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Oprah Winfrey slammed as 'racist' for saying caste system in US was 'the template for Nazis'

Winfrey made the comments while doing an interview with Isabel Wilkerson, author of the book 'Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents', for her Apple TV series Oprah's Book Club

Oprah Winfrey has stirred up a storm on social media by saying that the "caste system" in America served as a "template" for the Nazis. 

Winfrey made the comments while doing an interview with Isabel Wilkerson, the author of the book 'Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents', for her Apple TV series 'Oprah's Book Club' this week. The book claims that the USA's "social structure" is "an unrecognized caste system" which is based on race, The Sun reports. 

During the interview, Winfrey asked, "How did you decide to focus the book on three caste systems, India, Nazi Germany and the United States? I think a lot of people get riled up and offended that you're comparing the caste system here to Nazi Germany, yet we discover that we were the template for Nazi Germany."

In a previous interview about the book, Wilkerson revealed that she had been stunned to find how popular American eugenicists' books were in Germany "in the years leading up to the Third Reich." Wilkerson said, "Clearly the Nazis needed no one to teach them how to hate, and yet they did look to the United States."

"They sent people to the United States to research Jim Crow laws, and they were beginning to debate and contemplate Nuremberg laws," Wilkerson added. While speaking during the Oprah interview, Wilkerson revealed that her book focuses "on the infrastructure of our divisions."

"It's a focus in on what lies beneath, what we think we see, and it focuses us on the structure of a thing and that allows us to see how race has essentially been the cue and the signifier of where a person fits in that hierarchy," she continued. 

Oprah's comments were met with a lot of backlash across social media. One such user said, "@Oprah No, the eugenics model of Planned Parenthood followed after Nazi Germany. The MSM 'repeating a lie until it becomes the truth' models the Nazis'. Antifa/BLM behaving like the Brown shirts models Nazi Germany. America Was Never the ‘Template for Nazi Germany‘ SHAME ON YOU."

"Hey @Oprah I don't think at Nazi Germany 'template' would allowed you succeed and open your racist mouth as you do. Don't be a phony with your Black privileged attitude 'Karen,'" wrote another social media user who echoed the same sentiments. 

Yet another social media user commented, "@Oprah did pretty well utilizing what she now calls the 'caste system' that Nazi Germany copied. Oprah you’re not special, anyone with ambition & desire can make it in America! The problem is PARENTS aren’t parenting & encouraging their children! GOVT isn’t a good parent!"

"Oprah Winfrey is & always has been a racist. She disparages those who are white, yet for those white people who attended her shows & purchased her products, she would be working a 9-5 job for wages. The white race & Caucasians should reject Winfrey’s 'template for Nazi Germany'," commented another. 

One Twitter user posted, "I don't think Oprah is right. Nazi Germany per the history classes I took happened because Germany was so devastated by WW1 and the rest of the world was trying to make them pay. Post WW1 Germany was ruined financially. That is not us. @Oprah."