"England, mate! Yeah, go fuck yourself!"
I - Brief Notes On Why You Shouldn't Cancel Me For The Title Of This Blogpost
Let me explain the title before you raise your pitchforks and torches. The greatest documentary that I have ever seen, the one that best encapsulates the absolute state of modern Britain, is called 'Angry, White, and Proud.' Find it here."A lot of people would class [what you say] as racist thought," whines the journalist behind the camera, in the first interaction we see in the doc. "Yes, I'm incredibly racist against Muslims," Colin replies, immediately destroying the argument. "I 'ate Muslims, hate 'em with a fuckin' passion, more than I hate West Ham Football Club - and I 'ate them bastards." This post is about, and of course, its title comes from, the first half of that sentence. "I've never heard anyone say that before, I'm a little bit lost for words!" replies the documentarian, like a little bitch. This is the problem. How we speak about race, and who we let do it, is, to put it mildly, all fucked up.
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| the guardian inlay is just as important as the union jack, okay? |
II - Brief Notes On How We Talk About Racism
Some simple notes on racism discourse, before we begin.- Racism is bad. Sorry.
- There are certain groups of people, especially Online, that will try and tell you Black and Brown folks cannot be racist. They will smirk every time the concept of "reverse racism" is brought up.You will be able to tell you're talking with this specific version of fuckwit because they capitalise Black and Brown. Their claim is false. Indians hate Pakistanis; West Africans hate West Indians; China, Japan, and Korea are locked in a three-way hate-off and have been for thousands of years, and so on. Charitably, what the fuckwits mean is that "racism from people who aren't white is of less consequence than racism from people who are white," which is disputable but certainly a less objectionable sentiment. Uncharitably, what they mean is "I can say whatever I want about white people and about minorities because [static and wails, something about "structural"]." These people are awful and are to be avoided at all costs.
- Indeed, "Whiteness" is something that can only come from the minds of those poor, diseased Americans. These fuckwits I'm on about are mostly college-educated African-Americans, and that creates a problem. African-Americans are unlucky because they're one of the few groups in the world that doesn't have a diaspora mythology. You might be able to trace your family history from Hamburg or Hereford, into the East River, along the Great Wagon Road, into Knoxville, if you're white. If you're black you were taken from somewhere in West Africa and placed somewhere in [most likely] the Deep South. This is why when AAs look for their roots they look to a generalised Africa (that and Americans' woeful geography in general), and why they assume white folk look to a generalised Whiteness. I don't think that's true. You aren't white, you're German, Polish, Italian, Scotch-Irish (made up), and so forth. When snarky people on Twitter characterise that as various flavours of mayo they are missing the point in an incredibly dangerous way, because when you lump all white people together, the one thing the resulting group do have in common is they aren't black. Or Muslim, as the case may be.
- Racism isn't finished and it will never be finished. Sorry. It's too much a part of human nature to completely eradicate and your actions need to be based around mitigating it rather than eliminating it. If this is what Ta-Nehisi Coates means by Afropessimism then I'm backing. If he means "let me write more comics" then he can fuck right off.
- Racism is bad. Again, I sincerely apologise for taking such a principled stance.
III - Brief Notes On Football
"There is a natural progression from being a tearaway, into football violence, into the far-right" Colin says, leaning against a wall. You cannot understate the extent to which football culture and everything else in this country are intermingled, and I don't want to go too far into it in this essay, because I have something planned for the second half of the statement that inspired this, but note how "West Ham kicking off in Birmingham" is equivalent to "us lot kicking off with Antifa." Note how the structure of this outing perfectly mirrors an away day. You get a couple of cans in on the train to Brighton with your mate, you sing songs, you intimidate the opposing 'fans', except instead of watching West Ham lose because they're a shit team with a shit stadium, you punch a leftie in the face. All the songs they sing are football chants. The way they sing "Anjem Choudary, we're coming for you!", "There's only one Lee Rigby!" is the same way I would sing about Aaron Mooy, or Wilf Zaha, respectively, except Mooy is just a very good footballer that happens to play for my rivals, but Choudary is a threat to the futures of their children and Lee Rigby was a soldier killed by terrorists. Are these things equivalent? Clearly they're not far off it. Either we drastically overestimate the importance of racism in the United Kingdom, or we drastically underestimate the importance of football and football culture. You can probably guess which side I'm on.IV - On Diaspora
We hit our first revelation about five minutes into the programme. Colin's half Irish and half Italian, like some accursed version of Bugsy Malone - less Broadway, more Bugsby's Way. Of course, he's perfectly happy to joke about this apparent contradiction with his mother, before she produces those magic words: "The difference is, we work!" Don't dare forget that Colin is currently living with his mother because he's unemployed, not that it matters. Paul, who comes in about a third of the way through, is also a second-generation immigrant. "You're from Cyprus, son of an immigrant." "I was born here!" Paul replies, smirking. Greek Cypriots are obviously not going to have particularly fond views of Islam, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to suggest his heritage may be affecting some of his current views.Being a third generation immigrant is rather annoying, especially one from the Caribbean. You see, no matter how well my father and I assimilate culturally, we will always be Black and not English at first glance. Neither the evenings spent with kebabs in one hand and ciders in the other, watching Match of the Day, nor the evenings spent watching the opera at the de la Warr Pavilion (which we ruined by going to KFC after anyway), can do anything to dissuade the "But where are you really from?"s. You can fuck with your accent - I certainly do - you can change your name/gender/religion, but you cannot practice taqiyya on your skin.
