Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life, Page 3

  They wrote in their complaint: “We are the grandchildren of concentration camp survivors – the very people that Hitler tried to kill.” Of course I can understand why they might consider tourists frolicking with his likeness to be a display of inappropriate levity. But their complaint went further than that, claiming that the Nazi gestures and cries of “Heil Hitler!” were “an unequivocal demonstration of antisemitism and bigotry”.

  I just don’t think that’s true. The couple actually photographed two young tourists heil-Hitlering next to the waxwork, and one of them is doing the moustache with her other hand. I’m pretty sure that neo-Nazis don’t do the moustache. They certainly didn’t do the moustache at the Nuremberg rallies. What those kids in the picture are doing, I’m willing to bet, is taking the piss out of Hitler.

  That’s why I think it’s a shame that Tussauds’ reasonable response created a stir. Having apologised for any offence caused, Tussauds continued on the subject of interacting with the waxworks: “We absolutely defend the right of our visitors to make such choices for themselves, as long as they behave themselves responsibly.” The repeated “themselves” isn’t great but I completely approve of the sentiment. And I was disappointed that Lord Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, did not. He said: “I’m appalled at Madame Tussauds’ insensitive comments defending such activity, as surely they have a responsibility to ensure visitors behave appropriately and respectfully at their museum.”

  Respectfully of what? Hitler? Does he think the girl shouldn’t have done the moustache? Or does he think Madame Tussauds should ban a specific arm gesture when people are standing next to the Hitler waxwork? Or ban it in general so they can’t do it next to Margaret Thatcher, Sting or Timmy Mallett either? After all, Germany has banned it throughout the whole country. What a stereotypically German solution to a stereotypically German problem. Given the chance, they’d ban authoritarianism.

  When you ban something like this, you only dignify it with significance. You spoil the harmless piss-takers’ harmless fun and you justify fascists in their feelings of oppression. You take a stupid gesture out of the realm of mockery and you give it illicit cachet. Whereas, in general, freedom engenders freedom. If you let people do what they like, human decency usually prevails. Anyone doing a Nazi salute and saying “Heil Hitler” for reasons other than a joke is unlikely to garner sympathy. There are always evil, oppressive forces at work on any society but they’ll be found wanting in guile if they come at us goose-stepping and shouting “Sieg Heil!” for a second time. The only thing that could make that seem attractive or worth following, even to an idiot, is if it were banned.

  It appears that Lord Janner and I fundamentally disagree on the importance of solemnity where discussion of Hitler is concerned. He seems to think that, since the murder of millions isn’t funny, there is nothing to laugh at about the Nazis. I think that’s nonsense. One of the attributes of the British of which I am most proud is our reaction to Hitler and his regime: both during the war and subsequently, we’ve always found them so funny, so ridiculous.

  It beggars belief, it is positively hilarious that a whole country fell so completely in thrall to a posturing little prick like Hitler, who needed no help from our propagandists to look daft. There he is in the footage, making his speeches, all weedy and sweaty and cross – and there are the thousands of people cheering him as if he’s Elvis. It makes you laugh like Titania falling in love with Bottom.

  It’s perfectly possible – and important to our understanding of the human condition – to find that amusing, to laugh at the goose-stepping, the shouting and the pomposity, while simultaneously holding in our heads the tragic murderous consequences of Nazi power. That’s what makes the joke bite and also what reminds us that the massive disaster was human.

  Churchill got this. It was no accident that he insisted on mispronouncing Nazi as “nar-zee” and referred disparagingly to “Corporal Hitler”. He wasn’t underestimating the scale of the threat or making light of people’s suffering. But he knew it was vital to remember that the evil men who were jeopardising civilisation were also risible little twerps.

