More myths and misconceptions

I’ve been reading a long thread on a popular blog; among the subjects that came up during the discussion, it seems that certain myths and misconceptions pop up, as so often happens. Will some of these myths never die?

For example: the idea that ‘Germanic’ and ‘German’ are synonymous terms. What I mean is that people insist that peoples broadly described as ‘Germanic’ (that would include the Germans, of course, but also Dutch, Flemish, Austrian, and also the Scandinavians and some — and I emphasize some — of the peoples of the British Isles.

Other myths that make their appearance on the thread: that the English are ‘Germans‘ because they are Anglo-Saxon, and both the Angles and Saxons were from an area that is now part of the (fairly recently formed — in 1815) country called Germany, then the English or British are Germans. And other people insist that because the Windsor royalty who now occupy the throne of Britain were originally part of the House of Hanover or the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha families, they themselves are German, even if they concede the British or English people in general are not.

The English people, in that recent DNA testing seems to show a larger percentage of Anglo-Saxon genetics than previously thought, are apparently more Germanic in descent than they are, say, Celtic, though there are those who persist in believing that the English or the ‘British’ are ‘Celtic.’ Why is this so? My guess is that being Celtic is just “in”; people admire the image that popular culture and popular ‘history’ books have presented of Celtic peoples.

The ‘Celts’ in the British Isles are, of course the Irish, the Scots (who, however, have a larger percentage of Scandinavian/Norwegian ancestry,) and the Welsh, who are considered to be descended from the native Britons who were there before the Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Normans arrived. Some of the Britons, after being supplanted to some extent by the Germanic arrivals (Angles, Saxons, et al) went to what is now Brittany, in France; their Breton language is closely related to Welsh.

British people aren’t ‘Germans’, though they are Germanic. As to the British royalty, it’s true that they are not ‘typical’ British people, but neither are they ‘Germans’, though the Windsors are descendants of the Hanover and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. This article goes into more detail.

In any case, is there any hope of people letting go of their notion that the British royals are ”Germans” just because the House of Hanover was of German origin?

The fact is that European royalty, considering that the various royal houses of Europe generally choose their spouses from within that group, constitutes a sort of ethnicity to itself, being mixtures of various ‘nationalities’ within the smallish circle of European royalty.

And then we come to the popular assertions that marrying within the European royal lines spells ‘I-N-B-R-E-D’, which most Americans consider synonymous with defective, mentally challenged, and “ugly”, as many Americans say. I don’t see that this follows; I think Americans’ obsession with ‘inbred royalty’ is just an excuse to ridicule European royalty. We Americans, with this knee-jerk obsession with ”equality”, somehow find it necessary to ridicule and denounce royalty at every turn. This is something I don’t share with most Americans. I don’t see that our vaunted ”democracy” has served us very well; how could a monarchy be any worse than being represented (in theory, at least) by a lot of duplicitous crypto-globalist politicians? There’s not much to convince us that this is any better than a bad monarchy.

As far as ‘inbreeding’, I don’t know what degree of relationship is considered ‘inbreeding’; I’ve read that Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt were something like 6th cousins. This source says they were 5th cousins.

Whichever is true, the media don’t seem to consider the case of the Roosevelts as unhealthy inbreeding, though some royals are related no more closely than that.

I have noticed that the media seem to be pushing the theme of ‘inbreeding’ and trying to sell us on the idea of outmarrying, supposedly because it’s healthier, ”hybrid vigor” and all, new blood added to the stale bloodlines, etc. However ‘hybrid vigor’ does not seem to come into play with most human outmarriages/matings. I suspect the media is trying to push the Kalergist agenda, and they use that theme as a way of inducing people to comply. After all, we have to be equal opportunity spouse-seekers.

But as to the other genetic myths: there’s also the old urban legend about how the ”black Irish”, meaning those Irish-born people with dark hair and dark eyes, are descended from those men who were shipwrecked when the Spanish Armada was defeated by the English in 1588. This article casts doubt on that legend.

