Yes, I know it was unwise for Ken Livingstone to make those comments about Hitler in the clumsy way he did. But that should not give anyone \u2013 adversaries and especially supporters \u2013 licence to mangle his words. It\u2019s bad enough that he expressed himself so inarticulately without everyone\u00a0parroting those who seek to misrepresent his argument.<\/p>\n
This is the quote that got him into hot water:<\/p>\n
When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
True, the date should have been 1933; there was no Israel then, it was Palestine; and the phrase \u201cwent mad\u201d implies that Hitler\u2019s earlier expulsion policy might be seen as sane.<\/p>\n
So we really don\u2019t need to further indulge Livingstone\u2019s critics by conceding faults in his statement for which there is no evidence.<\/p>\n
He did not say \u201cHitler was a Zionist\u201d. That would be a really dumb, though not necessarily anti-semitic, thing to espouse. Livingstone may be many things but he is not stupid.<\/p>\n
He also did not say \u201cHitler supported Zionism\u201d. That would not be quite as silly a thing to say, but it would clearly be incorrect. The evidence \u2013 not least Mein Kampf \u2013 indicates that Hitler had no sympathies, even early\u00a0ones, with\u00a0Zionism, though some\u00a0other Nazi leaders did.<\/p>\n
Rather, Livingstone said Hitler \u201cwas supporting Zionism\u201d. While\u00a0the same could be meant by that and the statement “Hitler supported Zionism”, they could\u00a0mean different things.<\/p>\n
If I criticised you by saying \u201cIn lending Jim \u00a350 yesterday, you were supporting his drug habit\u201d, it would not follow that I\u00a0thought you wanted Jim to be a drug addict. I would simply be\u00a0making an observation about the consequences \u2013 intended or not \u2013 of your actions. \u201cSupporting\u201d in this context means \u201chelping\u201c, \u201cfacilitating\u201d, \u201cassisting\u201d, \u201cenabling\u201d.<\/p>\n
It seems pretty clear that in using the expression \u201cHitler was supporting Zionism\u201d, Livingstone intended it to be understood that\u00a0way. By approving the Transfer Agreement of 1933,\u00a0Hitler and the Nazis helped the Zionists, but it does\u00a0not\u00a0follow\u00a0that Hitler\u00a0 therefore supported \u2013 in the sense\u00a0of agreed with, liked, shared the ideology of\u00a0\u2013 the Zionists.<\/p>\n
Livingstone was speaking off the cuff, not carefully crafting a speech where he could weigh every word for possible misunderstanding.<\/p>\n
Some will say this is semantics. Others will say the point is unimportant. But it is not. This kind of groupthink \u2013 where even progressives are swayed or bullied into intellectual conformity and timidity by those who get to dominate the public discourse \u2013 is a serious danger to the health of our democracy.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start challenging those who seek to misrepresent Livingstone\u2019s comments. He is in enough difficulties as it is. We shouldn\u2019t add to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yes, I know it was unwise for Ken Livingstone to make those comments about Hitler in the clumsy way he did. But that should not give anyone \u2013 adversaries and especially supporters \u2013 licence to mangle his words. It\u2019s bad enough that he expressed himself so inarticulately without everyone\u00a0parroting those who seek to misrepresent his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,7,51],"class_list":{"0":"post-2073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-britain","8":"tag-israel-lobby","9":"tag-left-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}