Krautbashing …

… has in recent years, by some accounts, displaced Paki-bashing as a favourite pastime of the English. And, according to commentators such as Matthias Matussek, it is one which is not confined to lower-class hooligans. Writing of his experiences in Britain in 2006 as a correspondent for Der Spiegel, he noted:

… I’d hardly been in the country but a couple of weeks when, at a posh dinner party, I was seated next to the distinguished British novelist AS Byatt. Lamb was being served under the gaze of aristocratic portraits from the 18th century. I was a little tipsy, enjoying myself, and I toasted her health even though she had earlier been rather withdrawn and crabby towards me. She then asked what I thought of the European Constitution.

I almost choked. I didn’t know anyone who’d actually read Giscard’s 1,000 page opus, I certainly hadn’t. So I bluffed around a bit, responding that it was OK by me if the European national communities wanted to set out a few basic principles to get along by. What did she think about it herself?

I’d hoped to buy a little time by batting the ball back into her court. She didn’t look as though she herself would have had much to do with it. She airily waved a heavily be ringed and rather plump hand and said “You know, we British don’t need a constitution – we are the oldest democracy on earth.” Then adding: “For younger nations like you Germans constitutions may have their uses”.

It’s quite impossible to convey the nasally disdainful tone of voice in which this was conveyed. In effect, she was saying: “You are barbarians, you’ve just recently had the club taken from your hand, you’ve got no culture, you need to be held on a tight rein.”

I heard myself saying “As far as I’m aware, Madame, female suffrage was introduced by us rather earlier than it was here.” I took a swig of water. “And as far as constitutions go, a few more rules might do your benighted island, with its filthy hospitals and its broken-down trains, a power of good.”

But of course I didn’t say any of it. It just came to me later on.

Actually I was rendered speechless.

Was the lady right? Was it only yesterday that we emerged from the primeval forest?

2006 was supposed to be a watershed, a year in which Germany was hosting the World Cup, and Germans would transcend their image as goose-stepping euro-federalist bullies or simpering self-abasing tree-huggers and show themselves as a friendly, relaxed and welcoming society, at peace with itself and its nationhood. Whatever the received wisdom, it didn’t seem to percolate down to the lower reaches of the English social-economic spectrum, if this rousing rendition of “Ten German Bombers” bawled out by some of the 315,000 English fans present in Germany is anything to go by.

According to German pundits who have studied the phenomenon, Krautbashing, after a lull during the Cold War period, really took off again following reunification in 1989. This piece, which appeared in the upmarket weekly newspaper Die Zeit picks up on the theme.

Krauts
JÜRGEN KRÖNIG

The German image in Britain keeps getting worse – The governments seem to get on, but the people unfortunately don’t.

Whenever a German soldier gets shot loud cheers ring out in a crowded cinema in London’s Leicester Square. Can Steven Spielberg be aware what emotions his war epic Saving Private Ryan is stirring in young English people?

…

In the summer of 1996, after an appearance on a BBC TV programme in which I described the reasons behind the growing germanophobia in Britain, I received a flood of letters, faxes and phone calls. Germans who had been living in the country for years, and considered themselves well integrated, complained about the increasing hostility in their surroundings. During the course of the 90s formerly friendly neighbours seemed to have distanced themselves, over and again they found newspaper articles in their letterboxes, more often than not originating in middle-class papers like the Daily Express, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph. These articles are spiced with anti-German tirades and accusations such as “Britons are going to be forced by the EU to make up Germany’s pension deficit”.

Krönig goes on …

… Until the late 80s the British considered the Germans to be their best friends in Europe. Diplomats enthused about “The Quiet Alliance” in spite of the palpable antipathy between Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl….The reason for the pronounced change in British attitudes can, I believe, be attributed to the end of the post-war political structure in which a divided Germany was enveloped within a European-wide security system. The good Germans were, by definition, divided Germans.

It seems the Brits have previous form in being nasty to Johnny Foreigner….

… Now the Brits, with their dominant tribe, the English, in the van, have always had a special way of handling other nationalities. Whether it’s Frogs, Dagos or Wops – French, Spanish, Italians – they all get it in the neck. But we Germans occupy a special niche in the demonology. ‘Krautbashing’ is now ubiquitous…

… [But] German diplomats and journalists long ago gave up bothering about such blows below the belt. Many of our compatriots try to out-do the Brits in maintaining a still upper lip; why get worked up and risk being accused of lacking a sense of humour? When it all gets too much, Ambassador Gebhard von Moltke – whose name provides just as much mirth for British journalists as did his predecessor, Baron von Richthofen – may resort to issuing a restrained statement in protest, but without ever being under any illusion that it will have any effect.

