Well, to be honest Perry, (a) the French are hardly unique in honouring Pinter and (b) I hardly think it is correct that Slobbo and Saddam were National Socialists. They were certainly scumbags of the highest order no doubt, but can we try not to lump them all in together just so we don't end up doing the Daily Kos thing of calling everyone we disagree with "Nazis".

Slobbo and Saddam and Pinter are all evil but they are evil for different reasons. Individualism is the "One True Path" and there are many directions in which we can deviate from it. They are not all the same and calling them as such does a disservice to those who fight for freedom.

Just look at the one thig which unites these three reprobates (and others). It is not what they are for but what they are against.

I know the French are not unique. When the piece of shit was honoured in the UK I wrote about that too.

Milosevic was an extreme nationalist, ethnic sectarian (pity about the Croats/Bosnians/Albanians) and a non-Marxist socialist (in reality if not theory). He had tens of thousands of people killed on the basis of their race and ethnicity.

Michel Aflaq founded the Ba'ath Party (1945 I think) with the idea to model it at least in part on the Nazi party (adopting extreme nationalism, ethnic sectarianism (i.e. Pan-Arabism... pity about the Kurds) and non-Marxist socialism) and Saddam certainly ran with that ball.

If that does not qualify them as full blown fucking Nazis then I do not know what does, even if their military tailoring was not a patch on the Germans circa 1940.

Harold Pinter is a scumbag no different to those scumbags from the 1930s to the 1980s who were apologists for Stalin or Hitler or Mao (usually with some sort of phrase like "I know they have done some bad thing, but..."). Sure, everyone is entitled to their opinions and when those opinions are that collectivist totalitarianism is ok, then I am entitled to my opinion, which is to 'out' them as national socialist vermin.

Harold Pinter verses Galton & Simpson

Who won the class war of the 60s?

Just look at the ratings.

If 'Arold had met Albert
In Oil Drum Lane
It would have been match over.

Pinter hates the evil capitalists of the evil USA. Nothing else matters.

He could walk down the Champs wearing a red suit proclaiming satan worship and all would be forgiven as long as the hatred of the US was intact.

There is only one credential required for inclusion in the international tranzi elite.

At least he's not a tight lipped ballerina in the BNP, she's like the worst monster since Oswald Moseley, another paper tiger.

PdeH I have to agree with you that the Ba'ath Party is an Arab Nazi party. I believe there are leaders of that there party that have stated quite openly that they wish Hitler had "finished the job." Many of its founders had links with the Nazis during the war as well.

I never got why Pinter's plays were so highly regarded. Tom Stoppard is way, way above him in terms of talent.

He could walk down the Champs wearing a red suit proclaiming satan worship and all would be forgiven as long as the hatred of the US was intact.

Amen to that, Brother - words for our time.

Leftist Ideology, Chapter One, Verse One: "Strength in numbers - and a reservoir of usable quotes - is to be found amongst all fellow-travellers. Therefore, the MESSAGE is all-important, and the medium's integrity (or more to the point, lack thereof) is inconsequential so long as they clearly espouse the MESSAGE."

- So Al Gore becomes a figure of worship while he preaches global warming. He generates unnecessary greenhouse gases in his private jet? - no matter. He's suspected of cynically bandwaggoning the "global-warning thang" to keep his name in the headlines, thereby occasioning himself another shot at the Presidency - your talk is as the buzz of flies in my ear. The MESSAGE is all that matters - and it's no surprise that hypocrisy remains the downfall of the left.

The mass-murderers of our and former times deserve judgement in the clear dawn light of what they DID - what they said is history's true inconsequentiality, for it's established that politicians lie - and the comfortable apologists who fail to make this judgement for themselves before berating us over what we "should" think about brutal tyrants, are beneath the contempt of civilized men (if any exist). My 2c-worth...

Fair enough Perry, I had forgotten pan-arabism and it's links to the Nazis. I'll concede that much.

But, I still think I'm right to distinguish between different forms of tyranny. Saddam was apparently a big fan of Uncle Joe and took more tips from him than from Hitler.

You might regard that distinction as irrelevant and in many respects it is irrelevant to the poor sods who suffer under these monsters but it isn't irrelevant in terms of history. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia might have both been totalitarian states and they may have shared some surface details. "Hero Mother" isn't too different from the concept behind "Lebensborn" and - they both shared the absolute dead giveaway of totalitarianism - a goose-stepping military...

But they were sufficiently different ideologies to come to quite spectacular fisticuffs between 1941 and 1945.

Pinter is just a mentalist. He's got Pilger's Syndrome - a complete and irrational need to blame everything on the USA. It is a disease I have never really understood. It reminds me of Derren Brown's concept of the True Believer who believes patently untrue, unprovable things for utterly circular reasons.

It's worth pointing out that the Legion d'Honneur is not just a political award, and not just for services to France. So while Johnny Hallyday has one, so do Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, Placido Domingo and even Mrs Thatcher.

My cousin has one and it confers all sorts of odd privileges - his children, for example, attend a posh state school near Paris which is solely for children or grandchildren of winners.

And given the "cash for honours" shenanigans in the UK, I'm not sure that we're really in a position to comment, much as I agree with your sentiments about the man's political idiocies.

But they were sufficiently different ideologies to come to quite spectacular fisticuffs between 1941 and 1945.

Are different ideologies needed to go to war?

And given the "cash for honours" shenanigans in the UK, I'm not sure that we're really in a position to comment,

Why not? I did not give anyone honours for cash (although I am open to offers) and I am not on the UK government's payroll.

...much as I agree with your sentiments about the man's political idiocies.

When a nation state awards a person honours, I take the view you cannot just look at their talent as if the rest of the person does not exist. If Pol Pot has also been a superlative writer of children's stories, would it be ok to give him a Nobel Prize for literature?

Are different ideologies needed to go to war?

Not at all - just greed. Naziism, like Marxism-Leninism, like Maoism, like Worship-Kim-Jong-Ilism, serve as convenient smokescreens; maskirovka, and opiates of the masses. They're the red banner the head monster waves aloft to catch the people's eye while he does what he likes out-of-sight.

I don't buy it Jim. History is littered with ideological fights. Sunni/Shia, Protestant/Catholic, Nazi/Sov/Free World. There are many more: The Argentine Civil War (Federalism vs Unitary government), English Civil War (divine right).

With Hitler, why the Jews? Why them? Was it not because the Jews were a multi-national diaspora and therefore intrinsically contra the Nazi concepts of "Land und Volk". OK, they were scapegoats (blamed both for communism and capitalism) but they were selected for a reason which was specific to Nazi ideology - statelessness.

There are maskirovkas throughout history but there are also genuine barneys over points of principle. Even if the deep cause of Operation Barbarossa was German desire for Lebensraum it was justified in terms of ideology and its progress (in particular the especial barbarity of the Wehrmacht towards the Russians which utterly transcended their barbarity towards the ordinary military of the Brits, Americans and French) was deeply influenced by ideological thinking.

Nick: But they were sufficiently different ideologies to come to quite spectacular fisticuffs between 1941 and 1945. But this is the point that, I think, supports Perry's argument: it was not their ideological differences that compelled them to fight each other, but their nationalism.

BTW, Jim is correct, of course, it was also greed, but it was not greed alone.

I came across this quote from a letter sent to Ribbentrop by Haj Amin al Husseini and Rachid Ali in 1941.

We want "Recognition of the Arab countries right to solve the question of Jewish elements in Palestine and the other Arab countries in a manner that conforms to the national and ethnic interests of the Arabs and to the solution of the Jewish question in Germany and Italy."

from 'Iraqi Politics 1921-41 by Ahmad Abdul Razzaq Shikara London 1987

With Hitler, why the Jews?

- Reading Mein Kampf (which I've never been able to penetrate more than about a quarter of, before giving-up in despair), Hitler hated the Jews from a young age, and needed no other reason. He "justified" his hatred with antisemitic ideology and "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and he made-up the ideology he needed, to justify to one of Europe's most cultured nations, the killing of all the rest as he went-along. For his underlings, eager to ingratiate themselves in his eyes while fending-off other bootlickers, Nazi ideology was the be-all and the end-all. Same as why a copy of Mein Kampf was to be found on every hall table: it's safer that way when the Gestapo come knocking.

In this, many religions have historically followed the same "say one thing and do another" motif. Al Wahhab wandered the Arabian desert banging on doors until he was picked-up by a local dynasty who used his ideology to justify their territorial ambitions. Catholic priests were forbidden to marry (and therefore, produce heirs) while their Popes and Cardinals severed blocks of church land to "nephews". Lots of little-boy sex scandals suggests that priests in monasteries pay lip service to their several creeds.

And of course, Sunni and Shia have been gleefully killing each other for over a millennium, and we sicc'ed the Crusades on them and the Inquisition on ourselves, all done ideologically in the name of a gentle and loving God.

Perhaps the most gobsmacking comment I've encountered in this incarnation, was an outraged protest at Tienanmen Square: "Chinese do NOT kill Chinese!" Since when, and what facile trick of Communist ideology convinced him of that? Clearly he was not in the know about his leaders' proclivities; I sincerely hope the individual in question survived having his eyes opened.

History suggests to me that the zealous underlings are the only ones who buy-into their various ideologies; the leaders know better, and they're invariably motivated by power-lust and greed. "The FINAL TRIUMPH of our Faith will make ME king of the world! - in the Deity's name, of course! heh-heh..."

- Almost invariably: Osama bin Laden is definitely an odd-man-out here...

Hitler was brought up in Austria and was surrounded by anti-semiticism. The Catholic and Lutheran Churches had been calling Jews Christ-killers for over a thousand years. It is drummed into them.

Hitler shared that opinion and merely tapped into that instinctive hatred of the Jews. Pogroms against Jews were commonplace in Continental Europe; Hitler just mechanised and industrialised his and took it to the ultimate level.

NB: French people that I have met routinely say, "so & so who is a Jew, said..."