Allow me, if I may, to adpot Sunny Hundal\’s form of logic for a moment:
As a side-note, I love the way Mr Eugenides compares my earlier defence of Virendra Sharma over Subash Chandra Bose as the same as defending Enoch Powell. Erm yeah. One was a high-ranking British politician who warned that black and white people mixing would lead to race war. The other was a lowly freedom fighter trying to get rid of the British Raj from India who had ruled his country for centuries and killed millions of people in the process. Obviously both are roughly in the same situation. By the same measure Churchill is a dictator who should never be spoken off highly forever.
Yes, Enoch Powell was a man who spent years of his life fighting the fascists.
During October 1939 Powell enlisted in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, almost a month after returning home. Powell enlisted in the ranks as an Australian. During later years he recorded his appointment from private to lance-corporal in his Who\’s Who entry, on other occasions describing it as a greater promotion than entering the Cabinet. He was trained for a commission after, whilst working in a kitchen, answering the question of an inspecting officer with a Greek proverb. He was commissioned on the General List in 1940, but almost immediately transferred to the Intelligence Corps. During October 1941, as a Lieutenant, Powell was posted to Cairo and transferred back to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was soon promoted to the rank of Major. He helped plan the attack on Rommel\’s supply lines, as well as the Battle of El Alamein. Powell was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in August 1942.
Twelve months later, during August 1943 he was posted to Delhi. Though he served in Africa with the Desert Rats, Powell himself never actually experienced combat, serving for most of his military career as a staff officer. It was in Algiers that the beginning of Powell\’s dislike of the United States was planted. After talking with some senior American officials, he became convinced that one of America\’s main war aims was to destroy the British Empire. Writing home on 16 February 1943, Powell stated: \”I see growing on the horizon the greater peril than Germany or Japan ever were… our terrible enemy, America….\”[11]
In 1943 Powell was awarded the military MBE.
Powell\’s conviction of the anti-British attitude of the Americans continued during the war. Powell cut out and retained all his life an article from the New Statesman newspaper of 13 November 1943, in which the American Clare Boothe Luce said in a speech that Indian independence would mean that the \”USA will really have won the greatest war in the world for democracy\”.[12]
He desperately wanted to go to the Far East to help the fight against Japan because \”the war in Europe is won now, and I want to see the Union Flag back in Singapore\” before, Powell thought, the Americans beat Britain to it.[13]
Powell attempted to join the Chindits and jumped into a taxicab to bring the matter up with Orde Wingate[14] but his duties and rank precluded the assignment.
Powell began the war as the youngest professor in the Commonwealth; he ended it as the youngest Brigadier in the British army, one of the very few men of the entire war to rise from Private to Brigadier (another being Fitzroy Maclean). Powell felt guilty for having survived when many of those he had met during his journey through the ranks had not. When once asked how he would like to be remembered, he at first answered \”Others will remember me as they will remember me\”, but when pressed he replied \”I should like to have been killed in the war.\”[15]
Note that even the British Army does not promote someone from Private to Brigadier just because they have some Latin and Greek.
Bose on the other hand:
His stance did not change with the outbreak of the Second World War, which he saw as an opportunity to take advantage of British weakness. At the outset of the war, he went away from India and travelled to the Soviet Union, Germany and Japan, seeking an alliance with the aim of attacking the British in India. With Japanese assistance, he re-organised and later led the Indian National Army, formed from Indian prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from British Malaya, Singapore, and other parts of Southeast Asia, against British forces. With Japanese monetary, political, diplomatic and military assistance, he formed the Azad Hind Government in exile and regrouped and led the Indian National Army in battle against the allies at Imphal and in Burma.
Bose fought for an with the fascists. Indeed, if Powell had had his request granted to join the Chindits he would have fought directly against Bose and his fascist allies.
By continuing Sunny\’s logic we should all therefore be supporting the BNP for they are indeed fighting with, not against, fascism. Or something.
More seriously, I wonder what his opinion of Vlasov and the Russian Army of Liberation is?
Eh? By your logic, we fought for and with the Stalinists. That would also be bollocks.
If you’re fighting for your nation’s independence or survival, you take your allies where you can find them…
Most excellent comment dude!
Yes, John B, and then you get execrated for being a lickspittle of fascists (or communists, or whatever).
We know where you stand.
Mr. Bose and Mr. Hundal are both have Indian connections. I seriously doubt whether Mr. Hundal has ever considered further than that- he is merely shouting for a member of what he sees as his own team (which seems to me to be in agreement with john B’s position).
Tim adds: Comment edited. We’ll not go there shall we?
More seriously, I wonder what his opinion of Vlasov and the Russian Army of Liberation is?
Ah yes, this last I’ve discussed with many Russians and they were all, to man and woman, of the opinion that he was a traitor. My devil’s advocate arguments were to no avail.
Perhaps that’s the Stalinist legacy.
Bose fought for an with the fascists.
It’s really hilarious how many of you avoid two points entirely:
1. That Churchill also made an alliance with Stalin to defend Hitler and wasn’t averse to the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my short-term friend’ argument.
2. India was under occupation from the Brits who had killed millions over the centuries. I suppose that’s ok. (I’ve already said this was a bad strategy but I have absolutely no problem with people being desperate about chucking out the Brits at the time).
But oh no! Anyone who set up an alliance against the British Raj must be a bad person.
Tim adds: “an alliance with Stalin to defend Hitler” We’ll go with the typo explanation there rather than you being confused I think.
But you are still missing the main point here as well. You are saying that Powell must be anathematised because he made what you consider to be racist remarks (it is still possible to read that speech and think that he might have been making culural ones you know) even though he fought against facism itself: and yet you’re quite happy about someone who actually fought with the facists, in alliance with two societies which had expressly racist political systems and policies.
That’s the real point.
Oh wait, so you’re making two points. First that Enoch Powell was a lovely person and couldn’t possibly be racist because he fought against the fascists. A stupid argument to make because you judge a person on what he says. I’d expect anyone to fight against an enemy who wants to take over their country. That doesn’t mean they can’t have racist views themselves.
But if you thinkEnoch Powell was just a misunderstood lovely soul, that’s your prerogative. I just find it amusing that you think making cultural arguments to talk about racial war is ok.
nd yet you’re quite happy about someone who actually fought with the facists, in alliance with two societies which had expressly racist political systems and policies.
Oh and the British Raj WASN’T a racist and authoritarian system at the time eh? Were they running a liberal democracy in India?
Tim adds: “A stupid argument to make because you judge a person on what he says.”
Well, no, I don’t actually. I’m a big believer in what economists call revealed preferences. You judge people on what they do, not what they say.
It is really hilarious to watch how many people will actually just completely ignore the history of British Raj in India and how many people they killed, the deep seated racism, the fact that it was pretty much like how Jews would be under Hitler, and yet say this guy was so bad in trying to get rid of them. Heh.
Tim adds: Sunny….how about pointing to a time when India was indeed a liberal democracy, one that was not permeated with a deep seated racism? Even in modern times the caste system is indeed a deep seated form of racism. And the British takeover from the Moghuls was not exactly the toppling of a democratic system, was it?
To clarify, Jews under Hitler *before* the Final Solution. I accept the British never set up death camps.
And the British takeover from the Moghuls was not exactly the toppling of a democratic system, was it?
The Mughals never killed or subjugated as many people in India as the British Raj did.
And I’m sorry if I don’t take your point but just because India wasn’t a liberal democracy (and neither was UK for most of its life) and it had a caste system (UK had its class system) that it justifies being taken over.
Tim adds: Well, the population of India was smaller when the Mughals conquered all of it, of course. But you do know that they’re the descendents of the Mongols, don’t you? You know, ravenous conquering army thing? The Brits were simply the latest (and last if you like) group from outside that conquered India.
And to equate caste and class quite so directly….class is rather more malleable, don’t you think? Certainly it has been over generations: indeed, there’as a school of thought out there that caste was introuduced by one set of conquerrors (the Aryans perhaps?) precisely because it was less malleable over the generations than class.
The Brits were simply the latest (and last if you like) group from outside that conquered India.
And the most violent.
But I suppose that’s ok with you. They were just the latest. Who can blame them eh?
