Across the noisy expanse of social media- a series of platforms encompassing billions of people- certain words somehow catch on, becoming part of an ever-changing internet vocabulary. One such word that has been present in British internet culture, for at least the last few years, is ‘gammon’. But what does this insult mean, really, and where did it come from?
The term gammon is, generally speaking, a pejorative used to describe a middle-aged to elderly right-wing man.This meaty reference identifies the flushed red face and sweating one might experience while shouting about Shemima Begum, Brexit, or ‘snowflakes’. This gives the man in question the appearance of a piece of ham marinated in a honey glaze. Delicious.
The insult has a Wikipedia page which google actually lists above it’s culinary origin when searched, showing how the salience of the term has increased in recent years. Indeed Google Trends shows us that though the search term spikes every December for obvious festive reasons, the lower end of the graph (outside December) has persistently risen over the last 5 years.
Who are the key examples?
Prominent representatives of what one might term ‘the gammon community’ include Piers Morgan, Tim Martin, Andrew Niel, Tommy Robinson, and David Cameron. Cameron can be attributed with starting the trend upon his becoming Tory Leader at the start of the last decade. Times journalist Hellen Moran famously called him "a slightly camp gammon robot" as well as "a C3PO made of ham"- owing to his pink complexion. Other notable uses include a tweet by Ben Davies directed at a particularly pink Question Time audience he termed "the great wall of gammon".
Is it racist?
The argument about whether any given term is racist or not is nebulous, and prone to descend into partisan screeching as a result of ignorance, bad-faith, and contrarianism often seen below-the-line. If one were to view racism in its real sense, as a system of power as opposed to a list of bad words, which is how it should be viewed, then it's easy to understand why ‘cracker’ is permissible where the ‘n-word’ is not. It’s the history, the connotations, and the cultural and social implications that give certain words the power to convey something awful, not the words themselves.
That said, gammon is undoubtedly racialised as it refers to a white person's complexion when comically angry. But I would argue this is the point. The views ascribed to the ‘gammons’ of the world are typically right-wing nationalism, anti-migrant, and culturally-conservative, all generally associated with whiteness in the UK. Furthermore, this is not a term that was coined by black or Asian people to cause offence to their white counterparts, but a term coined by fellow white people to attack those in their communities with views they see as embarrassing and shameful. The term gammon was arguably created as an act of anti-racism by younger white people showing solidarity with migrants, refugees, and black and Asian Brits, by taking the piss out of their parents.
One could of course make the argument that simply including race as a criterion for gammon-eligibility is too far, and that any race-based insult, no matter the origin or intent, is too far. But this kind of political correctness would be something those called gammon typically hate.
Enemies of Gammon
Aside from the political correctness that would ironically save them from this insult, the gammons have a pretty consistent list of enemies, this includes but is not limited to:
Momentum (labour party group)
‘Snowflakes’
Shemima Begum
Vegan sausage rolls
The EU
Jeremy Corbyn
Ash Sarkar
Rich people who support poor people (hypocrites)
Poor people who support poor people (work-shy)
The Gammon-Snowflake Feud
Though the list of enemies includes many people, from grime artists to bakeries, the arch-nemesis of the gammon is, undoubtedly, the ‘snowflakes’. Snowflakes can be seen as the first shot fired in the generational culture war. It was coined by those who would later be called gammons, to describe millennials (people in their 20s and 30s) who went to university, vote labour, and think trans people are ok. The term can be attributed to the 1999 film Fight Club, in which lead alpha Tyler Durden proclaims to a room of men disappointed with their lot in life that they ‘aren’t a special snowflake’. Originally ‘millennial snowflake’ upon its rise to popular usage, the term was later shortened so as not to be too exclusionary to older people with progressive social views. Those people who think they are unique, special, or in some way deserving of more than they currently have are thus labelled ‘snowflakes’.
Where do we go from here?
You may think such insults as ‘gammon’ are inherently childish, antagonistic, and do little to help calm people amidst our polarized political atmosphere, and that’s understandable. The fact is though that in modern political discourse, a form of communication and shared understanding that is rapidly changing by the day, easy catch-all words to identify a group based on their attitudes are unavoidable. I would argue that ‘the gammons’ is a relatively useful term in identifying a group as, though it contains a racial element, it primarily uses beliefs to identify those it encompasses. Compare this to referring to ‘the English’, ‘the Muslims’, or ‘the gays’. These groupings, and the connotations that come with each, apply attitudes to groups retroactively. ‘Gammon’, and arguably ‘snowflake’ are labels applied to a set of values and attitudes. If you’re not upset about vegans and trans people, then you’re not a gammon, regardless of age, race, gender, or nationality. Similarly, if you went to university, live in a city, care about climate change, and think the British Empire was kind of a bad thing, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re 100% snowflake.
Usual left wing crap.