Krönig echoes Matussek’s observation that Krautbashing is not the explicit preserve of the lower orders:

… According to Guardian contributor Hugo Young “… no other people, with the possible exception of the Arabs and the Jews, are demonised to the same extent as the Germans.” This not long before the journalist and author AA Gill informed his four million readers in the Sunday Times that the Germans are anally fixated, blood-splattered psychopaths – “Let’s face it, everybody in Europe hates them.”
It’s not just rabid nationalists or members of the wartime generation who are inclined to anti-German sentiments. Intellectuals on both the right and the left regard the Germans, according to the left-leaning culture-oriented periodical Granta, as being ‘hateful, dangerous and predictable’ – predictable in the sense of being both unpredictable and mentally unstable. Since the early 90s concerns have been expressed that the Germans will never be satisfied with being just one of a number of European powers. Such fears are connected with an all-too-common perception about the Faustian nature of the German national character. It’s no longer considered uncouth to openly express the view that the Germans are especially prone to malevolence.

…

One still regularly encounters the diagnosis that Germany is ‘sick and dangerous’. The historian John Charmley explains why ‘we can’t unfortunately, ever really trust the Germans’. The temporary partition only obscured the underlying ‘German Problem’ for a couple of generations. ‘The effects of three hundred years of conditioning are not going to disappear overnight’.

The English play dirty, cloaking their cruel barbs under the guise of humour …

Similarly, we can’t console ourselves with the polite fiction that the many clichés and stereotypes directed towards us are intended humourously. As the Berlin anglicist Hans Dieter Gelfert correctly noted, after sport humour is the most important vehicle through which the English relieve their aggressions. The English have developed into an art form the ability to pass off certain deeply-held opinions as merely ‘tongue in cheek’ banter. Irony has an intrinsic advantage. It enables the user to retreat behind a screen of humourous intent should something be challenged, and to protest that it was only meant as a joke. Anyone still taking offence can always be disparaged as lacking in a sense of humour.

The media don’t seem to help matters much either …

The clichés about stroppy, humourless, stuck-up and tiresomely thorough Germans have become embedded within the British psyche. The post-war generation has grown up with the identical images in films, TV series, cartoons, articles and TV ads. They know by heart the endless parade of dull-witted German NCOs, thin-lipped SS men with grating voices, humourless bureaucrats and those notorious German holidaymakers, who in the regimented manner approved by the General Staff go over the top in the grey light of dawn to bag all the best places on the beach or by the pool, marking their territorial acquisitions with their beach-towels.

…

English humour has produced some brilliant jokes at our expense. The famous ‘Don’t mention the War’ episode in the TV series Fawlty Towers is a deservedly admired example. Still the endless torrent of jokes, war films and TV commercials, the skillful punning, the clever wordplay in the headlines, the constant exorcism of the sinister Germans, may all prove to be too much of a good thing.

He may have had in mind ad campaigns like those of Kentish brewer Shepherd Neame, makers of Spitfire Ale “The Bottle of Britain”, which have aroused the ire of do-gooders and ambassadors alike, even though they were deemed by the Advertising Standards Authority of being unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence. Like this one, for example:

or this one, also condemned as ‘racist’ according to some complainants:

Still, at least one German seems to appreciate the joke (and the ale) – Pope Benedict XVI is said to be not the first German to have downed a Spitfire, but certainly the most famous.

In a subsequent essay in Der Spiegel, Michael Sontheimer continues the refrain:

Captives of History

For many Britons the Second World War never ends. It’s simply too much fun winding winding-up the Germans…

Following on from a description of some shockingly violent incidents involving German exchange school-students who were attacked by gangs of English youths, Sontheimer continues by noting that:

…Physical ‘Krautbashing’ like this is fortunately an exception. However resentment against the ‘Sauerkraut-noshers’ is becoming more pronounced and more widespread, anti-German prejudice being more evident than anywhere else in Europe. 57 years after the war many Britons see Germany not as their biggest trading partner but instead as an ongoing Nazi state. Most Germans who work for British companies can expect to find themselves sooner or later greeted cheerfully by their British colleagues with a cheery “Heil Hitler”.

