JABBA THE AGNIVORE

WILL THE REAL IRISHMAN PLEASE STAND UP!

It's all quiet on the Western Front just now, as everyone settles in after the recent power struggle at Trigger's Brush FC. It'll be a while before The Laxative turns up to rile them all up again so, in the meantime, they can enjoy a period of relative calm. This means that the Brushers have got time, in between discussing 'cabals' etc, to muse over the tweets of Charlotte Fakes. These exposés of Green's dealings with Whyte have rattled a few cages. Unfortunately, I can't be bothered listening to recordings or ploughing through reams of documents so I'm unable to comment on any of it. As usual with the Brushers, however, it's not the substance that bothers them; their worry is who is leaking the stuff! Anyway, it hardly matters as the SFA will undoubtedly do sfa about Green's links with Whyte so the whole business is pretty much an irrelevance.

Bill McMurdo has decided to do a Leggat and publish an e-book exposing Dermot Desmond. For some reason the Brushers think that anything they get on Desmond will reflect badly on Celtic. Maybe they don't know it but it's extremely difficult to find anyone that is both a millionaire and a nice person. As Lord Acton said, 'Great men are always bad men.' These characters did not make their fortunes by being phlanthropic and most of them would sell their own grandmothers for the sake of a fast buck; I doubt that Desmond is any different. I, personally, don't look up to such selfish, greedy individuals but they have become a necessary evil in the world of football. That does not mean that we have to love them. Possibly the only real difference between Desmond and Whyte is that Desmond is a real billionaire! So, I for one am not overly concerned about any 'revelations' Old Bill comes up with.

I've had a bit of fun this weekend researching all this British Israelism stuff, which I mentioned the other day. As an historian myself I find this kind of guff endlessly fascinating. And to think that there are people out there that actually believe it!

Although all this shite had been around for a while, it became most popular at the end of the Nineteenth Century. Then, and now, it seems to be the preserve of Protestant groups, who are looking to prove their superiority. It is especially popular among supremacist WASPs in America, who can claim, through their European ancestry, to be descended from the lost tribes of Israel and, consequently, God's Chosen People! Some rednecks take it to extremes, claiming that today's Jews are the descendants of pagan tribes and, therefore, are not real Jews at all! Further, they believe that the Chosen People (ie themselves) are the only ones that God is going to save. They say that black people are just animals and that they do not have souls. Nice people!

One major fly in the ointment for these white, Protestant supremacists is the fact that the story goes that the descent from the Ten Tribes comes through the Irish. They have, however, managed to find a way round this. Apparently the people we call 'Irish' are, in fact, descended from the Tribe of Dan, who turned away from God and practised idolatry. The WASPs claim that this is the reason the Irish stuck with Catholicism. A serious flaw in this argument is that, according to the Bible, the Tribe of Dan, one of whom was Samson, was renowned for abstaining from alcohol. This hardly sits well with their usual stereotype of the drunken Irishman, shillelagh in hand, looking to fight with everyone in the world!

Reading all this guff I realised how cleverly it's presented. Most of their arguments are of the post hoc ergo propter hoc kind. Anyone who has studied History at university should recognise this phrase; it's something that you are told to avoid at all costs. What it means is that just because B happened after A, it doesn't necessarily folow that A caused B. Anyone handing in an essay using this type of argument would be handed it back with a very low score indeed! The British Israelism adherents use this kind of argument all the time. Their writings are full of 'that must mean' and 'it stands to reason'; basically filling in the blanks where there there is no evidence to support their theories. To folk that are naive about how to approach History these arguments can seem convincing.

Another device they use is to quote historians extensively. This can seem impressive and, again, extremely convincing unless you read carefully. For example, one of them bangs on, as usual, about how civilisation in ancient Britain was more advanced than that of Rome. She quotes the Roman historian Tacitus, who waxes lyrical about the nobility of the Britons. This, however, is not proof of what she is saying. In ancient Rome the cult of the 'Noble Savage' was a strong one. Romans liked to see themselves as unsophisticated and guileless, unlike the sneaky, lying, manipulating folk from the East. It was easier to blame a Greek, like Cleopatra, for the break-up of the Republic than Romans like Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. This was why Tacitus was praising the Britons, not because their civilisation was superior to that of Rome. This kind of underhand use of the views of genuine historians can be found throughout the writings of British Israelists.

There is a strong element of anti-Catholicism pervading these stories. There is a tendancy to transfer this hatred back onto Romans in general, not just Roman Catholics. These pseudo-historians therefore try their damnedest to 'prove' that the Romans did not bring civilisation to Britain but that a, possibly more superior, civilisation already existed.

The belief in these disreputable stories go some way to explaining the attitude of many present-day extremist Protestants. It lends a sort of twisted logic to the cries of 'We are The People,' and helps to sustain them in their feelings of superiority.

It also explains how they can so easily try to re-write the history of their dead team. The idea of a 'holding company' was never heard of until Rangers went into liquidation. This lets them argue that Rangers never went into liquidation at all, that Green bought Rangers, that it is still the same club and that others, namely the Peter Lawwell-led, so-called 'cabal' are responsible for all their ills.

Speaking of anti-Catholicism, there seems to be a certain agenda at the BBC to only concentrate on the Catholic Church when looking into child abuse. There was a programme on BBC4 the other night, a repeat, investigating the cover up of abuse in America and Italy. The whole sordid business deserves to be brought out into the open and those involved prosecuted, but this should apply across the board to all those involved in these disgusting crimes.

In the USA there are ongoing investigations into exactly the same kind of cover-up of child abuse among the Jehovah's Witnesses. In Canada there are inquiries looking into child abuse at homes run by different churches; not only the Catholic Church but all churches, including the normally smug, self-satisfied Presbyterians. Why is there no mention at all in our media of these investigations and these crimes?

Equally there was outrage after the BBC investigated the complicity of the Catholic Church in Fascist Spain of practically kidnapping children and selling them for adoption. Our newspapers were suitably indignant about these sordid practices and everyone agreed about how disgraceful and disgusting the whole business was. Meanwhile, hidden away in the newspapers, was the story about the British Government apologising for the thousands of children from care homes that were sent to Australia and Africa as, essentially, slave labour.

In ignoring these stories our media is guilty of exactly the same sort of cover-up of which they accuse the Catholic Church. They seem to be rather selective in who they condemn for child abuse. This is going to be even more the case in the future. As more cases come to light under the auspices of Operation Yewtree, deflection is going to be the order of the day!

'Here we go, lads! Proof positive that it's the same team!'