Nazi Germany was far better than Britain

To be fair, Prof. Kehinde Andrews didn’t say that in so many words. But it’s a logical deduction from what he did say during the debate at Churchill College, Cambridge.

“The British Empire,” he argued, “was far worse than the Nazis.” Now, if A is far worse than B, then B is far better than A, which simple inference vindicates the title above.

Andrews is professor of black studies at Birmingham City University, funded out of the public purse. Evidently, the public purse must be big enough to sustain the teaching of Prof. Andrews’s time-honoured academic discipline.

I’m sure Plato at his Lyceum, Aristotle at his Academy and Albertus Magnus at his Paris University all devoted much time to black studies. That established a scholarly tradition lovingly maintained at Birmingham City University and other such venerable institutions around the world.

In awe as I am of Prof. Andrews’s academic credentials, I still wonder about the source of his affection for Nazi Germany in general and Hitler in particular, whom he has often compared favourably to Churchill.

Since he condemns the British Empire for its record in race relations, one has to believe the Nazis fared better in that respect. This view is neither shared by many academics nor supported by factual evidence.

It’s true that the Nazis didn’t commit too many atrocities against Prof. Andrews’s own race because, as sports commentators say, you can only beat what’s in front you. In front of the Nazis were some other races they regarded as inferior and therefore wished to exterminate or, at best, enslave.

However, had the war gone differently and the Nazis got hold of large swathes of Africa and Asia, there’s little to suggest they would have treated the indigenous races better than the British did. Even though, say, the Indians were the original Aryans, one doubts the Nazis would have seen them as their racial forefathers.

As to the African blacks, I’d bet £1,000 against a Reichsmark the Nazis wouldn’t have treated them any better than they treated Gypsies, never mind Jews. In fact, the few German blacks were covered by the same Nuremberg racial laws and, for example, were prohibited from fraternising with white women. Mixed-race children were forcibly sterilised in the Rhineland and other parts of Germany, which didn’t bode well for Africans should they have fallen under the Nazi rule.

A true polymath, Prof. Andrews happily strikes out into disciplines outside his immediate expertise. For example, he has shown a sufficiently firm grasp of psychiatry to diagnose “whiteness” as a psychosis. He has also described capitalism as “genocidal” and called for its overthrow.

Aren’t you happy your taxes are funding the work of such an accomplished scholar? I am.

After all, I often comment at length on what’s wrong with modernity in general and Britain in particular. Now I can dispense with prolixity and reduce the whole argument to two words: Professor Andrews.

At no other time in Western history could a man like him hold a professorship and command a wide forum for his rants. In the heyday of the British Empire, Andrews would have been enlarging on his views in a madhouse or perhaps off a soapbox in Hyde Park.

He probably knows that too, which may well be why he loathes the British Empire and indeed post-imperial Britain. His affection for Nazi Germany is harder to explain, but then, unlike Prof. Andrews, I’m not an expert psychiatrist.