Mbeki attacks 'racist' Churchill

[bemildred]

President Thabo Mbeki has made a withering attack on Winston Churchill and other historic British figures, calling them racists who ravaged Africa and blighted its post-colonial development.

The South African president was addressing the Sudanese assembly, and he was criticised for not dealing with the government's human rights violations in Darfur.

He said British imperialists in the 19th and 20th centuries had treated Africans as savages and left a "terrible legacy" of countries divided by race, colour, culture and religion.

He singled out Churchill as a progenitor of vicious prejudice who justified British atrocities by depicting the continent's inhabitants as inferior races who needed to be subdued, and pointed out that Kitchener and Wolseley had waged ruthless campaigns in Sudan and South Africa.

Guardian UK

[KurtNYC]

1. So if Churchill was a racist, what was Hitler?

"Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.''
W. Churchill October 29, 1941

The nature of colonialism is racist but to single out Churchill is unfair and MBeki should know that.

[el_gato]

2. boo fuckin hoo, churchill had dirty hands just like the rest of them

If your basic criticism is that Mbeki didn't include everyone who is guilty then your stance is pretty flimsy.

[KurtNYC]

3. Does that Churchill quote sound like an oppressor?

Churchill was a lowly fuckin' Army officer in SA in 1921. Does Mbeki think that Churchill made the decisions about how to treat SA? He can't be that naive therefor he knows he is maligning a great man who was instrumental in keeping the alliance together and defeating Hitler. Most likely this is for Mbeki's own political opportunism.

Churchill is not alive to defend himself from this cowardly rubbish.

[el_gato]

4. nice rose colored glasses you are wearing

I don't subscribe to the idea that churchill is some kind of great historical figure who acted out of selfless devotion to humanity.

[KurtNYC]

5. And Mbeki IS?

Mbeki had some choice words about Desmond Tutu also.

Thank you Mr President for telling me what you think of me," Archbishop Tutu said in a statement.

"That I am a liar with scant regard for the truth and a charlatan posing with his concern for the poor, the hungry, the oppressed and the voiceless.
...
It would be good if those that present themselves as the greatest defenders of the poor should also demonstrate decent respect for the truth," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4052199.stm

That Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize and spent decades in prison for his actions to end aparteid mean very little to Mbeki who is most interested in pandering to a certain political base.

[tjwmason]

11. He did a damn fine job in W.W.II

which does qualify him for great status, but to pretend that he was a super-human without any human failings is idiotic.

He was a creature of his time, he opposed dominion status for India in the early '30s; he probably was racist (just abouteverybody was then). So too, I expect that in the future people will look back at us and be shocked at attitudes which we find to be normal.

[bemildred]

12. Correct on all counts.

There is nothing inconsistent in being both a racist aristocrat
and an effective wartime political leader. Winston had it right
a good deal in WWI too. And I expect that people from the future
will think we are every bit as wierd as we find people and culture
from 200 or 2000 years ago. It seems to me that something in excess
of 90% of everything we "know" these days is complete and utter
bullshit.

Mr. Mbeki is right about Winston being a racist pig, but Mr. Mbeki
has a flaw or two of his own, and he is in power now, so that may
be one reason he finds it convenient to bash Winston, rather than
focus on his own failures.

[TheKingfish]

6. No but how about India? n/t

[Salomonity]

10. Read a biography

Churchill resigned from the British Army before 1900. He went to South Africa, in 1899, as a journalist. In 1921 he was in London,and in parliament.

[TheKingfish]

7. Some Churchill Quotes

"I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes." -- Writing as president of the Air Council, 1919

"It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King." -- Commenting on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, 1931

"(India is) a godless land of snobs and bores." -- In a letter to his mother, 1896

"I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place." -- Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937

"The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate... I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed." -- Churchill to Asquith, 1910

"One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations." -- From his Great Contemporaries, 1937

"This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States)... this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire." -- Writing on 'Zionism versus Bolshevism' in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 1920

[bemildred]

8. I considered it a candidate for a "No Shit, Sherlock!" award.

Next thing we will discover that the USA was and is a racist society.
The admiration for jingo politics is telling too.

[mrgorth]

9. Thank you

Fuck Churchill.

[trezic]

13. This is hilarious

Mbeki should mention his opposition to fighting AIDS or his defense of Mugabe.

As for Churchill, he was a paternalist. He eventually saw the necessity of colonial independence, but he sought to do it slowly so that the people who had been neglected for so long could actually participate in a Western-style democracy.

[bemildred]

14. What is a "paternalist"? Is that different from a "colonialist"? nt

[trezic]

15. Paternalism

Paternalism is like today's nation building. It was done to some extent in India, with the training of various native colonial officials and creating institutions. The idea was for the colonies to have dominion status, like Canada. Over time, as the institutions developed and the belief in individual rights was strengthened, the dominions could, theoretically, have the option of full independence. Paternalism has its merits and demerits, but I think it could have failed much less catastrophically than immediate independence did.

[bemildred]

16. So you feel the British really were much superior to the

indigenous types in India, say, and that they were only trying to help?
And the imperial period was a big success, and since then it's been all
downhill for the citizens of the former territory of the Raj?

You do understand that "paternalism" assumes the other party is childlike
that is it assumes a vertical relationship of ruler and ruled,
and that it is an intensely undemocratic political point of view,
a very convenient one for the fellow that happens to be ruler, if he
can enforce it.