Republic of Britain?
It seems the British Tabloids have found yet another subject to get themselves into a tizzy about, and I'm not talking about the "15p a pint" headline that almost got squeezed out of the People on Sunday by the appositely monikered Abi Titmuss.
No, it seems that they're all shocked that a member of the Royal family, who aren't allowed marry Catholics, let alone Jews, was photographed wearing a Nazi Uniform.
From my republican perspective I can't see what all the fuss is about. He comes from a family of Germans who dress up in silly costumes several times a year to show how much better they are than anyone else, so he must be wondering the same thing.
Every columnist has their given their two cents about why Prince Harry acted the way he did. I remember a few years ago a poncey English guy came on to the Late Late Show and blamed the Royal Family's decline on the fact that they started marrying "commoners" a few years ago. So it's all his mum's fault, the same Diana that campaigned for land mines to be abolished, it would seem.
Others claim that he was acting the role that all offspring of leaders act and that he was drinking from the same bowl as the likes of Euan Blair and the Bush twins, who, even though their dad is no great Intellect, know better than to wear the insignia of a regime that invaded many countries, stole their resourses and tortured the locals.
Others say that it's because his mother died when he was young and that his father doesnt spend enough time with him, though I don't suppose Big Ears will getting any visits from the social services soon.
Me, I blame the crowd he hangs out with. Anyone that starts a party with a "Natives and Colonials" theme is eithercompletely out of touch with the times or else of the conviction that the rules don't apply to people of their caste, or a combination of both. So it's hardly surprsising that one of them would wear an insignia of an 80-year-old foreign group who believed they were the master race.
The curious thing about the British class system is that not only do English people think they're better than anyone else, the upper classes think that they're better than the working and trading classes as well. Watching the early episodes of Seven-Up, which examined people from different social strata at seven-year intervals, you get a chilling sense of the superioity complex they have, as one of them, all of seven years old, starts ordering a working class kid around. It's unclear whether he acts this way because he's been taught to do so or whether he just has an innate sense of superiority.
It's curious, too, that when the Germans were trying to take over the world, they had to keep telling their population that they were better than anyone else, whereas in the days of the British Empire the ruling classes would already have been preaching to the converted.
It's no secret that the Nazis were actually big fans of the British aristocracy, that concentration camps were invented during the Boer war by the British, that the Germans wanted to train a group of James Bond-like spies modelled on MI5 because the English "had such a long history of being a master race"
It's also true that while 6 million Jews were being gassed, in India, of which Harry's grandfather was Emperor, four million Bengalis were deliberately srarved while Churchill kept their grain impounded.
Yet people are shocked to see him wear the Nazi armband. It's shocking to me that the Germans would have felt the need to appropriate an image that comes from Hinduism, (which is a bit of a shock to the many Israeli tourists who visit India's inexpensive shores today) when their own history was so filled with icons.
On the other hand, most of Britains' symbols were imported from somewhere else. St. George was originally from Catalonia, St. Andrew from Israel. The Prince of Wales' motto is Czech. Their religion is a German version of a Roman version of a middle Eastern religion. Lions aren't indiginous to Britain either. So it doesn't come as that much of a surprise to me that one of their royal family should appropriate an image from his German cousins.
Still, they feel they need to discipline him, and he's going to have some sensitivity training from the chief Rabbi. Hopefully he can introduce him to some nice Jewish girls so he can see what a loss Austwich was to humanity, though if he brought one home people would see that his act wasn't all that out of character for the royal family.
Then he's going to have a spell in the Army. Well, that certainly sorted Hitler out. He was wearing Nazi armands and making anti-semitic remarks with total impunity until he signed up for the Austrian army in 1914, and they weren't long beating it out of him. This is the same British army of course, which executed hundreds of Irish soldiers who naively thought that by fighting for the colonial overlord they might get some sort of autonomy.
Harry's misemenour can only be good for the burgeoning republican movement in Britain. Hardly anybody there is going to want the eightieth aniversary of Austwich to be presided over by this obnoxious little prick. I'm all for a Republic of Britain, which would pull the carpet from under the Ulster Unionists and hopefully the money saved could be sent to people who really need it instead of spoilt brats like Harry.
Britain only changes really slowly, though, but the trend in the media is away from gossip about the royals to people that the public can relate to. The end of the aristocratic sport of fox-hunting is another welcome development. Yet the sad fact is that many of the wealthiest young people in the country are old money. Until this changes, then many young aristos will naturally feel that they're better than anyone else.
