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| Subject: Oh, Harry, you fool | |
Author: Ian (Australia) | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 23:49:39 01/13/05 Thu [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| [> Subject: It's funny... | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 00:47:57 01/14/05 Fri ... in two main ways. The first is that the people who seem to be least insulted are the Jewish Council of Great Britain, who, in accepting his apology, have recognised that he wasn't really trying to voice his support for the Nazis but was in fact just a bit stupid. As a Red Sea Pedestrian myself, I am not remotely insulted, since I am quite well aware that Harry is not a Nazi - he just has bad taste in fancy dress costumes. The second is that, about four years ago in a restaurant in Mayfair, I was having lunch with a Tory candidate for the Wrekin constituency, and he told me that, if I were ever to consider a career in public life, I had to start considering things which I couldn't do. And, ironically, given the present circumstances, one of the specific things which he mentioned was, "for example", as he said, going to a fancy dress party as a Nazi. He said that, while all my friends would say, "Oo, how clever, no-one else would have thought of that," the newspaper clippings would make a public career impossible. Prince Henry Windsor of Wales should have known better - not because wearing a blatantly ironic costume is in itself daft (I personally think that Rommel - as whom he was dressed - was one of the least evil ones), but because it must have been obvious even as he was hiring it from the Cohen Brothers, Covent Garden, what the media reaction would be. Harry is rather like my brother: a good boy, sporty, not too bright, Sandhurst candidate, etc. But, unlike my brother, the media will inevitably pick up on something like this whenever he does it. I fear that, like the Queen's late sister, he is not really prepared for the royal role. In some ways, this is to his credit; but it doesn't really do the monarchist cause much good. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: hmm | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 09:19:08 01/14/05 Fri While I think someone in his position ought to know better, I think this whole incident has been blown out of all proportion. Have people lost their sense of humour? Would the TV show Allo Allo cause great offence with its caricatured Germans if it were still shown today? Just for the record, I once dressed up as a pirate at a fancy dress party. I would like to apologise unreservedly to the victims of piracy. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: I think the storm was blown up by the BBC and NewsCorp who seemed to make the most of it. Known Republican sympathisers. | |
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Author: Conspiracy Theorist [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 09:29:17 01/14/05 Fri [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: I once dressed up as a nun, so I guess I should apologise for the inquisition, the witch-burning craze and rampant pedophilia | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 11:39:28 01/14/05 Fri But the holocaust is a little more recent than the inquisition and (wrongly, in my opinion) occupies a unique place in our culture as the supreme image of the evil that humanity is capable of. Harry should have thought a little better, as should William, since I gather he he was in the hire shop with his brother. Does rather beg the question of what a nazi uniform is doing in a hire shop if it is unacceptable to wear it. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> Subject: it's only unacceptable if someone is 3rd in-line to the throne and you want to get rid of the throne. | |
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Author: Nick (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 12:06:48 01/14/05 Fri [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Would there be the same outcry if he wore a Che Guevara t-shirt? I suspect not | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 14:05:13 01/14/05 Fri [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Indeed... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 14:45:56 01/14/05 Fri If you want to gauge whether this furor about morals, ethics and responsibility, or whether it is about politics, motivated by republicanism or class hatred, you only need to read the comments on the BBC News "Have Your Say" page. The usual rhetoric about privilege, insensitivity and aloofness are once again conspicuous. Some are even suggesting that he should not be allowed to go to Sandhurst! I would tell them to take a chill-pill and stop their politically motivated hysteria, but my comments are never published anyway: no doubt due to the BBC’s right-of-centre spam filter. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Media mayhem | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 01:24:10 01/15/05 Sat Have you noticed how hard the media are pushing this? If I didn't know better I'd begin to think that they had an agenda ;-) 24 hours after the story broke, it seemed like a very minor thing, since he had apologised, the Jewish Council of GB had accepted his apology on the grounds that it was a poor choice of costume and not an explicit statement of his political principles. 