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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

The fact that British Indians have been so successful and have integrated into society should be celebrated by the left. Here is a story of migrants, refugees and their descendants making notable contributions to British public life – in business, politics, media, entertainment, sport and more.

However, the identitarian left is much more interested in keeping ethnic minorities locked into a perpetual state of victimhood. The values of personal responsibility, individual initiative and self-sufficiency, which run deep in British Indian communities, challenge the left’s grievance-driven narratives. The fact that British Indians have managed to thrive also calls the widespread notion of ‘white privilege’ into question.

Rakib Ehsan

16 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court isn’t “Black”. I don’t see why British Indians can’t share the schadenfreude of not being what they are.

  • James Strong

    Ambitious, talented and industrious immigrants from India should be welcomed.
    Semi-literate goat-herds from India’s neighbours who want to replicate life in their home villages, but with clean water and reliable electricity supplies,and who follow a Dark Ages paedophile,should not be welcome.

  • Stonyground

    Since India has an emerging economy and our politicians are determined for us to commit economic suicide in homage to the climate gods, Brits might end up going to live and work in India.

  • Paul Marks

    Good post – because it is true.

    Instead of being happy that the Home Secretary, the Chancellor and the Attorney General are from families whose origins are from the Indian Subcontinent, the left is angry and they SNEER.

    The left press (Guardian, Observer, “I”) eagerly jumped on claims of sex abuse in the Buddhist denomination of which the Attorney General is a member – there were no charges against the lady herself, but some other Buddhists were claimed to have done bad things therefore…… therefore NOTHING you left press scum.

    By the way these are the same newspapers who stressed sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests when Benedict was Pope, but went quiet when the leftist Francis became Pope (even though Francis has a far WEAKER record concerning dealing with abuse cases than Benedict did). The left press, and left media, generally were never really interested in child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests as such (especially as the majority of abusing priests were of a certain “sexual orientation” that is a “victim group” according to the left), they were only interested in using the horrible abuse as a political weapon – even though the majority of abusers were actually on the left of the Catholic Church. NOT all of course – but the “typical abuser” was the sort of priest who would nod in agreement with a Guardian or New York Times newspaper editorial or BBC ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN-PBS programme. And that is certainly not the impression the media gave.

    The success of people of Indian family origin in this country, like the success of people of Chinese origin – or Nigerian origin, shows the LIE of the claims of “Institutional Racism” by Justin Welby and the rest of the left – including the pathetic Frankfurt School of Marxism (“Critical Theory”) BBC and the other television stations – all television stations in Britain being leftist by order of the unelected “Ofcom” quango.

  • The left love their theories, not their proteges. The failure of Hindus and Sikhs to rival Moslems in performing a resemblance (not very close but good enough for PC work) to the left’s own revolutionary hatred of existing UK society is very offensive to theory. Bombs and Rotherham are how the left’s theories say oppressed and marginalised people should behave – but some groups just don’t seem to get with the programme.

    It’s the same with the native British working class, who were already a great disappointment to their self-appointed revolutionary vanguard even before the latest election.

  • Patrick

    Indian and Chinese Brits seem to rank ahead of native white Brits in educational and salary comparatives by ethnicity. Is this anything to do with their obsession with family, education and self sufficiency / hard work? Seems success is a cultural thing. What can one deduce about those who rank at the back?

  • Deep Lurker

    The Soviets created a blueprint for the destruction of Western Civilization. Multiculturalists and the Identitarian Left are merely following a part of that blueprint, more-or-less blindly. And more-or-less hypocritically; whenever it advances the Soviet blueprint to do so, they’ll cheerfully stop recognizing the different identities of the different ethnic groups and treat them all as one homogeneous mass. They’ll treat the different groups as undifferentiated ‘wogs’ while projecting that fault onto their political enemies.

    And the Left becomes enraged when it sees members of those ethnic groups refusing to play their assigned parts.

  • Nullius in Verba

    “The left press (Guardian, Observer, “I”) eagerly jumped on claims of sex abuse in the Buddhist denomination of which the Attorney General is a member – there were no charges against the lady herself, but some other Buddhists were claimed to have done bad things therefore…… therefore NOTHING you left press scum.”

    Oh, yes. That’s the “Group A Group B Trick” again. Amazing how often it appears.

    “The left press, and left media, generally were never really interested in child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests as such (especially as the majority of abusing priests were of a certain “sexual orientation” that is a “victim group” according to the left), they were only interested in using the horrible abuse as a political weapon”

    Yes. “Group A Group B Trick”. Not interested in child sex abuse as such, only in it’s use to attack the ‘enemy’ group. Just pick your enemy.

    “The failure of Hindus and Sikhs to rival Moslems in performing a resemblance (not very close but good enough for PC work) to the left’s own revolutionary hatred of existing UK society is very offensive to theory.”

    It’s the difference between the cultural free market and cultural protectionism. Free marketeers pick up useful bits of culture from wherever – like we adopt the words and cuisine (French word!) from other nations. Chicken Tikka Masala used to be until fairly recently Britain’s favourite meal. Give everyone the free choice, allow no barriers or bans to keep out the competition, and encourage survival of the fittest. A culture evolved this way for popular success takes over wherever people have the choice. Cultural protectionists, on the other hand, secretly believe that their culture is not regarded by others as the best; believe that if free competition was allowed and other people given a choice, their culture would die out; and so try to raise barriers to wall out the world and keep their culture isolated and pure. They tend to be authoritarians who seek rigid control over culture, and enforce norms. They hate the uncontrolled chaos of the marketplace, of freedom. They hate the idea of other people being allowed to think differently to themselves. They hate even more the idea that they should ever be expected to change their own ways. They seek eternal stasis and stagnation.

