Controversial journalist Jemele Hill is slammed for tweeting the US is ‘as bad as Nazi Germany’
SPORTS journalist Jemele Hill has been blasted for saying the US is "as bad as Nazi Germany."
Her comments came in relation to latest book club pick — Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents — which encourages readers to explore the issues of race and hierarchy in the US.
On Sunday, Hill shared her thoughts on Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American author Isabel Wilkerson’s new book with her 1.3million followers on .
She said: "Been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s new book, ‘Caste,’ and if you were of the opinion that the wasn’t nearly as bad as , how wrong you are. Can’t encourage you enough to read this masterpiece."
The tweet quickly went viral and received backlash from many, including Arc Digital's Editor-in-Chief Berny Belvedere and former Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind who identified himself as a "proud Jewish American and staunch supporter of Israel."
Belvedere called Hill's comments "irresponsible" - saying, "This is breathtakingly irresponsible. How is anyone supposed to trust your judgment after this horror show of an opinion?"
Hill replied: "What would you call it when a country that murdered millions of Jews learned their systems of genocide by watching America, and studying our history of racialized slavery, and great knack for racial terrorism?"
Meanwhile, the former Democratic New York Assemblyman called Hill's "opinion sick, demented, and incredibly ignorant."
His tweet read: "This 'opinion' of Hill’s is sick, demented, and incredibly ignorant! To compare America to Nazi Germany proves she understands neither! How she can write for @TheAtlantic is beyond me but she’s insulted the memory of 6 MILLION dead Jews and all the survivors of Hitler’s Hell!"
Hill later gave an example of admiration for US racism.
"For example, I knew that Hitler admired Henry Ford for his racism. I did not know that they stole the one-drop rule from us as well as criminalizing interracial marriage. Also, what does it say that in 2020, lynching still hasn’t been outlawed?" Hill wrote.
Nonetheless, president and founder of Eurasia Group Ian Bremmer came to defend Hill and gave his two cents on the "takeaway" of the book.
Bremmer wrote: "Tremendous book. That’s not the takeaway. It’s that the US hasn’t dealt with its slavery, structural racism the way the Germans have after Nazism. And so we are still suffering from the legacy."
Earlier this month, Winfrey announced she had chosen Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” as her latest book club pick.
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In the book, Wilkerson looks at American history and the treatment of black people and finds what she calls an enduring, unseen, and unmentioned caste system that has yet to be fully confronted.
Winfrey said many details in Caste were revelatory for her, such as the Nazis’ admiration for the Jim Crow system.
“That was shocking to me,” Winfrey told The Associated Press. “Hitler was using the racist South as a template for race purification in .”