Because They Can
David Aaronovitch makes a valid point writing in The Times that the religious fanatics operating under the IS franchise will keep on killing innocent people around the world until we stop them.
Because just like Boko Haram or al Qaeda they have no discernible political agenda that can be reasoned with other than their demands to control the lives of fellow human beings, killing and enslaving people at times, as it suits their doctrinaire beliefs.
So in that sense they are modern day, religious fascists who will continue killing and murdering people simply because they can, just as the fascists did while they were winning in eastern Europe or in Spain during and after the Spanish Civil War.
I am imagine the parents of Goering, Goebbels and Hitler couldn't imagine their couldn't imagine their darling sons turning out to be murderous fascists, just like the gentle boy from Purley, but that's what it's come down to and there's no point in dressing things up any other way.
Isis will just keep killing — until we stop them
By David Aaronovitch - The Times
Notebook: The slaughter in Iraq and Syria is reminiscent of Hitler’s SS in the east
Last week in the grotesque bazaar of social media, someone posted pictures of Isis executions by a river in Syria or Iraq. On a concrete jetty awash with blood, victims were being brought one by one to the water’s edge, forced to kneel and then shot in the head before their bodies were pushed into the flow.
For this spectacle to exist there needed to be a minimum of four men: a guy to hold the bound victim and push him to his knees, a guy to hold the Isis flag, a guy to blow the victim’s brains out and — indispensable — a guy to take the pictures on his mobile.
By the Mac as I type this, I have a book with a photograph on the cover that shows much the same scene. A group of eight or nine young men — one no more than 17 or 18 — form the background, standing on a low bank. In front of them a man in a jacket and white shirt, holding an overcoat, kneels looking just to the right of the camera. To the side and slightly behind him, legs braced, is a uniformed man with spectacles, his right arm outstretched, holding a pistol about two feet from the kneeling man’s head.
The book, Believe and Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machineby Christian Ingrao, is an explanation of how “handsome, brilliant, clever and cultivated” young Germans came to be in foreign lands shooting defenceless people in their thousands, and thinking that this mass murder was not just necessary but good.
Most things that are bad — even very bad — are not “like Nazism”. But Isis are very like the SS in occupied eastern Europe. There is the same idea of a mystical destiny that doesn’t just permit killing, but demands it. Like the Caliphate for the jihadis, the east, as Ingrao puts it, “symbolised a mythical space for the SS, a tabula rasa for Germandom to shape, a place rich with possibilities”. In service of that vision, the pits had to be filled with bodies.
There are aesthetic differences. The SS would hang people if they wanted to put on a show and Isis men — including young Britons — will behead, stone or crucify them. But allowing for method, one great similarity will shine through. Just like the SS, Isis men will kill more and more, will be more unconstrained in their savagery, stopping only when they are utterly defeated and every executioner — even if he is such a gentle boy from Purley — is dead or tried. Any politician’s talk that does not envisage this defeat is wasted breath.
Budding Adolfs
Fortunately for our sanities there is a lighter side of Hitlerism and one can trust a Ukip man to find it. At the weekend the story broke of Bill Etheridge, the Faragiste MEP who had been giving speech-making advice to junior kippers at a conference in Birmingham. Hitler was a dreadful man, but — Mr Etheridge told the neophytes — you could learn a thing or zwei from him about public speaking. Like walking back and forth on the platform without speaking and glaring at the audience, building up anticipation.
Mr Etheridge could do worse than circulate the series of photographs by Heinrich Hoffmann, taken in 1925, of Hitler posing to recordings of his own speeches. There the budding Nigels will find Adolf’s full range of effective gestures: one hand on heart, t’other raised high; gazing into heaven one arm outstretched; the point direct; the fist clenched. But they should take note of Mr Etheridge’s caveat: “I’m not saying direct copy — pick up little moments.” So be careful out there.
Publish and be damned
Careful like Penguin weren’t. Their cover for the 50th anniversary special edition of Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka book has caused a very typical modern row. It shows a barely adolescent girl in lipstick and pink boa and prompted the author Joanne Harris to tweet: “Seriously, Penguin Books. Why not just get Rolf Harris to design the next one?”
Hmm. Strikes me that someone would rather not recognise the darker themes that underlie Dahl’s work. That cover is Veruca Salt to the life.
Notebook: The slaughter in Iraq and Syria is reminiscent of Hitler’s SS in the east
Last week in the grotesque bazaar of social media, someone posted pictures of Isis executions by a river in Syria or Iraq. On a concrete jetty awash with blood, victims were being brought one by one to the water’s edge, forced to kneel and then shot in the head before their bodies were pushed into the flow.
For this spectacle to exist there needed to be a minimum of four men: a guy to hold the bound victim and push him to his knees, a guy to hold the Isis flag, a guy to blow the victim’s brains out and — indispensable — a guy to take the pictures on his mobile.
By the Mac as I type this, I have a book with a photograph on the cover that shows much the same scene. A group of eight or nine young men — one no more than 17 or 18 — form the background, standing on a low bank. In front of them a man in a jacket and white shirt, holding an overcoat, kneels looking just to the right of the camera. To the side and slightly behind him, legs braced, is a uniformed man with spectacles, his right arm outstretched, holding a pistol about two feet from the kneeling man’s head.
The book, Believe and Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machineby Christian Ingrao, is an explanation of how “handsome, brilliant, clever and cultivated” young Germans came to be in foreign lands shooting defenceless people in their thousands, and thinking that this mass murder was not just necessary but good.
Most things that are bad — even very bad — are not “like Nazism”. But Isis are very like the SS in occupied eastern Europe. There is the same idea of a mystical destiny that doesn’t just permit killing, but demands it. Like the Caliphate for the jihadis, the east, as Ingrao puts it, “symbolised a mythical space for the SS, a tabula rasa for Germandom to shape, a place rich with possibilities”. In service of that vision, the pits had to be filled with bodies.
There are aesthetic differences. The SS would hang people if they wanted to put on a show and Isis men — including young Britons — will behead, stone or crucify them. But allowing for method, one great similarity will shine through. Just like the SS, Isis men will kill more and more, will be more unconstrained in their savagery, stopping only when they are utterly defeated and every executioner — even if he is such a gentle boy from Purley — is dead or tried. Any politician’s talk that does not envisage this defeat is wasted breath.
Budding Adolfs
Fortunately for our sanities there is a lighter side of Hitlerism and one can trust a Ukip man to find it. At the weekend the story broke of Bill Etheridge, the Faragiste MEP who had been giving speech-making advice to junior kippers at a conference in Birmingham. Hitler was a dreadful man, but — Mr Etheridge told the neophytes — you could learn a thing or zwei from him about public speaking. Like walking back and forth on the platform without speaking and glaring at the audience, building up anticipation.
Mr Etheridge could do worse than circulate the series of photographs by Heinrich Hoffmann, taken in 1925, of Hitler posing to recordings of his own speeches. There the budding Nigels will find Adolf’s full range of effective gestures: one hand on heart, t’other raised high; gazing into heaven one arm outstretched; the point direct; the fist clenched. But they should take note of Mr Etheridge’s caveat: “I’m not saying direct copy — pick up little moments.” So be careful out there.
Publish and be damned
Careful like Penguin weren’t. Their cover for the 50th anniversary special edition of Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka book has caused a very typical modern row. It shows a barely adolescent girl in lipstick and pink boa and prompted the author Joanne Harris to tweet: “Seriously, Penguin Books. Why not just get Rolf Harris to design the next one?”
Hmm. Strikes me that someone would rather not recognise the darker themes that underlie Dahl’s work. That cover is Veruca Salt to the life.
