If a part-Turkish, American born yet British, politician makes mockery of the clothing choices of a section of the population this is appalling, racism, tantamount to fascism.
‘Morally empty’ Johnson is courting fascism, says peer as Tory crisis mounts
It’s true that few are going to be praising his sense of personal morality. But really:
A Tory peer and former aide to David Cameron accused Boris Johnson of “moral emptiness”, casual racism and “courting fascism” as division over the former foreign secretary’s comments about Muslim women threatened to develop into a full-blown crisis for Theresa May and her party.
The comments by Lord Cooper, a former pollster who worked for Cameron at No 10, came after Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the party’s anti-EU right wing, criticised the prime minister for backing an investigation into Johnson’s remarks, in which he compared women wearing burqas to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”. Rees-Mogg said May had countenanced a “show trial” of Johnson because of her “personal rivalry” with him.
All of which is to rather miss an essential part of that British personality. Or culture, if you prefer. Our linguistic foibles are well enough known. “Not half bad” means absolutely superb. “How nice” often enough “that’s disgusting or at least common.” This does all go rather further, absolutely every section of British society, down to and including the group of lifelong mates propping up the bar, makes fun of the clothing choices of absolutely every other group of British society. Including among that group propping up the bar. It’s as with accents.
For example, there was that purge of red trousers from polite society.
From South Ken to Shoreditch, from Jermyn Street to Mare Street – these days anyone that’s anyone is wearing red trousers.
If you want your leg-coverings to let the world know that you’ve got a few quid and don’t care who knows it, or that you have some big ideas about what’s on at the ICA right now – or simply that you are completely insane (but in a mainly non-stabby way) – then you’d better get your wife or girlfriend to take those jeans and chinos down to the charity shop post-haste!
Because there’s only one type of trousers you’ll be wanting to wear, and that’s RED TROUSERS. In fact – if you can’t wear red trousers you’d be better off wearing NO TROUSERS AT ALL. That’s what I say.
The ire starting from the fact that posh people wear red trousers.
The sassy brigadier busts out a red trouser in retirement. It has military connotations, namely the 11th Hussars, Prince Albert’s cavalry regiment. This is how they justify it to themselves.
That’s the original source of course. Hussar uniforms, therefore posh, thus why they’re a marker of it and thus disliked at best by all other Brits. So, we take the piss.
Why do people mock men in red trousers?
The correct answer being because we’re British. For we mock any and every observable point, facet or fact about any- and every- one. That’s just what we do. It is, in fact, our culture.
This is true of burkas, afros, Sloanes in red trousers, people who wear trakkie bottoms, Last of the Summer Wine has fun with housecoats and curlers, Beyond the Fringe with bowlers and flat caps – the list is as endless as the possible items of clothing. As is so often the case the immigrant, Boris Johnson, is more native than the indigenes.
And? The correct British answer to mockery of the burka is for those who do wear them to mock and tease those who do not. To do anything else is to misunderstand among whom one has arrived.
British mockery as you describe it is now illegal if taken as abuse by anybody at all on behalf of anybody else. We replaced the right to gently mock with the right to be a victim.
US states have Civil Rights Commissions that compel testimony after complaints about “hate speech” (a trick of concatenation even more absurd than “assault weapon”). So certain individuals can claim the right to never hear mockery. This right is being extended to men pretending to be women, though they are free to call their detractors “homophobes,” and to people who over-eat.) Let African Americans discard their skin-color-based dialect, gibberish given names, and pursuit of a separatist culture, and I think the mockery ends immediately. (We might also have to end the War On Drugs and barriers to employment, which make the… Read more »
Burkas are Saudi Arabia’s way of playing arsonist-fireman. Kind of like when Ariel Sharon walked on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, then got elected as a strongman to put down the very Palestinian uprising that he created. What Saudi Arabia does is use their clerics to push people in the West to do controversial things, which gets them attacked, and then steps in as their savior. This way, they gain power over Muslims in the West. It helps to have them close when they’re turning them into suicide bombers. When you attack Burka-wearing Muslims, you’re playing into Saudi Arabia’s hands.… Read more »
Would you prefer to live in a society where you were expected to report a public burka-wearer to the police and risk being a criminal yourself for failure to report the crime, or one where sporting a burka was permitted and taking the mickey out of it was also permitted?
Sadly, we’re not that much different from the Danes and French culturally and there are quite a few in Great Britain who want to go down the first route.
Classical liberalism is holding on for the win here but only by the skin of its teeth.
I recall Jack Straw refusing burka-clad (or was it just the veil?) women from attending his surgeries. Bit of an uproar but nothing like what BoJo has generated. Nothing to do with the fact that Jack as a Labour MP was a man-of-the-Left?
I also seem to recall that BoJo’s line is not original and came from Billy Connolly. The same Billy who said the ‘world was a wanker short’ after every suicide bomber.
What BoJo said in his article was “Some people think that they resemble …”. Which is undoubtedly true. He certainly wasn’t claiming that it was an original observation.