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Political Correctness World War Scrapheap Challenge

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:51 / 05.01.06

As mentioned in the Head Shop, a contributor to the BBC's Have Your Say feature proposed that:

Both World Wars owed their roots to political correctness.

I'd like to see how this is arguable. Can anyone come up with a convincing reason why both world wars can be attributed to Political Correctness? Best answer wins a trip to PC Hell.

Tryphena Absent

10:08 / 05.01.06

We were too nice to the Germans and then they took advantage of us. We should have just called them what they were. Foreign bastards. Because the only true marriage is British marriage. But we appeased them. We should have stuck the knife in but instead we were all PC about it. Negotiation is PC.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:13 / 05.01.06

Well, the Second World War one is easy enough. Political correctness in the Weimar Republic stopped ordinary decent Germans from being able to air their honest decent reasonable grievances about TEH JEWS and DAS COMMUNISTS in a reasonable way, so they turned to Nazism (this is known as "the Blunkett theorem" for why we must steal our policies and rhetoric from the BNP). Then later on, political correctness was what stopped people in Blighty being able to say bad things about the Germans, hence appeasement.

Not sure about the first one. Political correctness keeps good honest bands down while keeping noncey arty hipsters Franz Ferdinand in power, thus leading to... Oh, hang on.

Sax

10:14 / 05.01.06

Gustav Princip was incensed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire's decision to only refer to his Serbian pressure group The Black Hand as "The Rather Dark-Hued Hand". It was political madness gone mad, so he went out and shot all four members of a popular music combo.

lord henry strikes back

10:25 / 05.01.06

Just to make things a little simpler, as WWII was caused by the massive reparations demanded by the alies, and the reparations themselves were a direct result of WWI, one really only needs to show that WWI was caused by political correctness.

With that in mind consider the following: Many people believe that it was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that cause WWI. It was a factor of course, but what really annoyed the Austro-Hungarians was that Gavrilo Princip, the man with the gun, escaped the death penalty because he was only 19. Old enough to commit a crime? Old enough to swing for it I say. PC gone barking mad.

PS. the mere idea of assassinating Franz Ferdinand fills me with glee. Bland, middle-of-the-road dicks.

Sax

10:28 / 05.01.06

That's who I meant. Gavrilo Princip. Not Gustav. Gustav was his roadie.

sleazenation

11:43 / 05.01.06

Just to make things a little simpler, as WWII was caused by the massive reparations demanded by the alies, and the reparations themselves were a direct result of WWI, one really only needs to show that WWI was caused by political correctness.

But presumably the reparations themselves were PC gone mad. If only we had wiped out all German people at that point we could have avoided the whole second world war...

...oh hang on a minute...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:46 / 05.01.06

Reparations? Barmy compensation culture, more like.

Tryphena Absent

11:53 / 05.01.06

What do you mean "hang on a minute". You people need to get off your PC ponies and start realising that drastic action sometimes has to be taken. We were failed by our leaders but then Churchill came along. Sure he was a bit too PC for my tastes but basically he said it a bit politer than it needed to be said and when everyone did what he said it was okay.

alas

13:13 / 05.01.06

Let me take the even more Un-PC-than-thou position, the US-centric position, on WWII anyway, for a moment. (We only just barely remember WWII in this country, let alone WWI, so who cares about it, anyway?)

We, by which I mean the only us that matters, entered WWII when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. They would never have bombed Pearl Harbor, and we would never have even had to enter the war against Germany, if we would have just developed the nuclear bomb a few measly years earlier--which we surely would have done if we hadn't had that communist FDR in office spending all our hard-earned taxes on pansy theatre projects and welfare!--and then pre-emptively bombed Japan with it. Or, failing the early development of the a-bomb, we could have firebombed the whole country--I mean, it's only about the size of California, I hear.

But NOOOOOO. We had to just sit here and WAIT for THEM to bomb us FIRST. PC gone completely bug-fuck mad.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:48 / 05.01.06

We even had the commies on-side! You couldn't make it up, etc...

Spaniel

16:24 / 05.01.06

This is an important thread. Someone should probably send it to the Today Programme.

All Acting Regiment

04:31 / 06.01.06

I've heard it was all the fault of prudey PC Churchill taking a few of jolly old Adolf's Gypsies'n'Gays jokes out of context.

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