It’s only July, but I think we might already have a winner for the “Dumbest Tweet of 2022,” and that’s against some really stiff competition. It was from a self-proclaimed “Marxist-humanist” who tweeted, “Yeah, Anne Frank had white privilege. Bad things happen to people with white privilege also, but don’t tell the whites that.” (For the record, the “privileged” Miss Frank and was hiding in a concealed room at 13 to keep from being murdered by the Nazis, who captured her family and sent them to concentration camps, where Anne died at 15. So did all the rest of her family except her father, who published her diary.)

https://www.theblaze.com/news/anne-frank-white-priviege-twitter-reactions

That stunning idiocy drew the condemnation it deserved and was quickly deleted. In fact, I would have just ignored it as another example of the brain drool that passes for discourse on Twitter, if it weren’t for the fact that it sparked some great responses that apply to a wide spectrum of current “critical race theory,” “white privilege,” “identity politics,” twisted history nonsense.

The best, obviously much-needed, history lesson came from writer Ashton Pittman:  "If you think 'Anne Frank had white privilege,' you don't know what 'white' means. Race isn't real. It's made up. What makes you 'white' is relative to your society's ideas. In Nazi Germany, she wasn't 'white:' the Nazis saw her as part of a 'Jewish race' & murdered her for it. If Anne Frank could've been transported into 21st century America, we'd consider her 'white.' But in Nazi Germany, she wasn't 'white;' she was Jewish and considered part of a separate race. That's why anti-Semitism is a form of racism even though most Jews appear 'white.'"

Exactly, but acknowledging that would open the door to judging historical figures in the context of their times rather than by ever-changing modern standards, which would destroy much of the “woke” left’s arguments.

Surprisingly, some good comments also came from the left. Liberal singer Clay Aiken tweeted, "I think it's time to shut the internet down. Completely." It was even a bridge too far for Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the bogus “1619 Project,” who replied, “Anne Frank did not have white privileged (sic) in Nazi Germany. Literally wasn't considered part of the white race."

But one of the most insightful replies came from Matt Walsh: "According to the Left's doctrine of white privilege, yes Anne Frank had it. If that makes the concept of 'white privilege' sound insane, well right exactly."

And that’s a great point. Set aside for a moment the offensive absurdity of claiming Anne Frank had white privilege and consider how easy it was under the current level of discourse for this moron to make such a claim. That alone should show you what a hollow, meaningless, intellectually bankrupt linguistic sledgehammer that accusation is.

And before anyone tries to claim that applying it to Anne Frank was a unique example of some anonymous nut on Twitter just going way too far, consider the last line of the linked article:

“In 2020, Time magazine claimed that disability rights advocate Hellen Keller was ‘just another privileged white person.’"

For those who’ve never seen “The Miracle Worker,” here’s the Wikipedia bio of Helen Keller and all the amazing things she accomplished, despite having been blind and deaf from the age of 19 months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller