Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last week compared the mask mandate in the House of Representatives to the Holocaust.
“You know, we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens,” she said on Real America’s Voice TV. “So much so, they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany, and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”
As a grandson of Holocaust survivors, I am appalled and insulted by Greene’s ignorant comparison. It disrespects those who perished, those who survived, and their descendants. I am also disturbed that the host, David Brody, did not stop her or push back. To be sure, Pelosi is a hypocrite for keeping a mask mandate while, along with other Democrats, attending a White House ceremony last week in which there was no widespread mask-wearing or social distancing. But the mask requirement is nothing remotely close to the Jews having to wear the yellow Star of David or being sent into slave labor and eventual death. Of course, some Jews and other ethnic minorities were killed on arrival at the Nazi death camps.
Greene’s Holocaust comparison demonstrates her absurd lack of knowledge about history. In this case, the genocide of 6 million innocent Jews and 5 million others.
Greene’s latest remarks, which included calling Pelosi “mentally ill,” exemplify that she is the Ilhan Omar of the GOP. Similar to Omar, who, along with her fellow “Squad” members, demonizes the Jewish state of Israel, Greene routinely spreads ignorance and bigotry in Congress and beyond.
In March, shortly after a 2018 Facebook post resurfaced in which she blamed California wildfires on space lasers launched by the Jewish banking family the Rothschilds, Greene toured Orthodox Jewish areas in Brooklyn and Long Island. Greene’s Holocaust comparison now shows that the reconciliation Greene made with the Jewish community was just for show. Her words are a slap in the face of American Jewry.
Amid the latest rise in antisemitic attacks, it is high time people condemn hatred or ignorance toward Jews. That should apply whether it is pro-Palestinian demonstrators attacking Jews, the terrorist group Hamas launching rockets from Gaza into Israel, or public figures making absurd Holocaust comparisons.
Jackson Richman is a journalist in Washington, D.C. Follow him @jacksonrichman.
