Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it, is an old gag attributed to Mark Twain, but it turns out that if you do try to do anything about it you will get fired, at least if you work at NPR.
NPR affiliate KNKX in Tacoma, Washington fired on-air personality and University of Washington professor Cliff Mass for correctly reporting which way the wind is blowing in Seattle (and elsewhere) on his personal blog:
Seattle has experienced a summer of fear and failure, with criminal activities reminiscent of Nazi Germany during the 1930s. During that time, thugs and anarchists broke the windows of Jewish businesses throughout Germany, painted offensive statements on walls, and threatened those that opposed them. Now Seattle has had it Kristallnacht and the photos of what occurred during the past weeks are eerily similar to those of 80 years ago.
Kristallnacht, for those unfamiliar with the rise of the Nazi Party, was an infamous riot during which mobs broke the windows of thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, torched synagogues, assaulted, terrorized and in many instances beat to death Jews in completely unprovoked attacks. As in Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere, the authorities looked on and did nothing.
KNKX was quick to respond to online complaints and demands to dump Mass, issuing a statement that said in part:
We turn to our regular commentators for their expertise and points-of-view when it comes to sports, food and the weather. But if a commentator, even on his own independent platform, delivers rhetoric that is offensive and inaccurate, we cannot support it.
This is the case today with Cliff Mass. His post on his personal blog compares recent events in Seattle to Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom carried out by Nazi Germany, and draws distorted, offensive parallels between protesters and Nazi Brownshirts. We abhor the comparison and find it sensationalized and misleading — it does not reflect who we are and what we stand for at KNKX.
The problem is that, while Prof. Mass’s blog post may offend some, it is not inaccurate and is drawn from Mass’s lived experience. As Prof. Mass, who is Jewish, told KING-TV:
“To me, this is not academic. My family, even here in the United States, went through a lot of discrimination,” he explained. “For example, my father wanted to move to a certain neighborhood, Jews and Blacks weren’t allowed.”
He said parts of his family who lived in Poland were never heard from again after World War II ended. Hitler’s “final solution” was the extermination of millions of European Jews with Poland at the center of it. Most Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz, were located in Poland.
After Prof. Mass defended himself KNKX Manager Joey Cohn went on the attack, saying this in response to an inquiry from KING-TV: “I stand by KNKX’s original statement on this issue. I will also add that obviously Cliff had second thoughts about what he wrote, and deleted photos and language from his original blog that compared the protesters to Nazis or fascists. It was those inaccurate, unfair and disrespectful comparisons that led to our decision to remove his segment from KNKX.”
The problem with Mr. Cohn’s characterization of Prof. Mass’s blog post is that it hinges on accepting the idea that what is going on in Seattle (and elsewhere) is a “protest” and not a riot, or more correctly the early stages of a totalitarian Marxist revolution.
What’s more, what happened to Prof. Mass has further disturbing parallels beyond the smashing of the windows of Jewish businesses and the burning of synagogues. In 1938, about the same time the Kristallnacht “protest” took place, Jewish workers were dismissed from their jobs; this followed earlier laws that barred Jewish professionals – including actors and radio personalities – from practicing their professions.
Cliff Mass’s characterization of what’s going on in Seattle and elsewhere as a 21st century version of Kristallnacht was not “inaccurate, unfair and disrespectful.” As a weatherman Prof. Mass was just looking out the window and telling us which way the wind is blowing for those of us who oppose the Marxist mobs now in control of cities such as Seattle.
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Hat tips to Thomas Lifson of the American Thinker and Jack Marshall.
Photo “Cliff Mass” by Cliff Mass.
