Prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer lauded President Donald Trump’s statement commemorating International Holocaust Memorial Day that failed to mention Jews as a “de-Judification” of the Holocaust.
“President Trump’s press release was as seemingly banal as any other,” Spencer wrote in a post on his website. “But the kvetching came quickly.”
He complained that the Holocaust has become a standard rhetorical device in liberal “hyper-morality.”
“We can’t limit immigration, because Hitler. We can’t can’t be proud of ourselves as a Europeans, because Holocaust. White people can be Christian, but not too Christian, because Auschwitz,” Spencer wrote.
The Trump administration’s statement mentioned the “victims, survivors, heroes” of the Holocaust and “the innocent,” but broke from bipartisan tradition by failing to specifically mention Jews.
Spencer called the White House statement “especially Trumpian” for its “de-Judification” of the Holocaust. He argued that was “utterly defensible,” going on to claim it is “unimaginable for Jewish activists” to see the Holocaust, during which 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, treated as “just another genocide.”
Anti-Defamation League director Jonathan Greenblatt called the omission “puzzling and troubling,” and Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, condemned Trump’s “vague” language.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum noted in a statement released Monday that while “millions of other innocent civilians” were exterminated by Nazis, “the elimination of Jews was central.”
White House press secretary Sean Spicer argued in a briefing Monday afternoon that Trump “went out of his way to recognize the Holocaust,” and said the statement “was written with the help of an individual who’s both Jewish and the descendent of Holocaust survivors.”
Boris Epshteyn, special assistant to the President, reportedly wrote the statement according to a Politico report published Tuesday. Epshteyn emigrated to the United States from Moscow in 1993 with his Russian Jewish family.