Most other sources seem to say the same; the story of Spaniards washing up on the shore of the West of Ireland and somehow fathering progeny there, enough to leave many dark-haired, dark-eyed descendants, just appeals to people who like a ‘romantic’ or spicy story. And the fact is, there are many dark-haired (and some dark-eyed) Irish people in the Western counties, and elsewhere. This seems to be from the predominant Celtic ancestry there, as in Wales, where there are more dark-haired people than fair.

But people do like these ‘colorful’ and fanciful stories. Maybe this is because people weaned on movies, TV, and fiction novels prefer stories to boring old facts.

Not that facts need be boring; I find reality interesting enough, and I read mostly non-fiction, though some think that preference is odd.

Another belief: those in the British Isles or America who have ‘Scandinavian’ origins as shown in DNA tests are descended from ‘Vikings.’ True, or not?

The fact is that the term ‘Viking’ is not an ethnic description as many Americans use it. Often the term is used interchangeably with ‘Norsemen’ or ‘Scandinavians’, at least those who lived in a certain era. ‘Viking’ was a term describing what these people did, not their ethnic origin or identity. Not every Scandinavian in the 8th-12th centuries was a ‘Viking’, though that seems to be assumed today. Still, the Scandinavians or Norsemen who became ancestors of people in the British Isles were probably seafarers/explorers/pirates, (Vikings) though this isn’t necessarily a given.

It’s tempting to think of our ancestors as ‘warriors’, adventurous, impressive people, and this may also explain the sudden popularity of the idea of Scottish or Celtic ancestry following the success of the Braveheart movie. It’s bad history, but apparently the image was something that people liked to identify with.

Again, this reminds me, too, of the sudden popularity of the ‘Celtic South’, the insistence, thanks to several popular books and a TV documentary, that the South was settled by, and mostly made up of, Scots-Irish people. Up until a couple of decades ago, Anglo-Saxons were considered to be the original colonists of the South, and the people who left their stamp on that region. But suddenly it was the Celts who made the South; they were the ‘real’ South, while the English settlers were downplayed. But some of our greatest heroes were of English descent: General Lee for example. General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson was half-English but is claimed by the Celtic South promoters as ‘Scots-Irish.’

But even the name ‘Scots-Irish’ is based on a misconception. The people described by that term are not ‘Irish’ as in Celtic Irish, usually Catholic Irish, but Protestants with no actual Irish origins; they came from Scotland, or England, usually the border counties — to the six county province of Ulster, Northern Ireland. These are the people who for so long were in conflict with the Catholic (Celtic) Irish in Northern Ireland. They are ‘Ulster folk’ and they are also called ‘borderers’.

Still the misunderstanding of ‘Scots-Irish’ persists.

There are so many of these myths and misconceptions, and they seem impervious to being debunked or corrected. They seem to be passed around the Internet by word-of-mouth, or maybe people are all getting these ideas from certain sources. In this respect the Internet has seemed to be a very efficient way of passing along many misconceptions and falsehoods. And that’s in addition to being the most efficient source of propaganda ever.

#britain, #england, #ethnicity, #genetics, #hbd, #royalty, #vikings

English genetics – the truth

What does it mean to be English?

At the link, an informative video on the origins of the English people: Celts, as some insist? Or Anglo-Saxon? Worth watching for some perspective.

‘Who controls the past…’

Recently I wrote of how the history of Britain was being re-written by the diversity-obsessed left, using the complicit media to propagate false information. As an example I cited the numerous movies and TV shows depicting blacks and Moslems showing up in the Robin Hood story, as well as a black or mulatto Guinevere in the ‘Merlin’ series of a few years ago.

Now the BBC is lying to children in its recent series about Roman Britain, in which the main purpose of the lessons seems to be to convince gullible children that Britain has always been heavily populated by blacks and other nonwhite races.

Do the propaganda merchants really believe that everyone will fall for these outlandish lies? Sadly, too many will simply accept these false representations, mostly the young, who have deliberately been maleducated and force-fed these contrived deceptions. The population across the generations have been so mind-conditioned over the last several decades that they too are slowly acquiescing and accepting what they, deep-down, must know is not true.

