RE:WRITING THE FUTURE: THE TANTA MUSEUM OF WHITE HISTORY

It gives us great pleasure to present this proposal for a flagship museum commemorating the history of white people as part of an initiative to recognise and celebrate the ethnic and cultural diversity of Gharbiyya Governorate, Egypt.

The museum aims to harness the power of art and education for social change by honouring the painful history of the white diaspora. It will address the complex and troubling stories of how the Great Pandemic, and the Arab revolutions whose centenary we are soon to celebrate, devastated the white race over the course of the twenty-first century.

The revolutions of the Arab Spring taught us that history is not written by the victors, and that no matter how long injustice lasts, there will come a day when the oppressed will tell their tale. Taking inspiration from this legacy, the museum will recognise and rewrite white history in an effort to educate the white minority and contribute positively to their integration into contemporary Arab society.

THE HISTORY 

One hundred years ago, a wave of revolutions known as the Arab Spring swept across the Middle East and North Africa, bringing hope to the people of those countries and inspiring kindred movements across the world. Under the slogan “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice!”, the revolutions profoundly transformed political and cultural life across the region.

The immediate aftermath saw the downfall of the monarchies and tribal regimes of the Gulf states, leading the Arab peoples into a crucible of political and social change which established democratic rule and led initially to the electoral success of right-wing Islamist parties. As foreseen by Middle East experts such as Edward Said, Joseph Massad, Wael Hallaq and Talal Asad, the Arabs realised that national identity was a concept foreign to their culture—a hangover from the age of Orientalism and Imperialism. This period saw borders and nation-states exchanged for systems of decentralised local administration under the aegis of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The tension between ascendant white nationalist movements in Western states and the new political order in the Arab world seemed to fulfill predictions of a “clash of civilisations,” and many were bracing themselves for the worst. Prominent voices on both sides were promoting war, especially after an evangelical celebrity pastor was elected president of the USA with the support of the American pope, who threatened undecided voters with the prospect of the End Time and the fall of the Messiah.

Once in office, the new president spearheaded the formation of an alliance of Western states committed to climate change denial. Climate change believers were imprisoned, while environmentalist organisations and think tanks were accused of performing the “devil’s work” and closed down. 

The pace of climate change accelerated, and huge swathes of Europe and the Americas were affected by rising sea levels. The state of Louisiana was submerged in its entirety, and melting ice at the North Pole flooded most of Denmark and Sweden and rendered Northern Europe largely uninhabitable.

Then the pandemic struck. Although scientists showed that the virus had been trapped under permafrost and released by rising temperatures, the US evangelical pope chose to call it the “African virus,” a designation quickly adopted across much of the West.

In collaboration with China and other Asian and African countries, Muslim Arab nations worked furiously to develop a vaccine for the virus and halt climate change—efforts in which Western nations refused to participate. Led by renowned Indian scholar Dr. Roy Sontag, a team of scientists soon succeeded in developing an effective vaccine. 

The vaccine was found to have an unforeseen side effect for white people: it led to an increase in skin pigmentation, which made white-skinned individuals turn brown or black. Although this side effect was also shown to strengthen resistance to skin cancer and a number of other conditions, vast numbers of white people refused to participate in vaccination programs, which they claimed were an affront to Western civilisation. French President Marine Le Pen said: “This is not a vaccine, this is a biological weapon designed to destroy the values of the French revolution.”

The white race was facing environmental and humanitarian crises. Birth rates dropped to a third of their former figure, mortality rates skyrocketed, political opposition was brutally crushed and the best minds fled the collapsing West for the safety and economic opportunities offered by the Arab and Islamic world, where they were welcomed with open arms.

It was only a matter of time before a series of uprisings across the West ousted the incumbent right-wing regimes, with Chinese and Islamic support. The revolutions brought about far-reaching social change in Western nations, which ultimately grew to embrace racial diversity and leave behind the delusions of white supremacy. But decades of upheaval and disease had ravaged the white race, which became a minority in most Western countries, and with the rollout of vaccination programs some white people lost their whiteness altogether, while many intermarried with other races. With only a few exceptions, the last generation of formerly white people gave birth to a generation of dark-skinned children.

Some of the dwindling white population fled the West for Africa and the Middle East. Thousands lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean, and those who arrived safely at its southern shores found themselves forced to assimilate to new cultures that were foreign and even anathema to their own. Americans had to adapt to free universal healthcare, even though it contravened the teachings of Christ and the US constitution. Even their history was rewritten under the hegemony of Arab Muslim culture in the lands, which they made their new home.