Even worse, I recieve precious few of the benefits of being a foreigner too. I have no exotic mother tongue; Estuary English escapes my guttermouth just as quickly as it escapes Colin's, just with fewer letters dropped - th's remain intact, I did go to grammar school after all, but t's do not. My grandmother doesn't like pepper, which means I miss out on the vast majority of the Windward Island culinary exports. There's precious little different about me, which is partly due to my upbringing and partly my own fault for spending Year 9 listening to Braid and This Town Needs Guns instead of Vybz Kartel, but it is what it is.
Paul, however, is perfectly capable of casting off his immigrant history because he is white, and can therefore pass as English. I find this incredibly annoying because he has to put no effort in to manage this, whereas I have to do so much for no reward. "Wow, entitled much?" Not now, intersectional feminism, you have enough posts already. All I am saying is I have eaten the fish and chips, laughed at all the unfunny Radio 4 comedies that launch BBC careers somehow, developed the binge drinking problem. Can I be English now? I have even paid legitimate Pound Sterling to watch Crystal Palace play Huddersfield Town, for Christ's sake. Isn't that enough? No, which is fine, but I'm still mad.
V - On Hilarity And Hoffer
"Since the breakup of the EDL, Colin and his friend Jason have set up their own splinter cell - the South London Infidels, which they mastermind from Colin's mum's house in Kent."What this documentary reminds me most of is Four Lions, which says a lot about both how serious these guys are, and how extremism happens. That's right, folks, I'm finna boutta bring back the concept of the horseshoe theory.
I think the horseshoe theory has a bad rap because no one has actually read Hoffer, and so centrist morons use it to mean "leftoids are entirely as bad as rightoids", and then leftist morons make terrible comics 'satirising' that viewpoint. I can't stress enough how much I hate Lubchansky and people like them. Neither as funny nor as insightful as they think they are, just barely zeitgeisty enough to be used by Bernie bros in the mentions of pundits. Deadting. Anyway, "left = right" is not the point - the point is "the material situations that cause someone to become a far leftoid can be very similar to the material situations that cause someone to become a far rightoid." This is why the left's complete dismissal of the idea annoys me. Hoffer is actually showing you millions of potential recruits, that could be moved AWAY from the most dangerous parts of your enemies, and your response is to say "har har le centrists are r*tards?" Seems like poor tactics to me, more 2020 Mourinho than 2010.
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| i don't need to explain this, i'm sure you understand |
The main characters in Four Lions are losers, social outcasts, and so forth. Omar is a devout Muslim and anti-Western agent, but he's also from Sheffield, which is obviously a problem if you hate the West. Hassan is a nerd and terrible rapper. Faisal and Waj are both a couple hadith short of a Kutub al-Sittah. Barry is an ethnically British convert, which makes him an outsider even among this group of outsiders. The reason Four Lions is so funny is because losers are the group one is most able to wring comedy out of . The reason Four Lions make sense is because only people this apart from society would ever consider doing something like this. The same is true of Angry, White and Proud, on both counts.
Again, I don't think I'm stretching when I say Colin and Paul are kind of losers. Colin definitely doesn't have a job, as we've established, and while it's not explicitly stated one way or the other, I doubt Paul could spend as much time doing the bollocks he does if he had to hold down a 9-5 concurrently. Paul's mates, Ian-Curtis-lookalike Adam and Speccy Fatcunt, whose name I never caught but whose face I despise with a passion, are similarly imbued with a certain aura of loserdom. Pree the little younger decked out in full Hastings-Direct-lookin-ass attire, barely out of puberty, at the Brighton march. Does that look like someone who regularly features for the football team at school, someone who goes to a shitload of parties, someone who has success with the gyaldem, to you? Must I reiterate that he is wearing a giant fucking St George's cross over a fake chainmail fucking suit at event full of middle-aged fat racists? This explains how them man have the ability and the vigour to pursue being in EDL splinter groups so passionately, but it also explains why I think this documentary is so funny.
Paul:"[Radical Muslims] are nothing but vermin"
Camera nonce:"Doesn't that make you a racist?"
Paul:"No, I'm not a racist, I think that's offensive."
Come on, man, not even Chris Morris himself could write dialogue that beautiful. This is also fantastic proof of my theory that the most effective slur against white people isn't 'wigger' or 'cracker', it's 'racist'. The same visceral disgust I feel when people say nigger is clearly what white people feel when they are called racist. Use this power wisely, otherwise it'll stop working. Looking at you, r/chapotraphouse user that thinks your dad is a fascist because he wouldn't let you wear a fursuit to your nan's birthday do the other week.
One of the funniest things I have ever seen happens seventeen minutes in. This next splinter cell are in Tottenham trying to find the Muslim Brotherhood, and Paul raises his voice to a scream as he proclaims "I JUST THINK THE PEOPLE OF THIS TOWN SHOULD KNOW, THAT THIS PLACE, IS HARBOURING, TERRORISTS!" His compatriots pat him on the back, say "Good job, Paul," and so forth. The camera then pans to reveal an empty high street. I was first shown this video as part of a Citizenship lesson in Year 10, and the mark it left on our malleable fifteen-year-old brains was undeniable. It's so eminently quotable. I ended up screaming "THIS PLACE IS HARBOURING TERRORISTS" so frequently I'm surprised I wasn't pulled up by the right-wing version of PREVENT. At one point Speccy Fatcunt is being accosted by police, and after running his mouth for however long, decides to make a break for it, is free for six glorious seconds, and then runs straight into a police van.
