To think the Daily Mail should read contributors' pieces before it publishes them?

[hackmum]

A couple of weeks ago someone drew attention here to a DM article on the Right Minds bit of their website that made unpleasant comments about mixed race couples. A lot of people complained and the article was taken down.

It turns out that another opinion piece on the same site contained the following jaw-dropping para:

"The German slogan ?Arbeit Macht Frei? is somewhat tainted by its connection with Nazi concentration camps, but its essential message, ?work sets you free? still has something serious to commend it. There is dignity to be gained from any job, no matter how menial, and for young people at the start of their careers, there are valuable lessons to be learned from any form of employment, whether that is on the factory floor, on a supermarket till or in the contemporary hard labour camp of a merchant bank or law office."

There's a screen grab here:

blacktrianglecampaign.org/2012/08/13/daily-heil-online-to-unemployed-graduates-arbeit-macht-frei-work-sets-you-free-still-has-something-serious-to-commend-it/

The offending paragraph has now been removed, but does anyone else wonder if anyone at the Mail actually reads these pieces before they put them on the website? Or will they just publish any old crap?

I don't see what is so offensive about it. The German phrase existed before the Nazis.

It has a fairly extensive history before its appallingly dishonest and cynical employment in concentration camps. For example, "by the Weimar government as a slogan extolling the effects of their desired policy of large-scale public works programmes to end unemployment" (Wikipedia). Interestingly, it was also used (in French) by an ant scientist in his book "Ants of Switzerland."

I think the Nazi's used it precisely because it was already a well-established one in other, more benign, contexts, not because it was an intrinsically Nazi piece of ideology. They filled the camps with little bits of worthy advice about hard work and hygiene etc to disguise from inmates the fact that their death was an anticipated and desired consequence of their imprisonment.

I agree though that it is very insensitive (and unnecessary) to invoke the Nazi association in a newspaper article. The sentiment behind the phrase stands clearly enough on its own to be anything other than undermined and distorted by invoking the cynical Nazi theft of the sentiment.

If you are a regular DM poster you get a 'by' to the vetting process that new posters will have on their posts.

Did nobody raise an eyebrow at "the contemporary hard labour camp of a merchant bank or law office"?