Is it really the role of the state to regulate taste?
Beer hall putz: Regulator slaps northern pub over Nazi-themed ad
A pub in County Durham, England, has been rapped by the UK Advertising Standards Agency after three complaints about its "German Night" advert were upheld. According to the ASA ruling, the Buck Inn in Sadberge near Darlington made a Facebook post on September 8 last year, promoting its German Night special menu. It featured in …
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 14:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
>Nazis aren't a racial group. Try replacing "Nazi" with "Soviet" or "Maoist" and see if you can figure it out.
I think the problem is it was described as a German night, therefore equating Germans with Nazis.
Germans are pretty sick of war jokes and I'm not surprised. They did start it though.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 14:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
you could argue it was the extreme punishment handed out after WW2 that led to the rise of the Nazi's...so it was our fault....but then we could argue it was the Germans fault for starting WW1, but then we could say that it was due to British and French imperialism combined with the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, which caused issues in Germany and Italy promoting a wave of nationalism......and on and on...
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 14:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Extreme punishment? The Marshall plan pumped billions into West Germany which allowed the nation to thrive. Ordinary Germans were not punished.
The Soviet block, on the other hand, was plenty of punishment for millions of people and could be argued to be behind the rise of fascism, much of it in Eastern Europe.
Look at Japan. Decades of occupation by the US didn't lead to a rise in fascism there.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 18:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Could you
List which parts of the Treaty of Versailles you consider unfair to Germany?
The notion that the Treaty of Versailles was unfair to Germany was a lie invented by the National Socialists in Germany to create a sense of resentment which the Nazis exploited.
It's an amazing irony that this lie has passed into received wisdom, and gets trotted out by people who have no idea what they're talking about, and is generally unchallenged
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 22:11 GMT veti
Re: Could you
The notion that the Treaty of Versailles was unfair to Germany was a lie invented by the National Socialists in Germany to create a sense of resentment which the Nazis exploited.
"Fair" requires a value judgement. As such, it cannot be called "a lie" unless we have explicit agreement on what constitutes "fairness". Your uncompromising use of the objective term "lie" to describe an inherently subjective claim "fair" is either silly or disingenuous.
The most contentious clauses were about reparations, which were orders of magnitude larger than anything that had ever been imposed before, and were impossible for the crippled German economy to meet. (Not unlike the terms the Germans themselves recently imposed on the Greeks.) The French eventually forgave the debt of Austria, Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, but they held out for full repayment from the Germans. Was that "fair", in your understanding of the word?
Then there was the loss of Germany's colonies - not given independence, but ceded to the French and other allies. This was a substantial hit to the German economy at a time when it was already hobbled by the drain of the war effort and the loss of manpower, and it was being asked to pay billions of dollars in reparations. Was it fair to load all those strains on the economy at the same time?
At the end of the day, "fair" is what people agree it is. If one side feels so aggrieved that it's willing to fight - then the arrangement isn't "fair" enough, no matter how much the other side may like it.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 11:43 GMT Mooseman
Re: Could you
"The most contentious clauses were about reparations, which were orders of magnitude larger than anything that had ever been imposed before, and were impossible for the crippled German economy to meet. "
Which, of course, they didn't, bar a couple of initial payments. The Germans have not imposed anything on the Greeks, please stop falling for that anti EU nonsense.
What pushed Germany towards fascism (and it was a close thing between that and communism) was the loss of face following the Versaiiles treaty (loss of colonies, the Polish corridor, restrictions on the armed forces etc) and the crippling effect of the Depression on the 1920's. Germany's colonies were not a great source of income, rather a source of pride that they too were an international power (although they had very little overseas territory). They were ripe for any demagogue who appeared to hold simple answers to all their problems (blame outsiders and jews, the "stab in the back" myth etc) to take over.
That all being said, it's sadly typical of the current little Englander mindset that anything German is automatically associated with WW2 or 1966.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 16:29 GMT jmch
"The Marshall plan pumped billions into West Germany..."
