The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #121472 Message #2655460
Posted By: Ruth Archer
13-Jun-09 - 05:02 AM
Thread Name: Folk Against Fascism
Subject: RE: Folk Against Fascism
"As things stand, I can go to a Welsh language or Welsh folk music music event, an Irish language or Irish folk music event, Breton, Scottish, Bengali, Jamaican .... fill in the defining culture for yourself - and none of these will be under any kind of pressure to include other cultures. But make that "English" and all of a sudden we're slightly ashamed to put our heads over the parapet."
That statement is worth examining in the context of the wider discussion here.
We shouldn't forget that it's in large part the legacy of the pre-BNP (the National Front) which got us to this place. They did such damage to the whole concept of English nationalism in the 80s, by linking it to racism, that it has never recovered. Now those very same people (many of whom now run the new-look BNP) are capitalising on the legacy THEY CREATED to say to white English people, "All these other cultures can celebrate their identity - why can't you? Why should you have to be embarrassed?"
I find it incredibly perverse that they present themselves as the solution to a problem they not only created, but would, if they became more powerful, both strengthen and perpetuate.
I can't believe there are people who fall for their rhetoric.
The other thing to say to people who tell us that the BNP are nothing to worry about, and that they will always be on the political periphery, is that it only took a tiny minority back in the 80s to bring English nationalism into such disrepute that 25 years later it has not yet recovered.