48 hours afterwards, the BBC had been calling up anyone and everyone who might make a slightly stricter comment, and came up with that deranged Labour MP who thought that he should be disqualified from going to Sandhurst (which wouldn't happen in the case of any other Sandhurst applicant). Now, 72 hours later, there are three page spreads in all the papers as more and more 'public figures' and rent-a-quote dinosaurs begin to realise the potential for just a few more column inches in the twilight of their careers. All of them seem terribly offended that we were not more offended. I even saw in a newspaper today one of those "for" and "against" pages, where two blokes are found to argue one side each: in this case, is Harry a spiteful and offensive young hooligan who would have been a BNP skinhead had his pater not been HRH the P of W, or is he just a party animal with a wry sense of humour which occasionally goes beyond the usual boundaries of good taste? This is not in itself surprising; but the fact that they managed to dig up two El Alamein veterans for the article (of which there can't be more than a dozen left) and pay them to have their say rather suggests and extraordinary amount of effort to 'keep the story going'. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Guevara never managed to kill six million in his whole career | |
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Author: Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna Lynch [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:12:05 01/15/05 Sat Hasta la victoria sempre! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: I rather suspect that Rommel didn't either, but that's hardly the point, is it? | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:51:41 01/15/05 Sat My gripe is that someone like Che Guevara can make a career out of commiting murder and help set up a dictatorship that continues to commit murder, yet somehow be seen as chic. Rank hypocrisy. A murderous thug is a murderous thug, whatever colour his flag is. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: It's sickening you know... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:23:50 01/15/05 Sat There is a restaurant in a fashionable part of Glasgow called Mao, where people go to enjoy lunch over the watchful gaze of the "chairman". It seems that it is acceptable to theme an eatery as a monument to one of the worst periods of Chinese history. What utter hypocrisy! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Aye, dinnae git me startit | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:12:26 01/15/05 Sat [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: But then Rommel was never a Nazi | |
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Author: Ein european [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:05:19 01/16/05 Sun In fact he was forced to commit suicide for his alleged involvement in Hitler's attempted assassination in 1944. He probably never wore a Swastika armband, because only the SS would wear armbands and Rommel was in the Wehrmacht. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: The Nice Nazi? | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:40:10 01/16/05 Sun Here, I'm all for standing up for Harry on the grounds that he's not evil but just a bit of a twit, but to suggest that there is a qualitative, rather than quantitative, difference between Rommel and Hitler is absurd. So was less mad than Hitler. So were Mussolini and Franco. Doesn't make them nice chaps. He fought for National Socialist Germany for years, and helped to roll the allies back to the Egyptian border. I doubt that any of his private papers say, "Ach, I am so unhappy because of all the successes which I have won for the Third Reich. I wish that the British would fight me better so my conscience were at rest." Also bear in mind the fact that many of those who wrote the anti-Jewish legislation did not approve of the Holocaust. Frankly, I do not think that these people were nice chaps because they thought that mass extermination was going a bit far, and that the Reich should stick at putting the Jews in ghettos and making them wear stars and so forth, which was comparatively moderate. These things are all relative, and while Rommel may have been nice compared to, say, Hitler, he was quite nasty compared to, say, Neville Chamberlain. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Not all Germans were bad... | |
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Author: Ein European [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:34:35 01/16/05 Sun No, he was never a Nazi. He lived in a Nazi state and he was a professional soldier, and a damn good one as well. THe fact that he was a professional soldier fighting for Germany between 1939-1944 doesn't qualify him automatically as good or bad. Prussian soldiers didn't question the motives, they just acted to the better of their abilities. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Ah... | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:54:21 01/16/05 Sun So he was just following orders, was he? Well, that's fine then. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Probably would be. Guevara was anti-Royal. | |
