But it is not good practice, in study, to ignore apparent anomalies. (To see whats wrong with that one, ask yourself whether the German Democratic Republic was a democracy.). Whenever I look at the outcome of the sexual revolution so far, it looks to me to have been a charter for unpleasant, selfish men. April 30, 2023 I think it does illuminate something important. I think that the selective condemnation of Israel for faults observable in many other countries, whoever does it, is a clear sign that its selective critics object to Israe's special character as a Jewish state. It looked as if someone had lobbied the Transport Department, and the supposed experiments with e-vehicles were bound to be pronounced a success. Neither man was *compelled* to make such a pact. I think it does illuminate something important. Well, that is just tough. , Education Categories: 'Special Relationship' The remark is partly facetious, partly profound. This is admittedly the most severe form this policy has ever taken. In areas where Christian symbols such as crucifixes had been routinely displayed in schools, especially Bavaria, Nazi officials sought to have them removed.***. How would the people of this country gain by such events? This is the *only* point I made about the Nazis and tax, quoting Rougemont. Was this the action of people who regarded the Stalin-Hitler pact as a shocking and temporary betrayal of socialist principles? See this misleading summary fr a good example of someone deliberately not taking an opposing view seriously***. Non-utopians may view education as a means of social improvement, but I cannot think of any free country in which it is used as an instrument of indoctrination, and of undermining parental authority and religious belief, as it was in the Third Reich and in Stalins USSR. Professor Burgis: Along with autocratic workplaces, the Stalin era witnessed a revival of anti-Jewish prejudice (Stalin himself was a bigot) and the prohibition of abortion and homosexuality, both of which had been legalized in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. The outcome in Sweden, where these mad things were not done, shows clearly that this was an inexcusable panic. On the contrary, on the last days of February 2014, armed thugs many, if not most, heavily armed far-right and neo-Nazi activists from western Ukraine stormed Maidan square, killing and capturing police officers and forcing the hand of a government that, as well as being unpopular, was bankrupt and diplomatically isolated. For there is a far more important case in which a senior minister needs to answer charges of misleading Parliament, one on which the whole issue of war and peace may turn. The Jacobins were explicitly and fiercely anti-Christian . This assertion is highly contentious and makes our monarch look silly and ill-informed. This would actually be a coherent response ( see above) . It is, Professor Burgis: Historically, the proposition that education should teach students critical thinking skills so they can make up, On religion, as Peters late brother, Christopher, liked to. I do so below, interleaving my responses in black with his original article, in blue. Can he give me an example of another *sort* of government, non-Utopian, using this method? Several Communist countries did hold anti-Jewish purges in the early 1950s. Rishi Sunak is not Margaret Thatcher. I think that both systems also made it similarly complicated and difficult for workers to move from job to job. These were delivered on time and according to contract, with every appearance of civility and friendliness. KPD militants commonly referred to the SPD as social fascists (they called the Nazis 'national fascists') and seriously believed that a Nazi takeover would only be the preliminary to a KPD-led revolution. Personally, I was struck by the image of a democratically elected president escaping his country in the middle of the night, chased by hooligans holding Waffen-SS banners. The officer caste headed by the marshals has been re-established. April 27, 2023 ', Here again we see how Utopianism, the belief in human perfectibility, is a key division in thought, perhaps, The modern left disowns Eugenics. Comments (2) None of this comes within ten thousand miles of establishing his conclusion. William Hague, the Ukraine and the Kiev Putsch. . In November 1939. Isnt there anything more important for you to write about?, people said, as if I did not also write all the time about education, the police, Ukraine, the Covid panic and who knows what else. Silly. The revolutionary left is notoriously sectarian, and its bitterest quarrels are between revolutionaries of different factions. Nazi Germany, in this case, was following the democracies. It then actually admits that the majority did not reach the required three quarters. They plead as an excuse that this has been the wettest March for 40 years. This countrys attitude towards events in Ukraine is based on a slavish decision to do what the Americans tell us to do, rather than on any serious estimate of our own national interest. Professor Burgis: One obvious point is that killing Communists who were accused (often falsely) of opposition to Stalin is a far cry from Hitler killing people becausethey were Communists. I dont blame him. I might add that its national anthem is an enjoyably anti-British poem. But will classroom lectures achieve it? I tried to get the attention of MPs, but, as usual, they were not interested. If you try to lift an e-bike from the heaps in which they often lie, you will find them enormously heavy. Surely it is important that we can