Ken Livingstone - antisemitic?

[Mick Mac]

I saw him on Newsnight last night - there seemed then to be some uncertainty about what he actually said - but if it's as below then, I can see he's in big trouble and rightly so

?Let?s remember, when Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism.?

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/ken-livingstone-wilfully-twisted-real-story-hitler-zionism/

[Earl Aelfheah]

Here's the whole thing in context: https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/social-affairs/discrimination/news/74365/ken-livingstone-bbc-radio-london-israel-lobby-tries

[Mick Mac]

I think my link is also in context....:)

[JohnL]

Mick Mac Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I think my link is also in context....:)

In his own mind he's absolutely sure that he's right.

He has no idea about how people feel as opposed to technical correctness though.

[robbin]

I reckon that if someone made comments as deliberately inflammatory as Ken's but about black people, the left would be falling over themselves to call them racist (and quite rightly so, in my view). It's amazing how many apologists there are out there when it comes to anti Semitism. There's also double standards - for example, some of the apologists for anti semitism would be the first to say how awful it is that Brexit has caused an upsurge in overt racism and wouldn't seem to recognise there was any sort of a contradiction there.

[Loz]

I still don't see this as being 'antisemetic' as such. He expressed a view on history. Maybe not quite historically correct, and maybe not completely correct. Certainly not politically correct. But was it actually abusive? Where does an allowable, different view on history end and antisemitism start? It's not as if he has denied the Holocaust happened.

I don't agree with Ken at all, but I have to go with Voltaire and ask: what ever happened to freedom of speech?? And, to quote the usual response to this, this is hardly shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre.

The caveat here is that Ken has actually said some rather unpleasant stuff about Jews in the past.

[Jeremy]

Yeah, maybe not antisemetic per se, but almost certainly deliberately inflammatory (to quote robbin above). He must have known some would feel offended.. basically, a bloody stupid thing to say.

[robbin]

Then that puts you in a small minority, I think, Loz.

I think any proper objective view of what he said and the context in which he said it, leads to only one conclusion.

Oh, and the fact that you say he has said some rather unpleasant things about Jews in the past doesn't in any way affect your view of the context?

On the question of context - he was speaking in defence of Naz Shah and what she said. The yet further problem is that Naz Shah came out and profusely apologised (fair play to her) and accepted she made anti semitic remarks and had failed to understand anti Semitism and its effect. She was still suspended but is now back and speaks out against anti Semitism.

[Loz]

Well, I generally prefer to examine what was actually said, rather than who they are. Play the ball and not the man, so to speak.

Many people say stuff to entirely for effect and to get people offended, quite a few of them in the Labour party (and other parties, of course). Not a pleasant personality trait, but hardly unusual. It's a basic 'skill' for just about every newspaper columnist and many political campaigners on both the left and the right.

But as you asked before, robbin, had he said similar remarks about other groups, what would have been the reaction? You asked about black people? But what about Americans? Irish? Essex white van drivers? I suspect there would be wildly differing reactions, very much dependent on the group in question. What makes some worthy of Twitter outrage and some not?

[????]

KL, and the reactions, just reinforce what an utter cess-pit the upper echelons of the Labour Party are nowadays

[JoeLeg]

On this at least myself and quids agree. I just don't buy into this idea that we should tolerate the current Labour leadership just because they 'aren't the Tories'.

I really don't know what the Labour Party stands for any more.

[Loz]

JoeLeg Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I really don't know what the Labour Party stands for any more.

Well, that is less contentious, at least. As a guess, its main stance is being firmly and steadfastly against getting elected.

[Otta]

The fact is, Jews suffered something totally unique in halocaust. There have been genocides, but the number of people that were systematically slaughtered in death camps is unlike anything else.

To suggest that the architect of that slaughter had gone mad, but before that was some sort of friend and supporter to the Jews is staggeringly insensitive.

And even now he will not back down one step, and this shows that he is a nasty little toad that needs shutting down.

[Otta]

I too am looking for someone other than Labour that I can get behind. Still a member, and there are good people trying to do things at a local level, but the leadership is a joke.

However, at least Corbyn has stepped in now over this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39499640

[Seabag]

If Corbyn could look out and not in (his mirror) he'd see what a cockshamles the 'party' is from the outside.

As Loz says, he's making his .....

Oh hell, you get it, it's pointless going into any further #CorbynCrap

[uncleglen]

Ever since Blair the Labour party has tried to grab ethnic votes

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/pressArticle/83

As a perennial cynic I believe the Labour party has been trying to ingratiate itself with the muslim community.

[Earl Aelfheah]

tinfoil hat stuff from 'migration watch'(the name of that organisation says a lot about its state of mind).

[Earl Aelfheah]

Otta Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The fact is, Jews suffered something totally

> unique in halocaust. There have been genocides,

> but the number of people that were systematically

> slaughtered in death camps is unlike anything

> else.

>

> To suggest that the architect of that slaughter

> had gone mad, but before that was some sort of

> friend and supporter to the Jews is staggeringly

> insensitive.

>

> And even now he will not back down one step, and

> this shows that he is a nasty little toad that

> needs shutting down.

I am not defending Livingstone, but I don't think it's true that he said Hitler 'was a friend and supporter to the jews'. He suggested that Hitler supported, at one time, the relocation of German Jewish communities to Israel. I don't know, but I suspect this was what he was trying to get at.. that support for the idea of Zionism doesn't necessarily indicate support of Jewish people,their rights and freedoms, in the same way that being critical of Zionism, the policies of Israel, or the continued expansion of the state into modern day Palestine (through the expansion of illegal settlements) is necessarily antisemitic.

[Lordship 516]

What happened to the Jews, gypsies & others considered undesirable by Hitler & his thugs, living in Germany, Poland, Hungary etc during WWII was horrific [an understatement]. Six million Jews and five million Slavs, Roma, disabled, Jehovah?s Witnesses, homosexuals, and political and religious dissidents were killed during the WWII Holocaust in Hitler's campaign for a Final Solution to wipe out these innocents.

...but there have been many holocausts just as horrific throughout the world - it matters not whether they died by fire, gas, starvation or bullets or whether it was because of religion, ethnicity or whatever - millions have been wiped out by vile hatred & indifference. More than one million Irish died during the Potato Famine at a time when their crops were exported to feed England. About another one million left Ireland to escape starvation - few cared. The great American dream was fashioned partly by a land plantation and it is estimated that over nine million Natives died from violent conflict or disease during that great land grab. The Ottoman regime is estimated to have killed more than 1 million ethnic Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks between 1915 and 1923. The Khmer Rouge between 1.7 and 2 million Cambodians in the Khmer Rouge?s "Killing Fields.

We have had modern day holocausts - Bangladesh, Congo, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur - the list could go on. Stalin murdered millions who he disagreed with or whom he declared an enemy of the people - estimated between 20 million & 60 million including about 7.5 million Ukranians through induced famine. Mao Ze Dong was probably responsible for even more death during his reign of terror.

Today ISIS is engaged in a very modern-day holocaust - designed to wipe out any other human being that doesn't ascribe to their harsh ideology & Assad appears to be on a genocidal trajectory of his own. The world seems unable to prevent these happenings.

Some [not all] Jewish people leverage the WWII Holocaust to justify genocidal actions of their own and this is lamentable; but that does not justify demonizing the Jewish people in general for this.

I don't know why Livingstone keeps his discussion going about Hitler & Zionism - it is contemptible that he would use such a reference in any manner to illustrate some political point. The people who have been affected by any genocide/holocaust may never experience closure on their suffering but we owe it to them not to use their painful history as tool to make some point or other.

The Labour party ought to insist that he expresses a sincere apology and if he fails to do so, then he ought to be booted out without further discussion.

Evil DOES prevail when good men do nothing.

[Otta]

The state of Israel does some really bad stuff. It is not anti semitic or anti zionist to say that (some would disagree, but they're wrong), it's just fact.

Bit Livingstone has picked about yhe most sensitive part of history to jewish people he could possibly pick, he has vastly exaggerated some history, and added some out and out fiction

And in saying that Hitler then "went mad" he is suggesting that at one point he was perfectly reasonable and sane.

It's intentionally inflammatory, and his insistence on keeping it up just shows that he is intentionally antagonising people.

I've never liked him, I've always felt hos self intereat was top priority, and I suspect he lined his pockets very well whilst mayor. But now he has just shown himself up as the absolute scum that he is.

[JohnL]

He's wrong anyway IMHO

Hitler wouldn't have said 'deport them because I support the creation of a jewish state' he'd have said 'deport them because they aren't our people and i want rid of them' and he didn't then proceed from sane to mad - he continued on the path he was already on and had written about.

from http://ww2history.com/key_moments/Holocaust/Hitler_talks_of_Jewish_annihilation

"Indeed, in Mein Kampf, written in the early 1920s, Hitler explicitly linked the imagined deceit of the Jews in the First World War with the need for their destruction, saying that the ?sacrifice of millions at the front? would have been prevented if ?twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas."

[Loz]

Otta Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> It's intentionally inflammatory, and his insistence on keeping it up just shows that he is

> intentionally antagonising people.

I don't think there is any doubt he is being intentionally antagonising, my question is whether that is a punishable offence.

[Lordship 516]

Loz Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Otta Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > It's intentionally inflammatory, and his

> insistence on keeping it up just shows that he is

> > intentionally antagonising people.

>

> I don't think there is any doubt he is being

> intentionally antagonising, my question is whether

> that is a punishable offence.

Not only ought it be a punishable offence but the media ought to deny him airtime for a long, long time. Just choke him off.

[Earl Aelfheah]

Otta Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The state of Israel does some really bad stuff. It

> is not anti semitic or anti zionist to say that

> (some would disagree, but they're wrong), it's

> just fact.

>

> Bit Livingstone has picked about yhe most

> sensitive part of history to jewish people he

> could possibly pick, he has vastly exaggerated

> some history, and added some out and out fiction

>

> And in saying that Hitler then "went mad" he is

> suggesting that at one point he was perfectly

> reasonable and sane.

>

> It's intentionally inflammatory, and his

> insistence on keeping it up just shows that he is

> intentionally antagonising people.

>

> I've never liked him, I've always felt hos self

> intereat was top priority, and I suspect he lined

> his pockets very well whilst mayor. But now he has

> just shown himself up as the absolute scum that he

> is.

Yeah, totally agree with that.

[red devil]

100...and Livingstone can fook off too :)