In the WISN interview, Gableman compared Journal Sentinel reporting to Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi propaganda minister — a comparison O’Donnell said was not appropriate and prompted a Jewish lawmaker to call on Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester to fire Gableman.
“You keep in mind Joseph Goebbels, who was Adolf Hitler’s head of propaganda in Nazi Germany, Goebbels said you give me control of a country’s media, I will turn any people into a herd of pigs,” he said. “What they’re doing over at the Journal would make Joseph Goebbels blush.”
Goebbels’ duties included presenting Hitler in positive light and fomenting hatred of Jewish people through Nazi propaganda films and the regulation of German media. He also orchestrated boycotts of Jewish businesses and artists. After Hitler committed suicide in 1945, Goebbels replaced him as chancellor of Germany for one day until he killed himself and his family.
According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Goebbels’ propaganda praised values such as loyalty to Hitler and racial purity, and the persecution of Jews and other “dissident” groups. Goebbels also was a chief instigator of Kristallnacht, the violent attack on the Jewish community in Germany in 1938, according to the museum’s researchers.
Gableman said he retracted the comparison after O’Donnell said a better comparison would be to the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
“We’ll settle on Pravda. I retract my statement about Joseph Goebbels and you and I agree on Pravda,” Gableman said.