bond with the Papacy. That now needed to change. The King and Court needed to direct that sense of loyalty away from the Pope, and toward the Crown. But the King is simply someone who lives and then dies. So basing a sense of loyalty on something far greater was needed. The State was born. The idea of England as a unified set of principles, was born. The King had to use a psychological weapon of some sort to persuade the people, that when they go to war, they are going to war for the good of England. What difference would it make, who was in control of England? Whether it be a French King, a Scottish King, a Spanish King, or an English King? They were all the same, with the same system. They were merely using the lower classes, to protect themselves and their wealth and status. And so with the onset of Protestantism (which wasn’t down to any religious reason, and was entirely down to a King and his council getting a little too power hungry), the government of the day, now had a complete say over the way their Country was run. Europe was governed by the Papacy in Rome before that. Even England, up until 1534 was pretty much governed by Rome. The Holy Roman Empire stretched across Germany and Austria and Belgium. It was one big nation. And it worked for Centuries. In fact, for the majority of British history, as i’ve stated before, from the year 0 to 2010, we were a strict Catholic country. Catholicism, is our traditional connecting value.
Fast forward 470 years, and America and Britain are now telling their people, especially those in the lower classes that they should put their lives on the line, in a war for the good of England and Britain and the rest of the World. When, on the contrary, those ridiculously brave men and women are dying, for the good of American and British business interests, and in fact, merely perpetuating the problem of Islamic extremism World Wide. I’m only surprised that it’s the extremist Muslims who have been the first to snap. I would have put money on it being the Latin Americans.
National Pride created by an elite set of rulers has never been about celebrating a common ancestry, or a common ethical standard. It has always been about Imperialism, either by force, by economic means, or by a mixture of both.
Nation States evolved during the colonial era, and are simply a left over of the colonial days. We drew straight lines on Africa. Go look at a map of Africa. It is divided almost into perfect squares. Do you think that is biological? It REALLY isn’t. We didn’t care about the tribes and who they identified themselves with. We just needed an easy way to know what land we’d decided were ours, and which were French owned plots of African land, for the purpose of slavery and exploitation.
Thomas Paine writing in section 3 part 2 of “The Rights of Man” over two centuries ago, says of the difference between the old Monarchical past and the new Globalised, democratic future;
“The one encourages national prejudices; the other promotes universal society, as the means of universal commerce.
The Nation States in Europe worked fine when we could strictly regulate trade, and capital and the influx of slaves. When economies were National. It embedded itself into our way of life, pretty quickly. It helped build our economy, so when we eventually became far more capitalist, we had a strong basis to work from, we had a massive advantage. Now, if you want the benefits of a globalised economy; cheap imports etc, then Nation States are hugely contradictory to that aim. If your borders are pretty much fully open to goods and to capital and are not rooted to their Nation of origin, and that capital is always looking for the best return on investment, then saying things like “British jobs for British people” is so unbelievably 17th Century Colonial reasoning, it’s not even worth trying to argue against. If capital and goods are able to flow freely across the World, then it stands to reason that labour should not be chained to it’s nation of ‘origin’, and so with labour comes different philosophies and cultures from Countries that have been colonial and protectionist for centuries. If you are the owner of a company, and you are looking for the best return on investment, and a Pakistani man applies for the same job as a white British man, and the Pakistani man is clearly better at the job, far more likely to raise profits, which in turn helps to create new jobs, why on Earth would you choose the Pakistani man? National identity is not compatible with Capitalism, because building a wall around popultion, is like building a wall around capital. It isn’t compatible with the aims of a globalised economy. It is only going to damage the country in the long run.
Our impact on the World, is quite real. The decisions that are made at the Bank of England, or at Westminster, can and do directly affect people in places like Afghanistan and African Nations. We call them “developing” because we assume that unless they follow our economic structure and accept that our way is the best way, they can never be “developed“, even if they are perfectly happy with the way their World is. We demand that they open their markets by lowing tariffs and removing any support for local farmers. We then flood their markets, and given that they don’t fully understand what a market based economy actually means, they are forced to give up everything they know, and succumb to our ways. We then put their wives and their kids in factories under appalling working conditions, for little or no money, working most of the day and night, so we can buy cheap shit from Primark, and then say “Well at least they’re earning” as if that’s justification. We cannot get away from the fact that we have a huge impact on the “developing” World, for our own benefit, and those people have absolutely no say over it. Illegitimate power. So who are the real victims of some abstract culture war, you dumb xenophobic, racist fucking idiot.
I do think National Identity is a human creation. And so, an abstraction. It isn’t real. We have assigned land masses to groups of people, and are deeply suspicious and unwilling to accept people who were born on other land masses, as being similar to us. We think that others, who were born on the same land mass as us, are the same, share the same beliefs and ideals and that no one else could possibly understand, and so they are “other”. It is nonsense. An abstraction.
The real social connections between people are based on ethical standards, but they are not rooted to a particular land mass indefinitely. Nor is it based on biology. If you identify your ethics, your standards, and your reasoning, to a particular culture, if that particular culture is the way you live your life, then yes, you are apart of that culture.
Pride in your Country, especially at times of international competition like the World Cup is great. I will be wearing my England shirt, for much of it. It is a time when people should indeed feel a real part of society in an increasingly individualist World. However, that sense of shared identity should be open to all who consider themselves a part of it, not just a few who happen to be white, and xenophobic.
There, now that I’ve got that off my chest, back to being an idiot:
“OMG DEY R SAYIN DAT ITS WRONG 2 SMEAR POO IN A MUZZIES FACE NOW INKASE IT OFFENDZ DEM!!!!!1 FUKIN POLITICAL CORECTNESS!!!1”
David Cameron is Prime Minister.
Posted by futiledemocracy 
This is one of those subjects, that makes me angry, just talking about it. Even to write about it, angers me.
After five years, and over 100 episodes, I sat down today to watch the Lost finale. I have been addicted to this year, for years. It is a show full of mystery and intrigue. It seemed intelligent, and simply ‘different’. The show, undoubtedly placed a great emphasis on character development, and mixed myth and mystery (even the way Richard or Ben would say “hello Jack” was exciting in the first few seasons) into the constantly morphing and intricate storyline. But the addition of those myths and mysteries, create a sense of needing-to-know how it was going to be wrapped up, along with the character development. The philosophical questions, were not answered in the finale. The character development was rounded off beautifully. They wrapped up the season, they did not wrap up the show.
“The day before I was elected leader, Mr Cameron suggested we join them. He talked about a “progressive alliance”. This talk of alliances comes up a lot, doesn’t it? Everyone wants to be in our gang. So I want to make something very clear today.
It amazes me that people actually consider any party; Labour, Tory, or Lib Dem of being the “party of change”. Absolutely unreal to believe that. I voted Liberal Democrat, almost in a moment of madness. I suppose I got caught up in the excitement of the election. It amuses me how many fellow students actually believe they were voting for “change” for the Liberal Democrats. It makes me feel like banging my head against a wall. The same feeling I get when people say “Well Gordon Brown caused this mess, so the Tories have to fix it!!!“. I am actually quite ashamed of myself for voting. I agree with the Lib Dem policy on Trident, and I agree with them on laying the foundations for a Greener economy. I disagree, profoundly with them and the Tories and Labour, on pretty much everything else. But my main issue with them, and my main issue with why they offer no real change, is because they still seem to believe that democracy is only acceptable in the Political sphere, and that the economic sphere is best left to faceless businessmen, as if they know what’s best for the World and the rest of us should just accept it.
It is 2:20am, and we in Britain are in the midst of the results of the election. It looks as if it is going to result in a hung Parliament, which may result in a Liberal Democrat/Labour coalition (hopefully). The BBC, ITV and SKY all will not call it. They keep saying it will most likely be hung, and that despite all the money that Lord Ashcroft has spent on the Conservative campaign, they are not gaining the seats they REALLY targeted, such as Tootin. 
Futile Democracy 