He then recites several recent incidents involving Krautbashing in the workplace …

…Marketing director Ralph Kappler was once asked by one of superiors in the London office of an international communications company whether the seats in Lufthansa planes were still covered in human skin. When Kappler put in a protest, he was ostracised and later fired. …Computer expert Jens Puhle from Berlin is still awaiting the outcome of his racial discrimination case in Bristol. He and a German fellow-worker at Motorola endured daily taunts of ‘Obersturmbannführer’, ‘Hitler’s henchmen’ and ‘fucking German prick’. After a year of this abuse Puhle could take it no longer and resigned.

The Puhle case received widespread publicity at the time, much of which was of the ‘political correctness gone mad’ variety. He appears to forgiven if not forgotten however; a little googling reveals that he is now living in Swindon and operates a translation bureau. The racism suit against Motorola appears to have been settled out of court.

Sontheimer assists with a historical perspective, and a by-now familiar commentary on the baleful influence of the media on Anglo-German relations …

The British disdain for the Krauts goes back to the First World War when Kaiser Wilhelm and his subjects were collectively known as ‘Huns’. In the Second World War German became synonymous with membership of a power-crazed, arrogant master-race...Historically the image of Germany for most Britons has been formed from a diet of documentaries about Nazi Germany, war films and the regular pronouncements of the tabloid press, the latter often being pressed into immediate service for use during football matches between the two countries, which are usually characterised in military terms.

The intervention of the-then German ambassador to Britain, Thomas Matussek (brother of Spiegel correspondent Mathias) focused on the way in which modern Germany is presented to schoolchildren in Britain especially in the teaching of modern history.

… the German ambassador in London, Thomas Matussek, has suggested that it might be time for Britons themselves to become more familiar with the success story of German democracy since 1945, which Britain itself did so much to create. Schools should modernise their curricula and publishers should avoid repetitious clichés.

Not mentioned in the Spiegel article, but reported in the British press, were other comments on the subject by Herr Matussek, including the following as reported in the Guardian:

The German ambassador has attacked history teaching in British schools, claiming it fuels xenophobia by focusing solely on his country’s Nazi past….
“I was very much surprised when I learned that at A-level one of the three most chosen subjects was the Nazis.”…

So what to make of it all? Is modern-day Krautbashing a real phenomenon or is it all just girly-boy whingeing on the part of a few humourless cry-babies with over-delicate sensibilities? If it is real, then what’s behind it? Is it, as Jürgen Krönig suggests, the product of a touch of grudging admiration, a little envy and also certainly some fear. That might contain a kernel of truth, at least as far as the first two factors are concerned – the Germans are demonstrably better at building cars, making beer and playing football, all matters of great importance to beer-swilling hooligans at least. As for fear, there does exist a very substantial and very popular subgenre of popular literature dealing with the atavistic fears about continental (ie German) invasion, from Erskine Childer’s Riddle of the Sands to Len Deighton’s SS-GB. A more recent example would be historian Andrew Robert’s The Aachen Memorandum which describes a future in which the EU has metastasised into a nightmarishly bureaucratic Fourth Reich under German hegemony.

Is it a purely modern i.e. post-WWII development, or does it have a larger historical dimension, as Michael Sontheimer proposes? If the latter, then when did it start? Sontheimer thinks it is a legacy of the First World War, but the evidence for that is mixed. We have to weigh the grinding effects of the war on the home front (including the influence of the very effective British atrocity propaganda) with the well-documented impressions of the Tommies who returned from the trenches. They came back filled with admiration for the bravery, fighting skills and, yes, even chivalry of their adversaries, feelings which were totally unlike those expressed for their erstwhile allies, the French.

If we look further back, there is even less evidence of historical Anglo-German enmity and animosity (Kaiser Bill’s post-Bismarckian antics aside). In every continental war that the English allowed themselves to become embroiled, ranging from the Hundred Years War to the Napoleonic, they consistently aligned themselves with the most powerful factions in the variegated German nation. From the mid-18th century onwards, all English monarchs have been German-born or of German ancestry.

So what gives?

Posted by Dan Dare on Sunday, August 16, 2009 at 10:48 PM in
Comments (44) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Captainchaos on August 17, 2009, 12:16 AM | #

Is it a purely modern i.e. post-WWII development, or does it have a larger historical dimension, as Michael Sontheimer proposes? If the latter when did it start?

The sociobiological dimension is key, though not mentioned above. The English have a higher level of evolved genetic individualism than Germans. Therefore, for England to be preeminent, Germans must be kept ever in their cages for the reason that National Socialism, and the “palingenetic”, are more effective group evolutionary strategies than English “conservatism”. And the English are more suseptible to the machinations of Jewry for the above stated reason, and are more readily disposed to being the extended phenotype of Jewry.

In every continental that the English allowed themselves to become embroiled, ranging from the Hundred Years War to the Napoleonic, they consistently aligned themselves with the most powerful factions in the variegated German nation.

But of course, before the unification of Germanic people.

Posted by Matra on August 17, 2009, 12:30 AM | #

If we look further back, there is even less evidence of historical Anglo-German enmity and animosity (Kaiser Bill’s post-Bismarckian antics aside). In every continental that the English allowed themselves to become embroiled, ranging from the Hundred Years War to the Napoleonic, they consistently aligned themselves with the most powerful factions in the variegated German nation.

But there was no united powerful German state then and France was the most powerful continental state and thus a threat. Yank-bashing is even more common than Kraut-bashing. America dominates Britain so there is deep resentment. Germany is the most powerful continental state. (Russia is too distant in the minds of the British for them to worry much about them). Germany’s perceived industrial and technical superiority and its power within Europe are enough in themselves to annoy the British. Add in war movies, the Nazi fixation, memorable football defeats, the belief that Germans are abrasive and arrogant (Michael Schumacher being the stereotype) all combine to make Germany a target. They are also white so it’s safe to have a go at them.

I think some Germans make too much of it. Germans are not hated by the average Brit. It’s just petty resentment and jokes that aren’t intended to be taken personally. The English and French are disliked everywhere in Europe yet they couldn’t care less.

Posted by Lurker on August 17, 2009, 01:05 AM | #

I find it hard to recognize the English portrayed in the post.

A.S. Byatt is a silly old cow, I wouldnt take anything she said seriously.

That screening of Saving Private Ryan sound bizarre frankly, Ive never heard of anything like it. The audience I saw it with, some sort of preview screening, included many British WW2 vets. If anyone had started cheering at deaths on screen they would probably have been lynched - well thrown out anyway.

Posted by Lurker on August 17, 2009, 01:24 AM | #

They are also white so it’s safe to have a go at them.

Quite. And cue...Jeremy Clarkson - plenty to say about Germans, Welsh, Australians, Americans etc. Nothing at all to say about Muslims, blacks, Jews.

I hear he got stick recently for some comment about Berlin to Warsaw in one tank. From the Germans. But my Polish pals tell me that it hasnt gone down well in Poland either and he was quite popular there it seems.

Posted by Lurker on August 17, 2009, 01:47 AM | #

And another thing…

Paki-bashing - I believe that, per capita, asians attacking whites is more common than the reverse. Even pushing the idea that paki-bashing has ever been a routine practice promotes an essentially leftist theme.

Posted by Bill on August 17, 2009, 06:32 AM | #

I don’t recognise any of this, I stopped reading less than half way through. It’s bordering on the absurd.

Who puts the rubbish in the head of the English soccer fan? Why the Sun (wot won it) of course. Say no more.

Posted by Bill on August 17, 2009, 07:22 AM | #

There’s a recurring theme among the British people (and gaining traction) that the second world war was a huge mistake, what was the point of it all. Hence the rhetorical question, what did our fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers fight for? To see our country handed over to the aliens?

The British people are articulating it’s an absolute disgrace, an insult to the memory of all those who took part.

There are no words to describe what the English feel toward their elite political class regarding the spit in the face to those who made the supreme sacrifice.

It is but one small step to saying we should have thrown in our lot with Germany.

Footnote.

It is sickening to see our establishment (Cenotaph, Iraq and now Afghanistan) weeping crocodile tears for our lost ones, especially for kids of eighteen who are being blown to pieces. Our elites are despicable - they really are, they couldn’t give a ****!

Another irony, which I don’t get is liberalism tells us that discrimination is a heinous crime, (especially by the oppressed against the victim) and yet here they are killing hundreds of thousands (Iraq Auf/Pak) and are gung ho couldn’t give a damn. All in the name of keeping terrorism away from our streets, whilst at the same time allowing millions of potential suspects through the back door. Oh dear! It’s all too postmodern for me.

Posted by Frank on August 17, 2009, 08:31 AM | #

“The sociobiological dimension is key, though not mentioned above. The English have a higher level of evolved genetic individualism than Germans.”

Prove it or drop your claim.

Posted by Selous Scout on August 17, 2009, 11:04 AM | #

It is sickening to see our establishment (Cenotaph, Iraq and now Afghanistan) weeping crocodile tears for our lost ones, especially for kids of eighteen who are being blown to pieces.

