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.
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.
EDIT: Also my post was intended as a reply to someone else, I’m still getting used to the UI can accidentally making a top level comment instead of a reply.
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.