Winston [ __ ] Churchill. Who is this man? What
did he do? Well, the story we all know is the one of a man who heroically stood up to the horrors
of Nazi Germany and ultimately led Britain to victory in the Second World War. His willingness
to stand up against Hitler proved especially crucial from the years 1940 to 1943 when no
other European leader did. A determined statesman and world-class public speaker; Churchill's
wartime speeches have become cemented as some of the loudest and most inspiring promotions of
freedom and democracy around the world. And yes, you could pick some holes in this story. You
could point out that Britain's solitude against Germany was a little overstated. Australia and New
Zealand declared war against Germany only a few hours after Britain did and within a week, South
Africa and Canada joined in too. Equally foolish would be the argument that we only have Stalin's
Russia to thank but nonetheless they were involved too. You could also argue that it's a bit easier
to persist in war when you command a global empire that provided over 2 million fighters from
India, a third of a million from Africa and 7,000 from the Caribbean. Others might even say
that Churchill's stance against Hitler had nothing to do with anti-fascism and everything to do with
protecting the British Empire. Leopold Amery, his Secretary of State for India during the war said
he couldn't see all that much difference between Churchill's worldview and Hitler's. But I don't
care for this argument because the difference is, when Churchill's side won his people still
had the freedom and power to vote him out; which they did by quite a big margin. You could
even say that Churchill is more popular today than he was in 1945. And- and so he should be! If it
weren't for him we'd all be speaking German right now! Can you imagine? Because if there's one thing
that made the prospect of a Nazi victory truly terrifying to British people it was the idea of
having to learn a second language. But seriously, I know full well that I'm able to sit here and
speak freely in the Queen's without living in constant fear of Gestapo - for now - and I
do kind of owe that - partly to my patrons, thank you very much - and partly to Winston
Churchill. Because imagine what that was like -standing up to a crazed tyrant who's already
decimated half of Europe; all your colleagues are prepared to surrender and your only ally within
a thousand miles is another crazed tyrant who, incidentally was also guilty of ethnic cleansing.
Look. It was the 40s. Everyone was racist and however racist Churchill was, it's still a
good thing that his side won. And maybe the left and right can just kind of compromise on this
World War II thing and see it as a sort of... racist on racist violence? But - I hear some of
you asking - why am I calling Churchill a racist? Well, Churchill was born in 1874 and a time
when the British Empire commanded a quarter of the world. As a schoolboy he was taught the
very simple lesson that the superior white man was on a mission to conquer and civilize the
barbaric dark-skinned natives of faraway lands. Churchill eagerly accepted this idea and held on
to it long after his contemporaries had deemed it a thing of the past. So there will be no "he
was just a man of his time" [ __ ] in this house. He was a white supremacist; in the sense that he
believed white people were superior and said it constantly. And at least once a year the
British media will ask itself a question, something along the lines of: "was Churchill a
hero or a villain?" A stupid question, of course, which always ends with one side talking about how
he defeated Hitler and the other talking about how he terrorized millions of brown people. Every
once in a while this six foot pus deposit and his tragic political prisoner will invite
a guest on for a three-on-one pay-per-view like this one, which features a black man
getting fondled by a sleazy radio presenter whilst being told to leave the country. "Why
don't you like living in this country?" "Why don't like living in this country?
Because I think~" "Why don't you live somewhere else, seriously? "Like I said where
would I go that Britain hasn't devastated? Jamaica devastated, Nigeria devastated, Ghana
devastated" "Every single part of planet earth~" "Every single part where black people live, yes"
"Right." One year, the BBC did a segment called: "Churchill: Hero or Villain?" where two historians
discussed the highs and lows of Churchill's career and concluded with something like: "he is
the most biographed person in history because he's a little bit of both." So, that's a fairly
nuanced take that anyone could get behind right? [ __ ] NO! You see, if you think of
Churchill as anything less than a hero then that's a problem for quite a few people. "And I'm
not saying that we should feel ashamed, I'm saying there are facts that we suppress because we're
not comfortable with them and when we raise facts" "It's not a zero sum game" "People attack you
and say that you're unpatriotic" "You know- you know what? It is a zero-sum game; Mr.
Churchill is a hero." Well, personally, I won't stand for this hyper-offended snowflakery.
I intend to pursue the truth wherever my internet search history may lead. The thing that interests
me here is the reactions you get from people when you talk about Churchill's shortcomings. Often
they'll just agree with you but then argue that he deserves a pass because he defeated the Nazis.
We all have flaws after all. And that's true, if by flaws you mean: we've all negligently
allowed three million Bengalis to starve to death whilst insisting that it was their own fault
for breeding like rabbits. But for others, the idea that we can appreciate Churchill for the war
and criticize him for just about everything else isn't good enough. And for these people - even
at his worst - Churchill is simply misunderstood and occasionally there's a bit of truth in this.
