With the England football team’s improbable winning streak against the Ukraine in the European Championship, media talk has turned once again to that elusive phenomenon, Englishness. Pundits in the Independent and Guardian ponder whether the boost to national pride generated by a mixed-race England football team that begins each match by bending the knee – the woke equivalent of the Haka – might be of a more inclusive form than the tribal patriotism of old. Yet I find a bunch of uneducated inarticulate fashion-bearded celebrity teenagers sponsored by multinational American sportswear manufacturers, bending the knee to diversity, leaves me stone cold. If they symbolise England, then I feel I must be a Dutchman.
Is this because I am a white supremacist fascist who thinks all England players should resemble blonde blue-eyed Bobby Moore? I think not. There have long been black players in the England team – Viv Anderson and John Barnes immediately come to mind. Nor is it that I think England players are notably uneducated, inarticulate, and empty-headed. English football players (and managers) have long been renowned for being unable to utter a coherent sentence, with class having as much to do with it as education. The contrast with their continental counterparts has always been stark. Remember Glen ‘the lads done well’ Hoddle?
Could Englishness not become an inclusive and unifying force, as our media pundits suggest? Kenan Malik explores the idea in a surprisingly thoughtful article in the Guardian and refers to a pamphlet published by Southampton University’s Centre for English Identity and Politics entitled ‘Beyond a 90-minute nation’. The idea that Englishness should be inclusive in the sense that colour need not be a bar is perfectly laudable. One need not be a Left-liberal to entertain it. De Gaulle himself once wrote that a French culture which could assimilate people of all races was all the stronger for that – and surely the same applies to English culture. But (and here was the rub) this only held if newcomers arrived in sufficiently small numbers that they could be absorbed and assimilated. The mass immigration of millions of other races and ethnicities, wrote de Gaulle, would destroy French culture altogether.
No, the problem is that the modern English football team does represent a new all-inclusive knee-bending English identity – an identity necessarily built on, and entailing the rejection and destruction of, the old identity. For the authors of ‘Beyond a 90-minute nation’, English history and culture begins squarely in 1948 with the arrival of the Empire Windrush from the Caribbean. Everything prior to that, encompassing a thousand years and more of English history, English culture, English characteristics, and everything we (the English of old) treasure, has been magically erased in the name of a post-Marxist doctrine of multi-culture, diversity, and deconstruction.
Sadly, the England team’s continued success will only give added impetus to those who would sacrifice Old England on the altar of diversity fuelled by continued mass immigration. And yet, paradoxically, when the Euros are over, the segregation of our nation, the mass movement of the English from the cities to the town and country, in search of the English identity of old, of Old England, will continue unabated.
Better perhaps that Denmark beat England on Wednesday?
All across the Anglosphere, there is forceful anti-white sentiment and destructive anti-white activity. In Germany too, of course. Fact, had the German states federated earlier, and had Big Germany then acquired decent pieces of Africa, Asia and even the New World, then there’d have been no Long War of 1914-1945. And with that, the self-loathing among naive, virtue-grubbing Anglosphere whites of weak intellectual-emotional constitution would not have developed as much as it has. And there would have been superior economic alternatives to the mass import of non-whites to white lands. And with that, there would be greater surplus wealth to send to non-white precincts and fund non-whites in ways that they cannot fund themselves. That’s what I think.
But wait: I thought we already had the ‘British’ identity for this purpose? One becomes British by residency and, perhaps, affiliation. Why should the word ‘English’ not be reserved for the indigenous people of that nation — why erase a useful distinction, by extending the term to persons ethnically and culturally quite unlike the English — and even hostile to them? Would a proud Scotsman who had lived in London for a decade be happy to be informed that he is now English? Could an Englishman become Inuit simply by virtue of residency in Greenland? We know the real answers to the questions, even if we durst not give the answers in public. Of more interest is this: why are the English now being hectored into give up something valuable — their historic ethnic identity? And what if they do not consent?
Patriots who just like watching and playing soccer have to steer between the Scylla of booze & boos from white trash and the negrolatry and Charybdis of nannying from woke obsessives. We do not need permission however to fly the English Flag just because persons of pigment and longshanks are now in a football team. What was good enough for Kipling….
Noting Raheem Sterling’s easy tumble in the penalty box when lightly touched by a Dane, should we not be celebrating diver(sity)? As bad as Emlyn Hughes.
“Taking the knee” at football matches may look like a woke football version of the Haka to Guardian readers and to you. To me it represents a political ideology that I reject. I think it is more analogous to the Nazi salute of 1930s Germany. Lest we forget; the Nazis came to power democratically. Few saw what was happening until it was too late to stop it. History has a habit of repeating itself in different forms.
I will not be cheering on England on Sunday. I can’t bring myself to support Italy; I have just lost interest in the game.
I quite agree. There seems to be an unstoppable acceleration of efforts to ensure ‘English’ identity transcends that of mere ethnicity, demanding that Englishness is whatever and whomever we think it should be. Native Englishmen are fast becoming that mythical beast that exists in plain sight, but cannot be talked of, particularly in exceptionalism terms, inclusivity and diversity being the zeitgeist that allows ethnic appropriation of the English identity, whilst at the same time ensuring you can’t wear a sombrero or a a certain hair style, if not of a minority. It is indeed possible to hold and support two opposing positions at the same time, as long as they believe the means justify the ends, the destruction of native ties to our history, culture traditions and identity. Would such destruction be allowed now if happening to a minority native peoples elsewhere in the world?
Then there are the bad features of English culture.
There’s the excessive misuse of alcohol and associated unpleasant acting out in the streets at home and abroad. And then there’s the vandalism and spectators shining laser lights at opponent players in football matches. Oh and the avoidance, by English folk in all walks and stations in life, of doing anything concrete to stop the advance of anti-Westernism generally, and anti-Englishism in particular.
Come on Italy!
Excellent. You won’t be watching or enjoying us win on Sunday then. Can you take all the pathetic boo-boys with you to whichever rock you crawl under? I hope they lift the trophy on the knee. It’s called solidarity and having a commitment to what you believe in.
And anyway, didn’t purely English culture end with the Norman invasion?
The Normans did indeed do a great deal to eradicate the predominant Saxon culture, along with anyone who showed any sign of resistance to their rule and reduce many of the remainder of the population to slavery.
Returning to the 21 century, there is absolutely no reason why any ‘white’ person in England today should feel obliged to grovel in front of people of any other ethnic extraction. It won’t get you any respect from them.
The English still speak English which is the main element of ethnic culture, whatever additions from French or other languges. The Normans, Saxons, Vikings and Celts were all racially related.
Yes indeed – the Northern European ethnic mix: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Norsemen and Celts. English is a shorthand to describe this ethnicity. England not being a separate state means that we’re British citizens.. Being paid to play for a sports team called England doesn’t make the player English. Ask any Scotsman
I thought I’d put up a post about this yesterday but can’t find it any more…….
Travel through England from Hastings to Hadrian’s Wall and study the place names. A few of Norse origin, a few British and Roman, very few Norman, the rest English.
@ Dee Ennay
Abusive labels are not arguments. The “we” of England’s soccer team is a collection of people who are very largely of non-English heritage. Does this matter? Not if the spectator fun just consists of watching the game, with imported long-legged Africans scoring goals, but the “national flag” enthusiasm is neither xenophobic nor chauvinist – just a bit ridiculous when you think about it, if you can think of course. A century ago the polymath Oswald Spengler prophetically remarked that the final decline of Europe would be marked by mindless mobs watching football matches.