BBC's Andrew Neil brands left-wing antisemitism a 'dangerous trend' in HET speech
BBC presenter Andrew Neil has said that antisemitism on the far-left is now a "more dangerous" trend in the UK than the extremism of the "knuckle dragging" far-right.
Delivering the keynote speech at the annual Holocaust Educational Trust dinner in central London, the Daily Politics show host also launched a scathing attack on Ken Livingstone for "intentionally" attempting to link Zionism with Nazi Germany.
Warning that the scourge of antisemitism was on the increase Mr Neil said: "When I was growing up the obvious antisemites were the knuckle-draggers in the National Front. In this country what was left of the KKK in America, the Holocaust deniers like Jean Marie Le Pen.
“Now these people and their kind are still around. But they are more marginal than they've been and they are less significant than they’ve been.
What has surprised me and what I think was entirely unpredictable was that the new development in this area is the rise of antisemitism on the far left. That is more dangerous than the knuckle dragging right."
He also warned that increasingly hatred of the state of Israel, masquerading as anti-Zionism actually represented modern day antisemitism. He said: "On the far left, just as there is on the far right there is a dislike of Israel, not just a dislike, a hatred of Israel.
"When it turns into hatred beyond normal criticism of foreign policy and state conduct, which we are all free to do and which every country must be subject to, when it turns to hatred then antisemitism flourishes.
https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/andrew-neil-throws-spotlight-on-labour-antisemitism-in-holocaust-educational-trust-speech-1.446066
Mr. Neil also references the use of social media and how antisemitic conspiracy theories are commonplace.
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