The JC reports:
MP George Galloway has emphasised that his Respect Party “abhors and campaigns against racism” after being alerted to comments by a party officer questioning whether Adolf Hitler was “the bad guy”.
Naz Kahn, who last week was being praised on Facebook for her selection as a new woman’s officer for Respect, made the comments on the same site on September 30.
Responding to a video called The Palestine you need to know, she said:
“It’s such a shame that the history teachers in our school never taught us this but they are the first to start brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler. What have the Jews done good in this world??”
She later added: “No, I’m not a Nazi, I’m an ordinary British Muslim that had an opinion and put it across. We have worse people than Hitler in this world now.”
Ron McKay, a spokesman for Mr Galloway, who was elected as MP for Bradford West in March, said that Ms Kahn’s comments, made less than a month ago, appeared on an unofficial site before she was a member of the party.
“Since joining Respect and talking with George and other leading figures, she now deeply regrets and repudiates that posting,” he said. “And, as any view later in the thread will confirm, she has praised seminal Jewish figures.”
He added that Respect was built on its opposition to racism and said that Mr Galloway regularly “praises the massively important role of Jews in world history”. Last week, at the Oxford Union, he had “reiterated that the Holocaust was the worst crime in history”.
When Naz Kahn questions whether Hitler was really the “bad guy”, claims that schools are brainwashing children into thinking Hitler was at fault, and asks “What have the Jews done good in this world??”, she is indistinguishable from a neo Nazi.
RESPECT is now in desperate damage limitation mode. It has hidden or closed down the relevant Facebook pages. But it won’t dismiss Naz Kahn.
Let’s have a look at RESPECT’s response.
Galloway’s bag carrier, Ron McKay says that the comment was made “before she was a member of the party”. In fact, the comment was made less than a month ago, on 30th September.
Two and a half weeks later, she was most certainly a “member of the party” – indeed, she was Women’s Officer of it:
A couple of days later, she was made Admin of the RESPECT Bradford Facebook page by Chris Chilvers. Chilvers is National Secretary of RESPECT:
The pro-Hitler comments were posted on the RESPECT Bradford Facebook page. It is rubbish to suggest that this was an “unofficial site”. It was a site which the National Secretary of RESPECT operated!
McKay continues:
“And, as any view later in the thread will confirm, she has praised seminal Jewish figures.”
Actually, as it has been taken down, you can’t see whether she praised Jews or not. My recollection is that she didn’t. She was, however, robustly taken on by an anti-racist RESPECT supporter called Anne Thompson who accuses her of “rewriting history” and “misrepresenting important historical facts”.
Naz Kahn responds – on 2 October:
Anne! Stop beating a dead horse. The Jews have reaped the rewards of playing victims. enough is enough!! A phrase comes to mind, “treat others in the same way you would like to be treated”. Allah-hu-Akbar!!!!
What else do we know about Naz Kahn? Well she thinks that the following song by veteran dancehall artist Macka B entitled “Run Rushdie Run“, mocking the plight of the writer facing a death sentence, is hilarious.
She also is attracted by conspiracy theories about the 7/7 bombings. Commenting on a Daily Mail article about a programme setting out one of those conspiracy theories she comments:
Thought provoking!! And for the ignoramus, an eye opener, not to believe everything in the news
Ach, just for the fun of it, here are some more of Naz Kahn’s thoughts.
This episode tells you something important about the way that RESPECT has developed over the past couple of years. Two years ago, RESPECT booted an antisemite called Abul “Abs” Hussain off its National Council. However, these days, they’re apparently happy to have a Hitler-lover and Jew-hater as their Women’s Officer, as a party activist, who runs their Facebook page for Bradford, to which she posts racist material.
RESPECT is the BNP for Muslims.
