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Samizdata quote of the day – British not English is actually fine The charge that followed was not that I phrased it badly. It was that my position was racist.
I have two children. Both were born in England to British parents who each came here from somewhere else. They are not English either. They’re British. I said this in the very same podcast Sunak pulls quotes from in his article.
My kids also happen to be whiter than a Michael Buble Christmas album. So either I’m a racist against my own white children, or this isn’t an argument about race.
Suella Braverman, Sunak’s own former Home Secretary, responded to the row about my comments by penning an article in which she argued that as a proud British Asian she herself is not English. Is she racist against herself or is there perhaps more of a substantive discussion being had than people would like to pretend?
– Konstantin Kisin, responding to Rishi Sunak
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I don’t think I’ve met anyone who is truly concerned about skin colour, but they might not have expressed such an idea in my presence knowing my views.
But I do know many people who are worried about different cultures. I am happy to say that not all cultures are equal.In my opinion the most advanced is the post-Enlightenment NorthernEuropean/North Atlantic culture. That, of course is a broad brush over-simplification of a complex situation.
I remember an article by Rod Liddle who challenged supporters of multi-culturism to say what they admire about other cultures, inviting them to consider their achievements in: Art, Architecture, Literature, Science, Engineering, Civil Rights and pretty much anything else and compare those achievements to the achievements of the West. (He did not claim that the West is perfect.)
It is a complex situation, and not helped by the deliberate conflating of race and culture.
Again I confess that my closing question is an over-simplification but it does contain a kernel of truth:
Would you rather be the only white person in a street of black/brown Christians (or atheists etc) or the only Christian ( or atheist etc.) in a street of white RoPers?
Yes – British is a political identity, and English is an ethnic identity (the English are a mix of Germanic tribes that came here in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., “England” is from “Angleland” – so the football supporters way of chanting “En-ger-land” is close to the truth, and the native Britons) – the “advisers” of former Prime Minister Blair who claim that the idea of an English ethnicity is “evil” might as well say that 1+1=2 is evil.
What is really evil is the desire to destroy the English and other historic nations, in the old sense of the word “nation” – i.e. ethnic group, this was known even in the Middle Ages, the idea that national ethnicities are a recent invention is a lie.
Do I have any English ancestry? A bit – as one of my two grandmothers was “Ethel Draper” (very English), but it would be a bit of a stretch to call myself “English”.
Am I British? Yes I am – born here and, in spite of his faults, loyal to King Charles.
Even the Norman (Norse who had lived in France for generations) Conquerors felt uncomfortable about ruling over a different people – the English. Hence their habit of marrying English wives – normally the daughters of former landowners.
King Henry the First did this – as well as saying that he was born in England, and was too young to take part in any of the atrocities against the English (especially the slaughter in the north of England) carried out by his father and elder brothers, he also made a point of marrying a direct descendant of Alfred the Great.
This was all part of a strategy of appealing to the English (well over 95% of the population) against his elder brothers – and it worked.
As for former Prime Minister Sunak.
He was the wildest spending Chancellor of my lifetime – people who chant the retarded slogan “Liz Truss crashed the economy” do not seem to understand who was Chancellor when 400 Billion Pounds (“not much if you say it quick”) was spent on counter productive (counter productive – it made things worse) Covid spending – on lockdowns and so on. Although, yes, the First Lord of the Treasury (Prime Minister Johnson) also supported this wild spending – in spite of knowing (he knew) that the lockdowns (and so on) were counter productive – wildly counter productive. As late as 2024 Prime Minister Sunak declared, in the House of Commons in response to a direct question from a Member of Parliament, that the Covid “vaccines” (which were not vaccines by the traditional definition of that word) were “safe” – that was a direct, a deliberate, lie, in the House of Commons – a lie about a matter of life and death.
As for his patriotism – his “Britishness”, the Gentleman answered this question when he walked out in the middle of the services marking the 70th Anniversary of D. Day – leaving Mr Biden and President Macron to be joined by Foreign Secretary Cameron.
There was no personal or national emergency or anything like that, Prime Minister Sunak just went off to do an interview.
I have nothing to add – as Mr Sunak, by his actions, has answered the question himself.
Prior to the current furore, for me, Racist and Racism described the human version of the proclivity for social animals to favour their own group.
Human reason and inclination, for sound reasons, has in some cultures, been able to suppress these in-group behaviours.
Sadly in today’s world, in my estimation, people and organisations of all stripes, whether they know it or not, are instrumental in negating this suppression.
To me this has also resulted in Racist and Racism becoming a Humpty Dumpty concept, thus obfuscating real issues.
