Monday, 24 August 2020

It ain’t over until the woke lady sings – The Battle of the Proms

 

Over the years the conductors and the BBC itself have become increasingly uncomfortable with the popular and patriotic music of the Last Night of the Proms.  For that one night only, the British are allowed to take pride in their nation and celebrate who they are and where they are from.  The woke British Broadcasting Corporation dislikes anything that celebrates Britishness, dominated as it is by the contrary woke-ideology that encourages the validation of disparate identities at the expense of the mainstream population.

Fearful of a head-on confrontation with the British public, up until now the Beeb has attempted to subvert the Proms from within.  It has selected lesbian conductors and sopranos and tried to turn a celebration of Britishness into a celebration of woke British values.  Instead of that which has traditionally been understood as Britishness – rooted in a Christian society that values virtues such as stoicism, courage and martial valour – the non-values of Sodom and Gomorrah are celebrated.  This Trojan Horse strategy of subverting patriotism from within, so that to wave the Union Jack means you also support the waving of the LGBTQ + rainbow flag, is very clever.  Meanwhile across the world our political class promotes values inimical to traditional society and calls this disastrous identity politics “British values”.

People are naturally patriotic and particularly on a party night like Last Night of the Proms they are easily susceptible to having a nefarious agenda slipped past them.  No one wants to be a party pooper.  The BBC’s Last Night of the Proms therefore got away with portraying Britishness as wokeness.

Nonetheless wokeness cannot hide its true colours.  It is not about unity or tradition, it is by definition hostile to what holds us together.  Wokeness is about creating disparate identities that define people as small and “oppressed” groups, downplaying and denying what unites them with their countrymen.  This is the corrosive and poisonous dogma of intersectionality.  It makes the marginal the mainstream at the expense of tradition and shared culture.  This is why the woke are sympathetic to the promotion of traditional Islam and feminism – seemingly contradictory ideologies.  This is not a contradiction if your overarching ideology is actually about destroying the mainstream culture and eradicating tradition.  Contradictory perspectives and ideologies are equally worthwhile of promotion if you wish to destroy Christian society.

Now there is not that much explicitly Christian about Last Night of the Proms (apart from Jerusalem).  Rule Britannia is from the Seven Years War when our Protestant identity was far stronger.  Land of Hope and Glory being Edwardian is more from the zenith or peak of British imperialism when perhaps more Masonic and Deist ideas were in the ascendancy, but the composer himself was a Roman Catholic.  Nonetheless patriotism more than faith is what is celebrated, albeit with references to God natural to a Christian society.  The reason these pieces of music are a target is they support a coherent national identity and that national identity because of our culture and history is linked to being a Christian country.

Subversion by the BBC had been working and was powerfully symbolised in last year’s last night, with both EU and Rainbow flags being unfurled and waved.  Particularly symbolic was the choice made of the soprano for Rule Britannia.  A rather large bisexual or lesbian American was selected who unfurled not a Union Jack, but a Rainbow flag.  She also sang the innocent children’s song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with strong hints of sexualisation.  It really was decadent degeneracy.  In a free society people can follow their sexual leanings, but in a decent society one does not advertise that as an integral part of one’s identity, particularly for a national celebration meant for everyone such as the Proms.  Claiming to be inclusive this behaviour is really exclusive of most of us, who really do not need to know about someone’s preferences and passions in the bedroom . . .

The contrast seemed even more powerful because the beautiful Tartar soprano Aida Garifullina was outside in the park also singing Rule Britannia, as though the mainstream and the traditional ideas of beauty were banished to the outside, while the margin had moved into the centre.  Orthodox Youtuber Jonathan Pageau has talked extensively about the topsy turvy way the woke agenda places the marginal in the centre at the expense of the traditional and normative.

This rendition of Rule Britannia by the woke lesbian Jamie Barton was the very peak of the Trojan Horse strategy.  She was able to ride the patriotic cheers as though they were actually cheers for what she was inclined to do in her private bedroom (a fact she was all too keen to make public).

This strategy that was working now seems to have been abandoned.  Covid 19 has changed the strategy.  Just as we had to witness unrepresentative BLM demonstrators destroying the monuments of our history and identity so the newly appointed Proms conductor from Finland, Dalia Stasevska, sees Covid and our virtual house arrest as an opportunity to “sanitise” the Proms of our patriotic songs.  This really is sneaky, because just like the BLM demonstrators, the conductress feels she can make this move as the audience will not be there.  It is though a strategic blunder.

This move, to delete patriotic songs, just proves wokeness and patriotism are not compatible.  For the former is about minority identities at the expense of cohesion and the latter brings us all together.   Wokeness, let us be clear, is not simply about tolerance, but promotion of the abnormal, the irregular and the marginal at the expense of the traditional.  Its whole narrative thrives on painting history and shared identity as oppressive of minorities who are of more importance than the majority.  So it was never really true that British values could be woke values.

Britain is a tolerant country, but tolerance is not the same as active promotion of the marginal.  Britain has a history we are proud of that has allowed a space for the margin, but has not attacked the mainstream tradition.  It is a history based on the recognition the mainstream does not need to oppress the margin.  Wokeness, with its cultural Marxist philosophy cannot accept tolerance, because really its programme is all about revolution.  It aims to overturn the normative and will utilise disparate groups and interests to do that.  As with all revolutions it is not promoted by the ordinary working class, but by a narrow group of privileged intellectuals who do not share the concerns of normal people.  Sadly this narrow group dominates in fields like the media, especially the BBC.

What will now happen is that the ordinary public, Sir Henry Wood’s key audience, who so love the Proms will react and no longer accept the woke propaganda, being revealed for what it is and what it is hostile towards.  Thus if the proposal goes ahead, the Proms would become a narrow world for the self-important woke and privileged.  Patriotic music is so often a way into the world of classical music for those not fortunate enough to have been educated through the private system and university (where nowadays you seem to learn to sneer at tradition).  The Brexit voters are the descendants of Sir Henry Wood’s target audience. 

The BBC might see its legitimacy at stake, when the unpopularity of the proposal becomes clear.  Most likely a “compromise” will be found in a dispute that never was other than in the inflamed imaginations of the privileged media class, so the songs will remain, but sanitised and made bland.  Nonetheless, what has happened is a major error.  The woke, having wormed their way into British life have now clearly cast their ideology as the opponent of patriotism.  We can now hope that when the woke soprano sang, it was the swansong of using patriotism as a mask for the woke agenda.

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