Perhaps the most politically incorrect thing you could do in this cancel-culture age, something taking you so far outside the Overton Window that you couldn’t even peek through it, is praise Adolf Hitler. Why, when a couple of schemers in the 1967 black comedy The Producers sought to create a stage musical designed to fail, celebrating Hitler was the very topic they chose.
It’s unknown if The New York Times’ leadership had the movie in mind — to the schemers’ dismay, their production became an unexpected comic hit — when making a recent move: rehiring a Hitler-praising journalist. What’s for sure in this case, especially now that the paper is defending its decision, is that no one is laughing.
As the New York Post reported October 20:
A New York Times reporter who came under fire last year for a praising Adolf Hitler in multiple resurfaced Facebook posts was rehired by the Gray Lady to cover the Israel-Palestine war.
Palestinian filmmaker Soliman Hijjy hailed the Nazi leader as recently as 2018 in a post on Facebook, when he shared a photo of himself captioned that he was “in a state of harmony as Hitler was during the Holocaust”….
That same year, Hijjy was hired by the Times as a freelance journalist and worked on a slew of “visual investigations” published by the organization through 2021, including one on an Israeli airstrike that killed 44 people.
Hijjy’s 2018 post — including a 2012 Facebook post where he wrote, “How great you are, Hitler” in Arabic alongside a photoshopped image of Hitler seemingly taking a selfie — were unearthed last year, when pro-Israel outlets called out the Times for hiring antisemitic journalists as freelancers.
At the time, Hijjy didn’t appear to be working for the Times anymore, and had since taken down his controversial pro-Hitler posts.
However, the Times rehired the antisemitic freelancer last week.
What’s more, the paper is now standing by Hijjy. “‘We reviewed problematic social media posts by Mr. Hijjy when they first came to light in 2022 and took a variety of actions to ensure he understood our concerns and could adhere to our standards if he wished to do freelance work for us in the future,’ a spokes[man] for the Times told FOX News Digital,” Fox News reports. “‘Mr. Hijjy followed those steps and has maintained high journalistic standards. He has delivered important and impartial work at great personal risk in Gaza during this conflict.’”
Wow, you mean, your personal views are irrelevant and all that really matters is that you can do the job? What a revelation!
And you mean, when falling from woke grace, all one need do is follow procedural “steps” to be forgiven? This will come as news to the countless individuals mercilessly canceled in the recent past. In fact, Gray Lady, I think Rosanne Barr might like to have a word with you.
After all, cancel culture doesn’t work that way. Putting aside that praising ol’ Adolf is a non-starter all across the mainstream political spectrum, un-wokeness has been treated in a way thoroughly unbending and unforgiving. Say something politically incorrect, you’re gone. Finis, end game — it’s stimulus-response. For example:
- Tech giant Brendan Eich was forced to resign in 2014 from his chief executive position at Mozilla over a $1,000 donation he made to the Proposition 8 (a marriage-defense measure) cause years before.
- British Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt lost two prominent positions in 2015 for making a lighthearted joke about women in the laboratory.
- Liberal writer Matthew Yglesias was compelled to resign from the publication Vox, which he’d co-founded, because his PC
comradescolleagues said his articles weren’t left-wing enough. - My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell’s company was dropped by approximately 20 retailers after he began asserting that the 2020 election was stolen.
- Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling has faced cancellation after criticizing the MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, aka “transgender”) agenda.
- George Washington’s, Abraham Lincoln’s, and Thomas Jefferson’s “names have been wiped from San Francisco public schools after the school board decided to rename 44 schools that had ‘ties to racism’ and ‘dishonorable legacies,'” related The Washington Times in 2021.
Note that none of the above were offered “steps” to restoration. Moreover, Tim Hunt (and many other cancel-culture victims) apologized for his “transgression”; it didn’t save him. In contrast, it doesn’t appear Hijjy has apologized at all.
Most ironic, however, was that an ex-New York Times opinion editor named Adam Rubenstein was forced to resign from the paper in 2020 after editing a piece by GOP senator Tom Cotton. “Steps” were unavailable to him, too.
So the Times’ standard is clear: Praising Hitler? That’s just a speed bump. But allow an opposing view to appear on the paper’s monolithically leftist pages?
You’re gone.
The Times is just being true to form, however. In 2018, its management hired and stood by an editorial-board hire, Sarah Jeong, who’d sent vile anti-white tweets. In the 1930s, its Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, defended brutal, mass-murdering tyrant Joseph Stalin’s policies, which at that very time were killing millions of innocents. (Note: the Times still hasn’t returned the 1932 Pulitzer Duranty “won” for his propaganda.)
Oh, the paper is also accused of having buried news about Nazi atrocities.
If you’re now thinking that, well, perhaps praising a genocidal despot may buttress your career, think again — unless you’re the right color. Hijjy has gotten an identity-politics free pass because he’s considered non-white.
What all this illustrates, again, is that leftists don’t have principles, just preferences. Their cancel culture’s “imperatives” are applied selectively because they don’t really care about them — it’s just a convenient way to eliminate opposition.