“Would you rather be the only white person in a street of black/brown Christians (or atheists etc) or the only Christian ( or atheist etc.) in a street of white RoPers?”
Not quite that simple. The average black person in this country is much more working class than the average brit – by culture, income, criminality. This is also true of the Muslims. The bitterness that many black people feel towards white people is not so different to that of the working class to the middle class.
To take your example, it would almost certainly be safer and more pleasant to live on a street with native English converts to Islam, than Black/Brown Christians (or non-Muslims) – IF we have to assume that each is of average class for their race.
I suspect that if England converted to Islam overnight it wouldn’t change much – it would be to Turkey what Turkey is to rural Pakistan. Much more urbane and liberal.
My fear about non-British immigration – and I include European and East Asians in this – is that they don’t value some of the freedoms we value in America and Britain -such as freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. Of course, many or most Brits already don’t value these as much as they should. East Asians are casually collectivists – witness the Covid response. As much as I like their food and work ethic there is still an upper limit to how many I would like to settle in the West.
“English is an ethnic identity”
Not necessarily.
If you were born and raised in England, regardless of ancestry, you could certainly claim to be English.
I suspect this will become a more common usage, particularly as those in other component parts of the UK increasingly insist they are Irish or Scottish or Welsh. Heck, if your grandparents moved to Cardiff from Amersham and both you and your parents were born and raised there, then who is to tell you you’re not Welsh?
Speaking for myself, British is a cultural identity.
Not an exclusive identity, but arguably my main cultural identity (by a narrow margin).
Should i write ‘English’ rather than ‘British’?
Perhaps. I have lived & worked in England, but not Scotland.
OTOH as i mentioned years ago, there have been important Scottish cultural influences on me; mainly from Hume, Charles Mackay, and A. Conan Doyle; but also from whisky, fiddling, and tartans.
Not to mention my attitude to money.
Jon Eds,(September 21 at 3.03pm) is much more sanguine about the RoP than I am.
I am a firm and proud RoPphobe. Because I know what it teaches and how its adherents behave.
I think it’s not that easy to claim that “English” is ethnic but British is different: these are bundles of characteristics that change over time. I’m a descendant of Norman French and Anglo-Saxons. 1,000 years ago the notion of Englishness hadn’t got fully going.
England has been a political term at times, and this may increase in the future if the U.K. fragments. So where does this leave Kisin’s argument?
How many generations must exist to become English by Kisin’s definition of the term? Never?
It’s a shame he’s got hung up on the topic.
Sunak’s parents were born in Kenya and what is now Tanzania. However, it appears they identified as Indian rather than Kenyan or Tanzanian. Sunak himself has married into a wealthy Indian family and the wife hasn’t taken British citizenship. There’s a video here of Sunak talking about how great ‘our diaspora’ is but it is pretty clear he isn’t talking about English folks who moved to Canada or Australia. People might say he has ‘British values’ but that term is rarely defined any further than a few liberal platitudes and appears to be a Blairite invention.
I think it’s a bit like abortion: a day before birth is murder, a day after conception not. The trick is where does the line get drawn. Dunno, but that doesn’t mean there is no line.
Fresh off the boat? Not ethnic English. 1000 years of ancestry? Ethnic English. The trick is where does the line get drawn? Dunno, but that doesn’t mean there is no line.
But perhaps more importantly, ok, maybe it matters but not very much. I loathed Rishi Sunak for many reasons but his ethnicity was not one of them. But telling English people their ethnicity does not even exist? That is a very serious mistake & plays into the hands of some very insalubrious people.
On my very first transatlantic trip to London a long, long time ago as an eighteen year old college student from BEF Texas, the Customs and Immigration officer was very unpleasant to me since I could not differentiate between Britain and England. I quickly learned the difference as far a geography was concerned, but the experience always left a bad taste in my mouth.
JJM – I was born in England, and both my parents were also born in England. Does that make me English? Not British (yes I am British) – but English?
I think Perry is correct (not about abortion – but about this question) – it a messy thing, perhaps not a thousand years in England – but a couple of generations is not really enough.
That being said – Bishop Ali, a brown man from Pakistan, always struck me as very English culturally, whereas the Anglo-Saxons who get drunk (and worse) in the gardens by the War Memorial, leaving their mess there every day (and I clean it up each day – on my way to one of my jobs) – do not seem very English in their culture, largely because they have no culture – none.
Drunken and drug abusing vagrants, who mess up the area near a war memorial (day after day) are not “victims” – and a society that treats them as if they were victims, will not survive.
Perry d H nails it. There’s a sort of line but it’s hard to define it. But it exists.
