nigel biggar
@NigelBiggar
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NIGEL BIGGAR is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Pusey House, Oxford.
Oxford, England
Joined August 2013
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I agree. Whereas the liberal position used to be that all views are lawful except those expressly forbidden, now we’re in a place where certain views have to be licensed by the courts. Something seems wrong here.
I find the fact that we have to wait for courts to pronounce which (utterly mainstream) opinion we are 'allowed' to hold to be absolutely batshit. A presumption that any opinion might be deemed unacceptable until some judge has decided otherwise is mental.
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@Fox_Claire
Those on the left who believe that the Culture Wars are a Tory fiction are in for a shock. We on the left and right who can tell biological sex from gender, doubt Britain's systemic racism, and refuse the equation of colonialism with slavery aren't going to shut up.
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@DalrympleWill
knows very well that plenty of economic historians disagree with his view of the effects of empire. And yet he pretends that his view is ‘fact’ and accuses .
@KemiBadenoch
of ‘ideological wishful thinking’ Not honest.
Kemi Badenoch needs to learn some history and not let ideological wishful thinking overcome historical facts
Kemi Badenoch: ‘UK’s wealth isn’t from white privilege and colonialism’. Minister told London conference that Glorious Revolution of 1688 paved way for economic certainty
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@SpeechUnion
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@DouglasKMurray
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@profdws
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@RSkidelsky
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@AFFSUK
Leading letter in today’s Times.
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@DalrympleWill
is sufficiently intelligent to know that the economic effects of imperial rule are contested and there many economic historians who disagree with him. Yet he pretends his own view is simply ‘fact’ and accuses Kemi Badenoch of ‘ideological wishful thinking’.
Badenoch studied computer science not history at university and it certainly shows.
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"Politics that trashes your own country’s past and indulges another country’s nationalist fantasy might seem smart in the short term. But in the long term, it foolishly surrenders serious hostages to national ill fortune": Nigel Biggar in The Spectator
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#freespeech
Against illiberal academics, JS Mill, "On Liberty" (4): "The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time".
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@robert_lyman
@OurIndianEmpire
@JamesSk89122859
@DouglasKMurray
@ZareerMasani
The Munk Debates (Toronto) were all set to stage a debate on colonialism between me and Caroline ‘Legacy of Violence’ Elkins tomorrow, 16 August. But she’s just pulled out.
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1/ I am aware that Alan Lester continues to wage obsessive war against me. I have already responded to his 15,000-word attack in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, which impressed me as neither honest nor intelligent. I don't plan to respond to him again.
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Moreover,
@zewditweets
, the National Trust is duty-bound to care for Britain's heritage, not the 'Global Majority's'.
Disgusting to see the
@nationaltrust
using this sort of language. The use of the term "global majority" to lump together everyone who is not "white" as a singular grouping is one of the most racist, ignorant, divisive and patronising examples of virtue signalling.
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Now in today’s Sunday Times top 10 bestseller list.
Sorry
@BloomsburyBooks
, looks like
@NigelBiggar
@HarperCollinsUK
and I are having a party without you 🥳😥
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That’s not true
@gladstein
@TheKNANC
@_rgxyz_
@BitPaine
@jordanbpeterson
@NigelBiggar
India was the richest place in the world before Britain began subjugating it
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That’s very brave of the Archbishop.
For years thousands of girls in Rotherham & elsewhere were raped, beaten & abused & the CofE was silent. But now social fracture has sparked unrest, it's suddenly remembered what Christianity is. Rioting's for amateurs, the CofE is one of the most skilled moral arsonists we have.
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I'm certainly up for it, .
@holland_tom
Will we ever see
@NigelBiggar
doing a podcast/interview with
@holland_tom
on Christianity, the ethics of empire, and anything else of interest?
