Samizdata

Looking at another country from afar is rather like viewing it through a spyglass. In the case of Britain, with its huge on-line media presence, with the wave of a mouse you see what UK media writes about in detail without seeing what lies around the issue. Then you see what the media in one’s own country says about things going on in the UK, and finally you base your emergent views within the meta-contextual references of your own culture, as we all do.

But a little learning is a dangerous thing. If I were to read the LA Times and NY Times from afar day after day without having lived in the US for many years, I might conclude I have a shrewd idea as to the undercurrents of US society and reasonably deduce that the United States was a very different place than the one it in fact is.

A great deal of wildly generalised commentary has been written about anti-Semitism and racism in ‘Europe’ recently. John Braue, who is not an unreasonable commentator much of the time, discusses Euro-racism in terms which are correct to an extent but also very misleading as he makes sweeping assumptions that tell us as much about his meta-contextual frames of reference as about the subject at hand:

It’s not contempt, it’s outright racism.  Europe is the home of the Tribal State; if you are not a member of the Tribe, you can never be a member of Tribe, not even if you are a tenth-generation immigrant.  You are at best a Gastarbeiter, to be given the scut work to do so that the Volk can collect their government benefits in peace; at worse, a nuisance to be run out of town if, inexplicably, one of the Volk wants your job instead of just cashing his monthly check as an “occupational reservist”. That, incidentally is the reason for European anti-Semitism; the Jews not only (in their view) cannot be assimilated into the Volk, they don’t want to be; they act as if being Jewish is as good as being English, or French.

From my discussions with French friends, there is some truth to that. Likewise one only has to read the nominally libertarian Hans-Herman Hoppe‘s works to realise how different German and Anglosphere views of the nature of society are. Every nation has its intolerant elements, but to think German and French racism on one hand, and English racism on the other have a common root is to fail to understand that ‘England’ (John does not say ‘Britain’) is not Europe.

To suggest that at its core, English culture has a blood and soil volk ethos is to fundamentally misread the often repeated messages of English history. By that logic we should still have Huguenot ghettos in London. How can the enormous number of Jews who have been senior government ministers over the last 50 years be explained away? The Jews of Britain have been the masters of successful assimilation precisely because being a Jew does not make a person less British or even English, any more than being a Catholic makes me less British or English. As a splendid example, when one reads David Carr’s articles to this blog, one is struck not by his jewishness but by his effortlessly pugnacious Englishness.

I am sure John and other commentators of similar generalised views reads the on-line Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Reuters etc. and are therefore very up on current events as reported in the UK media but I wonder if John also knows that there are more members of ethnic minorities in local government in the UK than in any other single country in Europe.

To be British is much like being ‘American’. It is a meta-context to which one subscribes, rather than be born into. Britain, and in particular England, in fact is no less integrated than the United States and probably more so (and with far less heavy handed intrusions by the state to make that happen) and far, far more so than mainland Europe. Mixed marriages are endemic, which is far and away the best measure of social assimilation. The proof of the sheer extent of miscegenation in Britain can be seen walking hand in hand down the high streets of Britain in glorious and damning rebuke to those who believe free choice without the direction of state leads to social separation. Is there racism and anti-Semitism in Britain? Yes of course. In a few areas it is very serious but it is hard to escape the view that race relations in the UK overall are almost a case study in socially driven (rather than state driven) assimilation.

For another splendid example of the reality of the ‘English Volk’, I recommend you check out the site of fellow British blogger, Adil Farooq of MuslimPundit and see Islam interpreted in ways which spring from a truly British meta-context.

All pale compared to the horror of having the builders in. The mess, the noise, the frangible schedules, the trail of half drunk mugs of tea… In fact, the combination of slipping schedules and a partially dismantled house (and an illness in the family) has forced me to delay a brief business trip to Europe I had planned for this week. Inconvenient does not even begin to describe it.

I mentioned my views on ‘The British Builder’ to both Joanne Jacobs and Brian Linse when they were in London recently, intimating to them both on separate occasions that these sceptred Isles produce by far the greatest domestic affliction known to Western man since Attila the Hun remodelled much of Italy… but both Joanne and Brian quickly asserted that the British Builder’s American counterparts are even worse fonts of woe, calamity and ruined carpets, taking deposits and promptly taking on a strangely ethereal quality.

I remarked on this to a German associate of mine and he in turn dismissed both British and American claims with a wave of his hand, claiming nothing leaves more misery in its wake than the attentions of Westphalian interior decorators. Then an Irish friend of mine asserted that the Irish builders had amongst their ranks many who had been rejected by the paramilitaries for being too destructive and had thus ended up with careers in construction, joining and decorating where their talents had a more ready outlet.

I seem to be detecting a strange form of inverted nationalism at work here!