  Many second world war veterans were accustomed to joking about Hitler. Spike Milligan and his contemporaries founded a comic tradition of making fun of the Nazis which has given us Peter Sellers’s performance in Dr Strangelove, “The Germans” episode of Fawlty Towers, Dad’s Army, ’Allo ’Allo!, endless YouTube resubtitlings of Downfall, and Prince Harry’s party gear. Just because the wartime generation has largely gone, we mustn’t lose our comic nerve. While we must never forget the scale and severity of Hitler’s crimes, we will have lost something precious if we start taking him seriously.

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  In the tense presidential election campaign of 2012, feelings were running high …

  Robert De Niro has got into trouble for telling a joke. When introducing Michelle Obama at a Democratic fundraiser, he said: “Callista Gingrich, Karen Santorum, Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?” It went down well at the time but the next day Newt Gingrich seemed unamused: “What De Niro said last night was inexcusable and the president should apologise for him. It was … beyond the pale and he should be ashamed of himself.”

  That’s a tough response. Gingrich reckons that De Niro’s remark is so offensive that he can’t even apologise for it himself. The apology has to come from the head of state. Not even Russell Brand ever went so far that Her Majesty was called upon publicly to atone. So I doubt that De Niro’s half-hearted attempt to say sorry will have quite slaked Newt’s thirst for contrition: “My remarks, although spoken with satirical jest, were not meant to offend or embarrass anyone – especially the first lady,” the actor said.

  Gingrich is attempting a particularly ambitious scam here, but it comes amid a thriving apology extortion racket in public life. Those who wish to silence others have noticed that expressions of offence and demands that people say sorry are the best way of doing it. Once you’ve demanded an apology, you can logically continue to demand it until you receive it. Often those called upon to apologise will do so just to silence the clamour – they can’t match the complainants for bloody-mindedness.

  Not even Jeremy Clarkson can. He’s a man accustomed to causing offence and yet even he said sorry for a remark he made on The One Show, purely to silence apology-extortionists’ demands. I say “purely” because, when seen in context – even a tiny bit of context – there was nothing offensive about what he said. On the subject of public sector strikers, he spoke the words: “I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families,” but he was clearly not advocating any such thing, or even using it as an off-colour superlative of disapproval. It was a comedic dig at the BBC’s requirement to represent all opinions. I’d be surprised if I agreed with Jeremy Clarkson’s views on the trade union movement, but not as surprised as if I discovered that they were that strikers should be shot. He’s a Tory, not a Nazi.

  But we live in such lamentably literal times that those who understood the joke were shouted down by an alliance of the stupid and the opportunistic – which meant the government called for an apology, and so did the opposition; the BBC gave way and then Clarkson also caved, saying: “If the BBC and I have caused any offence, I’m quite happy to apologise for it alongside them.” Like De Niro, he covered his pride by saying sorry for the offence caused rather than the remark itself – but you can feel the frustration, the shrug: “So we surrender to stupidity, do we?” Freedom of speech is sacrificed at the altar of manufactured rage.

  It reminds me of being made to apologise as a child. I remember a specific occasion when my parents were furious with me for some reason. And I was furious with them. It was a standoff. They were demanding an apology or else, as I recall it, basically nothing was to be allowed in future: food, sleep, not eating all my food, not immediately going to sleep, going outside, being allowed inside, contact with the cat – all banned. It was a massive
campaign of sanctions and I was livid. And so I apologised. And then my mother said: “Say it like you mean it.”

  “But I don’t mean it!” I screamed, trying to reason with her.

  “Well, it doesn’t count if you don’t mean it.”

  This was evil, I immediately felt. They might be able to force me to apologise but surely it was inhuman for them to attempt to make me mean it. It was none of their business what I meant. Was I to be punished for a thought crime? My insincere apology was the best they were going to get.

  What they tried to explain was that such an apology was worthless to them. They wanted me actually to be sorry, not just to say it – to understand that I’d done something wrong. Only that sort of apology meant anything. They didn’t want to humiliate me – they wanted me to learn something.

