Oppression, Oppression, Oppression,

People compete about being oppressed every day. If you’re not telling your friend you were chased home by bat-wielding jocks every single school day, you’re probably listening to your friend tell you that the jocks were meaner where they grew up and that the bats were twice the size and made of nettles. This is a microcosm of what groups of people have done throughout history. Here’s what an enlightened writer on a site called HubPages had to say:

“…here are the five most notably oppressed groups in American history (with no distinction made as to the level of oppression, because how could we possibly define one oppression as “worse” or “better” than another kind?). (Also, I don’t mean to imply that only Americans have ever been oppressed, just for the point of this article.)”

What do you mean, you can’t rank oppression? My big toe hurts more than yours and you’re a coward for suggesting otherwise. So, in an attempt to write some wrongs, here’s a little oppression ranking for you all. With plenty of non-Americans involved.

10. Native Americans

The name we’ve given this noble group of people is a classic example of cultural oppression; enforcing western PC sensibilities upon a group once so happy to be called “Red Indians”. They’ve been forced to perform Marlon Brando’s dirty work, been eulogised by shitty folk singers, made to run lucrative casinos and, in the case of Florida’s Seminoles, the Hard Rock Café. This is the stuff they’re pissed off about, they got over the buffalo ages ago.

9. Those who have played with Alan Vega

To have to listen to the absurdly unambitious crap that passes for music when you have been privy to the most perfectly punk weirdo music ever released must be deeply, deeply oppressing.

8. Black Africans

Ever since King Leopold used a fake company to con foreign explorers into claiming a grand African empire for the once small and insignificant country of Belgium, Africans have had to get used to being oppressed by feverish Europeans who dream of naught but endless tin mines, slave networks and heart-rending documentaries. On top of that, they have to “enjoy” the great cultural “exchange” that happens when Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Ry Cooder and Vampire Weekend come to town to steal their music and turn it into sensitive buckets of cash. It’s like “Little Black Sambo” all over again.

7. Christians

You try being fed to the lions. I’ll tell you something: it’s no trip to Whipsnade. And then there’s Jesus, the first Christian, the most oppressed man of all. Harassed his whole life, nailed to a cross and then dumped in a cave. Nowadays, Christians have to put up with the oppression of Richard Dawkins and Jerry Springer: The Opera. The savage words of the heathens cut deep.

6. Ian Mackaye

My high school was 80% black, and throughout my entire life, I’ve been brought up in this whole thing where the white man was shit because of slavery. So I go to class and we do history, and for 3/4 of the year, slavery is all we hear about. It’s all we hear about… everything has to do with slavery or black people. You get to the 1950s, they don’t talk about nothing except the black people.

-Ian MacKaye

Oh Ian, it’s a fucking tough life, but sometimes you’ve got to man up. Now, go home, mix yourself a nice rum and coke and get down with the collected works of Eldridge Cleaver.

5. Huguenots

Huguenot is just a fancy term for French protestant. If you’ve ever seen the film La Reine Margot you’ll know what I’m talking about. Unlike the scenes depicted in the film, none of the Huguenots hunted down during the St. Bartholomew’s day massacre could then go and sleep with Isabelle Adjani in an old monastery by the sea. Mainly, they had to deal with some serious Medici-backed, Pope-inspired slaughtering.

4. The Welsh

Microsoft Word automatically capitalises “Scottish” and “English” but it doesn’t share the same concern for the Welsh. If that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about the oppression of the ancestors of Uther Pendragon then you should read on. In the 19th century, the Welsh language was so ground down by the English jackboot (some say people had stopped speaking Welsh because it was seen as being impractical and useless, but those people are English imperial liars) that a plucky group of linguistic heroes (imagine Ray Mears crossed with a librarian) had to head off to Argentina to create a colony in which Welsh could be freely spoken. The Argentine government were delighted to sell these intrepid characters a massive plot of land in the boundless plains of Patagonia. The sheep-farming emigrants freaked out once they realised there were no sheep to be farmed in their new land and that, in fact, it was kind of an inhospitable desert. Many had perished on the seas and had it not been for the benevolence of a local Indian tribe, they would all have died over the first winter. Still, their legacy can be seen in towns like Trelew, where a few old people can still rattle out some Welsh phrases. Back in the UK, Welsh speakers can now bask in the guilt-induced resurrection of their language and cash in at the BBC, where hours and hours of air time needs to be filled with the mellifluous sound of the valleys.

3. Women

Ah, the little lady, doesn’t she look lovely all dressed up? It’s her big night out with her husband. They’ve gone to a dinner party with all the important people in town. But don’t worry, he’s told her what to say in case the boss asks her about Nixon and Kennedy. She may not know much about that, but she does know that her husband’s going to buy her a fridge freezer for Christmas and that makes her dimples glow with pride.

2. Helots

The Helots were the slaves of ancient Sparta. Despite greatly outnumbering their overlords, they were kept brutally in place, thanks mainly to the rigorous militarisation of the city-state in which they toiled. Every autumn, as a rite of passage, the Spartans would declare war on the Helot population. As a way of proving their worth, young Spartan men were sent off into the night, sans weapons, with instructions to kill any Helots they could find and then take their food away from them. They could do this without fear of any bloodguilt. Helots were forced to wear dog skin caps and wrap themselves in skins. They received a pre-ordained number of beatings ever year, so they’d remember they were slaves and if they ever looked a little too healthy or lively, they were killed.

1. The white man

They don’t call it the “white man’s burden” for nothing, you know. Someone had to bring civilization to all those savages out there and since no one else wanted to, the white man stepped up to the plate, did everyone a favour and took one for the team. And what does he get in return? Riches? Sure. The best jobs? Well, OK, a lot of the time, yes. Good schooling? It would be ridiculous if he didn’t. But, apart from that, he gets abuse. Serious, hurtful, abuse. People call him racist, Euro-centric, imperialist, jungle-feverist. Liberal papers are mean about him. He feels guilty and starts his own liberal paper so he can abuse himself. It’s a vicious cycle. And it came about because no one else had the balls to man up and take what the world had to offer. And then take credit for it.