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‘Ghouls’: Fox News Blasted for Declaring Jews ‘Survived’ the Holocaust by Being ‘Useful’

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On the heels of Fox News hosts defending Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis‘ new education standards requiring children to be taught slavery was beneficial to slaves, one Fox News host is now saying Jews survived the Holocaust by being “useful.”

Critics are outraged.

On Friday, Fox News host Jesse Watters in a segment called “Spinning History,” declared, “No one is arguing slaves benefited from slavery.”

“No one is saying that. It’s not true,” he insisted, before he then said it: “They’re teaching how Black people developed skills during slavery in some instances that could be applied for their own personal benefit.”

As HuffPost noted, social media users caught Watters in his own spin.

On Monday, the Fox News crew was back defending DeSantis’ new education standards, which specifically state that middle schools must teach that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

READ MORE: ‘Expendable Widgets’: DeSantis for Years Has Been Such a Bad Boss Former Staffers Formed a Support Group – Report

Again, it was Watters coming to the defense of America’s system of slavery in a segment attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, who traveled to Florida to denounce DeSantis’ new education requirements.

“This is well documented among historians,” said Watters, who has a history of racist rhetoric.

“This is historical fact that slaves did develop skills while they were enslaved and then used those skills as blacksmiths, as in agriculture, tailoring, in the shipping business, to then use to benefit themselves and their families once they were freed. That’s not controversial,” he insisted. “It actually speaks to the resilience and the aptitude of the enslaved African Americans who were at the time, able to better themselves and able to improve their situation. Despite brutal, brutal conditions, horrific and abhorrent conditions.”

Then, Fox News’ liberal co-host Jessica Tarlov weighed in. Mentioning that she is Jewish, she asked, “Would someone say about the Holocaust, for instance, that there were some benefits for Jews, right while they were hanging out in concentration camps, ‘you learned a strong work ethic, right? Maybe you learned a new skill.'”

READ MORE: Americans Have Forgotten How Bad the Trump Years Were – And ‘This Time They’re Coming in With a Plan’: New Republic

Co-host Greg Gutfeld essentially answered yes.

“Did you ever read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’?” he asked. “Viktor Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful – utility – utility kept you alive,” he declared.

Tarlov wasn’t having it.

“I’m talking about middle schoolers here, and there’s a lot of concern about what age people are prepared to understand complex issues. I’m not sure that 12 is the right age to start hearing things like, ‘and when you were enslaved here in America…'”

Brynn Tannehill, author of “American Fascism: How the GOP is Subverting Democracy,” responded to Watters’ remarks by saying, “These freaking ghouls would defend the Holocaust as a job training program if Hitler had a ‘-R’ next to his name on the ballot in 1933.”

Attorney, political commentator, and former South Carolina state lawmaker Bakari Sellers wrote: “If slavery was so good, why didn’t white folk volunteer. This is asinine.”

Calling Watters’ remarks a “disgrace,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) blasted the Fox News host.

“What really galls is behaving as though slavery existed from 1860-1865. As opposed to a system well over a hundred years in which you, your children, their children, & their children labored every day from ‘can’t see to can’t see’ subject to rape & abuse.Skills. Ugh.”

READ MORE: DeSantis Campaign’s ‘Slavery, Anti-Gay Video, Alleged Nazi Symbol’ Controversies Criticized Amid Call for More Firings

Conservative commentator Bill Kristol suggested Gutfeld’s co-workers to boycott their own show.

“Everyone else at Fox fine with Gutfeld suggesting Jews sent to concentration camps could survive ‘by being useful?’ How can any of his fellow panelists show up tomorrow to sit there next to him?”

Tannehill also responded to Kristol’s remarks, noting, “We’ve hit, ‘The Holocaust wasn’t all bad and we need to teach both sides,’ haven’t we?”

CNN host W. Kamau Bell also blasted Gutfeld: “These people show us over & over again that they are the worst & least serious people. & yet there seems to be no mechanism for unplugging their microphones. There’s no justification for what he said here, other than courting hateful ideology fattens his bank account.”

