We're seeing a lot of justified condemnation of Georgia United States Representative Marion Taylor Greene's comparison of pandemic restrictions to the Holocaust.
The Washington Post--and others--report:
Jewish groups seek Minnesota GOP response to use of Holocaust imagery:
Jewish community groups are calling for the Minnesota Republican Party to publicly stand with them in denouncing comparisons of the state’s coronavirus strategy to the Holocaust after social media posts in recent weeks by two endorsed candidates and the Wabasha County GOP.
They said the comparisons were inaccurate, offensive and diminish the horrors of a genocide of Nazis killing 6 million Jewish people. Such sentiments were renewed Monday when two GOP-endorsed state House candidates — Julie Buria in House 6B of Mountain Iron and Paul Brandmire in House 14B of St. Cloud, both sitting city councilors in their respective communities — back peddled on previous apologies over their Holocuast-themed posts.
Meanwhile, leaders in the Minnesota GOP have remained silent on their candidates’ sudden reversals, despite saying last week that Buria was “sincere” in her apology.
Carin Mrotz, executive director of St. Paul-based Jewish Community Action, said candidates invoking the Holocaust is a “far-right phenonomen” within the party and urged the state’s establishment Republican leadership to condemn their endorsed candidates.
“I would call on the party to be strong,” she said in a phone interview Wednesday morning. “I’m sure there’s Jewish Republicans that would like to see their party take action. It’s a really unnecessary and really offensive comparison.”
The Minnesota GOP did not return multiple emails and phone calls requesting comment on Tuesday and Wednesday regarding Buria’s retracted apology. A phone call Wednesday to Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan was not returned as of press time Thursday. Requests for comment were also sent to GOP leaders in the Legislature, St. Louis County Republicans and Eighth District Republicans.
When reached by email Wednesday, Andrew Wagner, director of public affairs for the Minnesota House GOP asked the Mesabi Tribune, “Are there new developments that warrant a third story on this topic?” He did not respond to a follow-up email for this story.
Carnahan previously described posts by Buria and the Wabasha County GOP as “vitriolic” and called for the resignation of a board member from the county group, who later stepped down. She did not comment on Brandmire.
Ethan Roberts, director of government affairs for the nonpartisan Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC) in Minneapolis, said GOP leadership has privately told the organization that these comparisons are wrong and believes the party has told candidates the same behind closed doors.
He said the JCRC understands an organization can’t control what its individual members say, but the collective relationship and influence of the Minnesota GOP can move the conversation beyond the Jewish community condemning the statements, and would allow the public to have better information on where the party stands on the issue.
“That’s what we’re looking for — an unequivocal statement supporting our Jewish community — an expression of their values,” he said over the phone Thursday. “We don’t have a choice. This is what has to be done.”
Dr. Marilyn Chiat, Ph.D., a Minnesota-based historian who is Jewish and gives lectures on the Jewish communities of the Iron Range, said she hopes the party is “flummoxed” by their candidates and said she wasn’t surprised by the recent lack of response.
“It’s so profoundly stupid,” she said over the phone about Holocaust comparisons. “How do you respond to utter stupidity?” . . .
Today, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz - the largest concentration camp during the Holocaust - imagery of the systematic genocide of Jewish people is being symbolized in the politics of a global pandemic sweeping Minnesota and across the United States.
Buria shared a post that suggested essential worker papers handed out after the state’s stay-at-home orders were an example of government overreach, similar to how Nazis routinely checked for Jewish people on the streets. In saying her apology was “forced” on Monday, she doubled down on her apparent belief that a “parallel” exists between the freedoms lost during the pandemic and the freedoms lost during the Holocaust.
Brandmire contrasted the mask mandate to yellow stars used in Nazi Germany to forcibly mark Jewish people in the early years of the Holocaust, saying it was a cautionary example of unchecked executive powers.
A party chairman in Anderson County, Kan. published a political cartoon showing Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in a Star of David mask while people were loaded onto a cattle car. The chairman, who owned the local newspaper, later removed the cartoon after first declining to apologize.
Elsewhere, state officials in Idaho and Colorado were compared to Nazis over their coronavirus responses. Protestors outside the Minnesota Governor’s Mansion in April carried signs likening Gov. Tim Walz to Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler.
In late July, two customers at a Walmart in Marshall, Minn. were removed from the store for wearing facemasks emblazoned with swastikas and quoted as saying, “If you vote for [Democratic presidential nominee Joe] Biden, you’re going to be living in Nazi Germany.”