‘Crocodile tears’ is an apt description! ‘Our’ elites send these same White troops overseas to fight pointless wars, in large part to keep them occupied and away from the real insurrection at home, in the UK. The same holds true, I think, for the American elites. How convenient that so many White troops are kept busy on overseas campaigns.

Posted by John on August 17, 2009, 12:20 PM | #

There’s a recurring theme among the British people (and gaining traction) that the second world war was a huge mistake, what was the point of it all. Hence the rhetorical question, what did our fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers fight for? To see our country handed over to the aliens?

The British people are articulating it’s an absolute disgrace, an insult to the memory of all those who took part.

There are no words to describe what the English feel toward their elite political class regarding the spit in the face to those who made the supreme sacrifice.

This about sums it up:

Posted by John on August 17, 2009, 12:23 PM | #

Sorry, got my HTML coding wrong,

Posted by Robert Reis on August 17, 2009, 01:07 PM | #

The modern Brits in my experience are generally alcoholic males and females of low intellectual quality who pride themselves on mouthing P.C. sentiment and spouting anti-German remarks. They are the only ethnic group I have encountered who admire bullies.
Even the B.N.P. site use “fascist” and “Nazi” as their ultimate term of opprobrium.
I have met none worthy to ties the bootlaces on the men in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6m_pvDV4JI&feature=related

After all these men went down fighting. The Brit have simply given all of their good traditions away.

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 01:54 PM | #

Prove it or drop your claim.

One need only look at their respective philosophical movements to discover the truth of this claim: Locke/Mill/Bentham/Smith v. Kant/Fichte/Hegel/Spengler for example. Locke and the utilitarian philosophers concern themselves with individual rights, property, commerce - the pursuits of the “self-made man.” The German outlook is far more holistic - such as realizing man’s role in the larger ‘organism’ (as Spengler would say) that is the state.

There are other things to mention but I’m pressed for time.

Posted by Q on August 17, 2009, 02:23 PM | #

I have met none worthy to ties the bootlaces on the men in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6m_pvDV4JI&feature=related

After all these men went down fighting.

Excellent video. Take special notice of the crosses on their gravesites.

Posted by Frank on August 17, 2009, 04:12 PM | #

“One need only look at their respective philosophical movements to discover the truth of this claim: Locke/Mill/Bentham/Smith v. Kant/Fichte/Hegel/Spengler for example. Locke and the utilitarian philosophers concern themselves with individual rights, property, commerce - the pursuits of the “self-made man.” The German outlook is far more holistic - such as realizing man’s role in the larger ‘organism’ (as Spengler would say) that is the state”

This is not proving a biological component which is what CC is insisting as undeniable fact. Pop sociobiology makes his claim, but there’s little basis for it. And the pop story goes (correct me if I’m wrong) that Angles and Saxons within Germany also hold these same tendencies. In CC’s mind this couldn’t be true because the Angles and Saxons fought as Germans, and biology is all that drives man and the state is the expression of these genes. Such a bio orientation is equally as foolish as the culture-only orientation of the “faleos” he condemns. The truth is both have a role in determining the character of the elites who hold the true power.

Posted by Frank on August 17, 2009, 04:16 PM | #

“Locke/Mill/Bentham/Smith v. Kant/Fichte/Hegel/Spengler for example. Locke and the utilitarian philosophers concern themselves with individual rights, property, commerce - the pursuits of the “self-made man.” The German outlook is far more holistic - such as realizing man’s role in the larger ‘organism’ (as Spengler would say) that is the state. “

This is merely a period in time. Allow for enough time, and the roles could be reversed. The English grew wealthy and corrupt while the Germans were up and coming. Had the Germans managed to achieve great wealth and power, corruption would have naturally followed.

Posted by Dan Dare on August 17, 2009, 04:36 PM | #

I too am somewhat sceptical about the Cap’s’s claims that English individualism has a biological basis. That the English (and other folk of the Isles) are more individualistic than Germans is empirically obvious but I’d suggest it is more a consequence of not being subjected to many centuries of continental-style absolutism than it is of genetic endowment.

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 04:55 PM | #

This is not proving a biological component which is what CC is insisting as undeniable fact.

It provides an example of the type of genius each produces, yes, biologically. Heredity is one of the bases of genius, yes?

Allow for enough time, and the roles could be reversed.

I am doubtful. Why is the character of the two so profoundly different? And why does the character English intellectuals so closely resemble one another, likewise the Germans, if this is only a “temporal phenomenon”?

Had the Germans managed to achieve great wealth and power

Even before unification Germans lacked neither wealth nor power.

