Leftists in Britain celebrated St George’s Day on Saturday with their annual issuing of false claims that the Roman soldier of Cappadocian Greek ethnicity was, variously, “Turkish”, “Arab”, and “a migrant worker” in an effort to “own” English patriots.
The fact that England’s patron saint, St George, was not an Englishman is not atypical — Ireland’s St Patrick was British and Scotland’s St Andrew, the first-called of Christ’s apostles, hailed from the Holy Land — but is seized upon every year by left-wingers as a stick with which to beat patriots in general and sceptics of mass migration and multiculturalism in particular.
“George was an Arab with a Turkish dad and a Syrian mother,” crowed one typical blue tick on St George’s Day 2022.
“Isn’t it brilliantly appropriate that the patron saint of England isn’t English. #Diversity?” they added.
As mentioned above, however, George was in fact a Greek from Cappadocia, and while Cappadocia is located in what is now Turkey, the saint was born in 200s, around 700 years before the first Turkic invaders began to arrive in the area from their native Central Asia — making claims he was from Turkey about as sensible as claiming a 3rd-century Native American was from the United States.
Similarly, while St George’s mother reputedly hailed from the Roman province of Syria Palaestina, the Arabs would not conquer this area until after the birth of the Islamic prophet hundreds of years later, with the contemporary population being primarily Graeco–Aramean in culture and ethnicity.
Some blue ticks added a contemporary twist to their well-worn St George’s Day commentary, linking the saint to the British government’s plan to send some male migrants who arrive in the United Kingdom illegally by boat to Rwanda while their (likely bogus) asylum claims are processed.
“St George is a Palestinian/Turkish immigrant who would be trafficked to Rwanda today by this British Govt,” asserted Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, repeating the ahistorical claims about the saint’s “Turkish” ethnicity and adding an equally ahistorical claim about his immigration status.
(While the soldier may have crossed the boundaries of the Roman Empire on military operations, there is no reason to believe he ever tried to claim citizenship in another jurisdiction, still less illegally migrate to one.)
“Unlike me, he wasn’t British,” the activist continued, adding: “The English aren’t loyal to who and what #StGeorge is but claim him as patron.”
Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the left-wing Daily Mirror tabloid newspaper, made similar claims about St George being “dumped by the UK Conservative Government in Rwanda” but pushed his agenda-driven description of the martyr even further, dubiously describing him as “a migrant worker”.
“Plastic patriots, reactionaries and racists waving flags must be proud,” he added, jabbing at seemingly imaginary bigots unaware of St George’s supposed “migrant worker” origins.
The fact St George was not English was no secret to the medieval English who adopted him as national patron — or to the Russians, Georgians, Genoese, and others who have also adopted him — with the military saint instead being chosen because he reputedly appeared to Crusaders attempting to win back the Holy Land from its Muslim conquerors in the 11th century.
This is generally not mentioned by leftists keen to recast him as a multicultural icon in the present day.
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