ninme

Okay, first, I get that he’s different because he’s fourth in line to the throne and all, and he has to take himself seriously because he was born into this fabulously wealthy family and all, but this is basically just an excuse to beat up on the royal family after a couple non-di years of relative peace and quiet.

The Germans have jumped all over him, despite thinking that their own (ahem) actions during WWII were no worse than the Israelis, saying “Nazi Harry, What Would Diana Have Said?” and that he’s mentally 12. And just across the border Jean-Marie Le Pen has said the Nazi occupation of France was “not particularily inhumane”. He’s a major politician, and the Sun isn’t jumping all over him.

Here: Harry: it’s a mistake not a catastrophe

Prince Harry is a 20-year-old private citizen. He is not a member of the British government nor of the diplomatic corps. He is not a head of state, nor even a head of state in waiting. He holds no public position or status, except as a very junior member of the Royal Family. The likelihood of his ever being king is, perhaps mercifully, slim. Nor did he don his costume on a public platform or at a public occasion. He was at a private party. That a member of the Royal Family should ever portray himself as a German soldier - even one assigned to a general who died opposing Hitler - may seem tasteless. But for goodness sake, so what?

He wasn’t running around a football pitch goose-stepping, for heaven’s sake.

Hypersensitivity to group feeling has now moved from political cult to raging obsession. It is being enshrined in a new anti-blasphemy law. I am sure that when I was at school I played Britons versus Nazis, not to mention cowboys and Indians, doctors and nurses and a variety of other politically incorrect games. That a soldier-to-be should dress up at a private function as an old enemy is hardly the end of the world. The former proprietor of The Daily Telegraph publicly idolised Napoleon. Is there a statute of limitation on dictatorship?

Good question.

No one supposes Prince Harry was “a Nazi”. He was making no political statement. He was not portraying himself as anti-British, anti-Semitic or an advocate of Auschwitz or the Holocaust. He made an error of judgment both in his choice of regalia - the swastika is illegal in Germany - and in believing that any party is ever going to be private with him around.

A friend of mine in Philly went to a halloween party in 2001 dressed as Anthrax. He was inside a huge enveloped with a tall white hat (like a rod bacteria) and dumped a bag of flour over himself to look powdery. Does that make him a terrorist?

Ah hah!

Der Spiegel’s Matthias Matussek complains in today’s Evening Standard that “it is the British who have a problem with Germany’s past”. Every day we run movies and old newsreel portraying the British as military victors and the Germans as beasts. We satirise the goosestep and treat the swastika as fancy dress. We depict Germans as a cross between our own lager louts and our own British National Party. Sixty per cent of our young people have never heard of Auschwitz

There it is! I spent so much time yesterday looking for a link to that statistic, but couldn’t find one so I thought maybe I dreamt it. 60% of British youths haven’t heard of Aushwitz! Why aren’t they demanding the BBC run a month of holocaust programming?! What’s more dangerous, a whole society forgetting, and another one thinking it “wasn’t so bad”, or one stupid kid going to a fancy dress party in a tastless costume. And after all, what’s the point of fancy dress costumes if not to be tasteless? Why else would french maid costumes sell so well? We should probably be thankful he knows what a Nazi uniform looks like.

And I’m no military historian, but I think that’s a soldier’s uniform, not an SS uniform, right? The army had nothing to do with the Death Camps. They were out fighting other soldiers. The SS were the psychos shooting women and children.

Update:

From the Telegraph

Someone has got to stop Harry from behaving like a prize ass, By Tom Utley:

When the local churchwarden goes to a fancy-dress party in a red leotard, sporting horns, cloven hooves and a forked tail, he is not implying that he approves of the Devil. By the same token, it would be ludicrous to suggest that the prince was displaying any sympathy for Hitler when he wore what looked like the uniform of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, with a swastika armband, to Harry Meade’s 22nd birthday party.

Yeah. This is odd, though:

Arthur Edwards, the Sun’s royal photographer (and therefore more powerful than any British royal), was spouting complete nonsense when he wrote in yesterday’s paper: “This outfit will just encourage British neo-Nazis and racist skinheads to believe that their sick views are right.” It won’t do anything of the sort - any more than Communists would have been encouraged if the prince had chosen to dress up as Karl Marx.

Arthur’s usually very pro-royal, or as much as is possible working for the Sun. But he took pictures of Wills and a girlfriend skiing last year and either Chuck or Liz banned him except for official functions. Maybe it still smarts.

Another thing should be pointed out to people not used to the British media, where they don’t continue to pretend they have no agenda. The Sun, though conservative, is very anti-royal. So take it with a grain of salt, eh?