(no subject)

[haptalaon]

ALSO I want to bring in something that's been bothering me on tumblr, and this is:

The idea that being a fan of homesteading, photos of trees and baby goats and home-made jams is an attack on indigenous people. As an Englishman, this is bothering me a fair deal. Because the only colonialism I'm seeing here, is the politics of an American-dominated-internet running roughshod over everybody else.

Land has always been politicised, and everywhere you go it's more or less the same story: the wealthy amass more of it, to the detriment of the lowly, and suddenly they're struggling to survive and having to pay for something they once held in common. Usually, some kind of trumped up reason is put forward for why the land must be taken: in America, for sure, it was racialised native identity, and the same in Australia. The same is true in England: it was the Anglo Saxons who lost their lands, in preference to the Norman French lords. In later periods of time, it was Catholic monks losing land to protestant Kings, and native Scots highlanders losing lands to English barons.

But your average Tumblr user does not want to hear that. They just want a justification to bully stressed kids who share pictures of lavender and butterflies to relax.

When you're attacking someone for a political reason, it has to be a goal oriented activity - otherwise, it's just an attack. And it has to be in good faith, and with understanding, and a willingness to change your perspective if someone brings a good counter-argument.

Not only that, one has to be open to entirely new frameworks of thinking. "White people are the bad guys of race" isn't a model that holds water in Europe in many, many contexts; anti-Black racism exists here, but it exists alongside ethnic tensions between groups who are undeniably white. So Americans coming in and trying to figure out who are the "good guys and the bad guys" in ethnic struggles, and who are the "white people" and the "black people" is - off to a losing start, because it's not informed by an understanding of the unique history/culture of the places under discussion.

1) "England has been taken from the indigenous English by foreigners" is a racist dogwhistle here. It's not an anti-racist way of thinking or speaking. It's a dogwhistle in which "indigenous English" means "white people" and "foreigners" means whatever wave of non-brits are coming into the country at that time, be it the Poles or the Jamaicans. These people co-opt the language of colonial struggle all the time; they see "English" as an inherently white, anglo-saxon-by-blood identity that no one else living here can ever claim.

So we're off to a very bad start if "only the indigenous people of the land know how best to tend it and have any right to it, and so only they may post home-made-lemonade recipes on their pinboards", because you're on the wrong part of the "anti-racist to blood-and-soil-nationalism" horseshoe.

2) Nontheless, England has been taken from the indigenous English by foreigners - specifically, the French.

3a) Now, you might say, that's not the same as the American indigenous groups, because it's a racist/genocidal dynamic, not merely a series of unfortunate events. The French are also white, so it's not "real racism" because American tumblr users only define racism in ways they recognise from their own history,

3b) But in 1066, a group of armed strangers speaking a different language came here in and ruthlessly suppressed the people who were already there, taking their lands and giving it to the French king's favourite allies. The myth of Robin Hood, who hunts the kings deer, is a nationalist myth because those were once Robin's deer, and the deer of everyone who held the woods in common. Then, that wood was taken from them. And Robin Hood fights tax collectors because men once tilled their own lands, but now they had to work for landowners and pay them for the privilege.

The division was made on national/ethnic/racial grounds, whatever term makes best sense to you, a Norman aristocracy and an English peasantry.

4a) And you might say: but indigenous Americans continue to be penalised to this day as a result of that takeover, which isn't true of white English people at all, that Norman/English divide no longer exists.

4b) But look here. If the land was divvied out equally among the people, we'd have half an acre each. Land ownership continues to be the primary source of wealth inequality in Britain.

Where did that wealth inequality come from? Oh look, THE NORMAN CONQUEST. For example, the 16,000 acres of the Arundel estate. I'd like 16,000 acres of the South Downs, but I can't have it, because that land was taken from me. 1000 acres of the Barttelot estate, which traces its family back to the Norman Conquest as well.

Now, land is money, so these people continue to have unearned power over the state of the world. They own businesses. They donate to government. Many of them *are* the government. They have unearned influence over the levers of power.

And they have unearned influence over the state of the countryside too, able to hack and destroy and convert to wealth-making but destructive industries.

Working class people in England have gone to prison for the right to walk in the hills they can see from their homes. Look up the mass trespass at Kinder Scout, and the battle of the Beanfield.

Worryingly large parts of the countryside, we don't even know who owns it.

These problems track all the way back to 1066, and the theft of the land from commonwealth to private property.

5a) And you may say, but that's still not really a cultural group. There was cultural destruction in the American conquest, and it was racialised, and nothing that happened a thousand years ago in Britain counts.

5b) and I'll point you to the Highland Clearances, this time wealthy English folk clearing the native Scots off their lands, along with their language, craft, traditions and communities - and that in the Victorian period. And I'll point you to the fact that up until the 60s, you could be punished in school for speaking Welsh instead of English and that this language was only saved by a thread. I know a man who had both his arms broken by a politician in a car, protesting for the Welsh language; and when he went to trial - the welshman this is, not the politician obvs - he refused to speak in English, and would not engage with the court until he'd won the right to speak his language there.

And the descendents of the Highland Clearances are still a distinct ethnic group today, persecuted very heavily like all Travellers in Britain, its one of those bastions of "socially acceptable racism"

6a) and you may say, "no that's not true, because you do also have indigenous people in Europe like the Saami"

6b) and I'll say YES EXACTLY, there are the Saami in FINLAND which is a DIFFERENT COUNTRY. This is what I mean by a lack of understanding. Europe isn't a monolith, though cheers for revealing that you think that it is.

7) And look:

None of this erases anti-black racism. It stands side by side, in stories of power stealing wealth from the powerless. England is, of course, complicit in colonial destruction internationally; and there continues to be a radical Black heritage of activism and struggle, which continues to this day with the conversations about Brexit - a political choice underpinned by racist desire.

But we can't deal with the problems of the world sincerely and with honesty unless we can be honest about the facts of history.

And so, by all means America, shred yourself to pieces about the colonialism of cottagecore (although I think that this is also very silly; stop attacking individuals for actions perpetuated by powerful institutions, and stop abandoning harmless hobbies to fascists. I can't think of anything more pointless than harassing a teenage lesbian who's trapped in her bedroom but dreams about living on a little farm with gentle chickens and soft textiles).

But pls, have a care before applying your frameworks/understanding to another nation. Of course there are overlaps, of course there are solidarities. But as culture becomes more centralised online, we need to talk about whose voices are amplified and whose are harder to find, and the dominance of American politics - something which is minimally relevant to me and which I do not have any power over - is a very real problem.

(and I have a similar rant about Black Lives Matter, and how bloody difficult it is to source and promote links and conversations about Black British history and contemporary struggle, because it's swamped by American bloggers insisting their politics is internationally relevant, and not one of them taking the time to amplify international struggles in their turn; and another one about "don't say g*psy say Roma" because that one's wrong as well)