The Auschwitz Borders
When Chris Lightfoot wrote the original "Melanie Phillips Naziometer", he considered adding to the search strings the names of a few prominent Nuremberg defendants along with the names of the major concentration camps. This was rejected as being too much faff, so the Naziometer only counts instances of the string "Nazi" on Melanie Phillips' Diary.
This means that it can occasionally be misleading, in that if Melanie is calling someone the equivalent of Goebbels, or comparing loft insulation to the Munich agreement or some such, then as long as she doesn't actually say "Nazis", the Naziometer will underestimate the true extent to which her blog wildly overuses Nazi analogies.
And so it is at the moment; the counter is zero, but three of the last four posts have references in them to the pre-1967 borders of Israel as "the Auschwitz borders". This is a quite unusual description; apparently Abba Eban was the first to make the reference, and the actual phrase "Auschwitz borders" was coined by Benjamin[1] Netanyahu. I swear that yesterday when I had a look on google there were fewer than a couple of dozen references to this phrase, but now there are 675; it's still not a common phrase though, and I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that its sudden dash to prominence might be the result of a public relations campaign[2].
The reason that they're called the "Auschwitz borders" is apparently that it's militarily impossible to defend them. Perhaps a strange claim to make, given that the one time they have been attacked, in 1967, they were in fact defended successfully.
[1] I am actually beginning to see the sense behind the BBC geopolitical theory of pronunciation. I know that "Binyamin" is almost certainly phonetically closer to the way the guy himself pronounces his name, but it seems a bit pretentious to me, particularly given that he isn't really in the news much any more.
[2] Oh no! Spooky conspiracy theory guy! Maybe it's Mossad forcing everyone to call them "Auschwitz" borders! LOL! Or possibly not. I do not in fact agree with the Mearsheimer & Walt thesis, but it cannot be seriously disputed that the government of Israel does employ PR agencies, and that the overall effect of these PR agencies on the quality of newspapers is negative. Quite strange really, that this bland assertion of fact has the air of conspiracy theory to it, while the utterly unsupported speculation that Syria is a puppet state of Iran (and of the Ahmadinejad faction within Iranian politics specifically) is the sort of thing that serious people can state without evidence while remaining serious.
Yes indeed: the Naziometer code does apparently keep a count of references to any of “Hitler Goebbels Himmler Goering Bormann Hess Speer”, but doesn't publish any of its findings.
ReplyDeleteSee here.
I think it's worth noting that she is much less likely to use Nazi in her paid for work than her blogging. Since 1995 she has averagd between 52 and 76 articles a year (Daily Mail once a week plus the odd one here and there, I guess) and only in four years has she written 'Nazi' in five or more of those - 2000/2002/2005/2006. That might seem like a rising trend, but so far this year it only records 2 (out of 63).
ReplyDeleteI think this might have been what lulled the Spectator into bringing her diary within its walls - I imagine they are regretting that at the moment.
You know how the film Elizabeth is so bad, Eric Cantona isn't the worst thing in it? Well, it's possible that Mad Mel isn't the maddest thing in the Spectator...
ReplyDeletePretentious? Moi?
ReplyDeleteThe same problem applies to his brother who is either Yonatan or Jonathan depending upon the circumstances. Presumably it is terribly pretentious to call him Yonatan given that he has not been in the news since the Entebbe crisis. Incidentally Benjamin/Binyamin seems to use both spellings on his website, so no help there.
I had no idea about Israel's 1967 borders not being militarily defensible. That's probably why Egypt and Syria won the Six Day War.
If you really mean it it's Yoni - see Max Hastings' memoirs and specifically the chapter about his book on the history of Tsahal.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, after our strategic decision never to be dependent on outside powers for frivolous web development again, no puny UN resolution can now keep me from mastering the secret technology of internetwork naziometry. Is there anything similar you want monitoring?
wow, that would be cool. Like the perennial whiny end-user I am, I will come up with a long and annoyingly vague wish-list.
ReplyDeleteChris did have a prototypic meter that counted the references to Danny Finkelstein on Oliver Kamm's blog, but Kammo has now moved beyond the point of needing to brown-nose the Times comment editor so I think that one's past tense.
Actually Israel wasn't attacked in 1967. And it wasn't attacked in 1956. Indeed, with the exception of the Negev whose status was in any case disputed, no Arab army managed to cross the borders of the putative 1847 UN resolution state in 1948. So these borders proved pretty effective, at a time when the military balance of power was much less favourabe to Israel than it is now (not to mention the fact that Israel now has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan).
ReplyDeleteD2, I'll do a generic one capable of handling any specific request.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, Bob, no self-respecting programmer would create a function called 'BombBaghdad'; it wouldn't be ethical. Instead, you would create a class Bomb with a method 'target' that could be used for any given location, thus enabling you to reuse code.
dsquared said, "I do not in fact agree with the Mearsheimer & Walt thesis[...]" What are your main disagreements?
ReplyDeleteset out here. Basically I think that the lobby they describe exists, but I don't think it's got all that much to do with Israel; it is the neoconservative political tendency, trading under false colours.
ReplyDeleteWell that's more pleasant than thinking the neocons are zionists trading under false colors.
ReplyDeleteSo points for pleasantness.
DD, care to comment on the BBC's varying usage of "General Musharraf" or "President Musharraf"?
ReplyDeleteObviously they won't be doing this any longer...
hmmm yes. I've just listened to a broadcast which referenced "VlaDEEmir PutEEN" and "ugo CHAvez", two entirely new developments, although I'm-a-dinner-jacket is still there.
ReplyDeleteIn related news, I am changing the name of this blog to "D-Squared Digest Friends Of Israel", so any future critical comments will be reproducing some of the vilest tropes, apparently.
is it wrong of me to be entertained that the phrase "Falsetinian ProPalganda" is being hefted around CT by someone seemingly claiming to teach an MA in political science?
ReplyDeleteYes, hilarious isn't it? I think it's an intentional joke so I'm going to leave it. Btw, a classic piece of "Iran and its client state Syria" in Oliver Kamm's Guardian piece today, allowing him to use everything Syria does as evidence in favour of war with Iran. It's a pure and simple conspiracy theory.
ReplyDelete