If You've Read the Complete Works of William Shakespeare...

Like a Jeff Foxworthy joke - "If you woke up this morning, you might be a right-wing extremist."

Tuur said:

... You might be a right-wing extremist. At least in the UK.

That's according to the UK's Prevent program, as reported here:

Yes Minister flagged by beleaguered counter-terror Prevent scheme

Some of Britain's most popular sitcoms and greatest works of literature were flagged as potential signs of far-Right extremism by a counter-terror programme.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Other works listed include Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, and the poems of G.K. Chesterton.

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Prevent's RICU organisation provided examples of 'recommended reading' style lists put up online by white nationalists/supremacists and members of the far and alt-right. You might notice a common factor about the authors of all these texts:

Lord of the Rings - White Dude
Brave New World - White Dude
1984 - White Dude
The Secret Agent - White Dude
Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy - White Dude

Same thing with the protagonists of those films/TV series

Sharpe - White Dude
House of Cards - White Dude
The Thick Of It - White Dudes
Bridge Over the River Kwai - White Dude
The Great Escape - White Dudes
Zulu - White Dude
The Dam Busters - White Dudes
Yes Minister - White Dudes

Same thing with all the playwrights and poets listed.

It's almost as if these people have an ideology that is based around lionising the contributions of Anglo-Saxon White Dudes, along with demonising their perceived enemies and minimising/ignoring/excluding the contributions of any other identity.

If you're going out of your way to cultivate a reading list that only consists of Christian, Straight, English White Dudes and excludes all other voices, I'd be questioning your political leanings as well.

Full disclosure:

My book shelf behind me includes the Collected Works of Shakespeare, selected stuff from George Orwell and Huxley and a few le Carre novels. I've also got DVD collections of House of Cards (the British version, not the American one), Yes Minister and some of the Sharpe series.

I'd say two thirds of my library was written by English, American or Australian white dudes.

However, I've ALSO got a whole lot of stuff from other identities - both Murakamis, Oscar Wilde, Maya Angelou, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Judith Butler, Eileen Chang, Karl Marx, Margaret Atwood, Robin Hobb, Ursula le Guin and others.

*glances at vast library of anime and manga*

I think I'm safe.

Gene2memE said:

The Dam Busters - White Dudes

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They just like it for the dog's name.

Gene2memE said:

Prevent's RICU organisation provided examples of 'recommended reading' style lists put up online by white nationalists/supremacists and members of the far and alt-right. You might notice a common factor about the authors of all these texts:

Lord of the Rings - White Dude
Brave New World - White Dude
1984 - White Dude
The Secret Agent - White Dude
Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy - White Dude

Same thing with the protagonists of those films/TV series

Sharpe - White Dude
House of Cards - White Dude
The Thick Of It - White Dudes
Bridge Over the River Kwai - White Dude
The Great Escape - White Dudes
Zulu - White Dude
The Dam Busters - White Dudes
Yes Minister - White Dudes

Same thing with all the playwrights and poets listed.

It's almost as if these people have an ideology that is based around lionising the contributions of Anglo-Saxon White Dudes, along with demonising their perceived enemies and minimising/ignoring/excluding the contributions of any other identity.

If you're going out of your way to cultivate a reading list that only consists of Christian, Straight, English White Dudes and excludes all other voices, I'd be questioning your political leanings as well.

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I'm wondering why you keep mentioning "dudes". The article mentions nothing about dudes. I guess that's some personal problem you're inserting from your psyche. Anyway, many years ago I read an article in National Review where someone (I don't recall the name) was responding to the criticism that education was Eurocentric. The response was "Show me the Asian Shakespeare, and I'll be happy to read him. Show me the African Beethoven, and I'll be happy to listen to him."

Gene2memE said:

Full disclosure:

My book shelf behind me includes the Collected Works of Shakespeare, selected stuff from George Orwell and Huxley and a few le Carre novels. I've also got DVD collections of House of Cards (the British version, not the American one), Yes Minister and some of the Sharpe series.

I'd say two thirds of my library was written by English, American or Australian white dudes.

However, I've ALSO got a whole lot of stuff from other identities - both Murakamis, Oscar Wilde, Maya Angelou, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Judith Butler, Eileen Chang, Karl Marx, Margaret Atwood, Robin Hobb, Ursula le Guin and others.

Click to expand...

So you've got one black person in your library, and she's a prostitute. Looks like tokenism to me. I have many books in my library by great black authors such as Thomas Sowell and Chuck Berry. Well some of them are records, not books.

I watched Yes minister for the first time last year and loved it. Uh oh.

G.K Chesterton being on the list is kind of amazing. It just goes to show you what the established order considers dangerous is tradition and the things which were once commonly believed in.

Still this list is rather pathetic. There are way more problematic figures for the current regime in the UK that I would have thought would be on the list but instead they're going for the classics, maybe because of their ubiquity.

The list concept fails to appreciate that right wing extremists like some quality stuff.