I was feeling quite down about one thing and another. Then I turned on the TV and learned that a protester had thrown a pot of paint at Charles and Camilla's Bentley and it cheered me up no end.
My thinking exactly: it is ridiculous to think that, among all Britain's war dead, not one would have opposed the class warfare being ginned up by the Torries.
I find this obsession with the heroic dead to be invariably authoritarian, if not openly fascist. Franconic Spain was obsessed with the dead, as were the Nazis. The Valle de los Caídos is still highly controversial, as well it should be. In WWII Germany, each death's-head SS ring was to be recovered and returned to Himmler, where they were kept in a special chest. There were plans to build a huge quasi-religious memorial complex in Bavaria, but the Third Reich did not last that long.
One of the reasons often given for pursuing hopeless wars- like the current one in Afghanistan- is that giving it up would be an admission that the heroic dead have died in vain.
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branchandroot
Re: Eggs and omelettes, I'm afraid
Date: 2010-12-11 10:24 am (UTC)I find this obsession with the heroic dead to be invariably authoritarian, if not openly fascist. Franconic Spain was obsessed with the dead, as were the Nazis. The Valle de los Caídos is still highly controversial, as well it should be. In WWII Germany, each death's-head SS ring was to be recovered and returned to Himmler, where they were kept in a special chest. There were plans to build a huge quasi-religious memorial complex in Bavaria, but the Third Reich did not last that long.
Re: Eggs and omelettes, I'm afraid
Date: 2010-12-11 03:26 pm (UTC)Re: Eggs and omelettes, I'm afraid
Date: 2010-12-12 12:46 pm (UTC)