Ken Livingstone compared a reporter to a good Nazi apparatchik. Good.
It's about time someone pointed out that the mentality needed to unthinkingly obey orders is as necessary to the running of a newspaper as it was to running the Third Reich. That it is definitely not confined to the horrors of the past. And that it could lead to their repetition. For this message, all Holocaust communities should thank Ken Livingstone.
"We're Only Doing Our Jobs!" is the perpetual squeal of blacklegs, strikebreakers and murdering mercenaries the world over. The slogan 'Arbeit Macht Frei' replaced the conscience of the one-time bank clerks in the Weimar Republic who found themselves burying corpses in Belsen 15 years later.
Every hack reporter for the popular press knows that at some time he will have to tell lies about people, and play a part in deliberately targeting individuals for attention which will almost certainly damage either their careers or family life. He also knows that his bosses will try to influence the political scene merely in order to sell newspapers.
The job of the hack is to put that agenda into words, no matter what his personal beliefs, or what he knows to be true. Like a lawyer or an MP or an estate agent.
That makes him a mercenary, and totally deserving of the comparison with the Nazis. If we can't use the Nazis as the ultimate insult, what can we use them for?
So what Ken said to him was meant to sting, and apparently it did. The fact that he turned out to be Jewish only means that he should know better than to throw in his lot with a news group whose owners were once Hitler’s greatest fans in Britain. And to be too willing to do the bidding of others purely for the sake of his career.
He should therefore understand the nature of the insult before being offended by it, as should the British Board of Deputies. They should further appreciate that it was the apparatchik mentality which enabled the ultimate atrocities in the camps to run their terrible course. And that is still with us today. By reminding us that fascism is just a kiss away, Livingstone’s words are a functional memorial to the holocaust victims, and should be applauded.
It is hilarious though, to watch the philosophical contortions of the right in their desperate attempts to kill off Ken Livingstone once and for all. It’s like one of Denis Norden’s clips of a dog trying to tear off its own collar.
Most of the time, they attack Ken Livingstone for his slavish adherence to ‘Political Correctness’ – which they hate. And then, each time he speaks his mind – which he regularly does – they don’t like that either. So then they fake outrage at his ‘Political Incorrectness’ – which they don’t believe in. Sounds like the first stages of schizophrenia to me.
Their only propaganda tool is a set of beliefs they don’t hold. Everything they once believed in has been stolen by New Labour, so they have no other strategy than to try and hoist their enemies ‘by their own cliches’. This current attack on Livingstone is so transparently desperate that, like the self-wrestling dog, it will either collapse in exhaustion, or strangle itself to death.
