Rudyard Kipling is described as an imperial racist by the BBC which can prove that contention by quoting to us Kipling’s poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’.
This poem supposedly encourages Imperial conquest and obliges White people to go forth and civilize the more brutish and barbaric parts of the world….or you could interpret it as…if you are going to invade and turn a part of the world into a bit of your empire then it is your duty to serve the native population well….a subtle but entirely different take on the poem.
‘Imperialist racism’ is a very simplistic and prejudiced view of the poem if you read its sentiments as Kipling probably intended them to be read.
However it is ironic that the BBC should denounce Kipling for jingoistic imperialism and his apparent call to ‘Whites’ to do their duty and civilise the world as surely the BBC Charter itself proclaims the same values The BBC World Service and its Media Action arm are the poem in motion subversively encouraging democracy, freedom of thought and expression, environmentalism, as well as ‘good governance’ and people power, through development of a sophisticated media and use of campaign groups…in other worlds bringing ‘civilisation’ to the barbarous, unruly nations of the world….and of course that obligation for the BBC extends to the wilder parts of the UK where unreconstructed Tories, UKIPPers, members of the EDL, any member of the white working class, Islamophobes, Euro and climate sceptics lurk…all in need of re-education courtesy of the white liberal class ensconced at the BBC.
The Royal Charter guarantees the editorial independence of the BBC and sets out its Public Purposes. These are defined as:
- sustaining citizenship and civil society
- promoting education and learning
- stimulating creativity and cultural excellence
- representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities
- bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK
When we hear people denouncing the West for not heading out to Africa and curing Ebola, or not tackling ISIS or not sorting out the Middle East are those people then racists? Surely they would be if judged on the same basis that Kipling is….and Kipling was a man of his times…what excuse do these paragons, these latter day saints, of the modern Liberal society have for their advocacy of the imperialist supremacy of the Western nations?
Melvyn Bragg & Co had a look at Kipling and it was interesting how they all took it for granted that Kipling was racist and an imperial propagandist…Bragg describing him as ‘a major apologist for the British empire’.
Well first, why should anyone need to apologise for the British Empire? That’s a very prejudiced view taken by a very select group of people and Bragg seems to be guilty of being trapped in group think rather than thinking for himself. Kipling wasn’t an apologist for Empire, he just lived through it and wrote about it as it happened….and he was critical of it much of the time…indeed ‘White Man’s Burden‘ is a call to treat the native populations well…which obviously leads to the idea that he believed they might not always be so treated.
We are told Kipling’s poems and stories have a stigma attached to them by virtue of Kipling being a supporter of the British Empire…and his poems and stories are ‘contaminated by his politics‘.
Kipling’s politics, his race theories were ‘unendurably horrible‘.
But….we are told…if we can look beyong his ‘unendurably horrible racism’ and his apologia for Imperialism then we can see the merits of his writing, in a technical sense. How very good of them to so condescend.
I have the sneaking suspicion that none of them on the show have a clue what they are talking about. They weren’t there with Kipling, they haven’t experienced ‘Empire’ as he experienced it, they haven’t moved amongst the natives, or amongst the maharajahs or the colonial officials.
They are imposing their own views of what they think the Raj was and how people such as Kipling ‘must’ have really felt about it…and doing so from the comfort of their ivory towers in academia and the media far from India and so very far from the times that Kipling wrote about.
Kipling’s ‘racism’ or imperialism are purely the concerns of a very select group of people who make it their job to search through history to denounce anything or anyone they feel has offended the censorious Liberal morality.
So, kids, you can read Kipling and enjoy the stories, but as you read bare in mind that they are an anachronistic relic from a bygone age in which attitudes of casual racism, racial supremacy, colonisation, violence, misogyny, apartheid, homophobia and religious mania held sway. Use the occasion to learn about the terrifying, and unendurably horrible, attitudes held by white people towards others merely because they do not have the same skin colour.
The Koran, by way of contrast, is a wonderful book, the cornerstone of a faith that brings peace and harmony wherever it is practised. The BBC highly recommends you read it, grow a beard and learn how to shoot a gun…er…only to defend yourself against those appalling Kipling-like Islamophobes who, through ignorance, prejudice and hatred, link that lovely religion to untold misery and violence.
