We're going to be runners up again. :-(

[Peter]

What confounds me most about 30's Germany is that the nation of Beethoven, Brecht and Einstein descended into a collective psychopathy that saw them embark on a programme of exterminating their fellow human beings, by gassing them, for simply being jewish!

It is pretty difficult to understand but it happens in stages. Your average German could claim to not have known about the gas chambers but they knew the Jews were rounded up in ghettos. Then rounded up and removed. And never seen again. And they heard the rhetoric..... many would have heard rumours of gas chambers but it is possible to think that they wouldn't have believed it.

Just one of many examples of how thin the veneer of civilisation is. And what lurks beneath it.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

Would be a strange old world if somebody here could explain it.

But in 19th and 20th century Europe they came to be seen as a threat to emerging nation states and their national identities. And Germany were looking for somebody to blame for WW1.

What is harder to understand is why people who would describe themselves as staunch anti racists seem to think that anti semitism is ok. Or simply fail to recognise it when they see it.

I'll give you the part about trying to create a national identity in terms of C19th Romantic modern nation states, and suspicions of those who are in some way "others".

But that doesn't explain the antisem in France. They're not like the Wops or Krauts, cobbling together a nation in the 1860s. They're a nation as old as us. And they're still a major power. And they also have Proddies as outsiders. Xmas trees came in 1871 with Alscatian refugees and were called Luther Trees.

In short, you can't explain Dreyfuss in terms of the emergence of Modern Nation States.

Good start, but more digging required.

[Peter]

Of course people had time to write poetry. Most of the squaddies did sweet FA between Dunkirk and D-Day. And while the aircrew had the same life expectancy as a junior officer on the Western Front they also had as much down time in which they could have written poetry if they'd had the talent.

But they didn't. Probably too much radio and movies etc. Made them lose the art of writing.

And it wasn't just all mud, you know. Yes it rained for the first and final thirds of Passchendaele, but the first day of the Somme was glorious sunshine.

But why do you think that? Oh, yes, the poetry of Owen and Sassoon both written around the time of Passchendaele. {Sasoon's even got one that explicitly mentions the battle, Memorial Tablet, while Owen's Dulce Et was clearly written during that.}

And if you're great grand-father got shot in the arse at Basrah, then there's a chance that the grandfather of Raju, one of my Delhi chemist mates, patched him up cos he was an RN surgeon. Brahmin. Realised the Britishers were actually made up of loads of plebs, not just officers, and decided the empire was finished.

But I'm confused. You're into mil-hist enough to study it, but you don't like Owen and Sassoon. So what are your non-war poetic tastes?

I would say that Owen and Sassoon are the people's poet laureates - they do the Tennyson but from the PoV of those there. They also get it across as musically as Kipling. But they can craft iambic pentameters like the best of the Romantics.

I just don't think you get poetry. Or WW1. Or Both.

I never claimed to get either

My favourite poets- Shakespeare, Wilde, Brooke, Larkin, Dylan, Cohen, Paul Simon.

Judge as you see fit, it matters to me not

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

It is pretty difficult to understand but it happens in stages. Your average German could claim to not have known about the gas chambers but they knew the Jews were rounded up in ghettos. Then rounded up and removed. And never seen again. And they heard the rhetoric..... many would have heard rumours of gas chambers but it is possible to think that they wouldn't have believed it.

Just one of many examples of how thin the veneer of civilisation is. And what lurks beneath it.

As you say, they'd watched Krystallnacht and then seen them disappear. They didn't need to even know of the death camps to have a vague idea they hadn't all gone raving in Ibiza.

But then, would you put your head over the parapet to ask? When you have a missus and perhaps kids? Then you're a braver {or more deluded} man than I, P. I'd have kept my head down. When I was single and in my '20s, yes, resist. But risk leaving my glw and cat alone, potentially also causing them problems, when it won't make any difference? Nah, just forget about it, put the radio on and hope it saussies and sauerkraut for tea.

We forget - though really shouldn't - quite what totalitarian regimes are like. If you can get major players, true believers, owning up to crimes they didn't commit at Stalin's show trials, you really think Herr Average will ask where all the Jews have gone knowing it will lead to a knock on the door without helping one single Jew?

And if you wanna think how thin this veneer of civilisation is, imagine that Farrage gets in tomorrow and calls for a Krystallnacht on asylum hotels. How many Brits go smashing windows and how many rush to their defence, knowing the fuzz have been told to stand aside. You really think we're any better? The Glorious Revolution settlement and 22 miles of water don't make us better people, as you well know.

[Peter]

I'll give you the part about trying to create a national identity in terms of C19th Romantic modern nation states, and suspicions of those who are in some way "others".

