Several commentators, dismayed at the recent antics of the Brexit party MEPs, have been tweeting variants of a quote from Josef Goebbels in the Nazi paper Der Angriff 1 :
We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem. It does not concern us. Any way of bringing about the revolution is fine by us. If we succeed in getting sixty or seventy of our party’s agitators and organizers elected to the various parliaments, the state itself will pay for our fighting organization. That is amusing and entertaining enough to be worth trying
Among the tweeters, Otto English, who used the quote in his article for Byline Times 2:
My piece on the childish stunt the Brexit party pulled at #Strasbourg yesterday and why it's wholly appropriate to compare it to Nazismhttps://t.co/CTw7nD18bs
— Otto English (@Otto_English) July 3, 2019
and the academic, diplomat and author Dr Jennifer Cassidy:
Read this. Do not look away. These are the words of Joseph Goebbels. You make the connection as you see fit. But read it. Save it. Share it. Read it again. I have never known of this quote & have shivers as I read each word. Thank @fascinatorfun for exposing this imperative read. pic.twitter.com/R6M1BNLUPk
— Dr. Jennifer Cassidy (@OxfordDiplomat) July 2, 2019
Is this justified alarm, or is it another example of Godwin’s law? 3 (“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”)
My gut feel is that this is just another piece in the bizarre take over of British politics by the populist right since 2016 - each event on it’s own seems almost laughable, but when they are taken together it becomes something entirely different.
We need our historians now…
