… Shaw is not at all the heretic his fascinated victims see him, but an orthodox Scotch Presbyterian of the most cock-sure and bilious sort. In the theory that he is Irish I take little stock. His very name is as Scotch as haggis, and the part of Ireland from which he comes is peopled almost entirely by Scots. The true Irishman is a romantic; he senses religion as a mystery, a thing of wonder, an experience of ineffable beauty; his interest centers, not in the commandments, but in the sacraments. The Scot, on the contrary, is almost devoid of that sort of religious feeling; he hasn’t imagination enough for it; all he can see in the Word of God is a sort of police regulation; his concern is not with beauty but with morals. Here Shaw runs true to type. Read his critical writings from end to end, and you will not find the slightest hint that objects of art were passing before him as he wrote. He founded, in England, the superstition that Ibsen was no more than a tin-pot evangelist — a sort of brother to General Booth, Mrs. Pankhurst, Mother Eddy and Billy Sunday. He turned Shakespeare into a prophet of evil, croaking dismally in a rain-barrel. He even injected a moral content (by dint of abominable straining) into the music dramas of Richard Wagner, surely the most colossal slaughters of all moral ideas on the altar of beauty ever seen by man. Always this ethical obsession, the hall-mark of the Scotch Puritan, is visible in him. He is forever discovering an atrocity in what has hitherto passed as no more than a human weakness; he is forever inventing new sins, and demanding their punishment; he always sees his opponent, not only as wrong, but also as a scoundrel. I have called him a good Presbyterian.
H.L. Mencken, “Shaw as Platitudinarian”, The Smart Set, 1916-08.
November 9, 2024
QotD: George Bernard Shaw
November 8, 2024
QotD: David Lloyd George and the British Liberal Party
Lloyd George is one of the most obviously fascinating figures in modern British political history, for three reasons. The first is his background. The Liberal Party, since its formal inception in 1859, had always responded to a touch of the purple. Lord Palmerston was a viscount; Lord John Russell was the son of a duke; William Gladstone was Eton and Christ Church; Lord Rosebery was Lord Rosebery; Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H.H. Asquith at least went to Trinity, Cambridge and Balliol, Oxford respectively.
Lloyd George was from nowhere. He grew up in Llanystumdwy, Caernarfonshire, where he lived in a compact cottage with his mother, uncle, and siblings, and was trained as a solicitor in Porthmadog. He rose to dominate British politics, and to direct the affairs of the most expansive empire the world had known, seeing off thousands of more privileged rivals, on the basis of truly exceptional native gifts, and without even speaking English as his first language.
How he got into the position to direct World War I is one of the most remarkable personal trajectories in British history. Contemporaries everywhere saw it as an astonishing story, even in the most advanced democracies. As the New York Times asked when Lloyd George visited America in 1923, “Was there ever a more romantic rise from the humblest beginning than this?”
The second reason why Lloyd George is fascinating is his extraordinary command of words. Collins is good on this. The book is full of speeches that turn tides and smash competitors. Lloyd George could exercise an equally mesmeric command over both the Commons and mass audiences, typically rather different skills. Harold Macmillan called him “the best parliamentary debater of his, or perhaps any, day”.
Biblical references and Welsh valleys suffused his speeches. As another American journalist put it, when Lloyd George was speaking, “none approaches him in witchery of word or wealth of imagery”, with his “almost flawless phraseology” communicated through a voice “like a silver bell that vibrates with emotion”. Leading an imperial democracy through a global war demanded rhetorical powers of the rarest kind. Asquith lacked them. That, amongst other reasons, is why Lloyd George was able to shunt him aside.
The last reason we should all be interested in Lloyd George — as readers will have anticipated — is that he was the last British politician to inter a governing party. His actions during the war split the Liberals into Pro-Asquith and pro-Lloyd George factions, and the government he led from 1916 until 1922 was propped up by the Conservatives. Though the Liberal split was partly healed in 1923, it was all over for the party as a governing force. By the time Lloyd George at last became leader of the Liberal Party (in the Commons) in 1924, he had only a rump of 40 MPs left to command.
