Given the current global political climate, a president who made racism great again, the richest man in the world making goo-goo eyes at the Third Reich, and that tool who was bounced from Fox News now giving platforms to Jewish hate, it “makes sense” that a white man who runs a prominent senator’s campaign would have Nazis all over his social media pages.
But racism never makes sense, and so when we see men like 25-year-old Stephen Woytek, a top staffer for a Republican Senator Jon Husted from Ohio, use a photo of SS soldiers as his Facebook profile photo, I become truly baffled. I use WTF so much these days that they might as well be my initials.
My shock is not the overt racism part, but that these people are proud of this legacy; that they want to be publicly affiliated with men and women who killed over 17 million during World War II and tried to exterminate an entire people.
And yet, Woytek not only used a photo of Nazis to represent himself on social media, but the Washington Post exclusively reports that he recently added to a public playlist of songs celebrating Rhodesia, “a defunct White-minority-ruled nation often venerated by white supremacists” (now Zimbabwe).
The Post says that in 2018, Woytek changed his Facebook profile picture to an image of soldiers from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division, an elite unit that became the Führer’s personal bodyguards.
In a statement on Friday, Sept. 11, after being contacted by The Washington Post, a spokeswoman for Husted said Woytek no longer works on the campaign as political director.
Sen. Jon Husted, who is in a close, important midterm race against former senator Sherrod Brown (D) in Ohio, had no direct comment, but his spokesperson lightly brushed over “Steve’s” racism with this statement:
“Steve serves our country honorably as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army and is a proud graduate of The Citadel. He studies military history and routinely reenacts historical battles. While he denies negative intent, his social media activity displays a complete lack of judgement and disregard for its impact on others. Sen. Husted demands better of those who represent him. Upon learning about the social media posts today, Sen. Husted made the immediate decision to part ways.”
Woytek had his own weak defense for his indefensible actions:
“I want to be unequivocal: I reject the racist and antisemitic ideology the SS and Nazi Germany represented. I believe it is important to educate our younger generations, which is why I participate in historical reenactments,” Woytek said in a statement, as reported by The Post. “I am utterly heartbroken, but respectfully am parting ways with his campaign,” he wrote.
One would think that if this man knew military history so well, he would NEVER want even the hint of Nazism near him (or his candidate) because he knows how much damage that regime did.
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