18 The Sunday Times November 14, 2021
COMMENT
Rod Liddle
People for whom my milk of
human kindness is of the
decidedly skimmed variety
include those who book a
beach holiday in Beirut and
are then discomfited when
Israeli heavy ordnance lands
on the deckchair kiosk — and
immediately demand that
the British government
rescues them. Oh, and
potholers.
Or, at least, potholers
who turn out not to be very
good at potholing.
I have no objection to
weirdos who wish to sit
beside some lake two miles
underground. Unless they
rely on the rest of the world
to save them.
George Linnane spent
more than 50 hours
pretending to be Gollum
in some dank, reeking
Welsh labyrinth, and it took
half of the country to pull him
out. Try stamp-collecting,
mate.I
notice that the controversial
Austrian-born politician Adolf Hitler
has been in the news again. An art
historian called Andrew Graham-
Dixon briefly impersonated the late
Führer in order to make a point
about immorality and racism during
a debate at the Cambridge Union
and found himself blacklisted by the
union’s president, Keir Bradwell. Keir
later apologised — not for banning Mr
Graham-Dixon but for using the word
“blacklist”. “I spoke in haste,” the
sanctimonious child averred, “and
should never have used the term.” Ha!
Ban the privileged dimbo! Ban everyone!
The Führer himself was not available
for comment, of course, although he is
forever with us, for a myriad of
sometimes paradoxical reasons. As a
totem of unsurpassed wickedness and
depravity, for example, but also because
of his foolish moustache, distinctive
hairstyle and somewhat overemphatic
rhetorical speaking style. And for the
goosesteps and the salute and the
shrieking, and for having only one
testicle, according to the rhyme beloved
of schoolboys since 1939.
For the uniforms. For the racial
delusions that underpin fascism. For his
quote in April 1945, as he surveyed the
ruins of Berlin and the Russian shells
landed ever closer: “In the end one
regrets having been so benevolent.” Well
indeed, Mein Führer, well indeed.
He is with us too on the internet, via
Godwin’s law, which states that as an
“online discussion grows longer
(regardless of topic or scope), the
probability of a comparison involving
Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1”. He is
a very regular contributor via proxy on
Twitter, then, and in Facebook threads.
Most historical evidence suggests that
he blew his brains out on April 30, 1945,
and his body was subsequently burnt by
his few remaining henchmen, but a close
relative of mine challenges that scenario.
She believes that his lifeless cadaver was
abducted by Soviet scientists and his
semen frozen in order, a little later on, tocreate Angela Merkel. I must admit I can
find no corroborating evidence for this
assertion, which is, nonetheless, quite
popular among certain circles of the
certifiably insane and the very, very right
wing.
In short, then, Hitler will not go away,
despite his death — and that is not an
entirely bad thing. It is perhaps true that
Hitler stands erect, arm outstretched, in
our collective memories as much
because we beat him as for the enormity
of his crimes: he exists as a cipher for
anything that is evil and, crucially, able
to be vanquished. But he also remains
with us because, despite those crimes,
he and his Third Reich — with its
vainglorious auditoria designed on a
neo-Roman scale by the weaselly andmorally bereft architect Albert Speer,
and which lasted 12 years rather than the
1,000 envisaged — are eminently
mockable.
And mockery of wickedness is
without question a good thing. It is, I
would suggest, vital. The boring post-
Marxist Herbert Marcuse once said that
comedy is the last refuge of the
bourgeois, but he was wrong about that
as he was about pretty much everything
else. Comedy is the first refuge of the
humane.
I have heard it said plenty of times
that Britain never fell to totalitarianism
back in the first half of the last century
because we were insufficiently
credulous and found such movements,
be they communist or fascist, inherently
hilarious. It is a dangerous and rather
smug contention: there but for the grace
of God! But there is also some truth to it,
I think.
Our famous, and often derided,
Anglo-Saxon anti-intellectualism
predisposed the population towards a
certain cynicism and disdain when faced
with pretentious ideologies that claimed
for themselves historical inevitability.
How could you take Hitler (or Oswald
Mosley) seriously when PG Wodehouse’s
wonderful creation Roderick Spode was
stamping around, ineffectually, in his
Nazi uniform, or Charlie Chaplin was
hamming it up as the Great Dictator?
Mockery was a crucial weapon in the
intellectual war against totalitarian
creeds. And it still is.
Who are the totalitarians now? Poor,
dim Keir Bradwell and the thousands
like him. He should know that a political
idea which cannot withstand mockery
will not last and does not deserve to
exist.
The more people he puts on a
blacklist — and then realises he has used
the word “blacklist” — the more normal
people find him very funny indeed, hoist
by his own dumb petard. And
impersonating Hitler for satirical effect?
It’s good for a laugh, Keir. But more than
that, it’s good for the soul.MPs’ concern over wellbeing
PHOTOBUBBLE: NICK NEWMANYou know who else didn’t like people
making fun of Hitler? Hitler, of course
Have you
had your
third job yet?lThat deranged, gleeful cackling you
can hear late at night is Britain’s
community of badgers rejoicing over
the political demise of Owen
Paterson. It was Paterson who
introduced the badger cull in which —
so far — 140,000 of these lovely
animals have been slaughtered, for no
good reason.
The government ordered an
independent panel of experts to
assess whether the cull was likely tobe humane and effective. This wasn’t
staffed with bunny-huggers, but top
vets and academics, led by Ranald
Munro, the government’s former head
of veterinary pathology. The panel
concluded that the cull would be
inhumane and ineffective, which I’m
told prompted a civil servant to snarl
angrily at one expert, “But you’ve not
allowed the secretary of state any
wriggle room!”
Owen didn’t need wriggle room. Hejust completely ignored the report
and refused even to speak to the
panel that had produced it. And so the
grotesque savagery went ahead and
has not remotely affected the
incidence of bovine tuberculosis in
cattle, which might possibly be linked
to the fact that 94 per cent of
transmissions are cattle to cattle.
So, in solidarity with Brock and
friends — good riddance to Paterson.
And now let’s stop that cull.Mockery was
a crucial
weapon in
the war
against
totalitarian
creeds
Cave trolls
should stop
wasting my
precious time