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This thought provoking letter to the FT has gone viral because it nails Boris Johnson’s cheap vibes

Normal Bates. Updated January 25th, 2017

Great letter in the FT that’s now had over 3,000 retweets:

Here’s it in full so you can read it clearly:

Postwar efforts cheapened by schoolboy allusions
From Daniel Sandelson, London, UK

Sir, Perhaps Boris Johnson does not want to understand why our European partners find his references to Nazi Germany via the allusion to “punishment beatings” so appalling. (“UK ministers warn EU against ‘punitive’ Brexit deal”, January 18)

Maybe his family were not victims of the Nazi death camps, did not suffer the Dutch Great Famine of 1944-45, did not hear of their children murdered in the Drancy internment camp in France, did not learn of their relative dying in the Szczecin massacre in Poland, did not learn of their son being shot in the massacres in Cephalonia and other places in Greece, or lose a relative in the allied area bombings.

And the foreign secretary seems to leave unacknowledged how wonderfully Germany has dealt with its troubled past, how it has not hidden what happened, how it has tried with the utmost sincerity to create, and succeeded in creating, a great country from the ashes of its history, and how those extraordinary efforts are insulted and belittled by schoolboy allusions.

And when Michael Gove labels people as “snowflakes” for decrying Mr Johnson’s puerile antics, he also shows an insensitivity to something that our cousins in continental Europe still feel most deeply.

History should not be abused for the sake of a brand.

Daniel Sandelson

London W8, UK