England Forsakes its Heroes

Order Jamie Glazov’s new book, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas: HERE.

Whether as individuals or as a civilization, our identity is shaped and defined in no small measure by our heroes. On a personal level, our heroes may be a father, a teacher, a mentor, an inspirational athlete. At the civilizational level, they are world-beating, larger-than-life figures who embody something about our national character that inspires pride, hope, and unity. Some even rise to the level of myth – think of Albion’s once and future king Arthur, for example. Flawed human beings though they may be – and we are all flawed; there has ever been only one man who lived without sin – we still venerate them for their achievements, their victories, their sacrifices, their virtues, their vision, their meaning for us as a people.

These icons stood for us in the past, and their triumphs continue to stand for us as inspiration and as challenge. When we refuse to stand for them – when we allow our cultural heroes to be publicly erased; when we stand by as our monuments to them are defaced or destroyed by subversive forces – then our roots are ripped out from under us and our shared identity begins to disintegrate. A society that abandons or forgets its heroes is one that has no center and cannot hold.

Is there any Western society caving to subversive enemies more precipitously than the United Kingdom? Every day seems to bring news of another willing capitulation of its elites to Islamic colonization. A new definition of “Islamophobia,” for example, is being imposed which will serve as a de facto blasphemy law to pave the way for the continued Islamization of British society. It will, as journalist and Londonistan author Melanie Phillips puts it, “accelerate the slide towards cultural suicide.”

Another disheartening sign of civilizational retreat is the report that the Bank of England, which issues money on behalf of the government, intends to end the modern tradition (since 1970) of printing images of great Britons such as Winston Churchill and Waterloo victor Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, on the verso (the reverse or back side) of the nation’s paper currency (the obverse, or front, has featured the reigning monarch: Queen Elizabeth II until 2022, then King Charles III). The Bank announced that it has decided to replace those figures with pictures of wildlife instead because the latter are “not divisive.”

Let that sink in. Churchill – the savior of England in World War II; the man consistently viewed as the “greatest Briton of all time” – and other historical luminaries are to be replaced with bland, pleasant-but-hardly-inspiring pictures of wildlife. And we all know what “not divisive” means: it means the Powers That Be are removing images of longstanding civilizational heroes in order to avoid offending that burgeoning sector of the population which hates the country and the West, and which openly expresses that hatred through cultural intimidation and violent savagery on an almost daily basis.

The self-loathing Powers That Be fear this demographic and yet welcome them as a replacement for their own people, the indigenous whites who have been deemed history’s most egregious oppressors and exploiters (for that matter, they have been deemed history’s only oppressors and exploiters). These are the same multiculturalist elites who recently determined that the British countryside is “too white” and must be forcibly diversified by an influx of Muslim migrants who don’t give a fig about the beauty of the landscape or the traditions, manners, and values of the indigenous locals.

“Heroes” in the context of the banknotes doesn’t necessarily refer only to warriors, but to anyone who has been of extraordinary service to the country and people of England, and indeed the world at large: scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, and Alan Turing; artists such as the Bard William Shakespeare (the first historical figure on any Bank of England note, from 1970-1993), architect Sir Christopher Wren, painter J.M.W. Turner, and novelist Jane Austen; and others such as nurse Florence Nightingale and economist Adam Smith. These and other notables from the vast pantheon of English heroes are soon to have their likenesses on the country’s currency replaced by those of inoffensive, anonymous beavers and badgers and hedgehogs.

The Bank of England said in a statement that the change was supported by their research into “public taste.” Don’t believe this for a minute. It is impossible to believe that the true British people, who are being held hostage by the Islamophilic administration of rabidly multicultural Keir Starmer, have lost their “taste” for Churchill or Shakespeare or Newton, and now prefer the furry visages of random animals. This is about surrendering to, and conforming to, the arrogant demands of the migrant population, which grows exponentially every day in number and political power. This is clear from the criteria which future currency designs must now meet: any new pictures must symbolize the UK, resonate with the public – so far, so good – but most importantly, be “not divisive: The theme should not involve imagery that would reasonably be offensive to, or exclude, any groups.”

Does wildlife symbolize the UK or resonate with the public? No, so the real criterion here is the avoidance of offense. In what way could honoring Shakespeare or Florence Nightingale be considered offensive or exclusive? Only if someone resents British identity itself, and we all know which “groups” take offense at British identity: the self-loathing Left and the migrants they champion who have come to the West not to assimilate but to conquer; not to become British but to replace the British. This demographic takeover is being facilitated by globalists in power whose self-righteousness and contempt for the bourgeois, nationalist commoners know no bounds. Their response to every cultural challenge from the enemy within is not to punish migrant lawbreakers or threat makers but to punish the indigenous Brits for triggering Muslim rage.

Consider the British victims of Pakistani rape gangs, some of whom the police arrested for reporting the horrific crimes rather than arresting the Muslim traffickers, groomers, and serial rapists themselves. And now the nation’s heroes must be erased from the currency so as not to offend those who have come to Britain’s shores to take advantage of Western prosperity and freedoms, only to sabotage them and establish sharia intolerance and oppression instead, erasing British identity forever in the process.

When you violently attack monuments to national heroes, you do so not because you dislike those heroes personally, but because they are symbols of the values and aspirational ideals of a society you hope to undermine. Yes, perhaps on a psychological level those heroes shame you personally for your weakness, your cowardice, your vices, and your small-minded political agenda, but for the most part you are consciously and purposefully attempting to subvert and dismantle the society you hate for falling short of your dream of a socially engineered utopia or a divinely ordained caliphate.

When you tear down or desecrate monuments to such great men and women of history as George Washington, Winston Churchill, or Joan of Arc, and have nothing to erect in their stead except meaningless, earthbound sculptures celebrating social justice martyrs-of-the-moment like petty criminal George Floyd, whose most significant achievement was to overdose while resisting arrest, then what you have is a country and a civilization with no identity, no history, no aspirations, no hope, and no future.

That is exactly what the totalitarian subversives among us – the unholy alliance of Islam and the radical Left, and their globalist confederates – want. Don’t let them succeed. Now is the hour – stand against the rising tide, and stand with our civilizational heroes.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.