In a rare case of condemnation against a news network, the White House has denounced comments made by Fox News host Greg Gutfeld about Nazi concentration camps.
In a Monday episode of The Five, panelists discussed the new Black history education standards put forth by the state of Florida. The controversial measures include a benchmark that will teach students “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."
Jessica Tarlov, a panelist on The Five who is Jewish, said she was “uncomfortable” with the idea Black people benefited from slavery, and questioned whether one could say the same about the Jewish people imprisoned and murdered in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
In response, Gutfeld said: “Did you ever make [read] Man’s Search for Meaning? Vik 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 has since faced harsh condemnation from politicians and historians alike. The Auschwitz Memorial said in a six-paragraph post to Twitter that “we should avoid such oversimplifications in talking about this complex tragic story."
“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 wrote in part. “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.”
The White House, which has been vocal in its opposition of Florida's history standards, issued a more scathing response to the network. In a statement, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said that "What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday — and has so far failed to condemn — is an obscenity."
"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," Bates said. "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."
