Diplomad, if Prince Harry had worn a Che Guevara sweatshirt, he'd be praised for his edgy fashion sense.
Brilliant and hilarious as usual.
Jerusalem Post's readers' reaction here http://www.jpost.com/servlet/
Sat...d=1105586367718 if anyone's interested.
Some of us have a weird constitutional arrangement whereby this stupid family actually supplies our Head of State and that unfortunate child is actually 3rd in line to inherit. I find your BLOG refreshing because the Brits like to say Americans fawn over the British Royal family but I assume it is in the sense you like celebrity culture and that is all the Royals are.
What's the deal with the nazis? Why do they get such bad press? Sure they killed millions of people but then again so has every communist regime. Maybe it was trying to kill all the jews, but these days if you do that you get feted by the un, billions of bucks from the eu and a nobel peace prize.
I can only imagine that this was the desperate cry of a young man looking for some attention from his family.
He obviously wasn't trying to piss off the word, or he would have worn an Operation Iraqi Freedom or Vote for Bush t-shirt, or my favorite Axis of Weasels
If the Sun hadn't published that picture, none of this would have happened. It was, after all, a private party...
I suspect you underrestimate how much these young royals actually do when teh cameras are gone. During the war, the then Princess Elizabeth worked as a plumber because there was a work shortage. This was only publicly discovered about 10 or 15 years ago after the documents about it were unsealed. It certainlya sn't publicised at the time.
Sometimes I think she must despair of the antics her chldren and grand-children get up to... but as I said, I wouldn't underestimate what they do when the cameras are switched off. It's certainly a sight more than some of the C-List celebs that sit around moaning about them royals on the evening news or breakfast shows.
Harry's a special case. He knows he'll never get the throne and I think that he's turned rebel because of that. You never see William in the news for stupid things he might have done.
My take on this is that Harry was trying to reach out to the French, since France and Britain have had their differences over relieving the world of Saddam Hussein.
But my serious take is hardly a take - just amazement at a royally educated mind, whose main family house was bombed by the Nazis, whose subjects' graves are descrecrated with swastikas in France, and whose every move is stalked by the media, would forget all that for what wasn't even a good costume.
If I can pick a small nit -- the King of Thailand is a rare royal who is a force for good. The rest are nothing more than members of the "lucky sperm club."
Poor kid. Must be a really tough life when you're basically useless, have no need for a skill or career so don't really work seriously at developing one, have too much time on your hands and too much wherewithall to try to keep yourself entertained or at least not terminally bored.
Imagine being brain-dead but not allowed to parade your gloriously brain-deadness in candid snapshots because someone may think you're...braindead? Can you picture a more hopeless situation? And to think he's young, intelligent (despite being brain-dead), and probably yearning to be relevent but all he is is a pathetic and restless kid with no discernable function or use.
If he had been anything BUT an idiot he would have been a freak of nature. But the moment he was born to his "Sainted Mother" and "Ears", the cards were stacked against him and it was probably pretty obvious to one and all that it was just a matter of time until he appeared in some tabloid somewhere doing something
...assinine.
Short of donning some sort of disguise or cloak of invisibility and disappearing into the real world to actually achieve some relevence by working as a doctor or with the Red Cross or something, what chance does he have? If he stays in England he's pretty much doomed to repeat the life of sad desperation that seems to characterise his father.
(the "Annonymous" post above was actually the continuation of my thought. No clue why it didn't give me due credit!)
~Viking Wench~
Which is more pathetic -- the press who spend time writing about poor prince harry, or the cretins who follow the royals' exploits? If we ignore them will they go away?
Enough royal-bashing! Leave that to the wretched press. I'd love to see a switcheroo where a paparazzi suddenly ends up in the alleys of Baghdad with a faithful ex-Baathist dragoman, and a BBC war correspondent ends up at a costume ball in gay Paris dressed as Andrew Sullivan in J. Edgar Hoover drag.
You wasted a precious post whacking away at the hackneyed notion that royal celebrities suck Cuban cigars while wearing Nazi uniforms or some such drivel when you could have been slamming the United Nations for wearing pansy blue helmets and smoking Cuban cigars instead. I think the United Nations is somehow managing to slip away from this tsunami disaster with some integrity. Horror! How could that happen?! Clare Short be damned. Maybe a photo op of Prince Harry, Clare Short, Jan Egeland and Koffeebreak Annan could be arranged.
I'm willing to blow this incident off and forget about it. Harry's done a dumb thing. He's apologized for it. I did dumb things when I was 20 years old only I never got caught for them. Harry deservedly has gotten his royal toches kicked in the press for this insensitive act. He'll be more thoughtful next time. And, no, he should not be kept out of Sandhurst for this.He's played the fool but he's probably no admirer of Nazi ways. His grand uncle, Edward VIII ( later Duke of Windsor) spoke native German and was truly a Nazi sympathizer yet he was British monarch for a while.
Funny about how Conventional Wisdom compares the depredations of the Nazis with those of the Communists now that Diplomad and commentors have brought up the subject.Both movements were responsible for taking out multi-millions of people.
In the Nazi death camps, as is widely recognized, twelve million were killed, six million of which were Jews.The Communist movement in Europe and Asia has killed off at l
...Continued...
..at least that many and probably multi-millions more. But Convention Wisdom seems never to assign the same level of moral contempt to the Coummunist movements as compared to the Nazis perhaps because the Communists were always "equal opportunity" killers. Funny about that.
The Nazis were and are evil, brutal, murderous leftist thugs...
Er... don't you mean RIGHTIST (if that is a word)?
R
It's as if the English don't remember that london was bombed and civilians were killed and many many English soldiers were killed in ww2. The armband is not just an offense to Jewish people it is an offense to every English subject! The act was probably just ignorant sillyness but the reaction that forgets that England was at war with Germany is astounding.
Speaking of King Rama IX, he was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Does he have dual Thai-US nationality?
And no, the Nazis were not rightists, they were leftists. "NAZI" is short for National SOCIALIST German WORKERS' Party. The Third Reich employed more full-time government economic planners than did Stalin's Russia.
Fascism, Communism, and Nazism are ALL manifestations of socialism, which in turn is a manifestation of statism. All tyrannical, all evil.
Harry should not just visit the concentration camps he should visit the graveyards where english soldiers and civilians who were killed in ww2 are burried.
In Britain we have always laughed at Nazis and other jumped-up despots. When we do so we are not making light of their terrible crimes but we are showing that we find their pretensions risible. This is one reason why our country proved so resistant to the totalitarian fashion that swept most of Europe in the 20th Century. The other reason was our constitutional monarchy.
So what should you wear to a fancy dress party?
Go in a devil's costume? The ultimate symbol of pure evil? You can imagine the Vatican press conference!
Genghis Khan, a slayer of millions? Complaints from millions across Asia.
He went as a 'Hitler Youth'. Children that wore the swastika and were manipulated and brainwashed by their evil masters.
Yes, I agree it wasn't a good choice, particularly as his colleagues should have been aware of the depths tabloids will descend to to get a story for the front page.
But it was a private Fancy dress party for God's sake.
Give the guy a break!
I'm with ex-fso on this one.... Harry just thought it would be cool to show up at a private party as Nazi. That's where the thought process ended for him unfortunately. As stated above he's 20 years old with no prospects but living a life of comfort (that he didn't earn) where he can't even do anything interesting (just exist as 'king insurance' in case William dies on the way to vacation). I'd hate to have had the press watching my every move when I was 20. Give the kid a break! We are way too easily offended today. Does anyone actually think that Harry is REALLY a Nazi, or that he thought 'hmmmm.... let me wear this and piss off every WWII veteran and Jewish person in the world'. He just needs a swift kick in the slats followed by a 'What were you thinking?' and lets all let it go!
Get back to bashing the UN! I'm one of these lefties you'all make fun of (Go Kerry!), but while I think the idea of the UN is worth while and necessary, some people at the top need t
cont.
o do some serious jail time. Keep up the good work. Staying on top of these corrupt agencies and people is the only way to make change happen
RE: comment from viking wench
"Poor kid. Must be a really tough life when you're basically useless, have no need for a skill or career so don't really work seriously at developing one, have too much time on your hands and too much wherewithall to try to keep yourself entertained or at least not terminally bored."
Funny. I could have SWORN you were talking about The DiploFraud. I was laughing too hard to read the rest of your comment!
Could I "borrow" this for future cut 'n paste duties? It's perfect.
Monica
As well as lacking wits or any substantive arguments, you also show nil humour. Just another boring carping leftie.
Someone needs to start a "celebrity idiots" blog so we common folk can see what they are up to on a daily basis. As usual, your comments are spot on and hilarious!!
Notice folks how AGAIN all the decent, well written professional material is mined directly from OTHER SOURCES, while the amateurish, barely-readable drivel is from The DiploFraud’s own hand?
From what appears to be new aspirations as a gossip columnist wannabe/fraud, Liz Smith he ain’t. And I see no gig at People Magazine any time soon. (Maybe DELIVERING them…)
Hey DiploFraud, is this one of your “lite” pieces? Or just a “shitty” one? Your exhaustion from handing out teddy bears in the “virtual tsunami zone” is certainly showing.
It’s been less than a hour since you uploaded this crap, yet I’m already pining for the “old days” of your serial lameness.
I smell a diminishing hit count if this keeps up. And as Martha Stewart might say: "That's a good thing".
Quite possibly Harry's Dad would not find anything wrong with his actions. I think the media should get a quote from Harry's real Dad...
JohninLondon, all that might be true, but she can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, so she has at least one redeeming quality.
R North
You know little about European history. Read R Conquest, R Pipes and Kershaw et al on the Nazis. You will see that the Nazis owe very much more to the Left than the Right - Hitler himself said that "the whole of National Socialism is based on it [Bolshevism]" - which I suspect is what Diplomad was refering to. (Ditto - Mussolini being ex-Communist.) It is a common mistake among the uneducated to equate the Nazis with the conventional Right even though both totalitarian movements had very much more in common with each other than they did with conventional Left/Right.
"Brown on the outside, Red on the inside", as Muntzenberg said.
Thank you, Diplomad, for the entertaining and true post.
The blood in the English royal family has, shall we say, run thin in the past couple of hundred years. I would wager that Harry's IQ is well below average. Pitiful.
Just in case you were feeling left out, our pseudo-celebrities also frequently kill themselves doing stupid things. It's ski season, so we're probably due to lose another Kennedy any day now.
Maybe the dummy was planning on doing a skit from "Springtime for Hitler" to entertain his friends. It certainly isn't the first time someone got themselves up in Nazi drag for fun. Save your shock for those who offend sartorially (Madonna and Britney come to mind) who actually seem to effect other's behavior.
Monica I-can't-do-my-own-thinking Lewinsky asked:
"Could I "borrow" this for future cut 'n paste duties? It's perfect."
Sorry, toots. My synaptic output is copyrighted. And unique. And brilliant. And perfect. etc. etc. But all mine.
Beg, borrow, steal, plagiarize elsewhere.
OR! Have a thought of your very own. :o)
Hey, if Johnny Rotten could wear a German tanker's uniform for a photo shoot ... maybe Harry needs Malcolm McDowell running his career.
On the other hand, what about the WWII "reenactors" who spend their weekends running around the woods in Wehrmacht uniforms? I guess they're "honoring the sacrifice of veterans" or something like that.
Harry at Auschwitz, that's going to be a hoot. He'll probably ask for directions to the gift shop: "I told Will I'd bring him back a T-shirt."
As an American with a competitive spirit, I feel challenged by your suggestion that we should compare notes concerning our dopes vs. their dopes.
I submit that Michael Moore is a considerably better dope than Harry is. In fact bigger and better! Moore's position as Dope Of The Year cannot be challenged by a small time doper like Harry.
Can anyone tell me why folks like "Monica Lewinsky" and "Colin Powell" bother to even come to blogs like these? Are people like this the blogging equivalent of gay men who spend all their time gay bashing and threatening to do terrible things to homosexuals? Are the trolls here really just "closeted" conservatives?
I think we should all gather around the trolls and allow them to accept their inner conservative with the hope that some day they can proudly display the elephant. We already have the Log Cabin Republicans-let’s welcome the Under the Bridge Republicans too. There’s room for all.
Does anyone, really expect anything else from the epigoni of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's 19th century mesalliance with the House of Hannover? And, even though the poor simple boy's mother was a Spencer, his grandfather was a the product of a Greek (Danish) mother and a von Battenberg.
All bloody Huns! The English need an English royal family to have fun with.
“Nazi uniform stunt,” a case of Rich & Famous spotlight media or rebellious youth or both... Born in 1985? Harry is really careless about swastika, Nazi, concentration camps...
Would like to share with you the following info about our Gen-Xer...
“The people who are starting college this fall across the nation were born in 1985. They are too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up.
Their lifetime has always included AIDS.
Bottle caps have always been screw off and plastic.
The CD was introduced the year they were born.
They have always had an answering machine.
They have always had cable.
They cannot fathom not having a remote control.
Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.
Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.
They never took a swim and thought about Jaws.
They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are.
They don't know who Mork was or where he was from
They never heard: "Where's the Beef?", "I'd walk a mile for a Camel" or
Cont'd
They never heard: "Where's the Beef?", "I'd walk a mile for a Camel" oror "de plane Boss, de plane."
They do not care who shot J. R. and have no idea who J. R. even is.
McDonald's never came in Styrofoam containers.
They don't have a clue how to use a typewriter.
…”
I'd like to add some comments and background information on the German roots of the British royals which the Times did not mention.
(1)
Young Harry may not understand the historical significance of the Nazis but his grandparents did not share that deficiency. The parents of the present Queen Elizabeth II acted with courage and dignity during the Blitz and won the respect of their nation and free world during WWII. Harry appears to reflect the current trend of fascination with neo-Nazism among the some of the more sad examples of a deficient education among certain British socialites.
(2)
The German roots of the present royal family extend earlier than Queen Victoria's marriage. Check out the history of the changing British royal lines and the connection begins centuries ago.
After the English Civil War the death of its Puritan leader Cromwell, and the temporary return of the autocratic Stuarts, this older British royal line was booted out by the British Parliament and
Diplomad
I doubt if you have served in the Uk or if so attended a fancy dress party. The British love dressing up, lampoon, laughing at themselves and sometimes at others.
The military in particular love and perhaps not surprisingly also love dressing up and fancy dress which often entails wearing the "opposition's" gear.
I fear you (and a malign media) have judged Prince Harry far too harshly.
I await your next post to see if a return to form and evidence of a sense of humour.
PS
You were quite right however about dressing up as a recognised leftie such as Stalin, Castro, Guevara etc etc.
That post cut off part of my comments.
If I may continue:
.....replaced with William (of Orange) and Mary. After the family’s dearth of direct heirs, Parliament gave an invitation for the Hanover (German) branch of royal line to rule Great Britian.
The first Hanover, "George” spoke very little English, while Americans have distinct memories of the efforts of George III, his grandson, to repress their colonial rights. Eventually, Parliament assumed control of the powers of this monarchy.
The present royal family is descended from this “German” branch as well as the Saxe-Coburg Gotha. Furthermore, if you look at the family tree, many royal marriages were made over the centuries with other German royals. In other words, there is a long history of cultural and family ties.
Note: Anyone confused over the term "German state” and Hanover should know that the various "culturally German states" didn't unite into the empire of "Germany" until 1871.
....
What I think is weird, is that everyone is talking about what some idiot 20 year-old is wearing to a costume party as if it really matters.
If he had dressed as Harry Potter, would that have meant he had secret aspirations to become a world-class Quiddich player?
Hmmm, well maybe, on second thought, that's exactly what it would mean.
Quiddich, if it were real, is just the sort of thing that could cause a celebra-dope to have a spectacularly wonderful and tragic death.
Wow. I thought I was the only one who refers to nazis as the leftists they were. Tagging the right with the nazi label was a brilliant coup of dezinformatsia, one of the earliest examples of the intellectual corruption of The New York Times, and other rags of its ilk. Not to mention our institutions of higher tuitions.
Now I know why I make an effort to read you everyday; however, a couple omissions: Johnny Depp and Ed Asner, to name just a couple.
I heard it was a "Bad Taste Party". If that is the case I think he should be applauded for his genius of bad taste!
A little known fact about the Royal family is that the Queen prefers to speak German in private. Is it any wonder that her great grandson should have grown up such an enthusiast for fancy dress parties?
I appear to have skipped a generation: should read "grandson".
And another thing, everyone keeps on referring to Harry as being a 20 year old idiot. How do they know how bright or lazy he is? Or maybe he does not care? Or maybe he is not brigt but having a good time? They say ignorance is bliss.
I can remember a few of the fancy dress parties I went to at his age. First World War theme (with some dressed as Red Barons); another when I dressed as a Trappist (or was it as a Cistercian monk); another (just to show we were ecumenical) dressed as a Sandanista guerilla, drag was another. The worst was themed "gold" and it took ages to get the stuff off. I had not been to one for ages until a few years ago which was themed 1940s. I went as a Brit officer but you will not be at all surprised to know that the quite few went as members of the German armed forces.
"They never, They have always, They can't, They never"
I would gladly trade all knowledge of the above for few more years of my youth, because every single one of those cultural eighth-notes pretty much amounts to nothing.
BTW, Harry is not a Gen Xer. Gen Xer's were born in the late 60's to 1981. Harry is Gen Y. Do not shove your generational pessimism on the wrong group.
Folks, this was a light interlude; a bit of fun, that's all. We'll have plenty of time and opportunity to get back to the nastiness.
And to any who misunderstood, I am an admirer of QE II, her dad and her mom. They were (she still is) genuinely class acts. They showed an admirable devotion to duty which is sorely lacking amongst the pampered clowns who will inherit the Crown.
Please ignore Monica; he's the same lonely guy who has posted here before under different names and is still seeking the attention women won't give him -- he's even adopted a woman's name now. The psychologists will have a field day with that one!
Bill:
"Wow. I thought I was the only one who refers to nazis as the leftists they were. Tagging the right with the nazi label was a brilliant coup of dezinformatsia, one of the earliest examples of the intellectual corruption of The New York Times, and other rags of its ilk. Not to mention our institutions of higher tuitions."
Let me point you in the direction of another superb blog, "Dissecting Leftism" published out of Australia by John Ray. He does a wonderful job of demonstrating that Hitler and Mussolini were socialists, and that fascist and nazi policies were socialist.
The URL is dissectleft.blogspot.com
Diplomad
Re: "And to any who misunderstood, I am an admirer of QE II, her dad and her mom." and similiar sentiments.
All is forgiven, my son.
What? No one ever dresses up as evil people for costume parties?
If someone dressed up for a party as Arafat, we'd all assume it was a statement of support? Geez... suppose I dressed up like Gloria Steinem and went to a costume party, would everyone assume I liked her or would they assume I was making fun of her?
"Bad guys" are popular for costumes. It's Harry's misfortune that he has different rules than the rest of us.
Without downplaying the the crimes of Nazis against Jews or suggesting for even a moment anti-semitism should be tolerated, a person just has to wonder sometimes if people have become unhinged from reason. I mean... accidentally arranging flower beds in geometric patters that resemble swasticas when viewed from above? What is this? An opportunity for anti-semites to act publically outraged? Who dares to point out the emperor's lack of clothes, that being offended by flowers planted in tidy rows is just plain *stupid*.
It was a costume party.
Vicar - bless you
It was a costume party. The picture is striking but doesn't have any relevance to truth or real news. Almost anyone else could have worn the same costume without consequence.
to be precise, it was a "bad taste" party. Get a life, folks, he is a teenager.
But i do take your point on him wearing a che t-shirt 
. On the other hand, diplomad comparing the Nazi's with Che. Hmmm, very good and balanced analogy :P
Two Birds with One Stone.
Make Harry the next Secretary General of the UN! Maybe he won't steal as much as the last one. Plus with Harry in charge, the UN can go back to raping little girls instead of little boys. It will also give a royal flavor to future UN sponsored genocides. It will also piss off Bill Clinton. Although I suspect Bill's first act as SecGen of the UN would be to change color schemes. Bill isn't real keen on blue nowdays.
Some seem to forget Rudolph Hess' flight to meet with King George VI (or so he said). Loyalties of the British royal house have not always been clear and open.
Instead of Harry or Slick, Ariel Sharon as UNSG could keep the blue and maybe even add a star to really piss off the Leftists.
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, it only fools the ignorant, and they don't matter.
National Socialist Workers Party pretty much says it all. Those that forget what NAZI is an acronym for deserve to repeat the experience until they remember. Yes, I'm of the stick and carrot shool. Small carrots, large sticks.
"Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous."
Confucius, The Confucian Analects
Chinese philosopher & reformer (551 BC - 479 BC)
The costume party excuse doesn't really hold up, because Harry wasn't in a costume, unless you consider an arm-band with a crudely drawn swastika a "costume." That was the only unusual part of his clothing. And as far as bad-guy costumes being popular, Harry didn't dress as Cruella De Vil, he wore a swastika. Mel Brooks is about the only one who can get away with making light of things Nazi -- we now know that Harry can't pull it off.
Heck, I remember a costume party back in college (mid-1980s) where one guy came dressed as Leon Klinghoffer. That's the sort of stuff boys in their early twenties do.
The impulse endures beyond university. Not ten years ago, I attended a costumer party as John Denver (wearing a flight jacket and seaweed around my neck). Call it irony, gallows humor, or simply testing the limits -- raising hell.
C'mon, bad taste never killed anybody. Loosen up, Sandy baby.
Then again, I'm not a Royal. Presumably, somebody in the Windsor Machine has instructed Harry that public figures can't have private lives. If they haven't, his training is past due ...
To adamthemadman,
I’m sorry about having mixed up the generations. Didn’t want to make the baby boomers feeling too ... *smile*. Honestly, I always thought after my parents’ generation, it’s the Xer’s. Learn new things everyday, thanks, and gladly when it deals with younger age!
KaiiLiing
Those under the impression that the Nazi party was anywhere but the extreme right side of the political spectrum had better take an elementary course in political science. Nazism, like all fascist movements, is the veritable definition of right-wing.
As for the argument that their name contains the word "socialist," so they must be leftists... "A rose by another name," as it were. The Peoples Republic of China, after all, is hardly republican.
OT, but . . .
So, Diplomad, how does a foreign service pro such as yourself feel about Senator Kerry's recent foray into diplomacy? I suppose I understand why Chirac might meet with his fellow-traveler, but it's hard to imagine why Blair would give Kerry the time of day.
I think Harry is looking for an excuse to visit Germany and see firsthand the legacy of his idol, Adolf Hitler.
And another thing, everyone keeps on referring to Harry as being a 20 year old idiot. How do they know how bright or lazy he is? Or maybe he does not care? Or maybe he is not brigt but having a good time? They say ignorance is bliss.
Because "My Dear Watson" he is a 20 year-old male and
20 year-old male = idiot ....for most values of 20 year-old males
A simple math fact, to which, anyone who has either been a 20 year-old male or raised one, can attest.
Sorry, the last anonymous post was mine. Wish you had a preview button...sigh.
Glenn,
Anyone working in the political science or history profession can enlighten you about the strong parallels between the totalitarian systems of communism and fascism. Political science instructors diagram their similarities by drawing a circle (think of a clock) locating the less extreme ideologies at the halfway positions (around the :15 and :45 on a clock) while placing fascism and communism right next to each at the bottom of the diagram (at the :30)
Also,
Regarding the use of the word socialist in the Nazi party’s name. The early Nazi brown shirts were disaffected lower class people who expected Hitler to take property from the rich and share it with “the people”. Once he used them for a private militia/street gang to attain power, Hitler empowered his psychopathic SS butchers to seek out the Brown Shirts during the “Night of the Long Knives”, and murder his faithful working class servants.
I just don't know what all the excitement about. It's just another case of the British royal family standing up for tradition. They're not very British but they're very much into tradition. In this case two old family traditions for the House of Hanover, er, Windsor: being a Nazi (as you pointed out, Diplomad and being an idiot.
I think the initial furor was right, but now they are trying to prevent the guy getting into Sandhurst. I think now its gone overboard.
Its important for the royal family to be at the forefront in military service. The best thing that could happen to him is to get into Sandhurst. In fact, the royals ought to have an unwritten rule, every boy spends his career in one of the services. His WHOLE career. That would restore some gravity to their glorified status.
I am not a hostile to the royals, nor even to the idea of royalty. It has its roots very deep into their society, and I would not go uprooting it just for the sake of uprooting it.
Hehehe, Lily (01.14.05 -2:08 pm,) you're so right and "bright"!
Lily sez: "20 year-old male = idiot ....for most values of 20 year-old males
A simple math fact, to which, anyone who has either been a 20 year-old male or raised one, can attest."
Quite true...and you don't need to either be or raise one...just be around *any* number of them for a period of time (say as an instructor or teacher) and the trouble they manage to get into will amaze you.
I noticed that in US it's mostly liberals who admire others' royalty and create some of their own. For example, it's the Kennedy who are called American Royalty, but not the Bush family. I guess it's because liberals don't like Bushs, while conservatives would never think of anything as stupid as this.
Funny how a lot of Brits automatically connect Nazi with Auschwitz, even though half their kids had never heard of Auschwitz, but cannot remember those Londoners the Luftwaffe roasted or those Brits cremated alive in Coventry.
Hey Diplomad
Under the heading 'Google gets it' go to Google and type in
UN coordinated
and see what it says right below.
If a machine can figure it out, can our government?
of course the real problem isn't the swastika, but that the young prince looks so charming in the uniform.
Honestly, the notion that mazi insignia are forever sacrosanct is ridiculous. THE WAR IS OVER!
Glenn,
The Nazis are correctly identified as leftists because leftism means state control of the totality of life, particularly economic life. The total militarization of all aspects of life, as in Lenin's "war communism." It was only when "war communism" abjectly failed, that Lenin allowed some aspect of non-militarized economic life to exist. The writings of the early Bolshevik "philosophers" about creating a society in which children would be raised in industrial-sized nurseries, in which workers would be housed in barracks and encouraged to couple in promiscuous sex rather than marry, and be shuttled around like soldiers to fulfill the will of the state, have many, many parallels with policies of the Third Reich. The fact that the liberal democracies of the West accepted a temporary alliance with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler, does not refute those similarities.
"They die in hideous car crashes while driving 120 mph; they get killed in speed boats; they die absurd deaths on ski slopes. . . it is not always "the good who die young."
Not just Kennedys as on cemmentor pointed out above. Let's not forget the entire NBA.
To summarise:
1) Part of being a 20 year old is behaving like an idiot and always has been
2) Fancy dress is an established part of British culture whereby people may dress however they like
3) Fancy dress subjects often include historic and current figures which involve celebrating friends and heroes as well as ridiculing foes
4) The British stood and fought the Nazis alone ("their finest hour") until help came from allies and the free world was saved
5) Brits should not apologise for dressing up as WW2 Germans whether it is done to ridcule Nazism or to remind us of its horrors
When I was 20, I quit college, was a ski bum, and made a few bucks as a folk singer. I smoked pot, drank every day, plus did a tab of acid about once a week.
I also enlisted in the Army and I am disabled and retired from same. I had to grow up fast and so will Harry. 20 year olds are trying to find themselves and do stupid things. Would I have dressed up like that? No, but I might have shown up naked at the party. Why? For the shock value and to make people laugh. Dumb Harry, in my opinion, did the same.
If he is nothing but a celeb-brat, he has learned something and he said he was sorry. That is more than most celeb-brats. What he did was tasteless and unthinking. But let us not forget, he is just a boy who is a prince.
I really must agree with Synova on this one.
Not that Harry's isn't a gilded ass -- his prior comments have already definitively placed him in the "I'd have been beaten to death with an axe handle if I weren't so priveleged" category.
His REAL crime is not having the full get-up and a giant balloon-ball to play with while so dressed....
"China, after all, is hardly republican.
Glenn"
But it IS a republic in that it has self-governing districts. It would be a fairly easy arguement to make that Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, etc. have as much autonmy as Nevada, Maine, and Florida. While America and China use different methods, they get the same basic results. The Central government decides which issues the states (or provinces) can deal with and which the federal government controls.
If I saw the prince wear a Mao button, I would send him to Gulag!
I am a perormer, and my main gig is impersonating Lenin: my Russian accent and looking exactly like him help.
I can attest that in NY, people have no negative reactions towards the character. It is not so with Hitler, even though Lenin's regime was more successful at killing people than Hitler's.
Well, too bad for Hitler and those who look like him.
Look at the picture again. See those thingies on his collar? Think mid 20th century now. The difference between civilian cloths and military clothing are the little thingies on the collar. If we had a blow up, we could figure out what his 'job' and unit were. My memory on this dreck is decades old, but I think the color(yellow/gold) indicates staff and the device inside the tab would show what his original branch was. If he was wearing the uniform coat, then we could tell from the piping what was what. IIRC Lemon yellow was general staff. Red for arty, light blue for air, pink for armor, black for sappers and so forth. But a shirt was just a shirt back then.
I suspect this has more to do with the elite educational establishment than with Harry. Anybody who has ever talked to a kid who attends one in the US would be worried...not particularly about Nazis but about other things.
I'm with those that thinks this is blow out of propotion. He's a 19 yo kid. He had no choice in the role he's made to play, being royalty. Any other 19yo dressing up as a African crops SS troup would garner some laughs at a Coloinal/Native party. We've all seen Indian Jones. We laugh at the Nazis, not with them.
Those they are truly outraged by this feel his wearing that uniform shows support of Third Reicht. They don't see the sarcasm in the costume. The fact the Reicht is reduced to a costume at a dress up party speaks volumes. Do you not think Harry knows who leveled most of London with V2 rocks?
I hope he stops apologizing. Those complaining the loudest are just making a mountain out of a mole hill to further their own causes (which aren't necessarily bad, re: visiting and remebering the holocust).
The world is losing it's sense of humor. And that's one thing that has always separated us from those that threatened us.
Just a couple of comments on this topic on this excellent blog ...
First ... Note which commenters have legit verifiable email addresses and which do not ... note which commenters post comments which make sense (whether or no one agrees with the detail contained in their comments) ... note the *high* correlation between the commenters who make idiotic comments and the commenters who have bogus email addresses ...
Second ... prior to the usurpation of the swastika by the National Socialist Workers Party, it was considered to be a symbol of the Light, of the side of Good, and of good fortune, in many cultures, including European, Eastern, and North American ... the Nazis took it because of its association with the Aryan sub-group ...
If any of you wish to strike a powerful blow against the beliefs of National Socialism and the Nazis, work towards reminding people that the swastika is NOT a symbol of evil, for all that it became one for a while durig the 20th century ... if en
(mutter, grumble, "remember, it's Diplomad's blog, graciously provided for others", mutter, grumble) (grin)
As I was saying before the (mutter,grumble) 'truncation feature' of the comments reared its ugly head ...
... if enough good people refuse to accept the swastika as *belonging* to the Nazis, yet instead remind others that it was *stolen* by the Nazis, then one of the sadly enduring legacies of the Nazis can be taken back from them, and any remaining power that it may have for the side of evil will be diminished and eventually removed ...
I read about a Halloween party in 2001 (following the 9/11 attack). A guy came to the party dressed as Osama Bin Laden. He got some strange looks, but later in the evening, after a lot of drinking, his co-partygoers beat the crap out of him. This episode occurred in New Zealand, no less.
I get that Harry is young, and young people make stupid mistakes. If he has apologized then I suppose forgiveness might be in order. It was still a stupid thing to do.
To those that don't seem to have a problem with it at all, I suppose that you are all fine with a 'AIDS kills fags dead' t-shirt worn by Axil Rose or pretty much anything that comes out of the mouth of Jerry Falwell then.
say what you will about Jean-Marie Le Pen, but having garnered a mere 15% in the last election hardly qualifies him as "popular". The fact that he and other members of the far-right in Europe are the closest to the Nazis today ideologically also seems to say something about your categorization of the Nazis as "leftists"
Ok, ok everyone have we forgotten this is a 20 year old we are talking about. Having raised 3 through that age I can tell ALL they are thinking about if they're boys are:
1) HOT girls
2) Fast cars
3) HOT girls
4) Fun parties
5) HOT girls
The last thing on that young man's mind was a worldwide crisis over his costume. Lets all get a grip and realize that the average 20 year old
isn't that concerned with the rest of us. That is unless we affect them adversely in some way. I don't mean to say this as a condemnation of him or other 20 year old's. Most young people from 13 to 25 are too totally self involved to really care. You gotta love em though, they start re-emerging about 25 and then they become just like us!
Hmmmm...more distraction from the real issue by the Diplorat. Who cares about Prince Harry, Prince Hal, John Falstaff, Bardolph, Pistol, Nym or Ms. Quickly? You right-wing cunts are responsible for a disasterous civil war in Iraq abd are now avoiding the topic by hook and crook. Now you seem to want to lay the sadism and inhumity of your foul administration upon a single scapegoat.
"Graner guilty in Abu Ghraib case"
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u...4&
u_sid=1309695
Will Graner's conviction pacify the insurgency? The bright ideas thoe neo-cons have!
"Fifteen Iraqi guardsmen feared kidnapped after insurgents attack Iraqi military bus"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
ar...1611EST0645.DTL
In context to the argument that everyone attends such parties; I would question whether a public figure associated with representing their country has the same degree of freedom of action as the average person. In particular, a leader’s actions must be governed by the understanding that the world may interpret them as symbolic of their country’s identity. The British monarchy justifies its existence by how it represents Great Britain. Harry enjoys its perks and therefore, should expect to pay its price package.
Personally, I can't see the point. At a costume party, lots of people wear villain's costumes: Frankenstein, Dracula, the Devil, etc. No one accuses them of digging up graves, being sympathetic to blood suckers, or leading a revolt of angels against God.
And they are right not to do so. Just as it was wrong to criticize him just for wearing a villain's costume to a costume party.
As for being ignorant about WWII, he would have to not watch the BBC, whose movie fare heavily features WWII.
I'd say that if he wore it to display his leanings, it was a stupid way to make a point. More likely, however, he just wanted something other than the other deranged villains in the set.
Though I'd be in favor of him dressed in robes, holding a scimitar and a decapitated head ....
Alasdair,
Many people are familiar with the older history of the Swastika in India. I've seen statues of Buddha carved with the symbol. Yes, a positive symbol of another culture was hijacked by one of history’s demonic movements.
However, when the symbol is viewed within the context of Western History any public figure should know the horror it represents to millions who lost family members to the Nazi movement. If many individuals remain insensitive that this symbol evokes pain and disgust from the world, perhaps they should consider developing greater awareness of people beyond their immediate social group.
I grew up with some individuals who expressed subtle approval of ugly ideologies, as exemplified whenever they found jokes degrading outsider groups humorous. Yet, experiencing the cultural approval of bias within one’s social set doesn’t sanction it as ethical behavior.
Regarding posting our email addresses-
This site doesn't provide a secure registra
A shortage of handcuffs? Too bad. As ong as there is no shortage of cavier
"Abu Ghraib Prisoners Escape"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/...5/
011505Y.shtml
"You right-wing cunts are responsible for a disasterous civil war in Iraq abd are now avoiding the topic by hook and crook. Now you seem to want to lay the sadism and inhumity of your foul administration upon a single scapegoat."
"Mission Accomplished," is that the best rhetoric your enlightened liberal intellect can manage -- misogynist profanity and sophomoric irony?
Hey, maybe you and Harry can party ...
Don't like being reminded of the damage you've created, Murderous Sully, nor the language? Tough shit. It's the only suitable dialect for you grunting wingnuts.
"Iraqis despair at struggle of their daily lives"
'“Before we used to curse Saddam Hussein when the electricity went out for a couple of hours a day or so. Now we are lucky if we get that much.”'
http://
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com...00501152421.xml
The education system everywhere is so bad that things like this can happen. I saw the pictures of the camps when I was in high school and it's something I've never forgotten. How much do you want to bet there isn't a high school out there, in europe or America, that teaches what really happened.
Just who was in charge of that young man's education? That whole time period should have been burned into his brain.
"Iraqi polling centre bombed by rebels"
http://
www.thepeninsulaqatar.com...05011524129.xml
M/A:
IF what you are posting could stand on its own, you would not have to resort to swearing...
"Al Sadr warns Bush on poll interference"
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/S...L&
IssueID=27301
Hold it. Not so fast with the demeaning comments about us idiots. There are lots of us "out there" and one day - just as soon as we get round to reading the instructions the right way up - we'll get organised,and then we'll.......well, you have been warned !
Please ignore the smutty-minded troll
MA - half your posts don't even make sense, and you can't seem to avoid swearing at your host, a rather serious breach of netiquette. Go read the NYTimes story on Graner - even the Times has to admit that he was not acting under orders.
Anyway, we see those headlines every day - we come here to discuss things, specifically things that our host chooses as topics. If you want to join in, fine, if not, go back to Kos and celebrate the death of Americans with your terrorist-symp buddies.
By his warning I assume Al Sadr's remark means "don't interfere with our usual attempts to bomb and terrorize Iraq citizens from voting freely or even daring showing up at the polls?
I agree that that perhaps too much is being made of this. It was stupid and insensitive of Harry, but he is after all a mere boy of twenty and stupid and insensitive are what they are.
On the other, his minders (the Royals y pay people good money to prevent this sort of thing)can atone for their incompetence by making sure the Prince learns what it is he has done. This should be made a painful lesson for him.
Additionally, this row points once again to the anachronism that the Royal Family has become. Really, the only purpose they now serve is as a kind of perpetual burlesque show. And a very expensive one at that.
"Brown on the outside, Red on the inside", as Muntzenberg said.
Anon | 01.14.05 - 10:43 am |
Thank you, Anon. The quote you so generously provided could aptly describe The DiploFraud’s online cult as well. I’d like to think of the “brown” as in “brown shirts”; however, we could just as easily take the analogy into a zone more “olfactive”.
The “Red”, of course, remains true.
My apologies for the errors in my last post. My editor is on break.
You mean your brain is. It'll be lng waiting for it to return.
C'mon Diplomad. You're savvier than allowing your agenda to be set by the MSM. This was a media-created hoopla, plain and simple, and you're not even lining up on the right side of it. If it had been a Bush daughter instead of Prince Harry in Nazi regalia that was reported in the Times, we'd have been all over the media, not the partygoer-- especially as soon as the ACLU had weighed in on it.
What I want to know is what's going on in Indonesia. Looks to me like the Indonesian government has made good tactical use of the tsunami. Are we out of there yet?
holdfast
What the Bush-administration flunkey New York Times admits is of no consequence to me. They're have been convincing reports that torture is still going on at Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons. And we have Torquemada Gonzales getting set to be our chief lawyer and we have Rummy's covert operation teams abductin "terrorists" and torturing them with the Prseident's appoval. No, this goes much further than the "twelve idiots who last Iraq". It goes up to the one idiot and two scoundrels who destroyed Iraq: Dumbya, Herr Rumsfeld und Darth Cheney.
It goes up to the one idiot and two scoundrels who destroyed Iraq: Dumbya, Herr Rumsfeld und Darth Cheney.
Boy, that is one convincing arguement...
One would think that a "mere boy of twenty" with the best education available and who was third in line to the British Throne would have at least an inkling of the type of uproar he would cause were he to don such an outfit. Having a brain in his head would also help.
Back in the day, some of us actually read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," even those of us with third-rate American inner city educations.
I realize that a younger sibling of the British Crown Prince doesn't have many demands made of him/her. But is not being an idiot too much to ask? Apparently, this is sometimes so.
Never refresh in these comments.
Bad taste costumes? In 1993 I went to a party as Monica Seles. Bought a "knife through the head" and adjusted it to fix my shoulder, wore a wig and a lovely little tennis outfit; shaving my legs took awhile though!
There's a Bush Administration flunky who writes for the New York Times?
How'd he/she get past the interview process?
How "Covert" must these sqauds be if everyone knows about them?
Thresh
Thresh,
MA begins to see enemies everywhere. Even the NYT is part of the right-wing conspiracy now.
The DiploFraud wrote:
“Please ignore Monica; he's the same lonely guy who has posted here before under different names and is still seeking the attention women won't give him”
There you go begging again. Has it occurred to you that maybe one or two of your cult members might be capable of independent thought, and can ignore me without you imploring them to? Or is this just your insecurities on display, knowing your fifteen minutes are nearly up?
Incidentally, that’s improper use of the semi-colon. Here’s a pop quiz question for you: what percentage of the Foreign Service Written Exam deals with written communication/effective expression? And is it possible to fail that section, yet pass overall by scoring well on all other sections? I await your reply.
In the meantime, PLEASE seek online help with your use of repetitive metaphors. You’ve used “seeking the attention women won't give him” five times in a row now, word for word. There’s help out there, but you must seek it
I’ve noticed that the DiploFraud does not actively take part in the “debate” on his own weblog. Save for the occasional attempt at witty one-line responses, this site has the lowest participation ratio of publisher-to-comment responses in the entire blogosphere. Could it be that he lacks the basic communication skills, and/or dare I say the “savvy”, to keep up?
It appears the soon-to-be-brief popularity of this blog is due to the number of reader responses alone, and in no way can be attributed to the work of the fraud/publisher.
This from an anonymous amateur who serially accuses the UN of taking credit for others work.
The real shame here is that EVERY SINGLE PARTICIPANT who chooses to link us to THEIR OWN WEBLOGS is more worthy and deserving of any accolades to be given out than this one-issue hack. And they all PROUDLY refuse to hide behind any cloak of anonymity. Or claim to be something they clearly are not.
Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
We don't have a royal family? What about the Kennedys?
Monica,
What expierence do you have that contradicts the Diplomads?
Not that getting diiddled by a cigar not of American origin does not count as having "foriegn relations" expierence.
If you think this site has a low ratio of publisher comments in the comments section, take a look at mahy of the blogs out there that don't even have comments enabled, Juan Cole for instance. Powerline, Wonkette, and until recently Instapundit, were all devoid of comments sections entirely, which means that their ratio was even lower than this sites.
You don't like what Diplomad has to say. Fine. We get it. You've said your piece.
So why do you keep coming back?
Thresh
Put me in the "Not personally offended, but God, how stupid can you get?" camp.
I think the Queen of Denmark is pretty cool.
Monica said:
"And they all PROUDLY refuse to hide behind any cloak of anonymity."
So this is the real Monica Lewinsky speaking?
Blog continues to inform and entertain. Keep up the good work. Don't forget the Danish royals during WWII donning Stars of David and refusing to hand over Danish Jews. I hadn't heard that QEII was a plumber during WWII but I am pretty sure she was also an auto mechanic in the Army's Womens' Auxilliary. My Dad met her when she accompanied her father on a visit to an American unit and he said she was a real babe too. Re celebrity idiots - When most actors speak without lines on the tube, I can't hit the "change channel" button on the remote control fast enough.
Curmudgeon
You are correct about the Queen's work in wartime as a mechanic - and driver. Lots of photos show her in uniform - and yes, she was very pretty. A fine young lady who sadly had to take over from her father when she was only 26 - he died aged 56, of cancer and worry.
This is what makes Harry's stupidity so sad.
Just for the sake of history that it seems you forgot entirely: the nazis were and are RIGHTIES, not lefties as you stated. It is worrysome that state departement personel makes such mistakes, by the way would you be able to tell, without looking in the internet, where Ouagadougou is?
thanks
Ariana,
I appreciate your comments. While you are correct that in response to the grave similarities between Soviet Communism and taditional fascism, some political scientists proposed that the traditional method of diagraming the political spectrum (as a line) should be changed (to a circle), this proposal has been largely discarded by higher philosophic analysis.
Traditionally, the left and right were distinct in that the left saw the state as a means of preserving individual liberty and equality, while the right saw the state as a means of dictateing a moral social policy.
Socialism, then, falls squarely on the left in that it is the ultimate form of state-sponsored equality/liberty (speaking theoretically), in that by removing market competition we destroy the last social classes (rich/poor) and create an environment in which all persons can be equally free and truly equal.
Fascism, on the other hand, asserts absolute social control over a given society, but not necesar
My response was chopped to pieces, and I don't feel like retypeing it (not to mention, I have hijacked the "thread," as it were), so we'll leave it at:
I'm right. Your all wrong.
Re celebrity idiots - Diplomad, you missed a wonderful opportunity to discuss those among our celebrity athletes who are overpaid, cannot form a complete sentence (or if they do, pepper it with "like," "I mean," "you know," and expletives), and who think we want to know everything about them.
Isn't the point of a costume party to be something you're not? People go to costume parties dressed as dracula, hardly a role model, and other nasty things. That's why there are costume parties.
To me, dressing up like a nazi is immature kid stuff, what kid hasn't been fascinated at one point or another with nazis, if only because it's forbidden.
Leave the kid alone. I'd rather criticize him for his photo ops with starving africans. It can't be easy to be that kid - all the royal pressure and papparazzi he's not even his father's son.
I thought there were some polls out the other week saying Brits almost all hated Israel and admitted they were antisemites. Or something like that, I recall it shocked me and I felt bad for my English Jewish friends, cripes who would want to live in the middle of that?
Now, they are suddenly upset about Nazis? Given their antiIsrael sentiment? They want it both ways.
No Glenn, do go on. Your exposition of classical Marxist theory is so fascinazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz - sorry, dropped off for a minny there. The National Socialists may have put the socialism in their platform as a cunning marketing ploy, but it was certainly up front. Go back to the texts & the speeches & have another look at the promises that the poor downtrodden Volk would get their "fair share". And it wasn't all rhetoric. Look at the nationalisation of the means of production & the wealth redistribution program. Consider the socialist symbolism of the Volkswagen, the People's Car. The left/right thing is, after all, an artefact of academic wankery. What matters is what regimes do. And there are a lot of similarities between Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia & comminist China. Especially the body count.
KK
erm ... comminist? ... must be infected by the Diplomad comment zone curse of poor spelling
KK
A recent book by Richard Overy (Professor History, King's College, London) entitled THE DICTATORS (Smithsonian Institute Press, 2004) compares the Nazi and Communist regimes of Hitler and Stalin, very clearly showing that they were very similar in almost every important respect, other than the Nazi emphasis on overt racism. Most importantly, the comparison shows that the Nazi economy was in fact a socialist, statist, planned economy. Nazism is statism, and the coercive terror of statism is present even in Thomas More's Utopia and Bellamy's Looking Backwards.
Prince Harry is just a dopey teenage kid who went to a costume party. The only time I ever went to one, I went as Bacchus, thus offending MADD and the WCTU. His actions have about as much import as the even more idiotic Gay Nazis running around in 'cool' SS uniforms because of the bondage connotations. His father's reported reactions are probably the most sensible, but the kid won't appreciate them until he's passed 25 or so (based on my own experiences as a dopey teenage kid.)
This is really pc prisness gone overboard.
Dont mention the war takes over the US
MA
holdfast
"What the Bush-administration flunkey New York Times admits is of no consequence to me."
You have now officially jumped the shark, going from ultra-left-wing hysteric to total parody. If you think that the NYT is a schill for the Bush Admin you are either (a) off your meds (again!), (b) slightly to the left of Mao Tse Dong, or (c) Dennis Kucinich. To give you the benefit of the doubt, I will hereafter refer to you as Dennis.
"And we have Torquemada Gonzales getting set to be our chief lawyer.."
And they say that racism exists only on the right. Bad boy Dennis, that was culturally insensitive. It's a good thing that the US doesn't have a psycho AG that orders the death by burning of a couple of dozen American children - now that would be really scary.
Me thinks the redheaded Prince struck a sore nerve in that part of the wide world where anti-Semitism is said to be at a pre-WWII level ... and is being practically ignored at the same pre-WWII level.
heldfastinmuck
The NYT, as did all the mainstream papers in the US which you wingnuts fable to be liberal, published the administration's lies about WMD and the danger of Saddam without contradiction. Does the name "Judith Miller" ring a bell?
The Bush mafia would like to censor all negative news out of Iraq and so far the apathy of the dunmbed-down American public has conpired with their wishes to ignore the atrocity that we have made.
The problem I have with this is that this guy's family receives millions a year from the people for its upkeep, has vast wealth acquired through its position over the centuries, and he himself will be an heir to the throne if Willy has an unfortunate hunting accident. He should be held to a high standard. Garbage like this doesn't cut it. If he wants to renounce his position and his state-provided wealth first, I don't care what the hell he does.
The worst part is that it was such a terrible costume. You'd think a royal could get a real uniform.
Hmm. I notice an omission from your short list of American royalty: people named Bush. That family has the real hallmark of aristocracy: it positions itself from generation to generation through appropriate outbreeding. Now it's got a half Hispanic heir. Give him twenty-five years and see if he doesn't become America's first semi Hispanic president.
"The Nazis were and are evil, brutal, murderous leftist thugs..."
Good to see accurate recognition of Nazis/Fascists instead of the politically correct meme that (classically) liberal democracies are somehow on a continuum between mass murdering socialists and mass murdering fascists. That this concept is just nonsense propaganda promulgated by the defunct USSR seems to escape too many people.
As far as Harry and the Windsor's are concerned, everyone should just play the dueling banjos from Deliverance whenever the topic of European royalty comes up.
Very briefly Boys and Girls:
Fascism and communism/socialism are similiar in most of their policies. The ONLY thing that makes fascism right wing is its ardent nationalism, whereas communism was more concerned with the international ("workers of the world unite" and all that crap).
Other than that they are both interchangeable as totalitarian regimes who favored government ownership of key industries, limitations on property rights, limitations on gun rights etc.....
Heyla
i was pointed at this blog from http://bar.baen.com:8080/~bar , I like.
Happy blogging.
and you'll be blogrolled when next i update...
Great article. One thing I noticed at the airport in London on my way to Iraq. Brits seem to flock to Cuba. They were boarding a flight to a destination I did not recognize.
I asked a lady sitting near me. It was Cuba. They were all going on vacation to the resorts. They apparently fly their every day.
Harry, the silly boy.....
The awful message we all should never forget about the Holocaust seems to have passed many a young person by. Was it 60% of under 35 year olds had never heard of Auschwitz, or Hitler, being presumably so warapped up in their modern shallow pleasures of pop 'music', booze, drugs, sex, porn, violent folms, etc., etc. Harry by wore a comparitively plain desert uniform, whose only real distinction over general men's wear was the collar badge and the swastika armband, and as such, it was not like a fancy dress costume, it looked more like a fashion statement'. I have since seen fancy dress costumes devised by young 'wags', and they are SO different. The ones that sport a bright pink wig, then a nazi jacket, then garish shorts and silly shoes, these are obviously poking fun, and as such, they are not offensive. BECAUSE they make the nazis look ridiculous. When you wear ordinary looking clothes, and stick a swastika on, THEN it does not look obvious that it
(whoops, I ran out of space....to continue...)
As I was saying, Harry was wearing largely ordinary clothes, the 'costume' was not obviously an attempt to look ridiculous, if he wanted to poke fun at nazis.
Unless the costume is clearly devised, like the ones with a mish-mash of kit like clown's wigs on top of a uniform, then it is liable to be taken as a serious statement. Like the deplorable, sickening way some arabs wore tee shirts showing the twin towers burning.
If Harry had gone in , say, an old colonel of the Indian Raj era, that would have been O.K. Or how about a scruffy rugby player with a tutu? There must be thousands of funny looking things he could have chosen...
To me, the problem came from the fact that the basic clothes, i.e., shirt and trousers, were very ordinary, not really what you'd call 'fancy' dress...
Toby.
Time for the RF to be replaced by afamily with a better knowledge of HISTORY.
YEs, i think the bart simpson fanily would do.
The Queen isn't the only British royal who's done something useful.
Prince Andrew, despite his playboy ways, flew helicopters in the Falklands, coming under enemy fire.
A few years in the army, and a tour of duty somewhere like Iraq, will soon sort Harry out.
Abolish the monarchy today, and tomorrow we'd see Tony Blair draping himself in the Crown Jewels, and quasi-royal power. The Monarch is bound by tradition; Blair wouldn't be.
As for the old canard, raised in comments, that the UK royals are really German, the family only spent two generations in Germany - three centuries ago. By those standards most Americans wouldn't be American.
James II was taking bribes from the French, so Parliament threw him out, passed the Bill of Rights, and imported some of James I's other great-grandchildren - a straightforward demonstration of Parliamentary power.
Does Harry reflect a widespread cultural misunderstanding of a dangerous legacy?
It’s interesting that so much confusion or disagreement exists over the nature of Fascism. I agree that ultra-nationalism was the main ingredient; but the idea has morphed into including ultra-anything. Today the term is tossed around so casually during disputes. We hear fascism applied to employers, feminists, Zionists, Muslims, conservatives and school principals. Above all, it is misapplied in various political confrontations.
Typically, opposing sides hang this label on their foes to discredit them. This technique results in a variety of groups branded as Fascists. Unfortunately, these accusations often result from a blurred understanding of the historical significance of the Nazi ideology.
One probable cause of this general confusion could be attributed to the lack of a written Nazi doctrine. While other ideologies define themselves through such foundational documents as The Declaration o
continuing
The Declaration of the Rights of Man or the Communist Manifesto, Fascism often defined itself through what it opposed. Perhaps this characteristic has been incorporated by varied modern movements.
While academic studies might provide some individuals with an invaluable understanding of the ideas contained in Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Nazi party’s platform goals, such opportunities are no longer widely available outside of specialized studies. I encounter German high school students who demonstrate little historical knowledge of their country during its 1930-1940 era, while American and British students often fail to recognize any significant events not gained through watching Saving Private Ryan. An entire generation lacks comprehension of the dangerous legacies of Fascism and Nazism now faded into vague images.
Such lethal ignorance can lead to any nation’s failure to recognize the reappearance of factors allowing Hitler’s election, his dismantling of a republic
continuing
Such lethal ignorance can lead to any nation’s failure to recognize the reappearance of factors allowing Hitler’s election, his dismantling of a republic and his implementation of a modernized, assembly-line genocide industry.
I actually have on my blog the pic of Harry wearing the outfit with the caption "Bloody Hell, I should have worn a Che Guevara shirt" I wish I could say I thought of it, but I got it from Kurt landers and "Caption this."
Young people today, even Royals have a Southpark mentality and that is nothing is sacred. My oldest son remarked that Pirates brutally killed innocent people but no one gets upset when one wears that. That is how it is today. We reap what we sow. (if your wondering, yes, I gave my son a good talk about the holocaust and no joking material there)
I don't care about the House of W
one way or the other. I think the
Diplomad's "July 4th,1776" comment
sums it up pretty well. But I will
say I think the press needs to leave
the kid alone and let his family deal
with the "What the HELL were you
thinking!?!" aspect. God knows we all
did stupid thoughtless stuff at 20.
The college I attended has a yearly
campus wide costume party. My first
year there coincided with the 10th
anniversary of a tornado that ripped
through campus destroying some of the
buildings and worse,killing three
students and injuring dozens more.
Well..you can guess where this is
going. One large group of guys came
to the party as "tornado victims".
They were wearing screen doors and
tree limbs 'arrow through the head'
style. Sick but sort of funny. My
older brother had been on campus
during that storm. A lot of my
classmates could say the same..but
nobody got really offended except the
administration. Gallows humor. Not
alw
oops..not always appropriate,but
nearly always present.
I don't think it's an indication that
he will lead a worthless life.
Thank GOD they didn't have cell phone
cameras when we were all in the first
blush of wild youth.
With proper editing it's pretty easy to see the rhetoric coming from England isn't that much different in its antisemitism than the group that provided the icon Harry idiotically rented at an upscale costume shop, which caters to young royals.
Nazi antisemitism and antiIsraeli polemics are all pointing to the saem horrible direction. I surprised there was a flap at all. If it had been on the bbc or reuters in slightly different words, it would have a white paper.
Look at Harry as a dyslexic Disraeli, he'd be dissing Israel if he could.Like Mummy's egyptian boyfriend.
Ariana,
There IS a written Nazi doctrine. Thousands, perhaps hundreds-of-thousands of pages of speeches, philosophizing, etc. Not to mention "Mein Kampf."
Fascism and Nazism, just like Communism, are different forms that the socialist idea took in the 20th century.
Leftism is Fascism. The Nazis and Fascists espoused all of the same themes that we see among the Leftists today - "environmentalism," calls for a ban on smoking, cheap and functional automobiles, vegetarianism, collectivism, a planned economy, violence, and anti-Semitism.
