Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, defended Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comparison of the Holocaust to the U.S. border.
“One of the lessons from the Holocaust is ‘Never Again’ – not only to mass murder, but also to the dehumanization of people, violations of basic rights, and assaults on our common morality. We fail to learn that lesson when we don’t callout such inhumanity right in front of us,” the New York Democrat, who is Jewish, said Tuesday on Twitter.
One of the lessons from the Holocaust is ‘Never Again’ – not only to mass murder, but also to the dehumanization of people, violations of basic rights, and assaults on our common morality. We fail to learn that lesson when we don’t callout such inhumanity right in front of us. https://t.co/EEBBkVL7FG
— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) June 18, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez, also a New York Democrat, triggered a controversy over the history of the Holocaust after she compared immigrant detention centers on the southern border to concentration camps during World War II.
“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps,” she said Monday.
“The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it,” the freshman congresswoman, 29, added.
Ocasio-Cortez — popularly referred to as AOC — then renewed her assertion Tuesday on Twitter, criticizing Republicans who said it was a bad comparison.
“This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying,” she said. “And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps. Concentration camps are considered by experts as ‘the mass detention of civilians without trial.’ And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.”
And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps.
Concentration camps are considered by experts as “the mass detention of civilians without trial.”
And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi weighed in on the comments Wednesady, saying she had not talked to the New York Democrat about her statements, but said that all Democrats should be careful “about how politically charged the atmosphere is.”
“‘They come to represent their districts and their point of view, and they take responsibility for the statements they make,” the California Democrat said Wednesday.
Ocasio-Cortez was blasted as ignored by Republicans, many journalists, and some Jewish groups.
“We are deeply disturbed by the language used in your recent Instagram live video which seeks to equate the detention centers on America’s southern border with Nazi-era Concentration Camps,” the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York said in a letter sent to Ocasio-Cortez Tuesday.
