The French are baffled by the BBC’s Rule Britannia censorship

From 1940 to 1944, the Vichy regime set aside France’s 150-year-old rousing national anthem La Marseillaise for Maréchal nous voilà, a sycophantic hymn to France’s collaborationist leader Marshal Pétain. Pétain in the southern zone and the occupying German forces in the north brutally punished any singing of La Marseillaise. During the Second World War, Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia were popular hymns of resistance to fascist invasion and oppression by British peoples in these islands and across the world. Rule Britannia was played at the ceremonial surrender of the Japanese imperial army in 1945 by the massed band of Australian, British and American forces. The BBC in its glory days was the vehicle for this music and its inseparable lyrics of resistance and hope.

Imagine the French at their national celebration of musical culture constrained by their state broadcaster to abandon the lyrics of La Marseillaise for a hollowed out orchestral version crafted to suit the forces of faddishness? Despite the words of the Marseillaise being among the most blood thirsty and blood curdling accounts of what is to be done to the enemies of France, French authorities have resisted the wokish diktats to which the BBC has sadly kowtowed.