By the 1920s, Lloyd George’s shifting ideologies could not easily accommodate the old party traditions or the new forces reshaping allegiances and identities in the aftermath of the war. In 1918 he described his political creed to George Riddell, the press magnate, as “Nationalist-Socialist”. The consequence was an unprecedented redrawing of the map of British party politics, producing the Labour/Conservative hegemony we have lived with ever since.
The rot had arguably begun to set in for the Liberals in the elections of 1910, when they lost their majority. Fourteen years later, in 1924, Lloyd George stepped up to the Commons leadership of an exhausted, defeated party, and neither he nor his successors could arrest the slide into irrelevance. […] The Liberals could not come back because they were left with no clothes of their own. What had once been distinctive lines on economics, religion, welfare, the constitution, foreign policy and even “progress” were either appropriated by their competitors or ceased to be politically relevant. The party’s history as the dominant political force of the last near-century was no proof against radical structural change.
Alex Middleton, “Snapshot of the PM who killed his party”, The Critic, 2024-08-01.
November 7, 2024
Kemi Badenoch portrayed by the left as “the most prominent member of white supremacy’s black collaborator class”
The left likes to think themselves the faction of racial equality, yet they often reveal themselves to be anything but when someone steps out of line (from their point of view) and chooses a different political worldview:
For centuries, Britain was ruled by an aristocracy. In recent decades, however, this concept has become rather passé, and we have been doing away with it — most recently with the vote to abolish hereditary peers in the House of Lords.
Yet, as the old guard fades, a new elite has taken its place. Inherited traits — particularly skin colour and sex — now grant special dispensations. Utterances that would be unthinkable for most are allowed, and positions incommensurate to talent are dispensed.
This is because the new aristocracy is flush, often through little toil of its own, with moral authority — a valuable currency wielded by what we might call the Patricians of Victimhood.
Their power rests on the idea that Britain is a fundamentally racist country, brimming with other nasty “isms” that can be contained only by them. To deny this is heresy — but to disprove it is a crime for which no punishment is too great.
This was evident when Kemi Badenoch, a black woman, was elected Saturday to lead the Conservative Party. This historic first for Britain might have been expected to please those preoccupied with combating racism, perhaps even chalked up as a win.
Instead, Badenoch was lambasted by politicians who have built careers campaigning about racism. Dawn Butler, a Labour MP, shared a post accusing Badenoch of representing “white supremacy in blackface” — an insult so improbable that it conjures only an image of a face-painted Justin Trudeau.
The post, now removed from Butler’s X account, read: “Today the most prominent member of white supremacy’s black collaborator class (in Britain) is likely to be made leader of the Conservative Party. Here are some handy tips for surviving the immediate surge of Badenochism (i.e. white supremacy in blackface).”
Another Labour MP, Zara Sultana, said Badenoch was “one of the most nasty & divisive figures in British politics”, for, among other things, “downplaying racism”.
Badenoch is opposed to identity politics. She believes in meritocracy and that Britain — as she told her children recently — “is the best country in the world to be black”. Badenoch’s optimism is well founded: a 2023 World Values Survey found that Britain is indeed one of the least racist countries in the world.
Forgotten War Ep4 – Rise of the Chindits
HardThrasher
Published 4 Nov 2024Please consider donations of any size to the Burma Star Memorial Fund who aim to ensure remembrance of those who fought with, in and against 14th Army 1941–1945 — https://burmastarmemorial.org/
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November 6, 2024
The Korean War 020 – American Disaster at Unsan! – November 5, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 5 Nov 2024American forces drive onwards, almost oblivious to the emerging Communist Chinese threat. At Unsan, an American regiment finds itself at the mercy of two Chinese divisions, who bear down on it from three sides. Getting out before being overrun will be no easy feat.
Chapters
01:18 Destruction of the 7th
03:41 Unsan Prelude
05:41 The Disaster at Unsan
10:47 Aftermath
13:31 Elsewhere
16:15 Summary
16:30 Conclusion
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QotD: “Colourism”
A comment at The Guardian:
which reinforce the inherently colonial practice of “colourism” – the discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone.
