This is just sad. And I don’t mean the prospect of “academia” eliminating Anglo-Saxon as a category. I mean Tom Rowsell having a public meltdown, and using overwrought emotion, hyperbole, and ad hominem attacks to support his position — the very tactics he accuses his opponents of using.
I would expect robust debate on a subject like this, not hysteria. If the accumulating evidence is beginning to show that “Anglo-Saxon” is no longer a useful category, that would be one of the most interesting debates of my lifetime.
But it seems that we aren’t going to get that kind of debate from the racialist side. They need the category for ideological reasons, it seems, so it has to be beyond debate.
- Rowsell, Tom (Survive the Jive). “Ban Anglo-Saxon? The Push to remove Anglo-Saxons from academic discourse“. YouTube, Oct. 27, 2019. Retrieved Oct. 29, 2019.
More Information
- Dockray-Miller, Mary. “Old English Has a Serious Image Problem“. JSTOR Daily, May 3, 2017.
- Horsman, Reginald. “Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850”. Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 37, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1976), pp. 387-410: JSTOR. Retrieved Nov. 14, 2019.
- Palmer, James. “Responsible Labelling“. Merovingian World, Nov. 11, 2019. Retrieved Nov. 14, 2019.
- Rambaran-Olm, Mary. “Misnaming the Medieval: Rejecting ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Studies“. History Workshop, Nov. 4, 2019. Retrieved Nov. 14, 2019.
- Wood, Michael. “As a racism row rumbles on, is it time to retire the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’?”. History Extra, Nov. 4, 2019. Retrieved Nov. 14, 2019.
Revised to add links.
