Churchill to Hitler

[Pinkkgaga]

So it’s trending on Twitter that people are comparing Churchill to Hitler and saying he was just as bad.
Absolutely disgusting imo, but I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts on it.

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

Churchill isn't particularly loved by Scots either. Secretary of State for War when the cabinet decided to quell strikers by rolling tanks into George Square, and also seen as completely aloof and disinterested in local concerns while an Member of Parliament for Dundee.

The Fifers aren’t keen either.

Postwar Conservatives like to make him the very embodiment of what their party stands for, but for much of his parliamentary career he was a Liberal, an Independent and a pariah to the Conservatives.

And Labour certainly don't get a free pass. Postwar Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech-Jones was widely derided by his cabinet colleagues for being a "N(etc) Lover," and Dalton complained during the war about 'whining jews' who kept asking for the death camps to be bombed.

Bovary yes I am aware of the terrible range of problems in Kenya at the moment (not least because a friend's family is in danger of losing their crops to the locusts). Where have I said that police brutality is the only problem? But it is a very longstanding problem and one that has not been erased by more recent events -- and in fact, these are not separate problems. If you have been following the lockdown in Kenya, you will know that brutal enforcement of it by the police is a big problem. This is from a local news site:

"Despite public outcry against police brutality, the law enforcers seem unperturbed and continue to harass citizens. In just three months since the government outlined and sought to enforce measures to control the spread of coronavirus, Human Rights groups claim the police have killed at least 14 people.The latest known victim is Maurice Ochieng, a carpenter in Kisumu County, who died on Monday, a few days after police officers beat him up for not wearing a face mask while in a public place. This is inhuman and must be condemned by all."

I don't think I'm engaging in any platitudes. I've been reading about and hearing stories about police brutality in Kenya for a long time. Now I'm seeing that people in Kenya have marched in support of BLM, there are plenty of editorials calling for an end to police brutality in Kenya and around the world. I'm not saying that everyone in Kenya is suddenly a BLM activist, I am merely rejecting the assertion that no one outside of Western states cares anything about it. And that's because police brutality is a global problem.

@dreamingbohemian

BLM is a Western movement. It is farcical and frankly offensive to suggest, as you did, that because of BLM, Kenyans are able to challenge police brutality. The phenomenon of 2020 which dominates Kenya right now is Covid and the draconian response of its government including confining people to quarantine, curfews and slum demolition. Your ignorance about Kenya is clear. Your inability to acknowledge that BLM is a Western phenomenon is indicative of your own insular perspective.

Churchill was never universally regarded as a hero though. In South Wales he was absolutely loathed for sending in the troops when he was Home Secretary during the miners strike.

I remember my grandad (who would have been a boy at the time) and others of his generation having the sort of hatred of Churchill that Thatcher later drew upon herself.

It was also widely reported that the crane operators along the Thames dipped their cranes out of respect and deference as Churchill's coffin was taken down the river. Afterwards it emerged that it was all a publicity stunt: they were compelled to do it after resisting because they disliked him.

It is dreadful. We as a nation almost alone in Europe stood up against racism in Germany. We gave many of our family's lives for it and now it all seems to get thrown back in our face. Yet we with the US behind us stood up against the Hun and their final solution and ensured people of all colours have the freedoms they have today. The world should see us as a beacon of freedom and hope, not make us all feel wicked and awful as if we are all nasty racists.

Xenia I agree with you .My family were involved in WW2 as well and my DF lost many friends in battle .Churchill had to defend our Country where Hitler was a dictator who invaded Europe and killed many Jewish people deliberately .Maybe Churchill wasnt perfect, but to compare him to Hitler is misguided at best and ridicolous at worst! We are talking about a man born in the 19th century FFS.Of course his outlook was different to todays !

People should be aware that the concept of racism did not really exist until the late 70s and did not become mainstream until much later. It is utterly meaningless to hold historical figures to standards that they were not even aware of.

Racism has since become the yardstick against which all else is measured - in Western countries anyway. If any of you were to venture beyond say the Bosphorus, you would find a completely different set of standards apply, and racism is not one of them.

@Shinjirarenai

People should be aware that the concept of racism did not really exist until the late 70s and did not become mainstream until much later. It is utterly meaningless to hold historical figures to standards that they were not even aware of.

Racism has since become the yardstick against which all else is measured - in Western countries anyway. If any of you were to venture beyond say the Bosphorus, you would find a completely different set of standards apply, and racism is not one of them.

Indeed - a short spell in Bahrain opened my eyes to that - it's like a mirror image - rather than being discouraged it seemed to be compulsory.

With that said, my experience in mainland Western Europe is that it's far from the multicultural tolerant paradise that many people seem to paint it as.

@Xenia

It is dreadful. We as a nation almost alone in Europe stood up against racism in Germany. We gave many of our family's lives for it and now it all seems to get thrown back in our face. Yet we with the US behind us stood up against the Hun and their final solution and ensured people of all colours have the freedoms they have today. The world should see us as a beacon of freedom and hope, not make us all feel wicked and awful as if we are all nasty racists.

Pointing out Churchill's questionable morality on some issues isn't "throwing it back in our face", it's legitimate commentary.

Can you name one multicultural tolerant paradise Hinge? I'd be hard pushed although some are better than others. People tend to naturally gravitate towards their own group - it's the way we evolved FGS, and most parts of the world are quite comfortable with this - while still extending courtesy to visitors. Moving in permanently is generally a completely different experience. That is the way of the world.

Can you name one multicultural tolerant paradise Hinge?

Al-Andalus - before Europeans "civilised" it ?

Sicily under Roger II ?

Admitted not anglophone so not proper history ...

@Xenia

Read your own post, then think about why so many people inside the US and UK are apoplectic at the actions of two States you believe should be perceived as 'beacons of hope and freedom'. That's the ideal, the picture postcard version, but its' evidently not the reality for huge swathes of both populations.

The athlete who lost his job and was vetoed by his entire sport for kneeling during the national anthem is the perfect example of this. Even the President chipped in to berate him for disrespecting the flag. The athlete himself replied that on the contrary, he was an unashamed patriot, loved his country, and the notion of the original constitution of fairness and equality for all. His kneeling protest wasn't an act of hate against either the flag or the nation itself, but a protest at how utterly unrecognisable from that original version on the US, as described in the constitution, his country has actually become. How on earth is it reasonable to expect a black man to stand and venerate an anthem that declares 'home of the free' when the apparatus of state is openly racist and persecutes black americans? For them, it's anything but the 'land of the free'.

And again, at the risk of repeating myself, the Soviet Union did everything the UK and the US did x10 insofar as defeating Naziism and Hitler goes. That victory in itself is no reason to laud or venerate the nations involved, being as they acted out of self-preservation and nothing else. We defended and fought for our existence in exactly the same way the Soviets did, yet nobody in the US or UK ever turns around and claims the Soviet Union was a beacon for freedom and hope. Nobody except delusional Communists anyway.

Is it right to be proud of standing up to Naziism? Of course it is, and it's to be celebrated and cheered forever more that they were defeated, but I'm sorry, the events of 70+ years ago say absolutely nothing about the merits, fairness, or value of the society we live in today.

I'm 32 and haven't studied history since I was 14. I wasn't a particularly keen history student, but I definitely was taught a lot of the things I keep seeing people say do not get taught in UK schools.

I really don't think the vast opposition to statues being removed etc comes from the perspective of thinking the UK is a perfect place with a perfect history, nor from the perspective of agreeing with the bad acts of the past. I think it is reductive to act as if that is the case.

stood up against the Hun...

Tiny bit racist?

multicultural tolerant paradise....

I'm amused by Richard Curtis's Notting Hill.

As Hugh Grant walks through his busy neighbourhood, look carefully and you will see two black people; one who hides his face and the other who runs away.

This by Andthenthenewone is worth repeating:

Why are people so afraid of facing the hard truths? Our education system is woefully insufficient and all we can do is to keep an open mind and learn it all ourselves. That is the only way forward

BLM is a Western movement. It is farcical and frankly offensive to suggest, as you did, that because of BLM, Kenyans are able to challenge police brutality.

Oh give it a rest Bovary. I clearly said BLM is a Western movement. I clearly said Kenyans have been fighting against police brutality for a long time independent of this.

Why did you even start talking about BLM on this thread? You seem very determined to delegitimise it on multiple threads, however tenuous the link.

Can we stop derailing the thread now? I get it, you think I'm a Western-centric idiot who doesn't know anything about the world. I'm not, but I can't be bothered to convince you anymore.

@Xenia

It is dreadful. We as a nation almost alone in Europe stood up against racism in Germany. We gave many of our family's lives for it and now it all seems to get thrown back in our face. Yet we with the US behind us stood up against the Hun and their final solution and ensured people of all colours have the freedoms they have today. The world should see us as a beacon of freedom and hope, not make us all feel wicked and awful as if we are all nasty racists.

Try telling that to the countless people who had to endure life under jim crow laws. Try telling that to the people still suffering from systemic racism today.

@MockersGuidedByTheScience

Sir Francis Drake was, in fact, a pirate

Only if you accept the authority of Pope Alexander VI to rule that all the land west of the Azores belonged to Spain and Portugal.

Drake, Hawkins and Co were exercising their rights to take ships on the high seas, which by dint of exercising control over them belonged to England. Britannia Rules the Waves and all that.

And where do you suppose the Spanish got all that gold and silver?
Argos? Elizabeth Duke?

This misses the point, apologies if I did not express myself clearly. The point I am making is that children are taught about the 'impressive' things figures such as Drake did such as circumnavigating the globe, but their more questionable actions are omited from the history books, such as the fact that he rode without an official privateer commission (not that that makes it any better!) or that as a young man he was a slave trader.

I can't see this trending on Twitter anyhow.

I suppose part of the problem is that for most people, you only really learn about all these people and events as kids -- and a lot of what we're talking about here is maybe too nuanced or complicated for kids to grasp, you have to simplify it somewhat. But if people never come back to it as adults, then that is all they're stuck with.

I think most Americans also think that we alone won WW2. You really don't learn about everything the Soviets did in school, so unless you look into it more as an adult, it just isn't something you know.

I wouldn’t compare to the scale of murder and calculated brutality and killings of the holocaust but I’d not have held him up as some sort of Messiah.
A ghastly man into Eugenics, misogyny, voted against universal suffrage and guilty of politics that led to mass killings and Bengal Famine. He advocated use of chemical warfare against ‘uncivilised tribes’ and was a notable white supremacist.

His deployment of the Black and Tans was pretty hard on the Irish too.