Atlantic writer says US just as bad as Nazi Germany
Jemele Hill, writer for The Atlantic, shared her view that the US was just as bad as Nazi Germany, comparing its treatment of African-Americans to the Holocaust.
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Jemele Hill, writer for The Atlantic, shared her view that the US was just as bad as Nazi Germany, comparing its treatment of African-Americans to the Holocaust.
Jemele Hill, writer for The Atlantic, shared her view that the US was just as bad as Nazi Germany, comparing its treatment of African-Americans to the Holocaust.
Hill wrote that anyone who believes that the US wasn't as bad in its treatments of African-Americans as the Nazis were to the Jewish people of Europe doesn't realize "how wrong [they] are."
Been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s new book, “Caste,” and if you were of the opinion that the United States wasn’t nearly as bad as Nazi Germany, how wrong you are. Can’t encourage you enough to read this masterpiece.
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill)
In 2018, Hill called Donald Trump a "white supremacist." In response to blowback from that statement, she said "I thought I was saying water is wet." She noted that she "didn't even think it was controversial."
National Review's Dan McLaughlin called Hill's tweet comparing the US to Nazi Germany "Holocaust denial."
This is - let's not put too fine a point on it - Holocaust denial. https://t.co/4lIR29cqp6
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank)
Brian Lieb, chairman of HaShevet, also took issue with the comparison.
Nazi Germany murdered Six Million Jews & millions of non-Jews. They looted Jewish businesses & then burned them to the ground.
Shame on you @jemelehill. This is a horrible tweet. https://t.co/YsX3ymSa9c
— Bryan E. Leib (@Bryan_E_Leib)
Caroline McCarthy simply stated: "saying that the US was just as bad as Nazi Germany is a garbage take."
Guys, I didn’t think I’d ever have to tweet this, but saying that the US was just as bad as Nazi Germany is a garbage take.
— Caroline McCarthy ? (@caro)
Hill, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention, was writing in response to a new book called Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, which has made the rounds as required reading among the anti-racist activist set. In it, Wilkerson conflates the Indian treatment of the Dalits, the German treatment of Jews under the Nazi regime, and America's treatment of the African-American people, all while positing that America has a strict "caste" system.
Wilkerson wrote that in each of these three instances, the nations "relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement."
The pushback against Hill's statement was swift and fierce, with many upset that the comparison was made. Still other's took the tack that Hitler, notorious leader of the Nazi regime, took America's treatment of both Native Americans and African Americans as inspiration for his own organized genocide.
ArcDigital's Bernie Belvedere called Hill's take "breathtakingly irresponsible."
This is breathtakingly irresponsible. How is anyone supposed to trust your judgment after this horror show of an opinion?
— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere)
James Lindsay, of New Discourses, was concerned for Hill's mental health.
Are you ok? Do you need help? You seem to be catastrophizing to an extreme degree about the society you live in, and cognitive behavioral therapy can make a difference in this.
— James Lindsay, Captain Deathstar Underpants (@ConceptualJames)
Oprah called it "required reading for all humanity," and featured it on her book club. The New York Times called it "an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far."
Gad Saad, author and professors, said that in this comparison, Hill was defaming the memory of those who died in the Holocaust. He brought up the conflict of the Lebanese war, which served as the backdrop for his childhood, and shared his believe that Hill was whining "about her country from the comfort of her privileged life."
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— Gad Saad (@GadSaad)
Dov Hikind, former New York state assemblyman, called the opinion that the US was like the Nazi's "sick, demented, and incredibly ignorant!"
This “opinion” of Hill’s is sick, demented, and incredibly ignorant!
To compare America to Nazi Germany proves she understands neither!
How she can write for @TheAtlantic is beyond me but she’s insulted the memory of 6 MILLION dead Jews and all the survivors of Hitler’s Hell! https://t.co/AYbjIjXsQu
— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov)
Germany has taken its place leading Europe, and has been largely forgiven for its sins on the continent, but activists hold the US to a different standard of progress.
It’s awesome that you can be this publicly, demonstrably wrong about history, slander the country you’re living large in, recognize no moral progress over time, and walk away patting yourself on the back while having socioeconomic privilege few attain.
— Perspicuous (@chaos_sonata)
Hill later clarified her position, in saying that it was a historical comparison she was making, and not one with today. She said that she "was referring specifically to our racial history."
Nowhere in my tweet did I say the current state of America is like Nazi Germany. I was referring specifically to our racial history. The parallels have been pointed out by plenty of historians, not just Isabel Wilkerson. You tell me to grow up. I say, you need to read more.
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill)
Wilkerson's book tackles the 2016 presidential election, and her belief that the election of President Barack Obama, the nation's first African American president, did not spell progress for the US.
She asks what so many asked in the wake of that election, which was "Why do the white working classes in America vote against their economic interests?"
For Wilkerson, the answer was that those white people who voted against "their economic interests" were instead voting to uphold a "caste system."
She wrote: "Maintaining the caste system as it had always been was in their interest. And some were willing to accept short-term discomfort, forgo health insurance, risk contamination of the water and air, and even die to protect their long-term interest in the hierarchy as they had known it."
Wilkerson suggests, much like Kendi, that the US needs something along the lines of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission to deal with the fallout from slavery and the mistreatment of African Americans.
Meanwhile, the organization that is working diligently to defund police and enforce equity, BLM, is founded in socialist ideology. The same kind of government that saw to the genocide of millions across Europe, which is being touted by intellectuals as comparable to the American experiment, has led to massive death every time it has been tried.
Conor Friedersdorf, who also writes for The Atlantic, pointed out that it's hard to understand why Marxism is so popular among the leftist intelligentsia, given how deadly that form of government has been.
I'm more baffled that every Marxist revolution ending in mass murder and/or immiseration hasn't sunken in https://t.co/TCf7rabdbd
— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64)
