BNP claims DNA evidence validates their racist policies

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, the way I know history, most of us are descendants of the rich guys from previous eras. Remember that by ancient and middle age standards, being poor didn't mean "has a McDonalds job and can only afford a second hand car", but rather being kept at bare subsistence level and it didn't take more than a severe drought or a levy at the wrong time to push you on the other side of the subsistence line.

Basically "we all come from Charlemagne" is about the right idea. And not just in Europe. In China some 80% a whole region has the Y chromosome of one particular dynasty.

What I'm getting at, though is: the British Isles changed ownership several times in the distant past.

The Celts themselves IIRC didn't claim to be natives there. Then came the Romans, and of course they and a few romanized celts were now the wealthy class who spread their genes. The came a severe plague which decimated the Romano-British to the point of near collapse, and they brought in the Angles and Saxons, which soon overran them. So now we have the germanic guys enjoying the survival advantage.

There is actual evidence IIRC that not much of the original Romano-British stock remained in England by the time of the Norman invasion.

And, yes, then came the Normans.

So unless he wants to make the Normans (descendants of) the original inhabitants of the British Isles, I very much doubt that he can claim that his ancestry goes back to the last ice age in Britain.

 

[Roboramma]

If this claim is correct, it's also probably true that a large percentage of people in living in France today can trace their ancestry back to ice age britain.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Considering that the Normans were the Northmen (i.e., scandinavians) that the king of France allowed to settle there... Well, considering all the places where the Vikings went, then probably a good chunk of Russia can trace their ancestry to ice age Britain. I have no doubt that the BNP is looking forward to welcoming them

 

[lightfire22000]

Hans, I'm pretty sure that the original inhabitants of all of Europe were of swarthy complexion. Britain was first settled by a non Indo-European group from Iberia. The Welsh often look like them. The Picts might also have been dark skinned.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Hey, I'm just going by his claims. I'm not actually saying that the fair skinned Scandinavians were the original inhabitants of Britain, but what aberrations would have to be true to make such nationalist claims correct. In other words, I just love a good ad absurdum

 

[fuelair]

The science aside, how the heck would this legitimize racism?

And if it justifies discrimination against non-white people in Britain, would it also justify discrimination against white people in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa ... ?

That's the point, it doesn't legitimize it, it makes it a really stupid idea!! It means he (the racist) is trying to throw out his cousins (a few hundred generations removed at most) because they tanned and he didn't.

 

[G-K-4]

Anyone whose ancestors didn't live in Britain before agriculture was practised (the 'good' two-thirds of the population, by Griffin's nauseating ideology) can bugger off "home".

It's chilling.

But that's not all. Anyone with some ancestors who DID live in Britain before agriculture was practiced, and other ancestors who DIDN'T, is also screwed. Griffin thinks that this "miscegenation" "destroys two ancient family lines". Never mind that those families are still part of history, still exist in the present, and will likely continue into the future.

I'm from the U.S. with British ancestry, and I mostly identify as British. But to Griffin, I wouldn't count because I also have documented and relatively recent French and German ancestry. So I guess my family lines have been "destroyed" and I'm some sort of temporal anomaly.

(Also see a ridiculous BNP claim (for which I could not find a clear reference) that "a white family line that stretches back into deep pre-history is destroyed" by such relationships, as quoted in the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party#Racial_and_immigration_policies )

 

[MattusMaximus]

Didn't the BNP actually win a seat in the British parliamentary elections? Good grief

 

[Rolfe]

(Also see a ridiculous BNP claim (for which I could not find a clear reference) that "a white family line that stretches back into deep pre-history is destroyed" by such relationships, as quoted in the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party#Racial_and_immigration_policies )

I think I feel slightly ill.

As it happens, I don't know of any of my family on either side who isn't Scots. But that may well be from lack of looking very hard. (Some cousins who emigrated to the USA in the later 19th century have looked, and their researches are all I know about.) And I've never been particularly keen on looking outside my own close ethnic/society connections for a partner.

But I will defend to my last breath the right of anyone to marry, shack up with or otherwise have a good time with any other member of the species homo sapiens that they happen to fancy.

I also happen to think that Scotland only has about half the population it ought to have, for various reasons not entirely unconnected with all these cousins in the USA and Canada. So where the hell does any idiot get off wanting to send away the people that are here???!! For goodness sake. Get a grip.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Didn't the BNP actually win a seat in the British parliamentary elections? Good grief

Uh, no. Maybe the one bright part of the FPTP voting system is that this is extremely unlikely to happen.

Rolfe.

 

[jasonpatterson]

Didn't the BNP actually win a seat in the British parliamentary elections? Good grief

He was elected to the European Parliament.

 

[BenBurch]

He was elected to the European Parliament.

Just makes it easier to laugh at him.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

He was elected to the European Parliament.

It's ironic that the European parliament has so many xenophobic politicians in it.

 

[G-K-4]

Now, there are a number of glaring issues with this line of argument, scientifically, ethically and politically, but I just wanted to see what the JREF made of the basic claims...

It's odd, but I was reading about genetic tracing of European ancestry just last week. It's still a realtively new field. One or two scientists with books are not enough to settle these questions. There are still debates about methods and disagreements about conclusions. (For example, see Stephen Oppenheimer's comments about Weale, here.) What Griffin has done is taken one author (who probably wouldn't even agree with Griffin's conclusions) and picked cherries to grind an axe. Or, more appropriately for a fascist, Griffin is grasping at a bundle of straws and inserting his own axe in the middle.

In his commentary, Griffin cites Oppenheimer a lot but doesn't mention Oppenheimer's other comments that "Given the distribution of Celtic languages in southwest Europe, it is most likely that they were spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to the British Isles. There is a dated archaeological trail for this. My genetic analysis shows exact counterparts for this trail both in the male Y chromosome and the maternally transmitted mitochondrial DNA right up to Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the English south coast." (here)

So I guess we're all Anatolians, too, by way of those swarthy Iberians. Cool. So does Griffin think it's okay for Turks to stay in Britain, since they appear to have ancient Anatolian roots as well? We're cousins! Does Griffin expect each Briton to carve out the "non-British" proportions of themselves? Or do we kick out those who are not pure enough?

He also spends much of this article saying how little genetic influence has been brought by famous invaders such as the Saxons, Normans, and other "Johnny Come Lately"s. So what then is the matter with recent and current immigrants? This happened before with no significant genetic effect, or so Griffin seems to say out of one side of his mouth. So what's the problem? If anything, the grandkids of the newcomers will marry the grandkids of the locals, and their descendants will still have Neolithic British direct ancestors. (Ah but, see my previous comment about who "miscegenation".)

Finally, Griffin also makes a big deal about an allegedly ancient and persistent division between English and Celts. Yet his source, Oppenheimer, says that there is still a strong Iberian (and thus Celtic) presence in his English samples. "England has rather lower rates of Iberian types with marked heterogeneity, but no English sample has less than 58% of Iberian samples." Origins of the British (2006), Stephen Oppenheimer states (pages 375 and 378) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Oppenheimer So again, people can and do have multiple ancestries, which tie English Britain and Celtic Britain together. As a descendent of both groups, even little old me is living proof of that.

Griffin's desire for exclusivity remain unfulfilled. And why should that be a reason for devolution? It has nothing to do with anything. Perhaps it is simply a way to abuse science to claim a right to more power based on nothing more than the accidents of inheritance, with his "team" making up the rules after the game is over. But isn't that what racism is all about anyway?

Britain simply is a multicultural society and has been for decades, if not centuries. The term merely describes the fact of what ethnic and cultural groups live there today. There are more than a few different groups, even though the numbers of Black Caribbean and of Asian Britons are still very small. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/profiles/commentaries/ethnicity.asp

It's also weird how Griffin is so focused on biological trivia. I thought modern, "media savvy" white supremacists were supposed to use the "culture" talking point instead. It seems to have gotten him elected to the EU Parliament, FSM help us all.

Much of this has also been discussed here:
http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/4366

 

[Mojo]

It's ironic that the European parliament has so many xenophobic politicians in it.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98933

 

[Professor Yaffle]

Someone should ask Griffin if he would chuck the royal family out...

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Someone should ask Griffin if he would chuck the royal family out...

Given the family links between the royals and Nazis, I don't think he would.

 

[jasonpatterson]

He also spends much of this article saying how little genetic influence has been brought by famous invaders such as the Saxons, Normans, and other "Johnny Come Lately"s. So what then is the matter with recent and current immigrants? This happened before with no significant genetic effect, or so Griffin seems to say out of one side of his mouth. So what's the problem?

Well jeez, isn't it obvious? They're going to sleep with our lily white daughters and we'll have a bunch of dark-skinned half-breed children running around committing crimes and terrorizing the old folks. That sort of thing doesn't happen to good English stock. Some people...

 

[dudalb]

THe BNP Euro Parliament member can join some of the other right wing nutjobs there...The Italian Neo Fascist, The French Le Pen crowd, and the Russian Ultra Nationalists come to mind. Birds of a Feather.

 

[Big Les]

G-K-4 beat me to it. I might have known the white supremacists would hijack Oppenheimer's work by cherrypicking one of his conclusions - that the various immigrations of the last few thousand years have made relatively little impact on the basic genetics of the British (and Irish) populations.

Of course, G-K-4 also nails the hilariously counter-racist implication of this, which is that current immigrations will also be assimilated and make, in the scheme of things, little impact on the British genetic profile. And the fact that it shows that we didn't "all" come from "good", white, Anglo-Saxon stock, but from Johnny Foreigner Land.

Hit up "oppenheimer" on the Stormfront and other white-sup forums and see how those racists that have actually READ Origins of the British feel about its claims. They ain't happy!

And as others have said - other than being an interesting historical footnote - so what? Even assuming we've been barely affected genetically and culturally (not so) by past immigrations, so what? What's the positive correlation between ethnic purity? A simple-minded tribal feel-good sense of community would seem to be about it. This isn't 1415 any more, Nick.