OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma Republican Party faced fierce criticism on Friday for a Facebook post likening COVID-19 vaccine mandates to the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
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The post on the party’s official Facebook page urged people to call the lieutenant governor and ask him to call a special session to prohibit employers from requiring their employees to get vaccinated. It featured a picture of a yellow Star of David with the word “unvaccinated” on it and said: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”
Roberta Clark, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City, called the post “highly inappropriate” and urged party officials to apologize.
“To compare the actions taken by Nazi Germany to a public health discussion is ill-informed and inappropriate,” Clark said. “An apology is really appropriate, and it shows leadership and sensitivity to the harmful impact this has made.”
John Bennett, the party’s new chairman, didn’t immediately respond to a phone message left at the party’s headquarters seeking comment.
Last month, Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, apologized for comments she made comparing the required wearing of safety masks in the House to the horrors of the Holocaust.
It’s not the first time the state party, or Bennett, has faced criticism for posts on Facebook.
In 2015, then-Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman Randy Brogdon apologized for a post that likened food stamps to feeding wild animals.
The following year, Bennett, then a state lawmaker, posted a news story on Facebook critical of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and added the comment, “2 words … firing squad.”
At the time, Bennett defended the comments as “sarcasm,” and said he wouldn’t wish death upon anyone or encourage violence toward any candidate.
stupid and ignorant…not anti semitic
It’s certainly inappropriate and outrageous and idiotic. However, to call it anti-Semitism is absurd and cheapens the real meaning of anti-Semitism.
It doesn’t sound anti-Semitic. If anything, it sympathizes with us. Inappropriate for certain. But I don’t see the hate.
Seems to me that the headline calling this anti-Semitism suffers from the same problem that the stupid and ill-advised comparison of forced vaccination to the Holocaust.
Nothing says click bait like “GOP” and “Nazi” in the same headline. I’m sure if we went through every states’ Democrats’ Facebook page we’d find numerous comparisons to Trump being a Nazi but “Democrats” and “Nazi” doesn’t generate the same traction.
Such a misleading headline
Not anti-semitic. Stupid and ill-informed.
Why are these liberal fake Jews who are always howling ‘anti-semitism’ whenever a Republican decent, moral American tries to express his horror about what is happening today in our beloved U.S.A, and in trying to find the right analogy to use, compares the totalitarianism and imminent dangers to our freedom and liberty, and to the Constitution of the U.S.A -have used the Holocaust in their comments. Yes! the vaccines are, being dangerous bio-weapons, CAN DEFINITELY BE COMPARED to the murderous evil unspeakable horrors of things that were done to us duriing the Holocaust. And the words spoken by Republican G-fearing, patriots are perfectly in place and tzim zach! Wake up Yidden – these freedom – loving patriots are our friends , unlike the criminal leftist Democrats, who are falling over themselves to destroy America and put us back into a Holocaust, Chas V’sholom!
More ignorant GOP conflating of hitlerism and trying to stop Covid. Who politicized Covid? Trump did. Who weaponized not wearing masks and getting vac? Trump. Who called it a hoax and a ‘mild flu’ ? Trump did. Facts matter.