Somehow, ABC missed the fact that Roseanne Barr had made horrifyingly disgusting comments on race long before her Tuesday tweets that so outraged the nation. Dressing as Hitler and burning “Jew cookies” wasn’t enough to give ABC pause when deciding to reboot the 1990s sitcom Roseanne, but she finally sealed her own fate with disturbing comments about President Obama’s former senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, saying that she looked like a cross between the “Muslim Brotherhood” and “Planet of the Apes.”
After calling Chelsea Clinton “Chelsea Soros Clinton” on Twitter and saying she had married the nephew of the right-wing’s favorite boogeyman, George Soros, Clinton responded by showing Barr what class and dignity look like.
Not only was Barr’s original tweet a complete fabrication, her response to Clinton was even worse. George Soros, who is definitely a ruthless businessman often compared to Donald Trump, is both Jewish and a Holocaust survivor.
According to Snopes:
‘That Soros was only nine years old (born in 1930) when the war broke out and all of 14 when Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945 hasn’t dampened his detractors’ enthusiasm for spreading these rumors, of which none is more absurd than the claim, which first surfaced in November 2016, that Soros literally served as an officer of the paramilitary Schutzstaffel (SS) in Germany.’
A spokesman for Soros gave a statement following Roseanne’s ridiculous tirade.
‘George Soros survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary as a 13-year-old child by going into hiding and assuming a false identity with the help of his father, who managed to save his own family and help many other Jews survive the Holocaust.
‘He did not collaborate with the Nazis. He did not help round people up. He did not confiscate anybody’s property. Such false allegations are insulting to the victims of the Holocaust, to all Jewish people, and to anyone who honors the truth.
‘They are an affront to Mr. Soros and his family, who against the odds managed to survive one of the darkest moments in our history.’
The vilification of Soros by the right-wing, Fox News crowd is far more related to the fact that he has contributed to Democratic campaigns than their distaste at anyone they mistakenly believe could be a Nazi. After all, President Trump said that the Charlottesville neo-Nazi protesters were “very fine people.”
Yet the Trump legacy of fueling hatred and division will live on while his oldest son retweets Roseanne’s Soros comments and her fans, as well as Trump’s rabid followers, continue to believe them.
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