Vicious Racism Concealed by a British Accent

[ashling]

Martin Amis & Chris Hitchens: Vicious Racism Concealed by a British Accent

By John Dolan, AlterNet. Posted May 24, 2008.



The American right wing, desperate for articulate hate mongers, is importing UK polemicists to stir the base up against the Muslim/Arab "enemy."

Martin Amis' new book, The Second Plane, is worth discussing only as a symptom of the plague of British right-wing ("Tory") rhetoric popping up in American conservative discourse. The American right wing, desperate for articulate hate mongers, has taken to importing Tory polemicists to stir the base up against the Muslim/Arab "enemy."

*****
The logical conclusion for the Tory, looking back on that great fall, is that the 20th century was a horrible mistake. By contrast, America seemed to be doing very well right up to Sept. 11, 2001 (though some would place the catastrophe a bit earlier, on Nov. 5, 2000, or Jan. 20, 2001). Only after 9/11 and the Iraq catastrophe did right-wing America feel a doomed affinity for Tory gloom and hatred

So now Red-State America is in the mood to hear that the whole modern world is a big mistake. *****

*****

The funny thing is, Tory propagandists hate America themselves. Until he was bribed to prop up Bush, Christopher Hitchens spewed the usual Tory loathing for the United States, based in resentment of the usurpers who took over Britain's imperial role.
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http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/86358/

[RB TexLa]

1. When doesn't a british accent indicate hatred for all who are not english?

[skooooo]

2. huh?

[QueenOfCalifornia]

4. That is quite

possibly the weirdest thing I've seen in here for quite some time.

And that is saying a lot.

[MindPilot]

5. On behalf of all the American citizens with British accents

please, go fuck yourself.

[ashling]

6. Sorry, I thought you were responding

to the OP

[DavidDvorkin]

9. Hear, hear!

[supernova]

8. Do you know the definition of Tory"?

[kenny blankenship]

10. When no one remembers the phrase "Wogs begin at Calais" anymore?

I think you have climbed aboard a Saturn V booster in your bid to go over the top, but
I'd agree that there's something a little odd at least in the idea that a British accent could somehow serve to conceal racism. Since when???? This accent inhabited, administered and ruled over an Empire in which subject peoples from Malasia to India to Iran to the Sudan were all indiscriminately called "niggers" and "wogs". Even southern Europeans with darker complexions enjoyed the wog label, leading to the hyperbole, "Wogs begin at Calais." And I'm sure Irish people could supply a small dictionary of racially disparaging terms applied to them by the English over the centuries of their colonization and struggle for independence.

Being British doesn't make anyone a racist, but, like any American, being British confronts any British person with the legacy of an overtly racist past--a legacy which has left many traces in the language.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. Martin Amis has always been nuts

Living in the shadow of his also-nuts father hasn't been easy for Martin. His personal life has been sloppy, his professional life one of skating on his father's reputation, albeit with a modicum of his own talent, and he'll do anything for attention.

British accent or not, he's a sorry whackjob hack writer trying to keep himself in the limelight.

[pretzel4gore]

7. amis and hitchens have hitchensed their wagons...

to a falling star, called Awe Gee dubia bush, the Youngster. Both twits are Belly Crackers, as disgusting as rush limbah toilet offerings .... to think they visited the wonderful Robert Graves at Ibiza, on the weight of daddy kingsley amis' reputation, while 'chrissy an marty' was in their overfed teens! Because of this, and their emergence as rightwing goonies, i despise them.... I have a special loathing for the drunken pig 'ickens (in 'Blinded by the Right' David Brock and a lady friend met 'ickens and were shocked at the stink, and the filthy clothes etc that chris protruded from his overwrought persona, like a snake that died of fright...) and that boor, amis (amis' cousin was a victim of the notorious britash serial killer Fred West, who with his lovely wife Ruth killed and buried a couple dozen kids, including a few of their own, behind their apartment house...when amis was reading up on Fred, he learned that Fred loved to eat onions, like they was apples, peels and all! ...chomp chomp...)
The irony about these dopes is that, though rich white males defended by millions of nuke armed soldiers and with history a record where the crimes of their lot are carefully hidden in secret archives etc, these dopes still think they are PUT UPON, by liberals and sympathisers, and it's they who are AFFLICTED while the masses of the world are the 'Comfortable' and like honest downtrodden writers they confort the afflicted and afflict the....etc, as the golden rule tells them to (!!)

[Wilber_Stool]

11. "like a snake that died of fright."

I'm going to have to use that one.