Canadian academic Jordan Peterson has lashed out at “scumrats” within the legacy media for “lying” about slavery.
The psychologist has taken issue with a report on slavery published in the UK media on Wednesday, calling those responsible for the article “scumrats” who were “lying” about the UK’s role in slavery.
Published in The Guardian, the article called on newly-crowned King Charles III to focus more on the role of both the monarch and the United Kingdom in slavery and other so-called “legacies of racism”.
Peterson however has taken serious issue with such a characterisation, with the Canadian seemingly being particularly upset that the role the UK’s Royal Navy played in ending the international slave trade worldwide was ommitted entirely. “You absolute scumrats,” Peterson wrote online. “You are literally standing the truth on its head.”
According to a report by Sky History, between the years of 1808 and 1860, the Royal Navy seized somewhere in the region of 1,600 slave ships and freed around 150,000 slaves in their efforts to stamp out the practice.
Another fact committed by The Guardian was the fact that thousands of British sailors are reported as losing their lives in the process. The West Africa Squadron was one of the most deadly Royal Navy commands ever with one British sailor dying for every nine slaves freed, a considerable toll underlying Britain’s determination to stamp out the trade at a great cost to itself.
The UK government spent 40 per cent of its annual budget in the 1830s buying the freedom of 61,000 slaves. The loan taken out by the government to fund the abolition act was only paid off in 2015, with taxpayer cash generated by modern Britons going towards the project of freeing those in slavery.