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 05:01 PM | #

Clarifying: The progression from, i.e., Kant>Hegel>Spengler>Klages involves a slew of different ideas, many of them at odds with one another, but underlying it all is an inherent German-ness that transcends any particular era. What is the basis for this if not biology?

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 05:03 PM | #

In order to prove it definitively I’ll concede that better proof is necessary. But that does not render micro-examples/subjective experience moot even so.

Posted by Frank on August 17, 2009, 06:05 PM | #

That short span doesn’t even cover one period. Culture is likely far more important there, even if there is a biological contingent. Also, the English would have been influenced by different interacting races and different environmental cues. “Germaness” itself is an odd category since the north looks a bit lighter from the south, though certainly not anywhere as different as the north of Italy and France from the South. Differences of mind might also follow the colour trend.

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 06:44 PM | #

Culture is likely far more important there

From whence does culture spring if not biology?

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 06:46 PM | #

Does the apolitical Bantu have a culture any different than he did 100 years ago? Or 1000 years ago?

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 06:53 PM | #

Does the apolitical Bantu have a culture any different than he did 100 years ago? Or 1000 years ago?

What I meant was: The seeds of culture rest within our genes. Bantus will never be capable of culture because it isn’t in them.

Cultural development is observable in Europeans but nations throughout history tended to retain their own distinctive characteristics despite the changes wrought by ages.

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 06:55 PM | #

Bantus will never be capable of culture

Woops, make that “civilized culture.”

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 07:25 PM | #

Food for thought vis-a-vis Euro genetics:

This is slightly different than the one posted on GNXP and frankly I trust it more - no agenda here.

Posted by Desmond Jones on August 17, 2009, 07:28 PM | #

It’s not necessary to prove it definitively because it’s a theory, an hypothesis constructed based upon the peculiarities of the English.

Andrew Fraser

The distinctive culture that emerged from the interaction between the genotype of the English people and their environment can be understood as what Richard Dawkins calls an extended phenotype. [31] Like the spider’s web or the beaver’s dam, the, extended phenotypes of Western civilization are part of a biocultural feedback loop linking our genes with our environment over countless generations. [32]

The extended phenotype produced by the English people founds its greatest political expression in the phenomenon of nationhood. Appearing first of all in England, the idea of the nation could be understood as what Richard Dawkins might call a “meme” [33] that has been only imperfectly or not at all replicated in the bioculture of other, particularly non-European, races.

...for two hundred years after the emergence of the English nation, it was the only nation. [40] Even those citizens of a modern nation who are blood relations or co-ethnics are expected to treat each other publicly “as if” they were strangers bound together by a willingness to recognize the fundamental constitutional norms associated with the rule of law, representative government and individual rights. [41] Only a people such as the English, characterized by the “non-kinship based forms of reciprocity” associated with Protestant Christianity, monogamy and companionate marriage, nuclear families, a marked de-emphasis on extended kinship relations, and a strong tendency towards individualism could possibly succeed in creating such a “society of strangers.” [42]

http://users.bigpond.net.au/jonjayray/fraser.html

A “society of strangers” is a nation bound by common law and for two centuries prior to any other, the English were a nation state.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/jonjayray/fraser.html

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 07:28 PM | #

Source of the above:

http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/geneticmapofeurope.jpg

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 07:34 PM | #

Desmond,

Forgive my ignorance, but it is not clear to me in your above post whether you think the hypothesis is true or a load of bollocks. Please elaborate.

Posted by Mark Ijsseldijk on August 17, 2009, 07:40 PM | #

Forgive my ignorance, but it is not clear to me in your above post whether you think the hypothesis is true or a load of bollocks. Please elaborate.

Forgive me, I see what you mean now. Disregard my last remark.

Posted by danielj on August 17, 2009, 09:14 PM | #

but underlying it all is an inherent German-ness that transcends any particular era.

What about language?

It could also have a huge affect on thinking, maybe even more so than biology.

Posted by gwood on August 17, 2009, 09:20 PM | #

Imagine how anti-German the English would be if there had ever been any movies made about the Holocaust.

Posted by Dan Dare on August 17, 2009, 09:44 PM | #

Whether transmitted culturally, genetically or through some amalgam of the two, is individualism necessarily such an undesireable trait anyway? If Andrew Fraser’s essay is considered it its full context, its author would certainly not appear to believe so. He credits the ‘relatively individualistic’ Anglo-Saxon genotype as the foundation stone of the brilliantly successful societies that were created by our forebears, and which collectively have no parallel elsewhere in the world.

