Public poisoners.
Jan. 13th, 2005 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbShock horror. A boy of 18 goes to a costume party in an Afrika Korps uniform.
Yes, well, but this is really what all the press and TV news body were talking about in Britain this morning. The boy in question is Prince Harry, third in line to the throne. ITV news dedicated ten solid minutes of television to this non-story, including the revolting suggestion that the young man - who has been hankering for a military career all his life - should be prevented from entering the military academy at Sandhurst. Oh yes, let us satisfy our ignorant passions by ruining a young man's life and depriving him of his chosen career. Now, I hope regular readers of this blog don't imagine that I have any sympathy for Nazism or anything remotely similar to it, but let us make a few points:
1) If he had gone dressed as Dracula or as the Emperor Nero or as Al Capone, I do not suppose anyone would have said a word. If he had gone as Stalin, or as Timur Leng, or as the Emperor Aurangzeb, or as King Leopold II of Belgium - let alone as the noble and gentlemanly British statesmen who decreed the death by starvation of their own Irish citizens in 1845 - nobody would have been shocked, although all these people were quite as bad as Hitler and infinitely worse than any Afrika Korps soldier. To go to a costume party disguised as an evil figure does not make you a supporter of that figure. It's called fun. If I ever see a British journalist dressed as a vampire or as a gangster (with a plastic tommy-gun under his arm), I will make sure to kick him or her extremely hard and where it hurts most.
2) Of all the fronts in the whole of World War II, North Africa (and the brief campaign in Ethiopia) was the only one where the laws of war were respected on both sides. The majority of the Axis troops were Italian; all the German troops were regular army, with no SS units at all, and they were led by a valiant and honest man, Erwin Rommel, who later paid for his uprightness with his life. When criminal orders reached his command, Rommel had them burned. This was reflected in post-war behaviour; while most German and Italian soldiers seemed to want to forget their war experience, it was said that you could always tell an Afrika Korps veteran by his confident stride and proud smile as he said "Ja, ich war im Afrika Korps, ich war mit Rommel". And the Italian army, which quite rightly tried to forget its shameful part in Jugoslavia, felt able to place a monument at the site of El Alamein battlefield, saying "Fortune failed us, courage did not". Which is no more than the pure truth. In other words, the adventurous, grim, but clean warfare in the desert is exactly the one part of the most horrible war in history which a young man like Prince Harry, who has been in love with the military profession since his teens, can have felt able to contemplate without mixed feelings. It was a chivalrous clash, however hard that may be to believe.
Truly, "we know of no spectacle so ludicrous as the English public in one of its periodic fits of morality" - the sentence is Victorian, but the truth endures; except that we should not speak of the English public, but of the English press. NO body in the world is as immoral as the British journalistic profession; none is so practiced at corruption ("chequebook journalism"), bullying ("monstering"), lies, intimidation, and the deliberate ruining of innocent lives for money. And no body makes more use of reflex, unthinking self-righteousness, self-righteousness that has forgotten all its bases in morality and reason, but that has redoubled its efforts to hate, to persecute, and to condemn, just in order to forget that it does not know any particular reason why it should condemn anything at all. British journalists are public poisoners, and, in the mass, they would be much better on the unemployment line, or indeed in jail or in exile.
Yes, well, but this is really what all the press and TV news body were talking about in Britain this morning. The boy in question is Prince Harry, third in line to the throne. ITV news dedicated ten solid minutes of television to this non-story, including the revolting suggestion that the young man - who has been hankering for a military career all his life - should be prevented from entering the military academy at Sandhurst. Oh yes, let us satisfy our ignorant passions by ruining a young man's life and depriving him of his chosen career. Now, I hope regular readers of this blog don't imagine that I have any sympathy for Nazism or anything remotely similar to it, but let us make a few points:
1) If he had gone dressed as Dracula or as the Emperor Nero or as Al Capone, I do not suppose anyone would have said a word. If he had gone as Stalin, or as Timur Leng, or as the Emperor Aurangzeb, or as King Leopold II of Belgium - let alone as the noble and gentlemanly British statesmen who decreed the death by starvation of their own Irish citizens in 1845 - nobody would have been shocked, although all these people were quite as bad as Hitler and infinitely worse than any Afrika Korps soldier. To go to a costume party disguised as an evil figure does not make you a supporter of that figure. It's called fun. If I ever see a British journalist dressed as a vampire or as a gangster (with a plastic tommy-gun under his arm), I will make sure to kick him or her extremely hard and where it hurts most.
2) Of all the fronts in the whole of World War II, North Africa (and the brief campaign in Ethiopia) was the only one where the laws of war were respected on both sides. The majority of the Axis troops were Italian; all the German troops were regular army, with no SS units at all, and they were led by a valiant and honest man, Erwin Rommel, who later paid for his uprightness with his life. When criminal orders reached his command, Rommel had them burned. This was reflected in post-war behaviour; while most German and Italian soldiers seemed to want to forget their war experience, it was said that you could always tell an Afrika Korps veteran by his confident stride and proud smile as he said "Ja, ich war im Afrika Korps, ich war mit Rommel". And the Italian army, which quite rightly tried to forget its shameful part in Jugoslavia, felt able to place a monument at the site of El Alamein battlefield, saying "Fortune failed us, courage did not". Which is no more than the pure truth. In other words, the adventurous, grim, but clean warfare in the desert is exactly the one part of the most horrible war in history which a young man like Prince Harry, who has been in love with the military profession since his teens, can have felt able to contemplate without mixed feelings. It was a chivalrous clash, however hard that may be to believe.
Truly, "we know of no spectacle so ludicrous as the English public in one of its periodic fits of morality" - the sentence is Victorian, but the truth endures; except that we should not speak of the English public, but of the English press. NO body in the world is as immoral as the British journalistic profession; none is so practiced at corruption ("chequebook journalism"), bullying ("monstering"), lies, intimidation, and the deliberate ruining of innocent lives for money. And no body makes more use of reflex, unthinking self-righteousness, self-righteousness that has forgotten all its bases in morality and reason, but that has redoubled its efforts to hate, to persecute, and to condemn, just in order to forget that it does not know any particular reason why it should condemn anything at all. British journalists are public poisoners, and, in the mass, they would be much better on the unemployment line, or indeed in jail or in exile.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-14 02:04 am (UTC)Personally, I think the world has a rather unhealthy obsession with the doings of the royal family. It's been how many years, and they're still finding things to write about Princess Diana. And I reckon if Prince Harry had turned up at that party in a fluffy bunny suit, they'd still write about it. Probably without the moral outrage, but still.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-14 10:46 am (UTC)This was followed by an even more earth-shattring news item - about Kylie Minogue's new wardrobe.
Long news items about short items
Date: 2005-01-14 11:00 am (UTC)Re: Long news items about short items
Date: 2005-01-14 11:58 am (UTC)Re: Long news items about short items
Date: 2005-01-14 12:07 pm (UTC)P.S.: Greatest kind of magic review written. Hope ya likes.
Re: Long news items about short items
Date: 2005-01-14 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-09 01:35 am (UTC)Maybe to North Korea. They'd fit right in.