The Proms are an annual season of classical music. The Promenade Concerts. (You can get in cheap if you stand up.) The final concert each year involves some popular classics: maybe the Choral Symphony or Rite of Spring or the finale of Twilight of the Gods. The second half includes some traditional numbers: a Fantasia on English Sea Songs -- by Henry Wood, who founded the concerts -- and Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March. The people who have been going to all the proper concerts as well are allowed to be a bit naughty in the second half. They stamp along with the Sailors Hornpipe and the conductor tries to go faster than them. They sing the words to Rule Britannia in the sea song medley, and they sing the words which someone added to Elgar's tune. This is all good fun and harmless. No-one is banning patriotic songs.
Sadly, people who do not go to the other concerts and have no interest in classical music have latched onto the end of term party. And the only thing that anyone knows about the Last Night is the two patriotic songs. You end up with the spectacle of a pop concert, which happens to include Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory taken out of context, being called "Prom in the Park." No-one is banning patriotic songs.
There is nothing wrong with singing rousing, silly old songs. And of course they sing a section from Blake's Milton as well, which (if anyone was paying attention to the words, which they aren't) is an anti-nationalistic, revolutionary anthem. Most countries have songs with words that they couldn't, in the cold light of day, defend. Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps perversion! Do you hear, in the countryside, the roar of those ferocious soldiers? They’re coming right into your arms to cut the throats of your sons, your comrades! The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France! No-one is banning patriotic songs.
We allowed this very harmless and very silly tradition to be hijacked by the very, very far right. Actual fascists have started to say that maybe not singing one of the songs for one year proves that the BBC is run by communists and should be destroyed. We are told that we have to sing the song to prove that we are not woke. No-one is banning patriotic songs.
Woke means "too strongly opposed to racism", "not racist enough", or, in short "not racist". If someone disapproves of wokeness, that is a pretty good indication that they are racist. (I am sure there are exceptions. Can you think of any exceptions? Then please keep them to yourself.) If you are told that something is woke, that is a pretty good indication that you ought to be doing it. No-one is banning patriotic songs.
Nobody gave a flying fuck about Edward “Who The Bloody Hell Is He?” Colston until the ludicrous Bristol nativists started saying “Unless you love and genuflect before the spirit of Colston and affirm that so-called slavery was not really all that bad, all things considered, then we do not want you in this city." And so the statue had to go, along with all the place names, in a single night. I have been to festivals where black-faced Morris dancers appeared: I have been to a festival in which one of the dancers who blacked up was actually mixed race himself! -- because it was a very silly nearly obsolescent tradition and no-one cared because no-one meant anything by it. But the actual full on Nazis started to say “We must defend our traditional English black-face, and if you do not black up you hate this country and are a communist”. So the tradition has come to an end. No loss: traditions evolve, and blue face and green face dancing turned out to be more fun. No-one is banning patriotic songs.
We are where we are. I quite liked Last Night of the Proms. I quite like Rule Britannia, even. But since the one thing which everyone agrees is that if we don't sing the song this year, we are being woke -- we are kowtowing and bending the knee to the new gods of woke, indeed -- then we mustn't sing it. Ever again. The options are being woke or being racist. So the song and the tradition and very likely the concert has to go. The white supremiscists have imbued a nice singalong with their own particularly twisted pathology.
No-one is banning patriotic songs.
4 comments:
Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and Carl Von Clausewitz all said that a wise military leader imposes his will on the enemy, rather than simply reacting to what the enemy does. If the BBC proms decide not to sing 'Land of Hope and Glory', a strong editorial in the 'Daily Mail' is no reason to back down. However, it is not beyond the wit of the alt-right to invite an attack on a naturally defensible position, for example on the armed forces, the police or the monarchy, and then let the liberals take heavy losses in trying to drive them out. A wiser strategy may be to attack the enemy on the weakest points on their battle line and roll up their flanks, leaving their more defensible positions to wither on the vine. I am not sure where the weak points are, but no doubt they can be found.
Woke means ... in short "racist".
Shurely shome mishtake?
Way ahead of you.
It was correct on the back of the original envelope.
I think pinning this entirely on the far-right does a disservice to all the activists whose efforts have finally brought us to a point where "maybe it's a bad idea for a nation to publicly celebrate its greatest crimes" is a mainstream opinion. It's a success so small that most of those activists wouldn't call it a success at all, but it's still enough to make conservatives - and not just the far-right - perceive a threat and react against it.
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