Ken Livingstone is the latest victim of a Twitter hit-squad
Ken Livingstone is being admonished for “bringing up Hitler and Zionism” yet again in an interview with Sky News.
The problem is, he didn’t bring it up.
The host, Adam Boulton, opened the interview with this:
“Now the row over anti-semitism is believed or alleged to have cost labour votes in an area of North London with a substantial Jewish community.
“Joining me now is Ken Livingstone, the former London mayor who is currently suspended from the Labour party over remarks he made in 2016in which he suggested Adolf Hitler supported Zionism during the 1930s.
“Welcome to you Mr Livingstone. Speaking to some of your former Labour colleagues in Barnet, they were specifically blaming you for the loss.”
What exactly was Ken Livingstone supposed to respond with? He was asked by the host whether his previous comments about Hitler and Zionism had cost Labour votes in Barnet.
The same 40 second clip of Livingstone talking about Hitler has been making the rounds on Twitter, but with no regard for its context.
Everyone seems to be on the same page, throwing around platitudes like “Give it a rest Ken” and “I just had a nightmare that Ken Livingstone was on TV talking about Hitler again”.
Even the three minute clip shared by Sky doesn’t have the initial question. The only place I could find it was in an article by the London Evening Standard.
The tweet that accompanied the article stated that, “Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has faced criticism after mentioning Hitler within the first 10 seconds of an interview with Sky News this morning.”
This, along with the headline ‘Ken Livingstone sparks outrage after repeatedly bringing up Hitler in yet another live TV interview’, is completely contradictory to what the video actually shows: that the first mention of Hitler came from the mouth of Adam Boulton himself.
This is surely one of the finer examples of Twitter’s Chinese whispers, where tiny, out-of-context clips are given an interpretation by a few users, and the message spreads like wildfire. Not one person willing to actually look into what the man was asked.
Also, I haven’t seen a single tweet that even attempts to discuss the validity of What Livingstone has suggested, that Hitler tried to make a deal with Zionists in the 1930s to move all of Germany’s Jews to Israel.
For any of you that have actually studied Nazi Germany, you’ll know that ‘The Final Solution’, AKA the Holocaust, was exactly as the title purports it to be — a FINAL solution.
The Nazis initially tried to deport Jewish people, they even drew up plans to send them all to Madagascar but the island wasn’t big enough to accommodate them. *
Is it so difficult to believe that they might have tried to make a deal with Zionists to get rid of their Jews and in turn help Zionists realise their dream of having a Jewish homeland?
Only after several attempted solutions to their abhorrent hatred towards Jews did the Nazis settle on the Holocaust.
But don’t worry, Twitter has it covered, they spread stupid rumours on a daily basis without bothering to look into context and without any prior knowledge of History. And people have the gall to call it a ‘news site’.
Having said that, poor form from the London Evening Standard, an established news site that is more worried about getting clicks than reporting facts to its readers.
The man is 72 years old, he’s given 47 years of his life to the Labour Party and he doesn’t want to be remembered as an anti-Semite because people didn’t bother to look up the facts.
“Give it a rest Ken” more like give it a rest Twitter users. Leave the man alone and let him retire in peace.
