There are times when even people and cause you support manage to ‘pull a Homer’ and do something so stupid that it makes you want to tear your hair out in frustration.

‘Unite Against Fascism‘ have the right motives - Fascism should never be allowed to go unchallenged but to them and and to others like Jo Salmon who seem ready to leap on the BBC for daring to show a Party Election Boradcast - tonight - by the BNP, I have to say.

1. For fuck’s sake get your facts right before you start.

The BNP are putting up 118 candidates at this election. With that number of candidates they are legally entitled to a Party Election Broadcast provided they stay within other application broadcasting guidelines and regulations - which they will even if it means toning down their usual message, having become quite adept over the years in putting up a semi-acceptable front which manages to stay just inside the law - if you don’t believe me, you can read an explanation of the regulations from the House of Commons Library here.

2. If you’re going to run a ‘complaints campaign’ then remember the first rule is that ‘you don’t talk about Fight Club’.

Don’t put it on your website, especially not before the damn broadcast has gone out - you just end up looking like you’re complaining for the sake of it (which is what the BNP will say anyway) and the Beeb and others are unlikely to pay much attention to complaints which arrive before the broadcast goes out - they’re pretty inured to that kind of thing thanks to groups like Media Watch and the loony Christian fundies over at Christian Voice.

If you’re going to organise, use e-mail and work through your mailing lists to alert people and do it quietly. Tell people to hold fire until after the broadcast has gone out and then complain - and try to be specific, refer directly to the broadcast and its content and work on that.

Uninformed complaints lodged before a broadcast are easily dismissed - if you haven’t seen a programme how you legitmately comment on it?

Informed complaints made afterwards which refer directly to the content and which relate you complaint back to broadcasting regulations and standards have to be taken far more seriously because you then have a real argument, not a bunch of assumptions, to put forward.

3. If you’re going to complain then watch the broadcast - nothing is going to make you look quite so dumb as fireing off at the mouth about it and then having to admit, afterwards, that you didn’t actually see it.

4. Deconstruct the content and argue from there - if all you can do is say ‘its the BNP, therefore it must be wrong’ you’ll lose the argument because all you’ll succeed in doing is validating everything they’re already saying about you - that you’re the one’s who’re ‘prejudiced’ against them, that you won’t listen, that you’re authoritarian and trying to take away their rights.

Principles are fine, but if you attack them on principle and without informing yourself first you allow them to make out like they’re some sort of political Robin Hood’s promoting a message that other’s don’t want the public to hear because its ‘dangerous’ - and its a short step from there for them to claim that you’re trying to suppress the ‘truth’.

Beating fascism isn’t about taking away their platform or driving them underground - that’s exactly where these bastards thrive, down in the gutters and the sewers.

If you really want to win, then let them speak, keep them visible and then debate, discuss, educate and inform - win the argument.

Take it from an old lag who’s been at this game for more than 20 years - you don’t kill cockroaches by sweeping them into corners and sealing them up behind the skirting board - you have to let them into the centre of the room and stamp on them, however distateful that might seem at first.

It really is the only way.

On Tuesday I wrote the following in regards to John Hemming and his legal challenge on postal votes…

There are numerous reasons why John’s case is likely to fall flat on its face, not least in that he appears to have learned nothing from his previous stab at challenging the electoral system in 2002 which is cited on his own ‘Stolen Votes’ website.

I also pointed out that

Having been caught out once before on the basis of Locus Standii, you’d have thought that John would have known better this time around

and that John’s argument was

a long way from establishing that the government is directly responsible for election fraud and, therefore, for disenfranchising voters.

Hemming responded, in part with the following comments…

There is no doubt about locus [standii].

The question is whether the current regulations are repugnant not whether there is a lacuna or not which I believe is quite clear.

[Lacuna is a technical point the upshot of which is that just because your could, in theory, be infringed it does not follow that they will be - Human Rights Law deal only with actual breaches not hypothetical ones]

In refusing Hemming’s petition for a judicial review of postal voting, Mr Justice Collins has stated that it was not enough to make general allegations about fear of fraud [Lacuna] before noting that he “was not yet a victim of fraud and could not be as the general election was still to take place.” [Both Lacuna and Locus Standii]

It should also be noted that the third reason why his first attempt at a legal challenge on postal voting, back in 2002, fell at the first hurdle was:

Discretion of Parliament - The decision for some of the aspects where a review was requested was a matter for parliament not the courts.

In referring to the risk of fraud at the upcoming election, Mr Justice Collins commented that this was

‘a matter for politicians and not the courts.’

I also noted that:

as seems to be perenially the case with John, his ego has got the better of him once again and his personal vanity would not allow anyone but him to be the one to make the challenge - even if others would have been far better placed, in law, as the plaintiff in this matter.

And as John’s challenge is now done and dusted I can safely explain my reasoning which was simply that, as John has found out the hard way, you can’t build a human rights case on the back of ifs, buts and maybes.

John’s best and only realistic chance of making any sort of credible case would have been to support a case brought by any of the losing candidates from either Aston or Bordesley or, even better, by any single voter who could legitimately demonstrate that their vote was stolen during last year’s elections in Birmingham.

If, and its still a big if, John could have worked with another plantiff to have the postal voting system that was used in last year’s council elections declared unlawful then, by extension, use of same system in the upcoming election would equally be unlawful - but then, where would be the ‘fortune and glory’ for John in having someone elses name on the case.

Having said all that,I’m sure that John will be happy to pop by in the next day or so to graciously concede that I was right all along - wouldn;t want anyone to think that he’s an ungracious loser.

…

Now back to day 4 of the John Hemming challenge, which as his request for a judicial review has now bitten the dust should be rather easier for him to complete.

To remind all of you, the question that’s been put to John every day for the last four days is…

Are Birmingham Lib Dems carrying out the instructions of the national Liberal Democrat party and processing applications for postal votes from Lib Dem supporters through its Birmingham Office?

The news that B16, the Pontiff formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was once a member of the Hitler Youth has drawn some interesting reactions, not least over at Harry’s Place where the general tone has been rather conciliatory.

Twenty Five years ago, Benny’s past associations would have had journalists hitting the archives in droves to check out his story. Its perhaps a reflection of how far we’ve moved on from ‘1945 and all that’ that today the official story of his allegedly very limited involvement in the Hitler Youth Movement is allowed to pass more or less unchallenged, despite the fact that there are a number of clear historical inaccuracies in the official story.

The Guardian article provides the following synopsis of the official line which, but for doubts over whether he could have avoided joining the Wehrmacht, stays broadly on message:

His father was a police officer from a family of farmers whose career suffered because he refused to become a Nazi. The young Ratzinger served briefly and unenthusiastically with the Hitler Youth and later with a German army anti-aircraft unit guarding the BMW factory in Munich. He says he never fired a shot.

But there is no doubt that his heart was not in his military service and he deserted in April 1944, ending the war in an American prisoner of war camp.

Its an interesting if historically inaccurate story for a variety of reasons.

First it needs to be noted that Ratzinger was born in 1927 - April 16th to be precise.

Membership of the Hitler Youth became mandatory for all German boys in 1936, some seven years before his alleged desertion from the Wehrmacht. At nine years of age, Ratzinger would have become a member of the Hitler Youth and would have remained a member throughout - bunking off was not only not allowed but would have put his family at serious risk of arrest, more so in light of his father’s apparent refusal to join the Nazi Party. Ratzinger’s ‘brief’ membership of the Hitler Youth would have lasted for a minimum of seven years.

On January 26 1943, with his armies overstretched and having lost the entire 6th Army at Stalingrad - Hitler turned over the manning of all anti-aircraft batteries in Germany to the Hitler Youth. Ratzinger would have been 15 years old, still far too young to join the Wehrmacht, and could have served in an AA crew only as a member of the Hitler Youth - his ‘never fired a gun due to a bad finger’ story sounds rather too reminiscent of Clinton’s ‘I didn’t inhale’ line to be credible.

As regards his service in the Wehrmacht, unless he lied about his age he could not have joined the regular German Army, even as a conscript, until he was 18. Yet he was only 17 years of age when he ‘deserted’ in April 1944.

The question then is just what did he desert from, if not the Wehrmacht?

In July/August 1943, 10,000 boys from the Hitler Youth were recruited as volunteers into the 12th SS-Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, which was based at a training camp in Beverloo in Belgium. To provide this new unit with experienced leadership it was ‘filled out’ with experienced officers and men from the Waffen SS - mostly survivors of the Russian Front - including some drawn from Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler which was, effectively, Hitler’s personal Praetorian Guard, plus 50 officers from the Wehrmacht, all of who were former Hitler Youth leaders.

On completing its training in the spring of 1944 - the period of Ratzinger’s desertion - this division was stationed at Hasselt, again in Belgium, in anticipation of D-Day and finally saw action in the Battle for Caen during which British and Canadian troops were both horrified and astounded by the fanaticism shown by the unit.