Colin is spot on in his analysis. "The same way I imagine their terrorists get brainwashed, it's the same way as us. The average Joe Bloggs on the street gets to hear what we're doing, and thinks 'fuck me, that makes sense, I might be up for a bit of that,' just turn up for the one occasion, give someone a slap and fuck off. Makes him feel good the rest of his live 'cause 'e 'ad it with a Muslim. But then you get hooked." A bloke is only gonna get properly hooked on stuff like this if there's not enough else going on. It might be someone jobless, from the rougher parts of town, with nothing to do except pick fights with the new immigrants down the road. But equally for Hoffer, it might be someone who traipses into Midtown each morning and traipses back out to Metroland each evening, who finally snaps, except instead of doing wacky things like Tracy Jacks he stabs a hijabi. The clues are laid out throughout the documentary. Of course the normal people they interview think both Anjem Choudary and our protagonists are retarded, because they are. When you have mates and responsibilities and hobbies, the amount of time you have to do racism or tell white people their daughters will be Muslim is drastically reduced. Even the documentarian gets frustratingly close, before retreating from giving any viewpoint (and thus surrendering to the typical "haha wypipo be rayciss!" conclusion): "I wondered if this was really what the marchers had come here for, the buzz of demo fever." No shit, Sherlock. This is just something to do. This is an away day. I'm not saying abhorrent views aren't harboured by people, I'm just saying you need a catalyst to spark the action that backs it up, and the catalyst is almost always boredom. The point is dissatisfaction with oneself, and that can come from a number of places. The way it manifests is another matter entirely.
VI - On How Much I Fucking Hate Wh*te People
I am under no illusions when it comes to whether people in this country are racist. My grandfather was routinely spat on in his job as a London Underground conductor; my grandmother was subject to all sorts of horrific abuse as a nurse (upon trying to bathe an incapacitated patient: "No, you'll get your black on me!"; upon meeting another nurse from St Michael while treating some cunt: "Oh, so you two are from the same tree, then?"); my father had 'NF' (you know, the EDL for the punk generation!) carved into his jotter at secondary school. I'm not going to be a good little house nigger and spend the rest of the post explaining that all my white friends are lovely (you guys are, but that's not the point) and that Dave and Stormzy have the wrong idea calling the country racist. But then you probably gathered that from the title of this section.You also must note that I am a fourth-generation massive fucking snob. My great-grandfather owned land on Barbados, which I feel makes me equivalent to landed gentry, and my grandparents carried this attitude with them across the Atlantic, so even though they were materially poorer than most white people for large chunks of their life, they still carry a certain air of poshness, and this resentment that I would describe as most similar to the way African Americans looked down upon "poor white trash" even though they were materially identical. It's still there, after sixty years. I of course, am fully naturalised English, and therefore drink copious amounts - "that's our culture," - and though they don't say it outright I know they're disappointed. I imagine most kids of similar extraction can relate. My dad is the least posh of my family - there you go, love, I don't think you're middle class in demeanor, just monetarily - and yet he still harbours the dregs of this resentment. He met a lot of people in his youth, especially when his grammar school was merged with the local shithole containment centre, sorry, secondary modern, that were utterly reliant on the "cahhhhnnncul" (council, obviously) for all their needs. When he tried to apply for the dole soon after I was born, which we will get to, he was quite disgusted with the facility that certain (overwhelmingly white) people got exactly what they needed, and more, from the government, especially because it felt like he got no help whatsoever. Ironically enough, that's exactly how a lot of white people feel about minorities like in this country. That's my point.
Of course I grew up with my worldview shaped by these people, and I've inherited some of the same snobbishness, and when that is combined with the jealousy from part IV, I can be particularly venomous. I mean, have you seen the way I've talked about Speccy Fatcunt in this post? Just like my dad, I'm always fascinated by how literate poor white people are with regard to the law, the government, what's technically allowed, and so forth. The ease with which they skirt boundaries makes me so jealous. "I FELT MY LIFE WAS IN DANGER SO I DEFENDED MYSELF," 25mins in, from Speccy. I wonder how well that would've gone down if it were me protesting that way. Of course, I strongly identify with the Asian guy that gets on the wrong side of their rules lawyering ("DON'T TOUCH ME, DON'T PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME," - Neymar-esque play-acting, drawing the foul, as it were) - "I'm British born, I got a red passport, and this is what I stand for."
I have to reconcile the fact that I adore Clement Attlee and his expansion of publicly owned property in this country with the fact that white boys in council houses hated my father because his father owned property in South London as early as possible. So early, in fact, that he did not consult my grandmother. One day she lived in Shepherd's Bush, epicentre of the West Indian community in London, indeed the country, and the next she lived in Tooting, at the end of the Tube, away from the support network she'd been able to build in the five years she'd lived there. But we're a middle-class family and property is key. Decisions had to be made. Fuck knows how much that terrace is worth now, probably millions. I would sell the place in a heartbeat, take all the cash, and rub it in those white boys' faces, "Now whose country is it, little cunts?", if I could. "Aren't you supposed to be a leftist?" I indulge the viciousness I inherit from my father, Family Rottweiler, to illustrate to you that anyone, ANYONE, that wants to tell you Black and Brown people aren't racist, can't be racist, is trying to sell you something, whether it be 'salvation' by acknowledging white guilt, or a book, or evenwhite nationalism. This is perhaps too Catholic a sentiment, but be wary of people who paint themselves as inherently morally superior, rather than equally as trash as you. We can all do better, no exceptions. I have no idea how surprising my attitude is for white folk, so if you hate me after that part, I completely understand. Hopefully you understand why I did it, at least. If not, let's get back to the programme, shall we?
VII - On Antiracism, And Who Gets To Do It
There's been a lot of antiracism in the news recently, which is nice, I guess. First, Stormzy said the country was "racist, 100%", which people willfully misinterpreted as meaning the whole country was entirely composed of racists, which obviously isn't true. Then Dave went off at the Brits, adding bars to his already-pretty-racially-charged single Black that made the kind of person that reads the Spectator go into conniptions. Then Dawn Butler made the correct assertion that Boris Johnson is racist on Politics Live and offended everyone. You'll note that I agree with every point being made. So what's my problem?Put simply, none of this WORKED. I wasn't expecting Dave to end racism with a piano, otherwise Stevie would've had us covered nearly fifty years ago, but the people we need to listen to this kind of thing most, Spectator readers and Star readers, upper-middle-class toffs and "left behind" precariats, find this shit abhorrent. This Spectator article highlights everything so perfectly I'm surprised I didn't write it myself. You'll never guess which personality disorder is to blame (the answer may shock you!!!!).
"Plenty of people are pretending this morning that they actually knew who Dave was the day before yesterday." = "haha no one even knows who you are and that means I don't have to take your arguments at face value and that means I don't have to change." Surprise, honey, it's narcissism again.
"But Dave’s crude pop at Boris, plus a line about the alleged mistreatment of Meghan Markle, made it all come off like a ragbag of liberal-left one-liners about how racist Britain is and the evils of Toryism and the redtop press." I've explained how there are two mainstreams in America already. Britain's no different. You got your Charlie Brooker, Stewart Lee, Adam Curtis, "Guardianista" (to quote the same article) side, who mostly 'control' the media and small parts of Britain government-wise, and you have Boris et al, who mostly control the government and small parts of the media (like the Telegraph). Dave is speaking boilerplate liberal truth, the Spectator isn't wrong about that. But Grenfell's still fucked, isn't it? Surely if Dave were the establishment, that'd be sorted already? Almost as if the writer's being dishonest with himself and with his readers so no one has to change. Frankly unthinkable.
"What’s more, this degradation of the word ‘racist’, its defining down to basically mean anyone someone disagrees with, has clouded the discussion of racism and fostered a lot of unnecessary resentment. The r-word has become little more than a weapon in the culture war, and this will only make locating and challenging real racism more difficult." Remember what I said about the n-word being tantamount to the r-word? That's in the interest of racists. When racism is a really, really big word that only applies to, like, Hitler and a select few others, that means you can't call out subtle shit without looking like a nutcase. "People keep touching my hair without asking me!" "I mean it's not exactly the fucking Holocaust, is it, Sprezz?" Argument finished, reason to change nullified.
I could go on and on, but I'd like to focus on us man instead for a bit. We do have to change tack if we want things to change, otherwise we'll end up thoroughly disillusioned, reading the Spectator in a semi-detached house on the outskirts of Reigate with nothing but our rugby full colours to comfort us. How do we actually tackle racism? Step one is standardising how we use "racism". Obviously impossible because there is no Académie de Gauchisme to police our langauge the way there is for French, but hear me out. You have to make racism a smaller word. If it's a career-ender from which you can basically never recover people will say "If I'm going to hell, I'm going first class," and not change. That's not narcissism for once, that's just simple analysis of the situation. Again, this is well papist, but there has to be a way to repent, and to be if not a "good" person, then at the very least a person who is not irrevocably fucked. I've actually heard people say this from time to time. Unfortunately they go on to continue to use it like the nuclear bomb of the discourse, which nullifies the point.
Step two? Less obviously Telegraph-baiting anti-British lies like this from smarmy cunts like Kumar, Sarkar, et cetera.
"Hello, I'm a foreigner here to introduce a song about how England (and they do mean England) is fucking pointless"— san vicente guaita fan account (@volvicstorm98) January 31, 2020
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"WAAAAAAHHHHH why is everyone mad?????"
I am TIRED, blud https://t.co/OXaYXe5nVi
"Why do you hate people of colo(u)r who aren't afraid to express their opinions?" I don't, I just hate jarring fucks like you, Nish. The thing that's really difficult to explain to people who aren't immigrants is the love/hate relationship with their new countries. Again, that's what I'm trying to elucidate in this post. My grandmother still can't talk about her nursing days without retreating into a mixture of pain and rage, I hate people I've never met that upset my father, but my grandparents were also brought up loving the "mother country," and probably have a better understanding of the positive and negatives of the empire than most English-by-birth people. One of my favourite books of all time is Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James, a Trinidadian Marxist but more importantly a Trinidadian cricket fan, and the reverence which he writes about British heroes like W.G. Grace is astounding. In the West Indies at least, that generation has a certain respect for this country, and in making stuff like this, not only are you fucking lying - of course Britain has invented things - you are alienating anyone with even a smidgen of pride in their country of origin, whether black or white. Perhaps this is difficult to understand if you have never left Goldsmith's, but a lot of people, myself included, still like the United Kingdom in spite of everything.
"The United Kingdom that rejected your grandparents?" Yeah. "The United Kingdom that resents your father's success and ascent into the middle classes?" The very same. "The United Kingdom that will never truly accept you as one of its own because of the colour of your skin, no matter how much tea you consume?" Listen, yeah, he's evil, but I can change him. It's complicated.
Unfortunately, presentation helps. There's a Stewart-Lee-looking fellow screaming "Racist scum, off our street", asking "Who protects the fascists?" in the Brighton part of Angry, White, and Proud. That's really not the kind of person you want doing this. He looks too much like how you'd expect a guardianista to look, and he has no relevance to the skinheads he's fighting. It's much too easy to brush him off with a "What would you know, posh poofter!" Like I've said, smarmy SOAS graduates well versed in both the language of intersectionality and exactly how to get on the BBC whenever they need a PoC talking head? They're not helping either. You're elitist AND foreign, you are everything this country's working class hates. Finally, the kind of person who gets super into Antifa is, like the South London Infidels or Choudary's backup dancers, a bit of a loser - hence their complete immersion in politics - and they tend to flaunt this. Put simply, you lot look like bellends and you would absolutely get your arses handed to you in a scrap. This is bad because I'm not sure if you lot clock what you're getting into? Colin: "I'd be 'appy breakin' bones. I'd be 'appy 'URTIN'em."
Register the vitriol. H's dropped harder than my dreadlocked skull on
the concrete. I am so serious about this that I've resorted to using
exploitative Coatesian "black bodies" language, man. This is what you
are up against. These people will kill you without a second thought, and then your mum will have to bury you in a blood-spattered fucking Waluigi costume.
The final step is outlined by Dave himself. When he begins to speak about Jack Merritt he says: "We never had the same background, culture, colour, or past, but you devoted your life to giving others a chance." That's it. Take each person as they come, give people a chance, solidarity over identity groupings. In my opinion you will change more racists' opinions by being a foreigner and not a total cunt, than by writing for Horrible Histories or appearing on Politics Live. Annoying as it was, Dave doing Thiago Silva with that white kid at Glasto will do just as much as his performance at the Brits in the long run.
James, socialist that he was, understood this too. On West Indian legend (and I do not mean that lightly, the man was one of the greatest batsmen our islands have ever produced and a key factor in the independence of Trinidad) Learie Constantine moving to the Lancashire town of Nelson to play cricket, he wrote: "there had been prejudice at first, but by 1932 the Constantine family were Nelson citizens. When he finally decided to leave, all of Nelson asked him to stay. He had conquered the hearts of the Nelson people. What is not known is that the Nelson people conquered him." As someone who has accidentally followed in James's and Constantine's footsteps by moving to an overwhelmingly white Lancashire town as A Coloured, I can attest that it is a bit weird at first but if you just grow the fuck up a second and connect with people on other shit than your skin tone you'll do wonderfully. If Constantine can do it in 19fucking32, one of three blacks in the entire town, you can manage it as 3% of the country's population. Dave managed to be friends with Jack until tragedy struck, you'll be fine. I'm not saying racism is fine (I refer you to part II), I'm not saying you never call shit out, I'm just saying you can, and will, survive.
Paul remains part of the movement, and here's where things get sensitive. References to assault and that, innit.
Paul is on his jihad, traversing the country spreading the gospel of "not racist, just don't like 'em," and then the Rotherham news comes out and him and his goons are proven correct - Muslims ARE vile, they ARE anti-British, they don't respect our laws, AND the government is willing to cover up for them. Is Paul mad? He is positively SALIVATING at the prospect, there is nothing he wants to hear more than "Muslims have been noncing kids". Muslims noncing kids means another day out, another chance to wave the beautiful white and red. Muslims noncing kids is drawing Manchester United away in the cup.
I think the obsession with nonces is revealing. Remember Operation Yewtree? Yeah, that thing that said to basically everyone in this country of a certain vintage, "everyone you ever saw in the media was a kiddy-fiddler. No, like, fucking all of them, man. Even him, you ask? Oh, ESPECIALLY him, Jesus Christ." That's a big blow, especially if you're quite a patriotic person. The BBC is one of our national institutions, and I imagine finding out it was infested with filth was quite a jolt. How do you recover your sense of national pride? Find a culture worse than yours. And hence:
"We will have a nationalist government, and we will stamp out all the sickness they've brought into this country."
It was them Pakis that brought the sickness, was it? Amazing that Jimmy Savile even had time to do Hajj in between all the assault, but Jim'll fix shit like that, I guess? This is, in my humble opinion, a cope.
The documentarian plays his part as turn-a-blind-eye Guardianista with aplomb, a really impressive display:
Paul: "Every single one of them [nonces] was a Pakistani Muslim."
Doc: "Oh well that's just individuals, though, isn't it?"
Unfortunately Paul isn't wrong, and to just ignore the structural causes cause it's racist is Peak Bullshit Leftism. It's gross to think about, but I think you can quite easily combine the mutual hatred between British Asian and White British people, people being paedos, having a non-English first language that allows foreign groups to remain relatively insular and keep their distance from said White British people, and an institution in the South Yorkshire police that was deathly afraid of being called racist because racism is such a massive accusation, and end up with what happened in Rotherham. Or you can call it individuals and learn nothing. I don't know, whichever one saves more kids, I'm not arsed, me.
Do not mistake me for a Paul fan. I think it's actually most revealing that one of the South London Infidels says gross shit about his daughter early on and no one bats an eye. This is the smartest move the director makes. These guys aren't purely good people on a righteous crusade. They are, without doubt, mostly cunts. You just need to know why.
