This is sent by our secret agents in Extreme Central Texas. It is derived from a recently published broadside from across the pond. It is judged by El Gringo Viejo to be a "must read" :
This letter is a response from Oxford to Black Students attending as Rhodes Scholars to
remove the statue of Oxford Benefactor, Cecil Rhodes.
Subject: OXFORD - THE FIGHTBACK HAS BEGUN
Interestingly, Chris Patten (Lord Patten of Barnes), The Chancellor of Oxford
University, was on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 yesterday on precisely the
same topic. The Daily Telegraph headline yesterday was "Oxford will not rewrite
history".
Patten commented "“Education is not indoctrination. Our history is not a blank
page on which we can write our own version of what it should have been according to
our contemporary views and prejudice"
Rhodes must fall ????
“Dear Scrotty Students,
Cecil Rhodes’s generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort and well
being of many generations of Oxford students – a good many of them, dare we say it,
better, brighter and more deserving than you.
This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in his
lifetime – but then we don’t have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago. Autres
temps, autres moeurs. If you don’t understand what this means – and it would not
remotely surprise us if that were the case – then we really think you should ask yourself
the question: “Why am I at Oxford?”
Oxford, let us remind you, is the world’s second oldest extant university. Scholars
have been studying here since at least the 11th century. We’ve played a major part in
the invention of Western civilisation, from the 12th century intellectual renaissance
through the Enlightenment and beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger
Bacon, William Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher
Wren, William Penn, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Samuel Johnson, Robert Hooke,
William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison, Cardinal Newman, Julie Cocks. We’re a big
deal. And most of the people privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a
big deal we are. Oxford is their alma mater – their dear mother – and they respect and
revere her accordingly.
And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts, mainly.
Sure we’ll concede you the short lived Southern African civilisation of Great Zimbabwe.
But let’s be brutally honest here. The contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern
civilisation has been as near as damn it to zilch. You'll probably say that's "racist". But, it's what we here at Oxford call fact.
Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to squander your time at Oxford on
silly, vexatious, single-issue political campaigns. (Though it does make us wonder how
stringent the vetting procedure is these days for Rhodes scholarships and even more
so, for Mandela Rhodes scholarships) We are well used to seeing undergraduates – or,
in your case – postgraduates, making idiots of themselves. Just don’t expect us to
indulge your idiocy, let alone genuflect before it. You may be black – “BME” as the grisly
modern terminology has it – but we are colour blind. We have been educating gifted
undergraduates from our former colonies, our Empire, our Commonwealth and beyond
for many generations. We do not discriminate over sex, race, colour nor creed. We do,
however, discriminate according to intellect.
That means, inter alia, that when our undergrads or postgrads come up with
fatuous ideas, we don’t pat them on the back, give them a red rosette and say: “Ooh,
you’re black and you come from South Africa. What a clever chap you are!” No. We
prefer to see the quality of those ideas tested in the crucible of public debate. That’s
another key part of the Oxford intellectual tradition you see: you can argue any damn
thing you like but you need to be able to justify it with facts and logic – otherwise your
idea is worthless.
This ludicrous notion you have that a bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes should be
removed from Oriel College, because it’s symbolic of “institutional racism” and “white
slavery”. Well even if it is – which we dispute – so bloody what? Any undergraduate so
feeble-minded that they can’t pass a bronze statue without having their “safe space”
violated really does not deserve to be here. And besides, if we were to remove
Rhodes’s statue on the premise that his life wasn’t blemish-free, where would we stop?
As one of our alumni Dan Hannan has pointed out, Oriel’s other benefactors include two
kings so awful – Edward II and Charles I – that their subjects had them killed. The
college opposite – Christ Church – was built by a murderous, thieving bully who
bumped off two of his wives. Thomas Jefferson kept slaves: does that invalidate the US
Constitution? Winston Churchill had unenlightened views about Muslims and India: was
he then the wrong man to lead Britain in the war?”
Actually, we’ll go further than that. Your Rhodes Must Fall campaign is not merely
fatuous but ugly, vandalistic and dangerous. We agree with Oxford historian RW
Johnson that what you are trying to do here is no different from what ISIS and the Al-
Qaeda have been doing to artefacts in places like Mali and Syria. You are murdering
history, (El Gringo Viejo calls to mind the Cliff Buddhas of Afghanistan....now gone forever).
And who are you, anyway, to be lecturing Oxford University on how it should order its
affairs? Your #rhodesmustfall campaign, we understand, originates in South Africa and
was initiated by a black activist who told one of his lecturers “whites have to be killed”.
One of you – Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh – is the privileged son of a rich politician and a
member of a party whose slogan is “Kill the Boer; Kill the Farmer”; another of you,
Ntokozo Qwabe, who is only in Oxford as a beneficiary of a Rhodes scholarship, has
boasted about the need for “socially conscious black students” to “dominate white
universities, and do so ruthlessly and decisively!
Great. That’s just what Oxford University needs. Some cultural enrichment from
the land of Winnie Mandela, burning tyre necklaces, an AIDS epidemic almost entirely
the result of government indifference and ignorance, one of the world’s highest per
capita murder rates, institutionalised corruption, tribal politics, anti-white racism and a
collapsing economy. Please name which of the above items you think will enhance the
lives of the 22,000 students studying here at Oxford.
And then please explain what it is that makes your attention grabbing campaign
to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more urgent, more deserving than the
desire of probably at least 20,000 of those 22,000 students to enjoy their time here
unencumbered by the irritation of spoilt, ungrateful little tossers on scholarships they
clearly don’t merit using racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to ruin the life and fabric
of our beloved university.
Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to learn from us;
we have nothing to learn from you.
Sincerely,
Sincerely,
Oriel College, Oxford"
_________________