  The same cannot be said for Newt Gingrich. If he were acting honourably in this case, then an extorted apology, one that he’d demanded, whether it came from De Niro or Obama, would have no value for him. If he or his wife were really hurt, or if he felt genuine concern that the joke, as he complained, “divides the country”, then he should say only that. And if, in consequence, Robert De Niro felt sorry and said so, then it would mean something. Or if, bizarre though it would be, Barack Obama felt guilty that this epoch-endangering quip had been made at an event in aid of his cause and was moved to express contrition at having been so thoughtless as to allow an Oscar-winning actor to make an unvetted remark at a dinner, then that would have some power to soothe poor Newt’s bruised soul.

  But that’s not the situation. Clearly Gingrich isn’t hurt. Nor is he worried that a gag at a fundraiser will have any negative impact on American racial harmony. It would take a bigger fool than him to think any such thing. He merely sees this as an opportunity to humiliate an opponent and boost his fading chances of the Republican nomination in the process. That’s how politics is played these days, both in Britain and America.

  Such vindictiveness offends me and I demand an apology. Also, as a pale person, I consider Gingrich’s phrase “beyond the pale” to be deeply racist. It’s inexcusable, in fact. The least Newt could do is get down on his knees and pray for forgiveness – preferably to Allah. And I want Robert De Niro to say sorry too, just for being in the same sentence. And I want an autograph. Anything less would be disgraceful. I mean it. I’m as genuinely upset as Newt.

  *

  The police have been going through a rough patch. First they were implicated in the phone-hacking scandal – though they managed to escape most of the blame when we collectively came to the surprising conclusion that it was more serious for tabloid journalists to neglect the public interest than officers of the crown. But while they deflected a lot of that responsibility, their attempts to deflect it over Hillsborough have been catastrophically counterproductive. And while senior officers have been caught dining with Murdochs or maligning the dead, officers on the ground have been getting shot and called plebs. Or not called plebs, depending on whom you believe.

  Meanwhile, the Police Federation’s attempts to extract retribution for the disputed p-word, in the form of Andrew Mitchell’s sacking, have been roundly slagged off by former Labour minister Chris Mullin, who described the organisation as “a bully”, “a bunch of headbangers” and “a mighty vested interest that has seen off just about all attempts to reform the least reformed part of the public service”. He didn’t call them plebs, though. Then again, some police have taken to wearing “PC Pleb and Proud” sweatshirts, so perhaps the insult has lost its sting? Maybe they’ll soon be sporting “Sergeant Headbanger Will See You Now” riot shields or stab vests with the slogan “You Needn’t Try Stabbing This Mighty Vested Interest”.

  Another accessory which the Police Federation advocates is the Taser. It has written to the prime minister asking for the number of Tasers to be trebled so that every frontline officer can have one. “They need to have the proper equipment to do the job,” says Paul Davis, secretary of the Federation’s operational policing subcommittee. And officers certainly seem to be getting a lot of use out of them. While, in London, Andrew Mitchell was pondering whether he could continue as Chief Whip, or would be reduced to private self-flagellation, a policeman in Lancashire Tasered a 61-year-old blind man as part of an operation to check whether his white stick was a samurai sword. It wasn’t.

  Of course, anyone might get rattled by a semi-paralysed blind man slowly tapping his way with a stick towards you. Apart from anything else, it’s so spooky. Those are the high-pressure moments when you need the training to kick in. According to guidelines, officers are permitted to use Tasers when they “would be facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use force to protect the public, themselves and/or the subject”, and this moment is surely eerie enough to qualify. The whole event would barely be worthy of note if it weren’t for the fact that they shot him in the back. But then the gentleman is quite old and has suffered two strokes in the last few years – so the comparatively slow rate at which he was fleeing was probably taken as provocation.

