In searching for some other topic, I came across a blog post which sets out to discredit the belief that Anglo-Saxons have a common origin. The writer asserts, very early in his essay, that there is no common origin; ‘Anglo-Saxons’ or English folk are descended from a very mixed conglomeration of various peoples who wandered onto the island and became part of this congeries of peoples who blended into the group now called ‘British’ (or ‘English’, if you want to be more accurate.)

Before I continue with this piece, I think that this kind of blog post is one that I am inclined to write. Why? First, because it has to do with our origins and our identity and who we are, biologically, culturally, and even spiritually. And we live in a strange time in which everybody gets to identify as part of an ethnicity or people or tribe or nation. This is, despite all the overdone rhetoric about how ‘we’re all one race: the Human Race.’ That statement is the stock response to the issue of the place of peoples and nations, or of nations vs. ‘One-worldism’, also known by some as ‘Babelism’.

Being of Anglo-Saxon, (or not, according to the author of the article) origin is a doubleplusungood thing, because our ancestors were explorers, enterprising people who ended up controlling much of the world, and in today’s convoluted thinking, that means that such a people must be punished and cut down to size. The reason? Being successful and dominant means there must have been oppression toward the subjects of colonial or imperial rule. The ancestors of many European people are automatically judged as bad and dangeroua, the sort who probably would return to oppressing the world if given a chance. It seems the one-worlders want to render those of English/Anglo-Saxon lineage weak and ineffectual. There is so much propaganda aimed at just this, and it operates among all people of European descent as well, but it seems as if the Anglosphere countries are a special target.

Hence you find these articles that tend to demean and dismiss the English and Anglo-Saxon in particular. There is a great deal of denigration of our folk online and in the real world to a lesser degree. I wonder if that Anglophobia is ‘grassroots’ or if it’s shills and operatives promoting this kind of thing online.

But to give an idea of what kind of approach the writer takes to the subject at hand, he eventually comes to declare that actual genetic origins, (though he says the English have no common origins of any consequence), are in fact irrelevant; the peoples of Britain would consider anyone that lived in proximity to be part of their people, as one of them.

“…[T]hese ancient people did not distinguish biological heritage from cultural association. In other words, someone who lived and died in the fifth or sixth century Anglo-Saxon village of Oakington could have been biologically related to an earlier inhabitant of England, a recent migrant from continental Europe or a descendant of either or both – they were all treated the same in death.”

The writer then says that the Anglo-Saxons were ‘written into history’, as if to suggest a fiction was created; no such people existed in any real sense of the word:

“Biologically then these people were a mixed group who shared what we consider Anglo-Saxon culture. But they did not think of themselves as Anglo-Saxons. The idea of the Anglo-Saxon is a romanticised and heavily politicised notion.”

Surely the writer should be aware that many groups originated in another part of the world, and that over time they encountered, associated with, and melded to some extent with other peoples. But does this mean that the resulting admixture was not considered part of a nation with considerable homogeneity? A factor that is usually downplayed if not denied is the fact that the peoples of the British Isles are not drastically different peoples, despite some ethnic conflicts that have persisted and been rekindled by the political agitators and the media. The writer mentions the Dutch and Danish as being genetically close to the English; that is factual. The Dutch seem to have been a very open and welcoming country, as witness how the Pilgrims, looking to escape persecution in their home country, went to Leyden, Holland for refuge, living for some years there.

The Dutch welcomed Huguenots fleeing France, and there was considerable intermarriage between those peoples. Does all of the above mean that the Dutch ceased being a people because they had intermingled with other peoples? No one seems to say that — yet. But it seems there is a drive to deracinate the English, and to a lesser degree, other Europeans. And the word ‘deracinate’ reminds me that the etymology of the word has to do with ‘roots’. Today’s upside-down world expects us to disconnect from our roots, to become rootless, without the thing that sustains us and keeps ups grounded.

As I finish this post, I know that some people are not comfortable with my writing about these kinds of things; some people prefer more superficial and upbeat subjects. But this is the sort of subject I feel a certain urgency about on behalf of people on both sides the Atlantic.

Still I am open to writing about less weighty subjects if that’s preferable at times.

But since I seem to have a polemical tendency, this is primarily what I do, but not exclusively. I enjoy writing about cultural and historical subjects, the arts, the English language, biography, and so on. I’m open to hearing what interests you out there.