One of the best discussions of this phenomenon is on "dissectleft.blopspot.com" -- put up by an Australian professor.
Thanks.
Bob,
The fact that the Fascists included Italian nationalism and militarism in their programme does not miraculously transofrm them into "rightists." Mussolini was a socialist.
Iconoclast,
You are spot on.
Might I second (ignoring the umpteen intervening posts) midas mulligan's comment:
"f I can pick a small nit -- the King of Thailand is a rare royal who is a force for good."
What he said. But, I might add, the less said about the son most likely to inherit, the better. I suspect that the King of Thailand hangs on to the throne for much the same reason that the Queen of England does.
Bertrand de Jouvenal, the French thinker who was a journalist in Moscow during the Phoney War, there ran into a young SS officer whom he had known in Berlin before the war. It was the period when the Germans and the Soviets were allies. What was the German doing in Moscow? de Jouvenal asked. He was there to study the camps. In other words, the Nazis wanted to "improve" their concentration camps by seeing how the Communists did it.
Italian Fascists were pussycats by comparison to the Nazis and Communists, despite their aspirations to totalitarianism and Mussolini having been called the Lenin of Italy before the Great War, when he edited the Socialist Party's paper. The only reason he formed the Fascist Party was that the Socialists wouldn't take him back after the war, and the only disagreement they had with him was over intervention, not doctrine or practice. The Socialists morphed into Communists, just as thuggish and murderous as the Fascists were. If they had come to p
(continued)
If they had come to power they probably would have been more murderous than the Fascists, in good Communist fashion.
(Sorry for the truncation).
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
Thanks for the link, I’ll visit it soon.
I used the term “written doctrine” meaning no concise, formal document which explicitly stated their ideology. Collections of various writings aren’t considered a formal doctrine and lack the clarity it provides.
I agree that a great deal of information is available through thousands of speeches, party communications and Hitler’s long and convoluted book describing his life and beliefs. However, these sources can provide insight only if one has the time and intelligence to study them. Normally, explanations come second hand through the interpretations of historians. What are the possibilities that a large percentage of the population would sacrifice the time and effort to read through this amount of material?
Continued
For an experiment, ask several (non-academic) people if they can explain half the points contained within the Nazi Party Platform. Many of them may suggest superior race and genocide. Fewer of them will mention ultra-nationalism, the land for the Volk or ending the Versailles Treaty and so forth. Yet, fewer still will indicate knowledge regarding the socialist goals ie.collectivism and a planned economy which you obviously understand. However, I doubt if your educational background is typical. Educational and age levels make a huge difference.
I don’t mean to prose on forever, but I believe these factors have contributed to the widespread misuse of the term and a general ignorance of the movement’s dangers.
Dear Diplomad,
I agree with you when you sneer at the European Royalty and the exceptions that you made. You need to add to your list of exceptions however - Princess Mary of Denmark. She is an Australian, appears to have a firm grip on reality and she is a babe.
Otherwise, carry on.
My opinion on the fancy dress thing - media beat-up. Leave the kid alone. Nobody else seems to get in trouble for taking the piss out of Nazis. Would the reaction been the same if he came as Stalin or Mao?
Ariana,
A concise summary of the Programme of the National Socialist German Workers' Party can be found here:
http://www.hitler.org/writings/p...ings/programme/
And here are his own words:
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." --Adolf Hitler
(Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)
There should be no doubt that Hitler was a leftist, and that Nazism is in fact a form of socialism.
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
There is no doubt the internet has revolutionized research and the ability to provide previously hard to obtain information for millions of people. Overtime, this easier access to such information may reshape common assumptions on the political slant of the Nazis.
However, socialist political groups would loathe to lose their handy tool used to smear political groups from the right or any other dissention. Therefore, no information or arguments will convince socialists or communists that a relationship exists with Fascism.
I’m not disagreeing with your conclusions, merely suggesting that changing widespread perceptions through information will remain limited by the number of people choosing to spend their time reading, or reading outside of their habitual sources. Those individuals represent a small percentage of the world’s population.
Ariana,
You are of course entirely correct.
Changing widespread perceptions is a long and difficult process.
But it behooves us to know what we are up against.
The kinder, gentler face of bureaucratic eurosocialism will bare its vicious teeth when sufficiently stressed.
Calling the Nazis "right-wing," and applying the Nazi label to anti-collectivist conservatives, is just another way the leftists heap opprobrium on their opponents.
Ever notice how the Islamist hard-liners who worked a REVOLUTION in Iran are called "conservative mullahs," or how hard-line Stalinists were called "conservative."
It's a "big lie" a la Goebbels, isn't it?
Fussing over other countries' royals seems the perfect compromise. Those who seem to need royals to fuss over can mind the Windsors from afar, and the rest of us Americans who don't care-- don't have to pay the bills for them.
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca,
Unfortunately, few people appear to recognize the reappearance of the the old pattern. However, there is a ray of hope
Leaving aside the gratuitous insults in this posting (such as describing the Royals as '... a gaggle of dopes' because I know you simply made that comment up to entertain your readers) I'd like to correct a couple of glaring inaccuracies:
"At least our dopes have to work for a living"
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II carries out approximately 350 official engagements every year. She does this to this day and she is now nearly 80 years old.
Other royals carry out many such engagments numbering in the hundreds in some cases. They aren't always fun either. There can always be criticism - some founded, some baseless - but there should at least be some accuracy in the mud-slinging.
"In the 1930's, moreover, some members were widely seen as openly sympathetic to the Nazis. In one iconic photograph, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, smiling broadly, were seen greeting Hitler." (Quoted from the Evening Standard).
So what? When the German Zepplin 'The Hindenburg' went dow
So what? When the German Zepplin 'The Hindenburg' went down in New Jersey in 1937 hundreds of American mourners are on film walking past the Swatika-strewn coffins of the German dead, making Nazi salutes. As those Americans were ignorant of the atrocities-to-come of the Nazis so too was our Royal Family.
"Harry's probably not particularly anti-Semitic, at least not any more so than the average European"
So your Blog is racist it seems. A number of us Europeans - me included - would be pretty offended by this blanket accusation of racism. On what facts do you decide we're, on average, anti-semetic?
Finally, I would add that, although his dressing in a swatika was an act of enormous stupidity I wonder just how intelligent the Diplomad thinks the average American 20 year old is? I don't think they'd be much better to be frank... Harry's biggest crime, after displaying terrible taste, is not realising just how much hot air would be expended on his stupid party outfit.
Two Sixes,
Re:"Majesty Queen Elizabeth II carries out approximately 350 official engagements every year. She does this to this day and she is now nearly 80 years old."
I doubt that anyone here would dispute that statement. There is no question of Queen Elizabeth's devotion and service to her country. She has been a grand monarch and Britain has been fortunate. Her successor will have to match a very high standard.
(cont.)
However the international respect given to "other" royals for volunteering many long and difficult working hours is based on the concept of a justified tradeoff. Many consider the excellent reputation of the British royals for accomplishing a difficult function, as the justification for their significant privileges and high stature. This controversy concerns a much larger scope than the British royals or the mistakes of teenager. This thread will be ending soon, but read past the sarcastic remarks and hear the real issues.
(Cont) You touched the problem of education; one major concern voiced in this thread. Of course many American 20 year olds lack adequate knowledge of European history and its political movements of the 20th century. Certainly there are American teenagers influenced by contact with the promoters of totalitarian movements. However, an American teenager wearing a swastika would also create an international scandal if they were the children of the President.
(Cont)
Think of the howls of outrage that would occur in response this scenario:
A major American political leader has their 20 year old “child” show up at a party wearing the symbol of any movement held responsible for bombing and attempting to invade the US, as well as killing millions of innocent people in allied countries. It’s not just about Harry and the royals; this incident opened the door for an brewing controversy to explode.
(Cont) Many observers believe the current climate of European violence over its ethnic/religious tensions has resulted from an inadequate education on the nature of totalitarianism. Note that I don’t limit this issue to fascism or Nazism, but include communism and authoritarian governments now existing. The world has developed an unhealthy toleration for authoritarianism, brutal dictatorships and fanatical despots. Why should we show surprise when our children reflect the culture?
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