by Quentin Cockburn

My son, (he is 11 years old) is constructing a model aeroplane.  I am so pleased that he is doing so, anything that’s a diversion from the computer keyboard, the iPad, and all that other instant gratificational stuff.  Model making can be boring, tedious, drawn-out, but very fascinating.  I’ve trained him well.  People often make a big mistake; they go through the ordeal of making the thing, and then leave it dusty on some shelf or display cabinet, stiff, dull and immovable.  We prefer to keep the models “active”.  We fabricate dioramas, film them in possible scenes, and then finally blow them up.  This last part is much more difficult than it used to be.  ‘Why?’ I hear you ask.  Fireworks of the conventional type are now unobtainable.  We must improvise.  This requires hours of preparation as we can’t even resort to the old standard, the air rifle; that’s more or less banned as well.

Curiously though, I am worried about the state of model making.  Marshall McLuhan wrote about the ‘Medium being the Message’.  At Hernes yesterday we saw splendid models, each with a magnificent painting of a plane, a battleship, a tank.  The german ones are particularly captivating.  The Germans had a message then, it was world domination in shorthand.  A Stuka looks like an evil crow, its evilness accentuated by the wheel spats, the bent wing, talons outstretched machine guns spitting death, on the tail that chisel tipped angular oblong is missing the only defining symbol of evil, the swastika. (Un-airbrushed Stuka in the air, right)  I have been told that swastikas cannot be included in the bravura depictions of warfare.  I am worried about this.  Wasn’t the whole point of our victory over the nazis and their vile policies to defeat that evil symbol, to prove that man was more than machine.  I have been told its airbrushing is to appease the Jewish lobby,  ‘The what?’ I asked.  Surely they of all people would not want us to forget, the banality of evil and all that.  No I am told, the reproduction of that hateful symbol in any shape, manner or form is repugnant, (criminal even) and thus it must be erased,  ‘Bollocks!’ I say.  You might as well go the full monty then, and replace Hitler with Dart Vader.  And what’s at stake here?  Do they think that skinheads will be inspired by the miniature swastikas on any 1:72 scale Messerschmitt and them commit a heinous crime, a crime, dare I say it, ‘against humanity’!

History like this, not taught, but condemned by association, is very dangerous.  That symbol must be recognised for what it is.  To air brush it, gives it a false power.  It will establish and harbour all that comes from holocaust deniers, and fundamentalists.  Besides, my old man fought against that symbol, and his patients, (from both sides), will not want its message to pass in vain.  And for twelve year olds, denying it makes it truly evil, and underground, they’ll want some of that when they’re fifteen.

Worse still, if you wonder about the relevance of this, I have in my possession a model that is well known, none other than that irrepressible Bismarck (left).  Now you’d think, though the swastika has been airbrushed, the message of its sinking, and its audacious venture, all about politics and ideology would not be forgotten, yet the instruction title reads “HMS Bismarck”.  So the story goes the British then sunk their own ship.
You figure.  History Wars, who won? Who knows?

And who could resist this song? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KecIdlEAKhU