The ‘left’ wants to replace the Holocaust with slavery, claims Starkey

Controversial historian David Starkey has been accused of mounting a “pathetic attempt to divide communities” after claiming the left is “jealous” of the Holocaust and wishes to replace it with slavery”.

In a speech to the National Conservatism conference in London, Starkey said: “The determination is to replace the Holocaust with slavery. In other words, this is why Jews are under such attack from the left, there’s jealousy, fundamentally. There is jealousy of the moral primacy of the Holocaust and a determination to replace it with slavery.”

His comments were initially tweeted on the official social media site of the three-day-long conference, before being deleted on Wednesday morning.Daniel Sugarman, the Board of Deputies director of public affairs, immediately condemned Starkey’s remarks tweeting:”The organisation I work for, the @BoardofDeputies, supports the building of a Holocaust Memorial by Westminster AND a permanent memorial to the victims of Transatlantic Slavery.

“If this quote is accurate, such pathetic attempts to drive a wedge between communities will not work.”

David Baddiel also tweeted regarding Starkey’s comments adding:”This notion is idiotic, not least because there is perhaps no greater example of the failure of Western culture to live up to its own ideal than the Holocaust.”

Joe Mulhall, director of research at HOPE not hate, also responded saying:” The National Conservatism Conference has played host to a number of speakers who have made far-right comments this week.

“David Starkey has a long history of reactionary and racist statements, his comments about the Holcoaust and Black Lives Matter are ignorant and offensive. Starkey should stick to commenting on the historical periods he’s researched.”

News reporters in attendance at the NatCon conference, at which home secretary Suella Braverman and levelling up secretary Michael Gove both spoke, later confirmed Starkey had made the comments in a speech in which he also claimed that groups such as Black Lives Matter were attempting to destroy “white culture” and “do exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust”.

Starkey, an expert on Tudor history, has previously been criticised for comments on slavery and the Black Lives Matter movement, including during coverage of the coronation on GB News when he was accused of racism for claiming that Rishi Sunak was “not fully grounded in our culture”. He later denied the comments were racist.

Elsewhere in Wednesday’s speech Starkey said:“The narrative of Black Lives Matter is that Western culture and Anglo-American culture in particular are fundamentally morally defective, they are characterised by the mark of Cain and their strategy is to do exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust.”