It’s ironic. We’re told by government and media that “cancel culture” is an imposition of the academic left. Yet here it is in reality, the actual “cancel culture” that prevents a truthful engagement with British history. Churchill was an admired wartime leader who recognised the threat of Hitler in time and played a pivotal role in the allied victory. It should be possible to recognise this without glossing over his less benign side. The scholars at the Cambridge event – Madhusree Mukerjee, Onyeka Nubia and Kehinde Andrews – drew attention to Churchill’s dogged advocacy of British colonial rule; his contributing role in the disastrous 1943 Bengal famine, in which millions of people died unnecessarily; his interest in eugenics; and his views, deeply retrograde even for his time, on race.
Churchill is on record as praising “Aryan stock” and insisting it was right for “a stronger race, a higher-grade race” to take the place of indigenous peoples. He reportedly did not think “black people were as capable or as efficient as white people”. In 1911, Churchill banned interracial boxing matches so white fighters would not be seen losing to black ones. He insisted that Britain and the US shared “Anglo-Saxon superiority”. He described anticolonial campaigners as “savages armed with ideas”. Even his contemporaries found his views on race shocking.
Loved Mussolini too. I mean all right wing intellectuals loved Mussolini even if he contradicted their stated philosophy, I’m looking at you von Mises, because destruction of worker power gained through collective bargaining was their real philosophy but Churchill wrote m.o.i.s.t. letters to him. Creepy.
I read some early approving statements about Hitler too. It wasn’t the racism or anything that bothered him, just German rearmament. He was just a Tory imperialist adventurer.
Yep.
This sounds horrific:
I can’t imagine what it must have been like…
Also (unrelated to this), a new book is forthcoming about Douglas Adams, 42, which brings together unreleased materials from his archive…
Because misogyny! But also, anti-communism!
My dad was born on Sept. 5, 170 years latter… but probably not on that spot.
It is left as a problem for the student to calculate the year
But I’m really only posting this story because it gives me an excuse to post this song…
Not gonna lie I’ve enjoyed explaining the backstory to that song (pausing the video on the book in her pocket near the beginning) many times to people. Also it gives you the chance to say “have you actually paid attention to the lyrics of Running up that Hill?” Which is always fun.
This illustration shows his (speculative) fleet of reed boats resembling Thor Heyerdahl’s Ra and Ra2, in which Heyerdahl attempted to prove the feasibility of such a voyage.
Of course, he was a latecomer to the Atlantic-crossing game, being preceded by St. Brendan (dubious), Leif Erikson (established), and Prince Madoc of Gwynedd (dubious).
