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AIBU?

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To be fed up of comparisons with 1930s Germany in U.K. politics?

873 replies

jessica29054 · 05/10/2016 19:48

Surely a better and far less potentially offensive comparison is the 1980s?

Labour in disarray, therefore weak opposition, and a female PM of course.

Comparisons with the rise of the extreme far right in Germany have little place. The BNP are the equivalent to Hitler and his party and thankfully have little mainstream support.

OP posts:
Fawful · 07/10/2016 11:01

Well Bill, if you consider that actually foreigners do NOT cause a shortage of school places & doctors appointments or lower wages, it's difficult to understand why people want them out at a huge economic cost, unless there's a little bit of something like what that Louis Theroux woman is saying going on in the back of their mind. It's about loss of control and fear of change ultimately (in 3 year olds too), so not necessarily bad as much as misplaced. IMHO.

As for 'we're not xenophobic for wanting EU citizens out, however Muslims, now they are intolerant', I'm afraid I don't follow the logic in this thread.

As the link above says, it's worth examining all prejudices, & we should try starting with ourselves if we can.

Extracts from the NYT book review (about Hitler's ascent) linked above:

Hitler’s repertoire of topics, Mr. Ullrich notes, was limited, and reading his speeches in retrospect, “it seems amazing that he attracted larger and larger audiences” with “repeated mantralike phrases” consisting largely of “accusations, vows of revenge and promises for the future.” But Hitler virtually wrote the modern playbook on demagoguery, arguing in “Mein Kampf” that propaganda must appeal to the emotions — not the reasoning powers — of the crowd. Its “purely intellectual level,” Hitler said, “will have to be that of the lowest mental common denominator among the public it is desired to reach.” Because the understanding of the masses “is feeble,” he went on, effective propaganda needed to be boiled down to a few slogans that should be “persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”
• Hitler’s rise was not inevitable, in Mr. Ullrich’s opinion. There were numerous points at which his ascent might have been derailed, he contends; even as late as January 1933, “it would have been eminently possible to prevent his nomination as Reich chancellor.” He benefited from a “constellation of crises that he was able to exploit cleverly and unscrupulously” — in addition to economic woes and unemployment, there was an “erosion of the political center” and a growing resentment of the elites. The unwillingness of Germany’s political parties to compromise had contributed to a perception of government dysfunction, Mr. Ullrich suggests, and the belief of Hitler supporters that the country needed “a man of iron” who could shake things up. “Why not give the National Socialists a chance?” a prominent banker said of the Nazis. “They seem pretty gutsy to me.”
• Hitler’s ascension was aided and abetted by the naïveté of domestic adversaries who failed to appreciate his ruthlessness and tenacity, and by foreign statesmen who believed they could control his aggression. Early on, revulsion at Hitler’s style and appearance, Mr. Ullrich writes, led some critics to underestimate the man and his popularity, while others dismissed him as a celebrity, a repellent but fascinating “evening’s entertainment.” Politicians, for their part, suffered from the delusion that the dominance of traditional conservatives in the cabinet would neutralize the threat of Nazi abuse of power and “fence Hitler in.” “As far as Hitler’s long-term wishes were concerned,” Mr. Ullrich observes, “his conservative coalition partners believed either that he was not serious or that they could exert a moderating influence on him. In any case, they were severely mistaken.”

Southallgirl · 07/10/2016 11:03

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

mimishimmi · 07/10/2016 11:07

Southall I don't know about Sweden but I live in a pretty Muslim part of Sydney, have been for close to a decade and that has never been an issue. It's not an issue for my daughter. Growing up poor I had far more issues with perverted old white men (and was molested at 8 by a young one whose dad turned out to be a notorious pedo). Abuse was rampant in the churches and we pretty much lived in terror of those who were not so mysteriously very wealthy and powerful after WW2 .

Nakatomi · 07/10/2016 11:16

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Nakatomi · 07/10/2016 11:20

Southallgirl

Why is it an inane belief? If, like you claim, to be so interested in women's rights and what have you and if it's really about women being forced to wear the burka, surely you think it's wrong for us to be deciding what women can or can't wear. It's not up to you to decide if a woman is allowed to wear a burka or not.

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 07/10/2016 11:22

Name calling continues... and breaks MN rules

Nakatomi · 07/10/2016 11:29

It's not name-calling to call someone a troll when that is what they are obviously doing.

BillSykesDog · 07/10/2016 11:30

Well Bill, if you consider that actually foreigners do NOT cause a shortage of school places & doctors appointments or lower wages, it's difficult to understand why people want them out at a huge economic cost

Who says anybody wants foreigners 'out'?

