White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer really stepped in it this time. In a week of PR blunders from Pepsi and United Airlines – both apparently centering on racial insensitivity - Spicer’s comments really took the cake.
During a press briefing Tuesday, Spicer said Adolf Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” in justifying last week’s retaliatory strike against President Assad’s forces in Syria following a chemical attack.
When asked to clarify his remarks later in the evening, he only made things worse by saying that Hitler “was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing... the way Assad dropped the bombs into the middle of towns—so the use of it. I appreciate the clarification. That was not the intent.”
Spicer was presumably talking about the use of chemical weapons in World War II battlefields in Europe - Germans generally avoided using them on the battlefield, perhaps fearing retaliation from the Allies - but toxic pesticides including Zyklon B were used in concentration camps, and remains the deadliest use of poison gas in history.
But beyond the cringe-inducing Hitler comparisons, Spicer was wrong for other reasons. Beyond using toxic gas on people already imprisoned, Nazis did use gas against Soviet troops in a 1942 siege in Crimea. And although never using chemical weapons against American or British troops, Axis powers did use them elsewhere – the Italians in Ethiopia, and the Japanese in China.
Syrians have experienced enough atrocities over the past six years that using Hitler as a benchmark for evildoing is hardly necessary. The war in Syria has seen at least a quarter of a million people killed, according to the UN – up to 470,000 by other estimates – created over five million refugees, and left over 13 million in need of humanitarian aid, according to Amnesty International figures. Syrian civilians have been the victims of barrel bombs, years-long sieges, starvation, and previous chemical attacks using sarin gas.
Many took to social media trying to unpack his remarks. Did he seriously think deadly gas didn’t count as a chemical weapon? Was he saying that because Hitler used gas on German Jews that it didn’t count as gassing “his own people”?
Yad Vashem Encourages White House Press Secretary to Visit its Website https://t.co/LmhYhrWWxE @WhiteHouse @PressSec
— Yad Vashem (@yadvashem) April 12, 2017
Meanwhile, the Anne Frank Center accused Spicer of Holocaust denial and called for him to be sacked – pointing out that he was insensitive enough to make the comments during the Passover holidays.
.@POTUS @realDonaldTrump MUST FIRE SEAN SPICER NOW FOR ENGAGING IN HOLOCAUST DENIAL. OUR STATEMENT BELOW. #Antisemitism #NeverAgain pic.twitter.com/4dB9ESCaZr
— AnneFrankCenter(US) (@AnneFrankCenter) April 11, 2017
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA),Congressman Donald Payne Jr. (D-NJ), among others, also joined in calling for Spicer to be fired.
Pelosi calls for Sean Spicer to be fired after Hitler remarks https://t.co/GbRp7KEYSy pic.twitter.com/0aLmoAXaXG
— The Hill (@thehill) April 12, 2017
It’s not the first time the Trump administration has had unfortunate timing with its controversial decisions - the first version of Trump’s “Muslim Ban” – halting immigration of people fleeing war and religious persecution - was announced on Holocaust Memorial Day.
The chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun last week left 86 dead, around 30 of them children.
The US retaliated by launching 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Shayrat air base, from which the Syrian military is suspected to have launched the attack on Khan Sheikhoun.
