[Mb-civic] Harry the Nazi or Harry the chump?

[richard haase]

well just like uncle david and wallace when they were guests of herr hitler
circa 1936 - 1937
whats the suprise?
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alexander Harper" <harperalexander at mail.com>
To: <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 9:46 AM
Subject: [Mb-civic] Harry the Nazi or Harry the chump?


A good article about the Prince Harry fancy dress nazi incident/storm in a
teacup. Far more shocking to me is the fact that 50% of the population of
the UK has never even heard of Auschwitz - I suppose that is true of the US
too.

Al Baraka


  Matthew Norman: Harry the Nazi, or Harry the fool?
The real but unspoken problem for the Prince is that his family has so much
previous on this issue
14 January 2005


Even for a country that justly takes pride in being the world's leading
manufacturer of synthesised moral disgust, what a week it's been. One minute
a phalanx of devout Christians are burning their TV licences outside the BBC
in protest at a satirical portrayal of the Prince of Heaven. The next, an
earthly Prince is pictured wearing a misappropriated Hindu symbol at a fancy
dress party in Wiltshire.

At time of writing, there are no reports of either Jewish people or veterans
of Monty's North African campaign (Harry also wore the outfit of a Rommel
officer) gathering outside Buckingham Palace to incinerate their passports,
but it's early days.

One way of seeking perspective on the matter of the Prince and the Swastika
might be to decide which of two captions would better fit the bill were he
to appear as a character in an updated version of Jerry Springer - The
Opera. "Prince Harry: Grandson of British Queen is Huge Fan of Adolf
Hitler"? Or: "Prince Harry: Not Especially Bright Child of Ignorant Times"?

In any "You, The Jury" phone poll held by The Sun, which broke the story
beneath the front page headline: "Harry The Nazi", my vote would be for the
latter, while, judging by his appearance on the Today programme, the Leader
of the Opposition would plump for the former. Michael Howard, who
melodramatically abandoned his lectern at last autumn's Tory conference to
whisper of relatives lost in concentration camps, permitted himself to be
scandalised. He even called on Harry to recite a public apologia.

Even Conservative leaders are entitled to their opinion, of course, but
listening to this nonsense I found myself wondering how a mutual friend
would have reacted. A year ago almost to the day, Stewart Steven, a
newspaper editor of immense talent and a most glorious man, died in his
sleep. As Mr Howard movingly reminded us at the memorial service, Stewart
was born to a Jewish father in Hitler's Germany, the family fleeing to
England when he was a small boy.

Adducing the dead as witnesses is slightly dodgy, but I'm fairly sure that
Stewart, a voracious student of the Holocaust and a passionate friend of
Israel, would have smiled wryly at the fuss. Undoubtedly, he would by now
have been to see Nathan Lane in The Producers, and unleashed his basso
profundo chuckle at the dance number in which the cast of Springtime For
Hitler form themselves into a giant swastika.

Whether or not Mr Howard has been to that show, my guess is that he has seen
the movie many times without feeling obliged to demand an official
recantation from Mel Brooks. You might point out that, as a Jew himself, Mr
Brooks's use of the swastika as a comedic tool is inoffensive ... in much
the way the 'n' word used as a greeting between black men has a clear tonal
difference than when coming from the mouth of an Alabama traffic cop whose
idea of a leisure pursuit is carrying a flaming cross across a field while
wearing a white hood.

The reason Bernard Manning is seldom vilified for his Jewish jokes ("I'm
very sad today, I've just found out my grandfather died in Belsen ... He
fell out of a machine gun tower") as for his repellent racist ones is the
widely known fact that he had a Jewish grandfather.

There may well be something in this argument, but, even so, I can find no
record of Mr Howard, when Home Secretary, demanding contrition from the
non-Jews who wrote 'Allo, 'Allo for teasing such mirth from Herr Flick of
the Gestapo and his Aryan helpmeet, Helga. Nor did he ever attack Freddie
Starr, another goy, over the impersonation of Hitler that graced ITV's Who
Do You Do? through so much of the 1970s.

Given this, we must presume that it is not the swastika itself that upsets
Mr Howard and others who affect outrage, nor the mining of Hitler and his
regime as a rich source of merriment. Some may believe the Nazis can simply
never be a subject for levity. More will accept, even if reluctantly, the
old formula which holds: comedy equals tragedy plus time.

For some years after his death, no doubt Roman noblemen avoided cracking
gags about how Caligula tarred senators and used them as makeshift torches
to light imperial dinner parties, but soon enough Suetonius was recounting
the detail in much the same ironic tone Peter Ustinov reserved for the
unending anecdotes he told on Parkinson.

Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, the Spanish Inquisitors and myriad other
monsters from history eventually took their place as short cuts to an easy
laugh. People roared at the homicidal dementia of Idi Amin and the Emperor
Bokassa even in the midst of it, as they giggle unashamedly today at the
names of Saddam and Osama.

Whether or not the Nazi regime committed a unique act of wickedness (and
personally I find the numbers game that attempts to equate Hitler with
Stalin faintly repellent), the inherent amorality of comedy guarantees a
place for its symbols and its figureheads as objects of mirth.

The real but unspoken problem for Prince Harry, it seems to me, is that his
family has so much previous on this issue. His grandfather remains European
royalty's closest answer to Bernard Manning, while such was his great great
uncle David's admiration for the Führer that the offending swastika may well
have come from a dressing-up box left behind by the erstwhile Edward VIII in
the rush to get to France.

According to a Christopher Hitchens profile in Vanity Fair, and other
sources, the dear old Queen Mum was casually anti-Semitic, while another
late relative of Prince Harry was overhead emerging from Schindler's List,
so it's been claimed, drawling: "Oh, those fucking Jews, always moaning!"
(Princess Michael of Kent's father wore the swastika for real, of course,
but is excused from the roster as a mere relative by marriage.)

Yet, however much form the House of Windsor may have, it is not for any of
us to visit the sins of the kinfolk on a boy guilty of nothing more or less
than belonging to a generation which takes a keener interest in the Nike
swooshtika than the Nazi swastika.

If Harry were in the Big Brother house, as one day he surely will be,
Professor Greer and that equally impressive didact John McCririck might have
taught him a little about Hitler and the resonance of the interlocking lines
he wore so blithely on his left arm ... enough at least from him to make an
informed decision about whether to wear that outfit.

As things are, one has to assume that the industrialisation of genocide and
its most chilling symbol remain virgin territory to an over-indulged young
chump who had no idea how he was playing into the hands of that half of
Britain which lives to take offence where plainly none was intended.

Whether that minor error of judgement says more about the quality of royal
advisers than the standard of history teaching at Eton, or the sheer,
boneheaded naivete of this feckless young Prince, I'm not at all sure. What
does seem clear is that, next time he is invited to a fancy-dress do, Harry
should hold true to the tastes and traditions of his class, and go as a
woman. Although probably not Eva Braun.

m.norman at independent.co.uk



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