The Concept of English Ethnicity is not Evil

By THOR - Summer Sky in Southsea England,.

“The concept of ethnic English is truly evil.” — tweeted John McTernan, political commentator and former Political Secretary to Tony Blair, on X.

Would he say this about any other ethnicity? Would he say the concept of ethnic Nigerian is evil? Or ethnic Pashtun, or ethnic Vietnamese? Would he describe the Berbers, the Sami, the Tibetans, or the indigenous peoples of the Amazon as evil for naming and valuing their identity? Of course not.

Why is it acceptable to disparage or deny the ethnic English, and Englishness itself, in a way that would be immediately condemned as racist, if applied to any other group? Englishness is the only identity treated as inherently suspect. The English are urged to be proud of others, but not themselves. Those who suggest Englishness is evil seem set on dissolving it.

Is ‘English’ an ethnicity? The word ethnicity typically means shared ancestry, language, history, culture and territory. By this definition, yes, the English are an ethnic group. We speak a distinct language, live in a historically defined land, and have a shared cultural story, and we generally consider our ethnic roots Anglo-Saxon.

There are sound scientific reasons to believe in Englishness as an ethnicity. A landmark 2015 study, “The fine-scale genetic structure of the British population”, analysed the genomes of over 2,000 people with four grandparents born within 80 km of each other, in order to understand deep-rooted genetic structure which has been unaffected by recent immigration. It revealed 17 distinct genetic clusters, aligned with historical kingdoms and early migration patterns. Anglo-Saxon ancestry accounts for up to 40% in the south, east and midlands. Other clusters appear in Cornwall, Devon, the north, Wales and Scotland, with Orkney standing out as the most genetically unique population in Britain.

The findings debunk the idea that the English are a homogenised blend. Instead, there is a strong biological basis to regional identity.

Those who argue against this would say that the English are simply a political or civic identity, loosely defined by geography, and that ethnicity has nothing to do with it. That argument is curiously selective and inconsistent, however, and never applied elsewhere. We do not see this with the French, the Italians, the Nepalese, the Danes, the Armenians, the Kurds, the Greeks, or the Inuit. No one demands they reject their culture, history or heritage to make room for others.

No one suggests Tokyo should be more diverse. No one visits Dhaka and wonders why there aren't more Swedish people. No one demands that Mumbai undergoes a fundamental rebalancing of its ethnic composition. The idea that London must not reflect England, or that Englishness itself is evil, is not global — it is uniquely directed at the English. Only the English are told that even describing themselves as ethnic is wrong. Why? To make more room for immigration and to justify it.

Legal net migration to the UK was 685,000 in the latest ONS figures and up to 1,000 people are arriving illegally every day across the Channel, so you might expect a conversation about immigration and what national identity. But to deny Englishness, to apologise for it, or to seek to obliterate it, is not sound, scientific or safe.

Socialists and their ideological cousins in communism despise the notion of nationhood. The nation, like the family, is a bulwark against the abstract ideals of a world defined by class struggle. If you want people to stop identifying with their land, their family, their ‘tribe’ and traditions then ethnicity is a problem. Hence the current tabula rasa from socialist commentators — they would erase England as it has been for hundreds, even thousands, of years.

Immigration on the scale we are experiencing is not simply a question of numbers, it is a question of resources, values and identity. Housing is limited. Schools are oversubscribed. The NHS is in a state of collapse. Many new arrivals cannot contribute financially for years, if at all, and become a net cost. Communities fragment, trust declines, and shared assumptions about life erode.

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We live now with the consequences of failed multiculturalism. In parts of London, Birmingham and Bradford, entire communities live parallel, even ghettoed, lives. Many do not integrate. Many do not wish to. Will a fragmented country with little shared identity remain a happy, prosperous and peaceful place? It is not racist to be concerned.

And what happens if ethnicity is erased as a basis for identity? Something always fills the void. We are not identity-less creatures. Without kin, culture and history to ground us, we are swept into new tribes: ideological, commercial, or artificial. Identity becomes not who you are, but what you consume or believe, or worse, who you pretend to be.

Many of the same people who deny English ethnicity will tell you a man can be a woman. That a woman can have a penis. Their reality is built on the rejection of the obvious, over and over. People are unmoored.

Carl Jung wrote in The Undiscovered Self:

“The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding … it strives … for atomisation, for the psychic isolation of the individual. The more unrelated individuals are, the more consolidated the State becomes, and vice versa.”

And again:

“Society is organized, indeed, less by law than by the propensity to imitation, which implies suggestibility, suggestion and mental contagion. Collective psychology cannot dispense with imitation; without it all mass organizations, the State and the social order are impossible. The more the sum total of collective factors becomes effective in society, the more will the individual be morally and spiritually crushed, and the one source of moral and spiritual progress in mankind is choked up.”

We saw this vividly during lockdowns. Alone in our homes, speaking to loved ones through screens, muzzled behind masks, told that our presence and breath were dangerous. We were literally atomised. This disconnection continues through working from home, dating through apps, leaning on AI.

England is a country. That seems banal to say, but apparently in these times it bears repeating. England exists. Someone can be English. They can also be ethnically English. These are not controversial statements, unless your ideology requires the abolition of place and people.

We still have a country. We still have a people. We still have a culture. We must not be ashamed to say so. It is not evil to know who you are.