Some similarities between Russian and British politics?

[heimfried]

An interesting article in The Guardian which in my opinion hits the nail on the head.

Britain and Russia are enemies in Ukraine – but both want to disrupt Europe
(by Caroline de Gruyter)

The Northern Ireland protocol row shows the similarities between two former imperial powers intent on regaining lost glory

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...rotocol-brexit

It is not only the inability of a bad governing, selfish and amoral PM Johnson and the todays Tories. Johnsons remark (IIRC) "there is nothing in British history we have to be ashamed of" reflects the opinion of quite a part of the British people.

British history should not be treated as a ‘soft play area’, says David Olusoga

Writer and broadcaster says teaching about the past must not be a way of making people feel good about themselves

Britain’s relationship with history is “not fit for purpose”, according to a leading historian who said too many pupils are still taught a “dishonest version” of the nation’s past that left out uncomfortable truths.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jun/19/british-history-should-not-be-treated-as-a-soft-play-area-says-david-olusoga

[skuthorp]

Treat 'em like mushrooms……..

[Peerie Maa]

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

An interesting article in The Guardian which in my opinion hits the nail on the head.



https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...rotocol-brexit

It is not only the inability of a bad governing, selfish and amoral PM Johnson and the todays Tories. Johnsons remark (IIRC) "there is nothing in British history we have to be ashamed of" reflects the opinion of quite a part of the British people.


https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jun/19/british-history-should-not-be-treated-as-a-soft-play-area-says-david-olusoga

This is entirely correct.

The assertion that “we have nothing to be ashamed of” is whistling in the dark. We British fear that we may have rather a lot to be ashamed of, but we were never taught what it was, our children today are still not taught what it was, and any attempt to revise the history curriculum to actually teach about things that we ought to be ashamed of will bring on a full scale national crisis.

Compare the Official Bad Guys of the last century, Germany and Japan:

Germany up to 1870, and largely up to 1914, looks like The Good Guys. Unlike France, Austria and Spain, Germany had not tried to conquer Europe, or indeed anywhere else. Yes, Frederick the Great had been pretty warlike, but against France, Austria and Russia, so that was OK,

Asked to name historically important Germans, people would come up with philosophers, scientists, writers and composers.

Yes, there was a tremendous bloodbath in Germany with the Thirty Years War but that was Germans, helped by foreigners, killing Germans.

All the Germans have to apologise for is fifteen years of folly, which they are taught about at school.

Now consider Japan. After a bloodbath in the last decades of the 16th century, and a spell of several centuries during which they were the most noted pirates anywhere ever, the Japanese stop travelling abroad and become so peaceable that they abolish firearms.

After the Americans stir them up the Japanese decide to have an Army and a Navy to protect themselves against ravening Caucasians, and they discover that their troops really dislike fighting, for the extremely sound reason that if a young man gets killed he won’t he around to help his parents with the family farm, so they prefer to run away. So the officers of the Imperial Army invent the code of Bushido, to make their farmers sons see things differently.

The British, on the other hand…

[Peerie Maa]

What importance do you place on the problem that for centuries after Enery the Eighth, Catholic France and Catholic Spain tried to impose regime change on Britain?

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

The British re-invented agricultural slavery on an industrial scale (the Romans had it, and it did them no good at all). Yes, the British also abolished it, but as David Olusoga says quite often, that does not make up for re-inventing it in the first place or for imposing misery on tens of millions of people.

And why? So that they can smoke tobacco, wear cotton clothes and put sugar in their tea.

It is probably correct to say, as Thomas Carlyle does, that we British acquired our Empire “in a fit of absence of mind”, but we did acquire a quarter of the Earth’s surface, a quarter of its people, and a third of its resources. (We went for the good bits.)

Kind, nice, gentle people do not do this sort of thing. We still criticise the Vikings for raiding, raping, murdering and stealing from people who had never done anything to deserve it, and the Vikings were mere amateurs compared to the British!

We conquered India because the few decades in which we absent mindedly did so (we were conquering India to protect our investments from the French!) coincided with a period in which European infantry techniques had been revolutionised; we had them and taught our Indian troops how to use them before the local rulers caught on.

[lupussonic]

"
All the Germans have to apologise for is fifteen years of folly, which they are taught about at school."

You sure about that Andrew?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero...maqua_genocide

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

"
All the Germans have to apologise for is fifteen years of folly, which they are taught about at school."

You sure about that Andrew?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero...maqua_genocide

I did say “largely up to 1914”, Martin! Compared to what the British the French the Italians and worst of all the Belgians were up to at the time, it doesn’t leap to a bad eminence in the scale of colonial wickedness.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

What importance do you place on the problem that for centuries after Enery the Eighth, Catholic France and Catholic Spain tried to impose regime change on Britain?

Elizabeth I - a woman! - was busily helping the Dutch to rebel against the Sovereign that God had appointed for them!

[Peerie Maa]

The British re-invented agricultural slavery on an industrial scale (the Romans had it, and it did them no good at all). Yes, the British also abolished it, but as David Olusoga says quite often, that does not make up for re-inventing it in the first place or for imposing misery on tens of millions of people.

