It is still just about possible, even this deep into the seemingly never-ending silly season that’s been running since about 2014, for a news story to take your breath away. Last week it was revealed that the curators of Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum have removed from display the mummified remains of the Egyptian priest Nekht, among other bits and bobs, because of an ‘absence of consent’. Presumably they are waiting for time travel to be invented, so that somebody can nip back 4,000 years and get Nekht to fill out the appropriate forms.
Under my scheme, the crank ideas of early 21st century academics will be kicked out of public life
Glasgow Life, the silly organisation responsible, told journalists that ‘The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations 2025 report, “Laying Ancestors to Rest”, raises ethical concerns about the display of ancient Egyptian human remains due to the consistent disregard of the potential wishes of the ancestors and the intention of the communities that originally laid them to rest’. It adds also that they are merely following ‘current museum practice’. This is the excuse known as ‘everybody else was doing it, Miss’.
But indeed, a sign at Montreal’s Redpath museum informs visitors that ‘by displaying [mummies] in showcases like objects for centuries, museums have greatly contributed to the dehumanisation of these individuals. In pursuit of decolonisation and the creation of a space of well-being and care, the Redpath Museum has therefore decided to remove mummified individuals from its exhibitions.’
This is, of course, all highly comical. Perhaps we should stop to consider the ‘potential wishes’ of the very long dead more often? Boadicea might not have wanted King’s Cross station to be erected over her. Let’s knock it down.
The work of ‘decolonisation’ is never done, it seems. I suggest a new project for the academy – ‘de-decolonisation’. Under my scheme, the crank ideas of early 21st century academics will be kicked out of public life.
The very idea of ‘decolonisation’, ironically, rests on a racialised view of the human race, with white westerners as uniquely evil oppressors of noble savages. Anybody who’s read more than a page of history knows this is pernicious nonsense. It throws every common human failing on to one ethnic group. The idea of ‘whiteness’ is blatant and grotesque racism, though it is, perversely, expounded mostly by white progressives as part of their eternal social status game. In both Kelvingrove and Redpath, there is a strong sense of showing off about the removals. This is middle-class people preening, the way they used to try to outdo each other’s hats at garden parties.
But still, this nonsense has successfully colonised western culture from top to bottom, a potent poison imposed by this small elite of progressives. And it must be kicked out.
How would this work? The Tories, bless them, have a habit of passing a little law and never enforcing it. Look at their 1996 ban on politics in schools – Sections 406 and 407 of the Education Act forbid the partisan promotion of political views in any subject.
Progressives simply ignored it; the Blair government didn’t even bother to overturn it. Why would they, when they control it? They weren’t going to police themselves.
My proposal? Not one penny of public money should be funding this rubbish. These ideas are destructive and dividing, and they must go. You can decolonise all you want on your own dollar, but no public money should come your way.
The right can no longer afford to be squeamish about this. Progressives, after all, are not timid. Despite being a minority in society at large, they have swept through the institutions with devastating power. And they must be met with equal, or maybe greater, force. That will require bruisers who can cut through the inevitable crocodile tears and sophistic objections.
The de-decolonisers must be versed in the nonsense they are fighting, in order both to understand it and to articulate the case against it clearly and firmly. It’s way past time for the progressive academy to be taken in hand – and, where necessary, defunded.
Am I going too far? I have to wonder what High Priest Nekht would’ve made of people in ancient Egypt who spread strange racialised lies about Egyptian society. We can never know, but I suspect he would’ve dealt with them rather more harshly than I would.
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