Quite regularly on the BBC, topical humorists of a left-wing bent remind us that The Daily Mail supported the Nazis before the Second World War. This is used as a reason to ignore anything the Mail says now. This line of reasoning is wrong, inconsistent because the people who supported Stalin's Soviet Union, as the communist state killed many millions of people, are not subject to the same degree of censure. More oddly the BBC's Director General, Lord Reith, also praised the Nazis:
You don't hear about that much on the BBC do you?
Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail were indeed editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists until there was violence at a BUF rally in Kensington Olympia that year.
So The Mail's naziu supporting past is relevant although it ended in 1934 but the BBC's is not although Lord Reith was still praising Nazi Germany in 1939. Odd double standards at the BBC.
9 March 1933 “I am pretty certain… that the Nazis will clean things up and put Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again. They are being ruthless and most determined.”
After the July 1934 Night of The Long Knives, in which the Nazis ruthlessly exterminated opponents and many Jews “I really admire the way Hitler has cleaned up what looked like an incipient revolt.”
After Czechoslovakia was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1939 “Hitler continues his magnificent efficiency.”
Also do note that Lord Reith's daughter, Marista Leishman, revealed that her father in the 1930s did everything possible to keep Winston Churchill and other anti-appeasement Conservatives off the airwaves.
You don't hear about that much on the BBC do you?
Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail were indeed editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists until there was violence at a BUF rally in Kensington Olympia that year.
So The Mail's naziu supporting past is relevant although it ended in 1934 but the BBC's is not although Lord Reith was still praising Nazi Germany in 1939. Odd double standards at the BBC.
3 comments:
What is odd about it? Perfectly normal behaviour for them.
(BTW saw a great video of a goat licking an electric fence - again and again. Pity I can't do copy paste as I'm sure you would enjoy it.)
Another in a long line of great posts. This comment is not particularly about this one post, just a further little word of encouragement and thanks.
This is a fascinating and, until now, to me, completely unknown fact about a man I had always assumed to be a rather tedious, puritanical prig.
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