The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #113211   Message #2423122
Posted By: Jack Blandiver
27-Aug-08 - 05:08 AM
Thread Name: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
Subject: RE: The Weekly Walkabout (part 2.)
before you came back on and brought up the R-word yet again, possibly hoping that others will follow suit (as often occurs). I won't complain to the moderators if you do it yet again, but will, yet again, try and make clear to you the difference between questioning immigration and being racist.

I bring up the R-word - racism - because it's such an intrinsic part of your entire self-published philosophy; it's there in your narrow exclusive concerns over English culture, which would be bad enough on their own but when you couple this to your views on immigration and repatriation, then I'm afraid there is no question about it, WAV - you are a racist, and what's more, you've published this fact for all the world to see. If you weren't a racist, you wouldn't publish such potentially inflammatory racist jargon; and if your concerns were truly with the English Folk Culture & Folklore you supposedly love, then you'd spend your time immersed in the study of it rather than relentlessly promoting your bizarre ideas which, alas, only demonstrate how little you know and understand of the subject.

I await your clarification on the difference between questioning immigration and being racist - only, please don't quote from your published rhetoric.

Meanwhile, think on this: The human & cultural history of these British Isles (of which England is a part) is one of tens of thousands of years of invasion, immigration, assimilation and diversification; the resulting cultural flux being a process of ongoing change and redefinition whereby not only might the country redefine itself with every overlapping generation, i.e. every three years, but remain entirely different things to any one of its 60 million citizens, native, immigrant, or otherwise. The experience of the individual citizen defines the overall character, and culture, of the nation.

Further - what percentage of England's 50 million citizens would agree that Morris Dancing, English Concertinas & the Unaccompanied Singing of Traditional Folk Songs in any way represented Their Own Good Culture? Also, in the England of 2008, there are more people Morris Dancing, playing English Concertinas & Singing Unaccompanied Traditional Folk Songs than have ever done so in the last 10,000 years. The same (with respect of their own Folk Cultures, albeit in the non-exclusive and cultural absolutist sense in which you might understand the term) could be said of the 5 million residents of Scotland, the 2 million residents of Northern Ireland, and the 3 million residents of Wales. The outlook is better than ever.