Monday 17 March 2008

The myths behind white guilt


By Sarah: Maid of Albion

Part 1: The slave trade

One of the many weapons which our opponents use against us, and also against others of European ancestry, is often termed historical white guilt. Those who hate us point accusingly to our Empire, and to our involvement in the transatlantic slave trade with the implication that we, particularly the British and European Americans, are uniquely guilty of crimes against other races. They believe that, by making us feel guilty about our past, we will be less inclined to object to what is done to us on behalf of our alleged victims.

However, as in so many areas, the truth does not suit their agenda, so, as ever, they resort to their favoured tactic, and lie with the ease and practiced familiarity of an ageing harlot unzipping her client's flies.

In our schools and on our television screens, they teach an entirely false and misleading version of history, and sadly it is one which at least two generations of our children now accept as unquestioned fact. Our empire, the greatest the world has ever known, and something I plan to focus on in a later post, is presented as being a cruel and oppressive force which was primarily concerned with plundering other nations and exploiting their peoples.

The story they tell us about the slave trade is also a lie, it is a lie which they use primarily against Britain and America and it is upon that lie which I will focus in this post.

The lies and myths about slavery are told with the same cynicism as those who voted to ban hunting with hounds in the pretence that they were motivated by animal welfare concerns. So intent are they in presenting slavery as a white against black crime that they actively seek to play down the fact that an estimated 27 million people are living in various forms of slavery right now in the 21st Century, more than twice the number transported to America during the total transatlantic slave trade with the effect that less is done than otherwise would be to help those currently in slavery but are an embarrassment over which a politically correct veil must be drawn.

Moreover they, our enemies, also misrepresent the truth about historical slavery. Transatlantic slavery did not exist in a vacuum, the slave trade was not invented by Americans or Europeans. Slavery had been part of the human condition since the earliest civilisations, look to the Torah, the Old Testament and the Koran, all of which have copious references to slavery written, a millennium or more before America was discovered and whilst the most Europeans lived in tribes and wore woad.

The historical revisionists of the left keep trying to tell us that cradle of civilisation was in North Africa, but they forget to mention that, if it was, it was built by slaves.

Even during the few centuries in which Europe and America were involved in slavery, we were not even the main players. Slavery was being carried out throughout the world, particularly in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The African, Arab and Asian involvement in slavery existed long before the transatlantic slave trade, and continued well after abolition, and involved far greater numbers of people.

A wrong is a wrong whoever commits it, and it is inequitable, and arguably racist, to hold one group more accountable than another on the grounds of pigmentation. I am not stating these facts in order to excuse the transatlantic slave trade, but merely to set it in context, and in perspective. You can not single out one or two nations for unique condemnation, when, in truth they merely, and briefly, got involved in what almost everyone else was doing, and which other nations had been doing for thousands of years .

This is particularly inequitable given that, in 1807, Britain was one of the fist nations on planet earth to abolish the slave trade and then through her Empire brought about the abolition of slavery across a quarter of the earth's surface a mere 26 years later. (a stunning achievement given that the British Empire included many lands where slavery had been a fact of life for thousands of years, and that this huge task was achieved in an age before aeroplanes, helicopters and satellite communications.)
Furthermore throughout most of the 19th Century the Royal Navy was actively involved in combating the slave trade as perpetrated by other nations by so doing we enforced abolition well beyond our own dominions.

Indeed British and other European colonialism itself, far from oppressing our subject nations, played a pivotal role in freeing them from the threat of being captured by Arab slavers, castrated (unlike in America, there are few descendants of those enslaved by Islam) and shipped to Arabia to be worked to death.

If you look to the history of Eastern Africa in the 19th Century, Britain was the major force in ending the Arab slave trade from places like Uganda, Northern Kenya and Zanzibar. We are repeatedly reminded of the slave caves around the coast of Western Africa, used by transatlantic slave traders, however there are similar caves on the east of Africa from whence the cargo travelled north and east, over far more centuries and in far greater numbers.

Another point supporting the fact that European colonialism brought about the end of slavery is that the only African country where it was still legal to own slaves well into the 1920's was Ethiopia, one of the only African nations which was never colonised and even then it was only abolished in order to gain Ethiopia access to the League of Nations.

On the other side of the Atlantic, also in 1807, the US Congress banned the importation of slaves and, 54 years later, well over half a million young, white, Americans died in a war fought partly in order to free the slaves. I am aware of no similar gesture on the part of those Arab, Asian and African states which had owned and traded in slaves for millennia before Britain's comparitively brief, three hundred year, involvement, including those, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Yemen, Oman and Mauritania, which didn't get around to banning slavery until 100 years after the American Civil war (and where some would say forms of slavery continue to this day) or in Mauritania which only imposed a ban last year or Sudan where slavery allegedly still exists.

How odd that we don't hear calls for reparations from those countries where slaves were openly owned within living memory. Of course, silly me, they are not white European nations and can't be held responsible for what they do.

That said, I personally see no justification in holding current generations of Arabs or Africans responsible for the acts of earlier generations (even though those were quite recent generations) Guilt dies with the guilty, inherited or racial guilt is an abstract and unsupportable concept, which is, at its heart racist. However, it is a guilt which we in Europe and North America are expected to carry and acknowledge, despite the fact that the guilt of our forefathers is so much less than the guilt of others and that we have done so much more than others to right a universal wrong.

The staggeringly important fact about the slave trade is not that Britain and America joined in for a while, it is that we, and we alone brought it to an end.

Instead of suffering white guilt over slavery, by comparison with many other nations, we British and our US cousins, have a great deal to be proud of.


7 comments:

Like The Roman said...

Another fantastic article, Sarah - eloquent and insightful, as always. Keep it up!

Britain First said...

Excellent article, Green Arrow. These days being white is almost something we're supposed to apologise for. But as you've shown, the truth is that we've got hell of a lot to be proud of.

Anonymous said...

Slaves shipped across the Atlantic from West Africa by Western countries - 12 million, 90% of which survived.

Slaves shipped up the East coast of Africa, and across the sahara, by the Islamics - 140 million , of which 90% died.

Westerners did not enter the interior of Africa to make slaves of previously free people - they bought people already enslaved either by neighbouring tribes or by Islamics, and taken to the coast to be sold.

Islamics both bought already enslaved people, AND mounted expeditions to the interior to capture previously free people.

Islamics also took enormous numbers of Hindu slaves from India. Nobody knows the numbers, but we do know that they killed approx 80 million Hindus within India, so it probably wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that they also took that many (or more) slaves. So many of these slaves died en-route back to Arabia that the Hindus named the slave route "Hindu Death", or, as it is better known today - "Hindu Kush".

The slavery from Africa, East and West, was all but brought to an end by the British Empire in the 19th century - spending more ending it than was ever made in profit from it in earlier days. The only parts of the Islamic slave trade in Africa that weren't brought to an end by our people were those parts that took place entirely within areas controlled by Islam.

And the Hindu massacres and enslavement were brought to an end by ... well, wouldn't you know it ... the British Empire. I have long thought (a personal view only) that one of the reasons why the British found it so easy to control India with so few people, and are well liked there even to this very day by so many Indians, was because we brought the Islamic Terror to an end.

The Barabary muslims took anywhere between 1 and 3 million white slaves from Europe, with their slave raids ranging as far north as Iceland, and including the British Isles. They virtually denuded the European Mediterranean coasts of people. This practise was brought to an end by, essentially, the Americans (thank you folks).

Saudi Arabia officially ended slavery in 1963. Yemen and Oman officially ended it in 1970 (all credit to Sultan Qaboos - it was in the first year he came to power - in a coup organised and carried out by ... ah, those damned British again). I personally knew a man in Oman in the early seventies who had been a slave.

Slavery, though officially ended in Mauretania, still exists there on a large scale. And it still exists within Sudan - where they still engage in slave raids.

So why does Whitey get all the stick, and demands for compensation while Islam gets a free pass?

All those black slave descendants in the Western world who now live in advanced Western countries and getting the benefits of this should thank their lucky stars that ancestors of theirs were taken from Africa. Muhammed Ali (Cassius Clay) said exactly that.

Otherwise they would today be living the life of, for example, a Congolese peasant.

Anonymous said...

Where is the outcry today when Brits are becoming slaves in their own country?
We all seem to just accept whatever injustice is done towards ourselves by our own politicians.
We are taxed to breaking point and for what?
They do it because We allow it!
Harriet Harman is proposing even more anti white laws that will be fully protected from any challenge.
Will we complain? NO!
Should immigration cease today the dye has been cast for our own demise and we still do nothing!
Slavery is rife in the world today but marxist eyes never see it unless white's are involved.


Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)
White Need Not Apply
By A. Millar
Created 2008-03-02 23:27
It can hardly be doubted that Britain is currently in the grips of a revolutionary government, even if its revolution is protracted and in comparison with those of the last century. As with any such historic upheaval there has been an exodus of those who have found their social standing in rapid yet constant decline. According to recent reports nearly a million “Britons” have left in the last seven years, with most heading to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Most of these emigrants are middle class, yet the White working classes – who have no such possibility of escape abroad – also feel that their position in society has declined further, if it were possible, from bottom to being buried far beneath the surface. As BBC boss Richard Klein has remarked in a recent article for the Daily Mail, “many of the white working class see themselves as an oppressed ethnic minority too, and lower down the ladder than other groups on the hierarchy of victimhood.”

But, do terms such as “Briton” and even “White” really apply in British politics today? No doubt many Pakistani-British and Chinese-British are emigrating with the economic growth of their familial countries, yet reports seem to suggest that the majority are British in the traditional, or ethnic sense of the word, which provokes another question. Do these emigrants, then, consider themselves British first, or Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh, or English?

Over the last decade Britain’s Labour government and its so-called “multicultural” ideology has facilitated mass immigration from Eastern Europe and the Middle East and the rise of Islam as a political force within the country, in part by continually obscuring “Britishness”, British traditions, laws, etc., and in many cases portraying them as outdated or simply bad. Notably the government’s own website for promoting the country to U.S. citizens has a section entitled “multicultural Britain” which is almost entirely devoted to the Muslim community (and most especially to praising it) though supposedly representative of contemporary society. In the subsection on “Politics”, for example, do we find the rather one-sided view that “Muslims promote universal values and champion the causes of peace, justice, tolerance, human rights, democracy and co-existence” and for this reason have entered British politics.

The same multicultural section also boasts – among many other achievements – that the many different communities of Britain feel they belong and have shared values – an assertion that flies in the face of the exodus of British people from the country. The viewer is led to the Citizenship Survey where bureaucratic fudging is apparent. Notably, while South-East Asians are broken down into Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian, and Black categorized as either Black African or Black Caribbean, there is only a single category for White people, so it is impossible to say what percentage is actually British-White. As Britain seems increasingly fragmented even among the traditional Welsh, Scottish, and English, it is also impossible to say what percentage each takes up in this inadequate category.

In every question asked Whites are either in the middle or lower, and thus far below the South East Asian groups who nearly always come top. (No doubt if Whites had been broken down along similar lines, White-British, White English, etc., would have been lower still.) Asked whether they felt able to “influence decisions in their local area and Great Britain”, however, Whites actually came bottom, with only 19 percent saying that they felt they were able to influence decision in the country, as compared to most other ethnic groups which were each in the 30 percentiles, with Bangladeshi the highest at 36 percent. Asked whether they felt able to affect decisions in their local are Whites were again by far the lowest at 37 percent, while Black Caribbean came out top, with 51 percent saying that they felt able.

