Let us get the niceties out of the way before we begin. My parents raised me correctly and in that there was the age old belief that you should respect your elders and old people. Added to that I’m a confirmed believer in the democratic process, would defend it to the hilt and respect that those of past generations fought and indeed in many cases died for the freedoms that I enjoy. So with that in mind, it’s a bit tricky but I’m going to have a serious go at a 94 (might be 92) year old bloke who worked on code-breaking at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
From the outset I fully recognise that many people can achieve great things in their lives but equally that does not mean that later on they can go seriously off their rocker. From his background I’m presuming that Harry Beckhough worked on German translation at Bletchley Park as opposed to being some kind of mathematical genius but I’m happy to be told otherwise.
The background of this post comes from a post I did recently regarding local UKIPper Derek Bennett having a blog. Derek seems to be a bit on the touchy side and not up for a bit of rib-tickling so no idea how long he’s going to last out here on the old interwebs but he did decide to take me to task. Apparently this blog is run by some ‘Loony Leftie’ a term I’ve never been described as before so I presume I should regard it as some kind of medal of honour. Apparently my blog is full of ‘left wing ideology’ although I’m screwed if I can find any lengthy posts on political theory but there you go, Derek’s obviously off on one having not done his research.
He also seems to be under the delusional opinion that he is qualified to pass judgment on the regularity of my postings for some strange reason. ‘(he doesn’t post as much as this blog)’
Derek Bennett also seems to have a problem with me criticising his endorsement of Germany’s Fourth Reich by Harry Beckbough which we’ll come on to later but he does sign off his post in response to my own signing off with the very complimentary “He signed off with the statement that he had “Important things to do”, I’d like to know what that is – is it stacking shelves in the local supermarket? Get on with it Penguin, Bat Man’s waiting!”
I’ve never quite understood why when criticised even lightly these right-wingers launch head on into full blown personal attacks. I can only presume that it is their lack of intellectual gravitas that means that they can only retort by being insulting and making factually incorrect statements as a means to undermine those who dare to think differently.
We’ll just address a few of these spurious remarks by Derek Bennett.
My parents taught me that quality is always better than quantity. Perhaps that was because we didn’t have much since Thatcher had destroyed our countries industrial base and my parents jobs along with it but I still hold that belief. I’d rather read/write one good article or post a month than a conveyor belt of garbage but our UKIPper Mr Bennett seems to believe that quantity is what counts so I think we’re not going to see a meeting of minds on that one.
No Derek, I’m self-employed and none of my work involves the stacking of shelves I’m afraid although it’s nice to see to what lowly regard he holds people who undertake such jobs, I do wonder if he expresses these views to the staff at his local supermarket. In addition to this I am a devoted father of two young children and also have other work to attend to so I’m sorry if he seems to think he has a right to question me but he sadly doesn’t.
Right, now for the fun stuff. Harry Beckbough and the German Fourth Reich. I’ll be the first to admit that I hadn’t read it. The headline assumption that this book/publication/knocked up on Microsoft Word thing, whatever it was, is a complete load of tosh because it appeared to suggest that the EU (that thing that for some reason Derek Bennett has a real problem with) was some kind of German conspiracy to take over Europe.
Derek says:
“Political Penguin also found the booklet, Germany’s Fourth Reich written and produced by Harry Beckhough, funny. He tried to ridicule, without understanding, what Harry Beckhough is explaining. Harry is a knowledgeable man who was a code breaker during the last war – he is not the sort of person who is going to write unintelligible drivel as Political Penguin does.”
So me being the curious little Penguin that I am, decided to take up Derek’s suggestion and get me either a synopsis or a copy. Now I wasn’t going to waste a fiver on it so I decided to see if it was knocking around online and hey presto I get this published on the English Democratic Party’s website. (never heard of this lot before but they’re funny too although their website is crap).