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Author: Harry Hewitt [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:32:03 01/15/05 Sat Don't I look like my father? [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> Subject: What has the reaction been in Australia and Canada? | |
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Author: Nick (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 09:38:39 01/14/05 Fri [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: The SMH article begins: "He's not a Nazi, he's just a very naughty boy." | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 11:29:34 01/14/05 Fri A poll in the (moderately pro-republican) Sydney Morning Herald gave these results (8711 votes): It's just fancy dress - 33% A bit thick - 37% Deliberately provocative - 6% Mind boggling - 15% Very royal - 6% Undecided - 0% [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: Most Canadians so far think it's just the crazy antics of a teenager and are not taking it to heart. It was a very stupid thing to do. | |
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Author: Jim (Canada) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 12:19:31 01/14/05 Fri [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> Subject: He may not be a Nazi but many of his family were nt | |
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Author: Harold Windsor [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:03:28 01/14/05 Fri [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> Subject: ...What? | |
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Author: Roberdin [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:08:03 01/14/05 Fri Oh, hey Curnoak. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: Quite. | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 01:08:57 01/15/05 Sat On the other hand, there is a grain of truth in the fact that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were not uncomfortable taking tea with Hitler. Conversely, they are isolated examples - especially since Edward was in fact forced to abdicate, which rather suggests that the system works fine - and of course Edward was, to put it kindly, a bit dim. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> Subject: An poinion piece from the Sydney Morning Herald | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:29:27 01/17/05 Mon "Why Nazism is a joke to callow Harry" The trivialisation of Hitler's Germany began long before Prince Harry, writes Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute. January 18, 2005 Prince Harry, the third in line to become head-of-state of Australia's hereditary constitutional monarchy, is at it again. In what might resemble a scene from an updated version of Evelyn Waugh's novel Vile Bodies, the wealthy young things of the King's Road, Chelsea, saw fit to dress-up for a "Colonials and Natives" knees-up at Highgrove. So it was off to Cotswold Costumes for some hired gear that would look frightfully gorgeous on the night. Prince William decided on a black leotard outfit while his younger brother went for the German Army Afrika Korps number - complete with matching black Nazi swastika set on a white and red background. The Sun obtained a photo of Harry-as-Nazi, all hell broke loose, and the Prince issued an "I am sorry if I have caused any offence" apology. The problem turned on the use of "if" in this context. However, in defence of Harry, at least he was attending a fancy dress party which - by definition - has a sense of unreality about it. It is unclear whether Harry knows anything about Europe in the 1930s and 1940s or, more broadly, about totalitarian regimes - fascist, Nazi and communist alike. If he is ignorant of these matters, then it is possible that he has been influenced by the modern word usage which regards the terms "fascist", "Nazi" and "Stalinist" as mere weapons of abuse, devoid of any historical meaning. In the lead-up to the second Gulf War, many demonstrators took part in marches in which the democratically elected leaders of the "coalition of the willing" (led by the United States, Britain and Australia) were depicted as having a fascist or Nazi disposition. For example, demonstrators in Sydney on February 16, 2002, carried a large portrait of John Howard on which was drawn an Adolf Hitler-style moustache. Now, the young Prince Harry has met the Australian Prime Minister. Who knows? In a historical mode, he may have come to the conclusion that if Hitler was just like Howard, then the founder of national socialism may not have been too bad after all. In which case, what could be wrong with wearing Nazi insignia when out and about with the (equally ignorant) King's Road set? In early 2003, the Australian expatriate journalist John Pilger declared that "the current American elite is the Third Reich of our times" and maintained the "regime of George W. Bush is totalitarian". According to this view, Bush and Hitler are much the same. Pilger writes regularly for the British leftist New Statesman magazine. Last November it ran a cover story that depicted Tony Blair as the communist Joseph Stalin. Robert Service, who has written a valuable biography of the Soviet Union dictator, went into hyperbole mode as he attempted to find parallels between Stalin and Blair. The