"Alt-right" Parading Ignorance, Stupidity, Malice, Etc.

[NineBerry]

Up until recently, in rural areas, people from a village 2 kilometres away were considered a different tribe that you cannot trust.

[L'Emmerdeur]

A lot of pontificating here and elsewhere (by people who apparently don't know all that much about the era in question) to try to defend a blithering clown who objected to a BBC historical cartoon. The thing focussed on a Roman Empire family in Britain, not the general population of Britain at the time. It is well established that the Roman Empire was ethnically diverse, and so were its representatives in Britain. In this thread we have reference to four historians (at least three of whom have spent their lives specializing in the classical world) who attest to this, and zero reference to any historian who disagrees.

[Brian Peacock]

I think the objections can be readily boiled down to it's base constituent here: "Nobody has a problem with a diverse Roman Empire or a diverse ancient Britain, but the BBC coulda avoided all this controversy if they'd just shown the brown guy shovelling ox shit like he's supposed to".

[Hermit]

Up until recently, in rural areas, people from a village 2 kilometres away were considered a different tribe that you cannot trust.

And villagers more than a day's march away were aliens.

[Hermit]

... It is for these reasons that Galaxian sees NO HOPE for this species. It is too stupid, naive & gullible. Can be led by the nose over a cliff!

I'm with you there brother - far, far too much magical thinking among our species. It's kinda pathological with us, wouldn't you agree?

Thanks Brian. Not often I'm understood here. 99% of the time the butt of guffaws & snide attacks. Your comment is tops

i agree with Galaxian, Brian. Your comment is tops. Just a shame he did not notice whom you were describing, but then that may be pathological too.

[Hermit]

It is well established that the Roman Empire was ethnically diverse, and so were its representatives in Britain.

Well, it was by 100 CE, and increasingly more so since then. Initially one would not qualify as a Roman, or become a member of the Roman administration, government or even a Roman legion unless one was actually born in Rome. In time the distinction between a Roman on one side and a satrap, a mercenary or a vassal on the other became watered down to the point of non-existence.

A lot of pontificating here and elsewhere (by people who apparently don't know all that much about the era in question) to try to defend a blithering clown who objected to a BBC historical cartoon. [...] In this thread we have reference to four historians (at least three of whom have spent their lives specializing in the classical world) who attest to this, and zero reference to any historian who disagrees.

Beats me why anybody would prefer the bleatings of a person whose qualification consists of being an employee of Infowars and a mathematician over people who have spent years studying archaeological evidence and other primary sources.

[Galaxian]

Up until recently, in rural areas, people from a village 2 kilometres away were considered a different tribe that you cannot trust.

A brilliant riposte to the do-gooders! Rather exaggerated, but basically accurate. How else did people have strongly different accents & dialects in different counties? How else did they even have different languages if they were so thoroughly mixed & multicultural?

Galaxian, Nineberry, & Forty Two are not hero idolators, like some here. The facts are incontrovertible no matter how many 'historians' try to be PC and save their tenures & salaries. There were some merchants & traders, even travelers. But they were a rare breed, and only given cursory protection for reasons of hospitality & mutual trading benefit. But if they dared to stay in the area & set up house & home they got their comeuppance.

In the past, as now radical change came about by conquest. Peaceful integration was slow process taking generations. Widespread, & enforced...though touted as "natural", mingling of peoples & cultures is a recent phenomenon driven by political motives & strategies

[NineBerry]

Missed my point by about ten light years.

[pErvinalia]

Galaxian trips the light fantastic, so 10 light years to him is like just over the other side of the room for you..

[Galaxian]

Missed my point by about ten light years.

The point was very obvious. Here, I'll repeat it for you incase you missed it:

Up until recently, in rural areas, people from a village 2 kilometres away were considered a different tribe that you cannot trust.

Were you speaking French, perhaps? That is the only way it could be missed.
I said that it is exaggerated but correct. The distance, usually was 20 miles, since people of different villages/towns traded with each other, on market days & such. But the gist of it 2km/20 miles was true.
10 light years is still too far for rural folk. But, as pErvin says, for Galaxian it isn't far.

Forty Two hits the nail on the head in exposing that the do-gooder nannies depend on cherry picking to try to prove a non-existent generality; i.e multiculturalism in ancient times. As I said, only by conquest & brute force...

Brian Peacock mentioned that Star Trek is not a documentary. He should tell that to Mary Beard & other wishful zealots. Nature is red in tooth & claw. It doesn't suffer fools gladly; it annihilates them.
There's NO Mercy. There's NO Justice. There is ONLY Natural Selection. The rest is just froth on the surface; here today, gone tomorrow, whether Mary Beard likes it or not. BTW, there are plenty of historians who disagree with her. Search & ye shall find...

[JimC]

Not that I'm at all worried about it, and it says nothing about the real level of diversity in Roman Britain, but the motivation for having a prominent dark-skinned person was probably political correctness rather than anything else. But it is not something to get your knickers in a knot about...

[NineBerry]

Considering that most children programs feature blue frogs or purple monsters, this doesn't seem so bad.

[pErvinalia]

It's cultural marxisms is what it is!!

[Jason]

The alt-right worries me less than the Marxist left these days - those guys are looking to knock out all the underpinnings of a free and democratic society built upon equality and truth in the forced promulgation of their corrupt and discriminatory ideology.

And yes I hate to throwback to Seth, but they really do have their roots in the evolution of the Marxist criticism of the 1970s. As a society we need to take a step back from trying to evolve society and rationally and openly explore what is coming down the pipe before it is implemented - that means quelling the righteous, religious, fury of the left and encouraging a more conservative approach to resolving social issues for the time being. Ignorance, stupidity, malice, Etc. belong just as much to the left as they do to the alt-right.

[Forty Two]

Post-modernism, nested in a bed of Marxism.