I’ve long maintained that the most objectionable form of ignorance is what is best known as willful ignorance. In other words, the kind of stupidity where a person knows the truth but chooses to pretend it doesn’t exist.
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is famous for being willfully ignorant, and now a crew from the BBC has discovered just how out of touch this domestic terrorist group truly is.
After the murders of nine people by white supremacist Dylann Roof at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the BBC negotiated with a KKK chapter in Alabama so they could get a more in-depth look at hate groups in America.
BBC Three’s documentary “KKK: The Fight for White Supremacy,” aired on Monday, and it follows members of the Klan as they begin preparations for what they claim is a coming race war.
In one of the most chilling scenes found in the documentary, a Klan member comments on a photo of Adolf Hitler which is displayed prominently on the wall:
“Adolf Hitler, he was one of the smartest men there ever was. The so-called concentration camps like Auschwitz and so forth, they say they were death camps. But these death camps, they gave the so-called people that were being killed cigarettes, there was coffee, there was a movie theater, a library, even a swimming pool in Auschwitz. And if you’re going to sit there and kill all these people then how come all these things would be in there? It’s more like a summer camp.”
The BBC interviewer is clearly stunned, and he asks:
“Sorry. You’re telling me Auschwitz was like a summer camp?”
To which the KKK moron replies:
“Well, they had a swimming pool, a movie theater and everything else. You know, you don’t see in prisons today any kind of swimming pool being in the middle of the prison hall.”
So what does this incredibly ignorant man think Jews were doing at Auschwitz? Simple:
“Swimming. And working. Because they didn’t want to do any work, and what Hitler was trying to do was he was trying to teach them to work, trying to rehabilitate them, if you will.”
And where exactly did he learn this bogus information?
“It’s all history.”
It’s not in any of the history books I read in school. It’s not what even the Germans say happened at Auschwitz, either.
In today’s world, with this kind of willful ignorance of truth and history, it is more important than ever for us to confront such denial. For as George Santayana wrote with perfect clarity:
“Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”
Watch a Trailer for the BBC Documentary on the Klan
This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org.