Historian David Starkey claims he is the victim of ‘metropolitan wokeness’ as he slams BLM

David Starkey has claimed ‘there will be book burnings next’ as he slammed Black Lives Matter for having ‘the same values as ISIS’.

The historian, 75, made the claims in his first interview since saying slavery was not genocide because there are ‘so many damn blacks’ around.

He has since resigned his honorary fellowship at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and Canterbury Christ Church University terminated his role as visiting professor.

Lancaster University also revoked his honorary degree and branded his comments ‘abhorrent’.

But Mr Starkey has hit back, claiming Black Lives Matter’s toppling of statues are the same values as ISIS and accused his critics of ‘Salem-style puritanism’.

He told the Telegraph: ‘We are going to see book burnings next. The British Library is now purging its shelves.’

The Tudor historian said BLM was trying to ‘delegitimise’ Britain’s past, claiming supporters were beginning with a conclusion and adapting the facts to suit it.

He also turned on the universities, branding them ‘woke superspreaders’ who ‘wear a cloak of impenetrable virtue’.

‘Right over the country, you have these kinds of implantations of Metropolitan wokeness.

‘The universities are acting rather like Covid spreaders, these are the super spreaders.’

Mr Starkey sparked anger when he used the phrase ‘so many damn blacks’ during an interview with Brexit campaigner Darren Grimes for YouTube channel Reasoned UK.

He said during the June 30 video: ‘Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain, would there?

‘An awful lot of them survived and again there’s no point in arguing against globalisation or Western civilisation.

‘They are all products of it, we are all products of it. The honest teaching of the British Empire is to say, quite simply, it is the first key stage of our globalisation.’

He added: ‘It is probably the most important moment in human history and it is still with us.’

It sparked a huge backlash, including from former chancellor Sajid Javid, who said Mr Starkey’s ‘racist’ comments were a ‘reminder of the appalling views that still exist’.

Mr Starkey later issued an apology, admitted his ‘bad mistake’ has cost him ‘every distinction and honour acquired in a long career’.

He said his ‘principal regret’ was that his ‘blundering use of language’ could endanger people’s right to freedom of speech.

On the phrase ‘so many damn blacks’, he said: ‘It was intended to emphasise, in hindsight with awful clumsiness, the numbers who survived the horrors of the slave trade.

‘Instead, it came across as a term of racial abuse. This, in the present atmosphere, where passions are high and feelings raw, was deplorably inflammatory.

‘It was a bad mistake. I am very sorry for it and I apologise unreservedly for the offence it caused.

‘I have also paid a heavy price for one offensive word with the loss of every distinction and honour acquired in a long career.

‘Moreover, this misunderstanding of my words in no way reflects my views or practice on race.

‘I have lived and worked happily and without conflict in multicultural London for almost 50 years and I spent much of the podcast discussing bi-culturalism as a key to the success of Britain’s multicultural society.’

Addressing the public reaction to his words, he added: ‘Central also to British history is a tradition of free speech.

‘If that tradition is suppressed on questions of race, resentments will fester rather than disappear.

‘My principal regret is that my blundering use of language and the penalty it has incurred will further restrict the opportunities for proper debate.

‘For it is only open debate that will heal the divisions in our society that the Black Lives Matter movement has both exposed and expressed.’