Waking up this morning and putting on the TV to see the news, instead I saw on BBC Breakfast a 30 minute piece on the role of a teenage girl in 1932 in helping her father do the maths to establish that the Spitfire needed eight .303 guns to deliver a sufficient weight of shot.
That sentence contains the total import of the 30 minute film. In spreading it out over half an hour, the BBC managed to repeat slight variations on that sentence over forty times, padded out with numerous shots of spitfires, Battle of Britain reminiscences and the exhibition of the kitchen table where the maths was done.
I am very glad the Battle of Britain was won. I admire the heroism of those who fought. My mother never forgot her only brother, an RAF navigator who was shot down and died aged nineteen. I am not mindless of the stakes or the sacrifice. But I am old, and the war was over more than a decade before I was born. It is as chronologically distant from a child born today as Victoria becoming Empress of India was from me. I have repeatedly been tempted to write about the WW2 obsession in the media and the English political psyche, but have refrained from not wishing to offend those with whose emotional ties I sympathise. But this is becoming an unhealthy obsession with a “glorious past”.
The BBC’s piece today actually finished with a Churchill speech, with spitfires flying and with Elgar. It was like a parody. The recent focus on Churchill’s vicious racism might as well not have happened. It really is going too far, and it links in to a current day militarism which was initially cultivated by New Labour and Blair’s obsession with neo-imperialist wars abroad.
You have a war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. We have had “anniversary” events that mark the 70th, 75th and now 80th anniversary with the result we have a full 16 years during which not a day passes that is not a “major anniversary” of an event in WW2, on which peg the BBC can hang more “Britain’s Greatness” nostalgia. Very plainly this all meshes with Brexit, with the nostalgia for Britain’s world-bestriding role exuded continually by Johnson and Gove, and with the new aggression of Unionism. It gets less and less subtle – Stalin’s propagandists might have blenched at today’s BBC state propaganda piece. The girl who did the maths deserved her recognition. But not like this.
In the real world, the UK has just resumed arms sales to Saudi Arabia to massacre the children of Yemen and support the jihadist terrorist fanatics of Idlib.
I am going to keep this page permanently open for comments, and hopefully bookmarked on the right hand side, so you can record future examples of BBC WW2 Porn as they occur, or indeed other examples of gratuitous official militarism.
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Well said, Craig, and many readers will agreeably understand your comments! Many, like myself, had relatives who lost their lives and/or were injured during both the World Wars, however, we tend to quietly and understandably respect that generation’s endeavours, rather than echoing propaganda-like phrases that appear all too often! Who needs to say much more?
Another thing the Brits don’t do is to have stonking great military victory parades every May 8th. Like in Moscow, for example – very quiet and utterly non-propagandistic.
It was either Cameron or Johnson who wanted to do that.
Funny how Remembrance Sunday always comes in for a lot of stick from certain groups with an agenda but there’s never a comment about the unashamedly military parades favoured by some others ( July 14th in France, Victory Day in Russia, etc).
Great post. England needs something to boast about.
How about:
“Boris Johnson’s ‘Government’ has led to more deaths in the last six months than Nazi bombing acheived during the Blitz” ?
The Germans unlike our beloved NHS never attacked the care homes.
What is NEVER mentioned in regard to WW2 is the price that the British Empire paid the United States for their backing and participation in it. Whilst Pearl Harbour may have convinced the US to take part, it was a back room deal that made them decide to help FUND the British effort.
Simply put, the deal meant the end of the Gold Standard, the end of the Empire as it was and an exit for Britain from the world stage as a superpower. After the war, whilst the US went on to have decades of prosperity and growth, the British Empire crumbled and we had decades of austerity, near bankruptcy (ACTUAL bankruptcy were it not for the Marshall Plan) and a debt to the US which was only paid off by the Blair government. The Americans gained greatly and we lost greatly for this war.
And, whilst we look back and see that this was WAS necessary, we know so much in hindsight that we did not when war was declared. We know now that approximately 11 million civilians were murdered by the Nazis in the lands they occupied. In fact, even that figure is rarely quoted. We wrongly think it is 6 million because that is the number of Jewish people murdered, we forget that the Nazis also murdered the disabled, Slavs, Gypsies and almost anyone else who either didn’t agree with them or look like them. The truth is far worse than most think. But prior to the war this had yet to happen and, even at the war’s end, we were only hearing ‘rumours’ of death camps. The war was fought on the basis of territory that was annexed, nothing else. We knew Hitler to be anti-semitic but most of Europe WAS anti-semitic, pogroms were still happening prior to the Nazis making it part of their policy. Britain was anti-semitic too, although I tend to think this has always been less so than the rest of Europe. Much of the world admired him and we all know about the Life Magazine of ’38.
