It is a sad state of affairs when we're litigating offending tweets.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_5_of_the_Public_Order_...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiqDZlAZygU
While I still do not claim to fully comprehend British culture, there is always an odd undercurrent of authoritarianism whose chill I can feel now and then – it is worth noting that it bridges the political divide. I have talked about this with my British colleagues and heard numerous explanations, but none that I feel satisfactory. At times when I feel particularly dark I joke about this with said colleagues and say: “You say that you went to war with the Germans on behalf of the free world. But at times I wonder: Was it not that they in a way were outdoing you and you were feeling a bit envious?” Now, clearly this is intended to be offensive and not something that I genuinely believe, but like many jokes, it somewhat works because there is some kernel of truth at its core.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-535...
The SNP are trying to be far more authoritarian than the Tory's at this point.
Who said that? They definitely ruled over a lot of the non-free world at the time. India? East Africa?
A large part of the world supported the Axis simply because at the time, the British Empire was the relevant empire oppressing them, and by default, anyone who hated the British supported the Germans and/or Japanese.
A possibly apocryphal story is that a Brit was trying to explain to an African why it was necessary to fight the Nazis. He said "each country must rule over its own people, the Germans over Germany, the Poles over Poland, the French over France..." and the African said "..."
Gandhi was firmly against fighting the Germans and Japanese, and many Indians equated fighting for the Axis with fighting for independence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Army
"After the war ended, the story of the INA and the Indian Legion was seen as so inflammatory that, fearing mass revolts and uprisings across its empire, the British Government forbade the BBC from broadcasting their story."
>But at times I wonder: Was it not that they in a way were outdoing you and you were feeling a bit envious?”
Were they? At the outbreak of WWII, the British controlled "25% of the world's population, and of 30% of its land mass".
The phrase "odd undercurrent of authoritarian" itself is particularly odd, because what's odd about a country that ruled over one of the largest, if not the largest, empires of all time having an authoritarian streak?
But “grossly offensive”, man that’s absurd.
But that someone tweeting “the only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella buuuuurn” is guilty of anything besides being lame, is beyond what I can understand. It seems like this is about something more than just being "grossly offensive", did this somehow make someone in the military upset or something? Surely it can't be illegal to be offensive now can it?
> The 72-year-old [Janet Hunter Jess], whose family served in the armed forces, said: “To see someone wishing British soldiers dead, it still hurts me. It still hurts me that anybody would disrespect someone that had given their live for the country.”
> Ms Jeffrey, 51, stated: “First of all, the gentleman in question had done so much to raise awareness and funds for the NHS in England and became a bit of a national hero at the time, but then the fact it referred to British soldiers as well.
It seems indeed this is more about that people in the military, or related to those with people in the military, was offended by the tweet.
I wonder if the irony around that this fellow fought in the second world war for freedom of speech for everyone is hitting any of these people offended at the tweet.
This is a man who had become known as a national hero, who stood for the resilience of the people of a country struggling with a pandemic and the services trying to protect them.I'm not aware of WW2 being about freedom of speech.
I'm pretty sure if Britain had ended up being occupied, they'd have had less freedom of speech than they enjoy today.
It doesn’t make the war about freedom of speech, it makes the war about resisting invasion (for Britain).
The Britain of the time had a tremendous desire to censor things they deemed unseemly which lasted long past the end of the war - see for example various obscenity trials regarding the publication of books in the 60s and 70s.
Yah, but fighting to resist invasion also means fighting to preserve values and legal protections.
[which may not have been the best in the world then, or interpreted as we'd interpret those values now, but still were better than the alternative].
An invasion is the same whether you are being invaded by people who believe in free speech or by people who don't. WWII was in no way about free speech. Germany was invading other countries not to impose their values and compelled speech, but to create "living space" and take their resources for the "German people". People war opposing this because they didn't want to be killed, nor did they want to serve the "German people" nor did they want their resources to belong to Germany. Nothing much would have changed in the opposition to German occupation if Germany had been a democracy with equality for all and deep protection for free speech, but still hell bent on conquering and controlling all of Europe.
It wasn't about resisting Britain being invaded if that's what you mean, it was the invasion of Poland that kicked it off. Rather similar to the current where we are resisting Russia invading Ukraine. Hitler didn't want to fight the UK. He wanted to partner with us to take over the other 'racially inferior' countries.
Germany allows most political speech, and doesn't execute teenagers for repeating foreign propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_H%C3%BCbener So this is a very strange instance of "less freedom of speech" to justify this whataboutism.
It's a bit tongue in cheek, but maybe avoid the red witch hunts, avoid murdering your own population for being black or revolutionary (or both). And for the French and British, not executing colonial soldiers and their families to avoid paying them (or to avoid respecting your promises of Freedom(tm) )
Maybe it was just a troll, but implementation is clearly not finished yet, and was surely not at the end of the war.
Second world war was obviously about multiple causes, not just one. But liberty and freedom was a pretty big part of that, and freedom of speech is obviously a big part of those two. If the other side of the war won, freedom of speech would have looked very different (or not exists at all), that much is clear.
Given that soldiers typically kill people, it seems inevitable that someone will hate them, whether justified or not.
If you look at countries that demand unconditional patriotism, they are usually flirting with dictatorship or outright fashism. It's not something a free society should emulate.
On a side note, Ari Shaffir better clean up his act. He said some bad shit about Kobe after he died.
The standard for “offending” will continue to encompass more and more speech, too.