  Incidentally, if you do get Tasered by the police, it’s advisable to watch your language. As Boris Johnson has pointed out, it’s now an offence to swear at a police officer. So should you incur a public-spirited 50,000-volt warning shot – perhaps for brandishing your pension book in an aggressive manner or because a young PC has mistaken your tartan shopping trolley for a piece of field artillery – don’t accidentally shout “Oh fuck!” or you might get sent to prison. Keep it to a “Dash it all, that smarts, constable!” and be on your way. As soon as you can stand.

  In the case of Colin Farmer, the suspected samurai, the police have apologised and Chief Superintendent Stuart Williams said: “We have launched an urgent investigation to understand what lessons can be learned.” That response demonstrates everything that’s wrong with large organisations. In terms of dereliction of duty, I think it’s worse than Tasering a blind pensioner. What possible good can this “investigation” do? We know what happened. A police officer, who Colin Farmer described as “an absolute thug with a licence to carry a dangerous weapon”, made a brutal and stupid mistake. How can an investigation illuminate the situation further? Will DNA analysis of the stick reveal that it’s a sword after all?

  All of which means it feels like an inopportune moment for Keith Bristow, the director general of the new National Crime Agency, to request more police powers. He’s trying to influence the new communications data bill so that he’ll be able to scour Skype and social media networks for wrongdoers. But he’s quick to allay the fears of those who call the bill a “snoopers’ charter”: “I value my privacy, I don’t want to be snooped upon,” he explains. “That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about criminals who run organised crime gangs that import drugs … We’re talking about predatory paedophiles, we’re talking about dangerous people.”

  Oh, well that’s OK then! He’s only going to be snooping on criminals. Personally I don’t think that’s enough – I think criminals should be arrested and charged, not just snooped on. But just as long as the NCA won’t accidentally be snooping on anyone who’s not definitely a criminal, I can’t see the harm in it.

  In an ideal world, Keith Bristow would be wasting his breath. When a state law enforcement agency says “We need more powers”, it should carry as little weight as when I say “I want you to read my book”. Not because either statement is insincere: all writers genuinely want people to read their books and all law enforcement agencies really believe they need more powers. But when they say that, they should be completely ignored. Not criticised, not accommodated, just disregarded.

  The sincerity is beguiling but it’s meaningless. “Help us to do our jobs better,” the police implore. “We can see the good we could do if you let us.” They almost certainly can. But they can’t see what it would cost society in lost freedoms. They can’t know the consequences of potentially irreversible authoritarian steps.

&
nbsp; It’s a frightening state of affairs. Those who know most about law enforcement – those who actually do it – are the least qualified to advise on what its rights, powers and funding should be. We have to ignore their cries and trust our instincts. We have to balance our fears of the indefinable, nebulous worlds of crime and terrorism with the fact that, if we put Tasers in our public servants’ hands, at some point they’ll use them on us.

  Since I wrote this in October 2012, the police and Police Federation’s public image has deteriorated further. In May 2014, the home secretary rebuked the Federation’s conference, calling on them to “Show the public that you get it”, and issuing a threat: “The Federation was created by an act of parliament and it can be reformed by an act of parliament. If you do not change of your own accord, we will impose change on you.” Meanwhile, the communications data bill, having lost Nick Clegg’s support in April 2013, looks unlikely to become law.

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  As someone who enjoys food, I’m surprised by how irritable chefs make me. Whenever I read about a chef or chefs campaigning for, complaining about or promoting something, I can feel myself metaphorically folding my arms. And sometimes I literally fold my arms at the same time – which, if you count both real and metaphorical limbs, briefly makes me an insect. A disdainful beetle, gearing up to get cross with a chef.

  “Oh, what is it now, chefs?” I sneer to myself – not out loud because chefs are famously handy: I’m thinking of Gordon Ramsay, or John Cleese in that sketch where he bursts out of the kitchen waving a cleaver. “You moaning chefs get my goat, which left to you would presumably be locally sourced, turned into a jus or a foam and piped all over a perfectly harmless starter! Why don’t you shut up, you bloody chefs?”