Its possible to get carried away with outrage. Sometimes people mean to say relatively innocent things and they come out sounding wrong. Politics doesnt need to become an indignation factory, and not every Republican gaffe is a sign of incipient fascism.
But Sean Spicers Holocaust comments are important, not just for their shock value for their sheer, breathtaking WTF-ness but for what they tell us about the architecture of the modern Republican mind.
I should have stayed on topic, Spicer lamented later to CNNs Wolf Blitzer. Fair enough.
But these remarks were more than just a digression. Spicer reflects his entire party, not just himself or the man for whom he works. And his most disturbing words the passing phrases that revealed so much got less attention than they deserved. Here are seven keys to this very odd, yet somehow very Republican, snafu.
1. Spicers a mainstream Republican.
Spicer doesnt come from Steve Bannons white nationalist/right-wing populist cadre. Hes a product of the mainstream Republican Party, years in the making. He worked on GOP political campaigns after graduating college, then became Communications Director for the Republican leadership on the House Budget Committee. He took a similar role with the Republican House Conference, co-founded a PR firm, and became Communications Director for the Republican National Committee in 2011.
Spicer was reportedly recommended for his White House role by Reince Priebus, the former RNC chairman turned White House Chief of Staff. In one of the few signs of good judgment Donald Trump has ever displayed, the president has reportedly been angry at Priebus over that recommendation ever since.
2. Spicer was trying to score points.
Spicer wasnt trying to shock and outrage the American people. He was trying to win a rhetorical battle against Russia. He said, You, lookwe didnt use chemical weapons in World War II. (Was he considering the fact that we, the United States, did use nuclear weapons in that war twice? Probably not.)
Yknow, you had someone who is despicable as Hitler who didnt even sink to the, to the, to using chemical weapons. So, you have to, if youre Russia, ask yourself, is this a country that you, and regime you want to align yourself with?
It sounded as if Spicer expected the press room to respond with a collective, Oh, snap! Instead, of course, the press room responded with whatever sound a roomful of people makes when it calls forth the memory of millions of people being rounded up and murdered with chemical weaponry.
3. It seems to have been a talking point gone terribly wrong.
Its also worth noting that Spicer was apparently using, and mangling, an administration talking point given to other administration officials as well. Later in the day, Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters,
Even in WWII chemical weapons were not used on the battlefield. Even in the Korean War, they were not used on battlefields. Since WWI theres been an international convention on this.
That was the point Spicer was probably instructed to make. The inclusion of Hitler was probably his own act of improvisation an act that went very, very wrong.
4. This was the most horrifying comment of all.
When reporters reminded Spicer about Hitlers use of chemical weapons in the concentration camps, Spicer said:
I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no (Hitler) was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Ashad [sic] is doing. (emphasis mine.)
Ive tried to parse this sentence several different ways, and can find no other way to interpret it: Spicer is saying that the Jews and other victims were not Germanys own people when Hitler gassed them.
More than 500,000 Jews lived in Germany, and over 191,000 in Austria, when Hitler came to power in 1933. Of the 240,000 who remained in these two countries by the start of World War II, an estimated 210,000 or 88 percent were murdered during the so-called Final Solution.
Not their own people? Jews in prewar Germany and Austria enjoyed full political, social, and economic equality. They participated fully in cultural and civic life. Jews played a leading role in Viennese intellectual and artistic circles. The completeness of Jewish integration is often cited as one of the main reasons why so many Jews stayed until it was too late. They simply could not believe that they were being systematically exterminated by a society that had accepted them so fully.
By saying that Jews, gays, Romany, and others murdered in the camps were not Hitlers own people, Spicer seemed to suggest that a nation is only reflected by its dominant social group. Religious and other minorities are always the other, no matter how integrated they may be by law and rights.
5. Or maybe this was his most horrifying comment.
In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust however, I was trying to draw a contrast of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on innocent people. (Emphasis mine.)
What? The men, women, and children who died in the camps werent innocent? Try again, Sean.
Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable, Spicer added. Good to know.
6. Republican scapegoating of minorities didnt begin with Trump.
The othering of concentration camp victims, and the taint of guilt applied to their memories, are presumably inadvertent. But words reflect thought processes, both conscious and unconscious. Spicer wouldnt be the first Republican to scapegoat a religious minority, just as Trump wasnt the first.
Republican candidates Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich targeted Muslims in their 2012 presidential campaigns. Rep. Steve King had been making racist remarks for years before his bigoted other peoples babies comment got media play last month.
In fact, race baiting, stereotyping, and othering of minorities have been core elements of Republican rhetoric since the days of Nixon and Reagan.
Thats not to suggest that Sean Spicer intended to marginalize or other the Jewish community or any other with his remarks. But when you become accustomed to thinking of minorities as less than full participants in a national community, it can become a hard habit to break.
7. Spicer quickly moved from the horrifying to the banal.
When pressed, Spicer attempted to draw a distinction between Hitlers use of chemical weapons and Assads aerial bombardment of civilians. That distinction, which was both morally and logically incoherent, was expressed in the following fashion:
I understand your point. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. There was not, in the, he brought them into the Holocaust centers, I understand that. But Im saying, in the way that Assad used them where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent, into the middle of town, it was brought. So, the use of itI appreciate the clarification. That was not the intent.
This was apparently the first time the term holocaust center has been used to describe the locations where Nazi genocide was conducted. (Common terms, as most people who are not Sean Spicer know, include concentration camps and death camps.)
Holocaust center seems like a fine Republican phrase. The GOP believes that corporations are people, after all, and idolizes the buzzwordy world of the private sector. So why not inject some corporate-speak into that gravest of all conversations, the conversation about mass death?
Holocaust centers? Thats the way people talk when theyve come to think of a nation as a body of identical-looking people and of government as a profit center for themselves and their friends.
Holocaust centers? It makes the largest and most horrifying murder machine in history sound like a network of Federal Express hubs for the transshipment and extermination of human souls.
Get used to the moral outrage and the corporate lingo. Welcome to Republican America, circa 2017. All our operators are busy helping other customers. We appreciate your patience. The Center will be with you shortly.
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7 Secret Keys To Sean Spicer's Very Republican Holocaust Gaffe - Huffington Post