I’m asking this superficially asinine question chiefly because it has generated a HUGE amount of (largely civil) debate on another forum, with its chief protagonist asserting that it most-definitely is offensively racist to white people, despite his being intelligent, articulate and politically-moderate with a left-of-centre bias.
To me ‘gammon’ denotes a small subset of British people characterised by intolerant and bigoted opinions, angry with modern cultural and social thinking. Typically right-wing, Daily Mail-spouting, tory-voting, privileged, middle-class and aging.
I’ve always assumed it was not a racially-exclusive group - people like Priti Patel and Suella Bravermann demonstrate that ‘membership’ is open not only to women, but also non-whites.
So, is the term ‘gammon’ racist towards white people?
Obviously it started out referring to the angry older white man with a face liked boiled meat bleating about something on Question Time, but it’s long since transcended that to refer to an attitude. Exactly like “the Man” (who isn’t necessarily a man).
I hear you. I only latched on to this absurdity, because it didn’t come from the usual thick, racist cunt, but someone who really could and should know better.
We live in a time of some very clever and insidious propaganda, which is sneakily crowbarring absurd, toxic notions like ‘gammon-is-racist’, ‘cancel culture’, ‘white replacement’ and so-on into the minds of otherwise decent people.
Similar stuff is happening in attempts to undermine tolerance of gay and transgender people, and I’m seeing that repeated by (for example) groups of gay women convinced that transgenderism is a kind of conspiracy to get rapists into school toilets…
It’s ALL fucking insane when you pick it up out from beneath the stones it hides under and hold it up to the light - but in the fetid gloom of social media, it thrives…