Forgive me if anyone thinks I’m taking quotations out of context but I’m going to hazard a guess that this Harry Beckbough guy really doesn’t like Germans, or Russians for that matter. Here’s two extracts from the introduction so you can decide for yourself:
“Added to my own research into the eternally aggressive intent of the German mindset, lust after power and domination of all Europe, East and West, and beyond, from the Atlantic to the Urals. A way of thinking, planning, plotting and lying deception, foreign to the British way of life, and unthinkable to our trusting nature.”
and,
“(our trusting West is just not brought up to pierce and dissect the wholesale lies and cunning deceit, of which both Russians and Germans are so adept).”
I did persist and read through the whole piece which follows on subsequent pages and the upshot is that Harry reckons the EU is a massive conspiracy whereby somehow Nazi’s at the end of World War Two hid themselves away with lots of money and then went about buying up lots of businesses to take over the world and as proof of this among other corporate goings on, he cites the purchase of the US firm Pimco Advisors Holdings by the Allianz Group for $33million. Apart from that should have been $3.3Billion so forgive me if I’m not going to trust my outlook on the world to some geezer that can’t differentiate between these two rather obviously different sums of cash apart from the proposition that the EU is some massive German world domination conspiracy not being barking enough.
Now I’ll add that after reading the publication on the English whatever Party’s website I thought it was awful in terms of structure and grammar so I decided to look elsewhere and came up with what looks like a full version of the document in Word format from here.
Just before we move on though, just a note and folks, no we really couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried. The English Democratic Party’s website along with all this anti-German rhetoric has it’s webserver based in guess where? Yup, Germany, indeed, very patriotic of them and oh so ironic.
I digress. So I got hold of this longer version from these silentmajority.co.uk people and just so we know the quality of discourse we’re dealing with here then here’s the main quote from the header section of their website:
“We are the Silent Majority, that’s you, me and us. Luckily there are billions of us. However there is a minority of seriously psychopathic people that run our lives. This Global Crime Syndicate have been busy for many years and your life, family, and friends is of little concern. Backed up by their Nazi freak scientists they plan to destroy most of us. If you find yourself working for this Evil leave now or throw a seriously large spanner in the works. We are now under serious attack and it is now becoming obvious to even those who would have never even dreamt it in their worst nightmares.”
Dear dear folks, we really are in wingnut territory tonight.
However and I’m happy to be instructed to the contrary but this seems to be the full on long version of The German Fourth Reich which has the rather illuminating sub-title of “Origins and Development seeking World Domination in ruthless terror”. Got to watch these German’s they’re evil, the lot of them I tell ya.
While I was hunting out these documents I also just happened across a little video as well (not really that little, at 50 minutes long). Won’t bother embedding it but here’s the link. It’s a sort of cosy chat come interview with our very own Harry Beckbough which I listened to while trying to absorb his written works.
Particularly of interest was the bit about the ‘illuminati’. Those versed in their conspiracy theory background will know this group. Big secret society, controls the world etc etc along with the Jews, the Davinci Code mob and the Lizard people, we get the picture, Harry’s a conspiraloon.
So to sign off on Harry Beckbough, 1940′s, good guy doing his bit to fight for freedom and democracy against Naziism, 60 years later, sadly gone a bit bonkers on the conspiracy theory stuff and is being used by others to peddle and back up their own agenda.
Back on to Derek Bennett for a last thought. Derek’s endorsing this rubbish so the question is, does Derek believe that German’s and Russian’s are a bunch of plotting, lying, deceiving people purely on the basis of their nationality and presumably by implication that Brits aren’t because I’ve met some right nasty lying deceiving ones in my time? I look forward to seeing that in his next election address.
I am just wondering if all these fleets into the conspiraloon territory might explain why Derek seems to have been sidelined by UKIP in recent years, perhaps he’s even too nutty for them, and that takes some beating.
Tata for now, I’m off to do some work, and no, not stacking shelves either. Good night.
