The relentless character assassination of the West continues apace.
The relentless character assassination of the West continues apace.
S hakespeare’s Birthplace Trust reportedly aims to build a “more inclusive museum experience” and will “decolonize” William Shakespeare’s hometown Stratford-upon-Avon because his work advanced “white supremacy” and also contains language that is “racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful.”
My colleague Dan McLaughlin, in offering a detailed historical account that explains why “there was nothing colonialist about Shakespeare,” appropriately posed the following question to the trust’s employees: “Are you people idiots?” Quite frankly, I’m not inclined to defend Shakespeare against charges of racism, since I imagine most National Review readers share my view on the matter. I do think, however, it is worth asking what cultural, political, and ideological forces sustain the progressive campaign of destruction that gained momentum in 2020.
According to the Telegraph’s reporting, the trust’s initiative is a response to a joint project with Helen Hopkins, an academic at Birmingham City University whose “areas of expertise” include “decolonial Shakespeare.” In 2023, Hopkins published a book chapter about the trust’s collections and asked: “What does it mean for a British institution — which is explicitly invested in promoting Shakespeare’s appeal at home and abroad — to interpret and curate items related to poets from other and Othered places that have complex cultural roles and specificities of their own?” To paraphrase without the pseudo-intellectual fluff, Hopkins wonders why Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust has the authority to keep and describe foreign-origin archives related to Shakespeare. She accused the trust of “Anglocentrism,” and further expresses worries that “Shakespeare can be wielded as a tool of imperialistic white British supremacy through his cultural authority and capital, as well as through the appropriation of his words.” Hopkins poses another (stupid) question that “should be grappled with by all influential ‘mainstream’ cultural institutions with anti- or de-colonial intentions,” and that question is best read with the irritating voice of a passive-aggressive preschool teacher: “How would a philosophy of sharing challenge and change the ethics of Shakespearean appropriation?”
To remedy the sheer evilness of honoring Shakespeare at a Shakespeare museum, Hopkins encourages a radical shift and insists that the trust “must begin with a revitalised interpretation policy that embeds . . . anti-colonial thinking developed through consultation with expert scholars and curators with established anti-colonial methods.” (Funny how the DEI activists identify faults that can only be treated by hiring more people like them.) She concludes by condemning Shakespeare as a perpetrator of injustice: “If Shakespeare’s cultural capital can be used to promote and celebrate poets and cultures that have suffered from the Othering effects of imperialism and broader white supremacy — in engagements that are embedded and permanent and not just ephemeral celebrations of cultural diversity — the Trust’s interpretation can become an act of sharing that can begin to redress some of the harms that Shakespeare has been used to inflict.” I guess the Shakespeare trust will have to establish museum exhibits about, I dunno, a Micronesian bisexual orphan with polio. And, given England’s punitive “hate speech” laws, we’ll have to pretend the kid’s sonnets are good, even spectacularly better than what Shakespeare left for us.
Although Hopkins is technically an academic, she is better described as a referee of a cultural game, wherein the rules are invented and abandoned at whim to ensure that anyone on Team England loses. Here’s where things stand now: There can’t be a museum dedicated to any aspect of British history because that promotes “cultural supremacy,” but also, white people have no culture and therefore we must welcome every foreigner. Britain can’t maintain an “Anglocentric” museum because that advances “white supremacy,” but also, the museums featuring foreign-origin artifacts possess “stolen goods.” The trust must adopt a “philosophy of sharing,” but the history of the West sharing its resources and values with the world is “colonialism.” Ultimately, the West can’t have anything — not even its past.
I have a question for Hopkins and the “anti-colonial” crowd: Why are racial guilt and generational punishment applied exclusively to white people? The double standards are obvious. I have yet to encounter a single argument about the necessity of “decolonizing” Japan, a racially homogeneous country with an imperial history. If a museum is worthy of denunciation for the supposed crime of promoting cultural superiority, then surely countries with more overt influence — such as China and its financial power in Africa — deserve intense scrutiny. If “historical injustice” demands an apology and the development of reparation programs, then countries where the history of slavery claimed more victims — like Korea — would face more heated criticism. And, if DEI enthusiasts like Hopkins truly believed that it is a moral imperative to exhibit racial and cultural diversity in museums, then they would insist that non-Western museums display Western artifacts — but apparently, it’s fine for everyone else to preserve and defend their history.
There isn’t a reasonable philosophical argument or consistent ideological framework that explains the asymmetrical condemnation of historical racism and the projection of hereditary sin. Indeed, the relentless character assassination of the West and white people has no intellectual justification. Instead, it is motivated solely by hatred.