And, it should be mentioned that Lord Haw Haw has selected as a handle, the nickname for one of the most despised supporters of Nazi Germany.
With the blessing of the First Amendment one can choose whatever computer handle one likes.
But in terms of good manners, tact, and good faith, some names, though protected by the First Amendment, rightly cause distrust in a community.
One would encounter a chilly reception at best if one were to walk into
most pubs in Britain and introduce oneself as Lord Haw Haw.
Many correspondants here are English, Irish, Scots, Welsh or from one of the ANZAC nations (Australia, New Zealand, Canada) and to invoke the name Lord Haw Haw as a handle suggests a severe lack of tact at the very least.
Some historical background on William Joyce who was nicknamed Lord Haw Haw. He was established to be a British subject. He and his voice had become well known prewar, for he had been a dedicated supporter and speaker for Oswald Mosely's British Fascist party and then, because Mosely was not radical enough, left to create his own Nazi affiliated party. Joyce left the UK just before declaration of war, went to Nazi Germany and spent the rest of the war giving radio broadcasts in support of Nazi Germany and to stir up as much emotional pain and despair among the British as possible. His voice made disguise impossible and he was captured in 1945 by British soldiers.
Rebecca West wrote in the 1940s when radio communication was still relatively new. She had been in Britain when it was under attack by the Nazis, at a time when doom was very close.
This is the context in which people experienced Lord Haw Haw and why that name is stained in the memory of many, even today.
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Never before have people known the voice of one they had never seen as well as if he had been a husband or a brother or a close friend; and had they forseen such a miracle, they could not have imagined that this familiar unknown would speak to to them only to prophesy their death and ruin.
' A great many people had experienced this hideous novelty, for it was easy to chance on Joyce's (radio) wave length when one was tuning in on the English stations, and there was a rasping and yet rich quality about his voice that made it difficult not to go on listening; and he was nearly convincing in his assurance.
'It seemed as if one had better hearken and take warning when he suggested that the destiny of the people he had left in England was death, and the destiny of his new masters in Germany was life and conquest, and that, therefore, his listerners had better hearken and take warning and submit; and he had the advantage that the news in the papers confirmed what he said.
'He was not only alarming, he was ugly.
''He opened a vista into a mean life.
'He always spoke as though he was better fed and better clothed than we were, and so we now know, he was. (Corboy Rationing in Britain was harsh, unbelievably so and it lasted until the early 1950s. People saved rinse water from pots and pans and used it for broth Corboy. They were told always to keep pots covered so that if a bomb broke a window, glass wouldnt land in the food and require it to be thrown out--for then one would go hungry and wait for the next set of ration points.)
'He went further than the mockery of his own people's plight...When the U-boats (German submarines) were sinking so many of our ships that to open the newspaper was to see the faces of drowned sailors, he (Joyce/Haw Haw) rolled the figures of our lost tonnage on his tongue.
"When we were facing the hazard of D-Day ge rejoiced in the thought of the English dead which would soon lie under the West Wall
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The New Meaning of Treason, Rebecca West, page 3 Viking, 1964)