Andrew Weinstein, who served as President Biden’s U.S. Public Delegate to the United Nations and “helped craft” a “high-profile forum on global antisemitism” at the UN, writes, “Greg Gutfeld argued on Fox tonight that Jews in concentration camps survived the Holocaust by ‘having skills’ and ‘being useful.’ This is vile, untrue, and an insult to the millions of victims of Nazi atrocities.”

Political satirist Jeremy Newburger adds, “Two things anger me about Fox News’ @greggutfeld. One is that he suggested Useful Jews survived the Holocaust, as if 6 million Jews were not useful enough, and secondly that he said this in support of the racist argument that Blacks benefitted from slavery.”

The Auschwitz Museum in a lengthy post (full post at the end 0f this article) responded, writing, “While it is true that some Jews may have used their skills or usefulness to increase their chances of survival during the Holocaust, it is essential to contextualize this statement properly and understand that it does not represent the complex history of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany.”

The Museum adds, “being ‘useful” did not guarantee safety, as the Nazis eventually decided to liquidate them, leading to the murder of those considered valuable as well.”

Read the Auschwitz Museum’s post below and watch the videos above, or see all at this link.

 

 

 

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law

Arkansas Senator Files Bill to Abolish State Library, Give Education Department Control

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The right-wing war on knowledge continues as an Arkansas state senator filed a bill Thursday to abolish the State Library as well as the library board.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Jonesboro), along with State Rep. Wayne Long (R-Bradford), filed Senate Bill 536 on Thursday. The bill would not just remove all references to the State Library from existing laws, but also put the state’s other libraries under the control of the Arkansas Department of Education.

A previous version of the bill, SB184, would have also shuttered the Arkansas Educational Television Commission, which oversees the state’s PBS stations, according to the Arkansas Advocate.

READ MORE: Clean Up Alabama Wants State to Dump ‘Marxist’ American Library Association

The Arkansas State Library is not just a regular library. In addition to providing information to state agencies and lawmakers, it also distributes funding to the other libraries around the state. Under SB536, the Department of Education would take on all its responsibilities. The State Library is officially a part of the Department of Education already, but it operates as an independent organization.

While the proposal may sound like a shuffling-around of duties, the main thrust of the bill is to allow more direct control over the Arkansas library system by controlling the purse strings. The bill would keep libraries from distributing “age-inappropriate materials” to those under 17 years old and sex education materials from those under 12. Libraries would also have to set up a system where those in the community could request that certain items be banned for minors, according to KARK-TV. Those that don’t meet these restrictions will have state funding pulled.

Earlier legislation filed by Sullivan and passed into law includes Act 242, which ended the requirement for library directors to have a master’s degree in library science, the Advocate reported.  Sullivan, however, was unsuccessful with a proposed amendment to another bill that would strip funding from libraries affiliated with the American Library Association—meaning most, if not all of them. That amendment was rejected this week over concerns the language in it was too broad, according to the Advocate.

The ALA has been a target of right-wing politicians and activists upset with its free speech stance and fights against censorship. Sullivan in particular has objected to a provision in the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights protecting library access for all ages, the Advocate reported. He also called for the state’s chapter of the ALA to be defunded—despite the fact that it receives no state funding.

Image via Shutterstock

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BIGOTRY

Texas to Investigate Anonymous Complaint Teachers Used Trans Student’s Pronouns

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After a Moms for Liberty member claimed that teachers at a Texas high school used a trans student’s new name and proper pronouns, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered an investigation.

On February 13, Denise Bell of the right wing, anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty, addressed the Houston Independent School Board. She read a statement that she said came from the parents of a trans student at Bellaire High School. The parents were upset that teachers used the student’s new name and pronouns, according to Erin in the Morning. The anonymous statement Bell read said that the change happened without parental consent, and “goes against our Christian faith, the advice of [their] therapist and quite frankly common sense.”

