#andrew neil had a whole program for *years* whilst being loudly right-wing and running the spectator

[ladymazzy]

There's a discussion happening about the rights and wrongs of Lineker referring to the Nazis in The Tweet. I do think it's more than fair to point out how fucked up it is that 'the Nazis' are so often brought up as an abstract 'Big Bad' with little to no sense of what actually made them so bad (the genocidal antisemitic, anti-roma, anti-lgbtq, all-round eugenicist white supremacism).

Yet, at the same time it is factually correct that the tory rhetoric surrounding immigrants and asylum seekers is grossly dehumanising and in this way reminiscent of the Nazi's antisemitic propaganda in the 1920s & 30s (even though the targets of that propaganda were citizens rather than would-be immigrants to Germany. Baddiel really needs to pull his fatuous head out of his arse...). And, in the spirit of the Holocaust Remembrance exhortation to 'never forget', it is important to point out when contemporary policies and rhetoric drift towards the kind that existed in Germany in the 1930s - precisely because it is so fucking dangerous

If you don't put the 'never forget' fully into practice, the Holocaust is grave danger of becoming frozen in aspic; divorced from the lived experiences of people today and future generations, as well those directly impacted at the time

That said... it is *also* true that UK (and US) immigration policy at the time was rabidly antisemitic. When German and Austrian Jews were trying seek asylum from the increasing hostility and terror, the UK was quick to say 'you ain't coming here'. The Daily Fail was (as ever) quick to side with Europe's fascists. Doors were actively closed on them by the British.

In the same spirit, pretty much every European colonial-settler state from the Americas to Australia had some kind of explicitly white supremacist immigration policy (eg: White Australia , and South American 'blanqueamiento' polices prohibiting non-European immigration to countries like Brazil and Argentina following the abolition of slavery).

The irony is that the same people criticising Lineker for invoking 1930s Germany in his tweet are by and large the same people who criticise anti-racist historians who seek to decolonise curricula and present a broader, more nuanced understanding of British history. They're the same ones that spend every other day pearl clutching about the so-called 'woke agenda' if someone so much as says 'the Transatlantic Slave Trade was fundamental to British industrialisation as it provided both the raw materials and finances necessary to power it'

If the majority of the British population had a better understanding of British history - its long history of antisemitism, and its pivotal role in creating the antisemitic, white supremacist, eugenicist, imperialist values that informed the Hitler's worldview - they would realise that it's not even necessary to invoke 'the Nazis' when discussing a Big Bad. The call has always been coming from inside the house

The UK was (and is - alongside its children-in-imperialism, the USA, Canada & Australia) a Big Bad for millions around the globe for centuries. From the Transatlantic Slave Trade, to the Opium Wars, Irish Famine and Bengal Famine, Millions have died or been displaced, languages and cultures all but annihilated, people dehumanised, economies battered all in the name of the European white-supremacist capitalist hegemony that is distinctly anglocentric

Sure, there have been many Big Bads throughout history, and the UK's own spectacular track record doesn't absolve any of them. But it's about time that people were able to refer to British policies and colonial activities. I mean, we don't have to look back far given that the Windrush scandal is still in full effect; people who should not have been deported are *currently* dying destitute because of this country's racist immigration policies

The UK is indeed *not* innocent, and, as Sivanandan said; 'we are here because you were there'