Imagine, if you will, going to a museum and seeing this
The ‘information’ on the plaque reads as follows
Napoleon’s toothbrush is made of a silver-gilt handle and horsehair bristles. Other objects found in his dental kit were ivory toothpicks, thin coral floss, tortoiseshell tongue scrapers and opium-based toothpaste. Most of these materials are not of European origin. This toothbrush and its accompaniments are a product of global imperial networks of extraction and trade. This system was based on the exploitation of colonies to gain resources, commodities and, ultimately, profit.
Imperial industries like agriculture and mining were highly exploitative and unsafe for workers and had widespread environmental consequences.
We know so much about the man that owned the toothbrush, yet far less about the silver miners, opium poppy harvesters, or ivory and tortoiseshell carvers without whose knowledge, land and labour it would not exist.
These stories live in the very fabric of many objects in this collection, and their legacies continue as the basis of our modern economic system.
(ANAIS WALSDORF)
In today’s world it will come as a surprise to literally no one that a political and ideological message is being pushed here.
Trade, of course, never happened and only exploitative subjugation could possibly be responsible for the well-to-do being able to clean their teeth with coral floss1. How else would a European get their grubby little exploitative fingers on such non-European items?
And I’d much rather we had whole volumes written about Digbert Dull, the tortoise catcher, than an absolute no-mark like Napolean. I mean, there’s just no comparison is there? Who wouldn’t rather hear about the high-speed day-long chases through dangerous tropical forests in pursuit of a tortoise?
And please spare a thought for the environment, while you’re at it.
There is, probably, some truth in what has been written. Strike me down with a feather (exploitatively plucked from some exotic non-European bird), humans have been humaning again. Raping, pillaging, and plundering. Pretty much par for the course for all of human history.
But, of course, that’s not the myth we’re seeking to create here. The myth we want to establish is that of the uniquely evil imperialist and colonialist ‘European’ (aka nasty vile whitey) who savagely erupted onto a world full of love and peace and harmony in which every noble non-European could be found sitting round their camp fires, bathed in the splendiferous glory of several thousand different genders, and singing Kumbaya.
This kind of distorted and partial view, deliberately designed to promote a particular ideological mythology, is everywhere.
This particular sprinkling of Walsdorf Walnuttery is bad enough, but what are we to make of the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, who in a recent speech said
Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker2
I have this vision of Gianni’s interaction with his PA.
PA : Sir, let me write the speech
Gianni : No, I want to go down in history
PA : You will, you will
I can only imagine the PA offstage holding his head in his hands whilst Gianni did his stand-up routine.
He goes on to say that, because he had freckles, he was bullied at school, so he knows what it feels like to be discriminated against.
This is the president of an organisation devoted to representing a game in which a bunch of grown men roll around a rectangular patch of grass in faux-agony and occasionally kick a football. We should, of course, pay particular attention to what he says about world affairs.
I just wish these miserable fuckers would just shut up and do their jobs in a professional and objective manner.
Today, I feel like I’ve had enough of this malignant idiocy
I hope the courtesan Coral Floss was suitably remunerated for her work
We hope, like Coral, the migrant worker was suitably remunerated for the grope
The woke have made collective self-loathing into a career weapon. They use it to punish rivals and exclude any heretics, real or imagined. The loud, gassy recriminations are otherwise empty. The wokesters will still eagerly support every brutal form of exploitation, provided it targets people they can safely despise.
What gets my goat is that these people imply that they would have done things differently had they lived in those times, and the arrogance that entails. Especially when the evidence is that they are not very smart and would have been nobodies doing the same as everyone else. If you read the diary of Captain Cook, it is interesting how trade was done coming to an island: they would leave things on a beach, retreat to their ships, and the locals would come, take what they want and leave their own products in place. Barter as a natural mean of exchange. The walsdorfs of this world cannot comprehend this and they are projecting their own myopic way of thinking onto others.