The Florida “Slavery Skills” Scandal: Fox News Doubles Down
In “We Must Stop Putting Lipstick on the Pigs of History,” I used analogy to illustrate how “some, by stretching the truth, decency and humanity to a breaking point, might find a sliver of redeeming value in even the worst tragedy.”
The purpose was to illustrate the absurdity and moral callousness of Ron de Santis’ Florida Department of Education requiring that instruction of children in African American history should include “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
With the caveat that I did not “intend to, by rhetorical comparison, satire or other, trivialize or minimize the horrors of the Holocaust or other tragic events,” I mentioned how “some might claim that the ‘medical’ atrocities carried out by Joseph Mengele et al in the Nazi concentration camps might have had some scientific value, in particular for the health of the Volk, or [Aryan] race.”
For a fleeting moment, I considered using another absurd “analogy” to illustrate the preposterousness of the Florida “standard.” I immediately rejected it as too repugnant and inappropriate, as it might unintentionally do what I was attempting not to do: trivialize the Holocaust.
However, leave it to Fox News to do exactly that, and worse, in an attempt to “contextualize” Florida’s indefensible characterization of slavery.
According to Raw Story, Fox News , on Monday, was once again defending Florida’ new education standards, but went one callous step further.
After Jesse Watters claimed it was a “historical fact that slaves did develop skills while they were enslaved and then used those skills…to benefit themselves and their families once they were freed…”, Fox News’ co-host Jessica Tarlov 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, without missing a beat, “essentially answered yes,” referring to “Man’s Search for Meaning” where, according to Greg Gutfeld, “Victor 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…”
Several personalities have publicly condemned Gutfeld’s assertions. Among them, President Biden’s former U.S. Public Delegate to the United Nations, Andrew Weinstein, who wrote: “This is vile, untrue, and an insult to the millions of victims of Nazi atrocities.”
The Auschwitz Museum put out a lengthy statement that said in part:
Millions of Jews were brutally murdered in execution sites, mainly across the east of occupied Europe, with entire communities wiped out regardless of their usefulness or contributions to society. While some of the ghettos seemed to have the goal of being productive and Jews were used as slave labor there, being “useful” did not guarantee safety, as the Nazis eventually decided to liquidate them, leading to the murder of those considered valuable as well…Being skilled or useful did not spare them from the horrors of the gas chambers. Furthermore, during the final stages of the Holocaust, as the Nazi system was collapsing, concentration camp prisoners were evacuated to shrinking camp systems, resulting in the death of many. In these circumstances, being useful did not offer protection either.
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