It was an awkward moment for viewers of ABC’s “The View” Monday when moderator Whoopi Goldberg repeatedly insisted that the Holocaust was not about race, prompting a heated discussion among the show’s panel.
The presenters were discussing a Tennessee state school board’s veto of the Holocaust book Maus. Goldberg then differed from his colleagues on why exactly the Holocaust should be taught to students.
“I’m surprised that’s what made you uncomfortable, the fact that there was some nudity. I mean, it’s about the Holocaust, the killing of 6 million people, but that didn’t bother you?” a baffled Goldberg said.
“I am not sure they don’t use the naked part as kind of a canard to throw you off from the fact that history that makes white people look bad,” liberal co-host Joy Behar replied.
“Maybe,” the Oscar-winning actress replied. “Well, this is white people doing it to white people. Y’all go fight amongst yourselves.”
Goldberg’s controversial comments about the Holocaust
Moments later in the debate, Goldberg again suggested that there was nothing racial about the Holocaust, which was set in motion by the Nazis because of their belief in the Aryan “master race” and their desire for racial “purity.”
Whoopi Goldberg, whose born name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, is not of Jewish ancestry, but adopted her stage name to sound deliberately Jewish, because she has said she personally identifies with Judaism.
Though Joy Behar noted that the Nazis considered Jewish people “a different race,” Goldberg continued to assert that Adolf Hitler‘s “Final Solution” was not racial.
“What is it about?” Behar asked.
“It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. That’s what it’s about,” Goldberg replied.
“But it’s about white supremacy,” co-host Ana Navarro retorted. “It’s about going after Jews and Gypsies.”
Critics blasted the show for platforming dangerous disinformation.
Jonathan Greenblatt, leader of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish anti-hate watchdog, tweeted: “No @WhoopiGoldberg, the #Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people – who they deemed to be an inferior race.
“They dehumanised them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering six million Jews. Holocaust distortion is dangerous.”
Meghan McCain, a former co-host of the The View, tweeted: “Antisemitism is a cancer and a poison that is increasingly excused in our culture and television – and permeates spaces that should shock us all.”
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted a quote from Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who wrote in Mein Kampf: “Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race?”
The US Holocaust Museum, in what was interpreted as a subtweet at Goldberg, wrote: “Racism was central to Nazi ideology. Jews were not defined by religion, but by race. Nazi racist beliefs fuelled genocide and mass murder.”
Amid growing criticism, Goldberg later apologised.
“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,” Goldberg wrote in a Twitter post.
“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,” she added
