Conservative political commentator Glenn Beck faced backlash from an antisemitism organization after comparing Twitter and other social media’s purging of conservative accounts to the Holocaust during a Fox News segment on Tuesday.
Beck, who founded The Blaze, spoke with host Tucker Carlson about recent crackdowns coming from big tech and social media companies following the violent riot Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol. Twitter says that it purged over 70,000 accounts for sharing “harmful QAnon-associated content,” while Amazon, Google Play and Apple removed Parler, a conservative social media alternative, from its app stores. (RELATED: Five People Died In The Capitol Riot. Here’s What We Know About Them)
“You can’t have freedom of speech if you can’t have — if you can’t express yourself in a meaningful place,” Beck said. “This is like the Germans with the Jews behind the wall. They would put them in the ghetto. Well, this is the digital ghetto. You can talk all you want, Jews, you do whatever you want behind the wall. Well, that’s not meaningful, and that’s where we are. That’s where millions of Americans will be.”
Beck continued on to say that “it’s not to compare it to the Germans” and said it should serve as a warning that “if you don’t stand up for free speech, you will be the one that loses it as well.”
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Stopantisemitism.org condemned the comment and detailed some realities “from an ACTUAL ghetto during the Holocaust,” writing that “Beck’s digital ghetto” was, for comparison, “not being able to tweet.”
Reality from an ACTUAL ghetto during the Holocaust:
– 25 people living in a 1 bedroom apartment with a loaf of bread to eat for a WEEK
– Parents murdered, leaving 12 year olds to raise 2 year olds
– Suicide all aroundGlenn Beck’s digital ghetto:
– not being able to tweet https://t.co/Qm6mQiGCPn
— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) January 13, 2021
Beck’s comparison is just one in a line of recent comments comparing actions to the Holocaust. Former Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger compared the Capitol riot to Kristallnacht. This was a deadly, violent attack against the Jewish community by the Nazis in 1938 in Germany and Austria.
Yahoo called Schwarzenegger’s comments “powerful.”
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My message to my fellow Americans and friends around the world following this week’s attack on the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/blOy35LWJ5
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021
In November 2020, CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour made a Kristallnacht comparison as well, likening Trump’s four-year presidency to the event. She later apologized for the comments.
President-elect Joe Biden invoked Joseph Goebbels, a Nazi propaganda minister, to condemn Republican Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz on Jan. 8, accusing them plus Trump of being a part of “The Big Lie.” Goebbels made an infamous comment about how the bigger a lie is, the more it will be repeated and believed.
Biden invokes Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and says Hawley and Cruz are as much a party to The Big Lie as Trump himself. “It’s the Big Lie,” he says. “The Big Lie.”
— James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) January 8, 2021
Pushback from Cruz about Biden’s comments resulted in Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell referring to rioters as Cruz’s “Nazi friends.”
Really sad. You incited a riot and your Nazi friends with their Confederate flags killed a cop. https://t.co/2ruEsLufCQ
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) January 9, 2021
In all, comparisons to the Holocaust have become more common among the media with Trump in office – from lawmakers to media pundits.