It’s not colonial, it’s classist. Dark skin means sun exposure. That is, someone who works for a living outside in the fields. Pale skin means someone rich enough to stay inside. Thus the bits in Jane Austem where the girls worry about their bonnets for they might get freckles.
This also changed, entirely, when work for poor people moved inside and only the rich could afford to get away for a tan. Suddenly, to have a tan – darker skin – became a mark of wealth, not poverty.
A change rather reflected in make up in fact, pre WWII (about, roughly) the aim was to powder or cream the face to be pale, pale, white. Post[-WWII] much foundation make up is to add colour, not take it away.
This also explains the popularity of sunbeds and fake tans, something which a century ago would have been quite literally unthinkable.
Colourism exists, most certainly, but that flip shows that it’s about class, not colonialism.
For the part about it that the colonialism reason cannot explain is why that flip.
That it’s about class also explains why colourism happens in places that never were colonies – Thailand say.
Tim Worstall, “Educashun”, Tim Worstall, 2020-01-12.
November 3, 2024
Kemi Badenoch replaces Rishi Sunak as UK Conservative leader
In the National Post, Michael Murphy discusses the new British Tory leader and why she could be a viable challenger to Two-tier Keir’s Labour government:
… in July, the Tories were ousted by Labour after 14 years in power, limping on with only 121 seats in the 650 seat House of Commons. But the honeymoon period for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government ended almost immediately, as its popularity plummeted faster than that of any administration in recent memory. This has made the Tories interesting once again at precisely the moment when they’ve chosen a new leader: Kemi Badenoch.
The Nigerian-raised mother of three, elected today to lead the Conservative party, threatens to be kryptonite for a Labour party wedded to identity politics. A black, female immigrant at the dispatch box is apt to leave Labour frontbenchers — particularly Sir Keir, a one-time BLM kneeler — somewhat stumped. To make matters worse, Badenoch is a persuasive speaker, commanding a charisma and eloquence that Sir Keir — a dull, po-faced lawyer — does not possess.
These qualities have given Badenoch cross-party appeal within the Tories, rallying endorsements from both the left and right. By endorsing her, however, the party has effectively signed a blank cheque, as Badenoch, unlike her opponents, has made few specific pledges. She has chosen instead to reflect on the election loss and the party’s ideological roots; she is prepared to play the long game, hoping this will allow the Tories to “earn back trust”.
On some issues, though, Badenoch is clear. “The government is doing far too much and it is not doing any of it well — and it is growing and growing,” she declared recently. “The state is too big; we need to make sure there is more personal responsibility.” These ideas are common fare among Conservatives, especially in bloated welfare states like Britain — but her zeal for them evokes, for many, memories of Margaret Thatcher. As the political commentator Simon Heffer wrote, “Mrs Badenoch is the politician who most reminds me of Mrs Thatcher since I last saw Mrs Thatcher”. He noted both women’s hard-mindedness, “deep principles”, and grasp of the “art of the possible”.
Badenoch’s Conservatism can be traced, as the writer Tom Mctague has argued elsewhere, to her beginnings in Africa. Having fled Nigeria during a 1996 military coup, she has a keen, outsider’s appreciation for Britain’s core ideals — not least the rule of law and policing by consent. She is therefore a champion of Britain, of both “the good” and “bad” of its former empire, at a time when it is fashionable to denigrate it, precisely because of her first hand experience that these norms are rare and fragile.
Like Thatcher, Badenoch studied a hard science (computing), marking them out in a Parliament filled with lawyers and humanities graduates. And the swift rise of both women, from modest beginnings through the ranks of the Conservative party, suggests that the “art of the possible” is indeed etched into their stars.
The Armchair General has a few suggestions for Badenoch’s agenda to turn the British economy around:
My one reservation [about Badenoch] was that, being a software engineer, instead of espousing liberty or slashing laws and regulations, Kemi might reach for more tinkering technocratic solutions — and your humble General is surely not alone in his opinion that we have had quite enough, thank you, of technocratic governments.
However, the more that I consider the severe problems that afflict this country, the more I believe that a process-driven leader, who can focus on the details, might make the biggest difference in the short to medium term.
