British politicians from all parties and across the news media poured scorn on the former London mayor for his “absurd” and “offensive” remarks.
A few Conservative parliamentarians did rally to Johnson’s defense, saying that he was merely making an historical argument in support of why Britain should vote to leave the EU in the country’s referendum next month.
But, by and large, British politicians and media lined up in thick ranks to pummel Johnson over his Nazi analogy.
The illuminating thing, however, is that this supposed British fastidious in matters of historical accuracy and ethical politics are thrown completely out the window when it comes to slandering the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
No less than the leader of Britain, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, has invoked Hitler and the Nazi Third Reich to describe Russia’s foreign policy under Putin.
Britain’s top diplomat, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, has also repeated the same slanderous accusations against the Russian leader and the Russian nation.
This week British General Sir Richard Shirref, former supreme commander of NATO, was given an unchallenged BBC platform to trot out a litany of calumnies about Putin. The General said: “He [Putin] has invaded Georgia, he has invaded Crimea, he has invaded Ukraine. He has used force and got away with it. In a period of tension, an attack on the Baltic states [by Russia] is entirely plausible.”
British political and military leaders, as well as senior American figures like presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry, feel free to spout Hitler and Nazi Germany comparisons with Russia all the time. And yet there is hardly critical dissent or questioning in the Western media to such crazed and baseless falsification of history.
The alleged Russian “invasions” of Ukraine and Georgia turn reality upside down. By far, the evidence proves that Washington and its NATO allies subverted both countries – not Russia. The Western-backed coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 – facilitated by a false-flag sniper massacre – installed a Neo-Nazi regime that continues to wage a war of aggression on the ethnic Russian population in eastern Ukraine. The debt-ridden, repressive Kiev regime is a Washington-EU bankrolled entity, and yet Russia is blamed for “invasion”.
As for Crimea, the people voted overwhelmingly in a referendum in March 2014 to join the Russian federation, rather than being subjected to Kiev’s aggression as the people of eastern Ukraine are. Get over it.
There is also a more disturbing and altogether more insidious intention from this falsification of history. By making spurious comparisons between Nazi Germany, Hitler and modern Russia under Putin, the effect is to subvert history retrospectively.
It was the Soviet Union that crucially defeated Nazi Germany 71 years ago, and saved Europe from fascism. But this vitally significant history is being eroded and corrupted by continual falsification, performed in such casual slanderous manner in the British and Western media.
By using specious historical comparisons with Hitler and Nazi Germany, not only is Russia slandered in current events and set up for attack by NATO; Russia is also slandered in the past and robbed of its glorious achievement in defeating European fascism. Moreover, the origins of Nazism and fascism as an extension of capitalist hegemony are conveniently erased from the public’s historical understanding.
Getting back to Boris Johnson. What he actually said concerning the European Union was mildly controversial and not without reasonable grounds. Johnson, who is a leading voice in the campaign for a Brexit – that is, Britain to leave the EU – told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper that historical attempts to forge a European superstate have always failed. He said: “Napoleon, Hitler and various people tried this out and it ends tragically.”
Johnson clearly did not equate the EU with Nazi Germany. He explicitly said that it uses “different methods”. But he added: “There’s a very good argument against the lack of democracy in the EU.”
However, the way in which Johnson has been lambasted by British politicians and media over his Nazi Germany reference is an astounding carnival of hypocrisy – given that the same chorus of British voices engage in much, much worse historical abuse with regard to Russia and President Putin.
Only days after Johnson made his EU-Nazi Germany comparison, British premier David Cameron was at it again, blithely and uncritically slandering Putin.
So, there you are. Not only is Putin a Hitler figure, according to Britain’s highest member of government, the Russian president is also in the same bracket as a vile terrorist chief who orders his followers to chop heads off victims.
Cameron and other British politicians continually make “obscene utterances” and “offensive historical analogies” against the Russian nation without so much as a raised eyebrow in the British media.
Which just goes to show how intellectually and ethically bankrupt the mainstay of British politicians, academics and media are. Truly, these are the sort of hypocritical idiots that make the world a dangerous place.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
