Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of “The View”, caused general consternation on her show on Monday night when she dismissed the racism of the Nazis.

The discussion began over a Tennessee school board’s decision to ban “Maus,” the celebrated graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its curriculum.

“Holocaust isn’t about race”

Ben Shapiro: Whoopi Goldberg’s denial of Nazi racism a mask for left-wing anti-semitism
He who deals deceitfully shall not live in my house; he who speaks untruth shall not stand before my eyes. Psalms 101:7
Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of “The View”, caused general consternation on her show on Monday night when she dismissed the racism of the Nazis. The discussion began over a Tennessee school board’s decision to ban “Maus,” the celebrated graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its curriculum.
“Holocaust isn’t about race”
“Let’s be truthful about it,” Goldberg said on the show. “The Holocaust isn’t about race,” she said, insisting several times. “It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”
Her co-hosts pointed out that the Nazi ideology was explicitly white supremacist. Co-host Joy Behar objected, arguing that Nazis “considered Jews a different race.” Guest co-host Ana Navarro asserted that “it’s about white supremacy, it’s about going after Jews and Gypsies.” But Goldberg continued to speak.
“But these are two white groups of people,” Goldberg said. “The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s about how people treat each other. It’s a problem. It doesn’t matter if you are black or white. Black, white, Jews, Italian, everybody eats each other.

Jewish Groups object

Jewish groups were quick to point out her egregious error. American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris wrote, “Whoopi Goldberg absurdly claims the Holocaust ‘isn’t about race.’ Nazi Germany considered all Jews a ‘subhuman race.’ That’s why they wanted to exterminate the entire Jewish people, including my family, & almost succeeded. Please rethink & apologize.”
The Auschwitz Museum tweeted her a link to an online course on the Holocaust showing graphically the error of Goldberg’s statement.

Apology…But not really

Goldberg posted the apology to her Twitter account late on Monday night.
“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,” she wrote. “As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people – who they deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand corrected.”
“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, before concluding, “Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg.”

pic.twitter.com/KUpdyhQnho

— Whoopi Goldberg (@WhoopiGoldberg) February 1, 2022

She later tried to explain her original remarks on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

“I feel, being black, when we talk about race it’s a very different thing to me,” she said. “So I said I thought the Holocaust wasn’t about race. And it made people very angry. I’m getting a lot of mail from folks and a lot of anger. But I thought it was a salient discussion because as a black person I think of race as being something that I can see.”
“When you talk about being a racist, you can’t call this [the Holocaust] racism,” she said. “This was evil. This wasn’t based on skin. You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. You had to delve deeply and figure it out. My point is: they had to do the work. If the Klan is coming down the street and I’m standing with a Jewish friend: I’m going to run. But if my friend decides not to run, they’ll get passed by most times. Because you can’t tell who is Jewish. You don’t know.”

ADL agrees: Racism is only white against black

Goldberg citing the ADL in her apology is more than a bit ironic as the organization would agree with her original (and horribly flawed) premise that racism is only from whites toward blacks. As its name implies, the Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 with the expressed goal “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all”. Despite its professed mission, the ADL would agree with Goldberg that racism is based solely on color and can only be perpetrated by white people against blacks. On its website, the ADL defines racism as “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people”.
Ben Shapiro: Left-wing covering for anti-Semitism
The Orthodox Jewish conservative political pundit, Ben Shapiro, wrote about the incident on the Daily Wire, explaining that Goldberg’s outrageous comments were a product of the flawed principles behind the left-wing intersectional politics. Shapiro emphasized that the left-wing “downplays Jewish minority status,” thereby enabling anti-semitism within their ranks.
“The intersectional argument is that Jews are white people, and that Jews are disproportionately successful thanks to ‘white supremacy,’” Shapiro wrote. “Because racism is ‘animus plus power,’ and Jews are powerful because they are white, anti-Semitism from non-white supremacists isn’t bigotry.”
“This logic is why the Left will condemn anti-Semitic attacks like the one at the Tree of Life but quickly memory hole anti-Semitic attacks by Black Hebrew Israelites in NJ or radical Muslims in TX,” Shapiro said in reference to the 2017 anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue that left 11 dead. In New Jersey and elsewhere, members of the Black Hebrew Israelites reportedly hurl anti-Semitic language, claiming to be God’s “true chosen people.” In 2019, the suspects behind an anti-semitic in Jersey City, New Jersey, were reportedly Black Hebrew Israelites as well. In Mid-January, an Islamic extremist with a history of making anti-Semitic remarks held a Synagogue hostage, but the Left and even the FBI tried to say anti-Semitism had nothing to do with that attack.
“This logic is also why the Left will embrace and/or justify radical Islamists who wish to destroy the State of Israel rather than siding with a liberal democracy that includes a significant Muslim minority,” Shapiro added.
“Anti-Semitism, in this theory, is only present when it springs from actual white supremacists,” Shapiro observed. “Other acts of anti-Semitism are just a reflection of the dispossessed lashing out against those who have more institutional power.”
“The attempt to abstract the causes of the Holocaust from Jew-hatred to ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ is actually a way of obscuring and covering for anti-Semitism,” he concluded.
Whoopi Goldberg’s claims to be Jewish
Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson. She took a Jewish surname for the stage because she claims to be Jewish. In an interview in the Jewish Chronicle in 2011 she said, “My mother did not name me Whoopi, but Goldberg is my name—it’s part of my family, part of my heritage, just like being black”, and “I just know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don’t go to temple, but I do remember the holidays.”
She went on to say that “people would say ‘Come on, are you Jewish?’ And I always say ‘Would you ask me that if I was white? I bet not.’” One account recalls that her mother, Emma Johnson, thought the family’s original surname was “not Jewish enough” for her daughter to become a star.