If Ratzinger was one of the 10,000 volunteers in the HJ Panzer Division, as seems possible - his account of deserting in April 1944 is ‘workable’ in that he was stationed in an location which would have afforded such an opportunity - then only he knows the real reason why he deserted.

The official story is clearly intended to paint a picture of Ratzinger as a conscientious objector, something which could be true but is inconsistent with the idea that he may have volunteered for service in an SS Panzer Division, if that is indeed what really happened.

Even if he did join the Hitler Youth unit at Hasselt, as someone who claims to have been ‘unenthusiastic’ regarding the Hitler Youth he may conceivably have sickened at being surrounded by so many fanatics, causing him to desert. Even his presence in such a unit, if proven, would not be absolute evidence that he was as fanatical as those around him. His father
was a ‘dissident’ in refusing to join the Nazi Party and Ratzinger would not have been the only young German to play out the role of a fanatic simply to protect his family.

On cannot rule out a simple case of ‘cold feet’ either - the Hitler Youth Division at Beverloo received superb training in as close to battlefield conditions as possible - including training with live ammo. If Ratzinger was at Beverloo, who knows what he might have seen and experienced and how that may have influence his decision to desert…

…if indeed he did desert, as even that cannot be certain.

Again, if he was at Beverloo and being trained by veterans of the Russian Front, he would certainly have been told, in explicit details, of the consequences of being captured by the enemy and, in particular, of how the Russian had a very different attitude to those captured wearing SS Uniforms as against members of the Wehrmacht. By the end of the war, as the allies closed in and defeat became inevitable, it was standard practice for SS personnel, fearing capture, to loot the corpses of regular Wehrmacht soldiers and steal their uniforms in order to disguise their membership of the SS. On the Russian Front, an ordinary German soldier could still expect to be treated as a POW when captured but SS troops would consider themselves lucky to be summarily executed.

Ratzinger would have known all that and, crucially, would have been told to expect the same regardless of who he was captured by or surrendered to.

At Beverloo, if he was there, the importance of dumping his SS uniform if faced with capture or seeking to surrender would have been drummed into him by the veterans of the Russian Front who were brought in to train his unit - sele preservation alone would dictate that he would claim to have been a member of the Wehrmacht, on being captured, even though he would have been too young to have served in the regular German Army.

…

The offical Ratzinger story is far from satisfactory and littered with historical inconsistencies. - the question being does that really matter?

From the standpoint of his becoming Pope I don’t think it does. Even if his involvement with the Hitler Youth was far more substantive than the official history would have us believe it was still 60 years ago and is mitigated by an understanding of the extent to which the Nazis set out to and succeeded in temporarily indoctrinating a whole generation of Germany’s young people. Ratzinger would be far from the only German of his generation to be taken in by systematic Nazi propaganda and brainwashing and one were to take the view that his distant past made him unsutiable for his present role then you might as well condemn ever German over the age of 70 to walk forever with a bell round their neck and carrying a sign reading ‘unclean’.

From a historical standpoint, however, it does matter. The truth is important as is the understanding of how often the official histories fail to match up to real events as they actually happened.

Moreover, if the tacit acceptance of the official Ratzinger history, for all its obvious flaws, is to be accepted as a sign of our willingness to put the past behind us then, equally, it does suggest that rather than having come along way we, in fact, still have a long way to go before we can safely put the Nazis and the history or World War II into a proper perspective.

If the real history of Benedict XVI is anything close to what I’ve suggested it could be in this piece then the obvious rationale for the dissembling official history is the perception that it still does matter, even after so long, that he may have been an active member of the Hitler Youth - something which would, whether you like him or not, be rather a sad reflection on our own inability to let go and get things into a proper perspective.

Update:

The plot thickens.

Factual Correction - Membership of the Hitler Youth became mandatory in 1939 for 17 yesr old and 1941 for over 10’s. 1936 was the year that they banned all other youth organisations but the Hitler Youth.

There seems to be some disagreement on when B16 deserted - April 1945 is now being quoted, which would rule out any SS Hitler Youth connections.

There also seems to be some confusion about where, exactly, in the German Forces he was supposed to have served - some say Wehrmacht, others are now saying Luftwaffe, as an auxilliary.

Oh, and if his autobiography is correct he appears not have noticed either the SS unit, which was in his home town and which was actively shipping Jew to death camps…

…alledgedly.