“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...” was a great quote by “Jaws” author Peter Benchley. He didn’t have to finish the sentence because we all knew what was coming next.
Sometimes when I read the news, a thought comes to mind: “Just when you thought progressives couldn’t get any stupider…”
You know what comes next—progressives got stupider.
To wit, a university in Britain has stepped up to the stupidity plate, and they are now removing the term “Anglo-Saxon” from their terminology. The Telegraph reports:
The University of Nottingham offers leading courses in Anglo-Saxon history and literature and is the only university in the country to offer a Viking Studies course.
But in a move to “decolonise the curriculum”, professors have renamed a masters course in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies as Viking and Early Medieval English Studies.
A module within the programme titled “Research Methods in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies” has also had the “Anglo-Saxon” term removed in favour of “Early Medieval English”.
Nottingham, if my memory serves, is where Robin Hood carried out his exploits. I wonder what he’d say about this new woke development?
The term "Anglo-Saxon" is to be replaced by "Early Medieval English" to help with "undercutting nationalist narratives" and "essential ideas" about nationality, meaning the belief that English identity is distinct and confers fundamental characteristics. pic.twitter.com/LrJ2PsPrpJ
— Diversity Makes Free (@WillemD19118035) September 1, 2024
My first thought when reading the above paragraph was, if you’re going to nuke the term “Anglo-Saxon,” how can you allow the term “Viking” to continue? I should have kept reading, though, because more idiocy was yet to come:
The university has also said it is seeking to “problematize the term ‘Viking’” in its tuition. [Sic.]
An English literature module “A Tale of Seven Kingdoms: Anglo-Saxon and Viking-Age England from Bede to Alfred the Great” was also renamed “Early mediaeval England from Bede to Alfred the Great”.
It comes amid concerns over the connections of “race, empire, Nazism” to Norse culture and mythology.
The obvious problem with this lunacy is that the Anglo-Saxons are actually a part of history, a people; they are not just a phrase that can be modified at will to fit the mores of the day.
The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to Germanic settlers who became one of the most important cultural groups in Britain by the 5th century. The Anglo-Saxon period in Britain is considered to have started by about 450 and ended in 1066, with the Norman Conquest.
What’s next—will the antisemites remove the word “Jewish” from the language? Shall we cancel the term “Spanish” because some of their explorers hundreds of years ago did some things we wouldn’t approve of today? I mean, if they really want to go for it, they should try to get the word “white” canceled; that might satisfy them.
I jest, of course, but some of their musings are anything but funny—their efforts to distort the history of mankind and simply delete anything that offends them are dangerous.
The move follows a pledge made in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests to decolonise the curriculum, a term denoting a move away from Western-centred material and the dominance of “white voices” in academia.
Teaching staff at Nottingham also ensure that module content aims at “undercutting nationalist narratives” and “essentialist ideas” about nationality, meaning the belief that English identity is distinct and confers fundamental characteristics.
In 2023, it was revealed that the University of Cambridge, home to a leading Anglo-Saxon department, was teaching students that Anglo-Saxons did not exist as a distinct ethnic group as part of efforts to undermine “myths of nationalism”.
As part of efforts to make teaching more “anti-racist”, courses aimed to explain that the Anglo-Saxons, Scottish, Irish and Welsh ethnic identities were not “coherent”.
What utter hogwash. The histories of these peoples have been written for hundreds if not thousands of years (ever heard of Beowulf?). To simply argue that they were all one big happy group of diversity is to utterly deny reality. I can understand that some groups want to bring the perhaps underrepresented history of their ancestors to light, but canceling the identities of other populations is not the way:
Progressives at Cambridge University are now claiming that:
— Jonathon Van Maren (@JVanMaren) September 4, 2024
A) "Anglo-Saxons aren't real."
But also,
B) "Anglo-Saxons were probably transgender."
I am once again asking that our institutions stop self-immolating. pic.twitter.com/VKjL0VxKMb
As a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant—a dreaded, evil WASP—I am disturbed that they simply want to wipe out a whole identity. (I did one of those genetic tests, and despite hoping to find out that I was extremely exotic, I discovered that I was almost entirely of English, Irish, and Scottish descent with a bit of Scandinavian thrown in. But I'm still exotic in my own mind.)
Pretty much every ethnic identity, regional background, ancestral descent, national origin—every single one will have some offensive history. The Aztecs brutally sacrificed their people to the Gods—should we never say “Aztec” again? The lunacy is off the charts.
When will this madness end?