Although th quote you are responding to DID say punishment after WW2, I think it's clear from the post that the author actually ment the punishment after WW1.
In fact the Marshall plan (and formation of EU) were instrumental in breaking that hundreds-year old cycle of tit-for-tat wars
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 23:13 GMT Wensleydale Cheese
The Marshall Plan
"The Marshall plan pumped billions into West Germany..."
and even more into the UK...
BBC History: The Wasting of Britain's Marshall Aid
Successive governments squandered billions of Marshall Plan Aid to support British world power pretensions, and so jeopardised the economic future of Britain.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 19:35 GMT ElectricRook
lack of reading
The OP meant extreme punishment to Germany over WWI (which Germany didn't start). Extreme punishment led oppressed Germans to become politically scattered hence the fringe Nazi party won. Kind of like how Arnold Schwarzenegger won the California Governorship in a field of 28 candidates after Gray Davis was recalled for bungling the electric power grid.
Many people down voted the OP, likely they didn't understand the history of how WWII started, which is based on how WWI ended, which is completely divorced from how WWI started, which is based on 19'th century European politics.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 19:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
"you could argue it was the extreme punishment handed out after WW
21 that led to the rise of the Nazi's"The West would have done well to deal with Ludendorff and Hindenburg and stop their "stab in the back" myth. If it hadn't been Adolph, it's quite likely Ludendorff would have found someone else. He was already banging on about the master race, exterminating Russians, an empire in the East and "international" (i.e. Jewish) capital attacking Germany in 1916.
If the West had really supported the Weimar republic instead of leaving it to be blamed for war reparations, WW2 might well not have happened. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 14:58 GMT Stork
-or their grandparents did
Really, blaming todays Germans for Nazism is about as fair as blaming todays Brits for the invention of concentration camps (Boer War AFAIK).
Todays Germany is IMNSHO the major European country least likely to fall for a totalitarian state (yes, also with the last elections in mind) - they have tried it and are taught about it.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 19:14 GMT Lysenko
I think the problem is it was described as a German night, therefore equating Germans with Nazis.
It isn't uncommon (particularly on the wrong side of the pond) to equate Russians with "Commies" without giving everyone the vapours and lots of Vodka branding relies on either Romanov or Soviet stylistic cues.
Couple that with the Holodomor (deadlier than Hitler's effort all by itself) and the other 50-70M wiped out by the Sino-Soviets and I sense a double standard.
Hitler's superlative sin was murdering so many white, western Europeans. His Communist colleagues mostly stuck to murdering easterners and "Asians", so Hitler gets promoted to be the head of the axis of evil rather than number three where he belongs.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 22:44 GMT 's water music
Hitler's superlative sin was murdering so many white, western Europeans
I think it may be as much to do with being on the losing side of WW2 and therefore becoming the natural repository for blame, just like that contractor who left last week ends up being entirely responsible for the state of the project
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Thursday 11th January 2018 08:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Stalin and Mao were protected for decades by the left, whereas everybody was happy to call Hitler a wrong'un.
( Even within the last few weeks, the leader of the Labour party went on a holiday to Mexico to visit^H "visit a cafe next to but not enter" the home of on of his idols, Leon Trotsky ).
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Thursday 11th January 2018 19:47 GMT ElectricRook
for the love of terrorism
"( Even within the last few weeks, the leader of the Labour party went on a holiday to Mexico to visit^H "visit a cafe next to but not enter" the home of on of his idols, Leon Trotsky )."
Wow.
Good ol' "You'll take Communism or I'll give you Terrorism"--Lev Davidovich a.k.a. Leon Trotsky.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 20:09 GMT Hans 1
They did start it though.
WWII together with the Ruskies, yes.... they did NOT start WWI, that was started by their Austrian buddies by declaring war on Serbia ... a fact that especially Brits often get wrong, that! But Ok ... and yes, I do think that it is inappropriate for anybody to link Germany of today with Nazism ...especially by people in the UK these days ... Brexit ethnic cleansing and shit ...
