PHILADELPHIA — Last week, a local Indiana chapter of Moms for Liberty attracted attention for quoting Adolf Hitler in its newsletter. After the local paper reported the story, the group added additional “context” but kept the quote. Eventually, after it faced even more scrutiny, the organization removed the quote and apologized in a statement posted to its Facebook group.
That, however, was a big mistake, according to advice at the Moms for Liberty national conference’s media training session Friday.
“Never apologize. Ever,” said Christian Ziegler, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party. “This is my view. Other people have different views on this. I think apologizing makes you weak.”
He advised the attendees to instead make it clear that the Hitler comment was “vile” but to immediately pivot to make the point that Hitler indoctrinated children in schools and that that’s what Moms for Liberty was fighting against. Ziegler warned that any apology would become the headline, so that should be avoided.
You read that right. He said to not apologize for quoting Hitler. That’s what we’re dealing with now.
Yes I can. But also, I have to apologize, saying “bad faith” was definitely going a bit too far. What you’re doing is being exceedingly and ironically uncharitable.
I’m guessing that the Moms of Liberty have quite a lot of statements to make the but the one in the newsletter that contained the quote was about giving parents more control over their children’s education. THAT is the topic of discussion (or at least what they present as their side of the discussion, their true agenda may differ).
Opponents to Moms of Liberty are derailing the topic of discussion by making it about quoting Hitler. This particular article quotes a member of Moms of Liberty advocating for not apologizing, because if they apologize that will become the story instead of the actual thing she wanted to talk about.
Then you come on here and say, don’t let them derail the conversation by bringing it back to the thing they actually want to talk about.
Because it is a quote by someone on this very thread with 14 upvotes. This is a member of your community and they’re popularly supported and you’ve done nothing to reign them in.
What exactly do you expect us to do to rein them in? What power do you think we have?
At the very least downvote it. There’s now EIGHTEEN upvotes, 2 boosts, and I’m still the only downvote on that comment. And I know people can find the downvote button because I can see how many downvotes I’m getting.
Moderators here don’t have a rule against calls for violence. I already reported it, but technically it’s not against the rules. Which I can understand in a politics magazine where war can be a topic of discussion, you don’t want to be banning people when for example the government is actively engaging in mass murder (e.g. like the Rwanda genocide) and a commenter is saying that the people should defend themselves with lethal force if necessary.
As the sidebar says:
The quality of my comments have been so abysmal I see. And jokingly calling for genocide is one of the best quality comments on this thread.
You keep coming back to defending their Hitler quote. As if it’s ever okay to quote Hitler regardless of context. You want us to discuss instead… Actually I can’t really figure out what you want us to discuss. But you want us to ignore the Hitler quote. You said that multiple times now. I think anybody who’s quoting Hitler should not be given the forum for debate. I’m not one that call a lot of people Nazis just for the hell of it, but if you’re quoting Hitler… Well then you’re a Nazi sympathizer at a minimum. I have no interest in what else you want to say after that point.