En skoleinspektør i 70ernes England mente i hvert fald, at hån, spot og latterliggørelse ikke var britiske værdier, skriver Charlie Brooker i The Guardian:
I was born in the 70s and grew up in a tiny rural village. There was, I think, only one black kid in my primary school. One day, someone pushed him over and called him “blackjack”. The headmaster called an impromptu assembly. It involved the entire school, and took place outdoors. No doubt: this was unusual.
We stood in military rows in the playground. I must have been about six, so I can’t remember the words he used, but the substance stuck. He spoke with eerie, measured anger. He’d fought in the second world war, he told us. Our village had a memorial commemorating friends of his who had died. Many were relatives of ours. These villagers gave their lives fighting a regime that looked down on anyone “different”, that tried to blame others for any problem they could find; a bullying, racist regime called “the Nazis”. Millions of people had died thanks to their bigotry and prejudice. And he told us that anyone who picked on anyone else because they were “different’ wasn’t merely insulting the object of their derision, but insulting the headmaster himself, and his dead friends, and our dead relatives, the ones on the war memorial. And if he heard of anyone – anyone – using racist language again, they’d immediately get the slipper.
At være britisk var, med andre ord, noget med at være høflig, imødekommende og tolerant, og med at være parat til at dø for sin frihed.
Det er en glimrende ideel definition, som man mske også gerne havde set som en slags definition på det at være “dansk” eller “europæisk” – hvor sand eller usand den i øvrigt er eller har været i forhold til den virkelighed, folk faktisk har levet i der som her.
Men ifølge Dansk Folkeparti, British National Party og andre af Europas højrepartier er det slet ikke nogen god definition. At være dansk eller britisk er at være svag, er at være offer, er at have så lidt tiltro til sin egen kultur og identitet, at man er bange for, at majoritetssamfundet skal blive rendt over ende af 5-10% “fremmede”. Det er at være frygtsom og paranoid, og det er at være overbevist om, at selvgode politikere og humanister lige fra Venstre og Konservative og venstre over står i ledtog med den væmmelige “godhedsindustri”, alt imens medierne (MSM, forstås) med Jyllands-Posten, Berlingske Tidende og TV-kanalerne i spidsen lyver om det.
Eller, som Charlie Brooker fortsætter:
According to the BNP, I’m wrong. Being British is actually about feeling aggressed, mistrustful, overlooked, isolated, powerless, and petrified of “losing my identity”. Britishness incorporates a propensity to look around me with jealous eyes, fuming over imaginary sums of money being doled out to child-molesting asylum-seekers by corrupt PC politicians who’ve lost touch with the common man – a common man who, coincidentally, happens to be white.
They’re wrong, obviously. None of these qualities has anything whatsoever to do with being British, but everything to do with ugly nationalist politics. And ugly nationalist politics are popular all over the world. Just like Pringles. Every country has its own tiny enclave of frightened, disenfranchised, misguided souls clinging to their national flag, claiming they’re the REAL patriots, saying everyone’s out to get them. It’s an international weakness. For the BNP to claim to be more British than the other British parties is as nonsensical as your dad suddenly claiming to have invented the beard.
På samme måde er Dansk Folkeparti måske det mindst danske af alle Danmarks politiske partier – for deres egentlige budskab er rent negativt, en fremmedangst, som er aldeles tværnational og som tager stort set samme form overalt, hvor den dukker op: Paranoid overdrivelse af imaginære eller meget små “trusler”, udbredelse af mistillid, paranoide forestillinger om, at majoritetskulturen er “undertrykt”.
Link: The BNP represents Britain’s workers? They don’t even represent basic British craftsmanship