FRANCHESCA RAMSEY: If you think anti-Semitism is over,
you clearly haven’t read our comments section.
You might think discrimination against Jewish people,
which is know as anti-Semitism, and Romani people,
called anti-Romani-ism,
ended with the Holocaust and World War II,
but this kind of hatred still thrives in 2016
and it’s popping up especially in conversations
surrounding the presidential election.
To talk about this firsthand,
I’ve enlisted the help of journalist Dana Schwartz.
DANA SCHWARTZ: Thanks Francesca! Did you know that outspoken anti-Semite
and former KKK leader David Duke
has endorsed Donald Trump for president?
Or that on several occasions Trump
has retweeted accounts run by neo-Nazis?
Like, more than once.
Back in July, the Republican candidate for president
even tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton
in front of piles of money with a six-sided star declaring
she’s the “most corrupt candidate ever”.
Of course Trump denied
that it was an anti-Semitic reference,
claiming that it was a “sheriff’s star”
or “regular star”.
But it doesn’t take a history expert
to realize that this lousy excuse
for a meme is reminiscent of Nazi propaganda,
which portrayed Jewish folks as greedy and corrupt
in order to stir up public hatred of them.
I’m not even reading too much into that image —
it was literally posted on a neo-Nazi
website implying that Hillary was owned by Jewish bankers.
White supremacist Trump supporters
have even gone as far as creating
a Google Chrome extension
which highlighted common Jewish last names
with three parentheses whenever they appeared online.
That way anti-Semites could specifically recognize
when a Jewish reporter wrote an article
and then harass them about it.
Trump denies that he promotes anti-Semitism,
but just this month his own son casually joked that
if Republicans were acting like Hillary Clinton,
the media would “be warming up the gas chamber right now”.
Eugh. It’s important to hold people accountable in instances
like that where they casually refer to the Holocaust
because these remarks minimize
the tragedy and the devastation it
caused and they encourage white nationalists
who still exist today.
FRANCHESCA: Part of the reason so many don’t take anti-Semitism
and anti-Romani-ism as seriously as we should is
because of how we talk about it.
If there’s anything we’ve learned over 60-plus episodes of Decoded,
it’s that our speech is often influenced in ways
we don’t realize.
Lots of misinformation has shaped how we speak about the Holocaust
and the people who were affected by it
in both the past and present.
We’ve even made this huge mistake on our own show,
which is what inspired us to tackle the things people
often get wrong when talking about the Holocaust today.
Misconception number one —
it’s okay to use the Holocaust as a comparison or a joke.
In our video ‘5 Excuses
for Slavery that Need to Stop’,
we used the example of the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC
as proof that America has seriously acknowledged
the Holocaust as a tragedy versus
the lack of an African-American museum
to acknowledge the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
This was both out of line and incorrect on our part.
Since releasing that episode,
the National Museum of African American History
and Culture had its official opening
in Washington DC on September 24th 2016,
which is great news.
Still, it’s not fair to pit two distinct tragedies
like the Holocaust and American slavery
against one another to try and make a point,
but this kind of comparison happens a lot,
with people likening the Holocaust to everything
from abortion to the meat industry.
And casually calling someone a ‘grammar Nazi’
or ‘feminazi’ is not only eye-rollingly uncreative
but totally undermines how awful the Nazis actually were.
I mean, there are people alive
right now that actually survived Nazi Germany.
What they went through is nothing
like someone going in on one of your tweets.
‘Your’ is possessive;
‘you’re’ is a contraction, as in ‘you are’.
Sorry, I had to get that off my chest,
and look — no one died.
Misconception number two —
the Holocaust was an example of white on white genocide.
Dana, you wanna take this one?
DANA: The Holocaust specifically targeted Jewish and Romani people
as not white because of pseudoscience
that claimed they were inferior to the Aryan race
and should be killed to improve
the overall health of the German people.
FRANCHESCA: As I’ve mentioned in previous episodes,
whether we’re talking about Aryan, Caucasian, or Irish,
throughout history whiteness has been a moving target,
with certain groups being granted or denied white status.
And because of this, there are numerous
misconceptions as to where Jewish and Romani people
fall in terms of whiteness,
largely because both groups predate
the idea of whiteness itself.
Misconception number three —
the Holocaust only targeted Jewish people.
In our ‘5 Excuses for Slavery’ video,
we also made the mistake of saying
that Germany subjected millions of other ethnic groups
to genocide in addition to the Jewish people.
While this was partially a case of misspeaking,
it does highlight a common misconception.
Too often it’s glossed over
that the Holocaust was also an effort
to eradicate Romani people,
as well as homosexuals, people with disabilities,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic priests,
as well as millions of Polish people,
Hungarians, Czechs,
and other Eastern Europeans.
They even set up a program to sterilize black children.
DANA: TL;DR — the Nazis hated lots of people.
FRANCHESCA: Misconception number four —
America was 100 percent the hero of the Holocaust.
Because the role America played in the Holocaust
is often oversimplified in classrooms
and pop culture as entirely positive,
you might be surprised to learn our nation’s involvement
wasn’t totally flawless.
In 1939, the US literally turned away
a ship of 900 German-Jewish immigrants,
254 of which ended up being killed in concentration camps.
Shortly after that, the US rejected a proposal
to allow 20 thousand Jewish children
to come to the US for safety.
DANA: The Nazis even garnered a lot of support in the US.
In 1939, 20 thousand members of an American Nazi
group called the German American
Bund rallied together in Madison Square Garden.
Major American companies like Standard
Oil and DuPont Chemical did business with the Nazi regime
and even recruited former Nazi scientists after the war.
And Henry Ford, considered one
of the greatest American inventors of all time,
was an outspoken anti-Semite and a Nazi sympathizer.
FRANCHESCA: The Holocaust may have taken place in the past,
but its legacy still lives on today
so we should give it the respectful treatment it deserves.
Thanks to our guest Dana, and thanks for watching.
We’ll see you next time right here on Decoded.