Although there does appear to be public support for more controlled immigration policies there doesn't seem to be much support or call for repatriations which I assume is what you mean. I don't think anybody seriously expects repatriations to happen outside of those with the most fevered imaginations. We don't even know that free movement will end yet, let alone mass repatriations!

Aside from that you're doing the same thing again - claiming that there is some sort of mass public feeling demanding 'foreigners out' when there is absolutely no evidence of anything of the sort.

Actually much of what you have written about Hitler and propaganda playing on the emotions could equally be applied to people on this thread making wild claims about repatriations or foreigners being rounded up or supposed rashes of attacks.

Another thing that is being ignored is a very big difference between us and Germany. Germany had proportional representation which allowed the Nazis to gain a small foothold of seats from parliament from which they launched themselves as a major party. We have checks in place to stop things like this happening and loony fringe parties getting even small amounts of power - as demonstrated by the fact UKIP only managed one seat in the last GE. We have pretty sturdy laws in place preventing dictatorship or banning of opposition and one party government and the Queen and the system surrounding her act as a pretty effective part of that.

We also have a reasonably free press and a government which has seemed willing to protect this - in fact most attempts to curtail press freedom in recent years have come very much from the left wing. But I guess these huge glaring differences are a bit too inconvenient for some eh?

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 07/10/2016 11:32

It's not name-calling to call someone a troll when that is what they are obviously doing.

Maybe you should read MNHQ talk guidelines then as you broke them and your post was deleted.

Nakatomi · 07/10/2016 11:37

Cheers for reporting me! Anyway, if you don't like being called a troll, don't be one.

Fawful · 07/10/2016 11:42

Bill except May & Rudd are giving us UKIP's immigration policies as from yesterday because they are doing what they think they need to do to stay in power, and that is how UKIP is ending up in government.

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 07/10/2016 11:42

Cheers for reporting me!

Big assumption there.

The deletion post, which replaced your post actually says it was deleted for breaking the talk rules.

Southallgirl · 07/10/2016 11:43

Sorry ..... I missed something. Who called who a troll? There are no trolls here, only different opinions based on very different levels of knowledge and nous.

No one is asking EU people to leave. As we speak, I have 3 Polish gardeners lopping & topping, and clearing the garden.

Fawful · 07/10/2016 11:44

Bill except May & Rudd are giving us UKIP's immigration policies as from yesterday because they are doing what they think they need to do to stay in power, and that is how UKIP is ending up in government.

GloriaGaynor · 07/10/2016 11:48

That called anecdotal evidence and has a reliability factor of about zero.

Oh yes the old anecdotal whine. Precisely the same whine used by misgogynists to deny sexual harassment and sex crimes. Which the sheer volume of misogynist abuse on the Internet and sites like everydaysexism.com counters

Even the police who released these figures said it was not reliable to make the extrapolations.

The police figures are clear enough: a marked and sustained rise in race hate crime.

It might have been a more convincing argument if you could have, perhaps, given a reason why the factors I said made the data unreliable rather than just throwing around abuse.

Let's be absolutely clear, labelling someone who denies and minimises race hate crime, makes excuses for it, and comes up with spurious reasons why it's not valid is a racist. That is simply a fact. Posting such noxious views and then playing the victim when a spade is called a spade, is particularly obnoxious.

Nakatomi · 07/10/2016 11:58

Southallgirl

You're trolling because you're making things up about what has been allegedly said to your daughter on the street (I don't believe it for a second) and listing things like wearing a burka in the same sentence as FGM as being equally bad, when they're not at all.

prettybird · 07/10/2016 11:59

Saw a very sad post today on FB from a friend (who knows nothing about this thread): she is a non-EU immigrant.

She was saying how unwanted she feels in the UK now, since Brexit, despite having, as a couple, been productive contributors for 20 years (one an NHS oncology surgeon, the other a senior member of a mental health charity) and having two British children. They recently (pre-Brexit) naturalised so that they could start going on holiday in Europe without having to get visas every time.

She herself commented that it felt uncomfortably like what she knew of the 30s - the "othering" of people who're not the same as "them", blaming them for the ills of the country. Sad

However much people deny get annoyed at people describing the parallels, it's those that are at the receiving end who can truly judge. Sad

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 07/10/2016 12:02

making things up about what has been allegedly said to your daughter on the street (I don't believe it for a second)

Wow

You can disagree with someone, but to call them a liar when you weren't there?

BillSykesDog · 07/10/2016 12:13

Bill except May & Rudd are giving us UKIP's immigration policies as from yesterday because they are doing what they think they need to do to stay in power, and that is how UKIP is ending up in government.

