"Hitler was right" and "Hitler did nothing wrong" are statements and internet memes either expressing support for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler or trolling. [1] [2] The ironic or trolling uses of the phrase allow those on the alt-right to maintain plausible deniability over their white supremacist views. [3]
In 1947, amidst a national outrage and widespread anti-semitic rioting over the execution of two British officers by the Irgun in an event known as The Sergeants affair, angry mobs in North Wales wrote the words "Hitler was right" on Jewish properties. [4] [5] In Eccles, a crowd of around 700 people were told by former sergeant major John Regan that "Hitler was right. Exterminate every Jew – every man, woman and child. What are you afraid of? There's only a handful of police." He was fined 15 pounds for the statement. [6]
Colin Jordan, leader of the British National Socialist Movement, argued in a 1962 speech titled "Hitler was right". Some witnesses recalled seeing banners stating "Hitler was right". [7] [8] In the early 1960s, Canadian neo-Nazi activist David Stanley distributed "Hitler was right" leaflets. [9] In Germany in the 1960s neo-Nazis were convicted for distributing "Hitler was right" leaflets. [10]
One of the most well known controversies relating to the 2001 World Conference against Racism was the unfurling of a giant sign saying Hitler was right among a crowd of 20,000 protesters. [11] [12] [13]
On June 29, 2011, a user posted on 4chan Hitler Did Nothing Wrong [14] and the phrase has continued to be used since January 30, 2012. [15] After the statement went viral, the site was pulled and accompanied with an apology, but the site quickly went back for a while. [14] The meme was originally on Mountain Dew's 2012 campaign, where in August 2012, 4chan users attacked a third-party sponsored Mountain Dew campaign called "Dub the Dew" [16] on the contest with the name Hitler Did Nothing Wrong, which was a failure. The write-in contained Nazism, the statement as well as the Holocaust joke to climb to the top of the list, and the company shut down the contest. [17] Adweek compared the incident to another recent campaign hijacked under similar circumstances, where musician Pitbull was sent to perform in Kodiak, Alaska, in a Walmart promotion. [18] [19] [20] An analysis by USA Today found that Teespring was selling T-shirts reading "Hitler Did Nothing Wrong" and one with an image of Bill Cosby paired with the slogan "drinks on me ladies". [21] After the huge controversy, an American Clothing website still continues to sell T-shirts with Nazi Slogans. [22]
A bullfighting stadium in Pinto, Madrid was vandalized by neo-Nazis in 2013 with the phrase (Spanish : ADOLF HITLER TENÍA RAZÓN, lit. 'ADOLF HITLER WAS RIGHT') accompanied with a swastika, prompting a condemnation from the town's mayor, a People's Party member. [23] [24] The incident was noted by both a Pew Research Center report [25] and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor's chapter on Spain. [26]
The concept of "Hitler as a Hero" was listed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as the top sixth most anti-Semitic slur in 2013, with the subject's entry stating that "'Hitler was right' has emerged as a rallying cry not only for neo-Nazis but increasingly among some Arabs and Muslims." [27]
The Microsoft chatbot Tay was trained in 2016 by internet users to use phrases such as "Hitler did nothing wrong" and "Hitler was right I hate the Jews". It was taken offline because of these statements. [28] [29] [30]
People tweeting "Hitler was right" has been cited as an example of fascism on social media. [31] A 2017 ProPublica investigation revealed that Facebook allowed advertisers to target users using antisemitic ad categories including "Hitler did nothing wrong". [32]
In 2018, conspiracy theorist Steve West won the Republican primary for a district in the Missouri State House after stating "Hitler was right". The Missouri Republican Party did not endorse West. [33] United States Rep. Mary Miller was criticized for stating the day before the 2021 United States Capitol attack that "Hitler was right on one thing. He said, 'Whoever has the youth has the future.'” [34]
Welsh criminal Austin Ross went on a campaign of vandalistic acts and hate crimes from 2012 to 2018 which involved the defacement of locations across Newport, Wales. Ross carried out at least two arson attacks and regularly covered buildings with posters saying that "Hitler did nothing wrong." [35]
In 2020, four people were arrested in Arizona after hanging a "Hitler was right" poster. [36]
In 2021, Palestinian BBC journalist Tala Halawa was fired after it was discovered she had tweeted "#Israel is more #Nazi than #Hitler! Oh, #HitlerWasRight #IDF go to hell. #prayForGaza." during the 2014 Gaza War. In response to her suspension Halawa apologized for the tweet but insisted that she was the subject of character assassination by the Israel lobby. [37] [38]
On October 20, 2021, posters carrying the phrase were posted on the walls of a synagogue in Carmichael, California, by the far-right Aryan Nations terror group. [39]
Neo-fascism is a post-World War II far-right ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, ultraconservatism, racial supremacy, right-wing populism, authoritarianism, nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigration sentiment, sometimes with economic liberal issues, as well as opposition to social democracy, parliamentarianism, Marxism, capitalism, communism, and socialism. As with classical fascism, it occasionally proposes a Third Position as an alternative to market capitalism.
Neo-Nazism comprises the post-World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and racial supremacy, to attack racial and ethnic minorities, and in some cases to create a fascist state.
Alois Brunner was an Austrian officer who held the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) during World War II. Brunner played a significant role in the implementation of the Holocaust through rounding up and deporting Jews in occupied Austria, Greece, Macedonia, France, and Slovakia. He was known as Final Solution architect Adolf Eichmann's right-hand man.
The 62 Group, originally the 62 Committee, was a militant broad-based coalition of anti-fascists in London, headed by Harry Bidney. Based on the earlier 43 Group, it was formed in 1962 largely in response to the resurgence of fascism in Britain at the time, and particularly Colin Jordan's National Socialist Movement (NSM). It used violence against the remnants of Oswald Mosley's Union Movement, the original British National Party, and the emerging National Front, as well as the NSM. The group was financed in part by the Jewish Aid Committee of Britain (JACOB).
Nazi analogies or Nazi comparisons are any comparisons or parallels which are related to Nazism or Nazi Germany, which often reference Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, the SS, or the Holocaust. Despite criticism, such comparisons have been employed for a wide variety of reasons since Hitler's rise to power. Some Nazi comparisons are logical fallacies, such as reductio ad Hitlerum. Godwin's law asserts that a Nazi analogy is increasingly likely the longer an internet discussion continues; Mike Godwin also stated that not all Nazi comparisons are invalid.
Nazi chic is the use of style, imagery, and paraphernalia in clothing and popular culture related to Nazi-era Germany, especially when used for taboo-breaking or shock value rather than out of genuine support of Nazism or Nazi ideology.
This is a list of topics related to racism:
The National Socialism Association (NSA) is a neo-Nazi political organization in Taiwan, founded in August 2005 by participants of the online forum Taiwan Nazi. It received international attention in March 2007, following reports of its inaugural in-person meeting that month.
Different opinions exist among historians regarding the extent of antisemitism in American history and how American antisemitism contrasted with its European counterpart. In contrast to the horrors of European history, John Higham states that in the United States "no decisive event, no deep crisis, no powerful social movement, no great individual is associated primarily with, or significant chiefly because of anti-Semitism." Accordingly, David A. Gerber concludes that antisemitism "has been a distinctly minor feature of the nation's historical development." Historian Britt Tevis argue that, "Handlin and Higham’s ideas remain influential, and many American Jewish historians continue to present antisemitism as largely insignificant, momentary, primarily social."
Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian official of the Nazi Party, an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the implementation of the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned. Following this, he was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to Nazi ghettos and Nazi extermination camps across German-occupied Europe. He was captured and detained by the Allies in 1945, but escaped and eventually settled in Argentina. In May 1960, he was tracked down and apprehended by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, and put on trial before the Supreme Court of Israel. The highly publicised Eichmann trial resulted in his conviction in Jerusalem, following which he was executed by hanging in 1962.
Metapedia is an online wiki-based encyclopedia. Its views have been described as fascist, far-right, white nationalist, white supremacist, anti-feminist, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-semitic, Holocaust-denying and neo-Nazi.
Patrol 36 was a neo-Nazi skinhead organization in Israel, consisting of 9 members, led by Eli Bonite, alias "Ely the Nazi". The group's members were Russian immigrants that had Jewish roots aged 16 to 21. According to The Daily Telegraph, the men's families were allowed to settle in Israel under the Law of Return.
National Action is a British far-right fascist and neo-Nazi terrorist organisation based in Warrington. Founded in 2013, the group is secretive, and has rules to prevent members from talking about it openly. It has been a proscribed organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000 since 16 December 2016, the first far-right group to be proscribed since the Second World War. In March 2017, an undercover investigation by ITV found that its members were still meeting in secret. It is believed that after its proscription, National Action organised itself in a similar way to the also-banned Salafi jihadist Al-Muhajiroun network.
Antisemitism in Venezuela has occurred throughout the history of the Jews in Venezuela. However, under the presidencies of both Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, allegations of antisemitism grew following actions and statements by the Venezuelan government, while also occurring in public incidents. The Bolivarian government would also use the words of "Jewish" and "Zionist" interchangeably in order to avoid accusations of antisemitism.
The Daily Stormer is an American far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial commentary and message board website that advocates for a second genocide of Jews. It is part of the alt-right movement. Its editor, Andrew Anglin, founded the outlet on July 4, 2013, as a faster-paced replacement for his previous website Total Fascism, which had focused on his own long-form essays on fascism, race, and antisemitic conspiracy theories. In contrast, The Daily Stormer relies heavily on quoted material with exaggerated headlines.
Triple parentheses or triple brackets, or an echo, often referred to in print as an ( ), are an antisemitic symbol that has been used to highlight the names of individuals thought to be Jews, and the names of organizations thought to be owned by Jews. This use of the symbol originated from the alt-right-affiliated, neo-Nazi blog The Right Stuff, whose editors said that the symbol refers to the historic actions of Jews which have caused their surnames to "echo throughout history". The triple parentheses have been adopted as an online stigma by antisemites, neo-Nazis, browsers of the "Politically Incorrect" board on 4chan, and white nationalists to identify individuals of Jewish background as targets for online harassment, such as Jewish political journalists critical of Donald Trump during his 2016 election campaign.
Gab is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service known for its far-right userbase. Widely described as a haven for neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, antisemites, the alt-right, supporters of Donald Trump, conservatives, right-libertarians, and believers in conspiracy theories such as QAnon, Gab has attracted users and groups who have been banned from other social media platforms and users seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms. Founded in 2016 and launched publicly in May 2017, Gab claims to promote free speech, individual liberty, the "free flow of information online", and Christian values. Researchers and journalists have characterized these assertions as an obfuscation of its extremist ecosystem. Antisemitism is prominent in the site's content and the company itself has engaged in antisemitic commentary. Gab CEO Andrew Torba has promoted the white genocide conspiracy theory. Gab is based in Pennsylvania.
Jack Andrew Renshaw is a British convicted child sex offender, terrorist and former spokesperson for the neo-Nazi organisation National Action. He was an economics and politics student at Manchester Metropolitan University and an organiser for the British National Party (BNP) youth wing, BNP Youth. On 12 June 2018, Renshaw pleaded guilty to preparing an act of terrorism, with the intention of killing the Labour MP Rosie Cooper, and to making a threat to murder a police officer.
Since the foundation of the Conservative Party in 1834, there have been numerous instances of antisemitism in the party, from both Conservative party leaders and other party figures.
Europa: The Last Battle is a 2017 English-language Swedish ten-part neo-Nazi propaganda film directed, written and produced by Tobias Bratt, a Swedish far-right activist associated with the Nordic Resistance Movement, a European neo-Nazi movement. It promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories, including Holocaust denial, and has been promoted across multiple social media platforms.