Corrine Fowler: My writing on colonialism made me a hate figure – so I replied to my trolls

[NonLinguisticRhetoricIsMyKryptonite]

Corrine Fowler is a brave woman, the author of the National Trust report that scarcely anyone read but generated a lot of heat and light. Considering other newsworthy stories at the moment and women unders similar pressure, this is inspirational.

Could this happen with Cass and on other issues?

During the first few months of controversy and coverage, I was rarely given a right of reply. Instead, I watched with mounting dismay as I was presented as an enemy of the British people. Embroiled in a culture war, I encountered opinions I’d never heard before. But the experience unexpectedly transformed the way I relate to people who aren’t like me.

When people heard politicians denouncing the Trust report, or saw me characterised as politically “biased”, finger-wagging, or generally doing down Britain (often a combination of all three), it’s hardly surprising that they felt wronged. The actual content of the Trust report and the evidence it presented was rarely discussed.
…
For over a year, there was little respite from the frequent articles and the angry messages that came in their wake. These were variations on a theme: “one really needs a no-platforming rule for pushy academics”; “I’m not sure you should be allowed anywhere near a university building” and, “presumably you obtained the professor bit out of a Christmas cracker”. There are many more like that.
There was also far worse: I received threats which were obscene and violent…
…
One day, when a stranger wrote, “your willingness to make yourself a laughing stock is appreciated and hilarious”, I hit the reply button. “Dear __,” I began, and pointed out all the inaccuracies in the article that he’d read. Perhaps surprised at my conciliatory response, he replied, “Oh. In that case, I must have added to your woes.”
To another emailer, who wrote that I had “slandered a race on the grounds of the alleged misdeeds of their ancestors” and was therefore “guilty of racism by deliberately stirring racial hatred,” I detailed my own ancestors’ involvement with slavery in Haiti and set out my case that, since formerly colonised people and their descendants had been greatly impacted by colonial history, I thought it better to bring this information into the public domain than to conceal it for fear of giving offence. To my surprise, I got a short reply: “You’re obviously not a bad person, you have my respect for answering.”
…
Reflecting back on the whole experience, focusing on critical, often hostile, voices was like turning the radio dial after years of having had it tuned to my favourite station. It revealed a world of parallel perspectives. My work has always been borne out of a desire to understand our shared history. But the fierce response to that work, while unsettling, prompted me to go much further in listening to people from across political and generational divides. We’re limited by what we know: the more diverse our thinking the more insightful the conversations we can potentially have.
Being under so much fire turned out to be a blessing in disguise. When I became a hate figure, I suffered at first. But I came to realise that, since they’d never met me, people didn’t actually hate me as a person. And when I reached out to the writers of those letters, their response was amazing. It’s been stimulating to interact with people who think radically differently from me: everyone deserves to be taken seriously. Now I’m a happier and more confident person. After everything that happened during that long year, there’s not much left to be afraid of.

https://archive.is/jJQ9M

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/22/corrine-fowler-national-trust-report-on-colonialism-trolls/

Thank you, this is an interesting article. I am currently doing an online course at Futurelearn about British country houses, and I suspect her work is part of the basis for that.
Good on her for not being cowered by her antagonists, even though it would have been better , had they behaved better in the first place!

If it's this one, it's Fowler's.

In response to all the feedback I was hearing, I devised a free online course called Country Houses and the British Empire, which goes into lots of detail about the history. The Telegraph ran an article about it and Telegraph readers were among the 4,885 people who took the course, which has very high approval ratings: Country Houses and the British Empire - Online Course - FutureLearn. It features an unfolding conversation between two people who appear on videos throughout the course: one was an older country house volunteer while the other was born in a former colony. Together they asked historians what they wanted to know, and you can see their growing rapport as the course progresses.

