White poppies for peace – http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/

A timely reminder of why I don’t buy poppies. The British Legion is a nasty bullying warmongering organisation and can get stuffed.

Yes indeed Chris.
Damn those Nazi-fighting vets.

Really Chris? The British Legion is doing the work of government.

From their website:
How the money was spent Total £112.2m
2009 expenditure breakdown
Care Services £20.6m
Community Welfare Services £44.4m
Membership Services £10.0m
Communication & campaigning £5.6m
Remembrance & ceremonial £4.7m
Funds generation £25.6m
Corporate Governance £1.3m

This does seem poor behaviour by Aldi. I detest the Mail and their language is laughable but they are right to be critical. I think this is one of those “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day” moments.

2

A reminder that you’re a thoughtless, ungrateful, know-nothing apparently…

I’ve never heard anything against the British Legion, but there does seem to be a certain amount of bullying around poppies each year, with people and firms that refuse to promote them (often with good reason) having their name dragged through the mud in the papers. What Jon Snow called “poppy facism”: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533751/I-wont-bow-to-poppy-fascists-says-Jon-Snow.html

In this case, it does appear that Aldi are being mean-spirited, but then I don’t trust the Mail to give a fair version of the story. They have a habit of lying.

@7, that would be why Alastair Campbell calls the DM “The Dacre Lie Machine”.

Given that Aldi started in the bombed out rubble of Essen, their mother’s (ie, the two brothers who started it) shop being one of the few buildings left standing, I’m not sure I could really get outraged even if it was company policy.

It’s also worth pointing out that the guy complaining about Aldi is a bit racistish:

“We’re very cross that Aldi won’t let us do the same thing, and the fact that it’s a German company doesn’t help things one bit.”

Isn’t their a difference between a german company called ALDI and a (presumably) british person employed by aforementioned company.

But this is private enterprise at it’s best. Private companies making decisions without the interference of other bodies. It is what the tory trolls dream about. . They made a decision, they don’t want some charity clogging up their entrance putting pressure on their customers.

And what does a so called capitalist, free market paper do. They whine about it. Typical right wing.

@10 – Yes its always worth trying to find racism where none exists.

@12 – Seems a very liberal stance to me, but then again im a member of the BNP, national front and tories and I enjoy torturing small animals and then taunting hungry africans with the meat

13

“Yes its always worth trying to find racism where none exists.”

Don’t be ridiculous. He singled out the fact that Aldi is German as a specific reason to be angry with its staff. Without any further info, it seems reasonable to assume he’s referring to the context of World Wars 1 and 2.

What it’s REALLY not worth doing, BTW, is sticking your fingers in your ears and going ‘la la la it’s not real’ when you encounter racism.

@15 – Perhaps we has referring to the inevitable backlash this would create as the company is german and people such as yourself would scream racism and media like the DM would jump on the story for their own agenda.

Before declaring racism its also good to look at other reasons for saying it

Hohum. Is it me or do stories about “PC gone mad – paragraph (3) WW2 section (f) Poppies” get earlier every year? How long before: “She was told to REMOVE her Poppy – but NOT her burqa” ?
Needless to say Aldi have let the old soldiers sell instore now, though that’s only mentioned in one sentence at the bottom of the Mail’s story.
As for patriotism, let’s not forget which paper was a cheerleader for fascism right through the 1930s.
http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/dictionary/dict_h1.php#hurrah

“I urge all British young men and women to study closely the progress of the Nazi regime in Germany. They must not be misled by the misrepresentations of its opponents. The most spiteful distracters of the Nazis are to be found in precisely the same sections of the British public and press as are most vehement in their praises of the Soviet regime in Russia. They have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call “Nazi atrocities” which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consists merely of a few isolated acts of violence such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalized, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny.” – Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail, 1933.

@16

Directly under the quote about Aldi being a German company (and how that “doesn’t help”) is a reference to Aldi being formed by two people who served in the Nazi army. The Mail is trying to draw a paralell that German = Nazi (as always) and if that isn’t racist I don’t know what is. Funnily enough you don’t hear about George W Bush’s family history of supporting the Nazis everytime he’s mentioned, or the fact that Disney and Ford were both admirers of Hitler. And of course the aforementioned Rothermere. If any of those lot were German – for example, if Disney was a German company – it would be a different story (for the Mail).

@ 16

“Perhaps we has referring to the inevitable backlash this would create as the company is german and people such as yourself would scream racism and media like the DM would jump on the story for their own agenda.”

A fascinating theory, with only the minor flaw of there being no reason to believe it true unless you have some strange bugbear about nasty “people like me” who unkindly go around calling racists ‘racist’. Here’s the quote again:

“We’re very cross that Aldi won’t let us do the same thing, and the fact that it’s a German company doesn’t help things one bit.”

See that bit about how worried he is about the backlash and the Daily Mail? No?

One further thing: I didn’t call him racist because he complained about a German firm as you suggest. I called him racist because he bitched at them for being German. Why are you so desperate to defend this guy’s racism?

@ 16

I should also make it clear that I do think people often try to find racism, and indeed bigotry of all kinds, where it doesn’t exist. They invent it to blame their problems on, or advance their cause, or to silence people who criticise them. If you’ve noticed that trend too and it’s pissed you off, I can’t say I blame you. That’s not what I’m doing, though.

sally @12,

I presume you therefore want the government to be allowed to decide who enters private property and what they can do there? Because remember this is apparently a government of ‘brown shirts’…

My guess is that this is some idiot of a manager making a stupid decision, being told by head office to change his or her mind, and a story being spun because of the obvious poppy-German angle that so appeals to the seemingly fixed mindset of many Daily Mail readers (although I am worred that Sunny is listed amongst that number, he references it so often). A non-story, which it is right to make a figure of ridicule – but not a window into the dark racism of the British soul or anything.

21

Good analysis!

I wonder if it’s simply that only a couple of people in the store have the authority to authorize someone to set up a stall, and they were away that day.

One further thing: I didn’t call him racist because he complained about a German firm as you suggest. I called him racist because he bitched at them for being German. Why are you so desperate to defend this guy’s racism?

That’s xenophobia, not racism. Unless of course you believe that Germans are a race apart, identified by definite racial characteristics of purity, blud und boden, aryan features and the like. You wouldn’t be the first.

“That’s xenophobia, not racism. Unless of course you believe that Germans are a race apart, identified by definite racial characteristics of purity, blud und boden, aryan features and the like. You wouldn’t be the first.”

LOL. If you like. Myself, I feel that common usage dictates that ‘racism’ has broadened to include prejudice based on nationality and religion (because ‘nationalityism’ and ‘religionism’ don’t roll off the tongue), but I know other people prefer to keep to the original definition. Feel free to mentally replace ‘racist’ with ‘bigoted’.

24 – Cheap shot. Sorry.

25,

Nah, is cool.

Chaise,

I wonder if it’s simply that only a couple of people in the store have the authority to authorize someone to set up a stall, and they were away that day.

Or that like most Aldis, the store is designed with only the required space free around the tills? Aldis tend to be small buildings compared to most supermarkets. Whatever, it is someone making a poor (but maybe understandable) decision.

As to the racism – I would be careful applying the term where xenophobia works better (in fact, most modern racism is xenophobia or even based on religion (what is the word for that?) – colour of skin seems less of an issue), as that is the kind of sweeping usage that ends up robbing the word of its specific meanings and making it seem less offensive. If what the readers of the Daily Mail see as a reasonable connection due to their inherent xenophobia towards Germans (as an idea – I suspect most have met nice Germans by now) is labelled racism, don’t be surprised if the same readers start to see racism as quite reasonable. And to then consider ideas they might previously have avoided as racist once more.

by Charlemagne

‘ JUST NOW, I am wearing a red paper poppy in my lapel, a few days ahead of Armistice Day, the November 11th commemoration of the end of the first world war. Living in Belgium, and travelling round the continent for work, I have been a bit taken aback to find out how few non-British people know what the poppy is for: all the more because it is a symbol derived from the wild poppies that sprang up on the battlefields of Flanders after the ground was torn up by gunfire. Those poppies grew not so very far from Brussels, inspiring the 1915 poem “In Flanders Fields”.

A fellow Brussels journalist asked me if it was something to do with AIDS. It puzzled the assistant in the sushi place opposite The Economist’s Brussels offices. In a grocery store in Paris just an hour ago, the teenage assistant at the till asked me if it was a joke flower, that could spray water at him. “It’s to remember the first world war,” I told him. “Who fought in that?” he asked. “Britain and France, against Germany, more or less,” I replied. “And they fought all over the world?” he asked, adding: “Who won? Germany, I suppose.” No, I said, Britain and France did, with American help. “Cool,” he said, and I paid and left. ‘

http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2009/11/wearing_a_poppy_being_misunder

28

Am I alone in finding that really quite sad? I wonder what the young Frenchman thought the national holiday they have on Nov. 11th every year is for?!

“Or that like most Aldis, the store is designed with only the required space free around the tills? Aldis tend to be small buildings compared to most supermarkets. Whatever, it is someone making a poor (but maybe understandable) decision.”

Or even that they think charity collectors annoy shoppers? Yeah, could be any number of reasons.

“As to the racism – I would be careful applying the term where xenophobia works better (in fact, most modern racism is xenophobia or even based on religion (what is the word for that?) – colour of skin seems less of an issue), as that is the kind of sweeping usage that ends up robbing the word of its specific meanings and making it seem less offensive. If what the readers of the Daily Mail see as a reasonable connection due to their inherent xenophobia towards Germans (as an idea – I suspect most have met nice Germans by now) is labelled racism, don’t be surprised if the same readers start to see racism as quite reasonable. And to then consider ideas they might previously have avoided as racist once more.”

See my post at 24… the thing is that language shifts of its own accord. The very fact that there isn’t a word for religious-based bigotry is one reason why ‘racism’ is used instead. I personally feel ‘xenophobia’ is a bit soft: it makes me think of the sort of person who brings a week’s worth of food on holiday with them “because they won’t be able to get proper stuff abroad”, rather than someone who looks at Aldi and thinks “bastard Germans”. That is just me, of course.

On the other hand, you make a good point about the danger of conflating the acceptable and unacceptable faces of bigotry, so maybe I’ll make a conscious effort to only use the narrower definition of the word in future.

30

“The very fact that there isn’t a word for religious-based bigotry is one reason why ‘racism’ is used instead.”

I think the word you’re looking for is “sectarian” isn’t it?

Or anti-Semitic, Christiophobic, Islamaphobic et cetera…clumsy words perhaps, but they do exist.

31

“I think the word you’re looking for is “sectarian” isn’t it?”

Yeah, but that’s got other meanings. And I think it only really applies when the intolerance is driven by religious belief. So Jews/Christians/etc who hate Muslims because “they worship a false god” would be sectarian, but someone who just hates them because the Daily Mail tells them to wouldn’t. And I really think the drivers of this attitude, along with the behaviours that result from it, are more reminiscent of racial hatred rather than aggressive theological disagreement.

@32

Oh, of course, and I had the option of saying (coining?) ‘Germanophobic’ instead. But the existence of these words don’t preclude the use of ‘racist’. And I still don’t think there’s a satisfactory catch-all term.

33

Perhaps, but I think sectarian is pretty accurate as a description of the kind of inter-communal violence seen in places like Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Lebanon etc. ; these often have a religious basis, but involve other things too.

NI is a great deal better described as a racial (hmm, perhaps indigenous v immigrant) argument with religion being the signifier of which group you belong to more than anything else.

The entire period of the English Ascendency (and even more so with the Plantations) led to the native Irish being subject to entirely different systems of law, just as one example (most especially about inheritance: primogeniture was not allowed for Catholics).

Convert and you could still be Gaelic speaking at home, still racially Irish/Celt, but you lived under the same laws as the Protestants. Including, crucially, that primogeniture, without which in a farming culture give it a fwe generations and everyone is left with nothing but a potato patch to feed the family. And we know the result of that.

35

“Perhaps, but I think sectarian is pretty accurate as a description of the kind of inter-communal violence seen in places like Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Lebanon etc. ; these often have a religious basis, but involve other things too.”

I’d use it like that (though what Tim says above makes a lot of sense too: protestants and catholics in Ireland are more names for which side you’re on than anything else). I don’t think it would apply to someone who hates Muslims “cos they blow everything up”. It’s also worth noting (perhaps crucially) that many people will use ‘Muslim’ to refer to anyone who looks Indian or Middle Eastern, regardless of whether they have any way of knowing that person’s religious beliefs. Which argues strongly for racist instincts being a big part of their thought processes.

36

Hmmnnn… I doubt many would accept your analysis of the Irish question as a “racial” issue. The Irish Gaels and the (mainly) Scottish protestants involved in the plantations are racially fairly indistiguishable. The attraction of the Scots planted in Ulster for the British state was their rabid anti-Catholicism, their hunger for land, and their aggression.

@ 38 substitute “tribe” for race then…..they’re only waystations on the same continuum anyway.

Um… of course they’re ‘racially fairly indistiguishable’. There is no such thing as ‘race’ in the nineteenth century sense of the word.

@40

“Um… of course they’re ‘racially fairly indistiguishable’. There is no such thing as ‘race’ in the nineteenth century sense of the word.”

Think you’re a bit confused there. Races may well be a social construct, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to distinguish between them. Most people can tell white from black or Indian from East Asian just by looking!

Think you’re a bit confused there. Races may well be a social construct, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to distinguish between them. Most people can tell white from black or Indian from East Asian just by looking!

No, I don’t think that I’m the one who’s confused…

“No, I don’t think that I’m the one who’s confused…”

Right. You say there’s no such thing as race, fail to explain why, and then post a content-free ad hom when someone (me) challenges it. Way to add to the debate,