And as usual the headlines are all about lurid negativity focused on the behaviour of a few – the few who are always morons, in all countries, plus some no doubt who have had a year of soul sucking hell and poured all of that emotion into this game. The desire to demonise England, the English and particularly the working class, continues. If you treat people like animals, eventually some will become animals. But in my pub, the singing and the dancing was loud and boisterous, good humoured, then the defeat was crushing followed by magnanimous applause for the winners and a good natured if somewhat deflated walk home. No problem at all. But that doesn’t sell newspapers does it.
Excellent comment. I’m sure the experience in your pub was replicated in gatherings – large and small – right around the country, but they’ll get no coverage because narrative trumps truth.
And, sadly, the narrative is that English football yobs are xenophobic scum and anyone who tries to say different is covering their own xenophobia with cries of “Patriotism”.
The comments pages over at the Guardian are full of it this morning. It’s almost as if they enjoyed the loss, just so they could indulge in denigrating their own countrymen.
The Guardian really is a miserable, English-hating rag (but its readers don’t always adopt the same stance, judging by the comments section at least; many commenters call out its anti-Englishness). I stopped reading it years ago ’cause I was sick of being told I live in a benighted, small-minded, hateful country when my own experience of being English is that is (for the most part), a positive experience.
“The comments pages over at the Guardian are full of it this morning. It’s almost as if they enjoyed the loss, just so they could indulge in denigrating their own countrymen.“
The Guardian is in the same stable as the New York Times and the Washington Post; they’re all English hating rages; yellow journalism at it best. The comments section of the latter two especially would have the world believe that England (Wales, Scotland and Northern Island get a free pass) was a Nazi state where BAMEs, POC or ‘people of color, or whatever the current term is, are regularly abused, shot, incarcerated on a daily basis because of their color.
Good news doesn’t sell newspapers; the same can be said for a the race industry in the UK; no significant race issues and tolerant country won’t pony in the donations from billionaires or funding from government or supranational organisations; the same can be said for the so-called ‘dingy people’; each one is a cash cow for someone.
Paddy Taylor
2 years ago
Patriotism has always been a dirty word on the “Liberal” Left. To show pride in your country is treated as almost akin to joining the BNP. That attitude, skewered so well by Orwell, is the default setting for the BBC, the Guardian and the bien pensant Left.
It is the idea that any and every culture is to be celebrated – but not British culture or certainly not English culture – one can celebrate the Celtic parts of Britishness (separately) but celebrating Englishness, whatever that might be, is seen as proof of latent racism.
In their heart of hearts how many Guardian readers were not with Emily Thornberry when she tweeted her sneering white van and Cross of St George picture? As though such low-brow, working class patriotism was worthy only of scorn?
These people have infected any debate involving patriotism with a national self-loathing, the idea that patriotism is xenophobic at heart, the idea that British history is something only to apologise for.
The head-banging nationalist, convinced the British Empire was a force of unalloyed good for the world, sits at one end of the spectrum. Afua Hirsch and her cohort sits at the other end, convinced it was simply an endless parade of atrocities and depredation. Both seem as monocular and impervious to nuance as the other. Both seemingly obsessed with Empire.
Any sensible person can see that the truth lies somewhere in between those two extremes.
I’m very proud to be British. As a student of history I am well aware of terrible things that happened (usually hundreds of years before I was born) but I am still unapologetically proud to be British. This country has had an enormous impact on the world – some of it very good, some bad.
But it is our history. It for the most part happened in our ancestors’ day. Nothing I can do or say will change that history. My pride has no more bearing on it than my guilt would. Nor, for that matter, the Guardian’s disapprobation.
The Left’s line seems to be that anyone who has pride in being English has somehow admitted to something unhealthy and ‘problematic’. Why? If an Italian is proud of being Italian, would they immediately mistrust his motives in the same way? I’m willing to bet they wouldn’t.
If a Tongan speaks of his homeland with tears in his eyes, (they are, on the whole, the most deeply patriotic people I’ve ever met) would they be suspected of xenophobia and a misplaced pride? Again – I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t.
So, what is so different about a British person expressing pride in their nationality? Why does the Left automatically suspect anyone who has pride in being English of some sinister subtext?
There have been so many articles written in the last few weeks about the “rehabilitation” of English Patriotism – but that is because most of these articles were written by journalists who live in a metropolitan bubble.
Gareth Southgate raised the hackles of the Liberal Left commentariat by talking up our history. It only seemed strange to them because – thanks to the BBC and the widespread Leftist takeover of our national institutions – the prevailing attitude is that anyone who shows any pride in Britain’s wartime past is jingoistic and somehow laying claim to glories that belonged to another generation.
Yet many of those very same people who push this miserabilist bilge, also waste our time bleating that we should all shoulder the guilt for anything bad done by this country in its imperial history.
Admiration for heroes in the very recent past is backwards looking, yet we’re somehow on the hook for reparations to the colonised 200 years later? It doesn’t seem a consistent position.
Why should the statute of limitations for guilt run so much longer than that of glory?
The head-banging nationalist, convinced the British Empire was a force of unalloyed good for the world, sits at one end of the spectrum. Afua Hirsch and her cohort sits at the other end, convinced it was simply an endless parade of atrocities and depredation. Both seem as monocular and impervious to nuance as the other. Both seemingly obsessed with Empire.
But the first specimen is hardly to be found. For years, the only mention of Empire was in the Guardian, the writers utterly convinced that that’s all anyone in this country talks about. But it was only them.
You come across it elsewhere on occasion now, in rebuttal of a Guardian-esque tirade, but even then, it’s usually a measured response pointing out the good and the bad of British history.
You are right. There is an obsession about the Empire in this country. But this obsession is nowhere but in the minds of the hyper-liberals and anti-patriots.
But, as obsessives are prone to doing, they project their own strange fancies into the minds of others: they imagine that they are surrounded by millions (eek! the racists! the Brexit voters!) yearning for the days of Empire to return.
Thing is, when was the last time you met anyone who even thinks about a return of Empire, let alone anyone who would find that a desirable notion?
Dan Gleeballs
2 years ago
Good article. Even cheered me up a bit, so thank you.
And as usual the headlines are all about lurid negativity focused on the behaviour of a few – the few who are always morons, in all countries, plus some no doubt who have had a year of soul sucking hell and poured all of that emotion into this game. The desire to demonise England, the English and particularly the working class, continues. If you treat people like animals, eventually some will become animals. But in my pub, the singing and the dancing was loud and boisterous, good humoured, then the defeat was crushing followed by magnanimous applause for the winners and a good natured if somewhat deflated walk home. No problem at all. But that doesn’t sell newspapers does it.
Excellent comment. I’m sure the experience in your pub was replicated in gatherings – large and small – right around the country, but they’ll get no coverage because narrative trumps truth.
And, sadly, the narrative is that English football yobs are xenophobic scum and anyone who tries to say different is covering their own xenophobia with cries of “Patriotism”.
The comments pages over at the Guardian are full of it this morning. It’s almost as if they enjoyed the loss, just so they could indulge in denigrating their own countrymen.
that England is racist is a foregone conclusion in Guardianland, England’s loss is now evidence but they had already covered that if England won that too would be evidence of racism.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/09/euro-2020-england-gareth-southgate
T
The Guardian really is a miserable, English-hating rag (but its readers don’t always adopt the same stance, judging by the comments section at least; many commenters call out its anti-Englishness). I stopped reading it years ago ’cause I was sick of being told I live in a benighted, small-minded, hateful country when my own experience of being English is that is (for the most part), a positive experience.
“The comments pages over at the Guardian are full of it this morning. It’s almost as if they enjoyed the loss, just so they could indulge in denigrating their own countrymen.“
Almost?
The Guardian is in the same stable as the New York Times and the Washington Post; they’re all English hating rages; yellow journalism at it best. The comments section of the latter two especially would have the world believe that England (Wales, Scotland and Northern Island get a free pass) was a Nazi state where BAMEs, POC or ‘people of color, or whatever the current term is, are regularly abused, shot, incarcerated on a daily basis because of their color.
I hope and trust they booed the “knee-taking”.
Good news doesn’t sell newspapers; the same can be said for a the race industry in the UK; no significant race issues and tolerant country won’t pony in the donations from billionaires or funding from government or supranational organisations; the same can be said for the so-called ‘dingy people’; each one is a cash cow for someone.
Patriotism has always been a dirty word on the “Liberal” Left. To show pride in your country is treated as almost akin to joining the BNP. That attitude, skewered so well by Orwell, is the default setting for the BBC, the Guardian and the bien pensant Left.
It is the idea that any and every culture is to be celebrated – but not British culture or certainly not English culture – one can celebrate the Celtic parts of Britishness (separately) but celebrating Englishness, whatever that might be, is seen as proof of latent racism.
In their heart of hearts how many Guardian readers were not with Emily Thornberry when she tweeted her sneering white van and Cross of St George picture? As though such low-brow, working class patriotism was worthy only of scorn?
These people have infected any debate involving patriotism with a national self-loathing, the idea that patriotism is xenophobic at heart, the idea that British history is something only to apologise for.
The head-banging nationalist, convinced the British Empire was a force of unalloyed good for the world, sits at one end of the spectrum. Afua Hirsch and her cohort sits at the other end, convinced it was simply an endless parade of atrocities and depredation. Both seem as monocular and impervious to nuance as the other. Both seemingly obsessed with Empire.
Any sensible person can see that the truth lies somewhere in between those two extremes.
I’m very proud to be British. As a student of history I am well aware of terrible things that happened (usually hundreds of years before I was born) but I am still unapologetically proud to be British. This country has had an enormous impact on the world – some of it very good, some bad.
But it is our history. It for the most part happened in our ancestors’ day. Nothing I can do or say will change that history. My pride has no more bearing on it than my guilt would. Nor, for that matter, the Guardian’s disapprobation.
The Left’s line seems to be that anyone who has pride in being English has somehow admitted to something unhealthy and ‘problematic’. Why? If an Italian is proud of being Italian, would they immediately mistrust his motives in the same way? I’m willing to bet they wouldn’t.
If a Tongan speaks of his homeland with tears in his eyes, (they are, on the whole, the most deeply patriotic people I’ve ever met) would they be suspected of xenophobia and a misplaced pride? Again – I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t.
So, what is so different about a British person expressing pride in their nationality? Why does the Left automatically suspect anyone who has pride in being English of some sinister subtext?
There have been so many articles written in the last few weeks about the “rehabilitation” of English Patriotism – but that is because most of these articles were written by journalists who live in a metropolitan bubble.
Gareth Southgate raised the hackles of the Liberal Left commentariat by talking up our history. It only seemed strange to them because – thanks to the BBC and the widespread Leftist takeover of our national institutions – the prevailing attitude is that anyone who shows any pride in Britain’s wartime past is jingoistic and somehow laying claim to glories that belonged to another generation.
Yet many of those very same people who push this miserabilist bilge, also waste our time bleating that we should all shoulder the guilt for anything bad done by this country in its imperial history.
Admiration for heroes in the very recent past is backwards looking, yet we’re somehow on the hook for reparations to the colonised 200 years later? It doesn’t seem a consistent position.
Why should the statute of limitations for guilt run so much longer than that of glory?
But the first specimen is hardly to be found. For years, the only mention of Empire was in the Guardian, the writers utterly convinced that that’s all anyone in this country talks about. But it was only them.
You come across it elsewhere on occasion now, in rebuttal of a Guardian-esque tirade, but even then, it’s usually a measured response pointing out the good and the bad of British history.
You are right. There is an obsession about the Empire in this country. But this obsession is nowhere but in the minds of the hyper-liberals and anti-patriots.
But, as obsessives are prone to doing, they project their own strange fancies into the minds of others: they imagine that they are surrounded by millions (eek! the racists! the Brexit voters!) yearning for the days of Empire to return.
Thing is, when was the last time you met anyone who even thinks about a return of Empire, let alone anyone who would find that a desirable notion?
Good article. Even cheered me up a bit, so thank you.