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[Previous entry: "'Lager Bier'?"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "The 'Congo Test' and Operation 'Artemis'"] 13 June 2003: "Britain, meet Godwin"It's becoming increasingly obvious that the vast majority of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom have never heard of Godwin's Law. We've had the hacks at the Daily Mail squealing regarding the EU constitution that What Hitler failed to do, Europe is now proposing to bring about by edict.On 10-Jun-2003, Harold Pinter proclaimed The US is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining to know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do. There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany wanted total domination of Europe and they nearly did it. The US wants total domination of the world and is about to consolidate that.And then of course there was the commentary by Oona King, MP in which she likened the Gaza Strip "in its nature - though not its extent - to the Warsaw ghetto." These are just recent examples; more are easy to turn up. Britons are almost unique among Europeans in that, when they encounter a person or institution of whose politics they don't approve, they have no qualms about drawing untoward comparisons with Nazi Germany. The only explanation I can come up with is that Britain was never occupied by the Nazis, and as a result very few people in Britain really understand the full implications of the comparisons, let alone object when such ludicrous comparisons are made. Curiously, due to the influx of immigrants from continental Europe to the United States (and to a lesser extent Canada) between 1935 and 1950, this may be an issue in which American common perception is closer to Europe's than it is to Britain's. |
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