Holocaust not unique: eco-warrior Roger Hallam disowned

A co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has insisted that there was nothing ‘unique’ about the Holocaust.

Roger Hallam at a demonstration at Parliament Square in London last year. Picture: Getty Images

One of the British eco-warriors who founded Extinction Rebellion has been disowned by his allies and rebuked by the German government after insisting there was nothing “unique” about the Holocaust.

Roger Hallam created a schism in the radical protest movement on Wednesday with an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit in which he described the Third Reich’s systematic murder of six million Jews as “just another f..kery in human history” and said genocide was “almost a normal occurrence”.

The comments drew a swift rebuke from German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who called the industrial-scale murder of Jews “uniquely inhuman”.

“We must always beware of this to ensure: never again!” Mr Maas wrote on Twitter.

German Greens co-leader Robert Habeck told the newspaper Bild “there must be no place for anti-Semitism or downplaying of the Holocaust”.

Mr Habeck urged Extinction Rebellion — known for its disruptive protests such as road blockades — to distance itself from Hallam.

The group’s German branch tweeted on Thursday that “Roger has breached the principles of XR, which don’t tolerate anti-Semitism, and isn’t ­welcome any longer at XR ­Germany.”

The British branch later ­issued a statement also condemning Mr Hallam’s comments “unreservedly”.

“Jewish people and many others are deeply wounded by the comments today,” it said, adding that internal conver­sations had begun about how to address the issue.

“We stand by restorative outcomes as preferable, although in some cases exclusion is necessary,” the group said.

Hallam’s publisher in Germany, Ullstein, said it was stopping delivery of the German version of his book following the remarks.

Reacting to the widespread anger his comments caused, Hallam told British media that he fully acknowledged “the unimaginable suffering caused by the Nazi Holocaust” but accused rich countries of allowing genocide to happen again “on a far greater scale, and in plain sight” by failing to stop global warming.

AP