How do I gaslight thee? Let me count the ways
ROGER WATS(N
SOME maintain that the expression ‘gaslighting’ is over-used these days. I don’t agree. I maintain that the process is more intense than ever; as the light grows dimmer, we are supposed to see less of what is taking place in our country in the media, on our streets and to our culture.
It is hard to know where to begin and even harder to know where to stop: there is just so much happening in our country to which we are meant to turn a blind eye. But here I consider three issues which exemplify the problem.
Colour-blind casting
I recently attended a very good production of Macbeth at the Hull Truck Theatre to which I have referred elsewhere as ‘Blackbeth’ because the actors playing Macbeth and Banquo were both black. Without meaning to sound virtue-signalling, I don’t really care what colour any actor is, and we are now well used to colour-blind casting regardless of how incongruous it may seem.
In Wolf Hall, the television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, black soldiers and guards were much in evidence despite the fact that it is unlikely there were any black people in the service of Henry VIII. This was long before the colonisation of either the West Indies or Africa.
I’m sure if there had been any black soldiers in the army of Henry VIII they would have done a good job, but it is the nature of colour-blind casting that it works in only one direction. Anyone who draws attention to that risks the label ‘racist’. If casting for television, cinema and stage really were colour-blind we could expect to see white actors portraying black characters. But we don’t.
Imagine the outrage if, for example, a white actor portrayed Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. If, in a remake of Zulu, hordes of white actors appeared over the hill with spears at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift there would be justified derision.
Heaven forbid that a white actor ever blacks up again, as did Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Gambon to play Othello. When Patrick Stewart portrayed Othello, he did so without the benefit of black make-up. But he was the only white actor; the remaining cast were black in this so-called ‘photo-negative’ production.
Illegal immigration
Hordes of priapic young men of military age and an Islamic persuasion invade our beaches daily. They get preferential treatment in terms of accommodation, access to health services and allowances. In gratitude, some of them harass, assault and rape our young women.
Yet we are exhorted to believe that there is nothing to see here. These are people ‘fleeing oppression’ (in France, apparently), many with beards are of school age and their presence on our streets should be referred to as ‘cultural enrichment’.
As with calling out the one-sided nature of colour-blind casting, drawing attention to such anomalies is to risk a hefty dose of abuse, cancellation and possibly even a knock on the door from the thought police, aka ‘the police’. Of course, the people turning down the gas over illegal and legal immigration are not the same people who have to share their streets and neighbourhoods with alien migrants. The benefits of cultural enrichment are largely reserved for the working classes whose housing is increasingly handed over to migrants and who are also less able to move out when the balance shifts in favour of the incomers.
Islamification
Not unrelated to the above, but with its own unique aspects, is the steady Islamification of our country and culture. We are, by now, well used to our Sovereign King, in his guise as the Grand Mufti of Highgrove (peace be upon him), praising the resilience of our Muslim ‘community’ during Ramadan (which should more accurately be described as ‘skipping lunch’) and packing Iftar dates. The man is obsessed with Islam.
Westminster has hosted Iftar and my own Hull City Council recently hosted a civic Grand Iftar in our City Hall. My hard-earned council tax is being used to fund this multicultural tomfoolery, and this is happening under a Reform UK Mayor of Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Lent and Ramadan went ‘head to head’ this year, but the attention on BBC Radio 4 religious programmes is tipped in favour of Ramadan. The Royal Mint is making gold bars depicting the Kaaba, the monument around which Muslims process in Mecca (sorry, Makkah), some of the proceeds to Muslim charities. You don’t have to be a raving Islamophobe to question why this is happening, to point out that it has never previously happened and to ask what benefit it brings to our society.
If one did and was taken seriously, as opposed to being banged up for a stretch, one would probably be reminded about the virtues of tolerance, making minorities feel welcome and about how diversity is our strength. That is akin to agreeing that we should tolerate woodworm boring holes in our best Chippendale furniture. Where our lords and masters see tolerance and diversity, I see a pile of sawdust.
This article (How do I gaslight thee? Let me count the ways) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Roger Watson
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