totalitarian put-down has also found a use with respect to the British self-proclaimed "reality" TV program Celebrity Big Brother. The story is well known. Despite her past denunciations of such phenomena, Germaine Greer became a guest on the British version. She subsequently quit the house amid much controversy (what's new?), but not before describing the organisers of Celebrity Big Brother as "fascists". Compared with Hitler and Stalin, Benito Mussolini fits into the category of mass-murderer-lite. Even so, according to R.J.B. Bosworth's recent biography, the founder of Italian fascism "sent early to the grave at least a million people, and probably more". Yet Greer believes it appropriate to use the same adjective to depict a tyrant-killer and the producers of an entertainment program who pay its talent good money to make fools of themselves. In Australia in recent years it has become almost a fashion to make reference to fascism/Nazism and/or communism in order to score political points. In his book The Right Road?, the historian Andrew Moore wrote that "it is not so very far from the truth" to "suggest that in 1951 Australian fascism's headquarters were in The Lodge, Canberra". In other words, Moore maintains that the long-serving prime minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, was really a fascist. This despite the fact that he declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939 at a time when the Communist Party was in alliance with Hitler, in accordance with the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Such confusion is rife, on both sides of mainstream politics. Online journalist Margo Kingston maintains that Australia, under the Howard Government, is in a "pre-fascist" condition. Last year cartoonist Bill Leak depicted the Prime Minister giving a Hitler-style salute as leader of what he termed "The Howard Youth", while brown-shirted youngsters sang the Nazi refrain Tomorrow Belongs to Me. Commentator Mungo MacCallum compared last year's Coalition policy launch with "a Nuremberg rally". And Jackie Stricker equated Howard's opposition to gay marriage with "Hitler's Germany". Whatever the merits of this decision, the fact is that homosexuals live freely in democratic Australia. In Nazi Germany tens of thousands of gays were incarcerated and murdered. From another perspective, Sydney radio presenter Alan Jones is on record as describing State Government regulation of local councils as "Hitlerism" and government controls over gambling as an example of "Gestapo-like tactics". In June last year retired General Peter Gration joined with such leftists as the late Jim Cairns and Professor Ted Wheelwright in comparing the Howard Government's anti-terrorism legislation with that initiated by the Nazis seven decades previously. Then, in recent times, Julian Burnside, QC, has insisted that it is appropriate to equate a democratic government urging its citizens "to dob in tax cheats" with "what happened in East Germany under the Stasi" secret police. What's more, legal representatives of David Hicks, who was detained in Afghanistan and is alleged to have been fighting with al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban, have maintained that he will receive "a Stalinist-style show trial". The fact is that there was no justice in Stalin's USSR, of either the civil or military kind. If well-educated, intelligent and outspoken citizens in Western democracies sincerely believe that their societies can be compared with Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, the Soviet Union under Stalin or Stalinist East Germany, why should society expect the likes of Prince Harry to know better? Especially when it remains fashionable in the West to display the images of communist mass murderers such as Lenin, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh. If it's OK to wear a hammer and sickle on the King's Road, why draw the line at a swastika? Harry may be a lightweight with scant knowledge of Hitler and Nazism. Yet his general understanding of totalitarianism is no worse - and probably better - than that of many commentators who look at democratic societies such as Australia, Britain and the US and see manifestations of fascism/Nazism/Stalinism. At least the Prince took his borrowed gear back to the hire company after conceding (sort of) that he had made an error. Whereas the likes of Greer and Pilger keep recycling their own historical howlers. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: opinion. o-p-i-n-i-o-n. opinion | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:46:54 01/17/05 Mon [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: Fascism Redefined... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:12:16 01/17/05 Mon Yes, I quite agree with that article. It seems that the main criterion for being judged a fascist nowadays is to possess an opinion which deviates significantly from the liberal-left's "progressive consensus". Unfortunately, this churlish reaction, coupled with an apparent inability to formulate articulate arguments to make their case in other ways, has resulted in a devaluation of the original meaning. It is worth reminding that Charlie Chaplin was parodying the Nazis when their actions were apparent to all. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |