This was on twitter and it is just too good not to repost:
Sums up my views perfectly.
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Bloody PolesAugust 19th, 2016 |
 57 comments to Bloody Poles |
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I agree very much. 303 Squadron – highest-scoring squadron in the Battle (and as the picture shows they flew Hurricanes, slower than Spitfires – up to a point it ain’t what you got it’s how you use it). Stephen Bungay’s book The Most Dangerous Enemy is good on this subject.
Hmm. Being partial to Polish immigrants because of their Polishness isn’t really treating each immigrant on his or her own individual merits. Much like being less partial to, say, Syrian immigrants because of their Syrian-ness is a tad groupist, or even racist if you like to spray that word about. So the question is whether it’s OK to have prejudices on which sorts of immigrants you let in, based on culture, language, past history, religion, whatever.
If groupism is allowed, then since the Poles who are immigrating now are not the same Poles who were flying in the Battle of Britain, then it’s relevant to ask whether the stereotypical current Polish immigrant is likely to contribute as much to the nation as did those 1940s versions. WW2 history* is relevant but hardly conclusive.
But if groupism isn’t allowed, then references to the Battle of Britain, and the Polish contribution thereto, is irrelevant. We shouldn’t prefer a Pole to a Syrian for any reason other than his or her individual merits.
I should have thought that partiality for Polish immigrants because of the 1940s is rather more of a Tory approach to immigration than a libertarian one.
* which also includes the very significant Polish contribution to the breaking of Enigma.
How epic. To so utterly miss the point is quite an achievement. This is the perfect example of flipping a collectivist notion by judging THESE Poles by their achievements, resounding deflating attempts to lump all Poles into a single group.
“Being partial…”
We are all partial. David Hume said it best: men are driven by emotion, not reason.
This is the perfect example of flipping a collectivist notion by judging THESE Poles by their achievements, resounding deflating attempts to lump all Poles into a single group.
Who is it exactly who favours excluding all would-be Polish immigrants regardless of their achievements / merits / potential ? It seems to me that “No Poles !” is a faux collectivist notion, invented by folk who would like us to believe there is no position intermediate between “No Poles !” and “All Poles!” Or more generally between “No immigrants !” and “No immigration controls !”
But if we are furiously agreeing that immigration controls are fine if they discriminate between candidates according to their individual pros and cons, well fine.
Presumably written by faux collectivists. No doubt there is some hidden nuanced middle ground there somewhere.
I think that I maybe see Lee’s point – because, what if it read ‘Syrian scum’ instead?
People seeing the surname “FeriÄ” and thinking “hang on, that’s not actually a Polish name” should be aware that his mother was Polish.
Do you want “Polish Scum” here, Perry ? Or would you prefer Polish creme de la creme ?
Personally I loved the Polish Air Force’s take on that period’s English cooking. “”English food consists of taking the world’s best ingredients and making the world’s worst recipes.”
God Bless ’em
Hey, the Poles also fought against the Bolsheviks and even beat them, 1919-1921.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War
Lee Moore: You asked question:
Well I would speculate (and I can only speculate) that the author of those remarks is exactly the sort of person who favours excluding all would-be Polish immigrants regardless of their achievements/merits/potential. Just a guess of course.
But by your subsequent reply, answer, I presume that if we could somehow track down the author, you suspect we would likely find that far from being some non-faux collectivist bovver boy wants no Poles in the UK, we would in fact discover someone with a nuanced take on the issue who would be delighted to have non-scum Polish immigrants in the UK, and he just wants to filter out the scummy ones. And indeed the only reason he did not offer up a more sophisticated perspective is that expressing himself on a wall is simpler than mastering WordPress and blogging his view in more detail. Yes?
I expect we would find someone whose experience of Poles in his life is less uplifting that the experience of those who remember the Polish contribution to our survival in WW2. No doubt 2% of the population would indeed be happy to shout “No Poles !” and mean it. But there are no politicians, pundits, chatterati – no one involved in the political discourse at all advancing such a view. This tiny minority is not the real target of your twitterist’s jab. He or she is having a go at the 50%+ of the population who have noticed an awful lot of foreigners coming to live here in the past twenty years or so, and would like to see considerably fewer in the future.
A classic example of ‘This thing is not that thing’. The word ‘Pole’ is pretending to be referring to the same thing.
But Poles fleeing for their lives from a totalitarian regime and choosing to risk death fighting for freedom…
…is not the same as…
…Poles coming from a safe European country to earn more money than they could back home.
I’m happy with both, but it’s a classic example of the left’s deliberate abuse of language.*
* See also: Environmentalism = Global Warming alarmism, EU = Europe, Immigration control = xenophobia, Social Justice = Facism.
Whilst I accept that you, like I, have been speculating, you are almost certainly wrong, given the twitterer in question is a former Grenadier Guard who voted LEAVE and re-tweets Nigel Farage. So I am rather inclined to see this as someone who says what he means, namely he voted for LEAVE not for HATE. So I would deduce is was indeed aimed at the sort of people who wrote that pithy remark on a wall.
If a second world war reference has any bearing (I don’t think it does, but the tweeter appears to) Britain started the second world war to defend Poland- jolly decent of them to lend a hand in defense of their own country.
Yes sure they fought well, and not just 303 squadron, and proved themselves worthy of the effort.
And sure all the Poles I’ve met recently (a small sample but all I have to go on) are OK.
Whether we are sensible to accept so many immigrants, and whether all the immigrants are suitable to be here is entirely a separate question.
IMHO we must limit the number to those we can house etc.- which implies that a repeal or at least relaxation of the Town and Country planning laws is required, else we have homelessness and exorbitant house prices. Indeed we need to get building to accommodate those already here as we already have both. We also need to remove those who seek to undermine the constitution and those who seek to scrounge (very few of either type appear to be Poles).
The only trouble I have with Poles is their habit of eating every fish they catch, rather than throwing it back- but they’ll get over that once they find that sea fish taste nicer.
Regarding identifying those who would harm you and that which you value.
It all goes around the attitude of the person.
If one starts to discern that the people of a certain identification have a stupid, destructive attitude, then that identification tends to stick.
Certainly, if one identifies a stupid, ungracious, destructive attitude, or a sly intent to exploit and destroy, it is stupid not to take it into account.
One doesn’t have to be a boor, pig-ignorant (sorry pigs) or ungracious in one’s assessment.
Just a little bit intelligent/discerning.
As for the harsh circumstances of Poles after their contribution to western civilisation and stability, I have wondered why the plane carrying Polish Prime Minister General Wladyslaw Sikorski crashed, back in 1943.
And the 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and most of his government was also very strange.
It makes me want to watch the Carole Lombard version of To Be Or Not to Be again.
I worked for Sq Ldr Ronnie Kellett (303 Sqd), for a while. Memory does not replay it as a pleasant experience. The bravery & fortitude of the Polish airmen has my admiration.
How many Englanders are working in Canada, Astraya and the U.S.?
If breeding returned there would be no need for foreigners.
What a simple world you must live in John.
All migrants should consist of good people in modest numbers.
Poles are no different than any other peoples. The decent amongst them are welcome in modest numbers. 750,000 in a decade is NOT modest numbers. Some are plumbers, dentists, entrepreneurs–fine. Many are clannish and low IQ agri-workers who have arrived on masse in some areas. Yes that cuts employers wage bills –esp as the taxpayer makes up the difference in tax credits etc– and also undercuts the less able end of our workforce. In a free market other jobs would be available at some point. But we don’t have a free market.
Corporate socialism benefits from MASS migration–ordinary people living under corporate socialism do not. Well off London Bubble types do very nicely from migration and so as far as the Bubblers care everyone else–those ignorant racist trogs –can piss up their legs and play with the steam.
Friction is always possible and mass arrivals make that worse. Regardless of Bubble snobbery people don’t usually write “Go home X scum” on walls without some reason to do so.
The fact that we and the Poles found common cause in WW2 does not mean either side is obliged for the rest of time. If modest numbers of decent Poles want to come –fine. Open house for vast numbers without regard to their circumstances and values (or lack of values)–NO.
Yes, and often those reasons are bad reasons. Jihadis have “reasons”. Everyone has “reasons”.
But that is not what this is about. Go re-read the caption of the UKIP supporter who originally posted this.
” Everyone has âreasonsâ.”
And sometimes they are correct in their reasons and reasoning.
The only hatred involved in my “Out” vote was for tyrannical bureaucratic and political scum.
That does not mean that unchecked (in both senses of the word) mass migration is acceptable anymore. It never should have been.
Excellent post: I think of these folk as I do of the Hugenots or Russian Jews – those who fled tyranny and enriched and benefited their hosts.
In essence, everything is simple, Perry.
In essence, yes. The trick is getting to the essence – which is why there are differences of opinion, discussions, and even conflicts.
Meaningless.
In essence, i agree. I am a nominalist, however, so i don’t believe in essences.
More seriously: i pretty much agree with Perry on this, both the OP and the comments. There is something that nags me, though, not directly addressed by Perry i think. It is perhaps best encapsulated by Alisa’s comment:
First of all, it must be said that graffiti like that are clearly unacceptable, no matter who the “scum” is supposed to be; especially unacceptable because anonymous.
Having said that, let me go back to Lee Moore’s question:
There are several issues here, and i’ll raise only a couple of them.
You might or might not think that culture etc should be a factor in deciding which immigrants we want to let in; but the fact is, other people do. Do you really want to deny those other people their voting rights, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom to choose whom to employ and whom to let housing to?
The fact is, immigration officers get to judge individual immigrants on their own merits, but it is clearly unfeasible for every individual citizen to judge the merits of every individual immigrant. That would not be a problem if people were to trust immigration officers; but can you blame people who don’t?
Yes.
No, because none of those things should be controlled by the state.
PDH: “Do you really want to deny those other people their voting rightsâŠ
Yes.”
So you are peddling the standard London Bubble line? Those who don’t agree with us and our well-off middle class “values” don’t get a say. Is that correct?
“whether itâs OK to have prejudices on which sorts of immigrants you let in, based on culture, language, past history, religion, whatever.”
Well, the USA has a much simpler, and possibly wiser answer to the question “which sorts of immigrants you let in”: those who have money. That was always their policy and it is simple and easy to implement.
Ecks, I am big on limiting state power, so I naturally like the idea of denying people a vote on matters that should be outside the purview of the state. In the USA they do that (at least in theory) with a written constitution, but it is still denying people a ‘right’ to vote on certain things.
Snorri, is the rest of your comment related to mine?
Alisa: it is related, to the extent that your comment was following up on Lee Moore’s: i started from your comment and backtracked to Lee’s.
Perry: I’d be the first to deny that a government acquires legitimacy by being democratically elected. On consequentialist grounds, however, i think it dangerous to deny the majority of people, or even a large minority, the right to vote. Dangerous for the people in the medium term, for the ruling class in the long term: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
In the specific case of immigration, i believe that building a consensus, and giving people a voice, are especially important.
PS: while i think that all, or almost all, adults should have some voting power, i have nothing against giving more voting power to people who pay more taxes; in fact, i am for it: less representation with less taxation.
(Taxation is to be understood as net transfers in this context: people whose income comes directly from the State, should have very little voting power.)
Snorri, it is not (or should not be) so much about who can or cannot vote, but rather what should and should not be voted on.
As to my question and your answer, I still don’t see the connection – but then by now I have lost track of it all, so I’ll leave it at that đ
And on consequentialist ground I think it is incredibly dangerous to give any people a vote on things that should be placed outside politics. Actually keeping key right outside the purview of state and politics is easier said than done of course, as witnessed by the effective collapse of parts of the US constitution.
As I recall the British Empire went to war, and fought for, Poland and the Poles and their freedom, not the other way round.
The Poland of the 1930s was far from an admirable place, particularly if were Jewish.
Mickc misses the point spectacularly.
Absolutely! which is why i tried to be clear about my view that immigration+integration should be placed inside politics.
I know, there is always some point at which we have to stop being realistic about what is feasible, if we want to express our views of what should be done.
As Perry seems not to understand, the point is that the Poles in the British forces were effectively fighting for the freedom of their own country, Poland.
This, of course, was not the view expressed by the arrogant Pole interviewed after the referendum result who said he would not fight for Britain as his father had. His father was actually fighting for Poland.
So, there is no gratitude due by the UK to Poland, or its people;quite the reverse.
No, mickc, the “point” is not who was fighting for whom; you (we) were all fighting for the same thing. The point is that Britain and Poland were then, and are today, friends and allies, and a vote for Brexit doesn’t (or shouldn’t) change that.
I really don’t think so, Laird. Without wishing to be unnecessarily rude, that’s an anachronistic BBC-ish take. In reality Britain was fighting for Britain. British foreign policy has, for centuries, been to try to avoid any one power dominating continental Europe. To that end it has allied itself, when necessary, with lesser European powers to defeat the power that would otherwise dominate. That strategy was the one in the minds of the politcos in 1939. For the ordinary person in Britain, they were fighting for their country. All allies were welcome to help. Likewise the Poles were fighting for Poland, the French for France, and so on. The idea that there was some common ideological crusade against the particular nastiness of the Nazis is a fiction. Of course once the war got started, the particular nastiness of the Nazis was emphasised, and indeed the Nazis did in fact become particularly nasty (pre-war they were little leaguers compared with the Soviet Union in actual nastiness.)
Britain and, when it joined in, America were not fighting for the same thing. American policy was, even during the war, still directed at the dismantling of the British Empire. Britain’s obviously wasn’t. Certainly some of the allies had similar attitudes and were friends as well as allies, but Poland and Britain pre-war were not extra special friends with special ties. They were allies of convenience.
The idea that we were all mates together, friends and allies, against the common foe is most obviously given the lie by the alliance with the Soviet Union. During the war, for propaganda purposes, good old Uncle Joe was played up, and the meme was swallowed by the ordinary folk who knew no better. But – except for the lefties who actually were chums with Uncle Joe, the people wised up after the war.
Lee, utterly irrelevant, because that is not the point of this post. Go back up and read the “Twitter caption” in the original post again.
Err, the Twitter caption cites the Battle of Britain and states it would have been lost without the Polish pilots. That surely implies gratitude is owed…or why mention it?
In any event, the BoB was itself more use as a propaganda exercise than militarily.
The key factor was Britain having a large and efficient navy, preventing any attempt at invasion.
Yes.
To confuse NATO and the E.U. – and to confuse opposing the E.U. with hating Eastern Europe, were two of the worst deeds of the establishment “Remain” campaign.
For me it’s quite a simple one of discrimination, in its purest form. Of which group would you prefer to allow 750,000 people into your country:
1. People who are (nominally) Catholic, with something of a shared heritage (e.g. co-combatants against Nazism, allies against Communism, musical composers whose works have entered the Western Canon together with yours), and who support a parliamentary democracy;
OR:
2. People whose religion is ultimately not only hostile to yours, but actually wilfully destructive, who were philosophically or in deed once part of an alliance against your country, who refuse to assimilate into your society and create exclusive and hostile mini-communities, who would replace your system of representative government with a theocracy, and whose social precepts are not only oppressive (e.g. towards women and “unbelievers”), but violently so.
You would have to be an idiot to prefer the second group, or even begin to entertain thoughts of their admittance on the grounds of “fairness” or whatever, whereas clear-headed discrimination would make the choice simple. Note, incidentally, that this is NOT a racist scenario; I would have no problem whatsoever admitting, for example, Hindu Indians or Rastafarian Jamaicans, because they do not belong to the second group.
The problem is that we have allowed the Left to turn “discrimination” into an epithet or something to be decried and suppressed, whereas discrimination is one of the elemental human instincts — for self-preservation if for no other rerason — and we suppress it at our peril.
No. Without control of the air, the largest and most efficient navy is useless — HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse, Yamato, Bismarck, the entire Pearl Harbor battleship fleet — and had Germany controlled the skies over the Channel and Britain, they could have ferried troops and armour across the Channel in steamers and passenger liners. The Battle of Britain was indeed a propaganda victory for Britain, but defeat would have led to invasion and almost certain conquest by Nazi Germany.
Like I said earlier, it is all about getting to the essence of things, as Kim’s comment above shows – sometimes it really is that simple.
The Battle of Britain was significant for the reasons Kim states; if the UK had lost air superiority then a seaborne assault by Germany could have worked. Sure, the Royal Navy would have put up a fight but it’s task would have been far harder, and the outcome less sure.
Those Polish men were indeed desperate to get back at Hitler and save some national honour. They also did the UK great service and I’m grateful for that. I have seen little downside to immigration from Eastern Europe over recent decades; the protectionist fearmongering from certain quarters doesn’t impress me one iota.
Kim,
Sorry that’s wrong. Ships were exceptionally difficult to sink by air attack. And the navy would have made mincemeat of the makeshift invasion fleet Germany could put together. Any troops who did get ashore wouldn’t have had any armour, and couldn’t have been supplied.
So no, Sea Lion was fantasy….which is why it didn’t happen. Btw,its been gamed many times; it never succeeds.
Rubbish: aircraft wreaked havoc on ship convoys such as during the siege of Makta ( from where I’m posting this). And a strong airforce can also strafe ground forces.
You’re talking about the wrong sort of ship, old man, and in convoy! The only ships in convoy in Sea Lion would be the German ones, being barges towed, slowly.
The RN destroyers would have had a field day!