Here is a rough guide to the lifecycle of a political scandal. First, the bad thing surfaces. Second, the politician apologises, expresses values inconsistent with the bad thing, and emphasises that the bad thing is not who they really are. Third, and this is the important part, the politician declares the matter closed and proposes that everyone now turn to the country’s economic and social challenges, which are real and pressing and notably do not involve any old videos. Samoan Prime Minister La’auli Leuatea Schmidt hit all three buttons on Monday, in about that order.
The bad thing, in this case, is a seven-second video from July 2007, published on Sunday by the Samoa Observer, a local newspaper. The footage was shot at a Schmidt family reunion on the island of Savai’i, when Schmidt was a member of parliament and deputy speaker. In it, he is holding a microphone, leading a “hip hip” call-and-response with the crowd, and then instructing those present to raise their right hands and say “Heil Hitler”. About a dozen people visible in the footage appear to go along with it, according to the Samoa Observer’s account, relayed by CNN. Radio New Zealand said it independently verified the footage through its correspondent in Samoa. Seven seconds is not a long time, but it is more than enough time to do a Nazi salute.
“Whatever the context or intention at that gathering twenty years ago, I recognise that those words and gesture were inappropriate and capable of causing offence and hurt and I apologise for using them.”
Schmidt also said the words were “not intended for the public”, per CNN’s report of his statement, which is one of the more delicious categories of apology: sorry, not for doing the thing, but for the thing becoming public. “I reject Nazism, antisemitism, racism and all forms of political extremism,” he added, saying the episode did not represent his beliefs or the values of Samoa’s government and people.
The apology came after the Samoa Observer contacted academics for comment, which is a neat trick newspapers have: you call up an eminent historian of Nazi Germany — in this case Richard Evans — and you ask what he thinks, and he says, by email, that the footage is “shocking and disturbing”, and now the prime minister has a problem with a news hook. University of Canterbury academic Anne-Marie Brady told the paper Schmidt should explain and apologise. He then did both.
One thing that makes this episode stranger than the median old-video scandal is that Schmidt, who became prime minister in 2025, has been conspicuously, almost theatrically pro-Israel. He wore a Jewish prayer shawl at his swearing-in, where a shofar was sounded. He has pledged to open a Samoan embassy in Jerusalem before the end of 2026, a step only a handful of countries have taken given the city’s disputed status and Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. If you were building a defence exhibit labelled “this man is not an antisemite”, you could hardly do better. The seven seconds from Savai’i are not easily reconciled with any of it, which is presumably why his statement treats the clip as a context problem rather than a beliefs problem.
The second strange thing is the plumbing of how the video came out. CNN notes that Schmidt banned the Samoa Observer from all government press conferences last year over what he called “unfair” reporting. Now, imagine you are a small local newspaper that has been cut out of government access by a thin-skinned prime minister. What do you do with your time? One answer is: you publish a verified nineteen-year-old video of that prime minister doing a Nazi salute at a family reunion, and the whole world — Al Jazeera, CNN, Radio New Zealand — picks it up within hours. I am not saying there is a lesson here about picking fights with the press. The sequence of events is simply available for inspection.
There is also some genuine local context. Samoa, a country of about 221,000 people near Fiji, was a German colony in the early 20th century — New Zealand seized what was then Western Samoa from Germany in 1914 and ran it until independence in 1962 — and German surnames and heritage are common. None of that makes “Heil Hitler” at a party a normal thing to say, and Schmidt did not offer it as an excuse. He said the words were inappropriate whatever the intention, rejected extremism, and said he now considers “this matter addressed” and will refocus on the country’s economic and social challenges.
Governments get to declare a lot of things addressed. Whether they are addressed is generally decided by other people.