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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Hitler? He Got Things Done.

(cross posted at kickin it with cg)

Yesterday Bernie Ecclestone, the head of Formula One, in an interview with London’s The Times newspaper, said that he preferred totalitarian regimes to democracies and praised Adolf Hitler for his ability to “get things done”

“In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done.

In the end he got lost, so he wasn’t a very good dictator because either he had all these things and knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it . . . so either way he wasn’t a dictator.” He also rounded on democracy, claiming that “it hasn’t done a lot of good for many countries – including this one [Britain]”.

Ecclestone later praised the concept of a government based on tyranny.

Politicians are too worried about elections,” he said. “We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He was the only one who could control that country. It was the same [with the Taleban]. We move into countries and we have no idea of the culture. The Americans probably thought Bosnia was a town in Miami. There are people starving in Africa and we sit back and do nothing but we get involved in things we should leave alone.”

Ecclestone, who owns F1’s commercial rights, is no stranger to controversial remarks. He once said women should dress in white “like all other domestic appliances.” In The Times interview, Ecclestone claimed that had been a joke, adding “I would love to have a good lady race driver and preferably black and Jewish too, but they might take maternity leave.”


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/ 14 Comments

14 comments

  2. Peter Jukes

    …is a horrible little oik, with a Hitler/Napoleon complex. I wonder where it comes from…?

    There are a couple of urban myths that need debunking here. First, apparently Napoleon was that small. More importantly, Hitler did not get things done, at least in economic terms. Most the non military major construction projects of 30s Germany, such as the autobahn, were planned and funded by the Pre Hitler Weimar Government. Likewise, it was right wing propaganda that claimed Mussolini made the trains run on time.  The improvements to the Italian transport system were made immediately after WWI, before he came to power in 1922

    Interesting this right wing fascination, however, with transport technology. Bernie Ecclestone is ideologically the heir to this futurist fascination with speed. His great ally and President of the FIA, Max Mosely, is literally the heir of the British Fascist leader Oswald Mosely.

    These petty tyrants also display strange sexual habits, perhaps to compensate or release their lust for domination. Max Mosely was recently revealed to have a penchant for erotic flagellation sessions with hired ‘female help’.

    Mosley won a recent libel action over a claim that this involved dressing up in Nazi uniforms, but admitted the rest.  

  3. rfahey22

    That poor Hitler guy, he was just getting things done and then someone “persuaded” him to get … other things done.  Sheesh.

    Isn’t F-1 on the rocks right now, anyway?

  5. vcalzone

    “Hitler’s government would have been great were it not for the genocide. And the racial purity stuff. And the world domination ambitions. And the secret police.”

    As if the one lesson we have taken from the 20th century was NOT that utopias almost always have the sort of dark underbelly that make the rest of the world recoil in horror. Hitler! Mussolini! Idi Amin! Jim Jones! Did you learn nothing? Mankind is too imperfect to live together in happiness, sad to say.

  6. HappyinVT

    Politicians are too worried about elections,” he said. “We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He was the only one who could control that country. It was the same [with the Taleban]. We move into countries and we have no idea of the culture. The Americans probably thought Bosnia was a town in Miami. There are people starving in Africa and we sit back and do nothing but we get involved in things we should leave alone.”

    The part about Bosnia makes no sense, although I would say most Americans couldn’t find it on a map (to be honest I could place it in the right region but would probably not be exact).

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