“Let’s be truthful — the Holocaust isn’t about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man – that’s what it’s about.”
This flippant and fallacious remark made by comedy actress and Hollywood heavyweight Whoopi Goldberg to her co-hosts on the hit ABC talk show The View justifiably caused a backlash.
The US Holocaust Museum, for example, quickly pointed out that racism was indeed a central tenet of Nazi ideology: “Jews were not defined by religion, but by race. Nazi racist beliefs fuelled genocide and mass murder.”
Whoopi Goldberg is facing a backlash after she said on a US talk show that the Holocaust “was not about race”.
The actress said the Nazi genocide of the Jews involved “two groups of white people”. She later apologised. pic.twitter.com/ivsSviwfNj
— talkRADIO (@talkRADIO) February 1, 2022
Referencing a neo-Nazi rally held in Florida on Saturday during which a horde of jackboot-wearing thugs chanted antisemitic slogans, including “the Jew is the devil” and “Jews rape children and drink their blood,” Israeli writer Hen Mazzig scathingly observed that, “being Jewish means watching white nationalists call for your death because you’re ‘not white’ while ladies on national TV say the Holocaust was ‘white people killing white people…y’all go fight amongst yourselves.'”
Less than 48 hours after Goldberg’s comment and amid this wave of criticism, she issued an apology:
On Today’s show, I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man.’ I should have said it is about both. As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, “The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand corrected. The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused. Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg.”
Of course, a heartfelt expression of regret was the right thing to do and, one can only hope, that Goldberg has learned a valuable lesson.
However, this remains far from certain when considering her somewhat checkered history of demeaning comments about Jews.
In 2010, Goldberg rushed to the defense of resident Hollywood antisemite Mel Gibson after audio recordings of the latter’s expletive-laden racist rants were published online. Goldberg said in response: “I have had a long friendship with Mel. You can say he’s being a bonehead, but I can’t sit and say that he’s a racist having spent time with him in my house with my kids.”
When asked directly if Gibson — who in 2006 notoriously raved while being arrested for driving under the influence that “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world”, is an antisemite, Goldberg had this to say: “Drunks say stupid stuff to people all the time… because they’re drunk, they’re out of control, they’re not thinking, they’re idiotic.”
Incidentally, she also could not bring herself to unequivocally condemn antisemitism in a 2019 interview with The New York Times Magazine.
On this occasion, she was asked to give her views on a comment made by her friend, author Alice Walker, who penned the novel upon which the 1985 Goldberg-starring film ‘The Color Purple’ is based, in which Walker praised Holocaust denier David Icke’s 1995 antisemitic text, ‘And the Truth Shall Set You Free.’
To Goldberg, though, denouncing Walker’s plaudits for Icke’s work was like asking her to “pick a side”:
I know that there are lots of complicated questions that people have about race and their place in it. And for me, understanding it works only on a person-to-person basis. I’ve never had this conversation with Alice, but I’ve had the conversation with other people, of ‘I need to hear why you feel this way.’ People want you to pick a side. I can’t. So I try to be neutral. People want you to feel the same way they do. But that’s not really about me; that’s about you.”
The Oscar-winning actress has also casually perpetuated negative stereotypes about Jews, such as when she shared a recipe for “Jewish American Princess Roast Chicken” for a charity cookbook in 1993.
When the then-national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham H. Foxman, rebuked her for this clumsy attempt at comedy, she is said to have called him up and berated him.
Goldberg caught flak again in 2012 when she waded into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by retweeting a brazen lie on Twitter that, “men, women & children in Gaza, Palestine [sic] have been getting Massacred for the past week.”
After social media users pointed out that Gaza’s terrorist rulers Hamas had instigated the fighting by indiscriminately firing more than 100 rockets at Israel in the space of 24 hours, Goldberg admitted she was actually completely ignorant about who started the military exchange.
Apparently checking the facts before spreading damaging misinformation to her 1.6 million followers is not a priority for Goldberg.
It is quite right that Goldberg’s latest antisemitic slip-up has sparked a controversy in the media (see here, here and here) – anti-Jewish ignorance and bigotry must always be robustly challenged.
But when the furor has died down — and if Goldberg’s history is anything to go by, it will — then she is liable to walk away from her bigoted comments unscathed and continue with her lucrative day job at The View.
Which begs the question: Why is one antisemitic comment not one too many?
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Image: Screenshot from “The View” (ABC) on YouTube
