Has everyone missed the point? In likening the journalist Oliver Finegold to a concentration camp guard, Ken Livingstone said that he was “a reactionary scumbag”. How does slagging off the people who oppressed the Jews in the holocaust count as anti-semitism?
Besides, anyone who heard the way Finegold gloated when he said “Great, I have you on record for that”, will have realised at once that he clearly is a scumbag.
First Minister Rhodri Morgan: “He must apologise.”
Mayor Livingstone: “Won’t apologise.”
“Don’t mention the war! I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it!”
Livingstone is a twat and should be hoist by his own petard. If you’re in politics and foolish enough to make such comments, you deserve to fall on your sword.
The whole thing about the Labour electioneering campaign is equally as pathetic. The ASA discounts political advertising from its remit for the simple fact that nobody believes anything in it anyway. ASA standards require that advertising is legal, decent, honest and truthful. Politicians are none of these so by their very nature, the advertising will be just as grubby.
By likening Oliver Finegold (the journalist involved) to a concentration camp guard, Livingstone was alluding to the Nuremberg defence adopted by alleged Nazi war criminals of “I was just following orders”, because as Livingstone predicted he would, Finegold went on to absolve himself of any moral responsibility for his actions by saying “I’m a journalist and I’m doing my job”. It would therefore be entirely accurate to say Finegold is like those defendants at Nuremberg in this respect if he (or the Associated Press generally) have been acting in a morally objectionable way.
Few are really game enough to say that what Livingstone said was anti-semitic, so if Livingstone should apologise, it is to Finegold alone for suggesting he was acting improperly – not holocaust survivors and not the Jewish community in general.
Judge for yourself by reading the full transcript of the conversation here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/02/15/ukensaid.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/02/15/ixportaltop.html