Except UKIP aren't in government. And you're just going down the same old tired route of any policy which isn't totally pro mass uncontrolled immigration being extreme and far right.

Incidentally companies have been required to ask for information re ethnicity and nationality already (although it's not been published granted) with the aim of collecting evidence that companies are not discriminating against BAME applicants or those of different nationalities in recruitment.

Suddenly when the same data is going to be collected but the aim is to look for companies that discriminate against British applicants it's unacceptable. I suspect that a lot of the people complaining about this would be perfectly happy for the same data to be published if it was done under the banner of exposing discrimination in the opposite direction - which it still might do, I have no doubt that companies where migrants and BAME staff are severely under represented will have their data seized upon. Besides, I really don't see what the problem is, if, as we're told, British people being frozen out of jobs by some companies is not a problem, then surely this data will be a damp squib which will just confirm that? A lot of the opposition to that gives the impression of people knowing there is something worth hiding...

Justchanged · 07/10/2016 12:23

I have listen to the podcast linked above. The speaker was articulate with perfect received pronunciation and soothing tones. Essentially his argument was that our identity and cohesiveness is all to do with our nation state and has been built up through centuries and cannot be understood unless you have the heritage; the EU vote was a question of identity and when asked to vote on identity, the result is hardly surprising. Especially as the British people want to be able to decide for all for themselves without interference from the wider world.

I come from Northern Ireland and so have heard similar arguments about identity politics many, many times but usually in a much more strident tone. A soothing tone does not make them less divisive, inward-looking, nationalistic or intolerant (how does shared identify work if Polish people move in next door?)

Fawful · 07/10/2016 12:34

Bill it's not about collecting this info, it's about publishing it and using it to shame employers, which means that each time I'll open my mouth to a customer at work from now on, people will think my employer isn't patriotic, which means I'm now a liability to them.
UKIP are effectively in government if their ideas make up policies.

justgivemeamo · 07/10/2016 12:48

What worries me is when all the clever chaps, educated, hard working EU citizens have left we will be stranded with these narrow minds, I am worried about the UK economy if we promote a culture of closed mindedness.

^^ I couldn't disagree more. I find sticking like glue to the EU restrictive and inward looking. If anyone is narrow minded I find it in the EU fanatics.

if all the bright, open-minded, multi-lingual and driven people are leaving and we are left with people who are not qualified to compete in a global economy because they have been told that the most important thing to succeed is to be British born

what a load of old cobblers!!

justgivemeamo · 07/10/2016 12:51

A lot of the opposition to that gives the impression of people knowing there is something worth hiding...

couldnt agree more

Fawful · 07/10/2016 12:56

'A lot of the opposition to that gives the impression of people knowing there is something worth hiding'

Yes, that's right, we're hiding everywhere, but once we're flushed out everything will be ok...

justgivemeamo · 07/10/2016 12:56

Well Bill, if you consider that actually foreigners do NOT cause a shortage of school places & doctors appointments or lower wages, it's difficult to understand why people want them out at a huge economic cost, unless there's a little bit of something like what that Louis Theroux woman is saying going on in the back of their mind. It's about loss of control and fear of change ultimately (in 3 year olds too), so not necessarily bad as much as misplaced

Yes Fawful, misplaced - go and tell that to Frank Field who pleaded with us to vote leave for the poor. Confused
www.frankfield.com/latest-news/news.aspx?p=1021270

It is the poorest in our communities, those whose choices in life are already by far the most restricted, whose standard of living is most adversely affected by the arrival of a record number of newcomers.

There is a school of belief which quite naturally draws upon compassion to justify the opportunities given to millions of people from the EU to start a new life here. But compassion demands that we consider as a priority the impact that so many new arrivals has on our poorest citizens’ chances of securing the ever scarcer necessities in life — a place at a decent school for their children, a home that they can afford to rent or buy, and swift access to healthcare.

A lethal combination, since 2010, of public-expenditure cuts and unrestricted immigration from the EU has already diminished our poorest citizens’ choices in this regard. Remaining in the EU will, I fear, bring a continued erosion in their living standards.

It is inconceivable that house prices and rents will fall, that the number of school places will expand, and that pressure on local health services will ease, in communities that are at the sharp end of unlimited immigration. An ever-growing portion of our national wealth — we know not how much — will be required to accommodate an unknown and unlimited number of newcomers.

The Prime Minister has failed from the inside to secure any concessions that would limit the number of newcomers to this country. Compassion toward the weakest members of our society, therefore, demands that we vote to leave the EU

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