In Britain indigenous ethnic nationalism is on the ascendant, with Scotland debating devolution and English nationalists calling for an English parliament and for St. George’s Day (the nation’s saint’s day) to be a national holiday in England. The rise of indigenous nationalism has undoubtedly been provoked by the government’s multicultural ideology which, it might be remarked, is really one of multi-nationalism, in which persons of every national and racial background are encouraged to speak and read their native language rather than to learn English, and to retain their customs, way of life, fly their native flag, etc. Consequently Britain is now a country composed of micro-nations, and for the first time in a millennium seems to exist in a near tribal state. But, it is also undoubtedly a reaction to the homogenization of the indigenous English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, etc. under the category ‘White’, or perhaps even ‘British’, which, under Labour, is supposed to give way to other ethnic groups and their cultures. British nationalism is thus taboo. Any suggestion by an MP that the British might have some legitimate concern about mass immigration, jobs, or housing is met with the mantra that he or she is “speaking the language of the BNP [British National Party]”, which is supposed to infer that the speaker has said something beyond the pale, rather than as endorsement of the nationalist party.

However, as England has historically been the center of power for the United Kingdom, and is often used as a synonym for Britain, English nationalism has come under fire from some politicians, even though Scottish and Welsh nationalism generally does not, and, as mentioned, ethnic nationalism of other, non-British communities within Britain, has been encouraged. Home Secretary Jack Straw has said – in the kind of language that would have got him fired if he had said it about any other ethnic group – the English are “potentially very aggressive, very violent”, and that they have historically “subjugated” the Irish, Welsh, and Scottish.

Of all of Britain’s ethnic groups, the English seem have been made increasingly politically invisible or helpless – a point that English nationalism has clearly meant to challenge. In 2007 the Steadfast Trust (then known as the Ethnic English Trust. The Steadfast Trust is Britain’s only registered charity for the ethnic English, and aims to educate young ethnic English children about their heritage, and to fight discrimination against the English) sued the Commission for Racial Equality alleging that it had:

(a) issued guidance in its codes for employers and public bodies which is wrong in law so as to conceal the legal recognition awarded to the English racial group;
(b) acted outside its legal powers by seeking to redefine the English racial group, and
(c) maintained, contrary to the Race Relations Act 1976, a policy, practice or rule of racial discrimination against the English racial group.

In fact it would seem that it is legal for employers to discriminate against an applicant on this basis, for, notably, in 2007 Abigail Howarth was barred for applying to the Environmental Agency for a trainee position because she was specifically “White English” (the indigenous White Scottish and White Welsh were nonetheless eligible to apply, as were those of every other ethnicity, of course).

Discrimination comes in more subtle forms also, and most especially in blanket labeling of different groups. It is remarkable indeed, that while the British government is able to break down Black into two groups and Asian into three it speaks only of Britons in regard to emigration and Whites in regard to problems of the youth of that large and ambiguous group. Notably, then according to several government and academic reports, poor ‘White’ boys are now the nation’s lowest achievers, coming far below those of other ethnic groups of similar income, though the Steadfast Trust contends that the poor ‘English’ boys account for the vast majority.

“British” and “White” seem now to be employed by the government in order to obscure the facts: the Bangladeshi is British and the Polish immigrant White. Or else – along with “English” – these terms are used as terms of disempowerment. The same government that champions ethnic groups from every other country seems to want to deny the indigenous ethnic groups of Britain not only their identity, history, and sense of worth, but even their right to be considered as ethnic groups. Notably, with the furor against mass immigration the Labour government has proposed closing down the ancestral visa scheme in which young people (largely from Australia and New Zealand) can apply to live and work in Britain if their father or grandfather was British. It is as if the government is saying to the near million Brits that have left, “and don’t come back”, and to those who have remained, “don’t think you are entitled to be thought of as an ethnic group or groups with historical ties and legitimate rights to this country; it’s not yours”.
SUMS IT UP NICELY! OUR COUNTRY HAS BEEN GIVEN AWAY.
CULTURAL GENOCIDE? YOU BET IT IS!

Anonymous said...