When we look at that, and then realise the deep racism of our own leader Churchill, we can only realise that whilst in retrospect the war was necessary and righteous it was not at the time it started. Simply another war over territory and one where the Americans used their leverage to gain financially and put themselves highest on the world stage where they remain today.
At school we were taught nothing of either of the world wars but I doubt that today’s children are taught any of these facts. They will have the edited highlights, as seen in retrospect…
I think that was an impressive comment from 6033624. I think most British people have only the sketchiest of ideas about the history of WW2 and the grotesque injustices that flowed from the British empire.
What is alarming is the way that British thoughts and dominating ideology has been shaped by the trite half truths and hypocrisies of recent history as promulgated by the BBC and other media.
Much of the greater reality seeps out but one has to make a real effort to move past or avoid the mountain of bullshit that accompanies so much popular culture.
Very little thought is ever given to the degradation of moral spirit that accompanied these events. My father rarely mentioned his experience but his family all knew that his physical health, psyche, personality, moral impulse, energy, and that of countless others, was damaged and corrupted by the experience and replaced with a sullen pragmatism that rendered so many people.I do indeed have a contempt for those state organs and the many individuals in them playing the same jingoistic tunes endlessly.
What is rare is that anyone makes anything but the shallowest of criticisms of our current state and the blogpost here shines a rare light on to the uncomfortable realities of our current culture.
Interesting comment about not being taught anything of either of the world wars at school.
I went on a gap year to a school in Austria and the way history of both wars was taught was a real eye-opener. Remember, Austria relinquished its regional superpower status at the end of WWI, when the Austro-Hungarian empire dissipated. In WWII, they were annexed by Hitler. So they saw the world rather differently to us lot.
‘History’ is actually propaganda written to condition peoples.
It is rarely unemotional, factual, dedicated to telling the truth.
6033624 – you’re absolutely right
In fact, the US began ruthlessly shoving Britain aside right after WWI. The story is brilliantly told in Michael Hudson’s book Superimperialism, which describes US financial policy in the 20th century – sounds boring but is fundamental to an understanding of international relations.
(It’s available free online at https://michael-hudson.com/books/ – in return for a donation)
Not to forget the funding of Nazis and the close connection the US industry biggest players and Wallstreet especially had with Germany.
“Moreover, American assistance to Nazi war efforts extended into other areas.17 The two
largest tank producers in Hitler’s Germany were Opel, a wholly owned subsidiary of
General Motors (controlled by the J.P. Morgan firm), and the Ford A. G. subsidiary of the
Ford Motor Company of Detroit. The Nazis granted tax-exempt status to Opel in 1936, to
enable General Motors to expand its production facilities. General Motors obligingly
reinvested the resulting profits into German industry. Henry Ford was decorated by the
Nazis for his services to Naziism. (See p. 93.) Alcoa and Dow Chemical worked closely
with Nazi industry with numerous transfers of their domestic U.S. technology.
Aviation, in which the J.P. Morgan-controlled General Motors firm had a major stock
interest, supplied Siemens & Halske A. G. in Germany with data on automatic pilots and
aircraft instruments. As late as 1940, in the “unofficial war,” Bendix Aviation supplied
complete technical data to Robert Bosch for aircraft and diesel engine starters and received
royalty payments in return.”………………………….
American companies associated with the Morgan-Rockefeller international
investment bankers — not, it should be noted, the vast bulk of independent American
industrialists — were intimately related to the growth of Nazi industry. It is important to
note as we develop our story that General Motors, Ford, General Electric, DuPont and the
handful of U.S. companies intimately involved with the development of Nazi Germany
were — except for the Ford Motor Company — controlled by the Wall Street elite — the
J.P. Morgan firm, the Rockefeller Chase Bank and to a lesser extent the Warburg Manhattan
bank.18
https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_Hitler.pdf
Yes — and the British have every justification for pride that our parents’ or grandparents’ generation unhesitatingly poured out all the accumulated wealth of empire in the cause of rescuing Europe from the Nazis.
Just don’t forget that the main burden of killing and being killed was born by the USSR, and that industrialised murder enveloped almost the whole continent apart from the British Isles.
You say “never”; it is indeed rarely mentioned. But Britain was paying off debts to the USA, incurred during WW2, until the 1990s. FDR wasn’t the “urbane and genial” character he is often painted as.
No regrets; the USA demolished the British Empire as the price for military aid, and became the foremost world power. I have no nostalgia for empire. I do regret the damage that was done to British economic capacity.
Craig Murray must not be watching very many current British films lately as so many of them are full of war propaganda and anti-Russia bashing. Anything featuring Benedict Cumberbatch or Lily James or set in the 1930s – aliens from Mars would think the 1930s were some kind of Golden Age of peace and prosperity in Britain if they were to watch these films – and funded by Hollywood should be avoided like the proverbial plague.
The BBC is the mouthpiece of the right wing in Britain it has been since it,s inception,the majority of the public do not comprehend or do not want to comprehend how they are indoctrinated by the subtle ways information is fed to them from news programs ,documentaries and so called discussion programmes.If you have any radical thoughts or ideas you will never see the inside of a studio.
The story of the girl and her father was featured in the programs about the Battle of Britain presented by Kate Humble & Dan Snow. It was interesting, but hardly news.
newsflash! britain was still part of winning coalition in ww2! details to follow.
Craig has put his finger on a central element of the (largely BBC-driven) militarization of our culture.
If I may shyly offer another example:
https://markdoran.wordpress.com/2017/06/24/who/
M.
Interesting post about the militarisation of Delia Derbyshire’s classic Doctor Who theme.
I suppose you don’t want to get started on the propaganda surrounding Vera Lynn’s death and funeral and the song that made her famous.
What I find fascinating is that supposedly strong leading female characters in modern dramas are always super fighty and violent, it’s like a woman can only have equality and be the best if she’s a wisecracking violent psychopath. It seems to me to be an effort to militarise the female mind. I find that very sad.
My parents used to complain about the militarisation of little boys thought with action figures and toy guys.
The escalation of violence in the psyche is very disturbing to me.
Very interesting article, Mark. The compilation of Dr. Who themes being slowly degraded over time is depressing.
It’s particularly sad, I think, because TV theme tunes from our childhood have a special power to haunt us and transport us back to a lost realm of wonder. The two most potent, in this respect for me at least, were the theme tunes to Belle and Sebastien and Robinson Crusoe. Anyone else remember those with affection?
I discovered “Doctor Who” when it was televised in the USA, c. 1980, beginning with Tom Baker episodes.
I assume they used the Delia Derbyshire theme; its swooping synthesizer or Theremin cascades were/are riveting and exciting.
I always wondered why Emerson, Lake & Palmer didn’t cover it, as far as I know. They did a pretty good job with the “Peter Gunn” theme, and the “Who” theme seemed perfect for the late, great Keith Emerson.
Pink floyd used to tie it into On Run!
Mil-porn and nostalgia-porn are about the only growth industries these days.
You have to wonder if it is deliberately directed/manipulated, or if it is simply people in general, clinging onto something they can feel proud of?
Harking back to the glories of the past has been going on forever of course – and is so much easier if you can also “remember” the past the way you would like it to have been… a golden-age, as comfort food for the ego.
For that you need a little creative story telling.
Others might call that propaganda, narrative control, or selective memory.
I couldn’t possibly comment.
After the banking crash all western powered expanding their balance sheets. You would hope this new money would go on helping get the country back to its feet but it rarely does. The army and the secret services always barge to the front of the queue and snarfle up the lions share.
They spend so much on propaganda it’s untrue – Hollywood films are funded by CIA operations the military offer Up to 40% budget help. They don’t do this because they like movies they do it to colonise the minds of the public. It’s grotesque
Surprised that there are no comments about the beginning of the war in Europe in Spain in 1936. Contrast the record of the Soviets and Mexico with that of the UK and France.
Next what about Maxim Litinov Soviet foreign minister from 1930 t0 1938 and a Jew? He was replaced by Molotov to make the deal with Hitler after failing to get a anti fascist alliance with the west.
What about Munich?. The Soviets offered to send their army to protect the Czech’s.. Poland would not agree to the transit of Soviet troops. The Poles also wanted part of Czechoslovakia which they got after Munich.. Finally there is the Munich Agreement a sellout when the German Army’s elite was mobilized for an anti-Nazi putsch if France and the UK had said no.
The more reasonable explanation of Litvinov’s replacement is that Stalin got tired of the attempts to build a collective security system in Europe and needed a tough negotiator who would make a deal with one of the two opposing parties. If Stalin was determined to make a deal with Hitler in the end of May when he sacked Litvinov, there is no explanation why nothing had happened until mid-August between Germany and USSR. In fact, as late as August 2nd, Schulenburg talked to Molotov and reported that Molotov was eager to make a trade deal but was very anti-German when it came to politics and accused Germany of trying to provoke a war between USSR and Japan. This would be a strange attitude for someone who’s job was to make a pact with Hitler. Hitler’s attitude was also not very pro-Soviet; at some point in June he even forbade Schulenburg and Weizsacker (who were both pro-Russian) to make any preliminary attempts to negotiate a deal.
