Although interestingly, in geological terms, the top of Scotland is actually rising while the south of England sinks, been going that way ever since the last ice age. So even though the UK isn't goint to break in the middle, England and Wales will disappear under the sea eventually. So would the concept of being British still exist then? One to ponder.
English Nationalism
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AlexisInfectious®
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My nationality is not English, I am a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which makes me a British National.
khanji
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Begrudgingly; yes, they are North Americans. But the jury is still out on the fruit, vegetable, or nut classification for them.
PsycholPsychic
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If England sinks, we'd have to invade Scotland again like rats on a sinking ship
shergalfarkey
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Tony Blair, Hammer of the Scots!
Doesn't sound quite as good as Edward Longshanks, Hammer of the Scots, does it?
Mitch
Doesn't sound quite as good as Edward Longshanks, Hammer of the Scots, does it?
Mitch
mamalicious
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The name Britain is from the Roman coruption of the ancient Irish name for a Welsh (ish) speaker. Later it was applied to those areas not under Roman control and then the whole lot. Nothing to do with the topic but I am being a post whore.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but this is what I believe is most dangerous. Nationalists today are trying to show everyone a fluffier version of what they believe using arguments that sound reasonable, usually taking advantage of the often ridiculous PC culture we live in. I've known people who use the more reasonable sounding arguments, but underneath it all they've always turned out to be racist. It's just their attempt to gain mainstream political support for their real bigotted agenda.
See, this is where the more intellectualised arguments that they use today fall apart. I have to ask, leeless - while I understand that you're merely acknowledging that they're reasonable rather than actually agreeing with them, surely if they were all that reasonable and intelligent they would have made at least some attempt to address this obvious point? There is no logical reason at all, the fact is that they're just bigots struggling to justify their position rationally.
I'm an Englishman and I consider myself a patriot. As you can see from my photo, I also happen to be white. I'm proud of our culture and I'm fascinated by our history. To me, being British is more of a cultural label than a racial one, and multiculturalism essentially is a large part of British culture. It has been ever since the days of the empire, when we imported so many great things from the countries we conquered (I'm not justifying the conquests here, that's a whole other thread). I like the fact that there are people of many different ethnicities living in England, it makes life colourful (no pun intended) and interesting. India especially has been a great influence, it wasn't called the jewel in the crown for nothing. There was a time when all you could get from supermarkets was baked beans and yorkshire puddings, now you can get all kinds of great foods from all over the world. It really is amazing. Personally I feel my pride in this aspect of our culture makes me more of a patriot than any racist BNP scumbag who's trying to make a big deal out of a completely irrelevant fact.
What makes things worse is the PC culture we have. At my school, there was a mixed-race kid who CONSTANTLY picked on my mate verbally, largely due to the fact that his Dad is gay. He just would not leave him alone. Eventually, my mate snapped and called him a racist name, not because he's racist but because he was just sick of this kid and his relentless piss-taking. Suddenly, my mate was the nasty one and the other kid was the innocent victim. People just think some kinds of discrimination are more acceptable than others and it's a load of crap.
To ues another example, I recently fell out with someone whom I believed to be a close friend because she's black and I quoted the bit from Bad Boys 2 where Will Smith uses the N word a few times. I felt she should have forgiven me after I apologised because I was so blatantly not using the word in a racist context (I was quoting a film, I was quoting a black actor and she knows I'm not racist) but she still considers it unforgiveable. I wasn't even making a racist joke.
To me it seems like she's asking for special treatment if I have to tip-toe around her to the extent that I can't even say a word, regardless of the context. Should I get offended every time someone makes jokes about my welsh ancestry? It's not like the Welsh didn't suffer at the hands of the English, and although it was a long time ago, it's not like my friend was working a sugar plantation either. Though my hair is cut short now, should I have been offended every time my mates made a joke about my long hair? No, because I know the difference between someone who's having a laugh with me and someone who's being vicious and bigotted. It might not sound as serious as racism, but I've had to deal with years of violence and verbal abuse because of my hair and because of the fact I wear black and listen to heavy metal, and at times I was scared to go out of my house or even to school. My friends have been beaten up badly and even stabbed for it. She's never had to put up with anything like that, so surely I'm in a far greater position to be offended by things than she is? Or forget me for a second, what about my gay uncle who got attacked by a gang of thugs who hit him with an iron bar and put him in hospital? Maybe he should stop laughing with us when we make jokes about him being gay.
There was another thing I realised at school. I realised that a large part of the problem was my oversensitivity. Though some of the piss-taking I received was malicious, some of it was just having a laugh and I made it worse by getting offended and preaching at people about how unfair it was. If I'd just learned to poke fun at myself from time to time and take a joke I would have saved myself a lot of bother in school. These days I'm more easy going and while I get a fair bit of piss taking it's mainly from my mates, and I laugh with them and poke fun back.
The point to this little story is that by being over sensitive about these things we just make it seem like we're demanding special treatment while we expect everyone else just to be able to take a joke. It's not fair, it creates unnecessary arguments and it plays right into the hands of the BNP who then start claiming that white people are being discriminated against.
See, this is where the more intellectualised arguments that they use today fall apart. I have to ask, leeless - while I understand that you're merely acknowledging that they're reasonable rather than actually agreeing with them, surely if they were all that reasonable and intelligent they would have made at least some attempt to address this obvious point? There is no logical reason at all, the fact is that they're just bigots struggling to justify their position rationally.
I'm an Englishman and I consider myself a patriot. As you can see from my photo, I also happen to be white. I'm proud of our culture and I'm fascinated by our history. To me, being British is more of a cultural label than a racial one, and multiculturalism essentially is a large part of British culture. It has been ever since the days of the empire, when we imported so many great things from the countries we conquered (I'm not justifying the conquests here, that's a whole other thread). I like the fact that there are people of many different ethnicities living in England, it makes life colourful (no pun intended) and interesting. India especially has been a great influence, it wasn't called the jewel in the crown for nothing. There was a time when all you could get from supermarkets was baked beans and yorkshire puddings, now you can get all kinds of great foods from all over the world. It really is amazing. Personally I feel my pride in this aspect of our culture makes me more of a patriot than any racist BNP scumbag who's trying to make a big deal out of a completely irrelevant fact.
What makes things worse is the PC culture we have. At my school, there was a mixed-race kid who CONSTANTLY picked on my mate verbally, largely due to the fact that his Dad is gay. He just would not leave him alone. Eventually, my mate snapped and called him a racist name, not because he's racist but because he was just sick of this kid and his relentless piss-taking. Suddenly, my mate was the nasty one and the other kid was the innocent victim. People just think some kinds of discrimination are more acceptable than others and it's a load of crap.
To ues another example, I recently fell out with someone whom I believed to be a close friend because she's black and I quoted the bit from Bad Boys 2 where Will Smith uses the N word a few times. I felt she should have forgiven me after I apologised because I was so blatantly not using the word in a racist context (I was quoting a film, I was quoting a black actor and she knows I'm not racist) but she still considers it unforgiveable. I wasn't even making a racist joke.
To me it seems like she's asking for special treatment if I have to tip-toe around her to the extent that I can't even say a word, regardless of the context. Should I get offended every time someone makes jokes about my welsh ancestry? It's not like the Welsh didn't suffer at the hands of the English, and although it was a long time ago, it's not like my friend was working a sugar plantation either. Though my hair is cut short now, should I have been offended every time my mates made a joke about my long hair? No, because I know the difference between someone who's having a laugh with me and someone who's being vicious and bigotted. It might not sound as serious as racism, but I've had to deal with years of violence and verbal abuse because of my hair and because of the fact I wear black and listen to heavy metal, and at times I was scared to go out of my house or even to school. My friends have been beaten up badly and even stabbed for it. She's never had to put up with anything like that, so surely I'm in a far greater position to be offended by things than she is? Or forget me for a second, what about my gay uncle who got attacked by a gang of thugs who hit him with an iron bar and put him in hospital? Maybe he should stop laughing with us when we make jokes about him being gay.
There was another thing I realised at school. I realised that a large part of the problem was my oversensitivity. Though some of the piss-taking I received was malicious, some of it was just having a laugh and I made it worse by getting offended and preaching at people about how unfair it was. If I'd just learned to poke fun at myself from time to time and take a joke I would have saved myself a lot of bother in school. These days I'm more easy going and while I get a fair bit of piss taking it's mainly from my mates, and I laugh with them and poke fun back.
The point to this little story is that by being over sensitive about these things we just make it seem like we're demanding special treatment while we expect everyone else just to be able to take a joke. It's not fair, it creates unnecessary arguments and it plays right into the hands of the BNP who then start claiming that white people are being discriminated against.
