Everyone makes mistakes, and even the best are subject to producing something less than eloquence under pressure. But what White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at his Tuesday press conference went well beyond a slip, a gaffe, or any sort of ordinary mistake.
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In the space of 10 minutes, Spicer first tried to make the case that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is worse than Hitler because …
"You look. We didn't use chemical weapons in World War II. We … We had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons.”
In itself, that’s an astounding statement. But it’s when Spicer was questioned about the statement that his clarification revealed the depth of the issue.
“I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no, he was not using the gas on his own people in the same way. that Assad is doing. There was not ... he brought them into the Holocaust center, I understand that. But I’m saying the way that Assad used them were he went into town and dropped them down to innocent … to the middle of town.”
Even beyond Spicer’s renaming of concentration camps as “Holocaust centers” and his implication that dropping bombs is somehow worse than creating an entire infrastructure of genocide, there are key phrases that show Spicer’s statement was even worse than it seems at first blush.
“He was not using the gas on his own people” …. “and dropped them down to innocent”
Spicer drew a line both between Germans and Jews, and a line between victims of the Holocaust and “innocents.”
Spicer might argue that Hitler didn’t view Jews as “his own people,” but of course Assad likely feels much the same way about Kurds, Melkites, and other groups within Syria. Spicer doesn’t draw these lines in Syria the way he does for Hitler’s Germany, because his statement is as dismissive of history and culture in the Middle East as it is accepting of bright divisions in who counts as a real European.
The next word that Spicer reaches for in making his differentiation is equally telling: innocent. Spicer catches himself halfway through this sentence, but the only reason to use the word “innocent” in comparing Assad’s victims with those of Hitler is to provide contrast. If those Assad bombed were innocent, then those gassed by Hitler were … less so?
It’s clear that Spicer started off his statement with the intent of explaining how Assad was even worse than Hitler—it’s a theme that’s been running through the alt-right and which has made its appearance on Fox.
“Assad killed 500,000 people, for the love of God. He displaced half of the country, he destroyed the country. He gassed women and children… He’s worse than Hitler.”
However, when you make the case that Assad is worse than Hitler, you risk making the case that Spicer did on Tuesday … the case that Hitler was not that bad.
And if Hitler was not that bad, then why not? “He was not using the gas on his own people.” Not on innocent Germans. Just on people who were other. And Spicer, along with much of the alt-right, finds that all too acceptable.