Controversial columnist’s offensive online messages rasie questions over potential Independent editorship
It began as a series of tasteless, vulgar conversations about race, religion and sex on a football fan website, but it could end with Rod Liddle, the former Today editor turned controversial columnist, being denied the chance to edit the Independent.
Liddle felt compelled to explain in the Jewish Chronicle today why he posted a comment on the fan forum Millwall Online complaining that he couldn’t smoke at Auschwitz. In his article for the paper, Liddle described as “absurd” suggestions that he is antisemitic.
He has used Millwall Online, which has no official links to the south London club, to say: “It’s fucking outrageous that you can’t smoke in Auschwitz. I had to sneak round the back of the gas chambers for a crafty snout. Also, I wasn’t convinced by the newish Auschwitz Burger Bar and Grill.”
Liddle used the Chronicle to claim: “My point … was that I felt it had been stripped of its awfulness and bleakness … festooned with no smoking signs and disabled access ramps.”
His intervention came at the end of a week when his credentials as a possible editor of the Independent had been called into question.
Alexander Lebedev, the Russian billionaire who last year acquired a controlling stake in the London Evening Standard, is in negotiations to buy the Independent from its Irish owners. He is thought to have lined up Liddle, who writes for the Spectator and the Sunday Times, to replace the incumbent editor, Roger Alton.
Liddle has posted dozens of messages on Millwall Online using the pseudonym Monkeymfc, including, allegedly, derogatory comments about Somalis, insulting references to the ITV newsreader Mary Nightingale and racist comments.
Liddle has admitted that he posted most of the comments, although he fiercely denies writing one that suggested black people were less intelligent than white people or Asians.
He told the Guardian: “All of these things are twisted out of context to make me look like a cunt. I may be a cunt but I’m not a racist cunt.”
He said the language he uses on the site was “not the language of the Guardian editorial pages” but said he was still using the site as a way of communicating with some of his closest friends.
He also pointed out that he routinely argued with racists on Millwall Online.
For a self-styled iconoclast who earns a living by writing provocative prose, however, he seems to have been shaken by the reaction to his comments.
“There are a few people in the metropolitan liberal left who think it’s not enough to disagree with me, and that I should be sullied and slurred,” he said.
Liddle’s profanity-laced remarks were immediately seized upon by critics who claimed that he was the wrong person to edit the Independent.
A Facebook site entitled “If Rod Liddle becomes editor of the Independent, I will not buy it again” has attracted more than 4,000 members.
The Spectator’s editor, Fraser Nelson, defended his star columnist: “If you look at Rod’s journalism over the years it is fairly clear that he abhors racism. His beef is with multiculturalism.”
He described the criticism Liddle has been subjected to as “Rod hunting”.
A spokesman for the Sunday Times decline to comment, but it is thought that Liddle’s job there is safe.
‘Monkeymfc’ speaks
Rod Liddle has been attacked for comments he posted on a Millwall supporters website under the moniker Monkeymfc. This is what he is quoted as saying and his response:
What “Monkeymfc” wrote about black people: “On average a little under 10 per cent thicker than whites; 15 per cent thicker than east Asians. I thought everyone knew, too.” What Liddle says: “Someone’s hacked in [using Liddle’s password].
Monkeymfc on Swindon’s black footballer Kevin Amankwaah: “**** off you spearchucking African ****.” What Liddle says: “I was quoting what had been allegedly said to a black player from another team and JUSTIFYING why that player then said something very nasty indeed in return.”
Monkeymfc on blogger Jo Owen. He wrongly assumes he is a woman: “Stupid bitch. A year eight sociology lecture from someone who knows fck all … Someone kick her in the cnt”. Liddle [in reply to a blogger]: “I don’t remember saying it and it certainly doesn’t read like me, but it’s quite possible that at some point I might use that terminology to make a certain point, perhaps the opposite to the one you imagine.”