As of now, there are still many images of life in Britain before the onslaught of mass immigration, images showing a White Britain, with little ‘diversity’ to be seen anywhere, at least, not diversity in a racial sense. There are You Tube videos (as long as they are allowed to remain up, on politically correct You Tube) showing London, now heavily non-white, as a decidely White city. There are books with photos showing the true Britain of old, before ‘diversity’ set in.

But will such resources continue to be allowed, considering that they contradict the ‘false history’ cooked up by the UK propaganda-pushers and diversity Kommissars? I doubt it, sadly.

Here in America, some years ago (after the 2008 election) there was a story that showed up in some news outlets about some kind of government edict that all books, textbooks I believe, published before a certain year, were to be recalled from libraries, schools, and even second-hand booksellers. They were to be destroyed, and the reason given was that these old textbooks had some kind of toxic materials.(!)I’ve done internet searches to find these articles (which I blogged about back then) and come up empty. So is it being done, this destruction of old books? I suspect it is, though I can’t prove it. The local library where I live appears to have purged a lot of classic books, choosing to focus on more current popular tripe, stuff that will probably be of only passing interest, as well as buying lots of pop-culture materials like rap/hip-hop CDs and other such high culture. There is also a recent dearth of old books at the local thrift shop which used to be a real treasure-trove of old and rare books. Where are all these books going? To landfills, or to be burned, as one librarian tells on her blog. She justifies getting rid of old books because they are dated; they are too politically incorrect — for example, a book that recommends traditional female roles, or a book from long ago which states that the races have evolved unequally. Can’t have books like that around in case someone gets ideas, or starts to question the diversity dogma, and the egalitarian faith.

So the establishment, which is the left now, wants to remove the truth from the marketplace of ideas, and wants to prevent people from even dreaming of other ways of looking at things, ways that conflict with the coerced ‘diversity’ dogma that is force-fed to us and our children.

And not being satisfied with that, they want to erase the past and replace it with this grotesque parody, in which Britain was always multiracial, never a predominantly White country, never a Christian country, never homogeneous, never the home of a particular people with a distinct way of life, a way which is being destroyed relentlessly.

Do the ‘Mary Beards’ and all the other propaganda hacks really believe the lies they churn out and defend? To the left, there is no objective truth; it’s just whatever suits their purpose. It’s all relative, and the past is what they make it, in their eyes anyway.

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” repeated Winston obediently.”

The same process is occuring in all Western, White majority countries. Thanks to the orchestrated ‘refugee’ invasion, these countries will not be majority White for long, as there is no end in sight to the invasion. Maybe this is why the powers-that-be, with their controlled media, are working so hard to condition the indigenous British to accept minority status and second-class (at best) citizenship in their rightful country.

An excerpt of a comment that appeared on Vox Day’s blog:

“It’s a direct, deliberate effort to extinguish all sense of European history as anything distinct or even European.

They are attempting to erase our own identity from us, to cut us loose and make us the descendants of foreigners.

They are scum, and this is a deliberate, profoundly evil, genocidally motivated attack on even the MEMORY of our existence. An effort to obliterate past whites as thoroughly as they want to obliterate the current ones.”

And (apologies for quoting myself), as I wrote on the King Arthur post:

“This is all more than just frustrating; it’s an outrage, because it robs a people of their sense of who they are, and a sense of their history and accomplishments. Shouldn’t all of this be considered a type of genocide?

I am not much in favor of throwing the word ‘genocide’ around, because like the word ‘racism’ it has become too widely employed to describe anything that a ‘victim’ group objects to. But when you lie to people about their origins and their past, when you ‘gaslight’ a whole nation of people, you strip them of their sense of themselves as a people, and of their bond with their real kinsmen.”

 

A nation with no borders?

“The White Nation has no borders. It is an international community. A “committee of the whole” the whole being the entire White race, worldwide.”

