Spicer's "Hitler didn't use chemical weapons" gaffe grows wings

RT
Wed, 12 Apr 2017 20:34 UTC

© Joshua Roberts / Reuters

The Anne Frank Center has demanded US press secretary Sean Spicer be fired after he claimed Adolf Hitler "didn't even sink to using chemical weapons" in a comment overlooking Nazi Germany's use of gas chambers during World War II.

In the midst of Genocide Awareness Month, the White House spokesperson appeared to skip over major facts about the Holocaust. Asked during a briefing on Tuesday about the relationship between Russia and Syria, Spicer brought Hitler and his apparent 'lack' of chemical weapons use into the equation.

"We didn't use chemical weapons in World War II. You had someone as despicable as Hitler, who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons. So you have to if you are Russia, ask yourself is this a country and a regime that you want to align yourself with," he said.

Spicer then sought to clarify the Hitler remark in a rambling, sometimes incoherent, answer to the press: "I think that when you come to sarin gas, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing.

"He [Hitler] brought them into the Holocaust centers, I understand that. But what I was saying that in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down into the middle of towns."

The incredible glossing over of Hitler's systematic murder of 6 million Jewish people during World War II prompted the Anne Frank Center to demand Spicer's dismissal.

"On Passover no less, Sean Spicer has engaged in Holocaust denial, the most offensive form of fake news imaginable, by denying Hitler gassed millions of Jews to death," Steven Goldstein, Executive director of the center, said in a statement.

"Spicer's statement is the most evil slur upon a group of people we have ever heard from a White House press secretary. Sean Spicer now lacks the integrity to serve as White House press secretary, and President Trump must fire him at once."

April is Genocide Awareness and Prevention month and given the importance of his role in the White House, Spicer is now being roundly chastised for his lack of basic historical knowledge. Mexico's former president Vicente Fox Quesada even had a go.

Meanwhile other Twitter users suggested that United Airlines and Pepsi must be thankful for Spicer's own PR disaster.

The White House later released a follow-up statement from Spicer, with the press secretary offering a further explanation for his remarks.

"In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust. I was trying to draw a distinction of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers," Spicer said. "Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable."

Comment: Boris Johnson said something similar in 2013.

Appearing on Channel 4's The Last Leg to discuss the Syria crisis in September of 2013, Johnson, who was then mayor of London, claimed that "not even Hitler used chemical weapons, as far as I can remember," seemingly forgetting about the several million Jews, homosexuals, Romani people, dissidents, and people with disabilities that were gassed to death in extermination camps.

Mindful of the use of Zyklon B in the concentration camps, the host said: "There is an argument to say that he did use chemical weapons at some point."

Gaffe-prone Johnson backtracked, saying: "In the theatre of war, as far as I can remember, and I stand to be corrected on this, I don't believe that even the Nazis used chemical weapons."

Technically, they're right. The Germans didn't engage in chemical warfare. Winston Churchill would've liked to, in contrast. And the Americans had no problem with Saddam Hussein when he was doing so during the Iran-Iraq war. But regardless. Bad comparison. Godwin's law prevails. And now that the media has skewered Spicer for "going there", maybe they'll self-reflect a bit and stop calling Trump Hitler. We'll see.

In the meantime, the Israeli Holocaust museum has joined the chorus:

"In light of recent statements made by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, encourages him to visit the Yad Vashem website to learn about the Holocaust and its period in history," the museum said in a statement published on its website.

It expressed "deep concern" over "inaccurate and insensitive use of terms related to the Holocaust" in Spicer's comments, adding that such statements reveal his "profound lack of knowledge of events of the Second World War."

The Jerusalem-based center also stressed that the press secretary's comments actually play into the hands of those who are willing to "distort history."

Spicer wasn't having the best day. While trying the explain himself, he made another gaffe, saying the U.S. is trying to "destabilize" Syria (i.e. "the conflict there").

Then he said it AGAIN to Wolf Blitzer: