John Barnes criticised for controversial comments on Adolf Hitler and black jews
John Barnes is at the centre of a controversial debate after he claimed World War Two wouldn't have happened if Adolf Hitler invaded African countries and not Europe
John Barnes has sparked a debate after suggesting World War Two would not have broken out if Adolf Hitler had invaded African countries.
The England football legend questioned if the conflict would have happened if the Nazi dictator gone into non-European nations. He tweeted: “If he took over black countries in Africa, the other non-white countries in Asia or South America, where the Allies didn’t have a vested interest, would WW2 have occurred?”
The ex-Liverpool ace also wrote: “WW2 started because the Allies wanted to stop Germany becoming too powerful, nothing to do with right or wrong.
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"Had Hitler left the European Jews alone and went to Ethiopia and committed the same atrocities to the black Falasha Jews, I doubt WW2 would have started.”
Speaking on Rob Moore's Disruptors Podcast, he also said that Nazi ideology was “based on what Europeans have been doing around the world for hundreds of years”.
Barnes added: "The genocide, destruction, exploitation. The Nazi ideology was based on that. If Adolf Hitler did what he did in Africa or anywhere else, the rest of Europe would've accepted that. But you can't do it to white Europeans."
But a former terrorism tsar said there should not be a “competition of horrors”. Lord Carlile, a former independent adviser on terror legislation, told the Jewish Chronicle: “Comparing the Holocaust with the undoubted systemic persecution of black people (in multiple settings) runs the risk of diluting the importance and impact of both.
“The Holocaust was a planned trauma of extermination of fellow Europeans under the guise of racial purification. Jews support strongly the exposure of the wickedness of slavery and discrimination."
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