Confronting the worst fake news
TRIBUTE of the week was in honour of This Country actor Michael “Slugs” Sleggs, who died last summer.
As the hit BBC1 comedy returned on Monday, Kerry and Kurtan, played by show creators and stars Daisy May and Charlie Cooper, discussed the death of their mate Slugs.
Kerry said: “Last words he ever said to us were, ‘Do you guys fancy doing a zombie escape room in Swindon on Saturday?’ But he passed away on the Friday.”
“Sort of a relief in a way,” added Kurtan.
The grief was genuine but the comedy remained.
The perfect salute.
DAVID Baddiel drives an Audi. So what? Good for him! You’d be forgiven for thinking this fact was totally insignificant.
However, it’s a German car. Which apparently means that the Holocaust, the Nazi massacre of six million Jews, didn’t happen.
Yep, it’s a rather colossal leap from one fairly benign fact to one great big ignorant denial.
And yet Irish Holocaust denier Dermot Mulqueen genuinely believes that Jews buying German cars is deeply suspicious. He even had a ridiculous song about it, something about 50 Mercedes outside a synagogue.
I’m also Jewish and love a bit of Vorsprung durch Technik. The fact that people can put these facts together and arrive at anti-semitism is terrifying.
Confronting Holocaust Denial With David Baddiel on BBC2 was shocking, powerful, frightening and important. It made me mad and it made me cry.
How 55-year-old comedian David managed not to punch Mulqueen I have no idea. Meeting a denier was not something on his wish list but he wanted to try to understand the phenomenon of Holocaust denial.
“If you’re going to talk about the devil, at some point you’ve got to meet the devil,” said David, bracing himself.
Mulqueen spouted some hateful diatribe that doesn’t need repeating and warbled along to his guitar. David handled it brilliantly, with his trademark sarcasm.
Afterwards, David downed a beer in about five seconds.
Raving
“I don’t normally drink but I felt I needed that. The whole thing was f***ing weird, but people believe this s***.”
David, whose grandparents escaped Nazi Germany, was worried that giving airtime to a denier would “fan the flames”.
But at just a few minutes, the interview only served to out Mulqueen as a mad raving lunatic and fantasist.
The rest of the hour tackled the issue by looking at documents, speaking to academics and tracing how the “noisy false history” has evolved.
It was sickening to see how fake news had erupted from governments suppressing information, news reports given a positive spin and Nazis destroying evidence.
David confronted a squirming Facebook boss about Holocaust denial posts.
“It’s hate speech,” implored David. Online he found a leaked document, a guide to help people spread hate. “Always blame Jews for everything,” it advised.
Bringing the film back round to truth, David met 89-year-old Holocaust survivor Rachel Levy. Her story was heart-wrenching.
She told how she was snatched by Nazis aged 14, never saw her mother or siblings again and watched her aunt’s dead body thrown on a heap.
“It’s so deeply true what she’s saying,” said David. “To say it’s not true is obscene.”
Shedding light on a scary post-truth world where facts do not seem to matter, this raised many questions that we need to keep asking.
WITH as much fanfare as a lone party blower,
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final mission.
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