Whoopi Goldberg Doubles Down On Antisemitic Comments
Whoopi Goldberg, in trying to explain her statements earlier this year about Jews and the Holocaust, manages to make things somehow even worse.
Whoopi Goldberg, the outspoken co-host of The View and star of Eddie, has again, for the second time this year, made comments about how the Holocaust was not about race. Reporting from Deadline, many people correctly lambasted the star for her comments to The Sunday Times of London, which stated “My best friend said, ‘Not for nothing is there no box on the census for the Jewish race. So that leads me to believe that we’re probably not a race.'”
Ironically, Whoopi Goldberg made this statement while promoting her new film, Till, about the unjustified murder of the young black boy Emmet Till while visiting family in Mississippi in 1955, and is about someone being killed just because of how they look. When the interviewer pointed out to Goldberg that Nazis viewed Jews as a race, the one-time highest-paid actress in the world said, “They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?”
In an interview from Sunday, Whoopi Goldberg doubled down on her antisemitic comments: “My best friend said, ‘Not for nothing is there no box on the census for the Jewish race. So that leads me to believe that we’re probably not a race.'”
In a statement issued later, after the Deadline report was published, Whoopi Goldberg walked back her statements, claiming that “I’m still learning a lot and believe me, I heard everything everyone said to me. I believe that the Holocaust was about race, and I am still as sorry now as I was then that I upset, hurt and angered people.”
A cynical observer, or just anyone that has spent time on social media, could be forgiven for thinking that Whoopi Goldberg is only recanting after getting caught, again, in an attempt to minimize the impact of the Holocaust. One of the worst events in human history resulted in the killing of over six million Jews, pulled from their homes, forced onto train cars like cattle, and put to work before their execution. Nothing good tends to follow a celebrity’s statement if they invoke the Holocaust, Nazis, or Hitler, to the point that there’s an internet theory based on the theory.
Back in 1990, Mike Godwin coined what would become Godwin’s Law, which states that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches. Though Godwin did state that not all comparisons are invalid, once a discussion reaches the point, the best method to maintain civility is generally to disengage and end the discussion. Nearly a year after her first statements on the Holocaust, Whoopi Goldberg has continued to engage, with even her attempts to clarify her initial comments digging the hole just a bit deeper.
Celebrities have been getting “canceled” in one form or another, for a very long time; before J.K. Rowling made comments about trans women, before Louis C.K. was accused of sexual assault, even before social media was a thing, Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr. was “canceled” by the general public. In general, the concept of canceling has been pushed so far as to be rendered meaningless with most individuals still going on to have successful careers in their chosen fields. The secret, which Whoopi Goldberg has yet to figure out, is to stop addressing the online mob and focus on work, instead of making outlandish comments.
