UK Holocaust memorial should examine white supremacist roots shared by Nazism and the transatlantic slave trade

“Fifty years after the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire and five years before the birth of Adolf Hitler, Otto von Bismarck, the first German Chancellor, called European powers to a gathering in his Palace on Wilhelmstrasse, Germany’s equivalent of Whitehall. Fourteen states attended the Berlin Conference in 1884 with an agenda to divide Africa between the colonial powers in an orderly manner. It was of particular importance to the British, French, Belgians, Dutch, Italians and Portuguese. Only a white supremacist mindset could have led European nations to believe they had a right to rule other people.” Dr James Smith, New Statesman, 24 October 2017

Nazism and the transatlantic slave trade shared roots in white supremacism. Linking the UK’s new National Holocaust Memorial with the Buxton Memorial alongside it would help us understand and address this continuing threat, writes Aegis Chief Executive Dr James Smith in the New Statesman.

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