Festival of Slights, the 3rd Night: “Holocaust Centers”

Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

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Happy Hanukkah! Mother Jones is celebrating this year’s festival of lights with a festival of slights. Specifically, President Donald Trump’s slights toward the Jewish people. 

At this point, you might be so used to the relatively articulate presence of White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders that the gaffe-filled tenure of Sean Spicer seems like a distant memory.

As the Trump administration’s original choice to lead its high-profile press briefings, Spicer’s first outing was marked by an absurd debate over how many people had attended the president’s inauguration, setting the stage for previously unthinkable clashes between the podium and the press.

One came on April 11, after Spicer suggested that Russia’s patience with its ally Bashar al-Assad might be wearing thin after the Syrian dictator had deployed chemical weapons. “Someone as despicable as Hitler,” Spicer explained, “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

Given the Nazi regime’s use of poison gas in its genocide against Jews and other undesirables, a reporter quickly gave Spicer an opportunity to clarify his remark.

“He was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing,” Spicer said, trying to grasp a distinction or a train of thought that seemed apparent only to himself. “He brought them into the Holocaust centers,” Spicer explained, coining his own term for the Nazi’s concentration camps. “I understand that. But I’m saying in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent—into the middle of towns.”

The next evening, Spicer appeared on CNN to mop up. “I mistakenly used an inappropriate and insensitive reference to the Holocaust, for which frankly there is no comparison. For that I apologize. It was a mistake to do that,” Spicer said. “I should have stayed focussed on the Assad regime.”

Read more Festival of Slights:

The 1st Night: Trump’s Book of Hitler Speeches

The 2nd Night: The Sheriff’s Star

Image credit: Shutterstock; farakos/Getty

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Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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