Bell then claimed that the school district was “purposely and secretively transitioning minors.”

READ MORE: GOP Candidate Complaining She Wasn’t Allowed to ‘Have Kids Laugh At’ Transgender Students in Viral Video Draws Rebuke

State Representative Steve Toth—who represents a different district than the school is in—informed Abbott of the complaint in a letter on February 26. Two weeks later, Abbott replied to Toth’s letter, revealing he told the Texas Education Agency to investigate the Bellaire High School, accusing the teachers of helping “to ‘socially transition’ a student—violating the express wishes of the child’s mother,” which Abbott called “inappropriate and potentially unlawful.”

Abbott directed the TEA to not just determine whether or not the teachers did indeed use the trans student’s name and pronouns, but also open a full investigation into the school. TEA was told to find out if the school had also violated “policies concerning sexual education curriculum, parental consent for communications with students, mental health services or guidance to students, and parent grievances”; if any school employees had “engaged in misconduct”; and whether any student “has been subjected to abuse or neglect.”

That last one has a footnote on “abuse or neglect,” referring to a statement from President Donald Trump’s March 4 speech in front of a joint session of Congress:

“A few years ago, January Littlejohn and her husband discovered that their daughter’s school had secretly socially transitioned their 13-year-old little girl. Teachers and administrators conspired to deceive January and her husband, while encouraging her daughter to use a new name and pronouns—‘they/them’ pronouns, actually—all without telling January, who is here tonight and is now a courageous advocate against this form of child abuse.”

This is not the first time Abbott and his administration have attacked the state’s trans community. In his “State of the State Address” this year, he said that teachers who discuss gender transition with students should be fired, according to KTRK-TV. Texas has also banned trans students from sports as well as the use of puberty blockers in cases of minors experiencing gender dysphoria, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Image via Shutterstock

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AMERICA FIRST?

Tim Walz: ‘Racism’ Motivates MAGA Movement to Pardon Derek Chauvin

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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz didn’t mince words when asked what the motivation was for the new movement among MAGA Republicans to convince President Donald Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who killed George Floyd in 2020.

“Racism. It’s racist. OK? That’s what I believe,” Walz said in an interview with Semafor published Wednesday.

The calls to pardon Chauvin started with an online petition earlier this month, according to The Independent. The pardon push picked up steam this week when conservative commentator Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire launched a webseries, “The Case of Derek Chauvin.” Shapiro claims the officer was convicted on “extraordinarily scanty evidence,” saying Floyd did not die from having Chauvin’s knee on his neck for over nine minutes, but rather from drugs in Floyd’s system and heart disease.

READ MORE: Derek Chauvin Sentenced to 22-and-a-Half Years for Murder of George Floyd – Less Than Maximum Possible Sentence

Walz, however, disputes this interpretation of events.

“This was a man who murdered George Floyd on TV,” Walz said, adding that a pardon “would undermine the faith in the system.”

The White House, however, has denied that a Chauvin pardon is in Trump’s plans. Earlier this month, Trump said he hadn’t even heard about a push to pardon Floyd’s killer, and on Wednesday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeated that a pardon is “not something he’s considering at this time,” according to The Grio.

However, some commentators, like The Hill’s Juan Williams are skeptical, pointing out that Trump has pardoned two police officers convicted of killing a Black man in the first days of his second term.

In 2020, after the killing, Trump condemned Chauvin.

“We all saw what we saw. It’s hard to conceive anything other than what we did see. It should have never happened,” Trump said.

If Trump were to pardon Chauvin, it would be largely moot. Presidents can only pardon those convicted on federal charges. Chauvin was convicted on both federal and Minnesota state charges. In the event Trump cleared the federal charges, the main thing that would happen is that Chauvin would be moved from the federal prison in Big Spring, Texas to a Minnesota state prison.

Minnesota sentenced Chauvin to 22 and a half years for murder; on the federal level, he was sentenced to 21 years for violating Floyd’s civil rights. Barring a federal pardon, the two sentences are running concurrently, not consecutively.

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