The above was a comment posted on a pro-White/White nationalist forum a couple of years ago; I saved some of the comments because they are very illustrative of the confusion many White people display when talking about their race and ethnicity.

The comments I quote were made anonymously; many of the commenters were British.  The original post seems to have been from an American of mixed European nationalities, namely Italian, Irish, and French-Canadian. She says that all Europeans are of the same race and that there is no reason not to mix ethnicities because she includes all of them as part of ‘her’ race, adding the cliche about there being ‘no pure races in the 21st century’; everyone, in her view is equally mixed, and strangely, she says that only one’s recent ancestry makes us who we are; our entire ancestral line is irrelevant, only recent ancestors count.

This person is somewhat typical of a lot of Americans of mixed heritage; they often adopt a very defensive attitude, or a chip on the shoulder about their ancestry, and seem to need to assert that ‘nobody is pure anything’; we are all just mixed and what does it matter anyway?

Another self-described ‘mixed’ person says

 

I think thats delusional, in our day and age, to say germans with germans, british with british, Swedes with Swedes etc…

Do you think there is abundant of pure breed Europeans left ? I don’t think so. We are lucky to have mixed race sub-european races left on earth. “

This commenter adds that Europeans seem to identify with their ethnicity more than their race — which is the natural thing, in my opinion — while Americans see themselves as White first, then as their ethnicity, which he seems to think is preferable.

Among the British commenters, someone brings up the subject of Eastern European immigration to Britain. Polish is now the second-most-spoken language in Britain, a fact that many Americans are surprised to hear — though they think the mass immigration is fine — as do some British people, but not all. This exchange occurs between some British commenters:

“I’m really not bothered by fellow European immigration, at least to a degree. If it wasn’t for the Poles coming to Britain, it’d be a damn sight less white. I wish them great success anyway, I’d love to join them. Oh, that’s good for you. I wish Poles in Poland all the luck in the world.”

A response:

“You do realize that Poles in Britain are not British? All Europeans are not the same sorry. I am sorry we don’t live in some utopian world where everyone is accepted, oh crap I forgot, we do live in a jew world where every “immigrant” is accepted. BTW, I would also like to add that the English are different from all the other British peoples as well. There is no shame in real diversity. ”

The above comment makes an important point: the English are a distinct people, and they are, ironically, some of the most marginalized in their own country.

On White (Eastern Europeans) coming to Britain, this sarcastic response:

“Yes but at least they’re White and they’re all uber ultra mega super White Nationalists who are all coming over here to offset the White minority[…] and help us reclaim our nations! They’re all better White Nationalists than us anyway doncha know? Heck when they were born their first words were the 14 words! Geez come on its White Pride World Wide!

Doncha know its against the rules to criticise other White groups […]

I mean yeah if it was non Whites coming over to do the exact same thing then yeah our indignation would be justified but these guys are White and therefore its alright!

Just remember the 28 words. “we must sacrifice our own childrens futures in our own nations for the benefit of every parasite and economic mercenary who lands here as long as they’re White.”

There does seem to be some division amongst British people as to the presence of colonies of Polish immigrants. If nothing else, this kind of immigration divides the native-born people, as it has in America as well; White Americans are divided, with those who argue fiercely in favor of the immigrants vs. the ‘nativists’. Mass immigration can often be a divisive and polarizing thing  for the host societies. Maybe that is one ‘feature’ that the elites like about introducing strangers by the millions into White majority countries.

In response to a comment calling for more Eastern Europeans (instead of non-whites) to immigrate to the U.S., a Southern  American poster responds:

“I’m so sick of this idiotic reasoning. No one should have to choose which group of immigrants pours into his country. Dixie does not need or want immigrants. Period. The idea that one group of immigrants is better than another is absurd because it accepts the internationalist position that there must be immigrants at all. Mississippians, like Southerners in general, are an Anglo-Saxon people. Large-scale immigration from eastern Europe will replace Mississippians and end our civilisation. The blacks are not half as much a worry as people here make them out to be. Southerners have always known how to deal with blacks. We could do so again if we were not ruled by outsiders. It is white outsiders who have always caused us problems. The most certain way to end Dixie’s racialism is to fill Dixie with non-Southern whites. Look to the liberal bastions of Maryland, northern Virginia, Delaware, and southern Florida to see what a South populated by white outsiders looks like. It is pure fantasy to think that a white melting pot white turn into fertile ground for a racialist uprising. Your fantasy is effectively promoting Southern genocide and declaring that the Southern people – who have always been leaders of racialism on this continent – are too incompetent to do anything without the help of mass immigration.”

