Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Embarrassing relatives

Today's Mail puts the boot into comedy Lib Dem Lembit Opik:

...Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik’s great-uncle Oskar was a senior member of a Baltic puppet government during the Nazi occupation and was accused of collaboration in crimes against humanity.
These exclusive pictures show Oskar Opik giving the Nazi salute as a senior member of the Estonian regime.

How terrible! Isn't it awful to think that some people's relatives were Nazi sympathisers?

I mean, imagine if the Daily Mail's owner Jonathan Harmsworth had a grandfather who was not only a fascist, writing in praise of the Blackshirts, but also wrote to 'my dear Fuehrer?" - imagine that!

Mind you, if Jonathan Harmsworth's grandfather really had been a Nazi sympathiser and friend of Hitler, his newspaper - the same one which printed HURRAH FOR THE BLACKSHIRTS - surely wouldn't criticise people whose own relatives had been collaborators, would it?

After the war, Oskar Opik justified his Nazi collaboration by saying Estonia needed ‘a robber to save us from a robber’. He claimed his support for the Nazis was an attempt to give his country some kind of post-war independence rather than the subjugation under the Soviets which, in the event, occurred.

Oh, hang on, it would. The story is apparently to highlight the hypocrisy of the Lib Dems, given that they have - correctly - accused the Tories of siding with extreme right-wingers and fascists in the European parliament. But how can Opik be responsible for his relatives' choices? That's not the same as William Hague happily jumping into bed with racists and extreme right-wingers now - that's an active choice the Tories have made, whereas Opik can't change what his relatives have done. And nor can Jonathan Harmsworth.

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