Backlash as Whoopi Goldberg doubles down on Holocaust race claims

Furious viewers are demanding Whoop Golberg’s firing from ABC after The View host repeated her view that the Holocaust ‘wasn’t about race‘ in an interview. 

Goldberg, whose real name is Caryn Johnson, sparked fury earlier this year when she claimed on-air that the Holocaust wasn’t about ‘race’. 

She apologized after an angry backlash, and ABC suspended her for two weeks but stopped short of firing her – a decision which enraged network staffers. 

This week, she doubled down on the comments in an interview with The Times of London, saying: ‘They were killing people they considered to be mentally defective. And then they made this decision.’ 

Holocaust survivor and author Lucy Lipiner, 89, said Whoopi ‘continues to use the Holocaust as her punching bag’ 

Backlash: Many Jewish authors, journalists and activists are calling for Goldberg to be taken off-air and say her remarks are ‘proof’ she has learned ‘nothing’ 

She also claimed to have been ‘canceled’ unfairly, despite still having her high-paying job.  

Now, many of those who criticized her in February at the time of the original offense, are calling for her to be fired or to step down. 

The Times of Israel called her comments ‘incendiary’ while Holocaust survivors and Jewish journalists said she’d learned ‘nothing’. 

‘Whoopi Goldberg continues to use the Holocaust as her punching bag. We told her that her comments harm us and she simply doesn’t care. 

Goldberg sparked outrage by claiming on The View in February that the Holocaust was ‘not about race’ because it’s ‘two white groups of people’. In a new interview, she repeated her claims

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In 2017, Whoopi released a line of ‘ugly holiday sweaters’. Some featured a black Santa Clause, others had a mixed-race couple kissing under mistletoe. This one depicted an Octopus as a Menora 

Whoopi Goldberg’s ‘Jewish American Princess Fried Chicken’ recipe from 1993 that the ADL called ‘insulting’ and ‘anti-Semitic’ 

‘I survived the Nazis and the Holocaust, so I’ll be damned if I let a comedy has-been, peddling a fake Jewish name get the better of me,’ 89-year-old Holocaust survivor and author Lucy Lipiner tweeted. 

Lipiner’s book, Long Journey Home, recounts how she fled Nazi Germany with her parents as a child. 

‘So Whoopi Goldberg’s *apology* and two week suspension from The View didn’t really mean much, did it?

‘I’m beginning to think that Holocaust education is not enough to change the Antisemitic views that are deeply ingrained in many celebrities with large platforms,’ said Joel Petlin. 

Eve Barlow, a Jewish journalist who was among those to speak out against Whoopi in February, also pointed out her false claim that she was canceled. 

‘Can someone tell Whoopi Goldberg that you can’t be canceled for anti-Semitism while still being given a platform on mainstream media? 

‘Sincerely – a Jew who has been canceled.’ 

Human rights attorney Arsen Ostrovsky tweeted: ‘So, after supposed ‘apology’ earlier in year, Whoopi Goldberg doubles down on her vile remarks that the Holocaust was not about race, and instead ‘white on white’ violence.’ 

‘Someone get this ignorant fool off the air!’ 

Survivor children in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau after the liberation, 1945. Godlberg said it wasn’t an act of racism because it involved two white groups 

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Ari Ingel, who runs the Creative Community for Peace, an not-for-profit set up to combat anti-Semitism in the film industry, said anti-Semitism was ‘deeply ingrained’ in Goldberg. 

The TV host’s comments on-air in January were not her only close-to-the-bone remarks about Judaism and the Jewish community. 

She has told in the past of changing her name from Johnson to Goldberg, deliberately choosing a Jewish name  because it belonged to ‘a Jewish ancestor’. 

In 1993, she submitted a recipe for ‘Jewish American Princess Chicken’ to a celebrity cookbook which poked fun at the stereotype of a young Jewish woman as spoiled and rich. 

She has also designed a range of Menorah-themed Hanukah sweaters for stores. 

Goldberg, in her interview with The Times, claimed that she’d been ‘canceled’ for remarks that she still does not believe were offensive. 

When the interviewer reminded her that Jews, certainly in the eyes of Nazis, are a race, she said: ‘Yes, but that’s the killer, isn’t it?

‘The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?’

‘Remember who they were killing first. They were not killing racial; they were killing physical. They were killing people they considered to be mentally defective. And then they made this decision.’

Her argument hinges on her comparison of Jews to black people. 

‘It doesn’t change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on a street. You could find me. You couldn’t find them. That was the point I was making,’ she said.

While she still sees nothing wrong with what she said, ‘you would have thought that I’d taken a big old stinky dump on the table, butt naked,’ she said.