WHY TANTA?

In its January 1917 issue, the Egyptian magazine Illustrated Fancies reported on the efforts Egypt was making to support European refugees and victims of the First World War. In March of that year, a charity market was held in Tanta to raise money for war orphans, some of whom had found homes in the city. To shield them from the trauma of bereavement, the children were told that their parents were still alive and encouraged to write to them. The report didn’t say why this approach had been adopted. It featured a picture of a young boy hunched over a pen and paper, writing a letter to his father who had been killed in the war.

Documents like this reveal the humanitarian role played by the cosmopolitan city of Tanta throughout its long history. Whether in the century of World Wars, or the century of pandemics and climate change, Tanta has a proud record of welcoming white refugees with open arms.

Taking its inspiration from this historical event, the museum will centre on the orphaned white child who wrote that letter to his parents, whose voice will guide visitors through the exhibits.

MUSEUM THEMES

The attached catalogue provides details of individual exhibits. The central themes of the museum are:

Celebrating White History

No history has been so distorted and abused as the history of the white race. Accused of imperialism and racism, white people were portrayed in the past as intrinsically evil, and their historical achievements downplayed or hijacked by slaves, colonised peoples, and immigrants.

The museum will shed new light on the great ideas produced by white minds of the past, such as the Catholic church, the US constitution, the successful imprisonment of leftwing thought in university humanities departments, high-interest loans, and other landmarks of white creativity.

White Heroes

The last century witnessed the near-total marginalisation of white cultural figures by the forces of political correctness. Silenced and made to feel ashamed of their white heritage, they were sidelined by immigrants wielding the weapon of “cancel culture.” The museum will showcase white culture’s most trailblazing figures, incorporating lifelike wax models and exhibits exploring their biographies and legacies. 

Among the historical personalities featured will be:

Steve Bannon, the last white prophet, who foresaw and fought against the extinction of the white race but was defeated by the forces of cultural diversity.

Jordan Peterson, a pioneering clinical psychologist nicknamed “the white Franz Fanon” who identified the psychological crises of the white race, and studied the phobias and schizophrenia caused by the presence of immigrants in white environments. Vilified during his lifetime, his ideas have since been neglected and forgotten.

J.K. Rowling, a famous writer beloved even of black and brown readers who was nevertheless cancelled for her efforts to defend white women from the predations of trans people and other less-than-female individuals seeking to invade women’s public toilets.

Stolen Voices

Not only have white voices been silenced—their ideas and achievements have been appropriated by other cultures. A classic example of this phenomenon is the figure of the “Karen.”

The “Karen” we know today is a simple-minded, lower-class white woman who appears in children’s stories and comic films in the role of the housekeeper and is made the butt of practical jokes and mockery for the entertainment of audiences. Surprising though it may seem, many high-profile actresses who have played “Karen” roles are in fact not white.

But one hundred years ago, a “Karen” was a strong white woman who was prepared to defend her family, her home and her neighbourhood from ethnic parasitism and cultural invasion. Only with the later domination of the values of the Arab Spring was “Karen” transformed into a figure of ridicule and a byword for hysteria and limited intelligence.

The Karen exhibit will tell the true history of these brave women and their battle to defend white cultural values.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND DIVERSITY POLICIES 

The museum’s founders are committed to racial and cultural diversity in the workplace. We will operate quotas to ensure we employ individuals from white backgrounds. The cleaning, sanitation, and accounting departments will be staffed entirely by white people. The museum is proud to be the first major cultural institution to hire a white deputy director of finance.

BUDGET 

The attached document gives a full breakdown of the museum’s proposed budget. We would like to highlight here that a large portion of the museum’s funds will be invested in creating positions for Muslim and Arab residents of Gharbiyya Governorate. Employee salaries account for approximately 65% of the overall budget proposed here. We have policies in place which aim to reduce the pay gap between Muslims/Arabs and white immigrants, and are committed to ensuring that 10% of the salary budget is spent on white employees within the first ten years of the museum’s operation.

We also have a pay-gap reduction policy in place for the employment of independent curators and artists. We are committed to narrowing the pay imbalance between Muslim/Arab and white freelancers to 3:1, from the current local average of 7:1.

We do not aim to appropriate the history of the white race but to create space for white voices as part of an international and diverse institutional culture and commitment to positive leadership.
 

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This publication was made possible by the DAAD ARTISTS-IN-BERLIN PROGRAM, as part of its engagement with ICORN, the International Cities of Refuge Network.