I second much of what this commenter says.

I especially like that he emphasizes the fact that most Southern Americans are an Anglo-Saxon people. That needs to be emphasized for the sake of the truth.

Too many people, as he says, have accepted the idea that immigration is inevitable; it’s a given, and we are lucky if we can only choose which kind of immigration we want; which group of strangers we want introduced en masse into our stable communities.

Why is immigration a given, a must? Why do so few of us question its inevitability, even as our communities and neighborhoods are changed beyond recognition?

My concern is that our people will slowly acclimate to this constant flow of outsiders and strangers, and the slow transformation of our world into something we hardly recognize. I see signs of it happening, and the more intermarriage and social fraternizing (part of the ‘integration’ that our political classes insist on) the more enmeshed will we become with the others, so that we are no longer a people.

The ‘White nation’ with no borders described in the opening paragraph of this post cannot be a nation if it has no borders and no fences.

Cecil Sharp on Appalachian Americans

I may have referred here to Cecil Sharp, the English folklorist who visited Virginia just over a century ago. He, along with his American assistant,  wanted to collect any folk songs of English origin that may still have been extant in that part of the country, and he found a great many old English ballads that were still preserved amongst the people of the Appalachians. Keep in mind that this is the part of the South that is said to have been settled mostly by Celtic  ‘Scots-Irish’ or Irish people, so this would seem an odd place to go looking for English folk songs and lore. Still, Sharp and his assistant were not disappointed in their quest, and Sharp wrote of the similarities between the rural Appalachian folk and their counterparts back in England.

This blog points out that Sharp’s descriptions stand in stark contrast to the stereotypes of people from that region that are popularly believed today. Here’s another site which is a good source of information about the subject.

As I love traditional music and all sorts of folklore I am fascinated by the story of Cecil Sharp and his mission to collect and help preserve the musical traditions of Appalachia. His work led to a cooperative effort between traditional music scholars and musicians on both sides of the Atlantic, in order to keep these traditions alive.

The demographic changes that are being imposed on even the more remote areas of the Southern U.S. will no doubt contribute to a weakening and possible loss of the culture and heritage overall. It is just not true that a culture can be preserved by just anybody; a culture is the product of a specific people, an extended kin-group who are genetically from the same source.  If a culture is a disembodied thing that can be transferred to any random ‘recipient’ then it is a museum piece, no longer a living tradition.

I hate to make this political, but there’s just no way around it. A people must be preserved in order for their culture to survive and continue.

 

 

The ‘English diet’

It’s pretty rare that the British press ever has anything positive to say about anything traditionally English, so this article from 2011 is a rarity. According to this, the ‘English diet could save thousands of Welsh, Scottish and Irish lives.’ Apparently, some think the English diet is healthier than the diet followed by the average Welsh, Scots, or Irish household.

The British media, like the American media, are always scolding and nagging readers about ‘eating healthier’, and if anything, the UK media are worse for their nanny state meddling in people’s diets and health choices. It’s bad enough that the government(s) and their media arm are sticking their noses where they don’t rightfully belong — government is not meant to involve itself in what we eat; at least in the U.S. our government is limited, strictly speaking, to certain functions — at which it is currently derelict (such as enforcing our borders) and it has no business preaching to us about what we eat. But the media does that constantly, and worse, they are behind the times as to the ‘information’ with which they lecture us. Example: their incorrect, and since discredited ideas about the benefits of ‘low-fat’ diets. But they persist in nagging us about eating low-salt diets as well.

Most of us remember that the older generations, our grandparents if not our parents, ate diets that are now condemned by the health establishment as bad and unhealthy — yet those older generations often seemed to live longer, healthier lives than today’s health-obsessed people. My Southern grandparents, of English descent, ate a breakfast that was almost identical to the traditional ‘full English’ breakfast, pictured here. Most people today would be horrified, probably calling it a ‘heart attack waiting to happen’, though my grandmother lived a healthy life, dying at age 94; her brother died at 105. And they ate this kind of diet.

If you read the article I link to above, about the ‘full English breakfast’ you will notice that the writer says, of the obligatory tomato included on the plate,

“Much like the beans, the tomato may seem like an optional garnish; I assure you, it is not. The sweetness and acidity that come from a cooked tomato goes a long way in cutting the fattiness that is inherent in the rest of the plate.”

I was amused by that; the older generations in my family always said that the tomato was there to “cut the grease” in the rest of the meal. Even centuries after our family came to this country, those sayings still persist. But yes, the tomato does seem to ‘cut the grease.’

It is interesting that some of the culinary and dietary habits came to this country, though in this country,  at least in the South, other breakfast items like ‘grits’ were added to the breakfast menu. I don’t think that particular food has British antecedents, especially as corn (Indian corn, or maize to some in the old country) was a New World food.

As to whether the English diet is healthier than that eaten elsewhere in the UK, I can’t speak to that; I found, in Ireland, that the people ate similar diets to that of most English people, with some minor variations — like brown bread with breakfast, although the Irish do like their ‘fry’ for breakfast at times too.

It does seem that on both sides of the Atlantic, the nanny state governments want to dictate or control what we eat, and while they claim to be motivated by concern for our health and well-being, at the same time they are feeding us GMO foods, and in this country, removing ‘place of origin’ labeling on some foods, and importing much of our food and medicines (even prescription medications) from third-world countries with very poor safety standards, and histories of adulterated and toxic products. So how concerned are ‘our’ governments, really, about our health and safety?

And it does seem as though they are aiming to make vegans of us all, eventually, and to habituate us to a ‘third-world’ style diet, emphasizing the exotic ethnic foods that the many immigrants have introduced into our Anglosphere countries. Out with the old, and in with the new, regardless of the dubious health benefits of these new foods.

Could it not be that our bodies are genetically programmed to do well on a certain type of diet, a diet which includes meat and dairy and what the questionable ‘experts’ call unhealthy amounts of fat? Our Northern European ancestors seem to have done pretty well on that diet, and yet we are constantly told we should stop eating it.  I suppose this article about the relative health benefits of the English diet would not be written in 2017. In the years since it appeared, the health ‘experts’ haven’t shown much sign of revising their ‘low fat, low salt’ dogma.

As for me, I prefer to go with what works, and what was good for the older generations is good enough for me, I think.

Place names in the British Isles

The map shows the pattern of settlements by Celts, Saxons, Danes, and Norwegians in the British Isles, as reflected in the place names common to those areas. It’s informative when considering the popular beliefs as to the ethnic makeup of the various regions in Britain and Ireland.

For example, it looks as though the Saxon settlement extended up into the Northeast part of Britain, and those northern regions near Scotland provided a good many of the ‘Ulster plantation’ settlers in Northern Ireland. Obviously (as is already known) those settlers were usually not ‘Celtic’ in origin, as is popularly assumed by many Americans who claim ‘Scots-Irish’ origin.

It also looks as if there was more Danish settlement in Eastern England, which was the place of origin for many New England colonists.

The map is from Isaac Taylor’s ‘Words and Places, or Etymological Illustrations of History, Etymology, and Geography’, London, 1865

‘Mixed’ ethnic makeup of Britain

The above phrase is from an Ancestry.com press release, here.

Needless to say, a grain of salt is necessary here, because from what I’ve observed, Ancestry.com seems to be grinding a multicultural ax, always stressing how ‘we‘ are this or that. I haven’t seen their TV series called ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ but from what people who have seen it tell me, and from this description, it seems the usual PC dogma on ethnicity and race is promoted.

I did find this part of the press release interesting:

“…[T]he average UK resident is 36.94% British (Anglo Saxon), 21.59% Irish (Celtic) and 19.91% Western European (the region covered today by France and Germany).

Following these top three regional ethnicities in the average UK resident are Scandinavia (9.20%), the Iberian Peninsula (Spain/Portugal) (3.05%), and Italy and Greece (1.98%)”

Actually several family members have had their DNA testing done, and similar results showed up on their reports, as well as mine. We have no recent Scandinavian ancestry, though we know of one Norwegian ancestor who came to New Amsterdam in the 17th century. So the Scandinavian must be via Britain in much earlier times, especially as it shows up on the ”average” UK resident. We also likewise had small percentages of Iberian Peninsula and Italy/Greece, though any such ancestry must have been quite distant. (Most of our family lines are accounted for in recent centuries.)

Still, I’m not sure what the rate of error is in DNA testing as it exists today. What I do know of family history does line up, for the most part, with family records and ‘word-of-mouth’, what older generations passed down to us.

The Germans and the English: closely related?

The common wisdom is that the English (or more broadly speaking, the British) are very closely related, genetically as well as linguistically.  EvolutionistX examines the relationships amongst the various European ethnicities, with some interesting findings. In response to a question he compares German and Polish genetics, specifically, and then compares the various European peoples.

“Obviously German is here referring to one of the Germanic peoples who occupy the modern nation of Germany and speak a Germanic language. But as noted before, just because people speak a common language doesn’t necessarily mean they have a common genetic origin. Germans and English both speak Germanic languages , but Germans could easily share more DNA with their Slavic-language speaking neighbors in Poland than with the English.

According to Wikipedia, the modern Germanic peoples include Afrikaners, Austrians, Danes, Dutch, English, Flemish, Frisians, Germans, Icelanders, Lowland Scots, Norwegians, and Swedes.”

I’m no scholar on the subject of HBD, though I have a curiosity about it and an interest in it. But I admit I was surprised to read the last sentence in that first paragraph above — the statement that Germans might have closer genetic ties with the Polish people than with the English. This is because, just as I said, the popular belief is that the English and the Germans are very close cousins. I suppose we all tend to take that for granted, having heard it so often.

In discussions of history and politics on right-wing blogs, many people bitterly condemn the two world wars involving the English and the Germans, on the grounds that ‘it was cousin against cousin‘ or sometimes ‘brother against brother‘, with the implication that the two peoples should never have fought each other.

However history shows us that oftentimes more closely-related peoples are at odds with each other, rather than allies and good neighbors.

There’s a great deal more information in the article about the various European peoples, including some useful genetic maps. Of one of the maps, EvolutionistX says:

“Note, though, that this map has some amusing results; clearly it’s a more Nordic distribution than specifically German, with “Celtic” Ireland just as Nordic as much of England and Germany.”

That last point, about ‘Celtic’ Ireland being just as Nordic as much of England and Germany, is also counter to the popular beliefs, especially those of Americans of Scots or Irish descent, who remain adamant that their ancestors were Celts, not Nordic or Germanic. So much of the inter-group squabbling and grievance-nursing could be eliminated if only ethnic partisans would accept this information as true. Unfortunately people will often believe what they choose to believe and reject any information that challenges their belief system. Politics too often colors people’s openness to new information.

“In 2003 a paper was published by Christian Capelli and colleagues which supported, but modified, the conclusions of Weale and colleagues.^[14] This paper, which sampled Great Britain and Ireland on a grid, found a smaller difference between Welsh and English samples, with a gradual decrease in Haplogroup I frequency moving westwards in southern Great Britain. The results suggested to the authors that Norwegian Vikings invaders had heavily influenced the northern area of the British Isles, but that both English and mainland Scottish samples all have German/Danish influence.”

Maybe, as I think I mentioned in an earlier post on this subject, there is a closer kinship amongst the various peoples of the British Isles than between the supposedly close kindred, the English and the Germans. And that seems only common sense, to me.

Is it just my perception, or have intra-European grudges and animosities increased somewhat in the last few decades? In the face of the common threat to all the European peoples, these kinds of rivalries and grievances should diminish. At the same time, though, I don’t think any kind of amalgamation of the various peoples should be the goal; each people is unique; all have their strengths and their weaknesses. Europeans are not all the same. And good fences make good neighbors.

Alliances, yes, but no forced unions, whether EU-style or other such pan-European schemes.

 

 

 

 

Not a matter of blood?

From a thread on an HBD blog:

There have been no genetic Anglo-Saxons for 1000 years. The term is gibberish invoked to express some social and political attitudes.

A useful genetic marker is R1a haplotype on the Y chromosome. This started out south of the Urals and spread east (Uighurs), south to the subcontinent (high fives Razib) and west across Northern Europe and Scandinavia. It entered Albion with the Anglo-Saxon invasion and Scotland and the coasts via Scandinavia. Before those invasions, the population was almost all R1b (original hunter-gatherers plus Celts entering in first millenium BCE). R1a is about 10% of the present population, so even if it was 50% of the Germanic tribes, the gene pool is only 20% “Anglo-Saxon”.

Unfortunately, the content of most of the comments on the thread is similar to the ideas expressed in the above.

It seems terribly important to some people, many people, to deny that Anglo-Saxon or English people exist, even in England or Britain as a whole. Why is that?

The blogger himself denies that Anglo-Saxon identity is a matter of blood.  In support of his belief, he mentions the National Geographic article which I linked to here, and which Patrick Cleburne at VDare linked, and says the information isn’t valid, supposedly being outdated. Supposedly more recent information refutes the content of the article. However there certainly have been other sources which cited that study and added their own information to it. Given the amount of disagreement here, we might get the impression that genetics isn’t a ‘hard science’ at all.

I have seen genetic maps that show that the peoples of the British Isles have more in common with each other than with continental ‘cousins.’ The blogger asserts that Anglo-Saxons and Germans are more closely related than is now believed, though the maps I’ve seen don’t show that to be the case. From a purely subjective point of view, I’ve never thought that English and Germans resemble each other that much. I’ve never mistaken one for the other just by their outward appearance. Having learned something of German and French, I found French easier to learn; the structure and syntax of German are radically different and some German words are not easy to guess as with unfamiliar French words. And yes, I know that is the legacy of the Normans, in part.

The one part of the linked blog piece that I agree with is this:

The number of people who identify as English has crashed since 1980. Why? The winds of cultural change. If you are of German and English heritage, you will usually say you are German American. If Irish and English, again, Irish (not to mention “Americans” who are actually English).”

Yes. I’ve said this as have others, and it’s true. Those who say ‘Germans are the majority White ethnic group in America’ are disingenuous as surely they know that the  ‘pie’ is divided amongst so many White ethnic groups in America that the Germans  will appear to be the most numerous. For that reason, and for the reason that people tend to pick the more recent immigrant group as their ethnicity, if they are a European mix, Germans may appear to be at the top, but if the truth were known it might look very different. Most Americans have not been DNA-tested, and many, like Elizabeth Warren, believe fairy tales about their ancestry because it’s in style to do so.

As for England being multicultural for centuries, having taken in immigrants from various European and later, non-European nations, we could make the same argument about many European countries. The Netherlands, for example, took in many French Huguenots, Sephardic Jews (Baruch Spinoza being one), some English Puritans, and Flemish people. In recent times, many ethnic Dutch whose ancestors had lived in the Dutch East Indies were ‘repatriated’ to Holland — bringing many mixed descendants (called ‘Indos’) back with them. The Dutch, unlike the English, were more willing to intermarry with the native people in their colonies. So can we say there is ‘no Dutch bloodline’, or that Dutch people are just a mixed multitude? I would not say that.

In our day politics and social change have damaged the objectivity of many ‘scientists’ and even more so, non-scientists.