‘Europe’s Standard Bearers’

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hitler-mussolini

Germany’s Führer Adolf Hitler (right) beside Italy’s Duce Benito Mussolini

Gulp.

Did the Irish Times warn us of the dangers of fascism?

Hail no.

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Irish Times, 1928

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Irish Times, 1933

Good Times.

Via @hired Knave

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30 thoughts on “‘Europe’s Standard Bearers’

  1. Starina

    give them a chance, they haven’t done anything that bad yet. it’s all a misunderstanding and if you disagree it’s whining.

  2. bisted

    …Fintan O’Toole has been cosying up to the Soc Dems in general and Anne Marie in particular…just sayin’

  3. Joe Small

    That’s a little unfair. Half the newspapers in Europe thought Mussolini and Hitler were great for bringing order to the utter chaos prevalent in Germany and Italy at that time. Hindsight is 2020, but don’t be surprised if your grandfathers or great-grandfathers thought those Fascist leaders were grand at the time. Certainly the vast majority of Irish supported Franco in the Spanish Civil War and many Irish hoped Hitler would give the English a good hammering during the Second World War.

    1. classter

      ‘many Irish hoped Hitler would give the English a good hammering during the Second World War.’

      Have you any evidence of this?

      Given how many Irish went to fight for the UK relative to how many went to fight for Hitler, given how pro-Allies our neutrality was, it is difficult to believe that this is true in any significant sense.

  4. ahjayzis

    They weren’t supporting Hitler, Bodger, don’t be silly.

    They were anarchists, you see.

    Just like how your editorial slant on the last US election accidentally consistently favoured nativism and the extreme-right wing, and the placing of actual fascists in the West Wing. Unhappy coincidence that your desired outcome mirrors precisely that of the modern day fascists :o)

      1. Precious

        Oh look nice editing.

        Broadsheet played it’s part in Daddy’s election so friggen deal with it…. and sack at least one employee.

  5. chris

    Can’t quite focus on the text on the 1928 piece with my gammy eyesight, but the Hitler piece is fascinating in fairness.

  6. ivan

    So lemme get this straight; because the mainstream media didn’t foresee Hitler as being the stain of humanity that he was, then it follows, axiomatically, that because the mainstream media didn’t, in the main, speculate as to HRC being the Great Satan, that we’ve had a lucky escape? Is that it?

    Because If HRC’s candidacy were happening in a vacuum, I’d *nearly* agree. But it wasn’t. It happened in a country where the Alt-right ideology was previously underground and has now sprang forth, blinking into the light because now that The Bloke That Wasn’t HRC But Has His Own Issues has been elected, their time has come. That genie ain’t going back in the bottle.

  7. scottser

    mussolini was shot by a dublin woman, violet gibson in 1926. pity she didn’t finish the job properly.

  8. shitferbrains

    ” his insensate hate of Jewry ” would seem to be a warning of a kind. But only to be found in a Protestant paper as the IT was. At the time.

    1. Neilo

      @shitferbrains: the contemporary inheritors of the liberal tradition in newsprint now run advertorials for Hamas.

    2. classter

      What suggests that such a warning would only have been found in a Protestant paper of the time?

      A couple of years after this article, the very Catholic Dev &y submitted a Constitution to the people which included a specific recognition of the Jewish Congregations in Ireland.

  9. norman bates

    I’ll give them a pass on hitler because he did turn a 3rd world country into a superpower in a ridiculously short space of time, but singing Mussolini’s praises? f*ck that.

    1. Yep

      Leave him alone. He just didn’t have the raw materials available to REALLY get his point across

      #biggerthanHitler

    2. classter

      The article is slightly more ambivalent than Bodger suggest, I would say. And it definitely does involve warnings of what Mussolini might do.

      ‘Italy’s foreign policy…is a cause of concern for the other powers’

      ‘What may we not expect from the man who not only has launched this devastating doctrine upon a democratic world, but has persuaded his own democracy to accept it?’

  10. Turgenev

    Sure he’s a lovely fellow, you’d take him home to your mammy

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vf_gUvPVUU

    and his lovely friend

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0V_xf3OQgM

    Seriously, people were travelling in Italy and in Germany, people saw and understood the growth of fascism and what it meant. The idea that they were all oh-gosh-what-a-horrid-surprise when Hitler and his buddy started shipping off Jews and Communists and Roma and gays and girls who’d had abortions and disabled people to camps or killing whole wards full in hospitals – the idea that this was a big surprise… Jesus, how naive can you get. If Irish papers were writing approving editorials it was because they approved of actions they knew about. And anti-semitism wasn’t just a Catholic thing in Ireland, or indeed elsewhere. The Jews were in the place the Muslims are now: “You couldn’t let them into your country, they’d be working from within to destroy it” – exactly the kind of stuff that’s said about Muslims now.

    1. classter

      Jaysus – Hitler’s speech there on how those international elements (in this case Jews) who have no tied loyalty to one nation has an uncomfortable closeness to Theresa May’s ‘But if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere’ spiel at the Tory Party conference

  11. Spaghetti Hoop

    Ah here – the Irish Times were hardly aware in 1928 and 1933 of the war crimes imminent and the extent of facist power. Interesting articles though.

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