Playing the "Literally Hitler" Card: Boris Johnson Compares Russia to the Third Reich
Another policeman who investigated the Sergei Skripal case has been admitted to hospital in the UK. He's said to be hospitalized for a possible poisoning. The symptoms seem to be secondary: he has itching, chafe, but it is another reason to throw more dirt on Russia.
Quite predictably, not only Britain, but other states, for example, a young Baltic democracy is eager to do so. Lithuania is considering declaring Russian diplomats, who are alleged to be spies, personae non gratae. No comments.
But it's hard to leave Boris Johnson's statement without comments. He compared the upcoming FIFA World Cup in Russia with the Olympics in the Third Reich. The Kremlin called it abominable, offensive and unacceptable. We can also recall this photo taken in May 1938 in Berlin. Germany vs Britain, more than 100,000 spectators. The team in white are greeting Adolf Hitler. Do you think they're Germans? No, they are Brits.
Anton Podkovenko will show us other examples.
- Anton, hello.
- Hello.
- Has London forgotten they were once friends with the Nazis?
- They'd like to, but you can't change history.
You don't have to dig deep. Back in the 1930s, British Union of Fascists was formed in the Foggy Albion. It was quite an influential political union with a rigid inner hierarchy. There were a leader, officers, rank, and file. Both aristocrats and unemployed would wear swastikas. The Blackshirt rows only grew in number before 1940.
Armen Gasparyan, political observer: "The British Union of Fascists was led by Sir Oswald Mosley. It was a national socialist organization, many members of which went to Germany for internships to gain some experience to come back and teach the British the correct national socialist ideology. The British have been reluctant to remember this".
Before World War II, Europe was so afraid of the Third Reich that it was ready to do anything to satisfy the growing fascist appetites. The UK said ditto from their comfortable island position.
Mikhail Myagkov, historian: "Let's remember the 1938 Munich agreement, when France, Britain, and Italy made Czechoslovakia actually give Germany a significant part of its territory. Many historians believe it was the Munich agreement that triggered World War II".
Here's another fact that British historians are reluctant to remember. In 1941, Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy in the party, flew to the UK for negotiations. Some suppose it could've been a military and political alliance. The talks ended with the arrest of Hess, but it left a bad taste in the mouth.
Andrei Manoilo, Moscow State University: "Hitler considered the British another Aryan race, believing that there was no difference between the Germans and the British, the Anglo-Saxons. And if Germany had allied with Britain. it would have been impossible to speculate on the outcome of World War II".
Instead, the West does it best to forget who enabled the defeat of Hitler. Now they resort to insults like, for example, Boris Johnson, the British Foreign Secretary, who has insulted, above all, the memory of his own people.
Armen Gasparyan, political observer: "He'd better remember 1938 when the British football team greeted Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich Führer, in Berlin. This man spat on those shot at Malmedy by the Germans, those who had rotted in German concentration camps".
But fascism, according to some historians, could well have arisen in Britain, at the turn of the 19th century. Thomas Carlyle, British writer and philosopher, thought that the masses were a tool in the hands of great personalities. Houston Chamberlain, 'racialist writer', belongs to the same group as well as Darwin's cousin Francis Galton who founded eugenics, a pseudoscience about human breeding.
Maybe, this is another reason not to be surprised at the current confrontation between Britain and Russia. After all, we were the ones who defeated fascism.
- Anton Podkovenko has told us about the real friends of Reich.