My Suggestions for this Issues the Lotus Eaters Should Tackle

Sargon and his chums in the Lotus Eaters have asked their readers to send them suggestions for what issues they should write articles about. I’ve therefore sent them three in the comments section. These aren’t suggestions about what they should do about their libertarianism, their frantic support of privatisation and free market capitalism when both are disastrously failing. Nor did I tell them what they could do about their support for Donald Trump, who may well be making a come-back bid to be president. They just wouldn’t publish them and I expect all I’d get would be a storm of anger and abuse from their supporters if they did. Instead I just sent them three suggestions regarding the skewed attitudes among anti-racist activists regarding the historiography of slavery, the failure to protest against the Pakistani grooming gangs and demands for autonomous communities by Islamic theocrats and Black activists. Here’s the comments I left:

‘I could present you with a list. I’d like it if you could tackle the way the historiography of slavery is being skewed. I’ve got the distinct impression that the anti-racist activists demanding reparations for slavery do not want it taught in schools or people made aware that slavery was universal and not invented by Whites; that it existed in Europe long before Europeans enslaved Africans; that Africans were also enslaving other Africans long before the transatlantic slave trade, and that some African states were not only complicit but did extremely well out of it. They also do not want to hear how the British government began improving conditions for slaves before abolition, nor how we attempted to abolish indigenous slavery in other parts of the British empire and around the world. They don’t want to know that Indians also enslaved Africans, or that the Arab slave trade resulted in the export of 14 million slaves from the continent. And above all, the really don’t want the Barbary pirates discussed. They have been erased from the narrative about slavery in the view of one academic author because they don’t fit with the idea that Whites enslaved Blacks, not the other way round. And the French postmodernists have a very racist view of them in which the pirates are ‘nationalists’ and their ‘white victims ‘imperialists’.’

‘Going further, the utter failure of the anti-racist left to protest against the Pakistani grooming gangs. Following Callum’s coverage of Unite’s and Stand Up To Racism’s protest against Tommy Robinson and his film about the rape of Telford, I wrote to Unite and SUTR complaining about their failure to protest against the gangs. I suggested that the organise a multicultural march against them, ’cause Whites have protested with Blacks on their campaigns against racism. No reply. I wrote to my local paper, the Bristol Post, suggesting this, and also to the Independent. No reply. I also wrote to Asher Craig, Bristol’s deputy elected mayor and head of equalities and children’s services. She’s a Black woman who said she wanted a museum of slavery in Bristol. No reply there either. This said very clearly to me that when it comes to racism, for the anti-racist left racism against Whites does not matter.’

‘And if you really want to be controversial, you could write a piece about colonialist attitudes among Muslims and Blacks. This exists. Anjem Chaudhury’s outfit in Belgium, Sharia4Belgium, wanted a separate Muslim territory in that country, governed by sharia law and with Arabic as the spoken language. The same demands were made over here in some of the literature published by the British Muslim publishers. A more recent argument I came across a couple of years ago explicitly ties it to the colonisation of America. The way the British encouraged other nations to settle in their colonies by allowing them to preserve their culture and laws, these Muslims argue that Muslims in the west should also be allowed to retain their laws under the protection of the British state. I’ve also seen Black British writers and politicos demand separate spaces for Blacks and autonomous communities.’

I know there are issues about people from the left dealing with right-wingers like Sargon and his crew. These are issues that I’d like the left to tackle. But they really don’t want to tackle them or see them discussed. And so, unfortunately, the only avenue is to take them up with the right and see if they will.

I’ll let you know if I get any replies.

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Tags: Anjem Chaudhury, anti-racism, Apartheid, Arabic Language, Asher Craig, Blacks, Bristol Post, Capitalism, Carl Benjamin, Colonialism, Donald Trump, Free Market Ideology, Grooming Gangs, Imperialism, Lotus Eaters, Multiculturalism, Museums, Postmodernism, Privatisation, racism, Sharia Law, Slave Trade, Stand Up To Racism, The Independent (newspaper), Tommy Robinson, Unite, Whites