The throes of empire

This screed from The Rant, apart from being factually wrong on many of its points (for example, the supposed "Anglo 6" countries are NOT the major trading partners of the US), is frighteningly similar to the racist bile spewed by the likes of the National Front in the UK and the far-right anti-immigration parties in Europe. What Ryan Thompson fails to understand, possibly because he appears from his photo to be comfortably Aryan, is that these so-called "Anglo" countries are not "Anglo" at all. Every one of the countries he lists (Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland) are either composed entirely of immigrants under the aegis of British Empire, or have such substantial non-Anglo populations as to make the epithet "Anglo" laughable.

If we're talking former British colonies and the accompanying legal and governmental systems, that already exists (the Commonwealth, from which the United States is excluded for very real, historical reasons). If we're talking English-speaking, then we should surely include the Scandinavians, the Dutch, the Swiss, the Germans, the South Africans and Indians and Pakistanis, many of whom speak far more grammatically correct English from birth than so-called "native" English speakers.

The only way to feasibly link Mr. Thompson's "Anglo 6" countries together is to split along racial lines, and even then one must a) put most of Northern and Western Europe on the list and b) ignore the very large non-Anglo populations in every single one of these countries. The "Anglo" illusion is one born of historical happenstance, and every definition that doesn't rely solely on race and language will include countries that are perhaps less comforting to Mr. Thompson's overly Aryan, blonde crew-cut covered brain.

This argument smacks of Harvard professor Samuel Huntington's recent article that attempted to argue that immigrants from Latin America are "diluting" the historical strengths of the United States - that the US was founded on Protestant values by Anglo-Saxons, and those are the important and strong ideals that will keep the country going. These blinkered and overtly racist views fail to recognize the very real and substantial contributions that immigrant cultures have brought to every country around the world, and needless to say, neglect the fact that the so-called "Anglo 6" were all founded by wanton theft of the land from the native peoples who were there before.

Comments

[jsm]

While not planning to read the item you criticize, your comments have a few inaccuracies on their face -- whatever their underlying merits. Of the 6 nations noted, two (UK and Ireland) are not "composed entirely of immigrants". Nor are immigrants anything close to a majority in either. Further the very large majority of the population in Australia and New Zealand is composed of descendants of immigrants of British and Irish origin, with some others of Northern European origin in the majority mix. Only in the last 20 or so years have non-Northern European ancestry individuals been permitted to emigrate to these two countries in more than token numbers. (As reflected in the expanding culinary options in Sydney.)

In addition, English is NOT the official or major language in any country on continental Europe, including the ones you note, although it has become a lingua franca around the world as the most common "second" language in many locations and is used to bridge major linguistic splits in places like India, Pakistan and, yes, South Africa where the majority population is not born speaking English as its "mother" tongue. (See, Zulu, Africaans, for examples).

Racial lines are not good methods of classification. Cultural lines often are. Strong shared cultural common strands do tie the 6 countries identified, although each has unique elements on its own as well.

By the way, the major trading partner of the US is Canada, one of the 6.

[Zoe]

The sentence was actually "either composed entirely of immigrants under the aegis of British Empire, or have such substantial non-Anglo populations as to make the epithet "Anglo" laughable." The "or" part of the sentence was specifically referring to the UK - Ireland isn't technically made up of Anglo-Saxons (a point that wasn't lost on 18th century English landowners). And if Britain ever attempts to enter into a racially oriented union with other white Christian countries, the 1.6 million Muslim Britons will surely have something to say about it.

English is the official language of both South Africa and India, and is the ad hoc official language of Pakistan. In any case, building an alliance around a common official language doesn't make sense when that language is the major business language of the entire world. I can see maybe building something around Chinese, which is far more culturally and geographically specific than English.

I don't believe that you can draw a line and say that since 20 years ago the predominant population in Australia was white and English speaking, that the most recent wave of immigrants have to knuckle under to the prevailing views (even if they happen to be the majority at the moment). Why not go back to 200 years ago and call (correctly) the Aboriginal peoples the "original" population and throw the white settlers out?

In Australia people like Pauline Hanson are arguing that all Asian immigrants should be kept out of the country on the basis of race, and this view ignores the very real contributions made by immigrants to the culture and economy of the countries they settle in. I find these arguments solely on the basis of race and "shared culture" very scary and very easily distorted.

The argument in the article is not for classification, it is for an "axis" or alliance between these so-called "Anglo 6" countries. The author was trying to break the UK away from its far older association with European countries, on the basis of shared "cultural" (read: racial) characteristics.

Point taken about Canada, although what I was trying to say was not that none of these countries is a major trading partner, but refuting the article's claim that ALL of these countries are major trading partners.

Having been a de facto 2nd class citizen for 13 years in Hong Kong solely on the basis of race, I am very sensitive to suggestions of axes based on "shared cultural values". There are transcendent values shared by every culture, and those are what should bind people together instead.

[Zoe]

PS Please be nice to me today, as I am terribly, TERRIBLY hung over and still had to come in to work this morning...

[Ranjan]

Well put, Zoe--especially your clarification in the comments.

[Mycroft]

If you take Ireland out of the list, there's a lot of common history between the remaining five countries over the past 80 years or so. All on the same side in the two world wars, close allies during the Cold War (as opposed to many Commonwealth countries, which went Non-Aligned), that sort of thing. Winston Churchill would have smiled.

That said, economics draws Britain closer to the European Union, just as Canada draws closer to the US (insofar as the two countries aren't really a single economy under two governments already), and Australia/New Zealand have to seek their accomodation with the growing economies of ASEAN and the like.