The immigration issue
As we know, uncontrolled immigration has seized the public imagination greatly — and, indeed, Jenrick centred his campaign around leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). We should almost certainly do this anyway — simply because, like the Americans, we should refuse to sign any treaties that raises foreign courts above our own Parliament.
But leaving that aside, the stated problems with mass immigration can largely be divided into two halves:
- cultural differences — these are not insignificant, and it is claimed that they lead to an increase in crime (especially sexual crimes) and an undermining of our high-trust society;
- economic issues — the evidence shows that a massive net influx of low-skilled immigrants depresses wages at the lower end, puts a strain on public services (which cannot expand swiftly enough to accommodate the increase in demand), raises the demand for houses (of which there is a shortage) and thus pushes up prices, and, ultimately, only increases nominal GDP whilst per capita GDP has barely shifted in a decade and a half.
For the purposes of this post, I shall address only the latter issue; given where we are right now, the former is a much thornier problem — at least politically — and probably cannot be solved without radical (and some might say “authoritarian”) action.
The second problem is easier to solve because it is caused, essentially, by the single biggest drag on our economy — our planning system.
[…]
Planning: the Conservatives’ political agenda
The core of the new Conservative manifesto must be a growth agenda; it needs to set out the following core principles:
- if we carry on the current trajectory, the British government will be effectively bankrupt in the next 50 years — so something needs to change;
- therefore, in order to pay for all the goodies that we have promised ourselves (now and in the future), we need to massively accelerate economic growth;
- unless we can build the roads, railways, power stations, research labs, data centres, and homes that we need, then our economy will not grow at the required rate — and spending will need to be cut to the bone;
- given the above, the only way to grow is to reform planning laws;
- removing the barriers to building will lead to greater investment, lower energy prices (leading to even greater investment), greater social mobility, regeneration of all the regions (so-called “levelling up”), and vast increases in per capita GDP;
- where the state invests in infrastructure, then it will cost considerably less than it does currently — meaning that not only will those projects undertaken provide more value for money, but also that many more projects will be viable;
- this prosperity and increased mobility will remove even the perceived need for immigrants to perform low-wage jobs (including in our public services), and remove the economic pressures of those that we have already taken in;1
- if we do it right, then we will also be able to cut taxes without drastically cutting the size of the state.2
The argument needs to be as stark and inevitable as that.
What this means is that the Conservatives need not stand on a platform of slashing state spending — thus addressing the huge numbers of people in this country who, incredibly, still believe in the benevolent state.
Except for one caveat, there really is no downside to adopting Foundations [discussed here], in full, as the core of the next Conservative manifesto (although it should not be the full extent of said manifesto — there are many other areas that need to be addressed, which I shall write about later).
1. As I say, the cultural issues are for another time.
2. Obviously, as a classical liberal, I believe that the size of the state should be drastically cut — but this is not a popular argument in a country that has been raised and educated on socialist doctrine for decades.
November 2, 2024
The Short SA.4 Sperrin; Britain’s Back-Up, Back-up Nuclear Bomber
Ed Nash’s Military Matters
Published Jul 9, 2024No, I have no idea how you pronounce “Gyron”.
October 29, 2024
The slavery reparations grift – “it’s not possible for us to compensate a man for having made him better off”
The demands for reparations from Britain over the slave trade are not based on the actual history as much as emotion and selective blindness to the facts:
No, no, stop squealing. Yes, slavery was appalling, vile, we’re all damn glad we don’t do it any more. But slave labour was not free.
We could — possibly should — look at the difference between that subsistence level that the slaves got and what free labour — not free as in at no cost, free as in free to choose — got at the same time. The answer being not much difference in fact. If we’re to believe Jason Hickel (which, of course, we shouldn’t) free labour in England got below subsistence incomes. To be Marxist, what was the expropriation from those slaves, from the value of their labour? And, well, not a hugely different amount from that of free labour at the time.
While imperial Britain soared to sustainable economic development and global military superpower status, the enslaved and their descendants were left to this day with enduring pain, persistent poverty and systemic suffering.
