Pete Doherty sorry for singing Nazi anthem

[oldironside]

"Singer Pete Doherty has apologised for offending festival-goers in Germany when he performed a Nazi-era rendition of their national anthem.

Crowds in Munich booed the Babyshambles frontman when he sang Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles during a live radio broadcast on Saturday.

Doherty's manager Adrian Hunter said the singer deeply regretted any offence he might have caused.

The controversial singer's performance was cut short when he sang a version of the anthem banned after the Second World War."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/pete-doherty-sorry-for-singing-nazi-anthem-1831990.html

Err, Pete? It's called Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit these days. Bad move, mate.

[non sociopath skin]

1. What's the German for "twat"?

The Skin

[Hopeless Romantic]

2. I think it's

twat

[oldironside]

4. It depends.

Anatomically, Fotze. In this context they would probably just say Arschloch.

It's not going too far to say that the modern Germany has done more than any other nation on earth to acknowledge the evil of it's past (see the link below for a good example) , but we Brits can still be crushingly insensitive.


http://www.aviewoncities.com/berlin/holocaustmemorial.htm

[Rambis]

3. Song about Pete Doherty

written by Linda Thompson sung by her children
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_AVwtUgn9M

[fedsron2us]

5. Well at least it was not the Horst Wessel Lied

By the way I saw Souixsie and the Banshees perform Deutschland Uber Alles (or the Deutschlandlied to give it its true title) in its original version at the Top Rank Sheffield in 1976.

And Alex Harvey not only sang Tomorrow Belongs To Me but also had an entire album bearing that title but then he was hard and came from Glasgow so he could get away with a bit of irony (nb - It should be pointed out that this 'Nazi' song was in fact written for the musical Cabaret by two American Jews, Kander and Ebb, in the style of a tradional German lied. This is something that Harvey with his experience as a West End performer in shows such as Hair would have known very well. Unfortunately it has has since been adopted by a lot of thick Neo Nazis who think it was composed by the Fuhrer himself).

As the Independent article state the songs lyrics actually had their origins in the 1840s and were only later hijacked by the Nazis so we should not get too snotty about them, particularly as we have plenty of jingo anthems of our own,

[oldironside]

6. A few points.

1. Sheffield is not in Germany, so therefore the audience were unlikely to be (a) aware or (b) offended. Singing that to a German audience is rather like singing The Sash in certain parts of Glasgow.
2. Small minded punks liked to use Nazism for shock value. They had nothing else to say except "Hey! We're over here! Look at us!"
3. Tomorrow Belongs To Me is totally irrelevant to this arguement since, as you point out, it's not a Nazi era song at all. He could just as well have sung Springtime For Hitler. What it became after Harvey sang it is even more irrelevant.
4. The lyrics were not hijacked by the Nazis, but instead accurately reflect the notions of romantic German nationalists in the pre-unification era, which overlapped with a large part of Nazi ideology. The first stanza is actually about Germany's natural borders (in their view), which would today require major redrawing of European borders.

http://ingeb.org/Lieder/deutschl.html

5. The song itself wasn't aggressive enough for Mr H and friends, so the official Nazi anthem was the first stanza of das Deutschlandlied and then das Horst Wessel Lied, which instantly and permanently destroyed the credibility of the first part by association.

[fedsron2us]

7. You really need to get that poker out of your backside

as I was not trying to create any 'argument' at all except pointing out the fact that judging a song of the 1840s in the hindsight of how it was used a century later is as singularly pointless as picking the Derby winner a decade after the race. British fascists could make just as good a job with Land Of Hope and Glory but that does not mean Elgar and A C Benson were Nazis. Indeed. if you are stating that current usage is more important than provenance I would suggest Tomorrow Belongs To Me is more potent song than the DeutschlandLied since it is very popular with all European Neo Nazi groups such as Storm Front and bands like SkrewDriver, despite the fact it was written for the show Cabaret. As for Doherty he is no more of an arse than many of his pop predecessors.

By the way how the fuck do you know whether people in Sheffield in 1976 were going to be less upset by a rendition of Deutschland Uber Alles than a bunch of young Germans in Munich in the year 2009. In fact English Northern cities at that time had many former East European refugees and their families living in them (including my landlord at that time) who had direct experience of Nazi persecution in the 1930s or suffered under Nazi occupation during the war. They would have had just as much reason to be upset by Souixsie crass insensitivity as teenage Germans who had only read about it in a history book.

[oldironside]

8. Don't like having your puerile arguments picked apart, do you?

Did you read my post or just decide to spew out the first rubbish that came to mind? Obviously the latter.

1. If you were trying to make the point you claim, then it's totally irrelevant to a self indulgent junky playing said offensive song now through total ignorance.

2. I may not be in Sheffield in 1976, but I am in Germany in 2009 and, judging by the reaction of my colleagues, students and friends it is both crass and insensitive. I very much doubt that the average Souxie and the Banshees audience would have been either insulted by or even conscious of the wider implications, any more than Clarkson's readership are offended by his Nazi ´jokes´.

3. The rest of your post is, as usual, totally irrelevant to the topic being discussed here. Remember, we are talking about a specific incident. Whatever Screwdriver do has no relevance to this, since they would never be able to do their full 'act' here in Germany. Anything about Cabaret is also irrelevant. It's a little thing called context. You may be interested to know that Cabaret is currently being performed at one of Hamburg's bigger theatres (I'll check the posters when I get to the tubestation). No riots, no letters to the editor. They're all slightly more vexed by McCartney snubbing the mayor.

I suggest you go back and read my original post, and then try to come up with some pertinant points. Otherwise this is just a waste of time.

Oh, and the bit about the poker? Ever heard of Freudian projection?