Republican Anti-Vaxxers' Obsession With Nazi Imagery

Georgia Republican Senatorial candidate Herschel Walker cancelled a fundraiser with a Texas woman whose Twitter profile contained needles shaped as a swastika after initially denying there was any Nazi link at all.

At least, Walker was sufficiently chastened to cancel the fundraiser and distance himself from the use of Nazi imagery. Sadly, the same cannot be said of many Republican anti-vaxxers who casually invoke Nazi imagery in objecting to vaccine mandates and other COVID public health measures.

Last month when the ADL of Arizona chided Republican State Senator Kelly Townsend for likening vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, Townsend told the ADL to "learn their history." Imagine if Townsend had said this directly to a Holocaust survivor. Actually, it's not hard to imagine at all.

Some Republicans like Congressman Madison Cawthorn, Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman John Bennett  Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have compared vaccine passports to the yellow Star of David Jews were forced to wear throughout Nazi occupied Europe. Mind you, Greene apologized for comparing mask wearing to the Holocaust back in June only to liken the Biden Administration's vaccine mobilization efforts to Nazi "brown shirts" three weeks later. Days later, Colorado Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert called those engaged in these efforts "needle Nazis."

I've objected to the use of Nazi imagery previously as well as Acting Boston Mayor Kim Janey's likening vaccine passports to slavery. At the time I wrote:

Now one might not agree with the policy of a vaccine passport. But to invoke Jews wearing a yellow Star of David or slavery with regard to the merits of a vaccine passport is just plain demagoguery built on the foundation of ignorance and stupidity. 

The yellow Star of David singled out Jews and slavery singled out African-Americans rendering both groups not only second class citizens, but subhuman. Vaccine passports are a public health measure which apply to all people regardless of their religious beliefs, race, gender or sexual orientation. 

Yet the ongoing effort of Republican anti-vaxxers to utilize Nazi imagery makes my blood boil. In so doing they minimize the deaths of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis and those who survived concentration camps. They defame those who died and mock those who have survived. It is anti-Semitism plain and simple. For all of their efforts to liken vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany, it is interesting how American Nazis are in solidarity with their anti-vaccine views.

Of course, if vaccine mandates were truly akin to the Nazis then the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Lauren Boeberts, Madison Cawthorns, Kelly Townsends and Herschel Walker's Texas fundraising host would not be free to speak their minds. They instead would be incarcerated or dead. Not even a vaccine could save their life.