walk freely in our cities and suburbs without the risk of being crunched from behind by a drugged-up lout. The news comes from a Cochrane Review, one of the most reliable and thorough forms of scientific research. Individuals of any stripe may opine about whether these conditions are good or bad. Daladier had banned 'L'Humanite', fearing with reason that the French Communists, thanks to their support of the Stalin-Hitler pact since August 1939, would undermine morale in indstry and the armed forces. In both states these were simply acts of utilitarian state policy, not driven by any principle about the sacredness of life. Even the poor King must take part, forced to say during his German visit that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. He was later taken up yet again by the BBC- and dropped again by them after making fun of Dame Vera Lynn, a target you would have to be very talented to hit. The KPD was decapitated, with 2,500 members murdered and 130,000 thrown into camps by Hitler (and the larger SPD also suffered similarly) . This is surely the standard which the United Kingdom upholds in its own affairs and elsewhere. Stalin had Trotsky murdered and awarded the assasin one of the Soviet Union's highest decorations. The issue here is that German middle-class conservatives, fooled as many were then, ***Has it? , Propaganda But in the same year it failed badly in New York. Dont. The son of a school-teacher, he spent more than 30 hard years in the Royal Navy - hard training, hard service, modest pay, including six years of war and a stint on the very severe Russian convoys. The Rada acted under Article 110, not 111. Or was it a certain idea Stalin and Hitler had in common? It is that all ideas must be argued on their merits, and that all attempts to establish guilt by association should be regarded with suspicion. The bitterness between the KPD and SPD at this time, largely caused by Stalins influence, was colossal, and undoubtedly helped to bring Hitler to power. And he is dead right. Hitler conveyed his thanks and wished the Congress success in its momentous work on 'population policy and race cultivation.'. It is far harder to guard against this silent speedy danger. I have said I told you so so many times that I get no pleasure from it. Or is it just that he *wants* to *believe* this? The Nazis imposed high taxes on the middle class. All of this surely goes far beyond the cold, hostile temporary collaboration he asks us to believe in. God rest the soul of Barry Humphries, and my condolences to his family and close friends. In my view it survives that devlopment now, in the Green movement and the sexual/cultural revolution, both of which have little to do with traditional socialism, but which increasingly dominate the Left in North America and Europe. It was clear from the start that the Hitler Youth (whose activities were timed to coincide with church services and who were sneeringly hostile to Christianity) were an anti-Christian body. Professor Burgis: And a far more important point is that Stalins consolidation of power in the Soviet Union represented a conservative turn at least by the standards of a state that had emerged from a successful socialist revolution. This was a calculated snub. The Nazis even combined with the Communists to organise a joint tram strike in Berlin and they happily entered into an alliance with Stalin in 1939, holding a joint Nazi-Soviet victory parade in the conquered Polish city of Brest-Litovsk. A Song of Ice and Fire. Behold, they say, the evils which follow from conservative thought, from love of country and martial strength. How Christian will the Coronation be? And if they think theyre not doing any harm by this lazy, feeble laxness, they are very much mistaken. The South African Communist Party likewise played a brave role in the fight against Apartheid, while simultaneously giving the most slavish support to every Soviet invasion and repression there ever was. It is not a war for the defence of peace against aggression. Article 111 of the constitution lists four circumstances in which an incumbent president may leave office - - resignation, a serious health condition, impeachment, and death - none of which applied in this case.. I promise you that protocol chiefs think very hard about such things, and their decisions go all the way up. I shall repeat this. However alien I might find his deeply conservative worldview Hitchens, the brother of former leftistChristopher, thinks atheism breeds immorality and worries about the dangers of legal cannabis I expect someone as smart as him to do better thanthat. . Under those circumstances, *** No doubt there were such cases as Professor Burgis mentions. Eventually his Edna Everage act had its first success in Britain. Having seen this happen, I have always had a special hatred for inflation and a special interest in it, and how it takes place. It is absurd to discount this. In Britain they are now known as 'Old Labour', the name of a defeated an dincreasingly irrelevant faction. ****PH : Christian churches say prayers for temporal rulers wherever they are. Peter Hitchens joins Mike Graham for his reaction to this week's biggest stories.