Cabbages & Kings - The Hitler analogy: Boris goes over the top

“The bed or roses was full of thorns
Though the fragrance of blossoms was alluring and sweet
I rose from that bed in a hundred dawns
Tears in my eyes and blood on my feet….”
From The Son-In-Law Also Rises by Bachchoo

Boris Johnson, the ex-mayor of London, quit his post and immediately devoted himself to the Brexit campaign, the faction that wants Britain to leave the European Union. On the trail for votes in the June 23 national referendum, he boarded a “Leave” campaign bus to tour the country and in his first speech said that the European Union was attempting to unify the countries of Europe into one whole just as Napoleon and Hitler had tried to do by military means. He alluded to the Romans having done it before. Of course, he added, “by other means” to his assertion, implying that whereas Hitler had made the attempt in a straightforward way, marching armies into Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Netherlands, France and Russia, the European Union was aiming at the self-same unification by stealthy means. People pointed out that his campaign bus was of German manufacture.

The opposite camp, those wanting to remain in the European Union, which includes the Prime Minister, chancellor, governor of the Bank of England, ex-heads of Britain’s top security services, US President Barack Obama, the head of the International Monetary Fund and the leaders of other European countries, were delighted with Boris’ speech. It was widely seen as irresponsible, scare-mongering, opportunist bunkum. It may have the effect of impressing those who are determined to vote to leave the EU in the referendum, but it may seriously damage Boris’ reputation as a potential level-headed successor to David Cameron as Prime Minister. Hitler is Europe’s biggest bogeyman.

Earlier, before the London mayoral and regional local elections took place, Ken Livingstone, the previous ex-mayor of London, went on radio and TV to say that Hitler had supported the Zionist project by examining ways in which the Jews of Europe could be relocated in West Asia. The statement got Livingstone suspended from the Labour Party pending a party investigation into anti-Semitism. In other parts of the world Hitler is not the scion of evil. On the street-crossings of Dhaka, the men and women who sell pirated books to the cars pausing in queues at the traffic lights are carrying, among the Harry Potters and Jeffrey Archer novels, Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

A Bangladeshi professor told me, when I enquired as to why this poison was popular, at least among the English-reading public (I don’t know if translations into Bengali exist), he said it was because the public is aware that the US, India and Israel have designs on Bangladesh. I asked him whether these were territorial designs but he wouldn’t say and instead asserted “Jews and Jewish interests” were behind the schemes. He was aware that I was Indian and didn’t go into any diatribe about “Hindu” plots, though I did get the impression that he was not averse to a bit of ethnic or religious bigotry.

The invocation of Hitler and his theories of ethnic cleansing are not new to the subcontinent. Writing in the 1930s, at the time Hitler was making his bid for power, M.S. Golwalkar included in his patriotic book, We Our Nationhood Defined, these thoughts: “From this standpoint, sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old nations, the foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation, and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race; or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen’s rights.”

Severe stuff! And then also: “To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews… Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

It later emerged that the quotes were translations and inclusions from earlier works and not his own formulations, but obviously if he quoted them he was in broad agreement with the Hitlerian agenda. Golwalkar didn’t have the Jews in mind. His journey into a quest for the meaning of Indian nationalism began with a reaction against Christian evangelism in India which denigrated Hindu texts, traditions and practices. It then evolved into a reaction against the earlier Muslim conquests of India and the conversion of masses of the population to Islam.

The current British allusions to Hitler, from Boris and Livingstone are by comparison frivolous. They are pushing arguments for small political gain, even though Boris, by advocating leaving the European Union, probably thinks he is leading the fight for Britain’s nationhood.