By G.A.Ponsonby
It’s caused outrage and anger with many vowing never to purchase the newspaper again.
The image of the Saltire with a Nazi swastika superimposed over the cross of St Andrew is a low point in Scottish journalism. What it might mean for the readership of Scotland on Sunday and the Scotsman is anyone’s guess.
By G.A.Ponsonby
It’s caused outrage and anger with many vowing never to purchase the newspaper again.
The image of the Saltire with a Nazi swastika superimposed over the cross of St Andrew is a low point in Scottish journalism. What it might mean for the readership of Scotland on Sunday and the Scotsman is anyone’s guess.
The editorial from Newsnet Scotland spoke of an image saying a thousand words, and in the case of this image all of them were offensive.
The article in Scotland on Sunday over which the offensive image sits is just as offensive – perhaps even more so, so much so that we won’t link to it.
Support for the SNP is conflated with support for the BNP with the author Dr Gavin Bowd suggesting both parties are part of the same “nationalist family”, Scottish nationalists are compared with Moseley’s blackshirts for good measure.
Dr Bowd talks of “anti-English Braveheart hysteria” and adds: “The Scottish electorate now appears more receptive to radical nationalism than Mosley’s blackshirts could ever dream of.”
In a few short sentences, Dr Bowd manages to insult and demonise huge swathes of Scottish society and the nation itself.
In truth though we shouldn’t be surprised at this latest example of Godwin’s Law from those elements of the Scottish establishment who might be better described as Fundamental Unionists. The demonisation and abuse of Scots who don’t subscribe to the total Unionist view has been going on for years.
There are no depths to which purveyors of this political porn will not sink in order to ensure that victims of this abuse remain in bondage. Like real world porn where the act of lovemaking is contorted and twisted, political porn ensures real debate is replaced with a grotesque and offensive caricature where stereotype and myth replace real people and fact.
The use of Fascist and Nazi imagery and rhetoric to demonise the independence movement has been part and parcel of Unionist currency for decades. This latest example is just another manifestation of this fear of change, fear of a rise in confidence and a resurgent growth in Scottish self-esteem.
Indeed so ingrained is this narrative within the Scottish Media branch of this type of Unionism, and indeed wider UK Unionism, that it is deemed perfectly acceptable for reporters and politicians alike to use such terms when describing people, groups and parties within Scotland who do not hold to the total Unionist view.
Scots and Scotland are legitimate targets for ridicule as evidenced by the Skintland map which extrapolated the image of the subsidy junkie Scot. The BBC gets in on the act with the Scottish Parliament held up to ridicule as the English audience laugh uproariously at subsided Scots and their Mickey Mouse politicians.
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BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman compares ‘broke’ Scotland to Zimbabwe and Alex Salmond to dictator Robert Mugabe …
… whilst BBC Scotland’s Business and Economy Editor Douglas Fraser compares the SNP to a now very well-known dictatorship in North Korea.
The myth of the xenophobic anti-English Scot is promoted on call-in programmes like Call Kaye with the presenter giving out a false interpretation of official statistics to turn the fall in anti-English attacks into a rise.
The political pornography extends to the Westminster Parliament with Scottish Labour MPs denigrating their own countrymen and women. Labour MP Ian Davidson speaks of Scots celebrating Bannockburn because hundreds of thousands of English people were murdered.
It follows an equally offensive description of the SNP as Neo-Fascists by Mr Davidson and the description of the democratically elected Scottish Government as a “dictatorship” by Labour MP Anas Sarwar.
In the world of the Scottish Unionist, a majority Labour or Tory government in Westminster is presented as strong government and is healthy. A majority SNP government in Holyrood is a dictatorship and is unhealthy.
The First Minister is compared to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini in this world of political pornography where Cameron is allowed to use the Olympics to promote Unionism but Salmond is barred from speaking at a rugby match for fear he might promote independence.
It’s the political debate that attacks Alasdair Gray when he seeks to open up a debate into the lack of Scots within Scottish Cultural bodies, but will remain silent when Scottish institutions are ridiculed and traduced. Challenge the Unionist version of the devolution story and you’ll be likened to holocaust deniers – a variation on the nazi theme.
Scots are fair game in this Unionist orgy. Our institutions, culture and our democracy are mere collateral damage and there will be more as we head towards September 2014.
But Scotland is changing and like an incoming tide Unionists can do nothing to stop it – they are frustrated, they are angry and they are lashing out.
What we are witnessing is the death of Fundamental Scottish Unionism and these outbursts are its death rattle.
