17 May 2023 , 11:29
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A right-wing historian has come under fire after claiming that anti-racists are "trying to destroy white culture" - and accused left-wingers of being "jealous" of Jews because of the Holocaust.
David Starkey, who has previously made a number of unpleasant remarks about race, was met with enthusiastic applause at the controversial National Conservatism Conference.
Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner described it as a "Trump tribute act conference" and a "carnival of conspiracy" at PMQs this afternoon.
The three-day festival of the right has already featured a number of senior Tories, including two Cabinet members, with the party's deputy chairman Lee Anderson set to speak there later.
Mr Starkey's outburst was described as "ignorant and offensive" after he proclaimed to an audience in Westminster: "We did much worse things to whites than we did to blacks."
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He cited sailors being "flogged to death" as an example of this.
The writer was met with loud applause when he fumed that "enemies" of conservatism are "intent at destroying the entire legitimacy of the western political and cultural traditions".
The conference has hosted senior Tories including Home Secretary Suella Braverman (Getty Images)He told the audience: "Please, it's too important for applause."
Dr Starkey then continued: "The idea that they are there to defend black lives is a preposterous notion.
"They do not care about black lives, they only care about the symbolic destruction of white culture."
And turning his fire on Black Lives Matter campaigners, he ranted: "The narrative of Black Lives Matter is that western culture and Anglo-American culture in particular are fundamentally and morally defective.
"They are characterised by the mark of pain and their strategy is to do exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust.
"But 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's jealousy of the moral primacy of the Holocaust and the determination to replace it with slavery."
The conference's official Twitter account shared a summary of Dr Starkey's remarks, but promptly deleted it.
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Daniel Sugarman, director of public affairs for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, tweeted that "such pathetic attempts to drive a wedge between communities will not work".
And Joe Mulhall, director of research at anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, told The Mirror: "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 Holocaust and Black Lives Matter are ignorant and offensive. Starkey should stick to commenting on the historical periods he's researched."
Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokesperson Christine Jardine MP said: "Government Ministers need to get back to parliament and focus on sorting out the many crises they have created, not sharing the stage with fringe views like this."
A No10 spokesman said: "It continues to be the case that ministers will speak at a range of events, it's for them to decide what events to speak at."
But he added that Mr Sunak - who is travelling to Japan for the G7 summit - "wouldn't agree" with the historian's remarks.
Dr Starkey, an expert on Tudor history, told the conference that conservatives must "engage in battle".
He was previously accused of racism for claiming that Rishi Sunak was "not fully grounded in our culture".
He later denied his comments were racist, saying he was referring to the Prime Minister being a "typical international liberal" with no interest in British "values".
In 2020 he was forced to apologise after saying slavery was not genocide because there are "so many damn blacks" still around.