View all newsletters
Sign up to our newsletters

Support 110 years of independent journalism.

  1. Politics
1 October 2018updated 23 Jul 2021 12:25pm

Jacob Rees-Mogg’s “jam jar” comment is nothing more than “Bongo Bongo Land” bigotry

Racist language at its most basic.

By Anoosh Chakelian

There’s this very specific thing that certain right-wing British politicians do when they want to talk down other cultures.

They know it’s probably a bit vulgar to be straightforwardly racist. To just come out and say “We’re superior to them” or “I hate X race because…” would be so passé, wouldn’t it? So they decide to disguise it with a linguistic flourish – a bit of wordplay or a scrap of imagery that sounds too ridiculous to be sinister, but is utterly dismissive of the people they’re trying to describe.

Serial offender Boris Johnson’s poem about Recep Tayyip Erdoğan having sex with a goat is a good example. It’s just a jokey rhyme, after all! Who’s saying Turks are uncivilised barbarians? Not me, guv! That deflection is clear in the racist insults he’s used to describe black people in his writing: the “watermelon smiles” he imagined on people’s faces in the Congo in a 2002 Telegraph column, for example – an evocative fruit-based simile, nothing more!

An old-fashioned racist description of African countries as “Bongo Bongo Land” has been around for decades in some form – trotted out in advertisements, songs and, of course, the mouths of politicians – and was resurrected by ex-Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom in 2013, during a speech about foreign aid. While he agreed not to use the term again, he told the Telegraph at the time: “It’s a derogatory phrase, yes, but I meant it to be derogatory – I didn’t mean it to be racist.” And then showed off a set of bongo drums he’d been sent.

Archaic phrases and bizarre imagery are the mainstay of this certain type of right-wing man – hiding their intolerance behind sham eccentricity.

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU

And this is precisely what Jacob Rees-Mogg, the hard-right Brexiteer with a reputation as one of the politest men in politics – all double-breasted jackets, immaculate partings, and genteel vowels – was doing when he called Libya the “People’s Republic of Jam Jar” at Conservative party conference:

“All the countries who are least interested in their people call themselves ‘people’s’, don’t they? So the People’s Republic of China? Oh, that’s communist. And the People’s Republic of… jam jar, or something like that, of Libya, was what it was called when Colonel Gaddafi was in charge.”

While trying to make the, frankly, teenage-boy-discovers-A Level-politics argument that countries called “people’s republics” are often autocratic regimes, Rees-Mogg mocked Libya’s full name following Muammar Gaddafi’s coup in 1969 (when its official title was “Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” from 1977 to 1986, and “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” from 1986 to 2011).

Rees-Mogg’s thoughts on Gaddafi’s leadership are irrelevant here. What he’s doing is making fun of an Arabic word (loosely meaning “state of the masses”), dismissing the language and culture as vaguely ridiculous and unworthy of serious discussion, while trying to sound English and whimsical. And it’s no better than Ukip-style sniggers about “Bongo Bongo Land” that he probably finds most unsophisticated.

Content from our partners
The promise of prevention
How Labour hopes to make the UK a leader in green energy
Is now the time to rethink health and care for older people? With Age UK

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU