Mad Enough
Today we are duty bound to remember that dreadful old scoundrel, Winston Churchill, who died on this day in 1965. Racist, royalist, aristocrat, misogynist, opposer of women’s rights, deployer of army weapons against striking miners even; who knows the scores of ways a human being could find to hate this man? Without Winston Churchill, however, we Brits would most certainly have avoided our moral obligation to challenge the grotesque behaviour of Adolf Hitler and his revolting Nazi Party. Unlike Parliament’s more so-called ‘decent’ MPs, Churchill alone was himself enough of a pervert to anticipate up which blind alleys Hitler’s hoodlums might divert the resources of Germany’s helpless, defeated, betrayed people. So don’t call me a Churchill lover, because I hate the bastard. That he defeated Hitler is because he was himself a fellow World Baddie but had heavier friends. Nevertheless, we are today obliged to note the great favour which this colossal madman did for humanity by daring to think of Adolf Hitler as a man, thereby unraveling the Nazis and clocking that they could be beaten.
[Written by Julian Cope]
For his role in WW2, he deserves respect. As you rightly point out.
But his track record ain’t exactly Lily White. As you rightly point out.
I absolutely love to hate winston churchill. He was the racism-meets-imperialist at its height. He was responsible for the bengal famine in india, which took a toll of millions of indians. He diverted foodstuffs from india to england and left indians to die. Howsoever great his role in averting hitler’s invasion of england, in the larger context , he was a colossal failure!!
It’s hard to know where to start: as Home Secretary he used the army to interfere in legitimate strikes. Tonypandy is the best known but Llanelli as well. His interference in Ireland almost caused a resumption of the war between Ireland and England. As First Admiral of the Navy, he attacked the French fleet in cold blood to impress the Yanks. The list goes on …… His role in WW2 is more an indictment of the poor decisions made by Stalin and Hitler rather than a positive statement about Churchill. His record wouldn’t look so good had Hitler invaded England and he wouldn’t have looked so good had Stalin had his act together when the Germans invaded.
The craven loon Churchill is despised by my mother in law because he ordered that Cobh harbour be mined during WWII to try and stop the zealous hun from trying to park their UBoats and wotnot there. It stopped them alright, and anything else from coming and going into southern Ireland for six years, ruining the local economy. It recovered, and to this day her older brother Will (100 this year) still runs their family shop; Carr’s at NO 7 The Strand (early closing Weds).
I agree about Churchill entirely. I grew up in Llanelli where living relatives of his victims still feel the pain today.We didn’t even have the satisfaction of proud defiance as people in Tonypandy did. After a brief rising against Churchill’s troops, a feeling of inappropriate shame settled on the town. It behaved like a rape victim who says ”It must have been my own fauult.’
There’s a good book out now about Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine.We know that as home secretary he ordered firemen not to extinguish a fire in which two Latvian anarchists were burning to death but to let them die.He also wanted people he thought eugenically unsound to be put in labour camps. He backed the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act which allowed single mothers to be incarcerated in mental hospitals for life. It wa in force until 1959.
His own book ‘My Early Life’ recounts how he and his friends ethnically cleansed villagers in the Hindu Kush.But we should embrace the most startling theory of all. Maybe we don’t hve to be grudgingly grateful to him for saving us from Hitler. Some recent books suggest he was a terrible war leader and we could well have been better off without him. As he said himself, history has been kind to him because he wrote it.
Even if it was strategically sensible, can we excuse his bombing of the French fleet?It was an unprovoked war crime against an ally. Chuchill noted that he would have been in a ‘pretty pickle’ if he had been tried at Nuremberg. It’s nauseating that this evil man is seen as our greatest Briton. Even as liberal home secretary in peace time, he seems to have got away with murdering at least seven civilians altogether. It’s time the demolition experts moved in on this so-called hero.
“Racist, royalist, aristocrat, misogynist, opposer of women’s rights, deployer of army weapons against striking miners…”
Good that things have been made clear and the balanced has been redressed in this website. A superficial observation might suggest to some of us (and indeed to the rest of the world) that the guy really was perceived and hailed as a total hero. I thought I was alone in acknowledging Churchill’s tremendously awful record in his curriculum. Among all of the things not mentioned above, I don’t even think he himself cared much for the plight of the Jews (or the Poles), to use some kind words.
Apart from that, his role in the war is also overstated. History shows that the Second World War was won in the East, partly because anti-communist Hitler was madly pursuing his idea of ‘lebensraum’, as 20 million Russian deaths scattered all over the Russian countryside attest. Germany lost much of the best of his army that dreadful winter due to Hitler’s obsession.
According to himself, Hitler always hoped that sooner or later Britain would become allies with him, while he was focusing all of his efforts on Russia. During the Cold War, of course, the US and the UK made an effort to hush this fact. It is obvious why no western war films ever show or mention the real savage war that took place on the eastern front.
I found it incredible that Charles Krauthammer, who is touted as the smartest conservative voice around, and whose book “Things That Matter” is a best seller, boldly states that Churchill was the greatest man of the 20th century, GREATER than Gandhi or Einstein. Both Gandhi and Einstein could have been replaced, according to Krauthammer, but Churchill was the only one who could have “led us out of WWII”.
As tall Hindu Brahmin: 6 ft 4 inches and weighing close to 250 pounds I have gotten in to fights with Britons in couple of cities in Europe and pulverized their faces to a bloody pulp for praising this son-0f-an-American-Whore Briton,
In a Munich Biergarten, I flung with the full force of my fore arm a large beer stein at drooling face a drunk Briton who had just finished praising churchill. Blood poured down from his face as he collapsed in a heap near the table.
I have this habit of beating up anyone and everyone who praises this monster.
Be as strong as Indra and beat up the fascists
Perhaps less evil than Hitler but still a very evil man