For example, when he was Home Secretary in 1910, there's the story that he sent national troops in
to deal with striking Welsh miners in Tonypandy; a move which resulted in one miner being killed.
There's a quote from his cabinet meeting before the event which goes: "if the Welsh are striking
over hunger then we must fill their bellies with lead." That quote is made up, in fact. He didn't
say that and the killing that happened was in a clash with the police before the troops had even
arrived. Obviously the welsh were right to resent him for sending in troops and it was a decision
that Churchill himself openly regretted. I also found out that the original memo which shows his
reluctance to use military force was auctioned for 1500 pounds which is kind of weird, like,
someone paid that much for the evidence that he did send troops in but he felt bad about it?
Anyway. There are people on the left who tell that story like he had ordered the military to
fire on miners and that was why someone died so I just thought I'd make that correction. Right.
Both sides. We did it. But, then of course, there are other defences of Churchill that are
just mind-blowing. My favourite one comes from the Conservative MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Jacob -
seen here looking like a reanimated Victorian tadpole - can't argue from feelings because he has
none. If anyone could give us a cold dispassionate defence of Churchill, it would be him. And on
BBC question time when Grace Blakeley brought up Churchill's role as a war correspondent during
the Second Boer war in South Africa, I remember thinking "oh [ __ ] he's going to bring up some
esoteric details that get Churchill off the hook." But instead the exchange went
like this: "the superiority of the race or the concentration camps or the
Kenyan Gulag? "the concentration camps- the South African concentration camps had exactly the same
mortality rate as existed in Glasgow at the time so they're not, um, a good thing but where else
were people going to live?" "Did you just justify the use of concentration camps?" "No I didn't I'm
talking about the bo- the Boer war had people put in camps for their protection~" "Where the
British invented the use of concentration camps." "I'm afraid you're confusing concentration
camps with Hitler's extermination camps." "I'm not saying they're the same thing, I'm saying
that any concentration camp is de facto awful, awful thing." "These were people who were
interned for their safety. Now that is not a good thing i'm not, in fact~" "Hundreds of thousands
of people died." "The death rate was exactly the same as in Glasgow. Death rates 100 years
ago were considerably higher than they are now for all sorts of reasons including~" "It was not
systematic murder." "It was not systematic murder, that's simply wrong. I'm not advocating people
being taken off their farms and put into camps but there was a war going on and people- and
people were being taken there so they could be fed because the farmers were away fighting the Boar
War. So this is one of the things where you've got to understand the history of what was going on not
just look at it from the comfort of 2019 and say that "this is the same as what was going on with
Hitler" it is completely and utterly different." Jacob Rees-Mogg there, showing us all the
true value of a world-class education. Incidentally he's lying about pretty much
everything. Let's look at the first claim: that they were interned for their protection. And
I know a better YouTuber would keep this short but [ __ ] you we're learning about the Second Boer
War. So, the Boers were a group of Dutch settlers who lived in South Africa through the 18th and
19th century. The word: "Boer" which is Dutch for "farmer" was the name given to them after
they had been forced to live north of the Cape by the British Empire. In 1899, the Second Boer
war was a fairly unfamiliar war for the British and not just because the enemy also had guns this
time but because it was mostly a guerrilla war. The Boer armies were defeated fairly quickly in
the field and the British then moved on to occupy their two capital cities. By the end of 1900,
Field Marshal Roberts declared the war to be over and left the country handing power over to his
second in command, Lord Kitchener. However, after the Boers started launching a series
of hit-and-run attacks on British troops, it became clear that the war hadn't been won yet.
Kitchener who wasn't used to fighting on these terms was faced with a problem. As the occupiers
they were in relatively unknown territory and they were surrounded by Boer civilians. Most
of the surrounding farmland was occupied by the wives and children of Boer fighters and the
British would eventually learn that the gorilla fighters had been moving between these farms
and relying on them for food and information. Kitchener's strategy was to burn down the farms.
By the end of the year, at least eight towns were completely destroyed and thousands of Boer women
and children were made homeless. In July 1900, the first camp was set up. It was initially meant
to be a shelter for the families of Boers who had surrendered but it was also used to hold people
whose husbands and fathers were still fighting and by 1901 over a hundred thousand people were
detained across 34 camps surrounded by barbed wire and ringed with block houses. This was the first
time the term "concentration camp" would be used in the English language. When the term was first
brought up in parliament, the Secretary of War assured the House of Commons that Lord Kitchener
had been taking every possible step to make sure that all refugees were treated humanely. At the
same time a young Winston Churchill wrote in The Times that the camps involved "the minimum
of suffering." It wasn't until Emily Hobhouse, a British feminist and welfare campaigner, visited
them when the conditions of the camps became public knowledge. The families had been crammed
into small tents that were unbearably hot by day and soaking wet at night. The water they drank
was never boiled and came out of a nearby river which had become contaminated with raw sewage
and diseases like typhoid, dysentery, measles, pneumonia and bronchitis were endemic. There are
people who would argue that this was beyond the control of British officers but to say that they
were off the hook is simply false. The British overseers had also made it an official policy to
give extra food rations to the families of those who had surrendered. Those extra rations came from
the families of those who were still fighting and by the time Hobhouse arrived, people were starving
to death. This wasn't even to mention the 40,000 black Africans who were being held in camps,
only in their case, with less food and no tents. Unfortunately Hobhouse's reports didn't do
much to change the views of people at home. The British who had become accustomed to winning
wars quickly and easily had a growing disdain for the Boers who, themselves, were not above killing
civilians when it suited them. And as per the dehumanization associated with concentration camps
one British author, Lady Maud Rolleston, had this to say about the Boers "I can only say that I much
disliked their aspect... their countenances are singularly deficient in nobility: their eyes are
generally small and dark, and very close together, the nose is short and insignificant, the drooping
moustache, which usually conceals the upper lip, shows the lower one to be large and sensual... the
face is, to my thinking nearly always animal... the glance is shifty, and reminds me irresistibly
of a visit to the zoological gardens at home." Decades before the Nazis would become known for
it, it was also common for British officials to blame interned parents for the deaths of
their children. In his own words Lord Kitchener believed that tens of thousands of children had
died to the "criminal neglect of their mothers" arguing that some of them "ought to be tried for
manslaughter." By the end of the war in 1902, 42,000 people had died in the
camps and the vast majority of them were under the age of 16. Kitchener would
later become famous for having his picture on the recruitment posters in World War I.
If the UN definition is anything to go by; this would have been classed as a genocide.
But moving on to the second claim: "The South African concentration camps had exactly the same
mortality rate as existed in Glasgow at the time." So, the death rate in South African concentration
camps was the same as in Glasgow. Let's look at that. Here he's most likely referring to the
Glasgow health crisis which, in 1900, had also coincided with a small outbreak of the bubonic
plague. Just a fun fact: the so-called "Glasgow Effect" relating to the city's famously low life
expectancy took a really, really long time to go away. In the early 2000s the male life expectancy
in Calton - a small borough in Glasgow - was 54. Over 10 years lower than that in the Gaza
Strip or in Iraq during the war so... love that. I should also correct Grace's claim
that hundreds of thousands of people died. In fact there were about 150 000 people interned
during the Boer War, of which 42,000 died in the space of two years. But that's an alarmingly high
death rate; averaging at about 280 per thousand. Was it really also that high in Glasgow?
No. The bubonic plague did wipe out about a third of Europe's population but that was quite
a while ago. During the Glasgow outbreak, only 16 people died. According to the National Records of
Scotland, just over 16,000 people died in Glasgow in 1901 from a population of 762,000 - putting
the death rate at just over 20 per thousand at the peak of the health crisis. The year
after, around 15,000 died. And this is where I'm kind of stunned. It's not even like he's confused
absolute deaths with death per thousand, he's just wrong in every possible way. And the
strangest thing is; he didn't need to defend any of this. Churchill wasn't in charge
of the camps. He was a journalist. I mean, okay, he was obviously a very irresponsible
journalist. "The minimum of suffering" But the concentration camps weren't set up on
his watch. This isn't Kenya in the 1950s when the camps were absolutely set up on his watch~
I mean not that. Jacob could have just been pedantic and said it wasn't Britain who invented
concentration camps; the Spanish did that five years earlier in Cuba, you know, we only copied
them and then continued to use them for 70 years. But the reason I find this clip so interesting
is that it gives us a look behind the curtain. By the time he was 18, enough money had been
spent on Jacob Reese-Mogg's education to buy a family house in the suburbs and this is
what you get for it. The living embodiment of entitlement and privilege lying through his
teeth because he found himself on the back foot against a 20-something left-wing woman.
Defending genocide when no one needed him to. The fact that Churchill just happened to be around
at the time was enough to make it worth defending. In the "Politics" there's a bit where Aristotle
talks about how you can't have political authority without majesty. For some people, it's
not enough for Churchill to be the man who was good at winning wars but terrible
everything else. He needs to be an idol and his critics need to be the uninformed rabble.
And if Grace hadn't been there to push back; the audience would have only heard that side
of it. That the camps were there to keep people safe and that was it; and if anyone was dying
it was no worse than it was in... Glasgow... You know, I looked all over the place
and I still have no idea where he got that claim from. Like what was his source,
was it Churchill's journalism? Wait was it?
