Churchill, BNP, kings, cabbages,...

I have been reading today (yesterday by now) an exceedingly strange post titled Churchill, As BNP As Mosley. The headline, to start with, was a bit confusing. I am not good in history, especially where dates are concerned, but I was pretty sure that Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill isn't running any political movement for any purpose currently. Not to mention Mosley.

In any case, the author of that post, one David Lindsay, got it in for the old man, so much so that he even forgot about Mosley. Ostensibly the purpose of his post is to provide a counterpoint to the current BNP's use of Churchill's name for their own nefarious purposes. The method chosen by Mr Lindsay was not to separate Churchill from BNP but to prove that Sir Winston was, if anything, a spiritual precursor of that revolting phenomenon.

The way Mr Lindsay waded into the target is not completely unlike the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so bloody-minded he was at the time of writing. A good example would be his characterization of the old man as "unreliable, opportunistic, highly affected and contrived, anti-Semitic, white supremacist, Eurofederalist demagogue who admired Mussolini, heaped praise on Hitler, had no need to work for a living, had an overwhelming sense of his own entitlement, profoundly hated democracy, and had a callous disregard for the lives of the lower orders and the lesser breeds". The paragraph where the quote belongs is built in a way that the quote could have been about Mosley, but "So did the other one" makes any doubt superfluous.

Well, what can one say about it? I could point out that Sir Winston was a true son of the British establishment of the time and that the said establishment was by and large racist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist and the admiration for Hitler was a plague that left hardly a British notable standing. And that callous disregard for the lives of the lower orders and the lesser breed could be detected even today.

And what can I say about this one, regarding Churchill's desire to see the British Jews relocated to Israel:

The anti-British terrorists who went on to found the State of Israel agreed with him, very nearly coming to an understanding whereby Hitler would have expelled the Jews by sending them to British Palestine, which he and the Zionists would have conquered together for the purpose.

Besides this being an old anti-Zionist trope, in hindsight I can only state that the alternative to this failed "Zionist plot" appeared to be somewhat inferior (yep, I am trying myself here in the British art of understatement).

But saying all of the above didn't get me closer to the real purpose of the post. So I had me a look at the blogger's profile:

The pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war voice of an economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriot. One Nation politics, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation. Conservationist, not environmentalist. Far too conservative to be capitalist, far too left-wing to be liberal.

Uhu... leaving the "make cute" addendum of the last sentence, we are dealing here with an anti-war isolationist - or a very good replica of one. It's going around today. Now, reading the post carefully again, one could find a few hints to reveal the full picture. Start with this:

...the brutality and the contempt for democracy, the admiration for Mussolini and especially for Hitler, are omitted from accounts of those who agitated for war in the Thirties, but heavily emphasised, sometimes to point of fabrication, in accounts of those who pleaded for peace.

If you think that the author's anti-war (stopper?) sympathies are not emphasized enough, here comes a scorcher:

Ahmadinejad’s oblique, if any, Holocaust denial causes uproar...

The word "oblique" has quite a few meanings, but I doubt that there is any ambivalence in that quote. What precisely is "oblique" when Mahmoud the Mad calls Holocaust "myth" or "lie" or "great deception" (all documented), I am unable to understand. But I believe I do understand where a stopper is leading when I see, hear or read one.

I believe that displaying his preference of the anti-war movement of 1930-s with its crowning achievement being a certain NC signing a certain M agreement (well, there is no mention of either in Lindsay's post), and by (lamely) diminishing the Iranian's menace, Mr Lindsay shows his cards quite clearly. There wasn't really any need to add "The contemporary resonances of both aspects could not be more obvious" - it was made obvious by the body of work, thank you.

So now I can finally say what I think about this post. To start with, by a quirk of fate I was born not only Jewish but also in the late Soviet Union and at a time not far too distant from the WW II. So, being forever grateful to the Red Army for sacrificing millions of lives to facilitate my birth, I am also forever grateful to the no good ole racist, anti-Semite, blah blah... Sir Winston for doing his best to help the Red Army to stand up to the Nazis. And I feel no more sympathy for the pre-war British (and any other) anti-war movement, including the above mentioned NC than I would feel for a squashed cockroach. Nor do I feel a lot of sympathy for the current breed of "We are all Hezbollah" stoppers and others of their variety.

As for the future and above mentioned Mahmoud the Mad - again, it could be educational to look back - namely, at Sir Winston's bio.

Churchill was holidaying in Spain when the Germans reoccupied the Rhineland in February 1936, and returned to a divided Britain. Labour opposition was adamant in opposing sanctions and the National Government was divided between advocates of economic sanctions and those who said that even these would lead to a humiliating backdown by Britain as France would not support any intervention.

How is that for "contemporary resonance", Mr Lindsay?

Should I use the trope about history repeating itself? Nah, no need really. After all, David Lindsay is a few field trips short of an historian. And so am I...

Hat tip: Andrew Ian Dodge.