“The deputy leader of Bradford (UK) council has resigned after he made a Nazi-style salute and commented ‘Sieg Heil’ to a German-born councillor during a meeting.

Tory Simon Cooke, deputy chairman of the of Bradford metropolitan district council, made the gesture to Labour councillor Lynne Joyce following a speech by her on community safety last Wednesday.” —Guardian.UK

Coming as it does on top of the much-reported incident last week in which a right-wing English tabloid publisher similarly strutted around the room deriding representatives of a German publishing group with whom they were engaged in business negotiations, one wonders whether the thin veneer of European unity can contain such persistent simmering ignorant hatred. In neither incident did the object of such ‘veneration’ respond with anything but incredulity, apparently. How does it read in Germany? It has been my impression that only when pressed deeply does the Nazi legacy resonate with any pain in the current generation-after-the-postwar-generation there; the rise of Hitler is usually thought of as something that happened to some other people far away. Literature and film, like My Hitler or Hitler’s Willing Executioners, which suggest the need for deeper German self-examination on the issue of receptivity to fascism are considered quite provocative. What goes around comes around, however; shouldn’t the Germans have their own measure of contempt for British ‘fascist’ toady-ism embodied in the invasion of Iraq?