Bill O’Reilly says the aftermath of the violent white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month doesn’t have to do with ideology, but history, saying that Adolf Hitler’s memory “should be as vivid as today’s sunrise.”
In a guest column written for The Hill, O’Reilly says that “most people on this planet have no clue as to how German Nazis went about their lethal business. And that includes President Trump and many other politicians, both present and past.”
O’Reilly blamed the education system for turning Hitler into a “caricature of evil, a distant monster” instead of explaining what really happened during World War II, on which O’Reilly has written several books.
“Exceptions are the Jewish people who directly experienced genocide at the hands of the Third Reich. In most Jewish homes around the world, the gruesome German atrocities are discussed and children are taught what happened in detail,” O’Reilly wrote. “But in many American public schools, World War II and Nazism is barely mentioned. Adolph Hitler has become a caricature of evil, a distant monster. He should be as vivid as today’s sunrise.”
“The crimes of Hitler’s regime and the population that allowed it were so terrible that words cannot come close to description. Yet words are all we have,” the column continues.
“To hear and see Americans embrace Nazi hatred, even though their numbers are small, is catastrophic to people who understand Hitler’s evil,” O’Reilly said, and Trump failed to see that. “President Trump did not understand that and it has hurt him. He was trying to make other points in the midst of the revulsion of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville.”
O’Reilly did agree with Trump that some of the people there were “good people” who simply didn’t want to see the removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue, but said “the proximity of white supremacists to the situation obscures the point, and makes Mr. Trump seem insensitive to the danger these loons pose, and to the horrors of slavery.”
You can read the full column here.