Nazi Party

[monkey_magic]

I think that's still relevant today though, with all the hysteria that surrounds violent films and video games.

 

I'm not sure if he was intending to be particularly political, or just ad-libbing (very funny) absurdities. Proabably a bit of both. On the same recording he made up a song that went "I'm a n igger and I fcucked a white chick". (He also put a collar and lead around the neck of an African friend when he was at university and took the "wog for a walk".)

 

Reminds me of a sketch in the Young Ones, where a police man utters a string of racist remarks to a white guy, then takes off his sun-glasses and says "Sorry John, I though you was a n igger."

 

It'd never happen these days.

[Mark Saber]

Might have happened at Harry's party - apparently some of them were blacked up to fit in with the colonial theme.

 

You learn all about Master/Servant relationships at Public School - but not from the Masters, who of course are your servants.

[hollandaise]

Reminds me of a sketch in the Young Ones, where a police man utters a string of racist remarks to a white guy, then takes off his sun-glasses and says "Sorry John, I though you was a n igger."

 

It'd never happen these days.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

And isn't that a terrible indictment of our politically correct times? When a joke like that - intended, quite rightly, to display the mindlessness of racism - is no longer considered suitable viewing.

 

I suppose this is because people in positions of authority assume racism has now been 'phased out' of our society. Which is clearly not true.

 

One of the great things about satire is how it shows up social injustice without becoming po-faced about it. Of course, it would be nice to think that's what Prince Harry intended when he ... but no, I seriously doubt it!

 

Instead, he's just given stand-up comics some great new material.

[simon]

If you say an offensive thing often enough it just becomes an absurdity. I'm pretty certain that that was also partly what 'Derek and Clive' was about. And I know that people have debated this for ages.

 

I heard someone say, the other day, that Prince Harry should be sent to Auschwitz. It might have been on 'Any Answers' - which is a radio forum for people who talk to the radio. A couple of weeks ago on 'Any Answers' someone made a reference to the events of 7 - 11.

[Rog]

This is already being quoted wholesale in part as well as in full as fact - especially in the Middle and parts of the Far East where it's being lapped up.

 

http://www.vialls.com/myahudi/princeharry.html

 

The home site is also well circulated and quoted as both fact and proof though its actually even more crappy than 'rense'

[Keristal]

What surprises me about the whole affair is that some of the papers censored the picture! hiding the fact that he had a ciggy on the go! I really think he overstepped all bounds of public decency there and he's been lucky with the treatment he's received, especially from the USofA. B)

[simon]

[StuartT]

And 50% of the population of the UK don’t even know what Auschwitz was let alone what took place there.

 

And you get this 'fact' from where?

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“Almost half the adult population has never heard of Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi death damp, according to a poll to mark the 60th anniversary of the death camp's liberation.

 

More than one million people died in the camp in Poland during the Second World War, but 45 per cent of the 4,000 people questioned in the survey said they had never heard of it. Among women and the under-35s, the level of ignorance rose to 60 per cent”.

 

Full story at http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml...3/ixportal.html

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I really think that poll is a load of rubbish. Considering the Final Solution is a central part of the national curriculum now, and was when I was at school, I wonder where on earth did they get these statistics from? They're either made up, or they asked people who were thrown out of school before they got to that stage in history, or were asleep or something. Either way they failed the course...

 

And I think you will find the Final solution is a lot more in the public awareness than other attrocities that are ignored. For example not many people seem to know about the misdeeds of the Japanese, Russians, etc...... These largely seem to pass without comment. I wonder whether anything would have been said if Harry has attended the party dressed as Hirohito, or Joseph Stalin?

 

Also the comments of some people on here who profess to be know all about the final solution are quite worrying. For instance some people talk as if the Jewish people were the only victims of the holocaust? What about the Mentally handicapped, Homosexuals the Gypsies, and the Slavic people? Perhaps they should be doing some reading up themselves?

 

IMHO Harry showed very poor judgement in his actions, but then personally I've always thought he was a little lacking in the common sense department. However I'm sure he was not himself displaying any sympathies to the Nazi's themselves, rather he was parodying them. He needs his arse kicking (by his Dad), and to apologise, but the whole reaction is a little out of proportion.

 

And those who make offensive comment about the British Army are quite clearly talking out of their arses. Maybe you should actually get to know soldiers + officers before you comment on them. That kind of sweeping generalisation is the kind of ignorance that the Nazi's themselves displayed.

[Rog]

Also the comments of some people on here who profess to be know all about the final solution are quite worrying.  For instance some people talk as if the Jewish people were the only victims of the holocaust?  What about the Mentally handicapped, Homosexuals the Gypsies, and the Slavic people?  Perhaps they should be doing some reading up themselves?

 

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Y’see the thing that makes the Jewish situation different from that of the other people killed in the extermination camps is that the intent was to make an entire race of people extinct.

 

In the case of the other people killed it was a case of mass murder, in the case of the Jewish people it was genocide – a word that had to be created because such a thing had never been attempted before by a modern civilised society which is what Germany comprised.

 

Death is death, murder is murder, but there is a difference between even mass murder and an attempt to make a race extinct. That is where the difference lies.

[Bill Posters]

....a word that had to be created because such a thing had never been attempted before.......

 

But sadly has since. Even though the UN is reluctant to use the word when the facts are staring them in the face.

[Mission]

Indeed Bill.

 

Let's just hope there isn't a rather unpleasant species out there in space that happens upon our small world, then we'll all know for sure what genocide is!

[StuartT]

Also the comments of some people on here who profess to be know all about the final solution are quite worrying.  For instance some people talk as if the Jewish people were the only victims of the holocaust?  What about the Mentally handicapped, Homosexuals the Gypsies, and the Slavic people?  Perhaps they should be doing some reading up themselves?

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Y’see the thing that makes the Jewish situation different from that of the other people killed in the extermination camps is that the intent was to make an entire race of people extinct.

 

In the case of the other people killed it was a case of mass murder, in the case of the Jewish people it was genocide – a word that had to be created because such a thing had never been attempted before by a modern civilised society which is what Germany comprised.

 

Death is death, murder is murder, but there is a difference between even mass murder and an attempt to make a race extinct. That is where the difference lies.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

And what about the intentions to wipe out Gypsies as well? Or do you not realise that they also count as an ethnic group (actually originating from India a theory states)? And why is it any worse to attempt to wipe out a group of people because they are a race, than it is to wipe out a people because they have a political belief, or stand in the way of someones ambibition, or because they are 'defective'? IMHO there is no difference, an intention to wipe out a group of people for whatever reason.

 

 

Have you read up on the attrocities of Stalin, or of Hirohito? Exactly the same happened before and after the war in Russia, when the White Russians,the Cossacks and a number of other groups were liquidated. POW's both Axis and Allied were taken by the Russians and kept in Ghulags for many years after the war (indeed in the era of Glasnost + towards the end of communism in the late 80's, it was suggested by the Russian leader at that time - I cannot recall if it was Gorbechov or Yeltsin that there were still POW's in the camps). Also read up on the 'Rape of Nanking', as an example of what happened when the Japanese conquered a civilian population.

 

 

You have to get this perception out of your head that somehow the final solution is unique. It is an example of genocide reaching a level of unprecedented efficiency. It demonstrates what happens when people are unprepared to stand against a tyrant, and of the immorality + horror of wiping a group of people out. But the reason the Jews were considered a target for extermination (same with the Gypsies, and the Handicapped) was that they were percieved as a threat to the German nation, they had been seen as its betrayers in the past (The "Stab in the Back" of the first WW). They were therefore seen as a problem to be removed. When you consider it in those terms you see why there is no difference between wiping out a people because of their genetics and culture, or doing it because of their political beliefs, or because they surrendered (or were ordered to do so).

 

 

And I nearly sprayed my screen with coffee when I read that the Final Solution was the first example of genocide! Believe me it was not at all. Ever read about the oppression and massacre's of Armenian Christians by the Turks that made Lloyd-George object to supporting Turkey? What about the genocide against the aboriginies in Australia? Or the actions against the Highland Clans after Culloden? The actions of the Crusaders? Or of the Teutonic knights against the Slavic people? Infanticide because of mental or physical defects is age old. Historys pages are littered with examples of genocide or attempted distruction of a people because of their way of life. You just have to look for them. And as you well know they still go on today - Saddams actions against the Kurds, the events in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda - need I go on?

 

 

Funilly enough, I seem to see daily criticism of the events in Iraq, and the British Army. While I am not wholly in favour of events there, I have had both friends and close family out there, and had certain events in my life taken a different turn, might have gone there myself. I wonder if those people who are so quick to shout condemnation for a war, which though not wholly fought for humanitarian reasons, has brought about some good, have seen (or know people who have seen) the suffering of the Iraqui people? Have they also heard the stories from those who fought in the liberation of Kuwait, of standing on the borders of Iraq watching the kurds being slaughtered, with no power to aid them, because UN mandate does not allow it?

