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The White House has slammed Fox News host Greg Gutfeld over his ‘dangerous and extreme Holocaust lie’ after he claimed some Jewish people survived Nazi camps by being ‘useful’.
Gutfeld’s incendiary comment came during a panel discussion in defense of the controversial new Florida slavery curriculum – also sparking rebukes from the Auschwitz Museum, and mass outrage online as he was branded a ‘scumbag’.
Middle school students in Florida will be taught that slavery gave black people ‘skills’ which could be ‘used for their personal benefit’, under the new curriculum approved by Florida’s Board of Education.
A 216-page document by the board includes new instructions for middle school teachers, including how students should be taught ‘how slaves developed skills, which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit’.
Speaking about this new curriculum during Monday’s edition of Fox News Channel’s The Five, hosts including Jesse Watters, 45, and Gutfeld, 58, were involved in a stunning exchange caught on clips which have since gone viral.
The White House has slammed Fox News host Greg Gutfeld over his ‘dangerous and extreme Holocaust lie’ after he claimed some Jewish people survived Nazi camps by being ‘useful’
It began with Watters defending the curriculum, which has been imposed by Florida governor and White House hopeful Ron DeSantis’ administration.
‘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,’ Watters said.
‘That’s not controversial. 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.’
At this point, Fox News’ liberal co-host Jessica Tarlov, 39, mentioned she is Jewish, and posed the hypothetical question: ‘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’.’
Gutfeld essentially answered yes with his response.
‘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,’ Gutfeld declared.
Jesse Watters, 45, also made a similar comparison about Black Americans who were subjected to slavery
This comes after viewing figures for Jesse Watters Primetime tanked by 800,000 after he replaced Tucker Carlson. The show aired with Watters for the first time on July 17, attracting 2.4 million viewers compared to Carlson’s usual 3.2 million
The White House weighed in on Tuesday, slamming the right-wing channel over its silence on the controversial comment.
‘What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday – and has so far failed to condemn – is an obscenity,’ Andrew Bates, deputy White House press secretary, said in a statement to CNN.
‘In defending a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement, a Fox News host told another horrid, dangerous and extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils of the Holocaust.
‘Let’s get something straight that the American people understand full well and that is not complicated: there was nothing good about slavery; there was nothing good about the Holocaust. Full stop.
‘Americans deserve to be brought together, not torn apart with poison. And they deserve the truth and the freedom to learn, not book bans and lies.’
Officials at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland also criticized their comments in a lengthy six paragraph Twitter post.
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‘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,’ they said.
Gutfeld’s incendiary comment came during a panel discussion in defense of the controversial new Florida slavery curriculum – also sparking rebukes from the Auschwitz Museum
‘While it is accurate to acknowledge that some Jews may have survived temporarily due to their perceived usefulness, it is crucial to remember that the Holocaust was a systematic genocide with the ultimate aim of exterminating the entire Jewish population.
‘It would be more appropriate to say that some Jews survived the Holocaust because they were considered temporarily useful, and the circumstances of the Nazi regime’s collapse prevented their murder.’
‘We should avoid such oversimplifications in talking about this complex tragic story,’ they concluded.
The museum also addressed Gutfeld’s reference to Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s 1946 autobiography which chronicles his experiences and how they shaped his view of the world.
‘Viktor Frankl’s observation about the specific situation in Auschwitz, which at some point became a camp that connected the functions of a concentration camp and extermination center and where deported Jews went through the selection process, highlights how some Jews became registered prisoners and might have used their skills to gain favor or prolong their lives in that particular setting,’ they said.
‘Yet, it never gave them complete protection.’
Known for his provocative rhetoric, Gutfeld, who has been a fixture of the Fox News lineup for more than 15 years after joining in 2007, received much more brazen criticism from viewers online.
Jewish academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, who describes himself as a Zionist, asked Gutfeld whether he considered his family members who died in the Holocaust as ‘just not useful enough to live’.
‘In an effort to explain how slavery benefitted African Americans, Greg Gutfeld of Fox News explains that the Jews who were useful survived the Holocaust,’ Ben-Ephraim said.
‘My family members who didn’t survive Auschwitz were just not useful enough to live. Right, Greg?’
Gutfeld’s Holocaust comment sparked outrage on Twitter, among both the Jewish community and horrified viewers
A woman named Marlene Robertson on Twitter also weighed in, branding Gutfeld a ‘scumbag’.
‘Scumbag Greg Gutfeld says that the Holocaust wasn’t all that bad because some Jews with skills survived,’ Robertson said.
‘He doesn’t mention what happened to the six million Jews who did not have skills.
‘How the f*** do advertisers, who keep Fox afloat, sleep at night?’
This comes after viewing figures for Jesse Watters Primetime tanked by 800,000 after he replaced Tucker Carlson.
The show aired with Watters for the first time on July 17, attracting 2.4 million viewers compared to Carlson’s usual 3.2 million.
It was Watters’ first 8pm show since Carlson, 54, was fired by the network in April, days after Fox settled its legal fight with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million over defamation allegations related to the 2020 presidential election.
Despite Carlson’s loyal following not all tuning in to Watters’ show, his figures easily bested his rivals on CNN and MSNBC, according to the ratings data compiled by Nielsen.
MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes had 1.222 million viewers on the same night, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 had 668,222 viewers.
