Suzanne Moore generously recognises that Paul Hollywood made a mistake. How magnanimous.
The photograph of Hollywood dressed as an SS officer wearing a swastika armband has only just surfaced but was taken 14 years ago when he went to a fancy dress party as a character based on the TV series ‘Allo ‘Allo!. He has now said that he is “absolutely devastated if this caused offence to anyone”. Here’s a tip: if you are not sure, best not dress as a Nazi.
Oh, FFS! It was a fancy dress party. He was dressed as Von Klinkerhoffen, a character in a comedy show from the nineteen eighties. Get over it fer cryin’ out loud. No one over the age of about three would be offended. If they are, they are a jerk.
But, of course, this isn’t about Hollywood. Oh, no, this is about Nigel Farage who is real Nazi – of course.
But something else is going on at the moment, isn’t it? There is this desperate performance of an uncertain British identity: cakes, bunting, second world war larks. We are uncertain whether it is OK to make jokes about Nazi symbols, yet we are also being told that not to wave a union jack is unpatriotic.
Bullshit. We are only diffident about such things because the left is in ascendance and howls in rage at every perceived slight – along with Twatter mobs and Farcebook hounding. They have taken the Godwin concept and turned it into its own parody. So, yes, actually, it is perfectly okay to make such jokes and it is perfectly okay in the grow up world to dress up for a bit of fun – even if it is as a Nazi as no one who is part of the grown up world gives a damn. Dressing up as a Nazi at a fancy dress event doesn’t mean you are one. No one has ever told me that it is unpatriotic not to wave a union flag. I have never waved one and have no plans to do so. No one has breathed a word about this lack of patriotism. No one. Ever. Not once.
So says Farage, who understands symbols very well. He is very concerned about flags. He does not wear a Nazi uniform. Oh no.
No. Because he isn’t one. Simple really.
This is the level of debate we get from the Guardian. So devoid is it of rational argument to defend its untenable position that it is reduced to shouting “Nazi” at people who dare to challenge it or say things it disapproves of. Love him or loathe him, Farage has upset the cosy leftist world (good). He managed to get the referendum on the EU into centre stage and forced Cameron’s hand (good). He is a flawed man (who isn’t) and he can be a twat at times, but he isn’t a Nazi. Suzanne Moore, however is a cretin.
So the issue is not one of who waves a flag and who doesn’t. It is not one even of people who dress up as Nazis for fun, or accidentally. It is one of giving a platform to those who cavort with the offspring of Nazis while claiming to be patriots. No amount of flag-waving can conceal this rot.
It’s called freedom of speech.
I think knowing the distinction between the union flag and the union jack makes it unnecessary for you to wave one. Or something else equally ridiculous.
The Guardian’s helped cover up all sorts of totalitarians and the horrors they’ve inflicted. Maybe some of their victims would like an apology from those who wrote, and choose to write, for such a vile rag.
As everyone in the Guardian and the BBC knows Nigel Farage is a fascist and a racist. Not that they have any evidence to support those claims.
Paul Hollywood is just being used as an excuse, not that one is needed, to have a go at Farage.
As to flag waving at the proms it used to be done as part of the fun, foreign nationals joined in and good luck to them. The waving of the EU flag en bloc is trying to bring politics into a fun event, it is no more ‘acceptable’ than waving TUC banners. To echo the Guardian – Hint: If you think it might be offensive don’t do it.
“Oh, FFS! It was a fancy dress party. He was dressed as Von Klinkerhoffen, a character in a comedy show from the nineteen eighties”
If I remember Allo Allo correctly there were no SS Officers, only Gestapo which is not quite the same thing. In any event Von Klinkerhoffen was a general in the Wehrmacht. So not SS then.
Why is it so effin’ easy to shoot these wanchors down in sh1?
God help us if he’d gone as Herr Flick. A disabled Nazi. There would be exploding heads all over the Guardian offices.
What if he’d gone as Herr Flick in the episodes where they were trying to impersonate Helga’s girlfriends? The exploding heads in the alphabet soup community would get classed as multiple terrorist incidents. Mein gott!
“Why is it so effin’ easy to shoot these wanchors down in sh1?”
That’s because any sensible person deals in facts, not lefty-driven innuendo and inference. Not many sensible people over there . . .
The Nazis got a few things right apart from the Volkswagen Beetle, the uniforms being a case in point. Even a joke one, seventy years after the party was disbanded, still has an aura of menace. As for the swastika even Airfix didn’t include them for the tailplane of my son’s model FW190. Simply terrifying! He could have fainted. How did we ever beat an enemy who were clad in such imposing clothes and intimidating insignia? May the Guardian protect me against the realisation that Hugo Boss made smart uniforms lest I end up in the Kriegsmarine.
Hey, me and my son look great in black SS uniforms. The fanatical glint in our eyes as the bright sun highlights our blond hair and blue eyes is a spectacle to behold. Does the wearing of SS regalia make us Nazis?
No lad, it’s the crazed ferret on a lead which does.
Too late to treat cretinism. It can be prevented using iodine tablets and a massive injection of common sense.
It is interesting to note that the actual designer of the SS uniform was one Hugo Boss; he died in 1948 but his Company is recognised today as a manufacturer of ‘designer’ clothes, much worn by the SJWs who shout “Nazi” at the sightest contradiction of their ever-changing ideology.
I wonder why Boss is not denigrated?
Oh. Is the word ‘denigrated’ going to trigger anyone? It’s so close to that other word.
The same argument can be applied to VW cars. Herr Hitler commissioned Herr Porsche to design a car that would be affordable to the general public. The wreckage of the factory was salvaged after the war and the Beetle was put back into production. The modern VW car company is the eventual outcome.
I can’t agree with Richard that the Beetle was something that the Nazis got right. It was a truly awful car that had nothing to recommend it apart from the fact that it was considered reliable by the exceedingly low standards of the time. Crude, heavy, cramped, noisy, thirsty and slow. Its commercial success can only put down to the fact that the world is populated by idiots who don’t know any better.