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I am slightly behind on the news, but I only just came across this story this morning, blinked, and then read it again.
And laughed. At length.
The British National Party (for those who are not familiar with it, the UK's far-right, send-'em-back-where-they-came-from, we-want-racial-purity, homophobic, fascist-sympathising party), produced the poster below in support of one of their recent anti-immigration campaigns, which focused to a large degree on Poland (and by "focused to a large degree", I mean they are basically saying: "No more Poles to be allowed into Britain, and those who are here, GO HOME." Charming).
Whilst the sheer distastefulness of the party's actions in exploiting an image of a proud and important moment in Britain's history in order to push a racist political agenda despised by many has - quite rightly - fired outraged criticism of the BNP from the RAF, veterans and families of veterans, plus a whole horde of other people (not to mention the inherent irony of a fascist-sympathising group hijacking a symbol of, er, anti-fascist struggle), the sublime FAIL is the fact that...
...the very Spitfire pictured is one from a Polish squadron.
Yep. That little RF marking identifies it as one of 303 Squadron. A Polish squadron.
As The Register's article put it, 'The last major example of the Polish coming over here and taking our jobs was, as the Telegraph notes, during the aforementioned Battle of Britain when their pilots accounted for 203 Luftwaffe aircraft - roughly "12 per cent of total German losses".'
See They're Taking Our Spitfires! and the Telegraph piece cited for more information
In response to the widespread mockery, there has ensued a swift about-face from the BNP, who are now claiming that featuring a Polish plane was entirely intentional. With apologies for the pun, this ain't flying with anyone else.
And laughed. At length.
The British National Party (for those who are not familiar with it, the UK's far-right, send-'em-back-where-they-came-from, we-want-racial-purity, homophobic, fascist-sympathising party), produced the poster below in support of one of their recent anti-immigration campaigns, which focused to a large degree on Poland (and by "focused to a large degree", I mean they are basically saying: "No more Poles to be allowed into Britain, and those who are here, GO HOME." Charming).
Whilst the sheer distastefulness of the party's actions in exploiting an image of a proud and important moment in Britain's history in order to push a racist political agenda despised by many has - quite rightly - fired outraged criticism of the BNP from the RAF, veterans and families of veterans, plus a whole horde of other people (not to mention the inherent irony of a fascist-sympathising group hijacking a symbol of, er, anti-fascist struggle), the sublime FAIL is the fact that...
...the very Spitfire pictured is one from a Polish squadron.
Yep. That little RF marking identifies it as one of 303 Squadron. A Polish squadron.
As The Register's article put it, 'The last major example of the Polish coming over here and taking our jobs was, as the Telegraph notes, during the aforementioned Battle of Britain when their pilots accounted for 203 Luftwaffe aircraft - roughly "12 per cent of total German losses".'
See They're Taking Our Spitfires! and the Telegraph piece cited for more information
In response to the widespread mockery, there has ensued a swift about-face from the BNP, who are now claiming that featuring a Polish plane was entirely intentional. With apologies for the pun, this ain't flying with anyone else.
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I understand that people can have sensible debates about immigration without necessarily being racist. There's just not a lot of those people about, and the BNP don't even come near to qualifying as that. (And, yes, it touches me on the raw, being Standard Issue Brit Mongrel who may have been born here, but wouldn't have been were it not for immigration...)
It reminds me of Eddie Izzard going on about Saving Private Ryan: "Hello! Hello, I'm a British soldier, this is a Canadian soldier here, Free French, some free Polish. There's Australians and New Zealanders, there's some Indian soldiers, South Africans. All been fighting here. What's the name for us? Oh, The Allies, that's it - The Allies. [...] Yeah, don't want to interrupt your film but, you know, just… if you could swing the cameras over the lads all on Gold and Sword and Juno beach would like to give a wave…A little bit of a wave there. [...] If you could just swing the fucking cameras over..."
Different point in the above, I know, but seriously - I'm still amazed when people seem to imagine that Britain's military during WWII consisted purely of, well, British people (or just English people, which is another issue again...)
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I can't believe (well, hah, I can) how many people think they're just Right-Wing Lite...I feel like shouting, "New Labour had the same tactic, it worked, and then they turned round and screwed you!" I know people are mightily disillusioned with the current government and feel here's no real alternative to Crap!Labour/Crap!Tory, and with very, very good reasons, but that's no call to make things even worse...ack.
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Damn, I hate assholes. I don't understand how they could even contemplate taken a WWII image to support a bigoted agenda... but it's pretty damn funny that they obviously don't know what they're doing. Why yes, BNP, your ignorance is showing...
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Andrew
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