#talktv #talkradio Yet another survey, this time from St Georges Hospital in South-West London, undermines the view that facemasks prevent the spread of Covid. , Communist Party Lenin, J.V. But I know perfectly well that astute political movements try to lessen the tax-burden on their supporters, often by increasing it on their opponents. Why? Many of them were pagans. Wasnt Sir Keir Starmer taught to respect women during his upbringing? Even the poor King must take part, forced to say during his German visit that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. No, Im not accusing the Council of selling marijuana. By the way, my late brother was most definitely still on the Left till his dying day, and regarded his support for the ultra-violence of the Iraq invasions as entirely congruent with his earlier enthusiasm for Leon Trotsky, Commissar for War ***. , Christopher Hitchens If this were a genuine anti-fascist war, would the first act of the French Government be to suppress the French Communist Party, the principal party of the working class and the leader of the anti-fascist fight? This is true. PH **** I am glad Professor Burgis and I can agree that mainstream conservatives are not Nazis. Especially after the adoption of 'Socialism in one Country', In 2002, his close friend Martin Amis published a book about Stalin called. But we do not have to take part. Meanwhile, as far as I know this country is not at war with Russia. This faction, whose founding document is known as The Wolfowitz Doctrine, have been hard at work since 1992, when the New York Times leaked their plans. Was this the case in Franco Spain or Salazar Portugal? On the murders of Communists, I was simply employing logic: If you use the argument that Hitler was right-wing because he killed Communists, which is exactly what my opponents contended, then you are in a difficulty unless you are also prepared to state that Stalin was right-wing because he killed Communists. I regard any such claim as ridiculous rubbishas ridiculous as the claim that modern patriotic conservatives, sceptical about mass immigration, are Nazis or inheritors of Nazis. That is why it tends to insist on limited government. No doubt someone will point out that the Nazis were also appalling and murderous racial bigots. But I am doubtful about the description there of his mother as a genteel philistine obsessed with cleanliness and respectable behaviour. Note that the original NSDAP programme, while fundamentally racially based, also expressed a vague rage towards profiteers, urged confiscation of war profits, called for improved old-age pensions, land reform and land expropriation, and , rather startlingly, for the creation of a healthy middle class. It is where and on whom the taxes fell most heavily that is important in Rougemonts description, not that there were taxes, or that they were high. It really is very hard to try to dream up any sort of excuse for this, that doesnt suggest that these two movements were worryingly closer than we now like to think. In normal times dozens of heavy, fast passenger and goods trains rumble across it every day. I am not a defender of the British government, in fact I despise it. And the fatherland means, above all, the authorities. The fascinating thing about the response to this article has been that most of those attacking me plainly have not read it, berating me for using the they called themselves socialists so they must have been socialists argument, which in fact I had not used (see below). But removing the mask policy in phase two did not produce a statistically significant change in the hospital-acquired Covid infection rate. But (as I shall also discuss) it has an interesting if worrying converse. Trains had been crossing it at walking pace for weeks. If you say so. They made few plans to prepare themselves for the danger of Nazi rule and suppression, one of the reasons why they were so easily smashed when the moment came. But no, she was hurried south in an aircraft and then driven in a boring motor car to Windsor, after a startlingly thin military parade. ****PH: It is what they hate and wish to sweep away, not what they want to replace it with, that is the common factor. I am myself sometimes described by my critics as an extremist. To state the painfully obvious: plenty of governments universally regarded as right-wing have been harshly criticized by a great many middle-class professionals. Some people may think this good and proper, so that the Ukraine has a pro-EU, pro-American government. More significant is the sort of song the Third Reichs soldiers sang, despite their belt buckles, for example Wir wollen keinen Christen sein, weil Christus war ein Judenschwein, as recorded by Olivia Manning when watching official German government propaganda films in Bucharest in 1940. I suspect that much of this country relies on the high standards and hard work of long-dead men, who designed and built thousands of such bridges so well we thought they would last forever. Their organisation. Whereas the original intentions of the Nazis pretty plainly were openly murderous. And each day there are more rumours of a less traditional Coronation. Unless you challenge Professor Sakwas account of the facts and figures, the majority required by article 111 (no less than three-quarters of [the Radas] constitutional composition ) was not reached. Surely siuch a film (based on a 1932 book) would not have been made or mass-released if Hitler's p[ropaganda chefs thought such efforts were futile. President Yanukovych was also legitimately elected. PETER HITCHENS: Will our new King be dedicating his life to God, as his mother did, or to Net Zero, as he seems to want to do? I should note here that the recent book on East Germany and its Communist founders by Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall, says that in 1936 Stalin arrested 55,005 German Communists who had taken refuge in the USSR . , BBC Why should any British soldiers be there at all? PH: ***Actually, it does if you