Posted by john on Tue, 07 Feb 2006 14:50 | #

Churchill is I think the only person who makes my stomach turn. Oh well, water under the bridge. Ruffian is an appropriate discription - he was pissed when he ordered the bombing of Dresdon you know.
I,ve never read any books about him, lifes to short. Sometimes you can just smell things.

Posted by john fitzgerald on Tue, 07 Feb 2006 15:10 | #

Yes Fred, south west, parents Mancunian.

Posted by Daveg on Tue, 07 Feb 2006 16:01 | #

You got it - Mancunian - Of or relating to Manchester, England.

Posted by Voice on Tue, 07 Feb 2006 16:10 | #

Why Aye Man!

My wife and kids are Geordies.  Both kids were born within a mile of the Tyne River in Newcastle.  That is classification for Geordies

Posted by Amalek on Tue, 07 Feb 2006 18:57 | #

I think we all know what Tolkien meant by ‘Americo-cosmopolitanism’. Rather like what Stalin meant by ‘rootless cosmopolitans’.

Guessedworker, however, has a tear in his eye whenever he thinks of half-American Winnie and his gallant stand to save us from the mess Winnie himself had done so much to drive us into—by exaggerated fearmongering about Hitler in the Thirties, and by his incompetence at the Admiralty.

Tolkien, like Evelyn Waugh, had realised that whatever the outcome, WW2 was no more than the coup de grace following Europe’s suicide bid in 1914-18. It would be all up for Old England, whoever ‘won’. What was left of our financial strength and military capabilities had to be pawned to ensure that the future was run by a gang of global financiers rather than by a gang of Bolsheviks. Some choice!

Posted by starimomak on Tue, 07 Feb 2006 21:39 | #

Remember when the ‘Great Britons’ was on a few years back—Mo Mowlam had Winston’s brief. She went to his old constituency , I forget its name now. She was only filmed at the train platform, but from the looks of it, it was about 110% south asian in population. Saris and all.

Wonder what the old drunk would have thought of that!

Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 07 Feb 2006 23:07 | #

Amalek, my Asiatic Little Boy, you don’t understand the English.

From the final entry Nick Griffin’s Free Speech blog, describing the moment he and Mark Collett left Leeds Crown Court as free men:-

We come out of the doors, I grab Mark’s hand and raise our twinned hands in victory. There are ‘V’ signs everywhere. When I first used this back in 2001 in Oldham there was a predictable whine from a few old hardliners about using the symbol popularised by Churchill. That’s not a moan I’ve heard for some time now. I think all but the most obtuse and or moronic Hollywood Nazi clowns have finally grasped the massively powerful symbolic value this salute has with the older generation, and the extent to which we have now almost made it ours (in this country at least).

As the parallels grow between the West’s pathetic surrender to Islamic extremism (typified this week by the British media’s refusal to reprint those cartoons), and the long policy of appeasement of Nazi and Bolshevik ambitions by an earlier generation of our leaders, the Churchill myth becomes more and more important to us.

The actual history of those times, the details of gambling debts and unjust treaties and all the rest of it are irrelevant, it’s the symbolism and the psychology that counts. Here is a weapon we can use to help our people survive and regain their freedom. As someone once said: “Whatever it takes”!

As for the slightly tiresome debate about WW2, if Germans can’t solve the problems they have in the present without repairing their self-esteem, OK.  I understand the motivation.  It would, though, be helpful if they would just get on quietly with those vital self-esteem repairs, and leave we English to confront our own problems in peace.

As for Asian boys, they can always learn German and be useful that way.

Posted by Al Ross on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 08:04 | #

Tolkien’s letters display a clarity of expression which was, according to one of his Oxford students,( the writer Kingsley Amis) absent in lectures, which Amis recalled in memoirs as being “unintelligible but, thankfully, almost inaudible”.
Tolkien, of course, knew the nature of his country’s real enemies and the ‘Americo-Cosmopolitanism’ euphemism he employed was doubtless meant for the cognoscenti.

Posted by Mark Richardson on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 10:26 | #

Al Ross, when Tolkien talks about Americo-cosmpolitanism he is referring to the levelling effects of American style commercial techniques as they spread throughout the world.

He didn’t want a world in which everywhere you went there was a shopping mall with a Wendys and McDonalds and the same kind of commercial mentality to accompany this.

He was a defender of the local and the particular.

Posted by Al Ross on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 10:33 | #

Well, thanks to M Richardson for clearing that up then.

Posted by Amalek on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 10:52 | #

Guessedworker: Nick Griffin’s use of the V-sign connotes no great admiration for Churchill. It is an old British gesture of defiance (known as the ‘Admiral’s sign’ or ‘wave’) which had acquired scabrous overtones (‘Up yours’) by 1940. So Churchill made it more palatable by turning his fingers round when giving it.

