The US presidential election is neck and neck. But only one candidate has been
compared to Adolf Hitler. Is it an exaggeration based in fact?
David Runciman (who poses the question) examines the evidence.
Donald Trump is a braggart, a rabble rouser and a narcissist, has been convicted of
a criminal offence and,to my mind. presents as a 96 Carat Turd. But from what I see
of the American Democrats, Trump may well be the lesser of two evils.
If David Runciman cares to examine a five pound note he will see the picture
of Winston Churchill, who served in Cabinet with Edward Carson, who happily
took as a compliment in the 1930s the description as the Leader of the First
Fascist Leader in Europe. On meeting Mussolini in 1925 Churchill waxed
lyrical about Benito, who had been dubbed a Knight of the Bath by King George
V in 1923. Mussolini had been a Socialist but ratted on his party and ran a newspaper
subsidised by British Intelligence since 1917. Not long after Musso was knighted
his goons murdered the Socialist Party’s Parliamentary leader. Come to think of
it Sir Keir Starmer is a Knight of the Bath…. but I can’t be sure he was ever a
Socialist.
When Sir Benito Mussolini’s forces were raping Ethiopia Churchill was even
more enamoured of the Duce. But it must be said the British made him pay
for his crime.
Pay dearly he did, into the coffers of the British owned Suez Canal Company.
Saving the rapists the trouble of sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar, around
Cape of Good Hope and many thousand miles of belly aches.
Jolly Brits such as Evelyn Waugh, covering the war were fervent admirers of
Mussolini.
It is evident that David Runciman is woefully ignorant of 20th Century History.
Gore Vidal, probably the most reliable American essayist and a historical novelist
matched only by the Australian Thomas Keneally appeared not to believe, as
Philip Roth did, that Charles Lindbergh plotted against America.
My own assessment of David Runciman’s work and that of other Guardian commentators that they arise from Portnoy’s Complaint.
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