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"To say that the British invented racism is ignorant. The Brahmins despised Untouchables in India long before Britons arrived":
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Well,it's dated (late 1990s, I think). But it's the most comprehensive survey we have, and the editors and contributors are all authorities. Woke historians may dismiss it because it doesn't share their prejudices or preoccupations. But those of us who're unwoke don't.
@NigelBiggar
@si_rubinstein
If I may ask you, how authoritative/relevant is the Oxford History of the British Empire (5 vols incl historiography)? Is it considered out of date or “wrongthink”?
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This is prophetic!
Still one of the greatest scenes in movie history.
Monty Python were so ahead of their time. 😂
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/2 Having answered the 10 most hostile reviews of 'Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning' in the paperback's postscript, I am confident it's basically reliable. So I am content to let fairminded readers judge for themselves. As for unfairminded readers, nothing will change their minds.
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Contra .
@DalrympleWill
Swiss economic historian, Rudolf von Albertini, after a comprehensive study of the data, concluded that colonial economics cannot fairly be understood in terms of ‘plunder and exploitation’. .
@KemiBadenoch
is right.
Kemi Badenoch needs to learn some history and not let ideological wishful thinking overcome historical facts
Kemi Badenoch: ‘UK’s wealth isn’t from white privilege and colonialism’. Minister told London conference that Glorious Revolution of 1688 paved way for economic certainty
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Susan Durber finds "repugnant" my book on colonialism since it defends Canada's residential schools for Indian children, despite the discovery of mass graves on school grounds. But since the alleged discovery 3 years ago, no remains of a murdered child have been identified.
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Oh, for the good old days,
@mlivecche
Letter from the administration of Wadham College at the University of Oxford in 1968 shows how universities dealt with student protesters before the feminization of academia
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@aroberts_andrew
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@DouglasKMurray
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@tiffanyjenkins
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@davidtorrance
Read in full my letter of protest to the Kelvingrove Museum at its travesty of the truth about Scottish (and British) involvement in slavery:
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The responsibility for this lies firmly at the feet of Nigel Newton, the founder-director of Bloomsbury.
One of Britain's biggest publishers dropped a book about malpractice at the Tavistock gender identity clinic, cancelled another contracted manuscript on the complex legacy of British Empire, and later sacked the editor who had supported both projects.
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On the nail
@DavQuinn
.
@NigelBiggar
@Fox_Claire
The left's point of view is that there would be no culture war if everybody surrendered to them. Therefore, it is their opponent's fault for fighting back.
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The cultural left have to keep shouting, because if they let silence fall, they might be provoked to think. And worse, think again.
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@Grego26108665
And the reason the Boers wanted out of British rule? Because the British Empire had abolished slavery.
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And the reason that India’s share of global GDP had declined by 1900 was that industrialised European and US economies has expanded enormously. India’s relative decline was matched by China’s—and China was never colonised. See Tirthankar Roy.
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It was cancelled by Bloomsbury in 2021. Happily William Collins rescued it and will publish it on 2 February.
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Not so wise .
@rogermosey
. The Culture Wars consist of people expressing reasonable views about race, colonial history and gender being attacked by the illiberal left. Universities must defend the right of reasonable people to dissent from prevailing intellectual fashions.
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The woke assault on the British Empire is an assault on faith in the West:
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But
@redhistorian
I talk about the dark side of imperial history myself. See page 276 of 'Colonialism' for a summary. My objection is to those who want to talk ONLY about the dark side.
@NigelBiggar
I always respected your preaching at Christ Church, Nigel, so this is a genuine question, not an attack.
If you admire this kind of collective self-criticism, should you not also welcome those who are trying to talk more openly about the dark sides of Britain's imperial history?
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“To say that the British invented racism is ignorant. Medieval Arab Muslims explained the natural inferiority of white Europeans and black Africans as an effect of a climate, respectively, too cold and too hot":
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"Listening to people who haven’t been
much heard is a good idea; agreeing with
whatever they say is not". Nigel Biggar on deference to ethnic minority voices: .