I mentioned how funny losers are earlier. The other thing about losers is you can extract pathos from their existences just as effectively as bathos. Four Lions spoilers, but when Faisal dies, it is legitimately quite sad, even though, or perhaps precisely because, he died after stacking carrying a shitload of explosive. When Omar walks into Boots in his marathon costume and reluctantly bombs the place, it is of course patently fucking ridiculous, but it's also a brother doing the last thing he can do for his almost certainly doomed idiot brother. Rubber Dinghy fucking Rapids, bro.
And then it comes out that Andy, who we saw in Tottenham earlier, lost his son in Afghanistan, and it all becomes clear. It puts what he said on the high street into perspective - "Tracking people like [Abu Hamza, Anjem Choudary, etc] makes it worth it, because at least then I've tried, you know?" It's utterly painful to watch. There's no political cure for heartbreak and the madness that follows. I know bereavement, it's my wheelhouse. I know the delusions it causes, I know the gaps that it leaves, I know the depths, and the cliffs, that it drives you to. My life story begins with my father deciding not to drive off Beachy Head (for you non-Brits, this is kind of our "Official Place Where You Top Yourself," a sharp drop into the English Channel) after losing my mother soon after I was born . It was hate that turned him back along the A23 before he reached Eastbourne, seeing the insurance headquarters that stood to profit off his decision and deciding they didn't deserve the money. Hate runs through my blood, just as it runs through his, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Hate is the most powerful political tool there is - sure, love is all you need if you're an incredibly rich Liverpudlian, but try winning votes with love alone. Try producing anything of note with only love. Try making anything happen with only love. Pussyhole. So I understand where the impulse comes from, indeed I respect it more than someone who "just wants us all to get along" but wants nothing to change to make that happen except the gender of the prime minister. That none of his friends can stop wanking off about Muslims - and it is wanking off, don't get it twisted, demos are edging and the slap on the wrist from the rozzers is the nut - for one picosecond to try and help this guy grieve properly, sickens me. I don't even care if he stops hating Muslims, I'd just like him to try and process it in a different way, if only to see what happens. You may achieve some sense of community by joining people like this, but it's not real, it's not useful, it's still identity groupings over real bonds, they will drop you the moment you stop helping them, and they will drive you mad. I hope Andy got out, but I doubt that he did.
That doesn't mean I don't still give a shit. Do you think I would have written this many words if I didn't? This country is on its fucking knees, between Brexit, pandemics, crumbling infrastructure, crumbling stock markets, housing crises, need I go on? Basically everywhere that isn't London, from industrial powerhouses like Newcastle, to Brexit voting Labour heartlands like Wakefield, to tiny fishing villages like Heysham, is pointless in this economy, and that causes all sorts of problems. And all some people want to do is "start a dialogue" about racism. I essentially flit between needing to singlehandedly save the whole country and needing to kill myself with distressing amounts of rum before things get any worse.
If protesting alt-right shit is incredibly important dangerous work, you look like morons when they come in tactical warfare LARP and you arrive in your fuckin waluigi costume; if you (correctly) discern this 'battle' as performative nonsense you don't get to lord it over us— san vicente guaita fan account (@volvicstorm98) January 20, 2020
The final step is outlined by Dave himself. When he begins to speak about Jack Merritt he says: "We never had the same background, culture, colour, or past, but you devoted your life to giving others a chance." That's it. Take each person as they come, give people a chance, solidarity over identity groupings. In my opinion you will change more racists' opinions by being a foreigner and not a total cunt, than by writing for Horrible Histories or appearing on Politics Live. Annoying as it was, Dave doing Thiago Silva with that white kid at Glasto will do just as much as his performance at the Brits in the long run.
James, socialist that he was, understood this too. On West Indian legend (and I do not mean that lightly, the man was one of the greatest batsmen our islands have ever produced and a key factor in the independence of Trinidad) Learie Constantine moving to the Lancashire town of Nelson to play cricket, he wrote: "there had been prejudice at first, but by 1932 the Constantine family were Nelson citizens. When he finally decided to leave, all of Nelson asked him to stay. He had conquered the hearts of the Nelson people. What is not known is that the Nelson people conquered him." As someone who has accidentally followed in James's and Constantine's footsteps by moving to an overwhelmingly white Lancashire town as A Coloured, I can attest that it is a bit weird at first but if you just grow the fuck up a second and connect with people on other shit than your skin tone you'll do wonderfully. If Constantine can do it in 19fucking32, one of three blacks in the entire town, you can manage it as 3% of the country's population. Dave managed to be friends with Jack until tragedy struck, you'll be fine. I'm not saying racism is fine (I refer you to part II), I'm not saying you never call shit out, I'm just saying you can, and will, survive.
There, now racism is solved and we can get back to the documentary. You're fucking welcome.
VIII - La Dénouement
I don't buy Colin's heel-face turn. It feels way too fourth-quarter-of-Kitchen-Nightmares, way too much like the documentarian decided it needed to end on a happy note. Nonetheless, if we take him at face value, we see another point: "All this anger, all this crap that I've been getting involved with is not to the hatred of other people, it's because I don't actually like myself... there's a lot of lost people in the movement, people with no jobs, people where no one cares about 'em... if you're new to [the far right groups], it's a wonderful feeling, empowering, it gives you, someone who doesn't have the confidence, you feel like you're part of something." Remember Hoffer? You get involved in extremism because of dissatisfaction with the self. The problem is, the movement cannot ever let you fix yourself, because then you'll leave. You have to get out to get better, and you have to get better to get out.Paul remains part of the movement, and here's where things get sensitive. References to assault and that, innit.