This is, as the cool kids say, problematic. Beckles is from Barbados. So, let us use Barbados numbers. And compare them to Sierra Leone and Liberia. The places that slaves not transported across to their servitude were freed into.
So, Hils, Matey, what is this poverty and pain you’re condemned to?
An obvious point — it’s not possible for us to compensate a man for having made him better off.
But we need to go further too. Britain did not benefit from this labour anyway. We did not then have a state controlled economy, we do not now have a state controlled economy. Britain didn’t own the slaves so it’s not Britain that — even if you can prove that there should be reparations — which should pay for owning the slaves it didn’t.
This does then rather leave the reparations argument being that Barbados — or whoever — needs to go around suing, individually, the estates of those who owned slaves. Good luck with that one.
The so-called Slavery Abolition Act, the most racist legislation ever passed in the British parliament,
Aha, have you ever in your puff seen such a perfect perisher of an argument? That abolition of slavery itself was the most racist legislation ever?
Aha, aha, aha. Becks must have practised that one in the mirror a lot for no audience would be able to hear that without screaming in laughter.
compensation of £20m in cash paid as reparations to the enslavers. The enslaved were valued at £47m, and the remaining amount was paid off with labour in kind for four extra years of enslavement after they were freed. They received no compensation for the theft of their labour or the denial of their human identity.
A £20 million bribe and cheap at twice the price. For that’s what it was. A bribe. One we’re still paying off today — no, Osborne did not pay it off, he issued more gilts to pay off the old ones — and I’m wholly happy to be paying my mite of that amount. Absolute damn bargain, freeing 700k people from slavery for such a trivial sum. As to the slaves, well, they gained their freedom. Which is of value. Actually, that’s rather the point, freedom has value, no?
October 27, 2024
The Great Demobilization: How the Allied Armies Were Sent Home
World War Two
Published 26 Oct 2024After the war, the Allies face the new challenge how to bring home the tens of millions of troops they have deployed across the globe. Today Indy examines this massive logistical effort, looking at the American Operation Magic Carpet, the British government’s slow but steady approach, and the devastation that Soviet troops returned home to.
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QotD: Puritans, predestination, and the Ranters
The third problem with Puritan wokeness is that it sinister echoes in the history of predestination. When the creed reached its zenith in the seventeenth century, the logical hole at its centre became insanely obvious. If it does not matter to God how you behave, because your salvation was pre-determined at birth, why not behave however the hell you want to?
The outpourings of radical thought in the English Civil Wars included sects who came to exactly this conclusion. The Ranters, at least by reputation, advocated a lifestyle of Dionysiac excess. If orgies and boozing, gluttony and blasphemy did not have any material impact on whether you were going to heaven or hell, then why not shag, indulge and curse the Lord as much as you want?
The extent of their membership is disputed and the fear of the Ranters was strong among the Puritans, partly, I suspect, because the logical fallacy of the original tenet is so glaringly obvious. Many of the theological arguments espoused by the men who were labelled Ranters were more textured and complicated than a license to loucheness. But the essential point remains: if you are already damned, your actions and intent are irrelevant.
The Puritan response was a horrified recoil. If God has made you one of the elect, you have a responsibility to Him to behave as if you are elect. A rare few came to believe they were not elect, and tortured themselves with it. If this sounds familiar, you have probably met an apologetic white male ally of the woke.
Antonia Senior, “Identity politics is Christianity without the redemption”, UnHerd, 2020-01-20.
October 26, 2024
QotD: Henry VIII
Barbara Tuchman […] said something about medieval nobles once, to the effect of “the reason some of their decisions seems so childish to us is that a lot of them were children”. I don’t think she’s right about that — kids grew up pretty damn fast in the Middle Ages — but if you expand it a bit to “rookies make rookie mistakes”, she’s got a big, important point. No account of the reign of Henry VIII, for instance, can really be complete without considering that when he took the throne he was only 17, and had only been heir apparent for a few years before that. He was most definitely the “spare” in the old “heir and a spare” formula for medieval dynastic success; it’s likely that his father was preparing him for a Church career when his elder brother Arthur died suddenly in 1502, when Henry was 11. What Arthur had been in training his whole life to do, Henry got at most six frantic years of, under an increasingly feeble father.
