Are We The Baddies? UK Edition

Meme created by reddit user chompythebeastFrom the meme: Quite Interesting @qikipedia states that “Independence from Britain is celebrated somewhere in the world, on average, one in every seven days.”

This is because Britain had such a vast empire, many modern countries celebrate their independence from British rule. There are so many of these independence days that, statistically, one occurs roughly once a week.

See the following map:

Map credit Llywelyn2000

Bottom Part (Reaction Image)

The image below is a well-known meme from the British comedy That Mitchell and Webb Look, where David Mitchell plays a Nazi officer who, after noticing some skulls on his uniform, nervously asks his comrade:

“Are we the baddies?”

You can watch the original sketch here here:

In this meme, his uniform has been edited to include British symbols (Union Jack and coat of arms), implying he’s representing Britain rather than Nazi Germany.

Combined Joke

The meme humorously implies that Britain, given how many countries celebrate their independence from it, might have been “the baddies” in a lot of historical situations (colonialism, imperialism, etc.).

So the overall message is:

“If so many nations celebrate freedom from you every week… maybe you were the villain in their stories.”

You can see the full list of countries have gained independence from the United Kingdom here.

Books on the subject:

• The British Are Coming: The War for America
• The Fate of the Day: The War for America
• Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation
• Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World
• Great Britain, the Dominions and the Transformation of the British Empire, 1907–1931: The Road to the Statute of Westminster

Here are a few other memes in the same vein: