Ken Livingstone was on Sky News today, treating us to an almost identical interview to yesterday’s Victoria Derbyshire one. No doubt it’ll be on YouTube soon if it isn’t already.
As before, he was invited on to Sky to opine about Keith Vaz, but it wasn’t long before Kay Burley brought up “Hitler”.
Ken still insists that what he said was true. Obviously nothing is ever going to change his mind about that.
Pity Kay Burley was so poorly briefed. It’s as if everyone has forgotten why he said what he said. (“Hitler was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”)
He said it in defence of the indefensible, i.e., Naz Shah, who has already admitted to a string of antisemitic tweets, pleading ignorance or insanity, apologised and promised not to do it again.
“For Ken Livingstone to say Hitler was a Zionist is offensive – well, of course that would be offensive. I wouldn’t just apologise if I’d said that, I’d have been straight off to my GP to check if I was in the first stage of dementia. Hitler hated and loathed Jews, but that didn’t stop him doing a deal with the Zionist movement in the 1930s.”
Since people have already posited the theory that Ken is in the first, or some other stage of dementia, bringing it up all by himself in the form of a metaphor seems a bit close to the bone.
He didn’t say Hitler was a Zionist - he said Hitler was supporting Zionism. See? Two completely different things, with plenty of wiggle room, or slither room if you like; enough for him to slither sideways with an almost conciliatory elucidation ….that the Zionists could’t help it, and he didn’t blame them, and what’s more Norman Finkelstein agrees with him, and no-one could call Norman Finkelstein antisemitic!
At the end of the section, Kay Burley read out a message from a viewer complaining that Ken was given a platform.
Kay Burley put her down quite superciliously, saying ‘That’s democracy”.
Not really, Kay. That’s show biz.
Ken Livingstone on anti-semitism row: you can't say "telling the truth can bring the Labour party into disrepute" https://t.co/yUH5zWnfGn— Sky News (@SkyNews) 7 September 2016