    Since the ‘Crisis of Marxism’ recognised in the 1890s, the left have struggled to find a way of preserving their beliefs and culture in the midst of a world that profoundly disagrees with and contradicts Marxism. The evidence of its failure is all around them. They cannot believe that it fails against the West’s capitalist free market culture because it is truly inferior, so they conclude the capitalists have to be using unfair methods to keep their victims’ cultures down. Hence their theories about racist colonialism, the sexist patriarchy, the heteronormative othodoxy, and so on. They believe an organised cabal of Western capitalist cultural authoritarians must be suppressing and oppressing them, it’s the only possible explanation for why theiy lose, so they look out for Western capitalist cultural authoritarians to fight. But it’s not the rich Western cultural authoritarians who are beating them – they are losing too. It is the Invisible Hand of the cultural free market that defeats them, and it’s its very invisibility that is why they cannot perceive their true opposition.

    “Indian and Chinese Brits seem to rank ahead of native white Brits in educational and salary comparatives by ethnicity. […] Seems success is a cultural thing.”

    Yes, and judging by the way they do better here for education and salary than they do back in China or India, it’s at least partly about aspects of culture they picked up from us. Question is, how can we spread and multiply that culture?

    By building walls between cultures, or by tearing them down?

  • Paul Marks

    Yes Deep Lurker – it is a mistake to think the left actually believe the stuff they come out with.

    Charges of “Institutional Racism” are just a weapon to attack the West with – the charges are a lie, a vicious lie. Not an honest mistake.

    The tragedy is that the most of the education system (the schools and universities) and the “mainstream” media, is under the influence of the left – with their Death-To-The-West agenda.

    So vast numbers of dupes, or partial dupes, are produced.

  • mila s

    The success of people of Indian family origin in this country, like the success of people of Chinese origin – or Nigerian origin, shows the LIE of the claims of “Institutional Racism” by Justin Welby and the rest of the left

    and presumably the success of people with a Jewish background disproves the presence of antisemitism

    Furthermore, I dislike Priti Pratel because she is (much like T May), an instinctive authoritarian. I couldn’t care less about her ethnic origins.

  • and presumably the success of people with a Jewish background disproves the presence of antisemitism (mila s, February 22, 2020 at 10:14 am)

    That is worth discussing, both as regards native Jews and as regards the immigrant ethnic groups Paul Marks was discussing (to whom mila s was responding). On Paul’s side, as regards the groups he discussed:

    – It makes a nonsense of imbecile “like the nazis” comparisons.

    – It is strong evidence against the PC claim that racism explains poor statistics of groups they patronise both in a debating-point sense (the PC claim to detect racism everywhere on ridiculous grounds, but therefore cannot consistently claim these successful ethnics were exempt) and a real sense (insofar as there has been conventional, as opposed to PC, racism in the UK in our lifetimes, it was mild enough to be straightforwardly ignorable by those who rejected PC excuses and took responsibility for their outcomes).

    As regards Jews, a successful British past does not guarantee the future. The left (helped by importing antisemites at assimilation-defeating rates) has built antisemitism in the UK to a degree I would not have credited in my youth. Happily, “like the nazis” comparisons, though more just than the incessant PC ones, are excessive today, and it seems the UK’s future will be what the UK makes it. On the continent, we’ll see (my poetic concern has been registered).

  • bobby b

    ” . . . and presumably the success of people with a Jewish background disproves the presence of antisemitism . . . “

    Could it simply be that the Jewish and British Indian cultures really are superiorly adapted to doing well in modern society?

    I guess saying that makes me a culturist! I denounce myself . . .

  • Snorri Godhi

    presumably the success of people with a Jewish background disproves the presence of antisemitism

    No: it disproves the presence of ***institutional*** antisemitism.

    Re-read Paul’s comment: it does not deny that there might be ethnic prejudice in Britain, even racism. What it denies is that prejudice is the reason why certain groups of people are not doing well, except in the grooming gang business.

  • Runcie Balspune

    I dislike Priti Pratel

    What I like about her is her resting bitch face which so many of the left would love to take the piss out of but cant because of her ethnicity, you can almost feel the frustration.

  • Runcie Balspune

    Seems success is a cultural thing

    It is more culture than ethnicity, but that is something the left doesn’t want to touch as it is an admission that some cultures might be superior to others, in particular western culture, so culture is attributed to ethnicity and therefore makes the racist card playable.

    The truth is probably that western culture does not really exist but is an amalgamation of what is the best among multiple cultures, the successful migrants to our shores are probably ready to abandon the bad bits of their own culture and willing to accommodate the useful parts of western “culture”, only those ideologies that have a supremacist or intolerant outlook are the ones that don’t do well.

  • Snorri Godhi

    culture is attributed [Snorri adds: by the ruling class] to ethnicity and therefore makes the racist card playable.

    An important insight.
    Another thing that needs to be said is that culture is related to nutrition, and nutrition is related to mental health. For instance, i suspect that the insanity of the Anglo-American “”left”” (actually the party of the ruling class) is mostly due to vegetarian diets. Not that vegetarian diets are intrinsically mentally-unhealthy, but vegetarians do tend to consume more than their fair share of seed oils, sugars, cereal grains, and soy products.

    The truth is probably that western culture does not really exist but is an amalgamation of what is the best among multiple cultures

    Not something that is unique to Western civilization: Chinese civilization owes a lot to Indian Buddhism, and Japanese civilization owes a lot to Buddhism AND Confucianism.

    My hypothesis is that there were 3 main factors in shaping Western civilization:
    Greek rationalism;
    the Roman and Germanic belief that liberty/freedom is something one has to earn for oneself;
    and the Judeo-Christian belief in God-given moral rights.