 

 

Why do you seem to almost be stating that to wipe out a group of people because of their genetics is a terrible thing, but if it's about politics, then that's ok?

 

 

There is no difference, so don't get into a cosy mindset, cos that's when you get into the attitude "Oh well it could never be that bad again". And then it happens again - As my FEPOW grandad (who never recieved an apology from the Japanese Government for what happened to him) said "Forgive, but do not forget. For when you forget, that is when it happens all over again".

[Rog]

Stuart, you have made an exclent post on a difficult subject. really, well done.

 

Here's my thoughts.

 

The mass murder of the Gypsies was just that – mass murder. They were seen as being ‘untermenshen’ but were not targeted for annihilation as a race. There is a difference between mass murder and an attempt at genocide.

 

Also the Rape of Nanking – a disgraceful event that few people have even heard of in the West was also a case of mass murder of a people considered inferior but here again – not the start of an attempt to obliterate them from the face of the earth. Not a genocide.

 

The ‘final solution’ was unique.

 

Not unique in terms of one nation trying to wipe out another. but unique in that it was the first time that people from a civilised and enlightened nation which embraced and valued polite society rather than some primitive or ‘pioneering ‘ group as in the case of the European invaders massacring the North American Indians or the Australian settlers attacks on the Australian Aborigines, took it on themselves to wipe out another race.

 

The closest that had been prior to the Nazi outrage was indeed the New Turks massacre of the Armenians, which I personally am convinced would have been to the last man woman and child had they had the chance but even that was nit of the same enormity as what took place as a result of Nazism as there is no way that the description of Turkey at the time as being a civilised and enlightened nation which embraced and valued polite society. There are those who would argue that this is still the case but that’s beside the point.

 

It is not the mass murder, it is not the attempt to decimate or even obliterate a population that is the ‘stop short’, it is the fact that it was done by a modern nation. That is the most frightening part of all. That is what needs to be highlighted.

 

If the Germans could undertake such a thing then so could any modern nation, That is what needs to be kept in the public eye more than anything else. 6 Million Jewish people killed. Terrible. The REASON 6 million Jewish people killed and the fact that it was a modern civilised nation that did so, THAT is the important thing to keep in focus.

 

The reason for the attempted genocide of the Jews as being simply to remove a threat and as a part of ‘pay back time’ for WW1? Naïve. There is no question that this was one of the factors used in the creation of the ‘Eernal Jew’ and it is only necessary to look at contemporary public papers, especially Streicher’s ‘Der Sturmner’ to see how the Jewish people were demonised as a part of the overall strategy leading to the commencement of the Holocaust,but it is a gross oversimplification and a big-time error to dismiss the underlying reasons that Hitler chose the Jews for ‘special treatment’.

 

Just as it is wrong for any Jewish person to maintain that being killed in the Holocaust was any worse than being killed in the same camps by the same methods for a Gypsy, a Homosexual, a Cripple, or any other of the Untermenshen who were butchered.

 

Being killed is being killed. The end result is the same, but the motivation for the killing – thereby lies the difference. That is what must be remembered and recognised for what it was. That was different.

[StuartT]

Rog, I also complement you on your well thought out and reasoned post. However I'm not entirely sure of whether we can really use the modern ',enlightened, civilised people' as making the Germans outstanding. Modern morals and approaches to genocide have taken a great leap due to the holocaust. But before that point, anti-semitism was an entirely acceptable and commonly found prejudice. Maybe you don't see what I''m getting at. The Jew's were seen as the betrayers. But they were a scapegoat. They were such an easy target because they were Folk demons. The stab in the back was just an extra addition to that demonisation, another extra reason for resentment of a people seen as being responsible for so much evil.

 

One can even understand (though not excuse) why such feelings can arise. I'm going to have to be very careful in phrasing this, so as to not sound like I espouse such things, but one can see that as the Jews were largely nomadic due to the persecution they endured, they kept their wealth in gold and other precious things that were easily transported, and thus their wealth was worth much in every country as gold has its value pretty much everywhere. Therefore in times of recession, those with good which cannot be devalued are going to be slightly better off - and therefore gain the resentment of those unfortunates who do not possess wealth which cannot be devalued. Thus you can see why resentment built up against the Jews. Throw in a bit of religion and history - "The Jew's crucified christ" (with the Romans part nicely whitewashed), and you get the idea. Resentment builds up.

 

 

This is a very difficult debate to be having, and there are other things I could mention, but won't because it is very risky ground to bring it up. All I can say to provide an example of an area we won't delve into, is Mr Ariel Sharon,and his uncalled for criticism of the Allies in WW2.

[Rog]

--- I'm not entirely sure of whether we can really use the modern ',enlightened, civilised people' as making the Germans outstanding.

 

Not outstanding from the rest of modern Europe or America and (even!) Australia / NZ, and that was just the point. It was precisely because Germany was a part of that group of nations and yet in spite of that managed to end up with a government that was utterly barbaric that ads to the horror and makes their attempt at – well, genocide, into a unique situation that needed a then unique name.

 

As I see things Japan at the time was largely feudal by nature and certainly by culture and to my own mind in many respects still is, the massacre of the indigenous population by the settlers in the Americas and Canada and Australia who at the time could hardly be classed as modern, enlightened, or in many respects, civilised when they were clearing the land of its rightful owners.

 

The question that I see – if there is one – is at what point did mass murder, even when aimed at a whole population become something different and in my mind it was when there was a real expectation that the objective could be reached and when it was conducted by a modern government.

 

There is even a school of thought that says without the re-creation of Israel on its own traditional territory, even of only a part of the traditional lands, genocide would have resulted as the remaining people who clung to their traditions would have disappeared within a few generations owing to fear by the young of another holocaust and a general apathy and reluctance especially amongst the young to be different.

 

--- But before that point, anti-semitism was an entirely acceptable and commonly found prejudice. Maybe you don't see what I''m getting at. The Jew's were seen as the betrayers. But they were a scapegoat. They were such an easy target because they were Folk demons. The stab in the back was just an extra addition to that demonisation, another extra reason for resentment of a people seen as being responsible for so much evil.

 

Totally agree. What’s more the Jews in Europe didn’t – and still don’t – help themselves by the insistence by some to mark themselves out as being different. And that is a clear sign of a reluctance to integrate at least to an acceptable level to the native population of a country. It’s bad enough being different but to make yourself OBVIOUSLY different is a bit like rubbing peoples noses in the fact that you WANT to stand out – almost as if you’re setting yourself up as being not only different, but better by appearing to be contemptuous of the norms.

 

But there’s so much more to anti-Semitism. Much based on groundless raw prejudice, folk-law, religious intolerance and worse, even tradition. And it must be said some based on some Jewish people doing bad or even anti-social things and hiding behind their very ‘Jewishness’ – a sort of ‘Well? What did you expect?’. It happens and there’s no point in pretending that it doesn’t Take --- well, no, better not, but I know the name that was in the front of MY mind just then.

 

We could go on for days – weeks – discussing this matter. And still not reach the bottom of it.

 

 

One can even understand (though not excuse) why such feelings can arise. I'm going to have to be very careful in phrasing this, so as to not sound like I espouse such things, but one can see that as the Jews were largely nomadic due to the persecution they endured, they kept their wealth in gold and other precious things that were easily transported, and thus their wealth was worth much in every country as gold has its value pretty much everywhere. Therefore in times of recession, those with good which cannot be devalued are going to be slightly better off - and therefore gain the resentment of those unfortunates who do not possess wealth which cannot be devalued. Thus you can see why resentment built up against the Jews. Throw in a bit of religion and history - "The Jew's crucified christ" (with the Romans part nicely whitewashed), and you get the idea. Resentment builds up.

 

Totally agree, but don’t forget that having gold when others did not presented a good opportunity to capitalise on the situation and many did. Then there is the matter of sticking together. If a community is a close community that comprises of people who help and support each other then they will prosper. Another factor that creates bad feeling from those outside.

 

 

This is a very difficult debate to be having, and there are other things I could mention, but won't because it is very risky ground to bring it up. All I can say to provide an example of an area we won't delve into, is Mr Ariel Sharon,and his uncalled for criticism of the Allies in WW2.

 

I have no problem with this debate and I have no problem with washing dirty linen. If it’s there, let’s not pretend it isn’t. What I object to is when propaganda is presented as truth or where reality is denied, that’s where I like to step in.

So go ahead if you like. Knowing that a subject is simply being explored or even debated critically or even condemned is not a problem – at least not to me.

 

It’s a Jewish trait – that’s why we say ‘shalom’ as a greeting before anything else – just to set the agenda straight!

 

Shalom!