Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone praised Hitler and shared his preference for totalitarian regimes over democracies yesterday to the Times.
Let me attempt to give Bernie Ecclestone the benefit of the doubt. I assume his intention was to say that a strong leader, irrespective of the ideology or system, is what he admires.
That hasn’t stopped the outrage from boiling over after Ecclestone shared some candid and controversial thoughts with the Times yesterday. Odd he should choose Hitler as an example of a strong leader and object of admiration.
“In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done," Ecclestone said in his controversial statement. “In the end he got lost, so he wasn’t a very good dictator because either he had all these things and knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it . . . so either way he wasn’t a dictator.”
He also rounded on democracy, claiming that “it hasn’t done a lot of good for many countries—including this one [Britain].”
I am unclear of what history classes Mr. Ecclestone missed in primary school but Hitler didn’t have to be persuaded to do the things he did. Have the British and American people forgotten the sacrifice paid to rid the world of a tyrannical dictator who was the definitional and tangible example of genocide? The responses of Ecclestone’s comments would suggest they haven’t.
A spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said, “Mr Ecclestone’s comments regarding Hitler, female, black and Jewish racing drivers, and dictatorships are quite bizarre. He says [in the interview], ‘Politics is not for me,’ and we are inclined to agree.”
Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, said, “Mr Ecclestone is either an idiot or morally repulsive. Either he has no idea how stupid and offensive his views are or he does and deserves to be held in contempt by all decent people.”
John Whittingdale, the Tory chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, said, “These are extraordinary views and I’m appalled that anybody could hold them.”
Ecclestone’s friend, and son of British Union of Fascists leader, Max Mosley has been involved in a war of words with the Formula 1 teams and was recently accused of being a “dictator.”
The label has reignited and reinvigorated Mosley as he was set to step down from his post as president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) this coming October. It now appears he may be considering another term and this has many Formula 1 fans, teams, and sponsors on edge.
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