Wednesday 27 August 2008

Airbrushing history

I see that Britain's involvement in the slave trade will become a compulsory subject to be taught in British schools. Need we wonder what the purpose of that is? Am I being overly suspicious or will this be another exercise in making white British children feel undeservedly guilty about their heritage whilst casting non-whites as victims of cruel racist imperialism?. I am sure my suspicions are well founded, and that schools will be highly selective in what details of the slave trade they they chose to teach, also, I wonder how much accuracy and balance there will be in what is taught?

Will school children be taught that the international slave trade had been carrying on for thousands of years before Britain became, comparitively briefly, involved?. Will they be taught that 90% of all slaves were transported eastward to Arabia and Asia where there was a thriving slave trade at a time before England was a single nation, let alone Great Britain?.

Will they learn that there are currently twice as many people living in forms of slavery today, as I write this post as were transported to America in the entire North Atlantic slave trade?.

Will they be taught of Britain's leading role in ending the slave trade and eradicating across a quarter of the Earth's surface, and using our navy to prevent others from continuing the trade. Will they be taught that whilst Britain banned the slave trade in 1807 and abolished slavery across the Empire in 1833, Saudi Arabia did not get around to banning it until 1964 (a century after the American civil war), and in Niger it was not banned until 2003?.

in 1935, 100 years after Britain abolished slavery across our Empire, in Ethiopia an African country which had never been colonised, there were 2 million slaves. What are the chances of our children being taught that?

I doubt those facts about the slave trade are the ones British school children will be allowed to hear about.

All these details together with relevant links and sources were in an article I posted a couple of months back, which, without false modesty, I have little doubt is considerably more accurate that anything likely to appear in the forthcoming curriculum.

I can all but guarantee that facts will be re-written to produce a version of history that will fit the politically correct anti white fairy tales of our day.

In terms of re-writing history to create a past which fits a present political ideology the Britain of today is becoming more like those Eastern block countries before the fall of the Iron Curtain. I recently read the following account on K C Johnson's excellent blog about the Duke lacross hoax Durham in Wonderland, and repeat it here as I think it is very fitting.

In March 1948, shortly after a coup that installed totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia, when the Czech Communist Party (KSČ) convened a celebratory gathering in Prague's Old Town Square. Tens of thousands braved chilling temperatures to hear KSČ leader Klement Gottwald speak. The new communist foreign minister, Vladimír Clementis stood beside Gottwald on the podium, and gave up his fur hat to shield the prime minister's bare head from the cold.

Four years later, a wave of anti-Semitic show trials occurred throughout the Eastern Bloc; Czechoslovakia experienced the most spectacular purge. In late 1952, the government denounced Clementis, KSČ first secretary Rudolf Slánský, and twelve other prominent Communists as "Trotskyite-Zionist-Titoist-bourgeois-nationalist traitors, spies, and saboteurs." Eleven of the fourteen arrested leaders were Jews. All were found guilty in show trials; eleven, including Slánský and Clementis, were executed.

The trials' outcome required creating a new, politically correct, version of the past. Propagandists eliminated the executed party members from communist history books. Clementis, for instance, was airbrushed from the photograph at the Prague demonstration hailing the coup. In the KSČ's version of history, all that remained of the former foreign minister was the cap that he had placed on Gottwald's head.The true story of Clementis and his fur cap comes from the opening of Czech dissident Milan Kundera's novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. To one of the novel's characters, the tale showed how "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." For historians, Clementis' fate illustrates the willingness of totalitarian regimes to alter the past to align with their contemporary political interests; and, from the other side, the need for scholars to resist such efforts.

I think we can be reasonably confident that Gottwald's hat will have lot in common with the history of the slave which will shortly be taught to our children.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

History is taught by those who win. Civilisations are built on who wins the war. And that is why for 12 years I got taught South African history through the eyes of the white winners, how they made a pack with God, the struggles with the Natives ect and heard basically nothing of the coloured, indian, or black history, while my maids children were not encouraged to go to school at all!

So I think it would be fair to say, that after all those thousands of years that people where were sold ,beaten, taken from their families and homelands and their history ignored, that YES its about time that some kind of balance in brought to teaching grounds, I am sure that no matter what they teach, a white supremist like you will find only fault in it.

Thank, god, allah, and satan himself that it is not the likes of you that won the war. You seem at first to be highly intelligent, but then you loose all credibility by white washing it will bull.

This might be alittle too much for you to handle, but sweet maid of madness, the world will never go back in time, no matter how much fear and hate you try and instill through you blogg.

History is being written as we speak and you are not in it, you and all your kind will one day fade away. I have heard rantings like this before by a man called Hitler, you could be him but you have less courage and less soldiers unmask yourself.