It is unclear to me why we should admire Churchill so much for defying a phoney invasion threat in 1940-41. I have commented previously on the grounds for doubting that Hitler ever seriously intended it, and more to the point, that Churchill knew this by June 1940 at the latest. But Churchill procured a real, massive and permanent occupation of the United Kingdom… by America. We became the jumping-off point for America’s economic conquest of western Europe, and the aircraft carrier for its offshore surveillance of its new acquisitions. That capitulation has led us into all sorts of scrapes, and we still have it tied to the leg of our foreign policy like a ball and chain.

Griffin may try to curry favour with older voters by using a Churchillian sign, but the BNP is committed to Britain minding its own business and ceasing to be ZOG’s menial. Actions speak louder than fingers.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 11:33 | #

Amalek,

What you seem incapable of understanding is that your attitudes and opinions don’t matter.  The great, blind winds and currents by which mere politicans sail are what they are, and include the sureness that this country had to defeat Germany.  That won’t be changed, as Griffin acknowledges.  Your bickerings about our national dishonour in wartime look, if indeed you are an Englishman, like nothing so much as a politically inverted liberal self-hatred ... but a self-hatred nonetheless.  If, of course, you are not an Englishman just say so, and we will all understand.

Turning to Mark’s post, I do not disagree with all your observations.  I, too, think Tolkien was prescient in finding disadvantage in both the options available to us in 1939 and I, too, dispute (with John, mostly) that Churchill was ever a Conservative.  But it is for his undoubted and great utility to a people at war that he is loved, which is a judgement I fully accept.

My father’s generation fought in a cause made noble by the nature of German nationalism.  That nobility stands regardless of the people’s ignorance then, as today, of “Americo-cosmopolitanism”.  It is mythical without being a myth, and it is unifying.  It does not distance us from the love we must rekindle to discriminate for survival.  We do not need a German nationalism to survive.

Posted by Lurker on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 12:01 | #

Our history is part of what makes us what we are. Churchill is a part of that, he might not be everything we want, but then I might like to be taller, Im not and thats just the way things are.

Posted by Mark Richardson on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 12:52 | #

GW, agreed. I have no problem with the standing of Churchill as a leader of a nation at war. I do have a problem with Churchill’s standing, in some quarters, as the great conservative leader. I can’t square this with parts of his political record.

Note too that Tolkien was not in some kind of neutral, defeatist corner. He thought the English should keep fighting in hope for the future, even though the political situation was moving the wrong way.

Posted by Amalek on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 14:46 | #

Guessedworker appears to think that a man’s historical reputation can be set in cement, and never revised in the light of what emerges in the longer term as consequences of that man’s actions and omissions.

This is both improbable and undesirable. It can lead to the canonisation of sacred cows and the declaration of certain episodes as off limits to inquiry, with penalties for heretics.

Every website has its pet sacred cow, and I think we’ve found MR’s.

Posted by Desmond Jones on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:28 | #

Mark,

You’ve commented on this before(?) Do you still feel Waugh “was wrong to exclude race from nationality.”

“I believe in nationality; not interms of race or of divine commissions for world conquest, but simply this: mankind inevitably organizes itself into communities according to its geographical distribution; these communities by sharing a common history develop common characteristics and inspire a local loyalty; the individual family develops most happily and fully when it accepts these natural limits.”

Posted by Mark Richardson on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 21:46 | #

Desmond, I would not accept the definition you’ve just cited (I take it it’s from Evelyn Waugh? Have we discussed it before? When was it written?)

Mankind does not divide itself into communities only on the basis of geography, but also in terms of ancestry or kinship, and this is marked by race.

In fact if you were to put 500 people into a local community, made up of 100 different races (or even 10), I think the sense of local loyalty would be exceptionally weak. In normal circumstances, such a community would be vulnerable to conquest by another more cohesive group.

It’s an interesting quote, though. Perhaps race had become such a taboo word at that time that Waugh was trying to get as close to a traditionalist conservatism without having to use the term.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 08 Feb 2006 22:54 | #

The Amalekite has two interesting characteristics.  First, he is an incendiary troll.  He is not merely here to express his own views but to provoke reactions, divisions and do any harm he can.  He has no bone to pick with me but, when he first arrived under the soubriquet Amalek, immediately did so.  Before that, as Asia Boy, he was picking a fight with the entire commentariat.

Second, he writes very well, couching his provocations in an excellent alround knowledge of WN issues, albeit often hedged about with some rather needlessly overt anti-semitism (which could be viewed as another kind of provocation).

What kind of agent combines the characteristics of troll (outrageously so as Asia Boy), anti-semitism and writing skill?

Posted by Desmond Jones on Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:25 | #

Mark, It was on a thread at VFR dated 2003[?]. It appeared to be a discussion between you[?] Kalb and Auster. Kalb’s sense was that the quote was circa WWII. It seems to parallel Tolkien’ s notion. It rationalises the conflict that appeared irrational on a racial level. A Germanic/Celtic people in a great life and death struggle with a Germanic people. Possibly a rejection of the Aryan race theme in favour of a more narrowly defined nationalism. Keeping faith with England. Rejecting the white man’s burden [divine commissions for world conquest] and the empire. Both were soldiers however, Tolkien, at least in the opinion of a Canadian Forces acquaintance, wrote like a soldier. Waugh, of course, was not held in such high esteem.    Although Tolkien adamantly denied that his work had any founding in his war time experiences with the possible exception of Sam Ganges.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 09 Feb 2006 10:29 | #

Desmond,

Reaching further back in time, could there not be only vestigial but still influential tribal rivalries between those Saxons and Engles who journeyed across the North German Sea to the east and those who succeeded to their lands?  What do we really know of the tribal rivalries of that time, of the numbers who set sail - and why - and the numbers who remained?

Posted by Al Ross on Thu, 09 Feb 2006 18:34 | #

Not only did the British refuse to see themselves as a Germanic people but they also declined to be identified as British, despite being propagandized to this end for many years. Britain is a modern state, a political construct, whilst England is,for now, a nation.

Posted by Desmond Jones on Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:42 | #

...yes, self-identification is reality…very interesting.

No doubt GW, no doubt. What *do* we real know about the past? Only that which others tell us. Reading Arthur Bryant’s Set in a Silver Sea: A History of Britain and the British People, Vol 1 you get a real sense of a greater Germanic/Nordic awareness. And then you read Bryant’s critics who say,

Bryant was in fact a Nazi sympathiser and fascist fellow-traveller, who only narrowly escaped internment as a potential traitor in 1940. He was also, incidentally, a supreme toady, fraudulent scholar and humbug.

The words of that robot from Lost in Space are quite prescient, “Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!”

Posted by Desmond Jones on Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:23 | #

Which begs the question why was Sir Arthur stigmatised. Apparently, writing in his book Unfinished War, [pp. 136-144] Bryant states:

“It was the Jews with their international affiliations and their hereditary flair for finance who were best able to seize such opportunities. They did so with such effect that, even in November 1938, after five years of anti-Semitic legislation and persecution, they still owned, according to the Times correspondent in Berlin, something like a third of the real property in the German Reich. Most of it came into their hands during the inflation.”

“But to those who had lost their all, this bewildering transfer seemed a monstrous injustice. After prolonged sufferings they had now been deprived of their last possessions. They saw them pass into the hands of strangers, many of whom had not shared their sacrifices and who cared little or nothing for their national standards and traditions.”

Bryant said,

In the 1924 Reichstag, a quarter of the Social Democrats were Jews. Jews controlled 57% of the metal trade, 22% of the grain, and 39% of the textile. More then 50% of the members of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce were Jews, as were 1,200 of the 1,474 members of the Stock Exchange. Of the 29 legitimate theaters in Berlin, 23 had Jewish directors. At one point, says Bryant (quoting an anti-Nazi book by E. Mowrer, Germany Puts the Clock Back), so complete was the Jewish monopoly of the Press that “a telephone connection between [sic] three Jews in Ministerial Offices could effect the suspension of any newspaper in the State.”

And what of Basil Liddell Hart’s, author of The Other Side of the Hill 1948, allegation of the so-called Halt Order at Dunkirk,

German General von Blumentritt with regard to this Halt Order:

“He (Hitler) then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilisation that Britain had brought into the world. He remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that the creation of its Empire had been achieved by means that were often harsh, but ‘where there is planing, there are shavings flying’. He compared the British Empire with the catholic Church - saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she should acknowledge Germany’s position on the Continent. The return of Germany’s colonies would be desirable but not essential, and he would even offer to support Britain with troops if she should be involved in difficulties anywhere.” (p 200).

Who do you believe?

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 09 Feb 2006 23:38 | #

Friedrich, you are looking at German identity as if it was a fixed entity, while the British have in some way shifted from a natural position.  This is too simplistic.  You must consider, for example, that 1789 and 1848 are not critical dates in domestic British history.  We had no Rousseau or Robespierre, therefore we had no need of a Herder and a Bismarck.

There is an argument to be made that the development of British social, political and economic history in the years from the Restoration onward was a process of relative calm.  Thus, one might expect greater stability in the evolution of British national identity than occurred in most of continental Europe.

Posted by Desmond Jones on Fri, 10 Feb 2006 08:09 | #

Possibly that could be your job here Fred, policing standards. You’re definitely suited to the task.

In fact the critics statement, that Bryant was nearly interned as a traitor because he was a Nazi and a fascist, *is* begging the question. The truth of the conclusion is assumed. No evidence is presented that he was in fact a Nazi sympathizer, or a fascist. It simply states it.