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Thursday 11th January 2018 01:51 GMT PNGuinn
Germans are pretty sick of war jokes and I'm not surprised. They did start it though.
Quite.
And the last century or so of history shows that too many of them have been willing to deny or attempt to justify that history.
The really frightening thing is that the lessons of that horrible past - and they go back to way before Adolf took power *democratically* in Germany - have not been learned in THIS country.
Or at least conveniently forgotten by our current crop of leaders.
In the nineteen thirties and forties that nightmare could not have happened here in the UK. (although there were far too many supporters of Hitler in high places in this country.) We still had enough people with a gut common sense that "they" were elected to serve and not dominate "us" and a perhaps somewhat nebulous love of the freedoms and justice that had been won over the centuries. Totalitarianism and violence was just not the British "way".
Today, I'm not so sure. So many of the freedoms, checks and balances that were built into our political and judicial systems have been deliberately eroded in the last few years.
As an incidental exercise for the reader - study National Socialist Party doctrine closely and see just how "politically correct" their dogma and propaganda really was - and where it led.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 04:43 GMT EarthDog
Re: Germans are pretty sick of war jokes and I'm not surprised. They did start it though.
IIRC the Nazis ad at most 30% of the electorate. It then dropped at which point Hitler et. al. exploited loopholes and built coalitions with other ultraconservatives to gain power and ban opposition parties.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 09:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Germans are pretty sick of war jokes and I'm not surprised. They did start it though.
To be fair to British NAZI supporters* of the 30's, they didn't know quite how bad he was at the time.
There was a rise in socialist parties across Europe, of which right thinking people were correctly terrified. I could certainly see people seeing him ( through what information they had at the time ) as being the lesser of two evils.
* I never thought I'd be typing that when I woke up this morning.
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Thursday 11th January 2018 11:51 GMT Mooseman
Re: Germans are pretty sick of war jokes and I'm not surprised. They did start it though.
"And the last century or so of history shows that too many of them have been willing to deny or attempt to justify that history.
The really frightening thing is that the lessons of that horrible past - and they go back to way before Adolf took power *democratically* in Germany - have not been learned in THIS country"
A couple of points -
1. Hitler was never democratically elected - he was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg, and then rapidly outlawed all other opposition parties
2. Germany has never shied away from it's WW2 past. Every German I know was taught about it at school, they are all without exception horrified and guilty, even those born decades after the events. Unlike in Austria where history simply stops in 1938 and carries on in 1945
Mosely and his blackshirts were mildly popular here, supported by the Daily Mail and several high ranking figures, but the average bloke had no time for their strutting nonsense. Would it happen now? After 40 years of anti European smears and talk of "swarms" of foreigners invading us, culminating in the brexit foolishness, who knows?
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Friday 12th January 2018 10:03 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: Germans are pretty sick of war jokes and I'm not surprised. They did start it though.
Mosely and his blackshirts were mildly popular here, supported by the Daily Mail
I'm shocked I tell you, shocked that such an upstanding organisation like the Daily Heil would ever support a facist organistion.
Next you'll be telling me that they dislike immigrants!
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 23:29 GMT PhilipN
Is it really the role of the state to regulate taste?
Thank heavens, no. Satire (q.v.) has been thriving in Blighty for 4 centuries. Most people understand when something is satire within a nanosecond. However, set up an agency to monitor "satire" then give its (originally completely normal) senior officer a title and an objective his discretion goes out the window and he becomes completely po-faced. Tiresome. And stupid.
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Wednesday 10th January 2018 12:10 GMT goodjudge
stable door / horse
"The Buck Inn was ordered to not show the adverts again "
So the ASA is ruling in January 2018 on a Facebook ad placed in September 2017 for an event that presumably took place in either September or October 2017... I'm sure the pub will find it easy to abide by that one.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
