Bruce Lawson (modern day follower of Montaigne): Someone very senior at the BBC recently said the whole corporation has become obsessed with diversity quotas. That’s the only charitable reason I can think of as to why BBC Two decided to have anti-Semite Ash Sarkar, a non-expert and non-historian on a Holocaust programme.
Tracy Ann Oberman (actress): Dear Patrick Holland, BBC2, as someone who lost family during The Rise of The Nazis I am deeply disturbed that of all knowledgable experts/historians, you use Ash Sarkar, a woman who endorsed the spray painting of the remaining Watsaw Ghetto wall - an open grave for our families. Why? Her friend Ewa spray painted FreeGaza on my family's grave. They died for being Jewish long before Israel even was a thought of existence. Ash Sarkar is not a Holocaust historian or expert. She is a Momentum Propagandist. Why have her on as an expert voice? So upsetting. BBC Two, Patrick Holland, rethink your ‘experts’ please. Too much insensitivity and lack of diligence on this.
Euan Phillips (Labour Against AS): What the hell are BBC Two doing making a programme called ‘Rise of the Nazis’ and featuring Ash Sarkar, who supported the desecration of the Warsaw Ghetto and opposes the IHRA definition of antisemitism? How tone deaf/insulting/outright racist are you??
Yes. This isn't another (albeit sick) joke about the ubiquity of Ash Sarkar ("literally a communist") on the BBC.
She really is an expert 'talking head' in the major new three-part BBC Two series The Rise of the Nazis.
Even by the standards of the present-day BBC, that's truly extraordinary, isn't it?
She really is an expert 'talking head' in the major new three-part BBC Two series The Rise of the Nazis.
Even by the standards of the present-day BBC, that's truly extraordinary, isn't it?
Thanks for highlighting this. Who is funding such programmes ? This is a relevant and important question. It seems that the BBC is the hands of forces that wish to change our perception of history so that they can influence our thoughts and actions in the present.
ReplyDeleteOnce when I pointed out that the lies a Professor of history told on BBC radio would cause incitement to hatred the answer came back from the BBC that "not enough people will be offended by it" That is the whole issue if "not enough" people take this up with the BBC than the BBC can get away with more and more.
I didn't realise Sarkar was involved in this. I wasn't intending to watch it as I don't trust any modern BBC docco. In any case, 'The Nazis - a warning from history' can't be bettered. That series featured loads of interviews with German soldiers and other people who were there at the time. It's horrific and fantastic.
ReplyDeleteWatching that series was the first time I was exposed to some hard facts about the rise of the Nazi party, as opposed to the shouts of 'monsters'.
My mother, who comes from a Jewish family that fled Russia, told me that Hitler hated Jews because they killed Jesus! This was when I was 12 and asked her what WWII was all about.
I realised her answer was nonsense at 12.
I would suspect Sarkar is there to make the link between the Bolshevik Marxists who Hitler perceived had taken over the German government, and the pure evil of the Nazi regime. I.e, Marxism good, Nationalism bad..... Or the Jew gets it.
This is not where we are now, but the BBC are such cowards that making a series acknowledging the modern truth is impossible.
...oh, and don't mention the effects of the Treaty Of Versailles on the German people which led directly to the rise of Hitler.
Sarkar is a yawn-fest and beyond a joke.
I mentioned this programme on the open thread - having come across it while channel hopping. Only watched about 20 mins but that was enough. So many parallels were being drawn that it would have put a sheet of graph paper to shame. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd what was Ash Sarkar, a "literal communist" by her own admission, doing there? If we are having "warnings from history", surely they shouldn't be delivered by someone backing an ideology repsonsible for the deliberate murder of tens of millions of people (and let's not forget those murders are continuing around the planet).
The programme seemed to have no sense of fascism being in strong part a reaction to murderous, thieving Bolshevism, not just the failure of capitalism to deliver prosperity in the post war period.
Like I've always said...the so called "Institute for Government" is actually a full-on Remainiac organisation funded by arch remainer and friend of Blair Lord Sainsbury, yet another Remainer Billionaire (there are so many, a fact that always seems to escaped Paul Mason!).
ReplyDeletehttps://order-order.com/2019/09/03/institute-government-hope-rebel-bill-passes/
Was it any surprise to see Remainer-in-Chief (Macron's high representative to the UK), Tony Blair give his Sermon on the Make to the nation with the IfG logo emblazoned behind him? No.
But still the BBC presents the Institute for Government as a neutral and authoritative think tank.
Apologies - was meant for the Open Thread.
DeleteThe obvious logic behind this is that Sarkar has been given the opportunity to fraudulently demonstrate that, by taking part in this the extreme left is not inherently anti-Semitic. After World War II it was official Soviet policy to deliberately downplay the Holocaust. I wonder if she will mention that?
ReplyDeleteIt’s very hard to believe that the BBC are not complicit in this charade. Particularly given their own drift from Blairism to the idiot fringes of the left over recent years.
The BBC guest pool has always been of a depth as limited as its calibre, but who they cycle as 'experts' or panellists is an utterly woeful limited collection best unseen and unheard ever, much less daily.
ReplyDeleteTrotting out middle-class gobby Wolfies like Mason, Sakhar, Jones, etc may play well in the W1A common room, but outside it is laughable.