West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, took the knee in 1970 as a gesture of solidarity, humility and penance towards the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Taking the knee has a long and honourable history in showing solidarity.
Current popular usage began with Colin Kapernick, who took the knee before BLM ever used it. BLM may well have appropriated it since the death of George Floyd, but only in the same manner that the far right in the UK has appropriated St. George's Cross and the Union flag. Does that mean to say we should no longer use St. George's cross, or indeed the Union flag, because of their association with the BNP and Ukip? Dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives would be apoplectic at such a suggestion.
Some on the right are fond of saying that BLM is a Marxist organisation. While it is true than two of the three original founders describe themselves as Marxist trained, it is now a highly decentralised mass movement encompassing many political philosophies from multiple countries, all united by the desire to see social justice for people of colour.
The far right want us to believe BLM is Marxist and will trot out this trope at every available opportunity in order to denigrate it - it's merely an extension of the Culture War, where terms are used without actually understanding what they mean and are cherry-picked for effect. For example, for American Republicans anything not Republican is automatically assumed to be Communist, and this tactic, commonly known as the fallacy of the undistributed middle, is now filtering across the Pond. Nuance is anathema to the Culture War warriors.
Inexplicably, Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith compared the gesture to footballers performing the Nazi salute during a 1938 match against Germany in Berlin. How one can veer from Marxism to Fascism is beyond me, but even more surprising is the comparison of a gesture of support for social justice and anti-racism with totalitarianism, when totalitarian regimes have a history of suppressing minorities.
As for booing players who take the knee at an international football match - what is wrong with these people? There is only one, inescapable conclusion, however much they may try to excuse their actions with weasel words. Actions speak louder than words.
They're simply knobs. It's perverse to believe there's nothing more patriotic than booing your own team, believing it's going to improve their performance, especially the black ones. Booing black football players is a well known tactic of racist thugs at matches.
If you're a booer, ask yourself why you're really booing, especially when it has been explained by Gareth Southgate, in detailed and eloquent terms, that it's nothing to do with Marxist ideology. Do you believe his reason for why team members are taking the knee, or your own warped interpretation? The only people who really know are those who are taking the knee and have explained their reasons.
One excuse is that sport should not be mixed with politics, but what is international sport? It's international combat without the casualties, and war is, as Clausewitz observed, the continuation of politics by other means. International sport is an avenue for national pride and boycotting sporting events for political aims is well established and successfully isolated South Africa during apartheid.
Let's move on to Jodie Turner-Smith and her portrayal of Anne Boleyn, which is sending the right wing into paroxysms of huffing and puffing with righteous indignation.
The writer, Eve Hedderwick Turner, wanted to portray Anne Boleyn as an outsider, and what better manner in which to do that than having her played by a black woman. This is even more poignant with what's happening with Meghan Markle - a current outsider (for some) whom the right-wing press love to hate (but, of course, it's not because she's the first woman of colour in the Royal Family - or so they maintain).
In Shakespeare's time men played female parts, but no-one complained. Many white actors in film have portrayed characters of a different race - most notable of late is Joseph Fiennes' portrayal of Michael Jackson, for heaven's sake.
The TV production is a drama, not a documentary. Strict adherence to history is not high on the list of priorities when it comes to film - drama is the priority, else it's very boring. Licence and liberties are taken with dates and the order of events and dialogue is not what was said at the time, which is usually totally unknown. Is there any danger that children in school will be brought up believing Anne Boleyn was black? Highly doubtful, but what if they do?
Ironically, those shouting loudest about historical accuracy have no problem portraying the addition of factual, documented and relevant detail to National Trust properties as 're-writing history' and are more than happy to promulgating a totally false and mythologised narrative about luminaries of the 18th and 19th centuries involvement in the slave trade. Again, a symptom of the Culture War in which the aggressors end up tripping over themselves through logical contradictions.
Lastly, the TV adaptation of the story is art. Art is not always faithful to reality. Show me a film with a maritime theme and I'll pick factual holes in it from now to eternity - it's dramatised for effect and I have to accept that. The history of a National Trust property is factual, not drama, unless you're making a BBC period drama series.
If you're huffing and puffing with righteous indignation, look deep inside yourself and ask why you're really doing it.
Finally, lets turn our attention to the matter of the cricketer, Ollie Robinson, who sent some pretty despicable tweets when aged 17 or 18. Oliver Dowden and Boris Johnson have excused the Tweets with Dowden saying; “Ollie Robinson’s tweets were offensive and wrong. They are also a decade old and written by a teenager. The teenager is now a man and has rightly apologised. The ECB has gone over the top by suspending him and should think again.”
However, in the case of Shemima Begum, who was younger than Robinson when she ran off to join ISIS, Johnson saw fit to remove her passport and declare her stateless. Both have apologised, but Robinson's apology has more weight with Dowden and Johnson. One wonders why? Again, a case of the missing intellectual consistency - that could be a Sherlock Holmes story.
Some would argue that Begum's crime was worse, but no-one died as a result of her action. The greatest damage was to Begum herself and her family. We don't know what damage Robinson caused, but he seems to not have been averse to a bit of race baiting, which could have made his targets feel devastated.
Both should face the music - Begum should return to the UK and be tried and suffer the consequences of the law, if found to have transgressed it; Robinson should be subject to an investigation and, depending on the result, should possibly suffer a short period of suspension. Most professionals are suspended during an investigation, and that period of suspension while the investigation is under way may be enough. Just accepting an apology at face value, however abject, is not the right message at a time when racism is on the rise in sport, especially as he was also released by Yorkshire in 2014 for what his coach, Jason Gillespie, called “consistently displaying behaviour that isn’t professional”.
So much for a government that maintains it's fighting racism. There again, Rory Stewart said of Boris Johnson; "Johnson is, after all, the most accomplished liar in public life - perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent - but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St Augustine. He has mastered the use of error; omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-untruth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie."
The Conservative led and gutter press-abetted Culture War is a nothing more than a war on decency and an attempt to take us back to the good old days of the 1960s.
If you were to tell me where you sat on a single one of the issues above, I could almost guarantee to tell you where you sat on the remaining two, as well as issues such as Brexit, cutting foreign aid, refugees, ignoring the Ministerial Code and a host of other contentious issues.
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