SO MUCH FOR TWO WORLD WARS THAT GAVE US FREEDOM. DID NOT LAST VERY LONG WHEN ONE CONSIDERS HOW MANY SOULS PAID FOR IT WITH THEIR LIVES.
A BRITISH POLITICIANS ANNOUNCES FREEDOM OF SPEECH MUST BE CURTAILED.
TRANSLATED BY GATES OF VIENNA STAFF HE OBVIOUSLY DID NOT WANT US HERE IN THE UK TO KNOW!

Friday, March 14, 2008
There Are Limits
by Baron Bodissey


Once upon a time Terry Davis was a Labour Party apparatchik in Birmingham, but these days he’s the General Secretary of the Council of Europe. For most of his career he concentrated on parochial affairs in his Hodge Hill constituency, but now he gets to hobnob with the movers and shakers in Strasbourg and apply his mind to the larger issues.

Such as — just to pick a random example — the necessity for a little judicious reduction in European freedom of speech.

Yesterday Mr. Davis wrote a letter that was published in the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Interestingly enough, the letter was written in Danish, and neither TB (our tireless Danish correspondent) nor I could find an English-language version. Perhaps Mr. Davis availed himself of the translation facilities at the Council of Europe headquarters in Strasbourg…?

In any case, Jyllands-Posten, in the admirable Danish tradition to which we have become accustomed, responded to Mr. Davis’ letter by publishing a lead editorial on the same day. TB has translated both items.

First, the letter:


We should be cautious
by Terry Davis, General Secretary of the Council of Europe

Freedom of speech should not be exploited as a freedom to insult

The very controversial drawings of Mohammed, depicting the prophet Mohammed, were recently reprinted in several Scandinavian countries. This happened after the arrest of three individuals who had allegedly planned to murder one of the artists.

Indignation toward yet another case of extremist violence is completely legitimate, but we should be cautious about unconsidered reactions to these sorts of events. I would like to state three points.

First: One cannot make compromises on violence. What followed the first publication of the drawings in Denmark was completely unjustified and unacceptable. The reported attempt to murder one of the artists should not only be condemned but also it should be taken to court.

Secondly: Freedom of speech is important in order for our democracies and our societies to work properly as a unit. This is secured by the European Convention of Human Rights.

Limitations

Of course I don’t think that the drawings should have been forbidden, but it is important to remember that unlike torture or the right to live, freedom of speech can be reduced under certain circumstances, which fact is mentioned in the convention it self.
- - - - - - - - -

The European Convention of Human Rights has previously insisted on such reductions in connection with a piece of art that was regarded as an insult to a faith community. Maybe it is appropriate here to mention that the religion we are talking about was not Islam. It was Christianity.

Thirdly: The drawings that were published were insulting not only to the violent minority of Muslim extremists, but also to the majority of Muslims who don’t promote violence.

This is the reason why I do not agree with the way that the Scandinavian media have reacted to this matter, with this latest escalation of the story. We all agree that violence must be condemned.

We all agree on the necessity to respect and defend freedom of speech. But I cannot see how the publication of these drawings — which have once again insulted the whole Muslim population worldwide — has had any positive effect on either of these points.

Without making any analogy to the controversy about the drawings [Then why is he bringing it in? — translator] I would like to comment on the announced release of an apparently very provocative movie about Islam, produced by the Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

Want to wreak havoc

It is not clear at this point whether this is a real movie or a just a cock-and-bull story. It seems like a cynical and irresponsible attempt to wreak havoc — due to political motives — which potentially could have huge consequences.

It is not up to me to judge whether this movie, if it exists, should be forbidden, but I don’t think that we can just hide behind freedom of speech, close our eyes, and hope that the worst won’t happen.

The fact is that freedom of speech should not be used as a freedom to insult. I hope that we in the future will be capable of reacting in these kind of situations with more empathy, tolerance and understanding. It should be possible to de-escalate these kinds of conflicts in the future without undermining the foundation of our democratic society.

And now for Jyllands-Posten’s editorial response:


Editorial: Sombre speech

“Freedom of speech is not freedom to insult” the General Secretary of Council of Europe , Terry Davis writes in a letter to the editor in today’s publication of Jyllands-Posten.

