Monday 6 February 2012

Anti-Scottish loathing and the Nazi Gauleiters

I remember, in the 1970s, it was quite common in the right wing press for cartoonists to portray Prime Minister Harold Wilson as some sort of fascist in a black uniform, jackboots peaked cap, arm band, horsewhip, sash etc. It passed almost unremarked.

Times have changed. Nowadays the mention of Hitler or the Nazis is enough to stop an internet conversation in its tracks. Godwin's Law states that, if you have to quote the Nazis back at your opponent, the argument is getting closed down, and you are on a loser.

Is it different if your opponent brings up the Nazis first?

Alex Salmond has compared a BBC political adviser to a "Gauleiter", a Nazi local organiser.  He also called the BBC "a tinpot dictatorship" after an invitation to comment on the Scotland-England rugby match was withdrawn.

I don't know if Eck has a case. No doubt there will be investigations and enquiries and press statement wars in the next few days until it all blows over.

But I do know that the SNP has form in name-calling anyone that doesn't cooperate with their views 100%.

Joan McAlpine, Alex Salmond's chosen chronicler, claimed that it was anti-Scottish to interfere with their referendum and to oppose a devo max question on their referendum. Mike Russell called opposition parties anti-Scottish during last week's Education debate at Holyrood.  There have been other examples, in fact it used to be quite common for words like traitor and quisling to get thrown around quite freely by Nationalists.

It's interesting to ask why these examples are all happening now. For the past few years the Nationalists have been on their best behaviour: not a lot of anti-English spleen, or accusatory bile has been evident. I presume it has been the proximity to power and the justified fear that such nastiness turns off the voters. So the word has gone out to "Tone it down lads, keep a lid on the insults and more extreme rhetoric. Just for the time being. Later. Well...". Even the cybernats have been almost nice.

 Now the veneer has cracked and we see the old opinions expressed anew. If you don't agree with them you're "anti-Scottish", a "gauleiter" even in one case you must "loathe the very concept of Scotland". Maybe they just got complacent, thinking their Holyrood majority makes "independence" inevitable. In which case why rein in your real opinions? Or maybe it just became too much to hold in and hide the truth: they really do believe that, if you don't agree with them, then you are not fit to inhabit their new Utopia. You (i.e. the majority of Scots) are just not Scottish enough.

Which is one very good reason not to vote for them or support their "independence" referendum or their bogus "devo max" fallback plan.

14 comments:

  1. now the frothing has started. calm doon son. accept independence is inevitable. go with the tide and a beautiful feeling will wash over you.

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  2. Alex Salmond the gift which keeps on giving


    "Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo... There the Lord showed him the whole land... Then the Lord said to him, "This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob... I will let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it."
    —Deuteronomy 34:1-4

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  3. I'm sure Ken Livingstone has done rather well after calling a journalist a Nazi guard (or words to that effect) after one door-stepping too many...

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  4. Gauleiter [ˈgaʊˌlaɪtə]
    n
    1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) a provincial governor in Germany under Hitler
    2. (sometimes not capital) Informal a person in a position of petty or local authority who behaves in an overbearing authoritarian manner

    Angela Merkel to install 'gauleiter' in Greece, says MP

    Just because the unionist press put a capital 'G' in a feeble attempt to smear someone you guys jump on it like a swarm of flies, pathetic as expected.

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  5. You would have to be pretty uneducated not to know that comparing someone to a Nazi enforcer is a pretty raw insult and beyond the pale for any leading politician.

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    Replies
    1. Your interpretation and nothing more thank goodness that more and more Scots are waking up to how they have been let down for decades.

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  6. Try a simple search of the UK parliament website Braveheart. You will find 31 examples of MPs using the term from the official record. Admitedly one of them is Alex Salmond - but the examples also include folk like David Blunkett. It's clearly a word in common parlance down there.

    Perhaps you could explain why, if it a good enough word to be used by people like David Blunkett, it becomes beyond the pale when used by Alex Salmond?

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  7. It's not good enough to be used by anyone.

    And following on from Joan McAlpine and Mike Russell claiming that those who don't support them are "anti-Scottish", it's another indicator of the low depth of some Nationalists' standards.

    This time from the nat leader.

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  8. CynicalHighlander

    Yes, but the words Nazi and fascist are also commonly used these days to refer to overbearing officials etc, but if a politician was to use them to refer to someone else that would hardly be an excuse, would it?

    And even accepting the less offensive meaning, Alex Salmond must have known the reaction it would engender, so why use it, other than for some kind of Machiavellian rationale that isn't quite obvious (an attempt to forment division, for example) or perhaps it's demonstrating some kind of Freudian slip?

    Indy

    Is that the "nae worse than the Unionists" defence trotted out again?

    Might as well stay with it then ;0)

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  9. Quote Kenny Gibson, 2008:

    "As always the tone is wholly negative, with the old, tired, fearful accusation that an Independent Scotland would be too poor and too wee to survive the looming recession brought on by the ineptitude of US and UK monetary policy."

    Would this be the "ineptitude of UK monetary policy" that the SNP now seems so desperate to retain?

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  10. Lol but it has been used on multiple occasions in the House of Commons applied variously to Brussels bureacrats, parking wardens, planning officers and other officious types popularly reputed to get carried away with their own power, losing sight of common sense.

    The hugely entertaining irony here is that if Alex was an English politician no-one would have turned a hair at his use of the word. But you are jumping up and down about it.

    You're not anti-English are you?

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  11. grow up son, there's more thing to worry about than you petty interpretation of the use of a word.

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  12. Salmond should have done better, there are plenty of more fitting words which he could have used, here are some of my thoughts -- http://olivermeredithcox.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/gauleiter-alex-salmonds-bland-failure/

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  13. @Indy

    "The hugely entertaining irony here is that if Alex was an English politician no-one would have turned a hair at his use of the word. But you are jumping up and down about it."

    I suspect if Cameron, Miliband or Clegg had used the term to describe a BBC official lots of people would be jumping up and down about it.

    So you're equating the First Minister of Scotland's status to that of a backbench Westminster MP?

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