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.”
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.'”
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.”
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.