But that doesn't explain the antisem in France. They're not like the Wops or Krauts, cobbling together a nation in the 1860s. They're a nation as old as us. And they're still a major power. And they also have Proddies as outsiders. Xmas trees came in 1871 with Alscatian refugees and were called Luther Trees.

In short, you can't explain Dreyfuss in terms of the emergence of Modern Nation States.

Good start, but more digging required.

I wasnt trying to. Largely because anti semitism is many centuries older than that. But nationalism created a significant wave of it in that period and framed Jewishness as a threat to national security.

No, it doesn't explain it in France, or here in Britain. Also doesn't explain why Mussolini saw Italian Jews as Italians.

You cant expect the effect to be uniform across an entire continent. But it is one factor.

Just as Israel and their American influence has created a new wave of it in the modern era among lefties and 'progressives'.... but the anti semitic undercurrent has always been there.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

I never claimed to get either

My favourite poets- Shakespeare, Wilde, Brooke, Larkin, Dylan, Cohen, Paul Simon.

Judge as you see fit, it matters to me not

The fact that half of those are songwriters, and you don't have a single Romantic says it all. I just don't see how you can like Shakespeare's sonnets but not the Romantics.

Have you read the WW2 "The Naming of Parts" btw? If not, you really should just once. Just do it in your best Kenneth Williams voice. But it is rather good.

But when I first read Owen and Sassoon, I felt like that stout Cortez chappy.

[Peter]

As you say, they'd watched Krystallnacht and then seen them disappear. They didn't need to even know of the death camps to have a vague idea they hadn't all gone raving in Ibiza.

But then, would you put your head over the parapet to ask? When you have a missus and perhaps kids? Then you're a braver {or more deluded} man than I, P. I'd have kept my head down. When I was single and in my '20s, yes, resist. But risk leaving my glw and cat alone, potentially also causing them problems, when it won't make any difference? Nah, just forget about it, put the radio on and hope it saussies and sauerkraut for tea.

We forget - though really shouldn't - quite what totalitarian regimes are like. If you can get major players, true believers, owning up to crimes they didn't commit at Stalin's show trials, you really think Herr Average will ask where all the Jews have gone knowing it will lead to a knock on the door without helping one single Jew?

And if you wanna think how thin this veneer of civilisation is, imagine that Farrage gets in tomorrow and calls for a Krystallnacht on asylum hotels. How many Brits go smashing windows and how many rush to their defence, knowing the fuzz have been told to stand aside. You really think we're any better? The Glorious Revolution settlement and 22 miles of water don't make us better people, as you well know.

I wasnt suggesting that anyone should have stood up. I was simply pointing out that these things happen in stages and when you break them down slowly each leap becomes smaller.

That is how these things happen. You don't go from mild racism to genocide in a matter of moments. Its a slow process of dehumanisation. Coupled with some degree of secrecy.

But do I think we are better? Yes, i do. But not by much.

[Peter]

The fact that half of those are songwriters, and you don't have a single Romantic says it all. I just don't see how you can like Shakespeare's sonnets but not the Romantics.

Have you read the WW2 "The Naming of Parts" btw? If not, you really should just once. Just do it in your best Kenneth Williams voice. But it is rather good.

But when I first read Owen and Sassoon, I felt like that stout Cortez chappy.

If you describe Leonard Cohen as a 'songwriter' again, we are going to have a problem.....

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

I wasnt trying to. Largely because anti semitism is many centuries older than that. But nationalism created a significant wave of it in that period and framed Jewishness as a threat to national security.

No, it doesn't explain it in France, or here in Britain. Also doesn't explain why Mussolini saw Italian Jews as Italians.

You cant expect the effect to be uniform across an entire continent. But it is one factor.

Just as Israel and their American influence has created a new wave of it in the modern era among lefties and 'progressives'.... but the anti semitic undercurrent has always been there.

Yup. All I was trying to do was show that while your modern nation state theory could be made to conveniently fit Germany, it doesn't explain Dreyfus and France.

The difference with here though is that they were chucked out in what, the 12th or 13th century, and didn't come back until Cromwell.

By which time we had those dastardly Papists as our "others". We were happy to have a Jewish Prime Minister in the mid to late Victorian era. We'd have never had a Catholic.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

If you describe Leonard Cohen as a 'songwriter' again, we are going to have a problem.....

We already do. I can just about forgive not getting Owen or Sassoon but if you don't think smack and Kulha Khan put the heating on do you want me to put the heating on? Put the heating on?e3|"?W
Warm, warm cold hot do you know? I need really do you think wants his daughter the fewwucking freaks when he does all the ****ing confusion work? Does he ****?