Anyone who thinks Rudyard Kipling was a ‘racist’ (in the sense the contemporary Left uses the word) has either never read him in depth, or is too unintelligent to understand what Kipling was saying.
Have you got the meaning of the word apologist wrong? It can be and is used by canons of the church to act as apologists,ie, for explaining. As in: Apologetics and Catholic Doctorine. I forget the author but he was not saying sorry for the Church (perhaps he should!}
“Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘Take up the White Man’s burden'”
From Introduction to his works-
“Introduction: R. Kipling (1865-1936) was born in India and educated in England. He returned to India in 1882 and lived there for seven years, working as a journalist. His ‘Jungle Book’ for children and his famous novel ‘Kim’ reflect his Indian experience. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His poem ‘Take up the White Man’s Burden’ was written under the impression of the American conquest of the Philippines, but it was also influenced by the experience of British imperialism in India. Often misunderstood as a praise of imperialism,
it was actually an ironic reflection on the imperialist’s vain endeavour.”
[Kipling’s poem can be found here.]
http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415485432/37.asp
I suppose we should not be too surprised as they go through the back catalogue of England’s finest and most inspiring writers and thinkers. Rudyard Kipling is beyond the BBC’s intimidation and reach along with Enid Blyton, Margarat Thatcher and Winston Churchill all exist in stark contrast to the ‘politically correct’ nonsense that will outlast the BBC bias. The BBC is trying to rewrite history according to its own virtual world. The hard left have long wished to abolish ‘childhood’ so popular Rudyard Kipling, Edward Lear, and Lewis Carol will all get panned for lack of racial issues, buggery and the lack of multiculti awareness. What the BBC ‘THINKS’ – is a bit of an oxymoron anyway. More worrying is their belief that they can rewrite history according to their own ‘unique’ liberal values. I look forward to more arrests at the BBC.
The BBC should stick fictional stories, like the sad tale of “The Sinking Polar Bear”, Wuthering Forests”, ” The World on Fire”, or “The Great Flood”.
Beeboids are only negative about the effect British colonialism of the past;
and are only positive about the current effect of foreign colonisation on Britain.
The common Beeboid political propaganda in all this: being anti-British.
Roger Scruton on ‘Oikophobia’
Chapter 8, of-
‘England and the need for nations.’
Click to access cs49-8.pdf
Excellent
BBC liberalism has to despise the past. The past actually happened. It is not a fantasy and even a liberal has difficulty in altering the past. They do, of course, but it is not the preferred option. Much better to denigrate the people of the past.
Why do they do this? All because the future is their concern and that is a fantasy story they are telling themselves.
Nothing of old England can be considered worthwhile. We were a worthless people who did only bad things in the world.
We who are the inheritors of our ancestors’ actions are guilty. Only by accepting the absurd tenets of liberalism can we atone. Better to get rid of us all together and create a new people.
The BBC/Liberal world is a nightmare not a dream and unless stopped it will destroy us all.
Melvn Bragg
That would be Lord Melvyn Bragg, Labour.
Outstanding post but I was wondering if you could write a litte more
on this subject? I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a
little bit further. Cheers!
see here is the thing,the middle class academics of the marxist labour party and these radio 4 types all have a guilty conscience about slavery and imperialism and want us all to feel the same.why should we,we was no part of slavery and imperialism, here is another thing,we have this black history month encouraged by the labour party marxists and taught in are schools every october,in effect that is teaching already angry black schoochildren that all white people was responsible for slavery and the brutal treatement of black people in the past,no wonder why black people hate white people and see them as the enemy if this type of division is being taught in are schools,socalism and marxism is the enemy of the working classes.expect a bellyfull more hate and divison is the labour party get elected in 2015.