Later independent research and a DNA test refute her claims of Jewish ancestry.

“Let’s be truthful about it,” Goldberg said on the show. “The Holocaust isn’t about race,” she said, insisting several times. “It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”

Her co-hosts pointed out that the Nazi ideology was explicitly white supremacist. Co-host Joy Behar objected, arguing that Nazis “considered Jews a different race.” Guest co-host Ana Navarro asserted that “it’s about white supremacy, it’s about going after Jews and Gypsies.” But Goldberg continued to speak.

“But these are two white groups of people,” Goldberg said. “The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s about how people treat each other. It’s a problem. It doesn’t matter if you are black or white. Black, white, Jews, Italian, everybody eats each other.

Jewish Groups object

Jewish groups were quick to point out her egregious error. American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris wrote, “Whoopi Goldberg absurdly claims the Holocaust ‘isn’t about race.’ Nazi Germany considered all Jews a ‘subhuman race.’ That’s why they wanted to exterminate the entire Jewish people, including my family, & almost succeeded. Please rethink & apologize.”

The Auschwitz Museum tweeted her a link to an online course on the Holocaust showing graphically the error of Goldberg’s statement.

@WhoopiGoldberg ‘Holocaust–the destruction of European Jews’
A seven-chapter online course about the history of the #Holocaust.

Links to all chapters below in the tweet below.https://t.co/Law3fQRRMS pic.twitter.com/YJqwbG9ld0

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 31, 2022

Apology…But not really

Goldberg posted the apology to her Twitter account late on Monday night.

“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,” she wrote. “As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people – who they deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand corrected.”

“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, before concluding, “Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg.”

She later tried to explain her original remarks on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

“I feel, being black, when we talk about race it’s a very different thing to me,” she said. “So I said I thought the Holocaust wasn’t about race. And it made people very angry. I’m getting a lot of mail from folks and a lot of anger. But I thought it was a salient discussion because as a black person I think of race as being something that I can see.” 

“When you talk about being a racist, you can’t call this [the Holocaust] racism,” she said. “This was evil. This wasn’t based on skin. You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. You had to delve deeply and figure it out. My point is: they had to do the work. If the Klan is coming down the street and I’m standing with a Jewish friend: I’m going to run. But if my friend decides not to run, they’ll get passed by most times. Because you can’t tell who is Jewish. You don’t know.”

ADL agrees: Racism is only white against black

Goldberg citing the ADL in her apology is more than a bit ironic as the organization would agree with her original (and horribly flawed) premise that racism is only from whites toward blacks. As its name implies, the Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 with the expressed goal “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all”. Despite its professed mission, the ADL would agree with Goldberg that racism is based solely on color and can only be perpetrated by white people against blacks. On its website, the ADL defines racism as “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people”.

Ben Shapiro: Left-wing covering for anti-Semitism

The Orthodox Jewish conservative political pundit, Ben Shapiro, wrote about the incident on the Daily Wire, explaining that Goldberg’s outrageous comments were a product of the flawed principles behind the left-wing intersectional politics. Shapiro emphasized that the left-wing “downplays  Jewish minority status,” thereby enabling anti-semitism within their ranks.

“The intersectional argument is that Jews are white people, and that Jews are disproportionately successful thanks to ‘white supremacy,’” Shapiro wrote. “Because racism is ‘animus plus power,’ and Jews are powerful because they are white, anti-Semitism from non-white supremacists isn’t bigotry.”

“This logic is why the Left will condemn anti-Semitic attacks like the one at the Tree of Life but quickly memory hole anti-Semitic attacks by Black Hebrew Israelites in NJ or radical Muslims in TX,” Shapiro said in reference to the 2017 anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue that left 11 dead. In New Jersey and elsewhere, members of the Black Hebrew Israelites reportedly hurl anti-Semitic language, claiming to be God’s “true chosen people.” In 2019, the suspects behind an anti-semitic in Jersey City, New Jersey, were reportedly Black Hebrew Israelites as well. In Mid-January, an Islamic extremist with a history of making anti-Semitic remarks held a Synagogue hostage, but the Left and even the FBI tried to say anti-Semitism had nothing to do with that attack.

“This logic is also why the Left will embrace and/or justify radical Islamists who wish to destroy the State of Israel rather than siding with a liberal democracy that includes a significant Muslim minority,” Shapiro added.

“Anti-Semitism, in this theory, is only present when it springs from actual white supremacists,” Shapiro observed. “Other acts of anti-Semitism are just a reflection of the dispossessed lashing out against those who have more institutional power.”

“The attempt to abstract the causes of the Holocaust from Jew-hatred to ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ is actually a way of obscuring and covering for anti-Semitism,” he concluded.

Whoopi Goldberg’s claims to be Jewish

Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson. She took a Jewish surname for the stage because she claims to be Jewish. In an interview in the Jewish Chronicle in 2011 she said, “My mother did not name me Whoopi, but Goldberg is my name—it’s part of my family, part of my heritage, just like being black”, and “I just know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don’t go to temple, but I do remember the holidays.” 

She went on to say that “people would say ‘Come on, are you Jewish?’ And I always say ‘Would you ask me that if I was white? I bet not.’” One account recalls that her mother, Emma Johnson, thought the family’s original surname was “not Jewish enough” for her daughter to become a star.

Later independent research and a DNA test refute her claims of Jewish ancestry.