If you’re going to “The Rachel Maddow Show” hoping to get straight news, you’re definitely looking in the wrong place. It’s a festival of misinformation as we noted in the past, on everything from Russia collusion to COVID.
A series of comments by ex-U.S. citizens caused MSNBC to lose its Friday night show. Ambassador to Russia under Barack Obama Michael McFaul made on the show, which were then tweeted out on the account for Maddow’s show blog.
McFaul – who is also a professor at Stanford – violated one of the basic rules of the internet: don’t compare things to Hitler. McFaul spoke out about the horrors of war in Ukraine and used remarks made by a Russian journalist on Ukrainian TV.
MSNBC/Maddow was going to delete it, so I saved a copy (and you should). pic.twitter.com/ZSAMd4G2FE
— Nathaniel Foley (@NathanielKFoley) March 12, 2022
“One of the Russian journalists said, ‘You know, there’s one difference between Hitler when he was coming in and Putin. Hitler didn’t kill ethnic Germans. He didn’t kill German-speaking people,” McFaul said to fill-in host Ali Velshi on Friday.
“I think people need to remember that we’re talking about cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol and Kyiv, there are large populations there, you know, up to a third and sometimes as much to a half that are Russian speakers and are ethnic Russians. And yet Putin doesn’t seem to care about that. He slaughters the very people he said he has come to liberate,” McFaul said.
Then, to make it worse, the Maddow Blog account tweeted a paraphrasing of it: “One difference between Putin and Hitler is that Hitler didn’t kill ethnic Germans, German-speaking people. Putin slaughters the very people he said he has come to liberate.”
Now you don’t have to know a lot of history to know Hitler and the Nazis killed a lot of ethnic Germans and German-speaking people, including Jews and the disabled. This also feeds the propaganda that Jews were not actually “German.” You don’t have to make Putin look worse by making Adolf Hitler look better.
For one, non-Jewish Germans with disabilities were the first to be systematically killed by Nazi Germany. And, of course, what makes the Shoah so shocking is that German Jews were so integrated – “German-speaking” was the least of it – and were targeted simply because of their identity. https://t.co/7HNiq0F5Pb
— Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) March 12, 2022
The Auschwitz Memorial even warned them.
On a factual note: Hitler did kill ethnic Germans & German-speaking people: those who opposed the Nazi regime, those who resisted, those who did not fit into the ‘Weltanschauung’. He ordered the murder of people with different disabilities & finally the murder of German Jewry.
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) March 12, 2022
The account deleted the tweet after it had been up for many hours. Some tried to explain it and others began flipping it.
Historical records are clear. Hitler murdered millions of Germans. We regret that we tweeted an incorrect statement by Michael McFaul last night without giving credit. The tweet has been removed. pic.twitter.com/T33rhM1yPT
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) March 12, 2022
McFaul also apologized, saying he was referring to ‘ethnic Germans’ other than in Germany.
“I slipped late last night and violated an unwritten taboo– never compare Hitler with anyone. I’m in agreement. His evilness was unimaginable. I won’t do it again,” McFaul tweeted. “To those who wrote to me to explain that Hitler committed the same atrocities against ethnic Germans that Putin is committing against ethnic Russians today in Mariupol and Kharkiv, please suggested to me the best scholarly readings on this history. Im eager to learn.”
But then he made it worse, suggesting that Jews could not be “ethnic Germans.”
Is that what you saw or did you just see it on Twitter? I was comparing how Hitler treated ETHNIC Germans (not Jews) in “liberated” countries and Putin’s treatment of ETHNIC Russians in Ukraine.
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) March 12, 2022
If you claim that someone did worse than Hitler, then it is not true. Just stop and don’t keep digging. Putin has invaded Ukraine, and is now killing innocent people. He’s not Hitler and you don’t have to make a comparison to somehow make him seem worse.
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