Don’t cancel Whoopi Goldberg – her Holocaust comments need to be discussed openly

Goldberg’s views are shocking but I don’t believe they come from a place of malice, rather from deep and profound confusion

You don’t have to be Jewish to understand that Whoopi Goldberg’s comments about the Holocaust aren’t just offensive – but quite simply incorrect.

How can anyone in 2022 possibly believe that the Nazis were not racist? It’s alarming that, more than 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, and with countless testimonies, not only from survivors but also the perpetrators of this horror, some people are still confused by this. Perhaps the sheer scale of such unimaginable cruelty is too difficult to grasp. Or maybe some have been too unwilling to listen. Either way, Goldberg’s comments reveal that more needs to be done to educate those in the dark.

On Monday’s episode of ABC News talk show The View, the panel, which Goldberg was moderating, were discussing a Tennessee education board’s decision to ban Maus, a graphic novel depicting the Nazi death camps. To everyone’s shock, Goldberg said: “Let’s be truthful about this, the Holocaust isn’t about race. No, it’s not about race […] it’s about man’s inhumanity to man […] These are two white groups of people.”

Later, after a justifiable furore, Goldberg posted a statement on Twitter apologising: “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. As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the Nazis’ systematic annihilation of the Jewish people – who they deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand corrected.”

Unfortunately, prior to Goldberg’s apology she had appeared on The Late Show where she seemed to double down on her earlier comments. “As a black person, I think of race as being something that I can see,” she said. “I don’t want to fake apologise.” The show’s host Stephen Colbert asked her if she realises that Nazis considered their attempt to exterminate the Jewish people a racial issue. Goldberg replied: “The Nazis lied.” She goes on to say: “Most of the Nazis were white people and most of the people they were attacking were white people. So to me, I’m thinking, ‘How can you say it’s about race when you’re fighting each other?’ […] I’ll take your word for it.”

It has now been reported that ABC News has decided to suspend Goldberg from The View for two weeks. A note to staff written by the organisation’s president Kim Godwin reads: “While Whoopi has apologised, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impacts of her comments.” She continues: “Words matter and we must be cognisant of the impact our words have.”

It’s hard to fathom what a two week suspension is likely to achieve here or at least how it will improve the situation. But of course we live in a climate in which the online mute button has become a reality. We assume this serves a beneficial purpose; it doesn’t. While it may reduce some of the heat, it merely suppresses a vital conversation that quite clearly needs to be discussed and unpacked.

Undoubtedly, Goldberg’s comments are shocking but I don’t believe they come from a place of malice, rather from deep and profound confusion. We shouldn’t put these thoughts under house arrest, we should be calmly and carefully addressing them. Silence is never the answer; education is. If Goldberg holds these views, you can bet many others do too.

As David Baddiel explains in his book Jews Don’t Count: “From both left and right, [people] object by saying that Jews are not a race and therefore cannot suffer racism.

“[This argument] is employed by those who have learned that racism is bad, but can’t be doing with extending that sufferance to Jews: and so they downgrade the category of antisemitism to that of religious intolerance”. And yet, Baddiel continues, “antisemitism has very little to do with religion. I’m an atheist and yet the Gestapo would shoot me tomorrow.”

This is the point which needs to be remembered and appreciated. The Nazis weren’t interested in how often someone attended synagogue. It wasn’t a religious endeavour. They irrefutably and passionately believed in Aryan racial “purity” and stressed the immutability of the German race. They sought to socially construct specific groups of people under the guise of pseudo-scientific justification.

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It is baffling and frightening that Goldberg could get to the age of 66 and not realise this fact. It’s not as if it’s a deeply concealed secret; the Nazis stated it openly and often. Furthermore, it is beyond the pale that someone would suggest the Nazis and those oppressed by their tyranny were in some way “fighting each other”. This wasn’t a power struggle: one side was determined to kill, the other to merely survive.

All the while, antisemitism is on the rise both at home and abroad. Every other day there is a new attack, whether it be youths smashing the windows of Jewish homes, children being abused on a bus celebrating Hanukkah or unprovoked attacks on elderly men on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day. It feels like an unstoppable wave that could end in disaster.

Too often, those who purport to fight racism have a specific Jewish blind spot and consistently appear to not take it as seriously as other forms of racial prejudice. Perhaps Goldberg’s comments reveal why this is and could help to change that false narrative.

This really isn’t about Whoopi Goldberg but of course her words do matter. They should be used to identify an area in which we need to learn, listen and understand. Her comments are an opportunity for growth. A problem has been aired and we must not move past it in outrage. Instead, we must face up to it and accept we need to do more to quash our ignorance.