I was going to post the other day on this thread but i realised that it was in part mostly waffle, however i'm gonna give it another stab.
To me i think the corner stone of any sence of nationalism is whether or not you have pride in that country. I'm English and although i acknowledge that our histroy hasn't been the rosiest with the things we've done i have that fuzzy feeling of national pride (we did do some good things too). I'm also British because England is part of Great Britian. Like Timmy Boy said the British Empire allowed us to import a great many fantastic things, and without wanting to sound like some sort of white supremacist it allowed us in return to export 'Britishness' across the Empire.
In the 50's we had lots of people immigrate here from a number of parts of the Empire, and maybe former parts too - my histroy isn't too flash in this area, because this country needed certain trades. I saw a part of a program on the telly not long ago talking about this and i think it showed a clip of interviews or something of people tallking about this and that it was done because the migrants felt hat they were British and were proud of it and the fact that they felt needed by England/Britain. Although they wouldn#t have been ethnically English they had every right to call them selves British, and i don't see why they're decendents can't call themselves English.
Likewise with people moving over to this country now, I don't see why a person moving over to this country has to initially give up their culture. I see the right for peope to claim 'British' Nationality as a big umbrella term that would cover people from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, especially if the immigrant person happens to hail from a country that was once in the British Empire. I personally question the need for them to totally do away with all parts of their culture to be English, yes i do think that to become English they would need to adopt some of our essential things but not everything. The thing that would make them fully assimilated is them viewing England with as much pride etc as the country that they (or their family in the instance of 2nd/3rd generation) are from.
And to clarify on what i mean above by adopting essential things it's in reference to something that was said on my local news back home. There had been an honour killing in one of the local cities (Peterborough) when a young couple, both of Asian decent although different countries, had fallen in love and the girls family dissaproved of the relationship. The boy was killed and they showed on the news his family, with his mum obviously distressed although she said something that i think is apt for this sort of discussion. She said that they had moved to England and that the ways the parents knew from their home contries were not their childrens ways because they had been born and raised here in England. That to me is the crux of the matter.
Hopefully i've explained myself on this, although i do have an a slight concern on being jumped on for this. I know on a much smaller scale i've been through similer. My dad served in the RAF for many years and we got dragged around a fair bit, we settled in the area he was last posted to (East Anglia) and it's where i say i'm from, although i still think of one of the other places we spent a lot of time at as being a bit homeish.
Moony
To me i think the corner stone of any sence of nationalism is whether or not you have pride in that country. I'm English and although i acknowledge that our histroy hasn't been the rosiest with the things we've done i have that fuzzy feeling of national pride (we did do some good things too). I'm also British because England is part of Great Britian. Like Timmy Boy said the British Empire allowed us to import a great many fantastic things, and without wanting to sound like some sort of white supremacist it allowed us in return to export 'Britishness' across the Empire.
In the 50's we had lots of people immigrate here from a number of parts of the Empire, and maybe former parts too - my histroy isn't too flash in this area, because this country needed certain trades. I saw a part of a program on the telly not long ago talking about this and i think it showed a clip of interviews or something of people tallking about this and that it was done because the migrants felt hat they were British and were proud of it and the fact that they felt needed by England/Britain. Although they wouldn#t have been ethnically English they had every right to call them selves British, and i don't see why they're decendents can't call themselves English.
Likewise with people moving over to this country now, I don't see why a person moving over to this country has to initially give up their culture. I see the right for peope to claim 'British' Nationality as a big umbrella term that would cover people from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, especially if the immigrant person happens to hail from a country that was once in the British Empire. I personally question the need for them to totally do away with all parts of their culture to be English, yes i do think that to become English they would need to adopt some of our essential things but not everything. The thing that would make them fully assimilated is them viewing England with as much pride etc as the country that they (or their family in the instance of 2nd/3rd generation) are from.
And to clarify on what i mean above by adopting essential things it's in reference to something that was said on my local news back home. There had been an honour killing in one of the local cities (Peterborough) when a young couple, both of Asian decent although different countries, had fallen in love and the girls family dissaproved of the relationship. The boy was killed and they showed on the news his family, with his mum obviously distressed although she said something that i think is apt for this sort of discussion. She said that they had moved to England and that the ways the parents knew from their home contries were not their childrens ways because they had been born and raised here in England. That to me is the crux of the matter.
Hopefully i've explained myself on this, although i do have an a slight concern on being jumped on for this. I know on a much smaller scale i've been through similer. My dad served in the RAF for many years and we got dragged around a fair bit, we settled in the area he was last posted to (East Anglia) and it's where i say i'm from, although i still think of one of the other places we spent a lot of time at as being a bit homeish.
Moony
That's what I suspect. However, what has lead me to question this, or perhaps, take more seriously the nationalist arguement, is that I've met a BMP regional leader. He drinks in the same pub. He is not, as far as I can tell, a racist, but a well informed, intelligant man, who respects Britains ethnic and cultural diversity.
Here is a link to the BNP mission statement.
http://www.bnp.org.uk/policies/mission.htm
Here is a link to the BNP General election manifesto
http://www.bnp.org.uk/candidates2005/man_menu.htm
There is more race orientated arguements in English Nationalism, but on the surface* of the BMP, racial superiority appears surprisingly elusive.
*I concede this point.
Here is a link to the BNP mission statement.
http://www.bnp.org.uk/policies/mission.htm
Here is a link to the BNP General election manifesto
http://www.bnp.org.uk/candidates2005/man_menu.htm
There is more race orientated arguements in English Nationalism, but on the surface* of the BMP, racial superiority appears surprisingly elusive.
*I concede this point.
AlexisInfectious®
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Then he is either in the wrong party, or else he's spinning you a line. (Which would hardly be surprising, since he's a politician!)
I suspect they have probably learnt a lesson from their earlier incarnations as the National Socialist Party, the National Front, etc.
Overtly fascist and racist messages have limited political appeal in this country. They might be good for recruiting thugs and bigots, but they don't win many votes.
So now they are trying to appear as though they are presenting a less extreme message. But it's just a front. Underneath they are still the same bigotted Hitler-worshipping scum that they always were.
Never forget the old saying: if you've got half a mind to vote for them then don't worry - that's all you need.
I suspect they have probably learnt a lesson from their earlier incarnations as the National Socialist Party, the National Front, etc.
Overtly fascist and racist messages have limited political appeal in this country. They might be good for recruiting thugs and bigots, but they don't win many votes.
So now they are trying to appear as though they are presenting a less extreme message. But it's just a front. Underneath they are still the same bigotted Hitler-worshipping scum that they always were.
Never forget the old saying: if you've got half a mind to vote for them then don't worry - that's all you need.
mikkiharris10
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- Mar 21, 2008
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He hasn't spun me a line as I've never talked politics with him. I just observed and engaged him in general conversation, in which he is very respectful of cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. I'm going to talk to him about it one day, but I'd rather talk about his parties offical policy rather than accuse of being Hitler-worshipping scum without any proof!
I suspect that that is true. But right now, I'm in a neutral frame of mind so I need some proof of that before I can be satisfied that my opinions are well thought out.
I suspect that that is true. But right now, I'm in a neutral frame of mind so I need some proof of that before I can be satisfied that my opinions are well thought out.
Well you're the one who knows him, so it's up to you to judge whether or not he is sincere in what he says.
I've got to say that on the face of it, it seems pretty odd for a BNP activist to speak repectfully of "cultural, ethnic and religious diversity", since it goes completely against all that they have always stood for.
Just look at their history. They have a strong pedigree as the heirs to the racist lunatic fringe of British politics. The pictures of their founders posing in neo-nazi uniforms aren't fakes.
I've got to say that on the face of it, it seems pretty odd for a BNP activist to speak repectfully of "cultural, ethnic and religious diversity", since it goes completely against all that they have always stood for.
Just look at their history. They have a strong pedigree as the heirs to the racist lunatic fringe of British politics. The pictures of their founders posing in neo-nazi uniforms aren't fakes.
I hear you mate. That's why I'm so intrigued. I must admit that I'm ignorant of the history of the BNP. Being only 20 years old, I don't remember the days of the National Front, Screwdriver and what have you. The only remnants is some of the old boys that I come into contact with.
All my life, there has been a constant chorus of an almost gospel truth hammered into me by everyone I ever met saying "BNP = Nazi Racist Baby-eaters". I've reached a point where I've got to ask why.
After all that though...I wouldn't vote for them in a million years
All my life, there has been a constant chorus of an almost gospel truth hammered into me by everyone I ever met saying "BNP = Nazi Racist Baby-eaters". I've reached a point where I've got to ask why.
After all that though...I wouldn't vote for them in a million years