Imagine the Sunaks or Kisins are around in England 100 years later. In my book, they’re English. And to deny there’s more than a bit off.
The very same people who demand we accept a Somali clitorodectomist fresh off the dinghy and now with a newly-minted British passport as being as British or English, Scots, etc, as am I – pale and Anglo-Norman – are exactly the same people who would think nothing of sneering at King Chuckles that he is really German.
They are also precisely the same people who support terrorists in favour of a palestinian Arab ethno-state but don’t you dare suggest that France or Sweden or Ireland etc. should be anything of the sort.
“I am a firm and proud RoPphobe.” Oh me too. Just ban it already.
” Because I know what it teaches” Agree
“and how its adherents behave.” Not quite. How some of them behave. There’s a world of difference between a Turkish banker (say) and a rural Pakistani tribesman. It’s about class and IQ – both of which are proxied by race.
Sunak was chancellor at the time they manufactured and released 50p coins that said ‘Diversity built Britain’. Amazing how what would have been far-left ideology a few decades became conservative mainstream boilerplate so rapidly.
If my parents moved to China in 1990, and I was born there 10 years later am I Chinese? Yes. Of course I am. Next.
This is the ridiculous sort of thing we are being asked/told to believe.
https://babylonbee.com/news/muslims-say-its-unfair-to-judge-their-entire-religion-based-on-the-actions-of-several-million"
Martin – yes. “Diversity” clearly did NOT build Britain – what was on the coin was a lie, a direct lie. I do not know if Mr Sunak personally approved that lie (unlikely – power is in the hands of officials and “experts” not elected politicians – as Dr Starkey and Mark Littlewood are going round the country explaining to people) – but he clearly has no problem with lying, for example as late 2024, when it was obvious that the Covid “vaccines” (they are not vaccines) had injured and killed people, Prime Minister Sunak stood in the House of Commons saying, in response to a direct question, that the Covid injections were “safe” – he lied, in the House of Commons, about a matter of life and death.
As for Islam…..
I normally defend Jacob Rees-Mogg (very much on my wing of the Conservative Party) – but I can not defend his recent debate in the Oxford Union, a position he “doubled down” on in a YouTube video statement – which made it clear he was not playing about in the Oxford Union debate, he actually holds to the absurd things he said.
The problem, contrary to Mr Rees-Mogg, is not “Islamism” – it is Islam, what Muhammed taught and personally did (himself – and ordered others to do) – Islam can not be changed by earthly authority, it was carefully designed to prevent that happening – Muhammed and the others despising how Jews had moderated their teachings over time, for example by putting their hand on passages of scripture that seemed to demand death for ….. so as not to read these passages aloud – “raise your hand” was not an invitation to surrender (even if they surrendered male Jews were killed and female ones taken as sex-slaves, it was the same for Christians and Pagans in Arabia – although some women were killed rather than enslaved), it was a demand that Jews stop covering up, literally covering up, passages of scripture – and carry out the death penalty for XYZ. The Islamic scriptures are not, and can not, be treated this way by Muslims – Islam forbids such watering down. The Jewish scriptures (the books of the Old Testament) were written by various people over centuries (that has always been admitted – the idea that all of the Bible is the direct word of God is NOT the position) – the Koran is not the same, the Koran claims to be the direct word of God revealed to Muhammed.
Islam holds that to leave Islam should be punished by death, to mock Muhammed should be punished by death, to fail to pay the infidel tax (and in due humiliation – the humiliation is just as important as the tax), should be punished by death, and-so-on.
“But we want to be friends with Muslims” says Mr Rees-Mogg (as does Mr Nigel Farage – “we must not alienate Islam” not understanding that it has been “alienated” for some 14 centuries) – he does not seem to understand the clear instruction – take not the Jews and Christians for friends.
A follower of Muhammed may pretend to take Christians and Jews for friends – as a valid tactic to lull these infidels into a false sense of security, but they may not really take them (or atheists) for friends – that is forbidden.
Mr Rees-Mogg has no authority to change Islam, and neither does Mr Farage – Islam is what it is.
I should have pointed out that the latter part of my comment was a continuation (and reinforcement) of what IrishOtter49 had already said – I was in a great hurry (newspapers and milk to deliver), but I should still have mentioned him, and I apologize for not doing so.
Some people claim that the constant nature of Islam (the fact that it can not be changed in its basic doctrines) is a weakness – it is NOT a weakness, it is the greatest strength of Islam.
What infiltrators (and informal permeation of bad ideas) have done to the Christian churches (including the largest – the Roman Catholic Church) is not possible in Islam – and that is certainly not a weakness of Islam.