Paul is on his jihad, traversing the country spreading the gospel of "not racist, just don't like 'em," and then the Rotherham news comes out and him and his goons are proven correct - Muslims ARE vile, they ARE anti-British, they don't respect our laws, AND the government is willing to cover up for them. Is Paul mad? He is positively SALIVATING at the prospect, there is nothing he wants to hear more than "Muslims have been noncing kids". Muslims noncing kids means another day out, another chance to wave the beautiful white and red. Muslims noncing kids is drawing Manchester United away in the cup.
I think the obsession with nonces is revealing. Remember Operation Yewtree? Yeah, that thing that said to basically everyone in this country of a certain vintage, "everyone you ever saw in the media was a kiddy-fiddler. No, like, fucking all of them, man. Even him, you ask? Oh, ESPECIALLY him, Jesus Christ." That's a big blow, especially if you're quite a patriotic person. The BBC is one of our national institutions, and I imagine finding out it was infested with filth was quite a jolt. How do you recover your sense of national pride? Find a culture worse than yours. And hence:
"We will have a nationalist government, and we will stamp out all the sickness they've brought into this country."
It was them Pakis that brought the sickness, was it? Amazing that Jimmy Savile even had time to do Hajj in between all the assault, but Jim'll fix shit like that, I guess? This is, in my humble opinion, a cope.
The documentarian plays his part as turn-a-blind-eye Guardianista with aplomb, a really impressive display:
Paul: "Every single one of them [nonces] was a Pakistani Muslim."
Doc: "Oh well that's just individuals, though, isn't it?"
Unfortunately Paul isn't wrong, and to just ignore the structural causes cause it's racist is Peak Bullshit Leftism. It's gross to think about, but I think you can quite easily combine the mutual hatred between British Asian and White British people, people being paedos, having a non-English first language that allows foreign groups to remain relatively insular and keep their distance from said White British people, and an institution in the South Yorkshire police that was deathly afraid of being called racist because racism is such a massive accusation, and end up with what happened in Rotherham. Or you can call it individuals and learn nothing. I don't know, whichever one saves more kids, I'm not arsed, me.
Do not mistake me for a Paul fan. I think it's actually most revealing that one of the South London Infidels says gross shit about his daughter early on and no one bats an eye. This is the smartest move the director makes. These guys aren't purely good people on a righteous crusade. They are, without doubt, mostly cunts. You just need to know why.
I mentioned how funny losers are earlier. The other thing about losers is you can extract pathos from their existences just as effectively as bathos. Four Lions spoilers, but when Faisal dies, it is legitimately quite sad, even though, or perhaps precisely because, he died after stacking carrying a shitload of explosive. When Omar walks into Boots in his marathon costume and reluctantly bombs the place, it is of course patently fucking ridiculous, but it's also a brother doing the last thing he can do for his almost certainly doomed idiot brother. Rubber Dinghy fucking Rapids, bro.
And then it comes out that Andy, who we saw in Tottenham earlier, lost his son in Afghanistan, and it all becomes clear. It puts what he said on the high street into perspective - "Tracking people like [Abu Hamza, Anjem Choudary, etc] makes it worth it, because at least then I've tried, you know?" It's utterly painful to watch. There's no political cure for heartbreak and the madness that follows. I know bereavement, it's my wheelhouse. I know the delusions it causes, I know the gaps that it leaves, I know the depths, and the cliffs, that it drives you to. My life story begins with my father deciding not to drive off Beachy Head (for you non-Brits, this is kind of our "Official Place Where You Top Yourself," a sharp drop into the English Channel) after losing my mother soon after I was born . It was hate that turned him back along the A23 before he reached Eastbourne, seeing the insurance headquarters that stood to profit off his decision and deciding they didn't deserve the money. Hate runs through my blood, just as it runs through his, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Hate is the most powerful political tool there is - sure, love is all you need if you're an incredibly rich Liverpudlian, but try winning votes with love alone. Try producing anything of note with only love. Try making anything happen with only love. Pussyhole. So I understand where the impulse comes from, indeed I respect it more than someone who "just wants us all to get along" but wants nothing to change to make that happen except the gender of the prime minister. That none of his friends can stop wanking off about Muslims - and it is wanking off, don't get it twisted, demos are edging and the slap on the wrist from the rozzers is the nut - for one picosecond to try and help this guy grieve properly, sickens me. I don't even care if he stops hating Muslims, I'd just like him to try and process it in a different way, if only to see what happens. You may achieve some sense of community by joining people like this, but it's not real, it's not useful, it's still identity groupings over real bonds, they will drop you the moment you stop helping them, and they will drive you mad. I hope Andy got out, but I doubt that he did.
