Maddow Show Deletes Hitler Tweet After Auschwitz Memorial Calls Out Misinformation
Late Friday night Rachel Maddow‘s show account on Twitter deleted a tweet and posted a statement after many hundreds of responses, including a correction from the Auschwitz Memorial.
With the host currently on hiatus, The Rachel Maddow Show on Friday was hosted by Ali Velshi live from Hungary near the Ukrainian border.
The now-deleted tweet featured a quote and clip of Stanford professor and former U.S. ambassador Michael McFaul, an MSNBC mainstay, speaking to Velshi. McFaul made an historical reference regarding Vladimir Putin that one of the many, many critics described as “arguing the relative moral superiority of… Hitler.”
“One difference between Putin and Hitler is that Hitler didn’t kill ethnic Germans, German-speaking people. Putin slaughters the very people he said he has come to liberate,” the tweet read, a quote from McFaul but they did not include quote marks.
Reactions to the tweet were almost uniformly negative, and many directed at McFaul’s account. However, the former ambassador to Russia was combative and unapologetic.
A representative reply from Jeet Heer is a good example of the many responses.
Okay, I'm going to express this calmly. It's wrong to suggest that German Jews, whose families had lived in Germanic lands for centuries, weren't ethnic Germans. Also Hitler killed German communists, German Roma, German trade unionists, German handicapped, German queers, etc https://t.co/GicnqD6Zk7
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) March 12, 2022
The Auschwitz Memorial finally weighed in, replying to the show’s tweet, saying, “On a factual note: Hitler did kill ethnic Germans & German-speaking people: those who opposed the Nazi regime, those who resisted, those who did not fit into the 'Weltanschauung'. He ordered the murder of people with different disabilities & finally the murder of German Jewry.”
On a factual note: Hitler did kill ethnic Germans & German-speaking people: those who opposed the Nazi regime, those who resisted, those who did not fit into the 'Weltanschauung'. He ordered the murder of people with different disabilities & finally the murder of German Jewry.
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) March 12, 2022
It all led to a correction tweet from the show calling McFaul’s statement inaccurate and saying that the “historical record is clear” that Hitler did, in fact, kill millions of Germans.
The historical record is clear. Hitler killed millions of Germans. We tweeted out part of an inaccurate statement made last night by former Ambassador Michael McFaul without attribution, and we regret doing so. We have since removed the tweet. pic.twitter.com/T33rhM1yPT
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) March 12, 2022
For his part, McFaul has remained rather combatively obstinate, issuing a series of sarcasm-tinged “apology” tweets.
He deleted one of his tweets, which said, “To those who wrote to me to explain that Hitler committed the same atrocities against ethnic Germans that Putin is committing against ethnic Russians today in Mariupol and Kharkiv, please suggested to me the best scholarly readings on this history. Im(sic) eager to learn.”
In the other he said, “I will never make comparisons to Hitler again,” although the criticism, as he knows, was not about the mere fact of the comparison but the fact that he was ill-informed and incorrect.
I made a mistake. I apologize. I will never make comparisons to Hitler again. Without historical analogizing, I will keep my analysis and comments focused on the present evil — Putin.
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) March 12, 2022
“Moving on,” he added in another tweet, apparently declaring the matter closed.
At the time of this post, Rachel Maddow has not personally added a comment on Twitter about the incident.
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This post has been updated to reflect that McFaul deleted some of his tweets.