Islam was very carefully designed by a man of genius – great genius (Muhammed – it is clear that he existed, the claims that he did not exist do not make sense) for the purposes of conquest and rule, it is a military faith and all its adherents have a duty to fight to spread the faith.
It must also be remembered that what in the West are called deception and treachery are, if-done-for-the-spreading-of-Islam (a very important qualification) not considered sins in Islam – quite the contrary.
To promise peace and friendship and then attack and destroy, as Muhammed did, is considered a noble act in Islam if-it-is-done-for-the-benefit-of-Islam, as is switching sides in the middle of a battle if-it-is-done-for-the-benefit-of-Islam, such as the Battle of Yarmouk in 637 AD, a battle that Muslims remember with pride to this day – they are far better educated in the history of their faith than Christians tend to be in these matters.
When, for example, Major Hasan killed “fellow American soldiers” at Fort Hood he was, from the Islamic (not “Islamist” – there is no such thing as “Islamist”) point of view, doing nothing wrong (quite the contrary) – they were infidels, and he was not “an American” (does anyone think that he believed in the Bill of the Rights – a central part of the Constitution that American military people swear to defend, what defines “an American”) – he was a follower of Muhammed.
To judge by statements Jacob Rees Mogg and Nigel Farage do not understand any of this – but then neither did the former head of the Israeli Shin Bet who, even years after October 7th 2023, was baffled as to how his policy of “deterrence” had failed to prevent the mass slaughter of Jews and others.
He did not understand Islam “101” (as it were) – you can NOT “deter” people who think that if they are killed by infidels they go to Paradise and have females to use for all eternity (and have other sensual delights), they want to die in battle and they want their families to die in battle against infidels (although they may squeeze out fake tears with which to fool gullible Westerners), they want this (for themselves and their families) because, according their sincerely held beliefs, this is the best possible thing that could happen to them and to their families. That is why they are, for example, happy to use their children as human shields – which seems strange to Westerners.
Refusing to take the beliefs of the enemy seriously is to show these people great disrespect – to show them respect (as human beings) one must take the trouble to understand their beliefs – which, clearly, the “Progressive” former head of Shin Bet had never bothered to do.
And, it must be understood, that this is both Sunni and Shia – which is why, for example, the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran government was happy to support the Sunni Hamas fighters – because they were fighting infidels.
If someone understands Marxism – everything Marxists do makes sense, from the position of their belief system.
And if someone makes the effort to get a basic (critical) understanding of Islam – everything Muslims do makes sense, from the position of their belief system.
The largest city in the United States, New York City, is now governed by a follower of Muhammed. The Commonwealth of Virginia has a deputy Governor who is a follower of Muhammed, and a Governor and Attorney General who, whilst NOT being Muslims, have a history of serving this cause via their words and actions, and a follower of Muhammed is in the lead in the Michigan United States Senate race (at least according to some polls).
Why is this? And why are Muslims doing so well, politically and culturally, in Britain as well?
The answer is ignorance – NOT the ignorance of Muslims, the ignorance of most infidels.
For example, within a couple of days of the 9/11 Islamic (not “Islamist”) attack of 2001 (which killed thousands of Americans) President Bush was in the Islamic Center in Washington D.C. making a speech about how wonderful Islam is. What was the point of the “War on Terror” (all that wild money spending – and throwing away of human lives) when President Bush had declared defeat (utter and complete defeat) at the very start.
People who tell the truth about Islam are often punished – often NOT by Muslims (they do not need to), punished by other infidels for the offense of “Islamophobia”.
If one looks, for example, at modern history textbooks in Austria (which fought the forces of Islam for so many centuries) the war may be already LOST – Islam is portrayed as good, and Christians are depicted as bad. Ditto with a recent television series in Hungary (in Hungary of all places) – which did the same thing.
Some 40%, and rising, of the children in Vienna are now Islamic – and other major Western cities, such as Birmingham or Brussels (the later being the capital of the European Union), are in a similar position.
The war seems to have been lost by default – the West stopped really opposing Islam.
The Western establishment spread illusions (delusions) rather than face the hard truth of 14 centuries.
As for “racism” – Islam is NOT a race, and Muhammed was a pale man who called black people “raisin heads” and said they looked like Satan.
“As for ‘racism’ – Islam is NOT a race”
And the fools who say such things don’t realize that they themselves are being “racist” when they say it is.
In Bosnia-Hercegovina, the only way to know whether someone was a Bosniac (i.e. Muslim) or a Croat or a Serb was to ask them their name.
JJM – yes indeed.