And why? So that they can smoke tobacco, wear cotton clothes and put sugar in their tea.

Are you sure that it is a British invention?

The Rise of the Atlantic Slave Trade

An Atlantic trade in African slaves began in 1444, when the Portuguese began to ship slaves from West Africa to Europe. For the next hundred years, the main markets for these slaves were in Europe and the Atlantic islands owned by Portugal and Spain. However, the discovery of the Americas in 1492 led to the creation of new colonies with a great need for cheap labour, and from the mid-sixteenth century European ships were carrying African slaves to Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America, in steadily increasing quantities.
At first the Portuguese and the Spanish were the main organisers of the trade, but by the second half of the seventeenth century the countries of north-west Europe were becoming involved. During the eighteenth century, Britain was the foremost slave-trading power, alongside the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the Spanish, all of whom had colonies in the New World.

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/histo...he-slave-trade
and

When Did Slavery Start?

Hundreds of thousands of Africans, both free and enslaved, aided the establishment and survival of colonies in the Americas and the New World. However, many consider a significant starting point to slavery in America to be 1619, when the privateer The White Lion brought 20 enslaved African ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. The crew had seized the Africans from the Portuguese slave ship Sao Jao Bautista.
Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans.

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery
US independence also put a stop to our sending criminals as indentured servants to the US colonies, further creating a demand for alternative cheap labor.

Mind you, we were probably more efficient at the mechanics of the trade.

[lupussonic]

I could write an article finding comparisons between the News at Ten and deep Bhuddist meaning if I tried. There are a lot of holes in the Guardian piece.

A lot.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

To be clear, this wasn’t the English only; the whole Imperial thing was an English and Scottish joint project. Including the subjugation of the Irish.

The English owned precisely no overseas territory beyond Ireland on the death of Elizabeth 1, indeed she had none when she came to the throne and there is no sign that she was much interested in getting any. Nor did the Kings of Scots.

Put the two nations together and you get a very different story.

[birlinn]

At least the UK has as reasonably free press (Murdoch notwithstanding), compared to Russia.
I wonder how long Private Eye would last in Russia!

[Peerie Maa]

To be clear, this wasn’t the English only; the whole Imperial thing was an English and Scottish joint project. Including the subjugation of the Irish.

The English owned precisely no overseas territory beyond Ireland on the death of Elizabeth 1, indeed she had none when she came to the throne and there is no sign that she was much interested in getting any. Nor did the Kings of Scots.

Put the two nations together and you get a very different story.

Drake, Sir Walter Ralegh, the colony of Virginia. Did they not sow the seed?

[Peerie Maa]

ACB, you are using a very broad brush.

[Canoez]

An interesting article in The Guardian which in my opinion hits the nail on the head.



https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...rotocol-brexit

It is not only the inability of a bad governing, selfish and amoral PM Johnson and the todays Tories. Johnsons remark (IIRC) "there is nothing in British history we have to be ashamed of" reflects the opinion of quite a part of the British people.



https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jun/19/british-history-should-not-be-treated-as-a-soft-play-area-says-david-olusoga

Oh.

I thought you meant Putin directing the politics in both places.

Carry on.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Oh.

I thought you meant Putin directing the politics in both places.

Carry on.

That too.

Putin was able to buy our political establishment for monkey nuts because of the elaborate tissue of fantasy that has been spread over it for decades.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

ACB, you are using a very broad brush.

I think Gunter’s point - and it’s a very good one - is that we British think that we are “the good guys” and the Russians also think that they are “the good guys”.

“After all, we saved the world from Hitler”…. by

(a) “standing alone” (alone apart from a quarter of the people and places on the planet)

(b) “sacrificing ourselves in the Great Patriotic War” (with a little help from nations who hadn’t been allied to Hitler)

er… delete as appropriate…

The Germans know that they are not “the good guys”, as do the Japanese. The French want to see themselves as the good guys but Vietnam and Algeria made it hard for them.

[Peerie Maa]

Ironically, in WW! Japan were our allies, and at the start of WWII Russia was allied with Germany.

Churchill could see which was Russia was heading, but after Russia was attacked by Germany, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. For now.

[P.I. Stazzer-Newt]

The really big difference between Russia and England is that Putin may well have a plan.

Bojo is playing the role of Baldrick.

[dutchpp]

"I have a cunning plan"

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

The really big difference between Russia and England is that Putin may well have a plan.

Bojo is playing the role of Baldrick.

A Baldrick who has the “cunning” but who struggles in the “plan” department.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

[lupussonic]

Clearly a public school education.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Colchester Royal Grammar School. A State day and boarding secondary school, which I attended as a boarder.

https://www.crgs.co.uk/

We had a strong Classics department.

The quotation comes from a speech which Tacitus puts into the mouth of a Caledonian leader rallying his troops against the Romans.

“To robbery, theft and plunder, they give the dishonest name of Empire; they make a desert and call it peace.”