But in less than 2 weeks everything changed. Stalin realized that GB and France won’t make a deal with him that will bind them to defend USSR; Hitler realized that the Poles won’t yield to his demands. And in a big rush, Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed.
Agree that the Soviets would have made a deal with France and the UK. However a Jew could not make a deal with Hitler. Also agree that the Soviets needed a tougher Foreign Minister.. However France and the UK could have stopped the fascists both in Spain and at Munich. This is my point since the post is about UK and western WWII porn.
Yes but at the time Stalin and the Bolsheviks had already murdered millions – the “Fascists” had barely started. I’m not saying they didn’t go on to do the same as the soviets ie. murder millions, however in 1939 this was not yet the case.
“..Stalin and the Bolsheviks had already murdered millions ..”
I can only presume that you are blaming Bolshevik economic policy for the ‘millions’ who died in the famines. If you are not then where were these millions of deaths? Except in the minds of propagandists.
Far from ‘having barely started’, the fascists in Italy, Germany and Spain were killing large numbers of people-including autistic children, homosexuals, the disabled, along with racially ‘inferior’ people and, first and foremost, their political opponents throughout the 1930s, when opportunity allowed.
Your generalisation, based upon a falsification of statistics and a failure to differentiate between victims of economics and those deliberately murdered, leads you to the conclusion, favoured by fascists everywhere, that the communist system was as bad as the fascists’. In fact even the victims of famines died as much because of western boycotts and military aggression as poor economic policy.
Consider today the plight of Venezuela, North Korea and Iran: in all three countries people are dying and have died because the US and its allies have engaged in economic warfare against them- warfare whose object is to cause famines which, it is calculated, will lead to famines, the deaths of millions and, in the end, revolution and regime change.
No doubt you blame the North Korean government for mass malnourishment over the years, the Venezuelan government for its failures to purchase food and medicine imports and Iran’s clerics for economic distress there.
These policies are modeled on those used against the Soviet Union.
bevin
So Anti-bolshevism = Pro-Fascism.
Yes I’ve heard it all before.
It is possible to dislike both.
So, the Cheka and the Red Terror, The Stalin White Sea-Baltic Canal, the entire Gulag system, deportations of entire ethnic groups in inhumane conditions – never heard of those? And of course the Holodomor – dismissed airily as “economic” deaths.
And I notice you’ve side-stepped Katyn.
The Soviet Union was a charnel house, yes it wasn’t the only one but in terms of scale in 1939 they were way ahead of the competition.
You sound like the Brits really cared how many people Stalin or Hitler killed. You should read their Cabinet discussions (for example, in Keith Nielsen’s “Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919–1939”) where no Gulags were mentioned but the main consideration was that making the deal with the Soviets will alienate Poland and Romania, who were considered to be more powerful than USSR. Chamberlain himself said this in his letter to sister Ida, that “…our close association with her (that is, with Soviet Russia) might easily cost us the sympathy of those who would much more effectively help us if we can get them on our side.” Inskip and Halifax were the main supporters of Polish Superpower myth in the Cabinet. Thus, since they overestimated the military strength of Poland and underestimated USSR, they made the wrong choice.
Yuri K.
To be fair they were not the only ones inflating the power of the Polish military – not least the Poles themselves!
They had after all stopped the Red Army in it’s tracks twice and even in 1939 the strength of the Polish forces was to all appearances quite impressive, with on the whole excellent equipment (even though they had effectively bankrupted themselves to pay for it), even unnerving some of the more nervous members of the German Staff.
Now of course we get the “cavalry against tanks” guff. It is often forgotten that when the Germans invaded the USSR in 1941 they took more horses with them than Napoleon had done in 1812!
You are correct. For example, in August 1939 Poland’s Foreign Minister Josef Beck told French ambassador that he considered Soviet Union “worthless” as military power. There were, probably, just two statesmen in Europe with a clear state of mind back then: Bonnet, who predicted a “catastrophe” if Poland’s stubbornness kills the talks with the Russians, and Churchill, who always wanted everyone on board against Hitler, Soviet Russia included. But in Chamberlain’s Conservative government probably only Hoare shared this view. This wasn’t enough.
Read here published by J. Carley
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339150635_Telling_the_Real_from_the_Fake_The_Origins_of_World_War_II_Paper_given_in_Moscow_week_of_15_decembre_2019/link/5e46b79892851c7f7f3aa59b/download
Just a note to say that where Craig refers to the way “The BBC’s piece today actually finished with a Churchill speech, with Spitfires flying and with Elgar”, he’s misattributing music that’s actually by William Walton: it’s from the music the latter wrote for the film ‘The First of the Few’, released in 1942, and which — I’m speaking here as a British music bore! — is *magnificent*. In particular, folks should look out for the sequence in which the assembly of a prototype plane, parts added one at a time, is accompanied by a fugal musical structure whose contrapuntal texture is developed by way of *parts added one at a time*. It’s fucking *brilliant*, and I will defend it in any forum.
..
https://youtu.be/i4zk3dHZ11w
M.
The eye-watering myth taken apart by none other than Professor of Strategic Studies at St Andrew’s:
‘Britain was not in any way the “Few” in the Battle of Britain. It was in many ways the superior power that won the battle quickly & at relatively little cost. It was never in doubt.’
Etc, etc:
https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1281931679595220992
The Battle of Britain. Cute how the Scots are written out of history. It was not a real battle if England never fought on alone against all odds and as such the battle loses its real name. The battle of the UK.
amid their “we’re rather wonderful, aren’t we?” deluge, certain facts are always kept neatly tucked under the carpet —
hitler’s inspiration for the holocaust was one of the giants in the development of u. s. capitalism, the midwesterner henry ford.
the inspiration for his treatment of russia was the pitiless looting of india by you know who.
the number of wehrmacht divisions faced by the allies was somewhat less than that faced by the soviets.
british troops, aka the best in the world were always defeated by the wehrmacht unless they had an overwhelming numerical advantage.
six of the seven 5-star u. s. generals and admirals in 1945 declared truman’s nuking of japanese civilians completely unnecessary and a crime against humanity.
the baby boomers who scorn today’s youth did not actually participate in wwii in any way, shape or form. (this was the revelation that most shocked me.)
The baby boom came after the war due to lots of people starting famalies then, so it would be impossible for the baby of that boom (such as myself) to take part in that war. Its a mystery to me why this information would be a shock and a revelation to anybody.
thanks johny. it was a little tongue in cheek.
The inspiration for his treatment of Russia was based on his admiration for the americans
and their no nonsense matteroffact ordained by god displacement/genocide of the native tribes I believe.
The other kind of indians, as opposed to the cowboys. Pewpewpew! (sorry)
People do have a rather simple choice: switch off the BBC.
I do not watch the BBC much any more, nor do I use their website much any more, apart from the weather.
I do not do so because I no longer regard the BBC as a News organisation, rather a self-righeous woke gauleiter of globalist totalitarian ecofascism.
They never respond to complaints, so it is either switch them off or beat them up.
So I switched them off.
I disagree with the “eco” bit. I watch Channel 4 News instead.
It’s a sad day when you can judge the calibre and integrity of a channel’s News reporting by the (repeated) number of times a Government spokesman is unavailble for comment.
Next step. Ditch the telly. Then for similar money invest in a half decent projector. Big screen in the living room, hook up to the new fangled internet, bin that licence. It’s all out there. Works for me. Decades have now gone by and I do not feel ‘left out’!
I have long felt that Britain’s love affair with World War 2 is because it was the last time a declining empire stood against a major adversary without the USA doing the heavy lifting; at least until December 1941.
It enables us to believe that Britain was Great, and in the words of ‘1066 And All That’ we were Top Nation.
What it does NOT do is show that we are still Top Nation either militarily, economically or morally.
Jingo Bells. Jingo Balls. Jingo all the way.
Having spent years promoting divisive identity politics, I think recent events have scared them now into trying to find some common national identity to rally around. But as noted the result is a bit pathetic and irrelevant.
A useful corrective to the Churchill myth is Clive Ponting’s biography:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Churchill-Clive-Ponting/dp/1856192709
Reading it made my see why Boris Johnson is so drawn to see himself in the Churchill image – vanity, deceit, opportunism and reliance on well-placed family and friends.
Indeed. However, Churchill had a couple of additional aces to play. Chronic drunk. Psychopathic war criminal.
Better keep an eye on Johnson.
I would be interested to see the BBC TV schedule since WW2 analyzed and graphed, particularly the last 8 years. I have uttered the words “not again?!” many times in the last four years and, in 2017, became so weary of the BBC’s empire & greatness nostalgia, and it’s feckless incompetence & ignorance when it comes N Ireland, that I quit watching or listening to all BBC news, politics & current affairs programmes.
I do watch historical programmes by David Olusoga & a few things on BBC 4, but the rest seems increasingly to represent a propaganda network.
I am Irish, living in Ireland, w an English wife. We have watched the BBC for 60+ years (all our lives), here, in the UK, on the continent, in Asia, in Africa. The only place we didn’t watch it was the US, because it wasn’t available then. I never thought to boycott it before 2017. The lack of pushback from Today programme presenters to barefaced lies about NI, a part of their own country, and about Ireland, in the context of Brexit, just became too much to endure any longer.
My English sister in law & family seem particularly representative of the target audience. She reads the Telegraph, is in her 60s, and her father was a Spitfire pilot. The family home is shrine to the Spitfire, with prints of it signed by surviving pilots, hung in every room. She cried during the film Dunkirk. The entire family voted for Brexit. The eldest son has a specialized job in an industry reliant on the EU single market. His employer has moved the first of three plants to the continent. He expects to be unemployed.
On a visit to Ireland it was clear Mrs Spitfire never for one second considered the effect of Brexit on either part of the country and knows nothing of the UK’s bloody history here. “Oh, I’m sure they will sort something out and it will all be back to normal in a couple of years” was her go to indication that it was all too difficult and it could be waved away for now. There is an added tragic irony in relation to her close family ties to war in Europe and its aftermath, equally blithely overlooked, but it’s not for me to rehearse here.
Suffice it to say that the English exceptionalism and ignorance were and are impregnable and have been sustained by dishonest media for decades, in terms of amnesia, selective memory (as documented by Ian Cobain in The History Thieves), and misrepresentation of history, in particular of the UK’s actual importance in winning WW2.
It’s not difficult to see where this will end. Mrs Spitfire will blame the EU for punishing the UK for leaving. Her children will agree. THAT is a concern, and a reason I think that the break with the EU may not simply be something that will expire with the boomer generation & its obsession with greatness. The corrective that seems inevitable &, to me anyway, welcome, is surely the break-up of the UK, followed by the English discovering that the world doesn’t revolve around them. Alas, it will take time and self-inflicted hardship that now appears unavoidable. Afterwards, they will study history with the seriousness of the Germans. And if a charlatan like Nigel Farage appears in future he will not be platformed endlessly by the English Broadcasting Corporation. The one way mirror around Britain reflecting greatness back will finally have enough cracks to see the world outside as it is, and thereby to see how the UK actually looks to its neighbours, former colonial subjects, and others. The misplaced sense of superiority will finally be laid to rest.
Well said, Samuel. I agree with every word. A Brit living in Ireland since 2006, father died in a Lnacaster flying a pathfinder mission. Always a realist despite BBC and other propaganda.
I live in the Netherlands, and stopped watching BBC because they are actually so very good at propaganda
and forming shaping and steering narratives.
They are insidious, a slippery kind of velvet that plays the heart like a string instrument
while slipping a poison dagger in our backs. It is all poison.
Dutch and Belgian broadcasting you can see coming from a mile away. BBC often needs sussing out.
“The one way mirror around Britain reflecting greatness back”
Well put. The US is worse. It might take total defeat to crack the one way mirror here.
My word. We do like looking back don’t we. If only we could learn something from the process?
Last night we were treated to another dose of cringeworthy ww2 glory propaganda with a documentary singing the praises of the royals and their heroic part in ‘winning’ the war.
That’ll be the German Royal Family with dubious links to Mr Hitler, at least now they can all speak english …
Indeed, I felt the same, especially about the end of the program. I watched it in the hope of finding out what those calculations were. What variables were being assembled and assessed? At least we did find out that Hazel went on to be a medic, saving life rather than destroying it.
The late great Heathcote Williams on Harry Patch.
Harry Patch – Anti War Hero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d26IVqVivE
The war took place a long time ago. The war now is a fight against government corruption and preservation of our rights
There is no war right now. No-one is interested in government corruption or “rights” that is why the people surrendered without a fight. They are so uninterested in these things that in a Pavlovian manner they are prepared to reaffirm their surrender every time they are asked – which is increasingly frequently.
In the unlikely event that people change their minds about their surrender it will make little difference as the government is nothing but corruption. Take away the corruption and you necessarily take away the government. 100% of public services are funded by corruption. Ask yourself who is going to fight against the NHS, schools, pensions housing benefit et al.
I try to encourage people to voluntarily dismantle the NHS and people think I am either crazy or the epitome of evil.
I think that most people cannot accept that ALL war is bad, there is no such thing as a good war or a righteous war. War represents a total failure of diplomacy and politicians. And, there is never any consequences for the failed diplomats or politicians that start the wars that lead to death and destruction for so many – but not for the politicians and diplomats.
Maybe we need a legal ‘decimation’ process that in the event of a war being entered into, then every tenth member of the parliament of the day is selected to be hanged for their failures and as a consequence of the death and destruction their failures have led to ?
‘It was the Hun who did it’. The second great unpleasantness features at least once/week in our local and national papers and is used to underline the island mentality so beknown to a now crumbling empire.
The bbc is a propaganda organ that has used its national broadcasting brief to psychologically massage public consent and it is spamming ourr minds with falsehood.
Wars are ugly, bloody and very lucrative to the arms manufacturing spine that props up a failing industrial policy and the ability to supply oneself with vital goods we need, because we are dependent on others for that just on time support. Some wars have been raging for a long time, like the war on drugs, futile, costly and totally inefficient, because we have a split relationship and total ignorance in office.
Since a very long time, mainstream banks have laundered drugs money, just as they have facilitated and used offshore havens to weaken state’s exchequers.
Conseauetive trade rounds have given global corporations massive powers and despite the common reporting standards CRS of over 100 OECD partner states,signed in Berlin Oct.2014, has yet to bring any results against the army of offshoring accountants and bankers.
Wars will continue to rage with all its violent inhumane excesses as long as we are selling arms and fuel conflicts.
just to repeat myself, breaking up the bbc is a positive move and long overdue, imho.
Churchill was not anymore a racist than anyone else back then. To wheel out this dreary woke cobblers now is pure idiocy. If Mr Murray was any kind of a historian at all, he would know that.
And let’s not kid ourselves. When it comes to flag waving racist nationalist bigots, Scotland is the epicentre of the UK.
That’s a rather inflamatory statement don’t you think? My uncle who served in Burma during WW2 had nothing but admiration and respect for the Indians he served with and spoke many times of the friendships he made with them. Churchill is well known for thinking the Indians were somehow inferior, so to say that everyone was as racist as him is not only unfair but also wrong.
As far as Scottish nationalists go, they just want an Independent Scotland. They don’t want to differentiate by creed or colour they just want to be free from English domination. If you think that the Scots Nationalists are the epicenter of bigotry when you have the likes of the EDL running about, who seem to base their entire philosophy on creed and race, then perhaps your moral compass is a bit off.
Churchill, like many other prominent figures of his time on the right and left was heavily influenced by eugenics. Which was not remotely controversial at the time. Serious historians are well aware of this and much else. Which is why they don’t go down the idiotic “Churchill was a racist” road that appeals to drippy Guardian readers with a poor understanding of the past.
Craig Murray is supposed to be a thoughtful individual capable of navigating through the past without resorting to silly Owen Jones style diatribes.
If you want to call yourself a historian, then behave like one.
Scottish “independence” is currently about crawling to Brussels cap in hand. Where they will soon find that the EU’s best days are behind it and they have a minuscule place at the table and zero influence. There is no socialist Shangri-La at the other side. No free universities or welfare state to speak of. No neocon free zone that Craig imagines. No freedom from their hated neighbour who will remain the major stakeholder in their economy and dictate the rules. They will also see the Ireland Tax Haven come tumbling down like the house of cards it is, and wonder what the hell they were thinking as the UK forges ahead signing free trade deals with the anglosphere, commonwealth and beyond.
And yes, I get Scottish Independence, and respect those serious Scots who desire it, for precisely the same reason i respect Brexit. But it ain’t going to happen with the current slippery globalist leadership in Scotland. There is no vision. It is based on lies and resentment.
Huw Manoid.
BTW, Enoch Powell was well known for being a big fan of the Indian intellect. Meanwhile, Clement Attlee has recently been exposed for being not exactly Woke regarding the early days of The Windrush.
This is why it is foolish to go down the “Churchill was a racist” road, and why serious historians avoid doing so.
Dreary? cobblers? idiocy? I would replace such crass with hopeful, interesting, and encouraging. War is not only bloodshed, not only gore, massacre, and murder; war is deception, propaganda, and intolerance. There is nothing good about military confrontation even though it unshrouds greed, selfishness, and the strange morality of sacrificing a life to save the many.
We remember the Falklands war and the initial US response was ambivalent to downright pro-Argentinean until Weinberger pointed out the UK was key to keeping Soviets out of key lucrative Latin America export markets. America worried that a protracted war could draw in the Soviet Union on Argentina’s side, with far-reaching geopolitical repercussions in an area of the world the US saw as its backyard. Also In plain sight was a repetition where military means subverts the political process, and then, with the weakening of non-military action, an increase in military action becomes imperative, This backed by a corrupt media that reacts to prevent us from knowing the strength of support for peace.
The Falklands war murdered my best friend ‘Eggy’ on HMS Sheffield, an unprotected frigate used as a decoy on the western flank of the British fleet. The top-secret Exocet disarm signal failed to prevent fire and damage from the heat of a jet engine that burnt through the extensive use of aluminium instead of steel on Naval frigates at the time.
No! Bravo Craig Murray
It seems to me that the BBC is in hock to this Tory government and will use their power to invade living rooms with government propaganda. The Labour party, apart from New Labour (and the recent Starmer led party), sets itself out as a Democratic Socialist party, (see back of membership card) in other words it wouldn’t, if true to its principles, ever use WW2 to gain credence with the voting public, sadly huge swathes of voters fall for the Tory game and puff up their chests as they put their X against the Tory candidate. It’s one of the sickest methods in politics along with the recent antisemitism charges against Corbyn to win voter approval, only a truly educated and woke population will bring these despicable practices to an end.
The Second World War is the cornerstone of Anglo-American self-congratulatory mythologizing; endlessly milked to justify “liberal interventions” by the Good Guys. Take it out of British and American history and there would be much more recognition of the rather unpleasant dominant themes in each.
You seem to have omitted to describe the rather unpleasant dominant themes to which you urge recognition. Some may think it is hard to recognize something if they son’t know what it is they are supposed to be recognizing.
If only you tell us what they were then we could compare and contrast them with the dominant themes of past empires like the Spanish Empire, the Mongol Empire, the USSR, the Islamic Caliphate, or even smaller Empires like the Ashanti empire. This last should be of great interest at the moment but for some hard to explain reason is of no interest at all.
“ Very plainly this all meshes with Brexit, with the nostalgia”
Exactly. The Brexshiteers are being coordinated with the playbook to hard BS,
It started with inciting the gammons to frenzy again with the amber clown over Blackburn, and is progressing with the risible Dan Snow and gammon historians fake nostalgia for beating Hitler! No we didn’t. The RUSSIANS DID.
Moronic ‘ mah cuntory back types who seem to think they got their sovereignty back’, what did the ‘Romans ever do for me’ morons. The EU never stopped my U.K. bosses abusing me type slobs.
While they support their football teams full of ‘foreigners’, love their favourite foods (foreign) and enjoy their music (mostly ‘black’) Bozo sells the NHS as they promised not to and imports Chlorinated chickens and hormone beef and GM everything else, as they promised not to and peruses the hard BrexShit – they promised not to.
Watch as poodle Keri puppy rolls over and rubber stamps it through hence making sure Labour have a hand in destroying what was really achieved by the Real sacrifice of WW2 – not some pathetic Snow flak fake history.
Amber clown = banner flown
With random auto typing with thumb on a not so ‘smart’ phone ?
Mental excercise: If WW1 was the great war, and WW2 the good war, how will WW3 be advertised
for the edification of future generations?
There probably won’t be any future generations after WW3.
spill the beans Kempe, you seem to be assured that ww3 is a given.
Perhaps, ‘The Quiet War’.
Plenty deaths and destruction, without the distasteful blood, guts and rubble. It’s happening now!
Cheers!
WWIII will be a economic war of sanctions that’s currently being used by the USA, sanctions on Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, and Iran and Venezuela, plus sanctions on individuals. Sanctions have indirectly killed millions of people in my opinion.
WWIII is currently underway, but not in a military sense, sanctions are the new weapons of mass destruction they’re a illegitimate form of collective punishment that disproportionately affects the weak, the poor and the sick of the targeted countries. Only this month Iran petitioned the International Court of Justice (the Great Satan, the USA has sanctioned ICJ personnel I think) for relief from unilaterally imposed US sanctions, stressing they violate International law.
They also violate the 1955 USA/Iran Treaty of Amity and Economic Relations and Consular Rights, the (ICJ) ruled in Iran’s favour, and although the (ICJ) ruling is binding Trump as head of the Great Satan ignored it. Iran is legally entitled to trade freely with other nations, US obstruction, is a breach of the UN Charter and International law.
So was the Great Satan’s walking away from the (JCPOA deal) it was unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council member states, which made it binding in International law and US Constitutional law.
In saying the above proxy wars and regime changes are, and will probably be, the first port of call after sanctions have failed.
There is no “International law”. Ask the Uighurs in Xinjiang, or the Rohigya in Burma to name but two.
The Iranians are really in a pickle because they have the same leadership they had in 1979, and they weren’t exactly doing a good job for their people back then.
You are right about sanctions though. Alas, they don’t hurt the top brass.