approach it with an open mind. They agreed together to do it. Even the legal speeds are fast enough to be dangerous, as dozens of people all over the world with broken bones of various kinds can attest. This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column. Dutt here means, The British Marxist Brian Pearce remarked in his commentary Marxists in the Second World War, written under the pseudonym B. Farnborough, that during the entire period up to the Fall of France, the British Communist Party functioned as a propaganda agency for Hitler. By the way, you may be sure that the Kremlin will have known about all this for many months. Were they on the side which said Man could be changed by power into something new, or the side which said that he could not? Is this a 'smear' I thought it was a settled question among the educated. The word socialism is vaguer and harder to test objectively than the word democratic. So far nothing. He said Theres a strong message, if those individuals who at the weekend are partying out in clubs or socialising in houses think theyre not doing any harm by having a line of cocaine or doing whatever they want to do Everyone involved in the chain is responsible. ****PH: The pact was certainly regarded as a betrayal etc. Comments (90) Quite often the wrong people get blamed. Fascinatingly, while he whizzed through Belfast in his armoured limousine, the car flew Old Glory and the Presidential Standard. But it does make it absurd to deny that Adolf Hitler belonged to the extreme right. Writing in anopen letterto Amis published in theGuardian, Christopher Hitchens pointed out that this attempted syllogism would suggest that, for example, many of the hard left types who worked with Martin Luther King Jr were the moral equivalent of Nazis. Both equally despised the Social Democrats, as they would later jointly despise the Democracies in the early months of World War Two. , Railways The old communist workers are pushed into the background; the working class is divided into different layers. PH: *** The policy of suppressing independent trade unions and collective bargaining is, first of all, not a policy which can be correctly described as socially conservative. **** PH: Then consider the possibility that I may have a point, rather than starting from the position that I dont, and setting out to prove that to yourself - an easy task given that you already believe it and are outraged and amazed by any contrary suggestions. he is thinking of Thatcherite or Reaganite economic liberals, who are not the same thing at all. I had rather thought it was a speciality of such governments, the most striking example being the Soviet myth of Pavlik Morozov, exalted by Soviet propaganda for betraying his own parents. ****PH . One such is the joint NSDAP-KPD tram strike in Berlin in November 1932. Professor Burgis: And a far more important point is that Stalins consolidation of power in the Soviet Union represented a conservative turn at least by the standards of a state that had emerged from a successful socialist revolution. and enveloped them in an all-encompassing ethos. . This is not the Winter of Discontent. And how Joe Biden's visit to Ireland finished off the 'Special Relationship'. But its a maze of dodgy parallels and less-dodgy ones. Few people realise that we are the last nation in the world to have such a ceremony. The parade was not, as Professor Burgis mistakenly says, held when the pact was signed but almost exactly a month later when Poland had been finished off by both Soviet and German armies in alliance. Ranks, decorations and titles have been reintroduced. It was nice to pretend that somewhere they managed these things better. The Bolsheviks, whose active and practical hatred of Christianity I discuss at length in my book The Rage Against God, had similar passions, as (with increasing lack of restraint) do todays Chinese Communists. The lower middle classes were for the first time prepared to consider a form of politics in which the state, once captured by their party, would expropriate others to benefit them (the normal course of action for parties of the left). This argument ( as I shall repeatedly stress) is much more about what people actually, There is another curious aspect of Utopianism where there is definitely an overlap between the 1930s Left and the Nazis, and this is the Eugenics movement, which at one stage led Marie Stopes, heroine of the contraceptive cause, to give Hitler a book of her ghastly love poems (In August 1939 she sent a copy of her, a telegram of 'respectful greetings' to Hitler, declaring that his 'far-seeing population policy based on racial hygiene and principles of heredity' would safeguard the future of the German nation. Helvetius was furiously denounced by the Roman Catholic Church (his books were publicly burned) as having made heretical departures from the central scriptural belief that man is made in the image of God, and therefore fundamentally not alterable. But were, And (please remember these words were published in November 1939): The Government must be compelled to make peace. They were using far-right slogans, fighting with the police, leading occupations of administrative buildings and dismantling monuments. that they taught mad dogmas instead of proper knowledge. In fact the last act of this putsch took place when several EU Foreign Ministers brokered a deal for early elections and major reforms, between President Yanukovych and the protest leaders. The Rada was legitimately elected in 2012, and the majority of its members participated in the important debates on February 21-22..