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/country-houses-british-empire

Reminds me a bit of what Mary Beard said about when she first started to get public attention after writing a response to 911 that offended a lot of people. Iirc (and I know I am paraphrasing badly) she decided they were important conversations to have and actually having those discussions in the public sphere were a worthwhile role for academics. She has always been very good at responding to personal abuse which takes it out of the level of personal and focuses on underlying issues.
I’m very glad to hear Fowler is doing this. The abuse must have been relentless.

I’m very glad to hear Fowler is doing this. The abuse must have been relentless.

It's hugely time consuming and enormous emotional work. I can see how it's persuaded individuals and led to some opportunities but the wear and tear on her was enormous.

For the polite engagement Bunbury visitors receive on FWR, have you ever had the impression that one has responded in the way that Fowler's abusive critics have?

I think that the NT was right to highlight the origins of the wealth that built some of our big country houses. But they were very naive not to predict a backlash.

The mistake always made by those on the left is to assume that everyone else thinks as they do - every election is a case in point.

Perhaps I am following my own train of thought there, but I had the horrible experience of a front-row seat at a workplace situation witch hunt and it was pretty much impossible to get people to see that even though they might believe that they have ‘right’ on their side, the costs of the situation becoming public might be far greater than they anticipate.

The comments below the article are appalling - people really seem to hate her. Yet everything she wrote seemed entirely reasonable as far as I could see.

It's almost as if the commenters haven't read the article and are reacting off previous coverage that hadn't read the report.

I wonder if Cass and Fowler could have a convivial chat over coffee about their shared experience with this.

I'd like to see the comments but can't view them.

I hope I am wrong but tbh I would put money on Fowler refusing to talk to Cass.

Agree with all of this.

I think that some on the left also have a subconscious tendency to "educate" others in a way that comes across very poorly and puts people on the defensive because they feel condescended to. Especially when the "educators" tend to be young university educated whippersnappers and the "educatees" tend to be older or non degree holders.

Would topics such as colonialism have been quite so fraught and divisive if we hadn't discussed them in this way to begin with? Or would there always have been people who wanted to stick to the way history has always been taught, kind of like those who resist the idea that dinosaurs had feathers and want to continue in their fond thoughts of Jurassic Park dinosaurs?

Fowler has nothing to do with any of that though. She's done her job, done it well, and been abused for it (just like Cass - - I wonder if misogyny played any role?) But I do really admire just how professional and level-headed she's been in some of her responses. A true case of someone taking the moral high ground, despite, I am sure, at least some temptation to respond in kind.

One has to wonder whether any of Cass's abusive detractors would come to an understanding with her and admit "I may have been wrong"?

Especially when the "educators" tend to be young university educated whippersnappers and the "educatees" tend to be older or non degree holders.

Lucy McDonagh and women's experience in the Deptford People's Project is a useful example of this. (The group ended up dominated by students, crudely.)

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3203804-The-Deptford-People-Project-and-the-impact-of-self-ID-and-transactivism-on-working-class-women

@NonLinguisticRhetoricIsMyKryptonite
Lol, I should have read all of it before answering! 😊 I subscribed to the course recently and only read the general info, so her name didn't ring a bell yet (of course she introduces herself in Lesson 1).

I think you are on the right track.

It's always seemed to me that part of the issue is that the people doing the "educating" have this odd idea that the plebs don't realize that often great wealth is amassed through various types of exploitation.

In some ways I think almost the opposite is true. They might not know exactly how Lord So and So made his money (and if it's interesting they might be happy to hear.) But they do consider that where power and wealth are concerned, exploitation and bad behaviour are completely ubiquitous across humanity.

(I think this is in part why the term "woke" has caught on - it is hard to resist as a term for people who think they have some great insight to offer on something so mundane (greed, etc) everyone already knows it.

@songaboutjam

Yes I think this goes a long way to explaining the backlash.

The kinds of people who visit country houses will already be interested in history, and those who are members of the NT will already be more likely to be better-educated.

Both groups will recognise the hypocrisy of the type of "educator" who comes from the naive cradle of student union political ideas to decry slavery while simultaneously espousing Communism as a political system, an institution which has left 100 million dead in the last century, dwarfing the Transatlantic slave trade by an order of magnitude.

As you and @TempestTost note, people know the world is unjust, and they know that people can't amass vast fortunes without exploitation.

As you and @TempestTostnote, people know the world is unjust, and they know that people can't amass vast fortunes without exploitation.

And, of course, if you're now touring the house/gardens with the National Trust, then they've lost their vast fortune! You're already partaking in the spoils of the proletariat revolution! (or something like that)

It would be rather more courageous to go and stick up signs on the current oligarchs' stuff and grill them about how they acquired their wealth.

This stood out for me:
”I encountered opinions I’d never heard before”
A little surprising?

Shades of Emily Thornberry campaigning in Kent and being astonished that someone might have a St George’s flag.

I agree.

I have never been to a stately home in my life, so I totally ignored the media ruckus over that report. I knew I had too little context to work out what was going on.

But then on MN we ended up having a thread diverted to the importance of acknowledging the exploitation that funded the building of stately houses on FWR, because two posters who proudly announced that they worked in heritage (and who didn't otherwise dirty themselves by associating with the bad women here) kept pushing it back to that subject.

At that point, I still didn't care about what displays National Trust homes put up, or what the focus was. But these two posters were so incredibly patronising and seemed to feel entitled to the plebs' deference. They bloody made it clear that anyone who didn't have a relevant degree and career in heritage was their lesser!

Heritage is not, in my experience, an employment sector that you get into without the right socio-economic background, and so it proved. One admitted that she cared about the subject because she was descended from colonial landowners and she wanted to acknowledge that. Her plan of action for her atonement included stomping on all the current-day MNers that she regarded as her social inferiors.

Frankly, by the end of the thread, I was in full class-warfare mode, and I would have cheerfully marched them both to the guillotine for being aristos. If they'd said the sky was blue, I'd have refused to agree for fear of betraying the working-classes!

One small point to note about these historical investigations of past wrongs is that they tend to collectivise responsibility; in newspaper-speak, it’s always along the lines of “these country houses reveal how we benefited from slavery”. Well, the people who ended up with the big country house were your ancestors, not mine. You don’t need much of an imagination to realise why framing it like this might antagonise some people.

They're certainly very similar stories aren't they? She posted several dozen uncaptioned photos that she had taken while campaigning, and one of them was used to create a narrative.

Academic does research into British Empire = the woke elite hate White British people.

Politician posts photo of England supporter's flag display = Labour sneer at English working class people.

Cui Bono?

But people do sneer at English working-class people all the time; here’s a screenshot from another Mumsnet thread right now, where people are openly mocked for being white and having an attachments to the traditional symbols of England. Given the extent to which working-class Britons are openly held in contempt by the more privileged, one ought to understand that they might be a little bit sensitive about these things.

(The creepy web-scrapers at Aston will now know, from my targeted adverts, that I’m in the market for a 3D printer. I wonder what they will be able to make of that.)

Clever woman. People who write this sort of personalized attacking stuff usually do it because they have attributed a whole mentality to the writer. That usually breaks down on an individual response, because the attacker feels recognition even if there is not agreement. A lot of people who attack views personalize it very quickly; usually in that instance they are expressing their own feelings of frustration or powerlessness. Somewhere in that exchange there may be interesting point so it's useful to try at least.

I sometimes regret not buying the Aldi 3D printers when they were available.

That usually breaks down on an individual response, because the attacker feels recognition even if there is not agreement.

Bunbury disruptors tend to attract many individual responses. I've often wondered if that in itself is a driver and secondary gain.

On a separate point, I know that Hayton has occasionally expressed the desire to sit down with several posters, one-on-one, "over a beer," and talk things over. However, it tended to come across as more of an "education" session.

I admire Fowler's response at the same time as recognising it's not scalable. Perhaps this is a genuine use for AI assistants (waving my hand vaguely as to how this would be feasible).