‘Shock’ as opposition to Holocaust Memorial Day amendment applauded at NUS

[LeftishBrit]

5. And the (recent) past

I was a student in the 80s; you should have seen some of the Federation of Conservative Students types. They were far-right in all kinds of ways (basically, an early form of teabaggers who could spell!). Though I remember them most for their misogyny and all-round racism, there was certainly a fair amount of the good ol' anti-Semitism going on. Among other things, there was an incident when the FCS at Aberystwyth had a celebration of Hitler's birthday. Neil Hamilton, later a Tory MP and after leaving in disgrace for some rather petty corruption, a TV celebrity, finally admitted an accusation that he had made a Hitler salute outside the Reichstag while on a parliamentary visit to Berlin in August 1983. On the left, there were still groups originally influenced by the old Soviet Union who did not much care for 'Zionists' aka jooos.

In 2011, some students in the Oxford University Conservative Association got in trouble for getting drunk at one of their 'port and policy' meetings, and singing a song to the tune of 'Jingle Bells' about dashing through the Reich killing lots of K-words.

It's not new, but it's nasty. The Internet means that such things become much more publicized than in the case, which increases the risk of copycatting, but also increases accountability. At least students in general seem to be taking the problem much more seriously now than they did in my day.