Leaving all of Henry’s personal quirks aside — and his was a very strong, distinctive personality — that’s got to affect you.
So many of the changes in Henry’s reign, then, must have been driven in part by the fact that it was the same man, reflecting on a lifetime’s experience in a job he was never expected to have, wasn’t really prepared for, and didn’t seem to want (aside from the lifestyle). There’s been lots of pop-historical theorizing about what was “wrong” with the later Henry — senility, syphilis, the madness of power — but more naturalistic explanations of his later actions must take into account simple age. A man nearing the end of his life, knowing that his succession was very much in doubt and fearing for the state of his soul, will do things differently than a young man in the prime of life.
[…]
Life was hard back then, and cheap. When every other child dies before the age of five and the average life expectancy is 35, I imagine, you live your life cranked to 11 every waking moment. Accounts of grown men weeping like little girls at the theater aren’t an exaggeration; the whole age was given to extreme outbursts. And that’s just the baseline! Now consider that a guy like Henry never had a moment to himself, and I do mean never — not once, in his entire life. He even had a guy with him on the crapper, who would wipe his ass for him. The relationship between Henry and a guy like Wolsey, then — to say nothing of his relationship with the Groom of the Stool — must’ve been intimate in a way we can’t possibly grasp. Compared to that, you and your wife are barely on speaking terms. If Henry seemed sometimes to set policy just because he was pissed at Wolsey, we must consider the possibility that that’s exactly what happened.
The best you can do, then, is imagine yourself back there as best you can, and make your interpretations in that light, acknowledging your biases as best you can (I’m not a medievalist, obviously, but I’m a much better read amateur than most, and though Henry VIII is a very hard guy to like, he’s equally hard not to admire). Most of all — and this, I think, is the hardest thing for academic historians, more even than recognizing their presentist biases — you have to keep your humility. Perhaps Henry’s decision about ___ was part of a gay little frenemies spat with Wolsey. That’s sure what it seems like, knowing the man, and having no contrary evidence …
… but contrary evidence might always emerge. It might not have been the optimal decision, but it might’ve been a much better one than you thought, because Henry had information you didn’t, but now do. It makes for some restless nights, knowing that your life’s work could be overturned by some grad student finding some old paper at a yard sale somewhere, but … there it is.
Severian, “Writing Real History”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-08-18.
October 23, 2024
Canadian history through the propagandist lens
Fortissax casually tosses a few bricks into the glass house of Canadian history as it has been taught to schoolchildren over the last 30-40 years:
During our annual Not One Body Found season, I thought I’d discuss the truth about the brutal violence and savagery of North America’s most early, prominent and influential indigenous tribes, and popular narratives surrounding them.
If you’re an ethnic Canadian, born in the 1990s, you’re no doubt familiar with the education system’s attempts to subject you to a program of Maoist-style struggle sessions over the alleged genocide of the indigenous peoples in Canada. These struggle sessions in classrooms and collective humiliation rituals serve multiple purposes. One is to de-legitimize the history of, and perpetuate the ongoing deconstruction of Canada. The other is to de-legitimize the existence of the Canadian people as a nation (defined as a group sharing ethnic, cultural, and historical ties), in preparation for demographic replacement via mass migration.
The average Canadian’s school experience is filled with a turbo-charged version of liberal Noble Savage mythology, which is still propagated by leftists and indigenous activists. This has given the impression to many of the indigenous tribes as a singular race, continent-wide, uniformly peace-loving, non-binary, nature-appreciating matriarchal egalitarians until the evil, white, patriarchal Christian man arrived.
This resembles equally revisionist history about the Indo-European invasions into Europe around 4000 B.C. against the Pre-Indo-Europeans. You know that story: patriarchal brutes from the Eurasian steppes, with their advanced bronze weaponry and horse-powered chariots, wiped out the longhouse-dwelling, peace-loving, egalitarian agricultural Early European Farmers, who were feminist. This theory, conceived by Maria Gimbutas, a feminist intellectual, was debunked and discarded years ago. In reality, the Early-European-Farmers were extraordinarily warlike, violent, engaged in child murder or sacrifice and were apparently innovative as they built monuments like Stonehenge. This is much the same for indigenous in North America. All of this is framed in a Marxist oppressor-oppressed paradigm.