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There are two reasons why I might not understand something: either I'm stupid or it's nonsense. I reckon that a lot of transgenderism is nonsense, and you've done nothing to change my mind.
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@DouglasKMurray
@nfergus
@aroberts_andrew
@robert_lyman
@BruceDGilley
The Wall Street Journal gives "Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning" the thumbs-up:
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@WalkerMarcus
Istanbul’s Archaeological Museum displays a book lamenting the foreign theft of Anatolian treasures. In the very next room lies a sarcophagus taken by the Ottomans from what is now Lebanon. Outside, a column from Egypt.
Well if Turkey’s in this kind of mood I have a whole list of things that ought to be returned to the Greeks - and they’re a lot larger than a few marbles…
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@NeilThin
Two colleagues in Christ Church were among the 58 who signed the Oxford protest. Later they sat right across the lunch table from me. One of them giggled nervously. Neither addressed me.
When you see an academic mobbing, don't look the other way. Contact the signatories collectively or personally. Ask them why, instead of trying to offer rational and dignified counterarguments, they tried to intimidate a fellow academic into silence and/or sabotage their career.
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"Political bias, smearing by association, strawmen, careless reading, misrepresentation, misunderstanding, unsupported assertions, an absence of open thoughtfulness, and a striking lack of critical self-awareness": Nigel Biggar rebuts Alan Lester:
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Against illiberal academics, JS Mill, "On Liberty" (4): "The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time".
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@DouglasKMurray
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@nfergus
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@aroberts_andrew
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@jordanbpeterson
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@triggerpod
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@KonstantinKisin
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@firstthingsmag
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@spectator
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@robert_lyman
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@tunkuv
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@JohnAndersonAC
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@adaobitricia
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@DorchesterRev
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@MWHamilton
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@mattleeanderson
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And UK Universities pretend there’s no problem.
Why I will never go back to academia (and why I have total respect for people like
@FondOfBeetles
and
@aytchellesse
who hang in there)
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Sanghera, ‘Empireland’, pp. 220-1: “government-endorsed front in this imperial culture war… These taxpayer-funded culture warriors… the government culture war”. And on the role of the abusive Left? Nothing at all. Partisan head stubbornly in the sand.
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@Culture_Crit
Perhaps because one couldn’t tell the difference between modern art with soup and modern art without it?
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@DouglasKMurray
Oxford dons and staff support pro-Palestinian student protesters on the ground of cartoonish history, naive ethics, and ill-informed law:
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Caroline Elkins, who calls for King Charles to apologise for ‘colonial atrocities’, was due to engage with me about colonialism on the Munk Debates in August. She pulled out the day before:
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This is courageous and important
@SohailSNAhmed
. Thank you.
I'm just going to stick my head out of the parapet and say the following:
It is an inconvenient truth that we Muslims do share *some* responsibility regarding the way we are perceived by the rest of the world. I actively speak out against islamic extremism and the problems in
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Both African and European enslavers equally regarded other Africans as worthy of enslavement. ‘White supremacism’ belongs to the American South and Apartheid South Africa. It does not apply universally to all white people. Only a racist would think so.
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Duncan Dormor .
@USPGglobal
calls "Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning" a 'polemic' that fails 'the rigorous standards expected in academia'. But a shoddy polemic wouldn't command the endorsement of historians Vernon Bogdanor, Niall Ferguson, Tirthankar Roy, and Jonathan Sumption.
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There are two very good film dramatisations (in German) made about the Scholls and the White Rose group. ‘Somebody had to make a start’ says it all. Now, as then.
#OTD
in 1943, at 10.45am, siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl walked into Munich University and distributed anti-Nazi leaflets. They were caught. On 22 Feb, they were sentenced to death and decapitated. Sophie had defiantly told the judge: "Somebody, after all, had to make a start."
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Amen
@ikeijeh
!
First they said racism could be anything from hairstyles to milk.
Then they deleted the word "illegal" from illegal immigrant.
Now they're saying terrorism doesn't need violence.
Each progressive retreat from reality appeases genuine criminality.
Make normality normal again.
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Hooraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
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@nfergus
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@DouglasKMurray
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@aroberts_andrew
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@robert_lyman
The Kelvingrove Museum's display, 'Glasgow--City of Empire' is scandalously partisan. A publicly funded museum is duty-bound to inform the public, not misinform them:
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Nigel Biggar's Colonialism "carries the intellectual force of a Javelin antitank missile" (Trevor Phillips)
My review coming soon in
@TheCriticMag
In the meantime, here is Trevor Philips.
‘The past is what happened. History is what we tell ourselves.’
Don’t be ashamed of the British Empire. The truth is messy.
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Oh, Dr
@krishk
, the short answer is that the story of 'mass graves' of murdered children appears to have been a fabrication. See pp. 127-35 and also, more recently, the bestselling 'Grave Error', ed. C. Champion and Tom Flanagan.
@NigelBiggar
I now need to read your book professor. Could you perhaps share the reason you defend the residential schools?
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@si_rubinstein
This is an unusually thoughtful review. It's largely fair about me, and VERY fair about my critics!
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‘In 1942 Churchill chose not to save Coventry from a German bombing raid, to avoid revealing Enigma as the intelligence source’. Not true: the Enigma decrypts didn’t specify the target. The widely believed story was stage-play fiction. (David Omand, How Spies Think, pp. 143-4.)
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This is delicious. Masterly. Funny.
It’s definitely worth the time to watch
@KemiBadenoch
put up exactly the right kind of opposition to the new government. Excellent speech
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Thank you! I'm currently writing a postscript to the paperback edition (February 2024), in which I answer my critics.
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@SimonMagus
@DavidGHFrost
Absolutely. Intellectuals can indulge in utopian politics only because they have no idea of practical constraints. For a cautionary tale read Volker Weidermann’s ‘Dreamers: when the writers took power, Germany, 1919’ (2018).
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Jordan Peterson and Nigel Biggar in conversation:
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"We all want peace, but at what cost and to whom? Not going to war in 1994 was good for Britons, but not so good for the Tutsi in Rwanda: our staying at peace left the Hutu at peace to slaughter 800,000 of them. Peace, like war, is morally complicated":
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Tim Stanley on Nigel Biggar's Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning: "THE book on the morality of the British Empire ... thoughtful, compelling":
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All liberal, open-minded, free-thinking Oxford students should now sever ties with OUSU.
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Bernard Lewis on Edward Said's 'Orientalism': "If westerners cannot legitimately study the history of Africa or the Middle East, then only fish can study marine biology"
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But a token of what is to come ...
Absurdly proud to be published in the print edition of the
@Telegraph
today for the first time.
With existential threats to free speech in education (especially the truly wicked move by Labour it to scrap the Free Speech Act) we need champions to step up!
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Strongly seconded,
@JohnOSullivanNR
Andreas, pleasekeep up your work on Churchill. It's important to protect the truth about our hrroes and our national achievements in the face of galloping self-contempt.
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Either Mr Erden cannot read or he cannot understand what he reads.
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Indeed, how odd it is that those who champion non-racist, multiculturalism at home should make a norm out of ethnic monocultures in the colonial abroad.
Borders were drawn following local trade and exchange patterns with strong input from local groups. The myth of artificial borders assumes ethnic homogeneity is natural for states. It is not. Plus, most of these groups were in internal conflict ("stool disputes") not peace.
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You can rely on them,
@JamesReform
@NigelBiggar
That’s good enough for me.