Anyone who cares to find what an anti-Imperialist, free from the need to parrot the usual clichés, has to say about Rudyard Kipling can read this essay by George Orwell:
http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/kipling/english/e_rkip
What struck me when I read this essay for the first time was Orwell’s referring to Kipling as a “good bad poet.” That phraseology more or less summarises what many feel about him, a sort of “man you hate to love,” if you will. In any event, Orwell was a much younger contemporary of Kipling (in his thirties at Kipling’s death at 70) and a bit closer to the world that could produce someone like that; all the more amazing that Orwell should take an opposite political view from Kipling and yet credit him with a place in the pantheon regardless, even if the niche he occupies is “vulgarian, but at least one who cared about things anyway, when most others didn’t, or at any rate, never wrote about them.”
Alan,
“Bragg describing him as ‘a major apologist for the British empire’.
Well first, why should anyone need to apologise for the British Empire?”
Well first, you don’t understand what “apologist” means.
“Rudyard Kipling is described as an imperial racist by the BBC which can prove that contention by quoting to us Kipling’s poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’.”
Nobody in the programme describes Kipling as an imperial racist.
Nobody in the programme quotes any lines from ‘The White Man’s Burden’.
Indeed, Bragg describes the poem as; “putting together, not so much a feeling of Anglo-Saxon superiority but Anglo-Saxon responsibility”. Which is exactly what you criticise the programme for supposedly not saying.
“‘Imperialist racism’ is a very simplistic and prejudiced view of the poem… …it is ironic that the BBC should denounce Kipling for jingoistic imperialism”
And yet, nobody in the programme described the poem as ‘imperialist racism’.
Neither did anybody denounce Kipling for ‘jingoistic imperialism’.
Your whole post is just a tissue of lies from start to finish[oh, how unusual…]. Anyone don’t believe me? Try listening to the programme…
Your desperate, pitiful attempt to link it to UKIP, EDL, ISIS, THE KORAN & HOMOPHOBIA is pure space cadet, batshit crazy.
“I have the sneaking suspicion that none of them on the show have a clue what they are talking about.”
ROTFL! Okay, that’s:
The Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester
The Winterstoke Professor of English Literature at the University of Bristol
The Professor of Twentieth Century English Literature at the University of Kent
Yes of course; “none of them have a clue”, and meanwhile you don’t even know what “apologist” means…
I LOVE YOU ALAN xxx
On reflection, of course you know the meaning on the word ‘apologist’. Look at the time I wrote it. I was a little ‘tired and emotional’. Forgive me.
I thought the BBC was the white mans burden!
Kipling may in fact have been a racist but there is no denying he makes exceedingly good cakes
The licence fee –
If you alone refuse to pay
While all around are paying theirs
Then you will be a man, my son.
If you can keep your head
while all around are losing theirs,
you are not in Sharia controlled territory.
Yes! Finally something about company obtained.
The USA, having committed the genocide of aborigines living in the North American continent , the Americans decided to enlarge the US Empire by conquering Philippines. Kipling was ‘instructing’ American politicians that to administer a Colonial Empire , one must necessarily deploy the very best your of American administrators to ensure the welfare of your subject peoples. BUT . . . the Americans sent second rate people to the Middle East . Ergo: the Middle East is in now in a bath of blood lust. Whereas we built, and relied upon, roads, railways, schools, hospitals, and the gradual inclusion of native peoples to encompass ” Democracy “. The Americans rely on the CIA, Tomahawk Missiles, Drones, and Mercenaries, Fox News, and Hollywood. How appalling!! Who are the inheritors of British ” soft power” ? Take note, Beijiing comes to mind!
The USA, having committed the genocide of aborigines living in the North American continent , the Americans decided to enlarge the US Empire by conquering Philippines. Kipling was ‘instructing’ American politicians that to administer a Colonial Empire , one must necessarily deploy the very best your of American administrators to ensure the welfare of your subject peoples. BUT . . . the Americans sent second rate people to the Middle East . Ergo: the Middle East is in now in a bath of blood lust. Whereas we built, and relied upon, roads, railways, schools, hospitals, and the gradual inclusion of native peoples to encompass ” Democracy “. The Americans rely on the CIA, Tomahawk Missiles, Drones, and Mercenaries Fox News, and Hollywood. How appalling!!
He did make exceedingly good cakes though 😉