Anti-Semitism Still in the Mainstream
Gilbert N. Kahn is a professor of Political Science at Kean University.
If this were not true it would be absurd. Tom Harris MP, the Scottish Labour Party’s (SLP) so-called “social media tzar” has resigned his position after posting a video on-line which presented Alex Salmond MSP, the First Minister of Scotland and the head of the Scottish National Party (SNP), as Hitler. The video, entitled Joan’s Downfall, was a parody of the 2004 German film, Downfall, which depicted Hitler’s last days in his bunker.
Harris, himself, had stood for Party Leader of the SLP last year. The source of the contretemps involves internal rivalries in Scotland between the SNP and SLP; but this was the work of the SNP’s media guru! Joan McAlpine MSP, is one of Salmond’s closest colleagues in the MSP.
There reportedly has been much use made of material from this movie in assorted video spoofs in Britain. Aside from the insulting casualness in which the English use Hitler references and its insulting nature for Jews, one wonders why the British have reached the point where they permit such imagery to be used indiscriminately for humor purposes, despite the fact that the United Kingdom suffered 450,000 military and civilian deaths at the hands of the Nazis. One might only wonder what the reaction might be in the US if similar spoofs were made by politicians using KKK references.
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