I bought these after seeing your tweet a couple of nights back. They just arrived
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‘The durability of free speech and free press rests on the simple concept that it search for the truth and tell the truth… Free expression will not survive if it be used to stir malice.’ Herbert Hoover, 1937
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Distorting our imperial history is dangerous
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According to Mike Pitts in British Archaeology (March 2023), for historians "the driving force is not to judge, but to learn". Then, ignorant of his own moral bias, he describes the 1897 British "assault" on Benin as "appalling" and the removal of objects "desecration & theft".
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This is appallingly biassed. But not at all surprising, given its author’s record.
Few know the history of the violent explusion of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948: it is not taught in schools, and instead many- myself included- were taught outright lies about Palestine being an empty desert, "a land without a people for a people without a land." As ideas for a
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The British Museum is the best home for the Elgin Marbles
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@Docstockk
I have no trouble understanding why membership of the Nazi party was proportionately higher among university professors in 1930s Germany: most just wanted a quiet life.
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Just for the record, I have no objection to other people using my excellent material.
Here is Shabnam reading out
@NigelBiggar
’s article on air and pretending it’s her own opinion (article here: )
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@AndreasKoureas_
Halima Khan is former chair of the Labour Party’s BAME Network. Observe her combination of ignorance, prejudice, and abuse. All too typical of the Thoughtless Left.
Doubling down on your cluelessness.
Fair enough, but to those of us who've read up on the topic, it's ever more embarrassing for you.
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@GoodwinMJ
And I can appeal to six years of 'lived experience' to confirm this.
"Anyone who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them — instead of answering their arguments" -- Thomas Sowell
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Brendan Gormley, Guardian 23 January 2010: ‘I think the colonial period, and the aid period, in 100 years, are going to be re-evaluated. [Colonial officers] ... were much closer to the community than a lot of aid workers'.
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Agreed. It took me too long to realise that they don’t want a discussion. They want war in which no holds are barred and their triumph is total. Ugly.
@NigelBiggar
Nigel, unfortunately such clues are wasted on those who would benefit most from reading your book! Their views are cast in concrete and hardened by the passage of time. They don't want to be moved from their position and are prepared to have those who dare to question destroyed!
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With people like Michael Taylor I find myself driven to use the word 'possessed'. His rational faculties are overcome by an intemperate hostility, which he cannot control.
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“To say that the British invented racism is ignorant. During WW2, a British officer found he couldn’t persuade his Somali troops to obey their Bantu sergeant, because they regarded the Bantu as natural slaves”:
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@AndreasKoureas_
I devote a section of ‘Colonialism’ to the Bengal Famine, which supports your view.
@NigelBiggar
Thanks Nigel.
I have you recent book on my to-be-read list, excited to give it a read soon!
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Thank you, James! Since you and I have different views on colonialism, your witness here is important.
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Hear, hear
@andrewdoyle_com
!!
Those who scoffed when the Free Speech Union was established by
@toadmeister
in 2020 look pretty foolish these days.
This organisation has repeatedly proven its worth by defending countless victims of cancel culture who would otherwise have lost their livelihoods.
I would
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It has been my consistent experience over the past 12 months that postcolonialist critics lack elementary academic virtue: they constantly misrepresent, have no interest in engaging rationally with replies, and prefer to appeal to authority or make ad hominem attacks. Shameful!
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Bravo, .
@AndreasKoureas_
!
But not his full quotations I see.
Because if you did that, it would be clear that he was talking about using tear gas against rioters - and your goal is to take him out of context clearly.
The full departmental minute of the War Office on the 12th May 1919:
"It is sheer
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@DouglasKMurray
@spectator
@rakibehsan
Evidence from indigenous Australians backing my claim in the Spectator that 'progressives' typically care more about their own self-perception and social status than attending to the hard graft of redressing real disadvantage.
@NigelBiggar
This is the first time that such anger has been expressed with the order of priorities that Australian elites have for the country's Indigenous community.
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@BruceDGilley
The Munk Debates (Toronto) were all set to stage a debate on colonialism between me and Caroline ‘Legacy of Violence’ Elkins tomorrow, 16 August. But she’s just pulled out.
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