Former mayor of London Ken Livingstone defends his claim that that Adolf Hitler was ‘a Zionist’ by citing Lenni Brenner’s book Zionism in the Age of Dictators. According to Livingstone – now suspended from the UK Labour Party – ‘Lenni’s book shows a shared common belief between the Nazis and the Zionists … they wanted to preserve their ethnic purity and that’s why they had a working relationship.’ In this comprehensive critique Paul Bogdanor skewers Brenner’s factual manipulations and pseudo-scholarship and explains why his work is a fixture of antizionist and antisemitic propaganda about the Holocaust on both the far left and on the far right. Fathom also recently published renowned historian Jeffrey Herf’s rebuttal to Livingstone, ‘Hitler and the Nazis Anti-Zionism’.

Our voice of the week is Fathom editor Professor Alan Johnson talking at length to BBC Newsnight about left-wing antisemitism, its historical roots and contemporary forms and where the line is that separates criticism of Israel from something darker.

An Antisemitic Hoax: Lenni Brenner on Zionist ‘Collaboration’ With the Nazis

by Paul Bogdanor