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Writer David Volodzko made quite the splash during his brief stint as a staff columnist at the Seattle Times, getting canned by the paper for a controversial statement after his very first story.
The column itself—based on the ethics of a Vladimir Lenin statue in Seattle—apparently wasn’t the problem. It was a subsequent tweet from Voldozko, in which he said that Hitler wasn’t as evil as Lenin since “Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful to society whereas Lenin targeted even those he himself did not believe were harmful in any way.”
It’s a strange hill to die on, and one that apparently got Voldozko axed after his inaugural Times story. Thursday night, the paper released a statement to social media announcing that, “effective immediately,” Voldozko would no longer be a member of the Times staff.