Dane-geld

In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Britons faced waves of invasions from people they knew as the Danes.  We would probably call them Vikings, fierce plunderers of the English tribes who were living in Great Britain.

Sometimes rather than fight, English kings would try to buy off the invading Danes.  In what became essentially a protection racket lasting years, this Danish gold bribe, or Dane-geld in the language of the times, became common. One of the more infamous kings to pay it was Aethelred, who is known to history as Aethelred the Unready.  Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, "Dane-Geld," captures the heart of the problem: "Once you have paid him the Dane-geld/ You never get rid of the Dane."  Those long ago English kings found it poor policy to knuckle under to invaders who often didn't leave after they'd been bribed, but hung around demanding more payments, else they'd start breaking necks, much like a mobster in New York in the late 20th century.

The term Dane-geld has echoed down through the ages for more than a thousand years, a hated approbation for those accused of it.  Neville Chamberlain's attempts to placate the Nazis at the start of World War Two were derided in newspapers as paying Dane-geld.  The term has passed into the collective fabric of free people as a shameful practice never to be condoned.

And yet, its modern equivalent remains alive and well and even celebrated as corporate America cringes and bends the knee to the BLM protection racket.  Major League Baseball, the NFL and other corporations large and not so large, rather than refuting the violence, instead fall all over themselves to play up their contributions to BLM.  But these sops to the mob are not concrete actions to improve society.  Actions taken to appease are never sincere indications of real and lasting friendship, but rather empty smiles that mask true feelings of fear and hate.

Corporations have calculated that a public gesture of goodwill - a black armband, a mural, perhaps a Tuesday blackout Instagram post with the right hashtag - will buy off the screamers and the throwers of bricks.  In reality, these companies do not care one whit about the issues; they see paying protection money to a violent mob as just another cost of doing business.  Pride, ethics and history be damned if it stops the incoming fire.  But they have forgotten or never knew history. Once you pay the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.

Both groups in this dance of the ignorant, the short sighted corporate cowards and the spoiled children playing at revolution, may yet succeed in being remembered by future historians.  But that remembrance will not be for any positive change they have wrought; there is nothing positive in destruction. If they are remembered at all, it will be as a scornful footnote proving again that more than a thousand years after the term was coined, Dane-geld should still never be paid.

Rudyard Kipling's poem speaks of nations, but the truth should be heeded by those who lead corporations as well.  As a mental exercise, substitute the word "company" for "nation" as you read:

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
       For fear they should succumb and go astray;
    So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
       You will find it better policy to say: –

    "We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
       No matter how trifling the cost;
    For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
       And the nation that plays it is lost!"