One after another our beloved institutions are in dire straits of awakening, as revered old soldiers crushed by a vicious new machine gun.
Recent hunt is the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in the south-west London, A few months ago, Cave’s management team announced bizarre plans to ‘freeze’ their collection from colonization.
Now, that decision is challenged by garden historian Ursula Buchan. In a report for the Policy Exchange think-tank, Buchan accused Cave of violating its ‘statutory responsibilities’ and said it might be in violation of the law to engage in ‘politically charged’ activities, including vegetation. There should be no place for science in the centre.
It’s an encouraging moment of resistance—but a small one, to be honest, and one doubts how much of an impact it will have.
The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in south-west London. Cave’s management team announces bizarre plans to ‘colonise-free’ its collection
Yet Cave – which gets half its income from taxpayers – is not alone. Instead, it is typical of the way many of our institutions have been talking, in theory, of late-left words about ‘climate injustice’ and, in Kew’s case, ‘plants and fungi. Structural racism needs to be tackled in science. ,
Can mushrooms really be racist?
Kew has no objection to the splendid collection being preserved as bequeathed by his illustrious predecessors. Orchard experts are committed to public austerity, which they call “a legacy” that has its roots deep in colonialism and racism.
They represent, they suggest, a ‘lighthouse of privilege and exploitation’, and they try to make amends by praising Black Lives Matter; Sometimes a questionable step is taken in view of the violence that surrounds that movement.
If the elite and experts feel so uneasy about their ‘privilege’, perhaps they should reduce their acceptable salary? Instead, how easy it is to ostentatiously bow down to an awakened ideology, while making sure to retain one’s power and status.
Take these extraordinary words from Kew Gardens director, Richard Deverell (annual salary 2019-2020, £191,300): ‘I acknowledge that I have personally benefited from the immense privilege of being Kew’s current white, male director.
‘I also admit how little I understand these issues’ [racism and colonialism] and their daily consequences on the lives of my black and ethnic minority colleagues, our members and visitors. I approach this subject with humility and caution.’
What is he actually confessing? Is it a sin to be white and male now? And how terrifying this act of self-inflicted sounds is given the outrageous confessions of Communist Party members disgraced during Stalin’s show trials.
‘The Constable’s The Cornfield is a delightful image of old rural England. But beware, art lovers. Without a reminder that you are not allowed to enjoy this beloved work, it was presented to the gallery in 1837 by patrons including the poet William Wordsworth, who once lived in a house in Dorset, Racedown Lodge, owned by a The former was with the plantation holder. Christopher Hart writes
What we are actually seeing in Kew and elsewhere is what communists call the ‘long march through institutions’.
French Marxist Herbert Marcuse coined the term in 1972: ‘Working within established institutions while working against them. ‘Boring in them,’ he said, suggesting boring a worm into an apple, which causes it to rot from within.
After early Marxists failed to incite the working classes to revolution, his successors sought to seize power and turn society upside down by changing institutions: schools and universities, laws, churches, museums, art galleries. ,
Known? Yes, and devastatingly so.
And that’s why today, despite the bold efforts of people like Ursula Buchan to control the Left in the public sphere, when we visit a taxpayer-funded institution for education, wisdom, consolation or beauty, we get a supernatural feeling instead. Is. that we are being taught.
In every case the original and original purpose of the institution has been vitiated.
History buffs can visit Imperial War Museum, art lovers National Gallery, Mali Kew. But far from experiencing the excitement or calmness for the new regime smiling at such places, you will be subject to hectoring, if not full-scale humiliation of your country and its history.
You will always be told that the UK is uniquely bad.
Take the National Gallery, which, despite sitting on a cash pile of over £200 million in 2018, receives millions of pounds annually in taxpayer funding.
The Imperial War Museum was established in 1917 in the midst of World War I, to collect and display material as a record of everyone’s experiences during that time. [conflict] – civil and military – and to remember the sacrifices of all sections of society
Visit Britain’s richest gallery and you get a truly pathetic impression of leftist academics desperately trying to link any of the paintings in the collection to anything related to slavery. The connections are often laughable.
Constable’s The Cornfield is a delightful image of old rural England. But beware, art lovers. You are no longer allowed to enjoy this beloved work without being reminded that it was presented to the gallery in 1837 by patrons including the poet William Wordsworth, who once lived in a house in Dorset, Racedown Lodge, owned by a The former was a plantation. holder.
Does it help you understand or appreciate the painting more? off course not.
But as an unusually intelligent academic voice, Professor Robert Tombs of St John’s College, Cambridge, has observed: ‘This is what our “history wars” really are: not an analysis and understanding of the past, but of negative claims. . Using historical claims to support the present.’
The Imperial War Museum – which is also funded in large part by government grants – is worse if anything. This great museum was established in 1917 in the middle of World War I to collect and display material as a record of everyone’s experiences during that time. [conflict] – civil and military – and to remember the sacrifices of all sections of society.’
How far has she strayed from this noble ambition?
Not long ago, the audience was stunned by the sound of the song Fight the Power from the hip-hop band Public Enemy. It includes the lyrics: ‘Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant s*** to me you see / Straight racist, he was a sucker / Simple and plain.’
Brilliant. And so it is very helpful to understand the military history of our country.
Not missing an opportunity to denigrate Britain’s past, this year the Museum went wildly aggressive on Remembrance Sunday, with a rap song attacking Winston Churchill.
A member of the public spoke bluntly when he said: ‘I used to come to visit’ [the] Imperial War Museum a couple of times a year. But instead of discussing them all, I would prefer to support an institution that respects and follows British values.
Oxford’s Pitt River Museum, with a world-class collection of weapons, canoes and other anthropological treasures, recently held an exhibition titled ‘Beyond the Binary’, partly paid for by a Heritage Lottery grant of over £90,000. (It is not publicly funded.)
The curators claimed that the exhibition is “a positive step in tackling the oppression the LGBTQ+ community often feels in places like this”.
Policy Exchange’s decision to question the awareness in KEV offers a ray of hope. But this fight is destined to continue
Writer Josephine Bartosh describes how a ‘community curator’ – worryingly one with a PhD from Oxford – added her soft toy to the exhibition. He informed visitors: ‘When I feel insecure, my maniac comes with me, and keeps me safe from his criticism. When I came to Oxford as a queer working class man, I felt a distinct identity from others.’
As far as the National Trust is concerned, one of Britain’s most loved charities, though again not funded by taxpayers, the horror stories of attempts to propel themselves into political correctness never stop. No wonder it is now sarcastically referred to as national distrust.
And herein lies the tragedy: in the ever-deepening divide between our cultural elite and the people they must serve—the ones who often pay their salaries.
Policy Exchange’s decision to question the awareness in KEV offers a ray of hope. But this fight is bound to continue.
On university campuses, free speech is dead, while the list of lecturers and guest speakers who have been banned, censored, silenced – euphemistically ‘de-platformed’ – is always long.
It reached ridiculous levels in April this year, when the University of Sheffield proposed a ban on Sir Isaac Newton. This was to free the engineering curriculum from ‘colonization’, as Newton could benefit from ‘colonial-era activity’.
The sanctions attempt was later shelved – with some disappointment from the left, a suspect.
Newton was undoubtedly one of the greatest scientists of all time. He is also famous for the humble observation that all his work was achieved by ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’, that is, thanks to the great thinkers of the past.
Today’s commissioner of the cultural elite seems to me the exact opposite of Newton: a dragon standing on the shoulders of giants, screaming with ungratefulness and plotting how to tear them down.