United Kingdom
Justin Champion
Guy Fawkes Day is a celebration of bigotry, said Justin Champion in the London Guardian. Every year on the fifth of November, the English light bonfires and burn effigies to commemorate the foiling of the 1605 “Gunpowder Plot” to blow up Parliament. The festivities are seen as a handy excuse to indulge in gleeful pyromania. But what are we actually celebrating? The torture and execution of Fawkes, a Catholic who wanted to kill King James I because he supported laws oppressing Catholics. The bonfires burning Fawkes in effigy are “a residual act of anti-Catholic hatred that reveals the Protestant foundations of modern political culture in the U.K.” The children’s poem tells us to “remember, remember” the terrible Gunpowder Plot—but do we remember that Catholics in Scotland and Ireland were overtly persecuted for centuries, right up until the last few years? One black friend who watched recent footage of the celebrations—images of “masked figures marching in procession, carrying burning crosses”—said it looked like the Ku Klux Klan had come to Sussex. Presumably the KKK bigots also see their revelry as “a harmless bit of fun.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
NASA is abandoning the climateThe Explainer Climate missions could be going dark
-
Every MCU movie since 'Avengers: Endgame,' rankedThe Week Recommends How did the recent 'Fantastic Four: First Steps' stack up?
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's illsSpeed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
