BRITAINISTAN NEWS: England Forsakes Its Heroes: The Slide Toward Cultural Suicide Accelerates; British Culture Under Attack—by Its Curators: From the Countryside to Canterbury, the Nation’s Elites Have Contempt for All Things English

England Forsakes its Heroes:

The slide toward cultural suicide accelerates.

Whether as individuals or as a civilization, our identity is shaped and defined in no small measure by our heroes. On a personal level, our heroes may be a father, a teacher, a mentor, an inspirational athlete. At the civilizational level, they are world-beating, larger-than-life figures who embody something about our national character that inspires pride, hope, and unity. Some even rise to the level of myth – think of Albion’s once and future king Arthur, for example. Flawed human beings though they may be – and we are all flawed; there has ever been only one man who lived without sin – we still venerate them for their achievements, their victories, their sacrifices, their virtues, their vision, their meaning for us as a people.

These icons stood for us in the past, and their triumphs continue to stand for us as inspiration and as challenge. When we refuse to stand for them – when we allow our cultural heroes to be publicly erased; when we stand by as our monuments to them are defaced or destroyed by subversive forces – then our roots are ripped out from under us and our shared identity begins to disintegrate. A society that abandons or forgets its heroes is one that has no center and cannot hold.

Is there any Western society caving to subversive enemies more precipitously than the United Kingdom? Every day seems to bring news of another willing capitulation of its elites to Islamic colonization. A new definition of “Islamophobia,” for example, is being imposed which will serve as a de facto blasphemy law to pave the way for the continued Islamization of British society. It will, as journalist and Londonistan author Melanie Phillips puts it, “accelerate the slide towards cultural suicide.”

Another disheartening sign of civilizational retreat is the report that the Bank of England, which issues money on behalf of the government, intends to end the modern tradition (since 1970) of printing images of great Britons such as Winston Churchill and Waterloo victor Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, on the verso (the reverse or back side) of the nation’s paper currency (the obverse, or front, has featured the reigning monarch: Queen Elizabeth II until 2022, then King Charles III). The Bank announced that it has decided to replace those figures with pictures of wildlife instead because the latter are “not divisive.”

Let that sink in. Churchill – the savior of England in World War II; the man consistently viewed as the “greatest Briton of all time” – and other historical luminaries are to be replaced with bland, pleasant-but-hardly-inspiring pictures of wildlife. And we all know what “not divisive” means: it means the Powers That Be are removing images of longstanding civilizational heroes in order to avoid offending that burgeoning sector of the population which hates the country and the West, and which openly expresses that hatred through cultural intimidation and violent savagery on an almost daily basis.

The self-loathing Powers That Be fear this demographic and yet welcome them as a replacement for their own people, the indigenous whites who have been deemed history’s most egregious oppressors and exploiters (for that matter, they have been deemed history’s only oppressors and exploiters). These are the same multiculturalist elites who recently determined that the British countryside is “too white” and must be forcibly diversified by an influx of Muslim migrants who don’t give a fig about the beauty of the landscape or the traditions, manners, and values of the indigenous locals. 

“Heroes” in the context of the banknotes doesn’t necessarily refer only to warriors, but to anyone who has been of extraordinary service to the country and people of England, and indeed the world at large: scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, and Alan Turing; artists such as the Bard William Shakespeare (the first historical figure on any Bank of England note, from 1970-1993), architect Sir Christopher Wren, painter J.M.W. Turner, and novelist Jane Austen; and others such as nurse Florence Nightingale and economist Adam Smith. These and other notables from the vast pantheon of English heroes are soon to have their likenesses on the country’s currency replaced by those of inoffensive, anonymous beavers and badgers and hedgehogs --->READ MORE HERE

British Culture Under Attack—by Its Curators:

From the countryside to Canterbury, the nation’s elites have contempt for all things English.

Picture the scene: gently rolling green hills, a babbling brook, sheep grazing in fields bounded by drystone walls. Perhaps a village sits in the distance, with honey-gold houses, church bells ringing, and, of course, a welcoming pub. The English countryside is celebrated worldwide—except, it seems, in England itself.

Where most people see a rural idyll, Britain’s bureaucrats spy a scandal. The countryside is a “white environment,” they complain. “White,” by their warped logic, means definitionally hostile to nonwhite people, which means racism, which is bad. So things must change. Last month, Britain’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) set out proposals to make the countryside more attractive to minorities, reportedly complete with “diversity targets.”

Bureaucrats and academics agree that rural areas must become effectively less English. DEFRA’s plans include outreach schemes to attract more Muslims to the countryside, recruiting more “diverse” staff, and producing marketing materials featuring ethnic minorities and written in “community languages.” British academics released a study on “rural racism,” suggesting that the countryside should offer more halal food and spaces for prayer (though presumably not in village churches).

The countryside is not the only target of this project. I’m lucky enough to live in Canterbury, a historic city built around a grand cathedral. For more than eight centuries, the cathedral has been a place of pilgrimage and worship. But recently, things have changed. The Cathedral has hosted “silent discos,” allowing revelers to “rave in the nave.” The aim is not just to generate revenue, but, according to the dean of Canterbury, “to engage with our wider communities, many of whom will never have set foot in a place of worship before, and to demonstrate that regardless of background or belief, they will find a warm welcome and a special experience here.”

Our cultural custodians have so little faith in England’s heritage that they assume the only way to interest people and attract visitors is fundamentally to alter it.

As if to prove this point, Canterbury Cathedral hosted an exhibition of graffiti art late last year, apparently to cultivate engagement with “marginalised communities.” Local groups were guided to ask questions of God that were, in turn, rendered into vibrant graffiti-style lettering and “expertly and sensitively affixed to the Cathedral’s stone pillars, walls and floors.” Pedants were quick to push back on critics, pointing out that the graffiti was just stickers. But why was graffiti of any kind, permanent or temporary, thought necessary in such a place? Do the leaders of the Church of England have so little confidence in the message of God, in the church’s magnificent architecture, or in the story of the murder of Thomas Becket to inspire visitors? Do they consider Britons so degraded that they can be won over only by the “relevance” or “edginess” of graffiti?

Just as with the desire to make the countryside more “diverse,” we see in such efforts complete disregard for the communities that use these spaces. So much for those who cherish a cathedral for worship, reflection, or, like me, to marvel at man’s creative potential. And, as with the report into the supposedly racist countryside, we see a desire to trash what is not just beautiful but quintessentially English.

In every aspect of our cultural life, the same nihilistic urge rules: anything that may produce a swell of pride for England or what the English have created must be exposed as outdated, irrelevant, and intolerant. It must be cheapened, defamed, and defiled until any remaining shred of pride is replaced by disgust. --->READ MORE HERE

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