Taxing English? - or taxing its beneficiaries!

Revanchism is generally understood in 20th century Leninist or Maoist terms: the capitalist / imperialist classes lashing out against their progressive tormentors.  But it might equally be applied to the thought-processes of those of the woke persuasion who see reparations as the appropriate form of justice against, well, anything they don’t like.  This generally means lining up western white folks and seeking to empty their pockets on some spurious pretext or other.

Here’s a really hilarious one that shows just how deep this nonsense runs: a writer in the Graun (where else?) who reckons that those brought up speaking English as their mother tongue enjoy unfair advantages in the world, which he is pleased to call “linguistic injustice”.  He reports favourably on: 

“compensatory measures [to] help reduce global linguistic injustice. Philippe Van Parijs, of the University of Louvain, has, somewhat provocatively, proposed a linguistic tax on English-speaking countries to compensate for the costs of teaching English in other countries. This would involve establishing a global tax on countries where the majority of the population speaks English as a native language and distributing the revenue to countries where English is taught in schools as a foreign language”

Etc etc with further anti-English measures he likes the sound of.  He doesn’t make it clear whether India and any African countries would fall into his net (Nigeria comes to mind, and SA of course) – in fact he doesn’t mention India at all.  These omissions are rather cowardly, I feel.

It seems we shall have to put up with this increasingly insolent stuff forever.   It rather overlooks the bountiful innovations issuing forth from these islands and its colonies and former colonies over several centuries, a list too long to insert here – enjoyed today by most of the rest of the world in some degree or other.  The great Lee Kwan Yew used to speak in very much those tones, I recall.  We should therefore respond with a “gratitude tax” on all those billions who benefit from English and its associated cultural boons (e.g. trade under Common Law jurisdiction, to name but one): we could call it the Lee Levy in his honour.

ND