Joining the hypocrites
Taki It is that time of year again. The time for peace and goodwill to all men. Mind you, goodwill towards all men is getting harder by the minute, what with those psychopathic murderers in the Sudan and in Zimbabwe. When I look back and remember the rubbish that was written by phoneys like Christopher Hitchens against the great Ian Smith, it is hard to have Christian thoughts. Some might say it served poor Smithy right. He fought for a country which then turned against him and did its utmost to squeeze the life out of his regime. Today's Zimbabwe is the result, and those who howled abuse against Rhodesia are still around blathering and boring our pants off.
A couple of Speccies ago, I read Rod Liddle's take on the Oxford debate and David Irving. I agreed with what he wrote — that Oxford was right to hold the debate — but I thought he laid on the abuse about how repulsive Irving is a bit too much. After all, has Irving murdered anyone? Has he incited people to kill? His crime was to have been a passive recorder of history, however mistaken he may have been in his interpretation of it. His denial of the Holocaust, which he denies, has cost him dearly — he has no income, no money and no home. And he has spent more than a year in jail for something he said ten years ago. The Queen, on the other hand, under orders of course, recently gave a state dinner for a Saudi kleptocrat who finances jihadists to murder infidels, us, and that particular kleptocrat also finances mosques in which imams teach the young to go out and kill us. So I ask you, dear readers, now that it's Christmas-time, who has done us more harm, Irving, or those who invited Abdullah over here and give permission for giant mosques to be built? All one has to do is to read the interview by Mary Wakefield (soon to become the third Mrs Taki) with Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the same issue to see what the Islamists have in store for us. But, no, it's far more important to establish our PC credentials and denounce a writer who has been almost broken at the wheel for downplaying the Holocaust.
And here I will join the rest of the hypocrites and say that I don't agree with David Irving, but I'm being cowardly in doing so. (I'd like to keep this column, especially now that I will be married to The Spectator's assistant editor.) No such problem for my friend Andrew Roberts. He recently wrote how some old and infirm Nazis must not be allowed to die in their beds. The War Crimes Act of 1991 allows Nazi war criminals to be brought to justice. The trouble is none of them will be because it is almost impossible to make such cases stand up in court. And, as Roberts wrote, when the bill was passed, law lord after law lord got up to denounce it on perfectly legal grounds. Roberts claims that Operation Last Chance, the brainchild of Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, is important even if it fails because it serves to remind us what happened 60 years ago. It sounds good but is anyone in their right mind not aware of what the Nazis did to the Jews? And aren't we reminded of it daily? Those who desecrate synagogues and beat up Jews today are militant Muslims living in this country as well as in France, but somehow Andrew forgot to mention this. PC, I suppose, is more important than the truth.
I recently read a comment by John Updike calling the concept of war crimes tautological. I agree. By incinerating women, old men and children from 10,000 feet, the Allies established the moral high ground and have been standing on it ever since. But Dresden was a major war crime, as was Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But who among us was about to bring Winston Churchill, FDR and Truman to justice? Only Bertrand Russell, that's who. Let's face it. Incendiary bombs are as lethal as Zyklon-B gas, and those who dropped them on unarmed civilians were only following orders. Remarks such as these will not, of course, get me a knighthood, but then, unlike my buddy Andrew Roberts, I ain't looking for one. (Nor is the future Mrs Taki.) In the meantime I haver been getting some very interesting letters from loyal Speccie readers about Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory (which was pre-eminent in its study of eugenics and was looked upon by the Nazis with admiration, the Lab which fired professor Watson for un-PC comments about Africa) and a short story 'Tomorrow's Already Here ... ' about what fools we are to welcome newcomers to settle in England, newcomers who take advantage of our Christian heritage of liberal tolerance, and how we are sowing the seeds of our own destruction and that of our children. I was very happy to get such letters because it shows that not everyone is frozen by fear of PC. And a reader from down under suggested that I read David Malouf, whom I greatly admire.
Keep it coming, as they say, and you will all be invited when I marry Mary early next year. She's in her twenties and I'm 71, a perfect age difference. Unlike most broads of today (Frank Sinatra's way of referring to the fair sex) my future bride cares about ideas and books and classical music, whereas the rest of them think only of megayachts, big houses, Gstaad chalets, private jets and lotsa clothes and jewellery. Mary is going to save me lotsa moolah. In the meantime, while I get fit for my young bride, I wish you the happiest of Christmases, however un-PC it is to do so.
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