This he has misunderstood.

Freedom of expression is exactly the freedom to insult anyone within the framework of the law. It is the very essence of freedom of speech as the foundation of the democratic way of governing, that one is able to come forward with points of view which some people may find insulting, and that one is able to come forward with information that some people would like to be ignored or suppressed.

That freedom of speech should be used with grace and that you should avoid insulting people who react with wanton destruction, murder, and boycotts is now a well known point of view.

The sombre part of this affair is that it comes from the General Secretary of the Council of Europe.

The Council of Europe and its institutions, the Human Rights Commission and the Human Rights Court of Law’ have since their creation shortly after the end of WW2, been standing guard of freedom of speech, if anybody has. While national governments and national courts of law have tried to apply restrictions particularly on the media’s freedom to come forward and share controversial points of view. the Council of Europe has cut through and overruled wrong sentences and little by little changed the administration of the laws in the member states.

Denmark in 1992 appended the Human Rights Convention into Danish law, so that it is now immediately binding for Danish Court of Law.

Freedom of speech has had its best protection and defense in the human rights court of law. In this country we remember all the instances of the Danish courts were employed in the so-called Jersild case, where a journalist let some hooligans come forward with racist statements. The sentence of the hooligans was retained, but the journalist and the TV station were acquitted because it was in the interest of the public to know the very existence of the points of view that made up the foundation of the punishable statements.

The member states of the former East Bloc dictatorships have contributed to the movement of freedom of speech in the right direction. They know the consequence of suppressing freedom of speech.

Therefore it is extremely depressing that the General Secretary of Council of Europe argues for certain considerations to be upheld for people who let themselves be insulted on behalf of billions over some drawings which they could just ignore if they don’t like them.

The General Secretary also uses this opportunity to criticize the Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ movie about the Quran.

“It seems like a cynical and irresponsible attempt to wreak havoc — due to political motives — which potentially could have huge consequences,” the General Secretary writes, and continues “

It is not up to me to judge whether this movie, if it exists, should be forbidden, but I don’t think that we can just hide behind freedom of speech, close our eyes, and hope that the worst won’t happen.

“The fact is that freedom of speech should not be used as a freedom to insult. I hope that we in the future will be capable of reacting in these kind of situations with more empathy, tolerance and understanding.”

Thereby the General Secretary pathetically leans upon scared and irresolute European politicians who do not dare to stand guard on freedom of speech.

If Geert Wilders’ movie is so horrible, as some seem to think, it should be met by arguments, and if anybody should attempt to react in a criminal way this is a police matter.

The Catholic Church and parts of the UN seem to make a joint front with those who want to limit freedom and undermine democracy. The fact that the European General Secretary supports these forces is almost unbearable.

Anonymous said...

I don't give a tinkers cuss (sorry !! is that term permissible, what is a tinker anyway?) what other people think.
I am white and English and have done nothing in my life to be ashamed of.
I can't apologise for what any one has done in the past. All colours and creeds have committed atrocities, some still are!!
To quote a current avertisment
"Get over it".

Anonymous said...

A brilliant article, Sarah.

Please allow me to add one further contributing factor and that is the role of the Jew in the slave trade.

The following is an except from a book by By Rabbi Marc Lee Raphael, entitled "Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History" -

"Slave trading was a major feature of Jewish economic life in Surinam which as a major stopping-off point in the triangular trade. Both North American and Caribbean Jews played a key role in this commerce: records of a slave sale in 1707 reveal that the ten largest Jewish purchasers (10,400 guilders) spent more than 25 percent of the total funds (38,605 guilders) exchanged.

"Jewish economic life in the Dutch West Indies, as in the North American colonies, consisted primarily of mercantile communities, with large inequities in the distribution of wealth. Most Jews were shopkeepers, middlemen, or petty merchants who received encouragement and support from Dutch authorities. In Curacao, for example, Jewish communal life began after the Portuguese victory in 1654."

http://www.rense.com/general69/invo.htm