Disney’s ABC suspended Whoopi Goldberg from “The View” late Tuesday after the show’s longtime co-host said on the program Monday the Holocaust was “not about race.”
“The Holocaust,” Goldberg said of the systemic extermination of Jews and many others in pursuit of a “pure” Germanic race, was “about man’s humanity to other man.”
The comment came during a segment Goldberg clearly didn’t prepare for, in which the panel discussed a Tennessee school board removing the book “Maus” from its libraries.
Disney-owned ABC gave Goldberg a two-week vacation, but not until after she was afforded the opportunity to clean up her remarks on Tuesday’s airing of “The View” and another appearance on Stephen Colbert the same night.
Whoopi apologized on Twitter, then offered a qualified apology on the late-night program taped before her tweeted statement. On Colbert, she doubled down on her claim that the Holocaust was merely about white people against white people.
“When you talk about being a racist, you can’t call this racism,” Goldberg said. “This was evil. This wasn’t based on skin. You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. You had to delve deeply to figure that out.”
Contrary to Goldberg’s claim the 20th century Holocaust was merely about “two groups of white people,” however, the Nazis possessed a special animus towards blacks and even referred to the children of French black soldiers and German women as “Rhineland bastards.”
“While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments,” said ABC News President Kim Godwin.
Goldberg’s treatment comes in stark contrast to how the same company handled online outrage when “Mandalorian” star Gina Carano made a Holocaust comparison with logical and factual bases. In February last year, Carano was promptly fired after the actress wrote on Instagram that mass political violence such as that of Nazi Germany begins with hatred of one’s neighbors.
“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children,” Carano wrote. “Most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”
“[Carano’s] social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable,” a spokesperson for Lucasfilm told Variety Magazine at the time. Carano was also dropped by her agents at United Talent Agency.
The difference in treatment becomes even more remarkable when considering the contrast in their respective roles. Goldberg is an authority figure tasked with informing the public on one of television’s most-watched programs. Carano is an entertainer.
Disney has a history of soft treatment for leftist ideological allies who engage in the conduct it deemed fireable in Carano’s case. Carano’s own “Mandalorian” co-star Pedro Pascal compared Donald Trump’s border policies in 2018 detaining immigrant children to the rounding up of Jews in Nazi Germany. Disney didn’t penalize him in any way. President Joe Biden has aggressively expanded the policy of child detention with shipping containers and hasn’t drawn the same criticisms. We all know why.
Whether Goldberg’s suspension was warranted is another question, but whether her suspension illustrates a routine double-standard at Disney, there’s no doubt.
