Quite regularly when I read something, I learn something new. On occasion I suspect that the author is mistaken in facts or in interpretation of facts. But there are those special times when I wonder what kind of drugs the author took to write such mumbo-jumbo. Today, I am lost for words. Darren Redstar has brought to my attention that Chris Bambery, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party, informs readers of Socialist Worker, the following:
Another falsehood is that Hitler was planning to invade Britain.
Darren Redstar explains other points in Chris Bambery’s article:
Bambers goes on to claim that the real fascist was Churchill, not Hitler. that the blame for the deaths of so many Londoners during the Blitz was down to Churchill, not the Nazi bombers. That the battle of Britain was nothing to do with defending Britain but to boost Churchill’s reputation. And that the whole thing was a propaganda exercise:
The air battles of 1940 were used to huge effect to win sympathy for Britain in the US.
The anarchist Ian Bone asks a question:
IS THIS TRULY THE STUPIDEST THING EVER WRITTEN IN SOCIALIST WORKER?
So incensed is Bone about this that he poses a follow up question:
HOW LONG TILL THE SWP DENIES THE HOLOCAUST?
I am not one of Bone’s greatest fans, but in this instance I think he is on the right track.
Update
To put this into some kind of context we can consider what Trotsky and the Trotskyists were saying in May and June 1940:
Trotsky and the Trotskyists in their own damning words.
No one needs to misrepresent what the Trotskyists said about WWII, one can just quote their own words. The meaning is obvious.
In the following quotation, it is clear that the Trotskyists saw Great Britain and France were on a moral equivalent level to Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy:
But isn’t the working class obliged in the present conditions to aid the democracies in their struggle against German fascism?” … We reject this policy with indignation. Naturally there exists a difference between the political regimes in bourgeois society just as there is a difference in comfort between various cars in a railway train. But when the whole train is plunging into an abyss, the distinction between decaying democracy and murderous fascism disappears in the face of the collapse of the entire capitalist system… The victory of the imperialists of Great Britain and France would be not less frightful for the ultimate fate of mankind than that of Hitler and Mussolini. Bourgeois democracy cannot be saved. [Emphasis added]
But Trotskyists do not even have to be that neutral that they are bad as each other (as if Churchill was somehow the moral equivalent of Hitler!), because Trotsky argued that the chances for the revolution will be better if democracies collapse and the Nazis conquer Europe:
From the standpoint of a revolution in one’s own country the defeat of one’s own imperialist government is undoubtedly a “lesser evil.” Pseudo-internationalists, however, refuse to apply this principle in relation to the defeated democratic countries. In return, they interpret Hitler’s victory not as a relative but as an absolute obstacle in the way of a revolution in Germany. They lie in both instances.
… Even in the event of a complete victory over England, Germany in order to maintain her conquests would be compelled in the next few years to assume such economic sacrifices as would far outweigh those advantages which it might draw directly from her victories… Hitler will have too many worries in Berlin to be able successfully to fulfill the role of executioner in Paris, Brussels or London. [Emphasis added]
