Yale professor claims Hitler never saw Jews as an 'inferior race'

Last week amid Whoopi Goldberg’s controversial remarks that the Holocaust was not about race, Yale University philosophy Professor Jason Stanley tweeted the claim that “According to Hitler, Jews weren’t an inferior race” because “Hitler didn’t even regard Jewish people as human persons.” 

According to Hitler, Jews weren’t an inferior race. Hitler didn’t even regard Jewish people as human persons. This is not quite the American notion of racism.

— Jason Stanley (@jasonintrator) February 3, 2022

Many responded to Stanley’s tweet, accusing him of trying to make a distinction without a difference. 

”Your distinction seems a bit semantical,” one user responded.

[RELATED: MARSCHALL: I’ve taught writing about the Holocaust to college students. This is what Whoopi Goldberg and her critics need to understand.]

”[T]he same could be said for black people in US history, where their deemed lack of humanity was used as justification for cruel, inhumane treatment. it can be seen in [N]ott’s “types of mankind” (1854) where he places the black race closer to apes than humans,” another reply pointed out.

The comment also drew criticism from historian Tarik Cyril Amar.

Amar, a scholar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, commented on Stanley’s tweet suggesting he read the scientific edition of Mein Kampf, adding, “Sorry but you’re really wrong here... your overly neat distinction here flies in the face of serious scholarship.”

In Mein Kampf, Hitler calls Jews both a “Volk” and a “Rasse,” explicitly. There are important issues re Hitler’s and Nazi terminology (add “Art” for instance, for more inconsistencies). BUT your overly neat distinction here flies in the face of serious scholarship. Sorry.

— Tarik Cyril Amar🌹 (@TarikCyrilAmar) February 3, 2022

Amar’s comments echo Campus Reform Managing Editor Zachary Marschall’s editorial yesterday. 

Marschall argued that while “Jews existed outside and beneath humanity” according to the Nazi regime, it makes for problematic analysis to interpret “European events from 1933-1945” as if “cultural conditions across time and nations are always identical to American social unrest in 2022.”

Stanley’s remarks come on the heels of the controversy surrounding Whoopi Goldberg, who was recently suspended from The View after similarly claiming that The Holocaust “[was] not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man.”

[RELATED: VIDEO: Students can’t answer basic questions about the Holocaust]

Such comments as Stanely’s and Goldberg’s have drawn the ire of more prominent critics. 

Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro, who observes Orthodox Judaism, responded to Whoopi’s comments by quoting Hitler’s Mein Kampf, in which he wrote “Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, where as in reality they are a race?” 

”What [Whoopi] is saying is full-scale stupid,” Shapiro stated. “The simple fact of the matter is that Hitler obviously treated Jews as a race, he explicitly said [that] they’re not a religion, they are a race -- the Nuremberg laws were directed against Jews as an ethnicity.”

Hitler also famously denied Jews human status after clarifying that they are a race, writing “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.” 

Campus Reform contacted Stanley for comment. This article will be updated accordingly. 

Follow @_addisonsmith1 on Twitter.