It hasn’t taken very long for Conservative Party supporters to take the election fight online into the gutter. Last weeek we saw spoof posters of asylum seekers cropping up, but featuring Gordon Brown as Adolf Hitler as Tory blogger Iain Dale has done goes far beyond anything that is even remotely acceptable.
There is nothing to justify use of a man who exterminated more than six million people and started a world war leading to the deaths of many millions more with Gordon Brown.
Brown may or may not have shouted at his staff and thrown stuff as told by Andrew Rawnsley who is on a crusade to shift as many copies of his book as possible.
Even if Brown did any of what The Observer journalist alleges (which would clearly be wrong) it can never justify the use of this image on any level. It just doesn’t.
Iain Dale weakly defends himself by saying this:”The left will no doubt go apoplectic with rage, but they should calm down and remember the hideous political art of the 1980s featuring Margaret Thatcher. This is mild by comparison.”
That’s truly pathetic. To even advance such an argument shows Dale knows very well he has crossed the line. He has already stooped low with his involvement in the miserable campaign to oust Bristol East Labour MP Kerry McCarthy. His talking about the political cartoons of the likes of Gerald Scarfe who did such fine work depicting Margaret Thatcher as she appeared to many of us as she privatised, smashed trade unions and communities before finally being kicked out by her own party. Dumped unceremoniously in the trash of political history.
Those cartoons of Thatcher are not in anyway comparable. The works of Scarfe and ‘Spitting Image’ was political art and satire. The kind we see daily in our national newspapers. The kind that depicted Tony Blair as a poodle and George Bush as a simian. Labour supporters have been ably spoofing David Cameron these last weeks led by Clifford Singer at Mydavidcameron.com, but as he points out the left would never stoop to this. Hitler spoofs were sent in to Mydavidcameron.com, but editorial judgment was exercised. Clearly something that Dale lacks.
This isn’t even any good. The artist concerned Louis Sidolo talks about being inspired by some of the political art that appeared in the Obama campaign. The irony of talking about the a black man being elected president by placing an image of our prime minister next to a mass murderer clearly goes over his head.
Dale is as low as you can go and he should be ashamed of himself. All this as the Tories slip in the polls. I’m sure David Cameron will be sending his letter of thanks to Dale any moment for all his good work.