Is not the alternative what former West German chancellor Ludwig Erhard, father of the post-war ‘economic miracle’, once referred to as a seelenlose Termitenstaat, a senseless, soulless and de-personalised colony of drones? He made these remarks in 1949, at a time when Germans would still have had fresh memories of daily life in the Third Reich.

Fraser correctly notes that the downside to our open civic nationalism is the intrinsic assumption that any and all incomers can be ‘made to fit’ through a process of acculturation. We know this to be untrue, but the way to protect ourselves from their unwanted intrusions is not to turn ourselves into the very same soulless drones as those we are trying to repel, but rather to topple the false gods of universalism and globalism that facilitate their entry.

Posted by Kronprinz Wilhelm on August 18, 2009, 07:03 AM | #

Funny after all, considering that dem Deutscher Volker were the FIRST “Anglo-Saxons”!

* * *

“Narrowing things down quite a bit, we arrive at the Germanic peoples. They were called Teutons (Teut or Deut[sch] means “the people”) or Gerr-mans (men of the “gerr,” a very dangerous and accurate close-range short spear that was whipped with a strong wrist flick off a grooved shaft of wood while running forward). They moved from their snowy Urheimat to even more snow, into southern Sweden and Norway, up into southern Finland (where an Asian people, the Suomi, replaced their language with their Finno-Ugric Asian tongue), over into Denmark and into the northern half of Germany.6

“The Germanics (Teutons) broke up into two groups, the Scandinavians (the future Vikings) in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and the Germans (now split into Germany, the Germanic-dialect nation called Netherlands and the similar Flemish half of Belgium, German-speaking Austria and most of Switzerland; plus England (created by northern Germans from Angeln and Lower Saxony (home of recent chancellor Gerhard Schroeder), hence the Anglo-Saxons.”

[...]

And, last but not least...,

“The kings of England from the 1730s on have been Germans themselves (or of German blood) from the House of Hanover (named after the capital of Lower Saxony). Though no longer speaking German after the time of King George III (who lost America in the Revolution), the House of “Windsor” (so-called since World War I) is nearly 100 percent Protestant German.13 The motto on the coat of arms of the princes of Wales, the heirs to the throne, is “Ich dien,” i.e., “I serve.”)”

Weiße angel-sächsische Protestanten indeed!

Posted by Kronprinz Wilhelm on August 18, 2009, 07:05 AM | #

Sorry, link to above quotes -

“Of Teutonic Blood - Early Contributions to Civilization of Germans & German-Americans”

http://www.barnesreview.org/html/_1_german_blood.htm

Posted by JC on August 19, 2009, 10:16 AM | #

The Prussians were quite popular after Waterloo, and besides the British royal house had been Electors of Hanover. We were all Anglo-Saxons, weren’t we? To Brits Germany meant music and mountains as much as Uhlans.

Antipathy set in with the devastatingly fast victories of Bismarck against Austria-Hungary and France and the establishment of the German Empire, to which Disraeli’s creation of Victoria as Empress of India was a riposte. The newly and artificially unified Germanic state seemed to be aping and challenging British colonial and industrial hegemony and getting too big for its boots, upsetting that sacred object of UK foreign policy: the European balance of power. The Germans appeared at once more tractable and better educated than us, a worrying combination-- the Japanese of the Continent, as it were.

Fear and commercial envy were expressed in an arms race and struggle for third-country markets. By the Entente Cordiale Britain finally made its historic choice to side with its longer-standing enemy, France (and Tsarist Russia), against Germans who were more racially close to us. France had become weaker, so to keep the balance we must guarantee it. Strange that as late as 1900 most British home defence was planned on the assumption of a French cross-Channel invasion.

Hence August 1914-- Germany having been fatally provoked by the UK-France-Russia understandings-- the outbreak of the European civil war (1914-45, with intervals) and the ceding of future global dominion to two states variously under pronounced Jewish influence: the USA and the USSR. Happily neither seems destined to have had nearly as long a run on top as Spain, France or England or (maybe) China in future.

There is no great hostility to Germans in Britain today, and there won’t be as long asthe Federal Republic goes on ducking out of military commitments which would revive the warmonger image. But there’s low-level antipathy of a PC kind-- it’s more OK to bash other whites-- which is kept simmering by the entertainment industry and other kosher elements’ fixation with the NARZEES, the gold standard of what the tabloids call “Evil”.