“Allow me, if I may, to adpot Sunny Hundal’s form of logic for a moment…”
I’m curious, how exactly did you do that? Large hammer blow to the head?
And, one hopes, the loss of IQ is only temporary, not permanent…
The Mughals never occupied the whole of India (neither of course did the British). Mughal rule never really extended to parts of the South, while the British preferred to allow some princely states to remain quasi-independent.
Tim says: “Well, no, I don’t actually. I’m a big believer in what economists call revealed preferences. You judge people on what they do, not what they say.”
I’ve always wondered how we reconcile what you say here about favouring open immigration with what you do poitically, i.e. stand as a candidate for the UKIP in national elections.
The British weren’t the most violent, although neither were the Mughals. Not even Aurangzeb. But that’s an irrelevant distraction.
The question is whether it is allowable to take political inspiration from a part of the views of a person famous for having other, less politically acceptable opinions (if they actually did, which is another question). In other words, whether the Association fallacy (otherwise known as the “Hitler was a vegetarian” argument) is actually valid.
I assume Tim’s view is that he thinks it should be allowable, but that whether you allow it or not, you can’t validly allow it in some cases but then condemn it in others. Sunny doesn’t seem to be arguing against the consistency point, but is instead trying to assert that both of his positions are valid – that it’s OK to smear all of Enoch Powell’s views because he was ‘a racist’, and that Bose had a valid excuse because he was fighting for Indian independence (or Churchill for allying with Stalin). In other words, he seems to be fighting for precisely the position that Tim is accusing him of holding. Most amusing.
If you read any history earlier than a certain point, everybody was culturally racist. It’s not unusual human behaviour. But there is a peculiarly modern form of racism: the self-directed racism of those who act as if only white people can be racist, only white Westerners can be oppressors and enslavers. Only white people that can be culturally intolerant.
Skin colour is set by a couple of genes that don’t have much to do with anything else, any more than blood group does. Every bad thing white racists can do; so can brown ones. If brown people can object to (as they perceive it) having their countries invaded by foreigners, their cultures changed, their jobs taken and the money sent abroad, and their every objection about all this ignored, overruled, or made a justification for persecution by the authorities – then so can white people.
I don’t agree with a lot of what they complain about, but I understand it. It’s the same sentiment, you see? Nationalism – whether by British Nationalists or Indian Nationalists or Arab Nationalists or whatever – is something people of any skin colour are willing to fight for. The Indians did. Enoch feared the British would, too.
Tim adds: As ever: “I assume Tim’s view is that he thinks it should be allowable, but that whether you allow it or not, you can’t validly allow it in some cases but then condemn it in others. Sunny doesn’t seem to be arguing against the consistency point, but is instead trying to assert that both of his positions are valid – that it’s OK to smear all of Enoch Powell’s views because he was ‘a racist’, and that Bose had a valid excuse because he was fighting for Indian independence (or Churchill for allying with Stalin). In other words, he seems to be fighting for precisely the position that Tim is accusing him of holding. Most amusing.”
Commenters say it better than I can.
Sigh.
Spookily enough, I’ve always thought of Sunny Hudnall as the perfect exemplar of what Powell was on about.
Spookily enough, I’ve always thought of Sunny Hudnall as the perfect exemplar of what Powell was on about.
Yes, I go around at night looking for white people so I can raise my whip at them. Twat.
In Powell’s words in 1968, under the Race Relations Bill (later the Race Relations Act) “the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided”.
This wasn’t aberrant in his philosophy. Powell was a pig-headed, anti-American, anti-European, xenophobic, crank conspiracy theorist. It was no accident (the dreary Marxisant formulation is apt here) that his wider writings were so preposterous: witness his forays into biblical criticism and his belief that the works attributed to Shakespeare were in reality written by the 17th Earl of Oxford. These were the recreational outlets for a mentality that found political expression in paranoid malevolence.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/oliver_kamm/2009/08/hannan-and-powell-yes-it-is-a-scandal.html
This is the guy you’re making excuses for…
Yes, I go around at night looking for white people so I can raise my whip at them. Twat.No, you just write articles claiming that the people who do are just over-enthusiastic social activists, naughty Jamal-the-lads or victims pushed over the edge by living in the worst society evah!
….you know, kind of like you’re doing now.
Hannan – open borders supporter Hannan – tells an open borders supporting mag he admired a guy who opposed open borders, and that proves Hannan is a really big racist. Meanwhile, a guy who really did work with fascists is a hero because, hey, he killed Brits, so he can’t be all bad.
That might work well with the self-hating tools at the Guardian, and back on your own racist freak show of a website, but out in the real world, you’ve been busted.
Sunny,
If your quote was meant to impress us with Enoch’s evident unreasonableness, it failed. It includes no mention of race, and there is at least one group of immigrants (note, not a race, and hence not racism) that it arguably applies to.
Nor do I think being anti-American or anti-European to be beyond the pale – there are plenty of the anti-Capitalist crowd who shout about how they’re anti-American, and being anti-Israel is moderately respectable too in such circles. You would say that they’re all racists, too?
I’ve heard the 17th Earl of Oxford theory elsewhere, I don’t know what the evidence supposedly for it is, so I’m not about to judge. But I’d consider it no more relevant than Sir Isaac Newton’s views on alchemy.
I’ll remind you once again of the central point. The question is whether it is allowable to take political inspiration from a part of the views of a person famous for having other, less politically acceptable opinions.
You seem on the one hand to be insisting that in the case of Enoch it is not allowable – everything is tainted by your belief that he is a racist. At the same time, you have argued above that it is allowable when it’s for someone you happen to agree with, even if they’ve taken up with fascists and communist dictators. The two positions are inconsistent.
I’ll also point out that we’re not making excuses for opinions Enoch held that we don’t agree with – of which there are many. We’re just saying that the fact we don’t like or agree with everything he said is no reason not to take him seriously as a political intellectual, as that was what he was.
It’s a thought-free, reflex reaction to a taboo subject.
Try turning it around, and consider them as the statements of an ordinary Indian or African speaking of immigration by the British. This sort of role-reversal is a very useful mental exercise for detecting one’s own biases. Is anti-immigrant sentiment necessarily racist?
Sunny H – “In Powell’s words in 1968, under the Race Relations Bill (later the Race Relations Act) “the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided”.”
And Powell was wrong because ….. ?
Immigrant communities are free to organise and “consolidate” their members (whatever that means. I assume he means mobilise them as a community for political purposes). They can and do agitate against their fellow citizens. And the Race Relations Act pretty much exists for that purpose.
What is more members of some communities have done all of these things – this is why plays about Sikhs have been pulled and why people were out burning the Satanic Verses.
Sunny H – “1. That Churchill also made an alliance with Stalin to defend Hitler and wasn’t averse to the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my short-term friend’ argument.”
Ummm, ignoring the obvious mistake, Churchill did not want to. He did not believe in Stalinism. Bose was a Fascist whose first choice was the Nazis. There is a difference.
“2. India was under occupation from the Brits who had killed millions over the centuries.”
Bollocks. Produce any evidence at all of these millions. You would have to include every single famine death going back to 1600 to get into the millions. If you’re going to make stuff up at least make it credible.
But so what if India was under British rule? How does that make siding with the Fascists acceptable? Are Indian lives (not that many were at any risk by then) worth so much more than Jewish ones? Is this your position?
“But oh no! Anyone who set up an alliance against the British Raj must be a bad person.”
When they side with the Fascists, pretty much yes, they must be a fool or a knave. Which do you think Bose was?
Sunny H – “It is really hilarious to watch how many people will actually just completely ignore the history of British Raj in India and how many people they killed, the deep seated racism, the fact that it was pretty much like how Jews would be under Hitler, and yet say this guy was so bad in trying to get rid of them. Heh.”
You might like to think that this is an argument with people who think the British Empire was a good thing because it makes you feel all morally superior. It isn’t. I doubt anyone here but me thinks that. It is an argument between your apologetics for a Fascist and a bunch of liberals. No one is defending the Empire (except perhaps me to some extent) and so your argument so far has been pretty much a strawman.
Like the Jews under Hitler? So what was the British equivalent of Kristalnacht Sunny? What did Indians suffer when Bose was alive that was remotely like that? Did the British ban marriage between Whites and Indians? Did the British criminalise sex between Indians and Whites? Did they prohibit Indians employing British women? Did they ban Indians from atrending Universities? Did they have a policy of seizing Indian businesses and handing them over to British people? Did they make Indians wear a Yellow Star? Explain to me how and in what way Indians were anything like Jews.
9 Sunny H – “To clarify, Jews under Hitler *before* the Final Solution. I accept the British never set up death camps.”
So your historical illiteracy has some limits. By alll means tell us where the German Jewish equivalent of Gandhi, or even Bose, was.
10 Sunny H – “The Mughals never killed or subjugated as many people in India as the British Raj did.”
Killed? Of course the Mughals did. Enslaved more too. Subjugated? Wasn’t from want of trying though was it?
Sunny H – “Yes, I go around at night looking for white people so I can raise my whip at them. Twat.”
Did Powell ever mention the word whip? If so, where?
And aren’t you the person who said all “Brown” people ought to vote Tory for some reason that escapes me? Isn’t that precisely the sort of communal feeling that Powell was warning about?
Sunny H – “To clarify, Jews under Hitler *before* the Final Solution. I accept the British never set up death camps.”
And yet Bose went to Germany after those death camps were set up. So he allied with what was by any objective measure – even by your absurd ahistoric definition – a worse regime. And still you defend him. Auschwitz was in operation and Bose wanted the Nazis to win. You defend him. Why?
11 Sunny H – “And the most violent.”
To call the British the most violent rulers of India is absurd. They were probably the least violent. Even Ashoka exiled whole communities. They certainly were far less so than the Mughals, but facts don’t really count here do they? After all, how many leaders of the Sikh community did the British torture to death to get them to convert to Christianity?
One thing is not possible to dispute about British India – all parts of India had a long period of peace after the British conquest with really only one major uprising. The Mughals cannot say the same.
“But I suppose that’s ok with you. They were just the latest. Who can blame them eh?”
There was no India when the British came. There was just a collection of peoples who did not have much in common, did not speak a common language, most of whom had been ruled by one or other group of foreigners for at least 800 years. How it was so much worse to be ruled by foreigners from Britain rather than Uzbekistan escapes me but perhaps Sunny can explain that?
Mmm, that was rather a lot of posts, some of which perhaps could have done with some editing for conciseness.
I would challenge the claim (19) that Hannan is an- open borders supporter – the Kamm link seems to refute that pretty well. Admittedly this is slightly different from Tim’s say one thing, do another approach, as Hannan is saying he’s opposed to open borders and campaigns against them.
just loves the way that the strictly logical John B has realised mthat he sides with the real fascists here…
@diogenes1960 say what? We stood side-to-side with Stalin because we believed that was our only chance for national survival. Bose stood side-to-side with Hitler because he believed that was his only chance for national independence. Stalin and Hitler were (+/-) equally evil. How the fuck does pointing those things out make me ‘side with the real fascists’?
Sunny H – “In Powell’s words in 1968, under the Race Relations Bill (later the Race Relations Act) “the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided”.”
So what purpose do organisations like the Black Police Association and the National Black Caucus serve other than to “organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest”?
ok John…spelling it out…
if you felt oppressed by the British Raj, would turning for help to the Axis powers be a wise course of action?
…as a hint, numerous people have pointed out that Gandhi’s saltg strikes in the 30s would only have been tolerated by the British….the Germans, Japanese and even the French would not have alloweed them to happen…
@So what purpose do organisations like the Black Police Association and the National Black Caucus serve other than to “organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest”?
Umm, fight racism? I’m pretty sure they’ve never oppressed me…
And the British Raj sucked, saying the Japanese would have been worse is nonsense, the vast majority would have had no idea. Bose is a complicated figure, its very nice that people want to attack him of the back of a few paragraphs they read here and there but I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
He’s even got an airport. To some Indians he is equal to Gandhi and Nehru as liberation heroes. He wasn’t just a fascist. Neither was Powell, although he was particularly unpleasant.
Hey, can somebody tell me a short summary of the book “wingate and his chindits”. I need it urgently and cannot reach to the book. Or if somebody can tell me where i can get a soft copy of the book in order to read and find out the summary. Please reply ASAP.