Monday 13 May 2013

For a Britain with British Ideas and without the ideological concoctions of the 1930s

What matters to ordinary citizens?

Admiral Horatio Nelson
Politics works very much like a market with companies providing services and the principles of supply and demand. Provide a service or goods that people want at the right price that people can afford and you have a successful political party. But for people to want to use your services and buy your products, they must believe that services or goods that you offer can be delivered and that you are not just another kid around the block making promises and offering things that you cannot deliver. Your services and goods must be good but they also have to be seen as being good.

For too long, Nationalism has been related to storm troopers, Nazi salutes, Racism, Xenophobia and Homophobia. To say that people who identified themselves with images of the Third Reich that was itself based on a package of myths taken from other cultures and other times were genuine representatives of the British people is frankly an expression of madness.

The swastika as a religious symbol, the word Aryans taken from the actual inhabitants of the Indian Subcontinent, stories about Atlantis and dreams of a Super Race were all put together with Germanic folklore and ancient religious beliefs and were used to create something called Third Reich that would have been the continuation of the Second Reich that came to an end when the German Kaiser abdicated by the end of World War One. Ordinary Germans were so desperate, so dispossessed and so frustrated that they were willing to follow any false prophets without even questioning such an ideological concoction.

British Nationalism is about what matters to Britain, about industry, about technology, about social justice and creativity to make peoples’ lives better. To mix the images of Nelson, Wellington, Stevenson, and many other British heroes with shameful ideological concoctions that ruled Europe and left behind a trail of devastation and chaos is an insult to intelligence and it is an insult against true British Nationalism.

In 2013, more and more people want a political alternative but there is still a lot of work to do to cleanse British Natinalism and transform it into a real and potent democratic political force.

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