Posted by Kronprinz Wilhelm on August 20, 2009, 07:05 AM | #

“--Hence August 1914-- Germany having been fatally provoked by the UK-France-Russia understandings-- the outbreak of the European civil war (1914-45, with intervals) and the ceding of future global dominion to two states variously under pronounced Jewish influence: the USA and the USSR. Happily neither seems destined to have had nearly as long a run on top as Spain, France or England or (maybe) China in future.--”
---

So true, my dearest Englische bruder, soooo true!

For whatever reason, the traitorous British upper classes were INSANELY jealous of the Second German Reich (Deutsches Kaiserreich) after is unification under Reichskanzler Otto von Bismarck in 1871, whose economic prowess built it into a major global power after only a generation, with few natural resources and almost no overseas empire or colonies of any particular significance.

Well, I guess there is your reason, after all. So much for the British ‘belief’ in ‘Free Trade’ and ‘Free Markets’! (LOL)

Methinks it was really the “British” “merchant class” (wink, wink), you know, the marx-mammon-masons who ruled Britain since at least 1694, were the real ‘hater-baters’, or the MASTER HATER-BATERS against all things Prussian/German, cause the Fatherland was going to be a really gooood example (or bad, from the MMM perspective) of how a Northern European nation can be properly economically, and socially, run and governed.

“But there’s low-level antipathy of a PC kind-- it’s more OK to bash other whites--”

Indeed, same gang of MMM criminals keep stoking the fires of eresentment and discord with a fellow Teutonic nation!

MMM script never seems to change.

[...] “These two fratricidal wars — like the original ones among the Greeks of Antiquity — pretty much accomplished the complete and possibly fatal wreck of our race and civilization.” [...]
“Remembering Harry Patch” | The Occidental Quarterly
http://www.toqonline.com/2009/08/remembering-harry-patch/#comments

~The bond between REAL Englishman and Germans will be FOREVER, as it was with the Duke of Wellington and Marschall von Blücher at Waterloo!

*Two of my favorite songs -

“The British Grenadiers”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x0aE14YoAc&feature=related

“Preussens Gloria”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pyqOTGQpVY

Cheers meine Angel-Sächsische bruder!

Posted by Wandrin on September 28, 2009, 12:11 PM | #

The English are naturally extremely xenophobic. The media have to use enormous pressure to suppress it while their attempted genocide takes place and part of that pressure involves channeling it against certain groups the media deem it is okay to be hostile to e.g Germans and (white) Americans.

If jews and their allies were removed both from the UK media and the global US media then we’d go back to being equally prejudiced about everyone who’s not from our island.

Posted by Euro on September 28, 2009, 06:13 PM | #

“If jews and their allies were removed both from the UK media and the global US media then we’d go back to being equally prejudiced about everyone who’s not from our island.”

Fascinating. I once met a charming Italian woman named Antonella.When she spoke it was in an elegant English “accent.” I didn’t expect an Antonella to sound British. About 40 years old,she was raised in London. She recounted how her British friend weren’t allowed to bring her in their homes because of the common contempt for Italians.

To think that today Jamaicans,Nigerians,Pakis,and most recently Iraqis, are pulling British birds off the streets and raping them in their secret lairs.Strange,very strange.

Posted by Wandrin on September 28, 2009, 10:39 PM | #

To think that today Jamaicans,Nigerians,Pakis,and most recently Iraqis, are pulling British birds off the streets and raping them in their secret lairs.Strange,very strange.

Not strange at all. The key differences are the media censorship and the numbers and concentration of the new invaders. The rapes you seem to find amusing are mostly in areas where the native population has been reduced to a minority and very little of it gets reported. If it was reported then there would be a reaction. The same is true all over the western world.

The key victory of the jews in their campaign to destroy the west was in them recognizing the potential power of the new media, film and television, while the old white elite saw them as toys.

Posted by Euro on September 28, 2009, 11:20 PM | #

“The rapes you seem to find amusing...”

I don’t find them amusing at all,sir.Apologies if it seemed so.

Posted by Wandrin on September 29, 2009, 12:36 AM | #

@Euro
Your comment reminded me of someone else. My apologies for jumping to conclusions.

Posted by danielj on September 29, 2009, 12:42 AM | #

If jews and their allies were removed both from the UK media and the global US media then we’d go back to being equally prejudiced about everyone who’s not from our island.

Island? Yeah right!

Try council, or town.

Posted by Wandrin on September 29, 2009, 11:51 AM | #

Try council, or town.

Lol true. It was actually much more extreme than nationality - in working class areas people used to attack other English people who were from the other side of the river.

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