The Dean of Durham has recently written an open letter to the new Italian manager of Sunderland Football Club, Paolo Di Canio, calling on him to renounce Fascism publicly or risk being associated with “toxic far-right tendencies”.
An open letter of this sort, irrespective of how diplomatically worded, is of course a thinly veiled attack upon the recipient, suggesting as it does that someone expressing admiration for Benito Mussolini is by definition unfit to hold the position of manager of a Premier League football club.
Apparently, Paolo Di Canio told the Italian news agency Ansa in 2005: “I am a fascist, not a racist. I give the straight arm salute because it is a salute from a ‘camerata’ to ‘camerati’,” using the Italian words for members of Mussolini’s fascist movement. Mr Di Canio also has a large tattoo on his back featuring a spread eagle design combined with a small portrait of the Italian dictator.
The Dean, Michael Sadgrove, a Sunderland supporter stated in his open letter, “Your appointment raises very difficult questions. You see, I am the child of a Jewish war refugee who got out of Germany and came to Britain just in time.”
In a further reference to his mother the Dean went on, “Some of her family and friends perished in the Nazi death camps. So I find your self-confessed fascism deeply troubling.”
However a potentially more troubling aspect of this whole affair for Sunderland’s Christian congragations may be the revelation that having a Jewish mother, the Dean despite his professed Christian faith, will halachically, i.e. according to Jewish religious law, still be considered Jewish by other Jews.
While I would not want to suggest that the Dean of Durham is in any way insincere in his professed Christian beliefs, and while it is of course possible for a child of Jewish parents to genuinely become Christian and beyond that attain high office within the Church of England, it is not unknown historically for converts to Christianity from a Jewish background to retain such an undue concern for Jewish interests that they have in certain instances attracted accusations of false conversion, and what may be of concern to adherents of the Church of England generally, is the relative frequency with which senior members of the Church turn out to be halachically Jewish or of recent Jewish ancestry and the extent to which they concern themselves with matters of primary interest to Jews but of little or no interest to Christians. Indeed this issue may be of far greater concern than the matter of a Premier League football manager who has in the past professed admiration for a long dead Italian dictator.
It is widely known for example that the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and Giles Fraser, until October 2011 Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, both have Jewish fathers. Again, I would like to stress that I am in no way suggesting that either of these two gentlemen are in any way insincere in their beliefs and I mention them only in order to illustrate that this issue of the Dean of Durham’s recent Jewish ancestry is not an isolated affair.
What may most concern Christian supporters of Sunderland Football Club is that a senior office holder within the Church of England has introduced politics and more specifically an interpretation of politics from a primarily Jewish perspective into the affairs of their club.
Italian fascists have historically had a strong relationship with the Roman Catholic Church and there is therefore no reason for Christians to feel threatened by or antagonistic towards Mr Di Canio’s alleged past admiration for Mussolini. The conflation of Fascism with Nazism and the assumption that Fascism always takes on an anti-Semitic dimension is however a particularly Jewish interpretation of political inclinations, the product of a Jewish paranoia not shared by Christians.
The Dean must realise that just as the manager of a Premier League football club is a role model for young people, so the Dean of a diocese of the Church of England is also a role model, and while Paolo Di Canio has a responsibility to avoid using his influence as the manager of Sunderland to promote his particular political beliefs, so too does a Dean of the Church of England have a responsibility to avoid unnecessarily taking up antagonistic political positions and to avoid being seen to use the influence of his high office to infringe upon another’s right to freedom of belief and freedom of expression.
Indeed during such times as these, when Church of England congregations are rapidly dwindling, one would expect clergymen to focus their attention on the needs and concerns of their own congregations rather than the paranoid concerns of a non-Christian religious minority.
Lastly, one of the features of Fascism that opponents of the creed so frequently allude to, is the alleged tendency to deny others freedom of expression. Anti-fascists like to talk about promoting ‘diversity’, however they rarely seem to appreciate a rich diversity of opinions when it comes to others political beliefs and indeed seek to employ the tactics that they profess to deplore in others, in order to suppress beliefs with which they disagree.
‘Pot’,’ kettle’ anyone?
By Max Musson © 2013
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frederickdixon
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It’s odd how being a fascist can cause such a stink when being a communist passes entirely without comment. I’m thinking of Chris Hughton, the half-caste manager of Norwich FC who, it is alleged, used to write for “Socialist Worker”.
Mickyg
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@frederickdixon. It’s called having a vested interest. These types are not interested in fairness or equality. They only care when such things touch upon their own kind, hence their silence when white people suffer racial abuse and murder – along with that of their cohorts, who are usually white, left-wing self haters (in other words lunatics). Had Di Canio professed a tendency towards left wing extremism then you wouldn’t have heard a peep out of the Dean of Durham and his ilk.
jackdaw
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Another great article. Keep ’em coming Max.
Michael Woodbridge
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In yesterday’s Mail on Sunday Peter Hitchens referred to the singing of the Marxist inspired “International” at the funerals of… Eric Hobsbawn, Tony Benn’s wife Caroline, Donald Dewar and Robin Cook. Hobsbawn was a close family friend of the Millibands so it ill behoves David Milliband to object to Sunderland’s new Fascist football manager in view of the atrocities commited by various Marxist governments. Hitchens also wrote that a few eyebrows would be raised if the “Horst Wessel Lied” were to be played at the funeral of a “right-wing” Tory; Alan Clerk comes to mind. Personally, I have no objection to the Marxists singing their miserable anthem at their miserable funerals just as I would welcome the singing of the “Horst Wessel” at my own. Whether that makes me a libertarian or a “Fascist” I’ll leave others to judge.
Steve
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The mere fact that a fuss is made over someone being some sort of so called Fascist but not about people who are Communists, shows who or what is in control of us.
They’re terrified that so called right wing ideas might get a hold in the public mind or such a person could be admired & emulated.
This man is far out numbered by those pushing a different agenda that never apologises for its many mistakes.
Michael Woodbridge
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The Church of England used to be dubbed, “The Tory Party at prayer”. That was in the days when the Tories still had a trace of patriotism and the C of E some sort of intellectual integrity.
Michael Woodbridge
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Nowadays we’re at a crossroads where we need to reassess the whole basis of our religion. The Church of England, together with the Catholic Church, has served our nation over hundreds of years. It has officiated at naming ceremonies, weddings and funerals and has thus provided the institutional support and historical records without which we’d be comparatively rootless. It has also provided a moral compass. Unfortunately, Christianity is based on shaky foundations because it’s fundamentally a desert religion. It did not grow from our own soil but sort universalist solutions to our philosophical questioning.
In “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” Gibbons describes how Christianity was instrumental in destroying the natural order. We’re now getting a taste of the same thing with liberal clerics undermining our society for the benefit of Jewish sensibilities.
In fact it has been argued that Jews originally saw Christianity as a dangerous liberal force that threatened to undermine their social order. It is interesting therefore that St. Paul, a converted Jew, went on to spread Christianity among the Romans, seen by many Jews as their Gentile enemy. Far fetched or not, it does seem to follow a logical pattern.
s ducain
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This Bishop of Durham character is halachically Jewish by definition, so has he seriously offended the Jewish community by dumping them and somehow ending up as a high up in the Christian World?
All of a sudden he suggests he cares more about Di Cannio’s politics because the Bishop’s mum is or was Jewish. So if he is so intersted in Jewish matters why the Hell did he leave that faith?
Steve
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So he could destroy others?