Re: The Reichsfuror

Mark Steyn devotes his Telegraph column to the bizarre furor over Prince Harry’s Nazi costume: “Harry a Nazi? You’re having a laugh.” Steyn finds elements of fakery and opportunism in the uproar:

[W]orrying about a minor Royal schoolboy’s alleged Nazi bent seems something of an indulgence at a time when the neo-Nazis get as many votes in Saxony’s elections as Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democratic Party; when from Marseilles to Paris, Jews are being attacked and their homes, schools, kosher butchers, synagogues and cemeteries burnt and desecrated in a low-level intifada that’s been going on so long the political establishment now accepts it as a normal feature of French life; and when the Berlin police advise Jews not to go out in public wearing any identifying marks of their faith. It’s not just Nazi insignia you don’t see in Germany these days; Nazi wise, the uniforms are the least of it.

Steyn is at his best in this column, full of righteous indignation over the beams in the eyes of Harry’s critics.
However, I have yet to see anyone make the point that has leapt out at me in the news coverage of the theatrical public reaction to Prince Harry’s faux pas. The news stories almost uniformly imply that indignation over Harry’s Nazi get-up is the province of Jews or their alleged friends. See, for one of many examples, the Independent’s “Harry’s ‘racist and bigoted’ set must be curbed, Charles told.” The Independent reports:

[I]t is expected that the 20-year-old will hold a private meeting with Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, as soon as possible this week. Prince Charles’s aides hope that confirmation of the one-to-one tutorial on the Holocaust by Dr Sacks will put an end to the media storm prompted by pictures of the “Nazi prince”.

Given the fact that Hitler’s war of aggression resulted in the death and maiming of hundreds of thousands of the royal family’s subjects, including the death of some 60,000 British civilians by bombs rained down on Great Britain, isn’t there someone in the country who can work up indignation on behalf of the Brits themselves? Does the indignation have to be imputed at every turn to Jews and their supposed friends?
Somthing’s happening here; what it is is not entirely unclear. Today the Independent reports “EU backs swastika ban after Harry photo.” Among those who are guilty of an offense against good taste, Prince Harry is a scofflaw tormented by felons and scoundrels. On this point, Steyn’s column nails it.

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