Posts by Rich Lock
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to ,
but seriously I say that at least one of the Nazis, while being technically human, was not correctly wired to be a compleat person.
Would you mind expanding on that?
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Yes, exactly. It's not a brand-new phenomenon - there have been a few sensationalist 'true story' books in the '60's to 80's: for example these and these. And a few clearly fictional examples like James Herbert's 'The Spear' from 1978.
But what was 'few and far between' seems to have become far more widespread and full spectrum more recently.
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I think the idea that the Nazis had the “cooler stuff"* is kinda problematic and often associated with some deeply screwed up ideas about Nazi Germany.
You're not wrong, and yes it is. But it's an oversimplifcation/generalisation that I don't think is particularly helpful, especially in this instance. It's hardly controversial to state that German technological prowess was in many areas more advanced than that of their opponents. If it wasn't, then the US wouldn't have put so much effort into Operation Paperclip, for example. A lot of people aren't able to separate the tech and the ideology. And a lot are quite well able to.
I also absolutely don’t think that Naziism is without shock value for people under thirty. It’s still a hugely loaded ideology, which is why it features in games like CoD.
No, it isn't without, but it's certainly my perception that there are differing and shrinking proportions as you go through the generations. This, for example:
I head over to the "battlefield" and approach Mo Mowbray, a former British soldier who has been a Wehrmacht re‑enactor for more than 20 years. Doesn't he find it strange playing the oppressor, with a swastika on his shirt? "You have to be careful," he says over "barbed wire" made from grey-painted string. "On at least two occasions a veteran has walked past and shouted and sworn at us. You can understand it. We're not here to upset anyone. Somebody has to be the bad guys. You won't find many people who do the political side – the black uniforms and that – because nobody will have them around. They're bad news."
The fact that there are a group of people who are perfectly ok with it, rather than a mono-block of 'not ok', is, I think, significant. You wouldn't have had that 20-30 years ago.
I was at an airshow last summmer where I spotted what I assume was a re-enactor wandering around dressed as Rommel. Pursed lips and comments were generally the level of harrasment he got, rather than, say, a solid punch in the face, which he would almost certainly have received 20-30 years ago.
Also, you've conflated the use of the Axis forces as an antagonist in CoD with Nazi ideology. I would suggest that an almost inexhaustible source of raw material provided by the biggest conflict of modern times, where it is easy to clearly define goodies and baddies might have more to do with it (rather than using, say, the politically troublesome 'police actions' that we somehow end up getting stuck in these days).
The Germans used to be almost universally presented as a straightforward baddie group in culture (war films and so on) with little or no modification. Now they're being modified, as in the examples I gave. In the process, they're being diluted and turned into something fantastic (as in, a group of non-human fantasy creatures), by being turned into zombies, magicians, space aliens, etc.
I don't disagree that it is difficult for many to separate their fanboy passions from the ideology, but on the evidence so far presented, I think we're very far from a 'gotcha'. And yes, his ownership of such a loaded item makes it fair game.
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When I first arrived in New Zealand and was tiki-touring the country in around 2002-2003, I was really very surprised by the number of antique shops that openly displayed genuine Nazi/Wermacht artefacts, nearly always stuff that grandad had brought home from Italy or wherever as a souvenir after the war. Walking into a shop and seeing a swastika flag on the wall certainly provided something of a jolt to the system. Several shops had explanatory signs on the door (aimed, I would guess, mostly at o/s tourists) along the lines of ‘no, we’re not nazis, it’s an antique/collector’s item. It’s not illegal, it’s just business, don’t give us a hard time, ’k? Thanks’. Clearly it was something that was more socially acceptable than it would have been in, say, the UK, but clearly it was also something that a lot of people found very troubling.
There was a thread on here a few years back after the Auckland Museum/Grammer-boys-nazi-salute news story that had some interesting comments, along the lines of what Izogi is saying. If memory serves, it was Mark Taslov who noted that for teens and early 20’s today – the Call of Duty generation (KDC's mentality if not physical age) – the nazis for them are broadly the same as cowboys and indians were for my generation (a couple of gens older) growing up. It’s just another goodie/baddie combo with no visceral emotional impact beyond that. It’s not a lived experience for them. It was for me insofar as my grandparents lived through it, but my generation is the last with that direct link. I just don’t think it’ll have that vividity of impact for the generation after me – they can’t look at a living person and think ‘I’m looking at someone related to me who lived through that. Wow’. It’s just dusty relics to them. You can see this in polular culture – videogames and films have shown quite a willingness to use the nazis merely as a source material – nazi zombies (dead snow among many others), space nazis (iron sky, castle wolfenstein), mystic magic nazis (hellboy, captain america, weird war 2), without any moral difficulty or perception that using these for 'fun' might be troublesome if not handled respectfully.
I can understand the collector’s impulse, and I can understand the fascination with military gear. There’s an overlap here, but even when talking about military/nazi collectibles, they’re not synonymous. Hayden Green on the same thread noted that the Germans had the ‘cooler’ stuff (and, from the perspective of my inner 14-year old, he’s right). Lemmy of Motorhead fame is a well-known collector of German WW2 militaria. Is he a Nazi? No. Unreconstructed, yes, but not a Nazi. I saw a documentary a while back where the documentary makers took him to a re-enactors camp, with what was obviously to them supposed to be a highlight of taking him for a ride around on a Panzer tank. He was just a bit bemused by the whole thing – he likes collecting, but he’s not into, and clearly doesn’t understand, the whole dress-up, let’s play cowboys-and-indians aspect of it (and it's worth noting that at least one US politican has got in trouble for playing dress-up waffen SS with his re-enactment group at the weekend).
I can fully understand why someone might want the bragging rights of owning that particular item. Personally, If I ever saw it, it’d make me feel very odd (not really the right word, but I can’t think of a better on at the moment). I’m not even sure I’d want to touch it, even though my rational mind is telling me it’s just a thing.
But I don’t think KDC has the same qualms, His inner 14-year old ‘stamp collector’ impulse is stronger. He’s also clearly an A-grade mischief maker – he just loves to throw a jolt into the squares (like teenage boys do). He’s made an entire lifestyle and career out of it. I also wonder how much his German background plays into this – the thrill of the illicit and all that.
This doesn’t make me feel any differently about him as a person – I was already indifferently wary towards him - a court jester with the capacity to amuse and shake things up, but needing a close eye kept on him. It’s entirely unsurprising to anyone with a passing interest in him that this is the type of thing he’d own, but is this a game changer in any way? No.
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Hard News: The Internet Party, whatever happens, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I immediately imagined them:Sub-gluteal fleshy folds spreading sideways at right angles to the perpendicular;or the one that bisects you allvertically down and back…None straight forward,all curved dark spacesthat can suck us in…… I now need strong liquorto burn that dreadful moonfrom my ‘retainers’…
He talked of his dreams in a strangely poetic fashion; making me see with terrible vividness the damp gluteus of slimy flesh - whose geometry, he oddly said, was all wrong, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours - and hear with frightened expectancy the ceaseless, half-mental calling from underground: "Cthulhu fhtagn", "Cthulhu fhtagn."
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And to this day Clausewitz is the foundation of military strategy
Apart from this obscure and little-known chap who no-one has ever heard of called Sun Tzu.....
his key points aren’t regarded as being refuted.
Military historian John Keegan argued in 'A history of warfare' that for the Clauswitz doctrines to completely succeed, your entire state needed to be in a state of perpetual (and inevitably sterile and un-evolving) militarisation ((Although I should note that his position has been heaviliy criticized).
Anyway, to show this isn't a completely irrelevant derail:
For the tactics you mentioned to work you have to have substantial superiority.
No. Napoleon's armies were defeated by the Russians taking advantage of a combination of the weather and logistics breakdown (there wasn't enough feed or forage for the horses even before the onset of winter). Napoleon incorrectly assumed that his victory objective was the capture of Moscow. This turned out to be a worthless achievement. The Russian forces were inferior in pitched battle, but far superior at guerilla warfare. Cossack light cavalry never offered direct confrontation, but garried the edges of the retreating army as they attempted to forage and rest. Their ponies were far better suited to the landscape, so they didn't have the same logisitical difficulties.
The lesson is that you don't fight your enemy on the terms they choose, and that you learn and utilise the landscape to your own advantage (Sun Tzu again), more or less as Ben has outlined.
In the long-term, I don't think any of The Great Libertarian Project is sustainable. Everyone is going to end up spending more for a worse result, whether that's education, health, banking, or whatever. So their 'victory conditions' (the capture of Moscow) are flawed from the start. We're already seeing the cracks (2008 and all that). How best to use that in this context? Yeah, I'll get back to you on that.
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Busytown: School bully, in reply to Russell Brown,
Life inside the exam factory – why British teachers are quitting in droves.
Weeell, I did link to that 17 posts up the page, so you're welcome :)
But again, I recommend anyone who is interested has a read through the 'secret teacher' archive on The Guardian. Of particular interest are the 18th Jan and 8th Feb entries from this year.
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Busytown: School bully, in reply to Baxterabout,
paying tax at internationally uncompetitive rates
I think, rather than attempt to unpick any sort of meaning from this, let alone respond, I’ll just leave it standing, like a work of abstract art. It's inherent meaninglessness ensures that it only has the meaning that we ascribe to it, and in doing so we are forced to contemplate the nature of our own consciousness.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Going Large, in reply to Moz,
“it’s k-pop, nothing will make it sound decent”
Yes, but she needs the more expensive headphone because it's all about the Gangnam style, innit? Keeping up with the Parks, and all that.
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Busytown: School bully, in reply to Trevor Nicholls,
NZ schools // UK hospitals.
UK schools are actually 2-3 years (give or take) further down more or less the exact same path NZ is heading down.
See here, here, and here for a different comparison than the US ‘no child left behind’ (spoiler: the ending is the same).
In fact, every one should just go and read all of the ‘secret teacher’ entries on The Guardian website.