Anonymous said...

Yes, usualy guilt trip nonsense, Sarah.

They forget to tell us that Black African parents sold their kids for a pretty penny, and that a number of the slave trade merchant transport ships were owned by... oops! To politically incorrect! Gasp...

We'll let educated readers do a little further research.

Try the book 'White Gold' by Giles Milton for an inverted perspective.

alanorei said...

Anon 03:14

Why don't you check Sarah's article and the associated links before you play the 'race card'?

You might also check out the fact that, as Strider indicates, African chiefs (for gain, they weren't destitute) sold their own people into slavery (no way European slavers could independently track down indigenous peoples in their own bushlands, even on horseback) and the fact that virtually all victims of ANC violence, e.g. necklacing, were of one race and it wasn't the white race.

Until now, that is, with the 100s of farm murders taking place in SA, about which you appear to have no conscience.

Since you're a fan of 'Allah,' you might also check out Faith Under Fire in The Sudan, by veteran missionary Peter Hammond, who describes how Muslim Arabs enslaved Nuba blacks and a white Christian man,General Charles Gordon, fought against the slavers.

P.S. Rest assured, 'the war' isn't over yet.

Anonymous said...

Ah so, "Goodwin's Law" has been invoked!

"I have heard rantings like this before by a man called Hitler, you could be him but you have less courage and less soldiers unmask yourself. By Anonymous 28 August 2008 03:14

Whenever a poster invokes "Goodwin's Law" that postulates when using terms of "Hitler" or "Nazi", the person introducing those words be declared the loser.

Goodwin's law states that the person to introduce those terms be declared as having no further credibility. They have just inhibited any progress of their viewpoint by further expounding upon it.

....and as a "teacher" for at least "12 years", you could use a refresher course in improving bad grammar, misplaced punctuation, skewed sentence structure and spelling mistakes.

Strider says: "They forget to tell us that Black African parents sold their kids for a pretty penny, and that a number of the slave trade merchant transport ships were owned by... oops! To politically incorrect! Gasp..."

These people?

StaalBurgher said...

I am also South African. To say that the wrongs of the past justify the distortion of the truth is ludicrous. You can take that argument back into perpetuity.

Have you ever considered that Apartheid was inevitable? The Boers (Dutch farmers) suffered under British rule from 1795 until they managed to move away and establish their own republics. The Brits were happy to leave them until gold and diamonds were discovered. 1880 and 1899 are the dates you are looking for. Concentration camps and scorched earth policies followed. We were then ruled us as a dominion until the Statute of Westminster was passed in 1931.

So after more than 100 years of struggle, the period during which the "Afrikaner" nation was born, you expect them to just go "Ok, boys, we fought, died and suffered for the last 100 years, but you can have it"? I'm not saying Apartheid was right, but it was inevitable in context of our history.

To say the distortion of history, black empowerment and reverse racism by government ministers are justified now is in fact justifying the very Apartheid system you hate.

Jeff ( Va. Rebel ) said...

Great link by anon.
11 : 43 . Was going to mention the book
" The secret relationship ... "
but you got it .
---------------
These black sob stories got old , tattered and moldy years ago . This cow has been milked and bled dry .

Some of us finally got the full screen picture that the
" debt " you perceive will never be paid in full - not in apology , nor money , nor blood . Take yer whimpering white guiltiness elsewhere .

Years and years of reparations introduced at all levels of life have been squandered , just as we knew they would be . By and large the black race amounts to nothing more than a plague . A parasitic body that sucks and destroys the host to the extent it harms even themselves . They know nothing else .

Anon. 3 : 14 - do you think yer going to convince the South African commentor as to all the "redeeming traits" of the noble black man ? This heathen creature who tortures and kills daily without impediment ?

You liberal suck a$$ whiners are a dime a dozen . Working to undermine your own and slapping yourself on the back .

The blacks streamed voluntarily to South Africa . This VOLUNTARY
"subjugation"
raised their standards of living immeasurably and they were quite content until the media and educational machinations convinced them otherwise .

The only qualm I would of had with their apartheid system was that it even allowed others within their ranks and borders at all . Such an integrated society will self destruct in time .
Refer to America or even Europe , we're trying hard to catch up .

Take yer arguement to God ... He's the author of segregation .

Yes , things will get worse before getting better . But indeed we'll be going back to the good ol days you seem to detest so much .

" History is being written as we speak and you are not in it ... will one day fade away ."

Oh contraire ... we are center stage and proceeding according to plan . Our day is about to begin . Whether most believe or realize this has no effect upon its inevitibilty .

Now , return to your arsenal of crayons , labels and emotions for that's all you have to counter sound logic and reality .