 |
| Lmao imagine letting a sad thing just be sad! It's 2020, grow up! There's that bathos bullshit I was on in part V!!! #MoodWhiplashGANG |
IX - On My Political Aspirations
I was always supposed to be Prime Minister. I was the oldest one in the year in primary school, and this gave me some level of responsibility. I did the best performances in our school plays - my Captain Hook remains unrivaled to this day. I even actually won the prime ministership in Year 6, to coincide with the 2010 elections, God how far away they seem. The cherry on the cake is that I had to run as a Tory, considering my present views. I was supposed to go to Oxford and study PPE, and I swear I really did get the offer. Unfortunately I discovered, in the following order: bereavement; Deftones; unrequited love; and Football Manager; and now I'm this person instead. Borderline alcoholic, borderline racist, TLP devotee, absolutely no shot at being anything other than the best guitarist in Lancaster and kind of a cutie if you squint right.That doesn't mean I don't still give a shit. Do you think I would have written this many words if I didn't? This country is on its fucking knees, between Brexit, pandemics, crumbling infrastructure, crumbling stock markets, housing crises, need I go on? Basically everywhere that isn't London, from industrial powerhouses like Newcastle, to Brexit voting Labour heartlands like Wakefield, to tiny fishing villages like Heysham, is pointless in this economy, and that causes all sorts of problems. And all some people want to do is "start a dialogue" about racism. I essentially flit between needing to singlehandedly save the whole country and needing to kill myself with distressing amounts of rum before things get any worse.
This is not particularly helpful, politically. And so I try to do better. I hope I've made it clear why even if I had done everything properly it couldn't be me to fix things. I am reminded of a Deftones lyric, from "Korea": "work your niche." My niche is very obviously not running the country, it's writing shit like this. If I can convince a few people to change their view, to tackle racism even a little bit differently, based on this, then I've done alright.
This article is obviously much too dense to effectively change loads of people's minds, so sometimes I wonder what I'd say to the general public. Maybe something like "I sincerely love England. This is the country that played a massive role in the Atlantic Slave Trade, but also the country that abolished the trade for itself, and bullied Portugal, Sweden, France, Spain, and the Netherlands into prohibiting their trade. This is the country of a belligerent Kipling, whose hate for the Germans would never abate, and of the benevolent Quakers, who just want everyone to be friends and eat oats together. The England that produced Millwall and the England that produced Corinthians. There is good and bad in this country, just as there is anywhere else, and since I am essentially stuck here, since hot weather does not agree with me and that prevents me from moving "home", it is a goal of mine to find that good. This is my home, I know there is good in it, and I love it. I hope you'll join me."
But I know how that comes across. I know how I come across. There I go, hair in a mess, nails newly painted, dark skin freshly cocoa buttered, off to tell working class people about their own country. About how wonderfully understanding and enlightened I am to still be bothering, in spite of white folks and their terribly gauche, terribly racist demeanors. Go fuck yourself, you middle class Oxford reject black cunt. And so I consider the retreat, the defensive speech: "I'm much too good for you fuckwits, Black people are much too good for your godforsaken country, I hope the Tories kill you all, I'm off to Bridgetown to sun myself and not be called any slurs, yeah?"
But I don't believe that either. I do see a way out, it just doesn't really involve me. And so I suppose what I'd actually write to people in North Shields, in Wakefield, over the river in Heysham, is "You deserve so much fucking better. You deserve someone that will bring back the railways, bring back jobs, support the boys, win, lose or draw, account for the dead boys in your towns, but it can't be me. I'm sorry. I'm too Londoner and too posh and too black and too stupid and there is much too much hate running through my blood to adequately serve you, and you know that. Never forget you deserve that saviour, though. If you need any incomprehensible articles or twinkly emo bullshit, you know where to find me. Yours sincerely, his mother's black eyed angel, his father's little fucking gibbon, Sprezz." Oh, and speaking of gibbon:
This article is obviously much too dense to effectively change loads of people's minds, so sometimes I wonder what I'd say to the general public. Maybe something like "I sincerely love England. This is the country that played a massive role in the Atlantic Slave Trade, but also the country that abolished the trade for itself, and bullied Portugal, Sweden, France, Spain, and the Netherlands into prohibiting their trade. This is the country of a belligerent Kipling, whose hate for the Germans would never abate, and of the benevolent Quakers, who just want everyone to be friends and eat oats together. The England that produced Millwall and the England that produced Corinthians. There is good and bad in this country, just as there is anywhere else, and since I am essentially stuck here, since hot weather does not agree with me and that prevents me from moving "home", it is a goal of mine to find that good. This is my home, I know there is good in it, and I love it. I hope you'll join me."
But I know how that comes across. I know how I come across. There I go, hair in a mess, nails newly painted, dark skin freshly cocoa buttered, off to tell working class people about their own country. About how wonderfully understanding and enlightened I am to still be bothering, in spite of white folks and their terribly gauche, terribly racist demeanors. Go fuck yourself, you middle class Oxford reject black cunt. And so I consider the retreat, the defensive speech: "I'm much too good for you fuckwits, Black people are much too good for your godforsaken country, I hope the Tories kill you all, I'm off to Bridgetown to sun myself and not be called any slurs, yeah?"
But I don't believe that either. I do see a way out, it just doesn't really involve me. And so I suppose what I'd actually write to people in North Shields, in Wakefield, over the river in Heysham, is "You deserve so much fucking better. You deserve someone that will bring back the railways, bring back jobs, support the boys, win, lose or draw, account for the dead boys in your towns, but it can't be me. I'm sorry. I'm too Londoner and too posh and too black and too stupid and there is much too much hate running through my blood to adequately serve you, and you know that. Never forget you deserve that saviour, though. If you need any incomprehensible articles or twinkly emo bullshit, you know where to find me. Yours sincerely, his mother's black eyed angel, his father's little fucking gibbon, Sprezz." Oh, and speaking of gibbon:
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