Tales of cruel treatment, deliberate biological warfare via smallpox blankets (of which there is only one known reference, with attempts to implement unknown), or extermination by colonial death squads haunts the minds of Canadians, planting the seeds of self-doubt and masochism. If you listen carefully to the rhetoric of leftists and indigenous activists, you’d be led to believe there was an industrial mass-slaughter of tribes, with conveyor belts funneling indigenous people into machines that spit out moccasins and dream catchers. The depopulation of indigenous tribes was not the result of deliberate action but rather Europeans being far more numerous and carrying diseases to which they had no immunity. The second cause was perpetual, brutal warfare by the survivors against each other. The mass depopulation from epidemic disease in North America occurred in the mid-1600s, after epidemic breakouts in the filthy, cramped conditions of Europe. Not almost a hundred years later in 1763, where smallpox blankets are merely discussed by General Jeffrey Amherst and Colonel Henry Bouquet.
Indigenous activists believe they were subject to a holocaust-style genocide. It is not a coincidence that the amplifying of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation occurs at the same time as the Managerial Regime in Canada has declared itself a “post-national state” (which the indigenous also live in and suffer consequences from). They believe Canada is a country without a people. Ironically this lines up with activists’ own definition of “cultural genocide”, because in 1867 during Confederation Year, according to census data, Canada was 92% Anglo-French, 7% miscellaneous Europeans, and the remaining 1% indigenous. Canada is unquestionably, unmistakably, a European construct of Anglo-French extraction.
In 2021, seemingly out of nowhere, the public was subjected to the establishment of this astroturfed federal holiday, which was made statutory—still only for employees of the federal government (what a coincidence!)—as of March 2023. Participation in this public humiliation ritual involves the coerced wearing of orange, and sometimes red, shirts. Canadians across the political spectrum knowingly or unknowingly participate in this ritual, with many rough, cowboy-hat-wearing, lifted-big-black-truck-driving conservatives, as well as tattooed, soy-eating, vegan ketamine enthusiast quartz-worshiping leftists also enthusiastically partaking.
It’s called being a decent human being, Chud! Schools, the monopolized legacy media, corporations, and brands all recognize and partake in the humiliation ritual, directed exclusively at ethnic Canadians. Football games have their players sing the national anthem, and every clinically obese, corn-syrup-slurping sportsball fan claps as the announcer humiliates and shames him or her with a land acknowledgement to prove to the crowd and community that they “don’t see race”. Medical professionals and university faculty across the country also include land acknowledgements in professional email signatures. Even law enforcement gleefully participate in the the ritual, dancing like circus monkeys to the tune of people who despise them.
The Last Surviving Giant Passenger Hovercraft
The Tim Traveller
Published Jul 2, 2024In early 1968, Britain launched a revolutionary new form of sea transport: the giant SRN4-class hovercraft. They are the largest passenger hovercraft ever built, and they could fly between England and France in just 30 minutes — three times faster than anything else on the water. So why don’t we have anything like them any more?
MORE INFO
The Hovercraft Museum: https://www.hovercraft-museum.org/
The museum’s “Support Us” page, if you’d like to help them out: https://www.hovercraft-museum.org/sup…
October 22, 2024
A Conquering Hat: a History of the Bicorn
HatHistorian
Published Jul 1, 2022Emblematic of Napoleon Bonaparte and his age of conquest, the bicorn is a distinctive military hat that became part of the most formal of dress uniforms and remains to this day in certain ceremonial outfits
The bicorn I wear in this video comes from Theatr’Hall in Paris https://www.theatrhall.com. The uniform comes from thejacketshop.co.uk
Title sequence designed by Alexandre Mahler
am.design@live.comThis video was done for entertainment and educational purposes. No copyright infringement of any sort was intended.