Was Winston Churchill a racist?

In a Nutshell: Churchill is revered in Britain, regarded as a hero and voted ‘Greatest Briton’ of all time. The darker reality is that of a white supremacist genocidal despot whose hatred for Indians led to four million starving to death, terrorised the Irish, used chemical weapons against the Iraqis and waged war on black people across Africa and in Britain. Introduction A part of the "Great Chain of Being" is the racial concept of superiority that goes back many many centuries. Evolution, especially modern notions of evolution, is a scientific process that goes towards that already existing concept, the superiority of the white people and inferiority of coloured people. Western culture is based upon this concept. Winston Churchill believed what white people of his time believed (especially and particularly the high ranking aristocracy) and have been taught for countless centuries: the superiority of white people and the white western culture, as inheritors, maintainers and developers of that culture, society, way of life. It is why western white Europeans found it so easy to enslave, colonise, destroy peoples and civilisations. Afghanistan Churchill said “all who resist will be killed without quarter” because the Pashtuns need “recognise the superiority of race”. He would reminisce in his writings about how he partook in the burning of villages and homes: “We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation...” And how: “every tribesman caught was speared or cut down at once”. Egypt On how to deal with Egypt in 1951 he wrote: “Tell them that if we have any more of their cheek we will set the Jews on them and drive them into the gutter, from which they should never have emerged” Greece The British Army under the guidance of Churchill perpetrated a massacre on the streets of Athens in 1944 where 28 protesters were shot dead. The British had demanded all guerrilla groups should disarm on the 2nd December 1944. The following day 200,000 people demonstrated and Churchill ordered the army to fiee on them out of hatred and paranoia for communism. Guyana Churchill ordered the overthrowing of the democratically elected leader of ‘British Guiana’. He dispatched troops and warships and suspended their constitution to put a stop to the government's nationalisation plan. India Churchill’s hatred for Indians led to four million starving to death during the Bengal ‘famine’ of 1943. “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion” Bengal had a better than normal harvest during the British enforced famine. The British Army took millions of tons of rice from starving people to ship to the Middle East — where it wasn’t even needed. When the starving people of Bengal asked for food, Churchill said the ‘famine’ was their own fault “for breeding like rabbits”. The Viceroy of India said: “Churchill’s attitude towards India and the famine is negligent, hostile and contemptuous” Even the right wing imperialist Leo Amery who was the British Secretary of State in India said he “didn’t see much difference between his [Churchill] outlook and Hitler’s” Churchill refused all of the offers to send aid to Bengal, Canada offered 10,000 tons of rice, the US 100,000. Churchill was still swilling champaign while he caused four million men, women and children to starve to death in Bengal. Churchill never waged war against fascism. He went to war with Germany to defend the British Empire. He moaned “are we to incur hundreds of millions of debt for defending India only to be kicked out by the Indians afterwards” When India was partitioned in 1947 millions of people died and millions more were displaced. Churchill said that the creation of Pakistan, which has been an imperialist outpost for the British and Americans since its inception, was Britain’s “bit of India”. Iran When Britain seized Iran’s oil industry Churchill proclaimed it was a prize from fairyland. For decades he did his utmost to exclude Iranians from their natural resources, encouraging the looting of the nation where most lived in severe poverty. When the nationalist government of Mohammad Mosaddegh threatened British ‘interests’ in Iran, Churchill was there, ready to protect them at any cost. Even if that meant desecrating democracy. He helped organise a coup against Mosaddegh in August 1953. He told the CIA operations officer that helped carry out the plan: “If I had been but a few years younger, I would have loved nothing better than to have served under your command in this great venture”. Churchill went on to privately describe the coup as “the finest operation since the end of the war [WW2]” Iraq “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilized tribes… it would spread a lively terror.” Churchill was appointed ‘Secretary of State for the Colonies’ in 1921. He formed the ‘Middle East Department’ which was responsible for Iraq. Determined to have his beloved empire on the cheap he decided air power could replace ground troops. A strategy of bombing any resistance to British rule was now employed. Several times in the 1920s various groups in the region now known as Iraq rose up against the British. The air force was then put into action, indiscriminately bombing civilian areas so to subdue the population. Churchill was also an advocate for the use of mustard and poison gases. Whilst ‘Secretary for War and Air’ he advised that “the provision of some kind of asphyxiating bombs” should be used “for use in preliminary operations against turbulent tribes” in order to take control of Iraq. When Iraqi tribes stood up for themselves, under the direction of Churchill the British unleashed terror on mud, stone and reed villages. Churchill’s bombing of civilians in ‘Mesopotamia’ (Kurdistan and Iraq) was summed up by war criminal ‘Bomber Harris’: “The Arab and Kurd now know what real bombing means within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out, and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured, by four or five machines which offer them no real target, no opportunity for glory as warriors, no effective means of escape” — Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris. Ireland “We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English” — Churchill In 1904 Churchill said “I remain of the opinion that a separate parliament for Ireland would be dangerous and impractical”. Churchill’s ancestry is linked to loyalism to Britain. He is a direct descendent of the ‘Marquis of Londonderry’ who helped put down the 1798 United Irishmen rising. He would live up to his families reputation when it came to suppressing revolutionary forces in Ireland. The Black and Tans were the brainchild of Churchill, he sent the thugs to Ireland to terrorise at will. Attacking civilians and civilian property they done Churchill proud. Rampaging across the country carrying out reprisals. He went on to describe them as “gallant and honourable officers”. It was also Churchill who conceived the idea of forming the Auxiliaries who carried out the Croke Park massacre. They fired into the crowd at a Gaelic football match, killing 14. Of course this didn’t fulfill Churchill’s bloodlust to repress a people who he described as “odd” for their refusal “to be English”. He went on to advocate the use of air power in Ireland against Sinn Fein members in 1920. He suggested to his war advisers that aeroplanes should be dispatched with orders to use “machine-gun fire or bombs” to “scatter and stampede them”. Churchill was an early advocate for the partitioning of Ireland. During the treaty negotiations he insisted on retaining navy bases in Ireland. In 1938 those bases were handed back to Ireland. However in 1939 Churchill proposed capturing Berehaven base by force. Kenya Britain declared a state of emergency in Kenya in 1952 to protect its system of institutionalised racism that they established throughout their colonies so to exploit the indigenous population. Churchill being your archetypical British supremacist believed that Kenya’s fertile highlands should be only for white colonial settlers. He approved the forcible removal of the local population, which he termed “blackamoors”. At least 150,000 men, women and children were forced into concentration camps. Children’s schools were shut by the British who branded them “training grounds for rebellion”. Rape, castration, cigarettes, electric shocks and fire all used by the British to torture the Kenyan people on Churchill’s watch. In 1954 during a British cabinet meeting Churchill and his men discussed the forced labour of Kenyan POWs and how to circumvent the constraints of two treaties they were breaching: “This course [detention without trial and forced labour] had been recommended despite the fact that it was thought to involve a technical breach of the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 and the Convention on Human Rights adopted by the Council of Europe” The Cowan Plan advocated the use of force and sometimes death against Kenyan POWs who refused to work. Churchill schemed to allow this to continue. Caroline Elkins book gives a glimpse into the extent that the crimes in Kenya were known in both official and unofficial circles in Britain and how Churchill brushed off the terror the colonial British forces inflicted on the native population. He even ‘punished’ Edwina Mountbatten for mentioning it: “Edwina Mountbatten was conversing about the emergency with India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the then colonial secretary, Oliver Lyttleton. When Lyttleton commented on the “terrible savagery” of Mau Mau… Churchill retaliated, refusing to allow Lord Mountbatten to take his wife with him on an official visit to Turkey”. Palestine “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger.” In 2012 Churchill was honoured with a statue in Jerusalem for his assistance to Zionism. He regarded the Arab population Palestine to be a “lower manifestation”. And that the “dog in a manger has the final right to the manger”, by this he meant the Arabs of Palestine. In 1920 Churchill declared “if, as may well happen, there should be created in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish State under the protection of the British Crown which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event will have occurred in the history of the world which would from every point of view be beneficial”. A year later in Jerusalem he told Palestinian leaders that “it is manifestly right that the Jews, who are scattered all over the world, should have a national centre and a National Home where some of them may be reunited. And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated?”. At the Palestine Royal Commission (Peel) of 1937, Churchill stated that he believed in intention of the Balfour Declaration was to make Palestine an “overwhelmingly Jewish state”. He went on to also express to the Peel Commission that he does “not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place”. Four years later he wrote of his desire for a ‘Jewish state’to be established after the second war world. The establishment of the colonial settler state however was done by the British Labour Party under Attlee, who were always there to back their Tory counterparts when it came to British foreign policy. Saudi Arabia “My admiration for him [Ibn Saud] was deep, because of his unfailing loyalty to us.” — Churchill Prior to 1922 the British were paying Ibn Saud a subsidy of £60,000 a year. Churchill, then Colonial Secretary, raised it to £100,000. Churchill knew full well of the dangers of wahhabism. He gave a speech to the House of Commons in 1921 where he stated that Ibn Saud’s followers “hold it as an article of duty, as well as of faith, to kill all who do not share their opinions and to make slaves of their wives and children. Women have been put to death in Wahhabi villages for simply appearing in the streets… [they are] austere, intolerant, well-armed and bloodthirsty” He was however content to use the House of Saud’s twisted ideology for the benefit of British imperialism. Churchill went on to write that his “admiration for him [Ibn Saud] was deep, because of his unfailing loyalty to us” He showered Ibn Saud with money and presents — gifting Ibn Saud a special Rolls-Royce in the mid 1940s. South Africa Thousands were sent to British run concentration camps during the Boer wars. Churchill summed up his time in South Africa by saying “it was great fun galloping about”. Churchill wrote that his only “irritation” during the Boer war was “that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men”. It was Churchill who planted the seed to strip voting rights from black people in South Africa. In June 1906, Churchill argued that Afrikaners should be allowed a self-rule which would mean black people would be excluded from voting. He went on to state to Parliament that “we must be bound by the interpretation which the other party places on it and it is undoubted that the Boers would regard it as a breach of that treaty if the franchise were in the first instance extended to any persons who are not white”. Conclusion There have been a number of attempts to rehabilitate the image of the British Empire in Britain in recent years. He was a racist to the core. In response to migration from the Caribbean to Britain he said England should “be kept white”. Throughout world war two his cabinet obsessed over British people viewing American Black GI’s favourably. They were concerned that they would fraternised with white English women. A true believer in white supremacy, Churchill blamed the Native American and Aboriginal Australian people for their genocides. He said he did “not admit that a great wrong has been done to the red Indians and the black people of Australia.” When it came to his own fellow Brits he was less than complimentary and displayed a deep hatred for the working classes. He suggested “100,000 degenerate Britons should be forcibly sterilised” And that for “tramps and wastrels there ought to be proper labour colonies where they could be sent”. It needs to be put once and for all that Churchill was despicable, racist, war criminal. Churchill was not unique. He was in fact a true representation of the British establishment.