MSNBC host Toure is feeling extensive backlash by a major Jewish group and others for his comments about Holocaust survivors. During a recent tweet, Toure said Jewish Holocaust survivors “benefited from the power of whiteness.”
While on Twitter, Toure responded to another user, who is the relative of a Holocaust survivor. According to the poster, his loved one had been held inside a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. The family member reportedly legally immigrated to America “with nothing” after the war but was still able to “make it work” in a new land.
The Simon Wiesnethal Center almost immediately responded to Toure’s comment about the power of whiteness.
Simon Wiesnethal Center Israel office director Efraim Zuroff had this to say about the MSNBC host’s tweet :
“It’s obviously absurd and smacks of intense and disgusting and anti-Semitism. It’s reverse racism basically. There is no question that part of the anti-Semitism that we see has its roots in the form of jealousy. This is a perfect example: ‘Jews made it because they’re white and Jews.’”
Efraim Zuroff is often regarded as the leading Nazi war crimes investigator. He has played an instrumental role in prosecuting World War II Holocaust criminals who are responsible for the murder of 6 million Europeans Jews, gypsies, and others who were deemed unacceptable for the “racial purity” goal of the Nazi regime.
Earlier this month, fellow MSNBC host Ed Schultz tweeted and then quickly deleted, “Gay people were really the ones being persecuted in Hilter’s Germany.”
Any student of history would surely agree that all those held captive in Nazi concentration camps were victims of horrible emotional, mental, and physical torture, regardless of why they were chosen by Hitler for removal from the general populace.
Twitter users posted photos of concentration camps and pointed comments in response to Toure’s tweet about the white privilege of Jews and other Holocaust survivors. National Review columnist Tom Rogan said, “In four words he trivialized mass murder.”
Rogan also suggested that the MSNBC host book a trip to Auschwitz and garner a better grasp for what those herded into railroad cars endured during WWII.
Toure has not commented further about his Jewish Holocaust survivors tweet via Twitter or made a public statement about the power of whiteness allegedly possessed by those lucky concentration camps survivors.
[Feature Image Via: Wikipedia Holocaust page]
[Secondary Image Via: YouTube screengrab and Wikipedia]