Former London mayor “Ken Livingstone has been sacked from his LBC radio show following his claim that Hitler supported Zionism,” the British newspaper The Independent reported Saturday morning. The move comes nearly a month after he was suspended by the Labour Party for the remarks.
“Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel,” the veteran politician said in April. “He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”
The Independent notes that Mr. Livingstone — nicknamed “Red Ken” in the 1980s for his outspoken opposition to Margaret Thatcher — told the paper, “It’s weird because I would have thought good capitalists would want to carry on making a profit.”
Mr. Livingstone boasted to The Independent that he had expanded the reach of the radio program he hosted sixfold from the time he took over hosting until he was fired.
The left-wing London gadfly’s saga is just the latest incident wherein the extent to which the Labour Party tolerates anti-Semitism in its ranks has been scrutinized. When Jeremy Corbyn secured leadership of the party and with it leadership of the opposition in Parliament last fall, The Telegraph newspaper published an article looking at “Why Jeremy Corbyn’s rise makes British Jews afraid.”
“[H]ere stands a man who has been connected to Holocaust denier Paul Eisen, and who exhorts us to be ’friends’ with terror organisations Hezbollah and Hamas,” wrote Angela Epstein in her Telegraph op-ed.
In April, the Labour Party suspended Mr. Livingstone for his Hitler comments. As The Guardian newspaper noted at the time, Sadiq Khan, then Labour’s candidate for London mayor, condemned Mr. Livingstone, the first person to hold the elected post.
Mr. Khan went on to win the London mayoralty in a landslide victory following a heated campaign which included allegations that Mr. Khan had links to Islamist extremists in his past.
• Ken Shepherd can be reached at kshepherd@washingtontimes.com.
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