Whoopi Goldberg Apologizes for Saying Holocaust Was ‘Not About Race’

Feb 1, 2022
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Whoopi Goldberg, the comic and actress who can be a co-host of the ABC discuss present “The View,” stated repeatedly throughout an episode of the present that aired on Monday that the Holocaust was not about race, feedback that come at a time of rising antisemitism globally. She later apologized.

Within the episode, Ms. Goldberg stated the Holocaust was about “man’s inhumanity to man” and “not about race.” When one in every of her co-hosts challenged that assertion, saying the Holocaust was pushed by white supremacy, Ms. Goldberg stated: “However these are two white teams of individuals.”

She added, “That is white individuals doing it to white individuals, so y’all going to battle amongst yourselves.” As she continued to talk, music got here on, indicating a business break.

Throughout World Conflict II, below a coverage of mass extermination, the Nazis killed six million Jews — a couple of third of the world’s Jewish inhabitants on the time — on the idea that they had been an inferior race.

After her feedback prompted widespread criticism, Ms. Goldberg apologized. “The Jewish individuals world wide have at all times had my assist,” she said in a statement posted on Monday evening. “I’m sorry for the damage I’ve precipitated.”

In an look on Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Present” on Monday, Ms. Goldberg defined that, as a Black individual, she thinks of racism as being based mostly on pores and skin coloration however that she realized not everybody sees it that means. “I get it. Of us are offended,” she stated. “I settle for that, and I did it to myself.”

Jewish teams stated Ms. Goldberg’s feedback had been harmful and the most recent instance of rising ignorance concerning the Nazi genocide. The chief govt of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, wrote on Twitter of the Nazis: “They dehumanized them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering 6 million Jews,” he stated. “Holocaust distortion is harmful.”

Meghan McCain, a former co-host of “The View,” stated on Twitter on Monday that antisemitism was “a poison that’s more and more excused in our tradition and tv — and permeates in areas that ought to shock us all.”

In line with a 2014 report by the Anti-Defamation League, a couple of billion individuals globally maintain antisemitic views. Greater than a 3rd of individuals within the 102 nations polled had by no means heard of the Holocaust, the report discovered.

Jewish communities world wide have indicated a rise in annual antisemitic incidents, in keeping with analysis by the Anti-Defamation League. That feeling is pronounced in Europe, the place 89 p.c of Jews felt that antisemitism of their nations had elevated between 2013 and 2018, in keeping with a 2018 European Union survey of about 16,500 Jewish individuals. The survey additionally discovered that 40 p.c of European Jews anxious about being bodily attacked, and throughout 12 E.U. nations the place Jews have been residing for hundreds of years, greater than a 3rd stated they had been contemplating emigrating as a result of they not felt protected as Jews.

Final month, the United Nations adopted a decision that condemns denial and distortion of the Holocaust. Ms. Goldberg’s feedback additionally got here weeks after a gunman held a number of individuals hostage at a Texas synagogue for 11 hours.

David Baddiel, a British comic and the creator of the e book “Jews Don’t Rely,” stated in an interview that antisemitism has little or no to do with faith itself — descendants of Jewish individuals who had transformed to Christianity had been additionally killed within the Holocaust as a result of they had been considered as members of the Jewish race.

“In case you are a race, an ethnicity, as Jews are, which have suffered persecution over many, many centuries, principally as a result of that occurs to be who you might be, occurs to be who your dad and mom are, occurs to be who your ancestors are, then that’s racism,” Mr. Baddiel stated.

“There is no such thing as a different phrase for it.”



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