No, it seems that they're all shocked that a member of the Royal family, who aren't allowed marry Catholics, let alone Jews, was photographed wearing a Nazi Uniform.
From my republican perspective I can't see what all the fuss is about. He comes from a family of Germans who dress up in silly costumes several times a year to show how much better they are than anyone else, so he must be wondering the same thing.
Every columnist has their given their two cents about why Prince Harry acted the way he did. I remember a few years ago a poncey English guy came on to the Late Late Show and blamed the Royal Family's decline on the fact that they started marrying "commoners" a few years ago. So it's all his mum's fault, the same Diana that campaigned for land mines to be abolished, it would seem.
Others claim that he was acting the role that all offspring of leaders act and that he was drinking from the same bowl as the likes of Euan Blair and the Bush twins, who, even though their dad is no great Intellect, know better than to wear the insignia of a regime that invaded many countries, stole their resourses and tortured the locals.
Others say that it's because his mother died when he was young and that his father doesnt spend enough time with him, though I don't suppose Big Ears will getting any visits from the social services soon.
Me, I blame the crowd he hangs out with. Anyone that starts a party with a "Natives and Colonials" theme is eithercompletely out of touch with the times or else of the conviction that the rules don't apply to people of their caste, or a combination of both. So it's hardly surprsising that one of them would wear an insignia of an 80-year-old foreign group who believed they were the master race.
The curious thing about the British class system is that not only do English people think they're better than anyone else, the upper classes think that they're better than the working and trading classes as well. Watching the early episodes of Seven-Up, which examined people from different social strata at seven-year intervals, you get a chilling sense of the superioity complex they have, as one of them, all of seven years old, starts ordering a working class kid around. It's unclear whether he acts this way because he's been taught to do so or whether he just has an innate sense of superiority.
It's curious, too, that when the Germans were trying to take over the world, they had to keep telling their population that they were better than anyone else, whereas in the days of the British Empire the ruling classes would already have been preaching to the converted.
It's no secret that the Nazis were actually big fans of the British aristocracy, that concentration camps were invented during the Boer war by the British, that the Germans wanted to train a group of James Bond-like spies modelled on MI5 because the English "had such a long history of being a master race"
It's also true that while 6 million Jews were being gassed, in India, of which Harry's grandfather was Emperor, four million Bengalis were deliberately srarved while Churchill kept their grain impounded.
Yet people are shocked to see him wear the Nazi armband. It's shocking to me that the Germans would have felt the need to appropriate an image that comes from Hinduism, (which is a bit of a shock to the many Israeli tourists who visit India's inexpensive shores today) when their own history was so filled with icons.
On the other hand, most of Britains' symbols were imported from somewhere else. St. George was originally from Catalonia, St. Andrew from Israel. The Prince of Wales' motto is Czech. Their religion is a German version of a Roman version of a middle Eastern religion. Lions aren't indiginous to Britain either. So it doesn't come as that much of a surprise to me that one of their royal family should appropriate an image from his German cousins.
Still, they feel they need to discipline him, and he's going to have some sensitivity training from the chief Rabbi. Hopefully he can introduce him to some nice Jewish girls so he can see what a loss Austwich was to humanity, though if he brought one home people would see that his act wasn't all that out of character for the royal family.
Then he's going to have a spell in the Army. Well, that certainly sorted Hitler out. He was wearing Nazi armands and making anti-semitic remarks with total impunity until he signed up for the Austrian army in 1914, and they weren't long beating it out of him. This is the same British army of course, which executed hundreds of Irish soldiers who naively thought that by fighting for the colonial overlord they might get some sort of autonomy.
Harry's misemenour can only be good for the burgeoning republican movement in Britain. Hardly anybody there is going to want the eightieth aniversary of Austwich to be presided over by this obnoxious little prick. I'm all for a Republic of Britain, which would pull the carpet from under the Ulster Unionists and hopefully the money saved could be sent to people who really need it instead of spoilt brats like Harry.
Britain only changes really slowly, though, but the trend in the media is away from gossip about the royals to people that the public can relate to. The end of the aristocratic sport of fox-hunting is another welcome development. Yet the sad fact is that many of the wealthiest young people in the country are old money. Until this changes, then many young aristos will naturally feel that they're better than anyone else.
posted by seamus @ 2:27 pm
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