New York, NY, June 27, 2013 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today condemned as “outrageous and shocking” comments by MSNBC analyst Michael Eric Dyson, who in an appearance Wednesday afternoon characterized Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s vote with the majority overturning a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as, “A symbolic Jew has invited a metaphoric Hitler to commit holocaust and genocide upon his own people.”
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor, issued the following statement:
While one has a right to agree or disagree with Supreme Court decisions, we are shocked that anyone would draw such an outrageous comparison between a ruling rendered by justices working within the bounds of our constitutional democracy, and the murderous deeds of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
As we have said repeatedly, there is no place for comparisons between social or political issues in the 21st century and the genocidal actions of Hitler and the Nazis, whose crimes against humanity and role in the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others were unique in history and should be respected as such. It is particularly painful when Mr. Dyson references the pernicious notion of a Jew who turns on his own people.
Inappropriate comparisons and references to Jews or Hitler in the context of a debate over American political issues only serve to trivialize history and are an insult to the memory of those who fought and died during World War II. We hope that Mr. Dyson will reconsider his words.