Blog post: randomc: Assimilation by any other name

I belong to an identity group which has been described as indigenous to the North Atlantic/British Isles. Culture across Britain and even Ireland is similar to the point of being homogenous, and also little distinguishes one region from another genealogically - anyone who's ancestors have been here for a generous handful of generations or more is basically mostly a Briton (i.e., a celt) with a dash of something else, be it norse, angle, jute, saxon, pict, slavic, or whatever combination of the above.

But an identity group isn't quite the same thing as an ethnic or cultural group, rather ethnicity and culture are used as proximal justification and validation for the maybe more dystal issue of identity.

The last native speaker of the language of the identity group i belong to died a few years ago. According to UNESCO, the language is now dead, and really a culture without a language is stretching any sensible defintion of the word. So this culture is also pretty much dead; little validation for identity to be found there.

While a population geneticist would probably be able to home in on the region i come from given my genome, a distinct ethnic group for this region couldn't sensibly be winkled out of the overall Britonic cline. so there's not really any validation to be found on ethnic grounds (desirable in principle or not) either.

So what else is there? We have no distinct strong ideology to bind us, and which might help to make us competitors in the soft power game. We do have nationalism, but nationalism alone is little more than a clunking fist; it's basically just a threat. Totally unconvincing without the muscle to back it up.

Really, in a melting pot of competing identity groups, and without any means of justification or validation, the group i'm describing is completely fucked. It's already been assimilated but it just doesn't know it yet. And I suppose the battle against assimilation is one my grandparent's generation couldn't be bothered to show up for; i feel like it's not really even my fight. The whole thing was more or less over before i was born and I'm picking through the rubble of something i'm defined by, but which no longer exists and hasn't existed for some time.

The only way i can define my identity group is by saying that we are decidely and distinctly not English. Which is about as dystal as identity group definitions get - we're not you. That's just about all there is left.

So who are these people who for centuries try to assmilate us without a fight, the sneaky bastards? Well, from any sensible genealogical or ethnic perspective they're us, actually.

More infuriatingly, how can they possibly get so self-righteously upset when they encounter resistance? I'd understand if they were to simply say; ' look, we are the people who own your country. Shut the fuck up'. But they seem completely unaware of their own aggression. The imperial heritage runs deep, even when they are exerting soft power.

I think the problem here is that the latest tool of assimilation is so exceedingly sneaky that they've ended up assimilating themselves, something like narcissus gazing into the lake.

Anyhoo. I think it's true that if populations are connected up they WILL assimilate to a common culture and identity group eventually. Given enough time.

I don't know whether British-style (really: London-style) Multiculturalism will turn out to ease this process, but the ideology is certainly represented at the moment by what is an indentity group in itself (i.e., Londoners and their converts).

One identity group succesfully dictating how and whether all the others get to preserve themselves is dominance, and requiring that other groups acknowledge the dominant ideology is assimilation. The aggression with which the equal validity of identity groups is demanded by this assimilating indentity group seems slightly deranged to me, especially given how selectively applied the demands seeems to be.

So that's how it is; 'indigenous' identity groups shaking the clunking fist of nationalism because they have nothing else left to resort to, and the dominant alpha group giving them the sneaky finger of definitely-not-assimilative-multiculturalism in the possibly (or possibly not, who knows?) deluded belief in some brave new world just over the horizon.

I'm not sure human tribalism can be wished away, whatever the outcome of the clusterfuck going on in Britain at the moment.
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