It says a huge amount about the confidence of the royal family, that they feel able to respond to their Nazi home movie with nothing other than outrage that anybody should see it. They make no denial they were giving Nazi salutes, no statement that the royal family did not support the Nazis. Of course the young children had no idea of the implications. But the adults most certainly did. The missing figure is the cameraman, future King George, who was filming his wife and brother displaying the family sympathies.
The royal family were of course German themselves – completely so. Since George I every royal marriage in line of succession had been conducted in strict accordance with the Furstenprivatrecht, to a member of a German royal family. The Queen Mother, who was of course not expected to feature in promulgating the line of succession, was the first significant exception in 220 years. She was evidently trying hard to fit in. But I am not sure German-ness has much to do with it. Nazi sympathies were much more common in the aristocracy than generally admitted. Their vast wealth and massive land ownership contrasted with the horrific poverty and malnutrition of the 1930’s, led the aristocracy to fear a very real prospect of being stood against a wall and shot. Fascism appeared to offer social amelioration for the workers with continued privilege for the aristocrats. It is completely untrue that its racism, totalitarianism and violence was unknown in 1933-4. They knew what they were doing.
Happily fascism was defeated. The royal family is of course only the tip of the iceberg of whitewashed fascist support – without even starting on industrialists, newspaper proprietors, the Kennedys, etc. etc. But the Buckingham Palace option of outrage that anybody should ever remember is very sad – still more sad that such a position gets such popular support.
We never did get round to shooting the aristocrats.
I am an optimist in politics. My experience of life has taught me that altruism is a far stronger human urge than selfishness. Modern political fashion is based on the denigration of the urge to cooperation, and I do not believe will survive.
Which leads me to believe we are now living in an embarrassing past. Future generations will look back at the massive and exponentially expanding gap between rich and poor, at the super state security services and near total surveillance, at the violent wars waged in ill-disguised annexation of resources, and be amazed that people could support it. I also think that enormous shame will attach to all those who support the excruciatingly slow genocide of the Palestinians. That will be part of our embarrassing past.
“I didn’t say everyone who voted for Hitler was a Nazi.”
No, we’ve already established that. Let’s not go round in circles.
You said “I would expect around the same proportion as those who voted for Hitler in 1933 being Nazis.” Which is 44%. Therefore, substituting terms, you are saying : “I would expect around 44% to be Nazis.”
Who are you referring to?
Here the Red Tories live up to their name.
The government’s brutal, monstrous welfare reform bill passed its second reading in the Commons tonight by 308 votes to 124, meaning that somewhere in the region of 80% of Labour MPs abstained on it.
http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-end-of-irony/#more-73559
Roll on Scottish independence.
More on the Red Tories abstaining.
Just 308 MPs voted in favour of the Welfare Bill a few minutes ago.
Excluding the Deputy Speakers, Sinn Fein and the tellers, there are 311 opposition MPs.
The SNP, the DUP, Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats and the SDLP all voted against.
Labour (with the honourable exception of the rebel contingent) abstained, leading to the Bill being passed by 308 votes to 124.
http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/for-avoidance-of-doubt-labour.html
If it goose-steps and talks like a nazi;
It’s a nazi. But let’s dumb it down, shall we?
“Let’s not go round in circles.”
Fine by me. Goebbels bragged about how easy it was to drag the gullible along with you. Tell them that everyone else is out to get them, tell them everyone else is lying to them, tell them everyone else is evil and the Nazis are the only ones they can trust. Invoke nationalist pride, tribalist rivalry.
He explained exactly how it was done.
Fred : “He explained exactly how it was done.”
…. which is more than you are willing to do. You make broad sweeping comparisons between the SNP and nazis, but when you’re asked to explain exactly what you mean by them, you avoid answering a direct question, then change the subject.
Put up or shut up.
Habbabkuk (la vita e’ bella)
20 Jul, 2015 – 4:46 pm
“Science has demonstrated that unremittingly negative thoughts and excessive, obsessive bitterness are VERY bad for one’s health.”
………………………………………………………………………
Quite true Habbabkuk but what are the drivers that lead to “unremittingly negative thoughts and excessive, obsessive bitterness”?
The people with these ‘afflictions’ must have reasons to be as they are, as in the cause/effect relationship.
Being forced to live in squalor and deprivation; having your homes demolished; being unlawfully arrested; being put in detention without charge or legal process; being tortured or having your parents, siblings and children murdered…
Yes I can see how those circumstances could be bad for their health.
But don’t you see your politics are the politics of hatred just the same as the politics of Hitler?…..
Fred, although you don’t profer association fallacies, you do however engage in syllogistic arguments. Don’t you see?
So what should we learn from the Royal family’s early and possibly willful blindness to Hitler’s dark side? Along with so many other supposedly humane, intelligent, even liberal-minded people, it should be added.
Appeasement didn’t work too well. So perhaps we should support early military engagement when we see fascist movements gaining a foothold abroad and terrorizing their neighbors. But then how to define fascist? How about: extreme authoritarianism; intolerance of others to the point of genocide; worshiping cults of personality and violence; anti-liberal hatred of modernity such as sexual, artistic and academic freedom; obsession with community decline or victimization and related nostalgia for a greater or purer past.
All of these traits could be seen very early in Hitler’s fascism, as Craig points out. Gays, Jews and liberal-minded folk were already being attacked and persecuted, dissent suppressed, neighbors threatened, violence glorified. And it wasn’t only the British royal family that stood and watched for too long.
If we’re going to learn something, where do we see such rhetoric and actions these days? Islamic fundamentalism is where! They have exactly the same characteristics of hatred, violence and racism, feed off exactly the same power. And just because we see the injustice of the Iraq war and the guilt of the west in laying the foundations for their rise, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t blind ourselves to the absolute vileness of what ISIL and their fellow travelers are saying and doing. They are the absolute refutation of any kind of decency, human rights, liberalism, enlightenment. So what do we do about it? Stand by while they build their power, terrorize their neighbors? Hope they go away or at least just get on with their vileness in a different part of the world and don’t make us confront it too much. Right, that worked so well last time… Which is actually the point The Sun may have been trying to plant.
In dealing with ISIS, it’s better to do nothing than to bomb from a great height. If you put your right hand into a pot of boiling water to retrieve a coin, only to do the same thing again with your left hand, then you are a fool. But learning from our past mistakes in history is something we’re not very good at.
M Scorgie
“Habbabkuk (la vita e’ bella)
20 Jul, 2015 – 4:46 pm
“Science has demonstrated that unremittingly negative thoughts and excessive, obsessive bitterness are VERY bad for one’s health.”
………………………………………………………………………
Quite true Habbabkuk but what are the drivers that lead to “unremittingly negative thoughts and excessive, obsessive bitterness”?
The people with these ‘afflictions’ must have reasons to be as they are, as in the cause/effect relationship.
Being forced to live in squalor and deprivation; having your homes demolished; being unlawfully arrested; being put in detention without charge or legal process; being tortured or having your parents, siblings and children murdered…
Yes I can see how those circumstances could be bad for their health.”
________________________
I do apologise, Doug – I had not realised that Mary and the other Eminences expressing negative thoughts and obsessive bitterness on here had undergone any of the circumstances you point to.
I suspect that the causes of their negative thoughts and obsessive bitterness are other.
Fine by me. Goebbels bragged about how easy it was to drag the gullible along with you. Tell them that everyone else is out to get them, tell them everyone else is lying to them, tell them everyone else is evil and the Nazis are the only ones they can trust. Invoke nationalist pride, tribalist rivalry.
He explained exactly how it was done.
That’s not a recipe for Nazism alone, though, is it, Fred? That’s a recipe for getting the uncritical and badly-informed masses behind you in a cause which itself might be good or bad. See also this (I’ve posted it before) –
http://theconversation.com/the-five-point-plan-used-to-justify-fighting-wars-is-being-deployed-in-media-again-32348
As you say, Hitler didn’t have the technology – though he had as good technology as anyone else. We have, in particular, media technology which can get a message worldwide in seconds, and which is absolutely dominated by profiteering interests. The message, originating from the politicians in power, is spun and dumbed-down by the huge corporate PR industry, and spoonfed by the media -whose workers are selected for their ability to cut-and-paste without analysis or criticism – to a public which is carefully not educated in the workings of the system. You might be disturbed by that, but your obsession with Nazis obscures your view.
Still and all, what got the massive SNP majority? Rigged elections? Nope. Thugs beating up the socialists in the streets, and later arresting them en masse? Nope. A romantic notion of racial purity? Wagner by torchlight in Ibrox? Come off it. What got the SNP its votes was the incompetence of the UK government in managing the fallout from the banking crisis, the long continuation of the same, and the total abandonment by Labour of any principles it may once have had, leaving its ex-industrial heartland unrepresented. It was mainstream unionist UK which failed, leaving a power vacuum. And the SNP had the wit to exploit it, and any media it could wrest away from the PR fixers.
I confidently predict that it will take no longer than five years to demonstrate that a democratically constituted party like the SNP can actually make no difference at all to corporatism, austerity or Osborne, and the SNP will lose half its gains at the next election. Then I think we might be looking at a surge in fascism. Won’t be the SNP, though.
^^(not a clone. Me)
How much does David cameron pay you for doing this job, Fred?
Your posts get more frequent and erratic, does he really pay that well to undermine the SNP?
You are a Tory boy through and through, even when all the other English parties are down, you keep on going admirably, what a show….. and only against the SNP.
do you get a bonus?
There’s another angle to this, too. Fred loves to equate the SNP, which is an independence movement, with the German Nazis, who weren’t. For a start I would like to know if he considers Ireland to be a fascistic country? Were its successful revolutionaries any more fascistic than the UK’s agents, in particular the Black and Tans? And this was a violent revolution, not a democratic one by a party explicitly committed to peaceful means, as the SNP is.
And Norway? Not exactly renowned for supporting the German occupation, either, it broke from Sweden by entirely peaceful means, very similar to what the SNP is proposing, and has always proposed.
do you get a bonus?
My own experience of living in remote Highland communities, in the agricultural/estate sector, is that you think and do whatever the laird tells you. Otherwise, no job and/or no tenancy. That may be the answer to your question.
Stop arming them, there is an arms embargo on anyone that so much as disagrees with the USUK et al. That is other than ISIL/ISIS/IS/Daesh. These mercenaries are being used as their predecessors in “al Qaeda”, and the culprits who arm them, train them, fund them (that is the USUK goubiments) then start pouring their crocodile tears and talk about the same nostrum as before; bomb the crap out of yet another Muslim country!
That has been the case for the past decades in case of zionistan. The lunatic supremacist zionists have been killing British soldiers, British Ministers, bombing the crap out of their neighbors, terrorizing the Palestinians, setting up “Jewish only roads”, and areas, whilst the world has sat back and watched twiddling its thumbs. Why The Sun is not talking about that? Is seventy odd years too soon for the Sun and the rest of the oligarch owned media to twig on to those facts?
Conclusion; blow out of your elbow, this one has bells on, go find a class of infants to preach the bullpucky you have been plastering on the thread. BTW doest the H in the moniker stand for little Hitler, or Heil?
“They are the absolute refutation of any kind of decency, human rights, liberalism, enlightenment. ”
Thanks David H
You’ve defined the West so well and it’s freedoms is human rights based on individualism and egalitarianism. How fortunate we all are. Keep bearing.
Fedup, 9:17 am, your attack on DavidH (4:59 am) was uncalled for. I’ll return to this in a while.
The t**** still sprays his poison and names me in his latest.
His ‘negative thoughts’ are dissent and protest against a rotten system with an increasingly fascist government in charge of it.
~~~
The 48 Labour MPs who did not abstain in the Welfare Reform Bill Second Reading were:
The full list of MPs are here:
Diane Abbott
Debbie Abrahams
David Anderson
Richard Burgon
Dawn Butler
Ann Clwyd
Jeremy Corbyn
Geraint Davies
Peter Dowd
Paul Flynn
Mary Glindon
Roger Godsiff
Helen Goodman
Margaret Greenwood
Louise Haigh
Carolyn Harris
Sue Hayman
Imran Hussain
Gerald Jones
Helen Jones
Sir Gerald Kaufman
Sadiq Khan
David Lammy
Ian Lavery
Clive Lewis
Rebecca Long Bailey
Andy McDonald
John McDonnell
Liz McInnes
Rob Marris
Rachael Maskell
Michael Meacher
Ian Mearns
Madeleine Moon
Grahame Morris
Kate Osamor
Teresa Pearce
Marie Rimmer
Paula Sherriff
Tulip Siddiq
Dennis Skinner
Cat Smith
Jo Stevens
Graham Stringer
David Winnick
Iain Wright
Daniel Zeichner
Kelvin Hopkins (Teller)
Good for them for caring.
Jay, 9:19 am; don’t speak too soon. I’ll come back to this, too.
Ba’al Zevul 8:58 am and Nevermind, 8:52 am; from my personal knowledge, you’re wrong about Fred.
Fuck, why does every fucker want to FIGHT? Fighting’s the PROBLEM, not the SOLUTION. Dear Truth help us all!
OK the UK monarchy is a thorn in the flesh for Scotland, reminding them of bitter defeats at the hands of the Queen’s forebears. So why don’t they, the Scots, go to the US and say, look here you supes, an injustice was done to us same as the Sykes Picot Winston Churchill Syrian border and the crushing of the Muslim Chaliphate.
Why not give us a few weapons and humvees so we can kick droopy chops German Ma’am Bordellbesitzerin out of her oversized bungalow in the Scottish Highlands. And we will sell you cheap stolen Scottish oil in return. The ensuing military hostilities will boost local businesses and give employment to disaffected youth.
All this carping on about the injustices of history is a bit teenage. If the Scots get independence, like IS have now been given a chaliphate, we will get to see what kind of bunch of nutters the chaliphate is, or Scotland really is, when given enough rope to hang themselves.
Maybe?
DavidH, 4:59 am, you make a number of very important points, but miss other equally important points. Unfortunately, the missed points have become sparks around which fires threaten to spread. No one can be expected to think of everything; if only there were more tolerance…
– – – – –
Sorry for these many rapid comments, I’m trying to act fast…
“…. which is more than you are willing to do. You make broad sweeping comparisons between the SNP and nazis, but when you’re asked to explain exactly what you mean by them, you avoid answering a direct question, then change the subject. ”
Nothing wrong with my answers, you have a problem with your questions, you will keep on asking them till you get the answer you want.
What is thin thread about? The thread is about the Royal family being portrayed as Nazis. So many people eager to believe the Queen is a Nazi based on the flimsiest of evidence.
When photos were published of SNP supporters harassing Jim Murphy and preventing him from speaking this blog declared it the “Worlds Worst Photoshop”, yet photos of a family playing were proof of their Nazi sympathies. Seems to me the Nationalists reserve the right to be derogatory towards everyone else on the political spectrum, paint them as murderers, paedophiles, traitors yet all criticism of themselves must be stamped out.
People are the same wherever you go, there is good and bad in everyone and throughout history nationalism has brought out the worst in people.
Will you lay off adjudication! The “contributor” is clearly promoting the bombing of Syria!
Fedup
The neighbours of Daesh are not afraid of fighting them. The sociopaths of US Christian fanaticism , like John McCain, get a chance to enact their sociopathic fantasies in the back end of Syria’s cowboys and injuns land, using the world’s sociopaths – believe me they do not have to believe in God or be Muslim to join this Israeli free-daily-amphetamine Daesh gravy train.
Ba’al Zevul 8:58 am and Nevermind, 8:52 am; from my personal knowledge, you’re wrong about Fred.
Like any good person of Yorkshire descent, I speak as I find. If Fred wants to portray himself in the worst possible light, that’s up to him. For all I know he’s a Zen master with the wisdom of Krishnamurti – oops, sorry – and the Godly compassion of Christ. But that is not how he comes across to me. I am also making what I consider to be fair points. I would welcome some fair comment on these.
DavidH, 4:59 am, to take your points in order:
Pretty good recognition check-list for fascism – I note that it’s a description of government and society.
Yes, it is seen there, but also elsewhere, and specifically relevant to this, in the power structure of Saudi Arabia. However, many of the extremists within groups such as ISIS are rebels to the Saudi monarchial power structure; consequently, the Saudi monarchy and its allies, ie. most of the West and the other Gulf monarchies, can deny responsibility.
More…