Mrotz, of Jewish Community Action, said the fundamental issue is that people feel these political statements justify them as victims of perceived government overreach without taking into account the offensive nature or divisiveness.
“The root of the problem is they are comparing measures taken for public safety and measures taken to exterminate and genocide my people,” she said. “You’re saying the Jews are the disease … co-opting trauma for your own perceived victimization is divisive and hurtful.”
Mrotz considered the statements and posts are a form of anti-Semitism because they’re using Holocaust imagery and history to “score a political point.”
Buria later retracted her apology, Jimmie Lovriem reported for the Duluth Tribune in Sorry, not sorry: Iron Range GOP candidate says she 'was forced to' apologize for comparing pandemic response to Holocaust:
The Republican candidate for a Minnesota House seat is facing backlash after she shared a Facebook post last week making a false claim about the state's COVID-19 response and comparing it to the Holocaust. Though she apologized and deleted the post, she later retracted the apology and said she "was forced to" apologize.
Julie Buria, a Mountain Iron city councilor and GOP-endorsed candidate for Minnesota House 6B, shared a post that said: "Any government with enough power to demand that you carry papers in order to move around freely is far more dangerous than COVID-19." Under the text was a photo of Nazi soldiers checking a man's papers and another photo of a mass grave filled with victims of the Holocaust.
News of the post, and the apology retraction, was first reported by the Mesabi Tribune.
Not only was the post incorrect — Minnesotans never had to carry papers proving they were essential workers during the stay-at-home order, which was repeatedly explained by state officials — the imagery of dead Jews and the comparison of the state's COVID-19 response to Nazis murdering 6 million Jews and 5 million others was "triggering and harmful to a number of people in our community who have first-hand experience of the Holocaust," said Carin Mrotz, executive director of Jewish Community Action, a statewide social justice organization that shared on Twitter a screenshot of Buria's post.
While Mrotz understands the comparisons of the COVID-19 response to the Nazis and Holocaust are supposed to show government overreach, she said it remains "a faulty, uneducated comparison."
"The problem is that the measures that the Nazis were taking were designed to eradicate Jews. And the measures that our government is taking are designed to eradicate a disease. And so by making this comparison of the way that you eliminate Jews and the way that you eliminate a potential-deadly virus, you're actually making Jews analogous to the virus," Mrotz told the News Tribune on Thursday.
The Tikkun Olam Committee of Temple Israel Duluth said it was "appalled and dismayed" in a letter it sent to the Mountain Iron City Council on Sunday.
"This distortion and lack of thoughtfulness is misleading and hurtful to readers both Jewish and non-Jewish," the committee wrote in the letter later shared with the News Tribune. "This type of incongruous comparison of the governor’s actions to the atrocities committed during the Holocaust dehumanizes the facts of 6 million Jews murdered and 5 million others whose lives were lost due to the travesties leading to and resulting in World War II."
An apology, then a reversal
Facing widespread outrage over the post, Buria apologized last week.
"Everyone who knows me knows that I have always been a fervent supporter of Israel and the Jewish people. I regret sharing the post and apologize for its graphic nature," Buria wrote in an email to the Mesabi Tribune.
Minnesota GOP Chair Jennifer Carnahan also told the Mesabi Tribune that Buria had apologized to them and that the party was "saddened by these vitriolic posts" comparing the COVID-19 response to the Holocaust. The Wabasha GOP Facebook page last week had also shared a similar post.
"We spoke with (Buria) following her post, and as she said in her apology, she immediately regretted the post and was sincere in her apology to not let it happen again," Carnahan said.
But at the Mountain Iron City Council meeting Monday, Buria retracted that apology and called the situation "asinine and trumped up."
"I was forced to (apologize) ... I stand for my statement," Buria told the council and members of the public in the meeting. She did not say who forced her to apologize.
Buria and the Minnesota GOP did not return calls or emails from the News Tribune seeking comment this week, and the Minnesota GOP has not commented on the matter since Buria retracted her apology . . .
Mountain Iron Mayor Gary Skalko, who said his grandmother was a Russian Jew who sought refuge in the U.S. in 1907, but had relatives die in the Holocaust, said the post "crossed the line."
"When you compare a pandemic, the handling of it, in this case our governor, to the Jewish community where you have a picture with a bunch of dead people in open graves there, how do you think the Jewish community is going to react?" Skalko said in the meeting.
Discussion of the post went on for more than 30 minutes.
As of Friday afternoon, Buria is still listed as the GOP-endorsed candidate for House District 6B on the Minnesota GOP's website, despite calls for the party to retract their endorsement.
Minnesota House 6B incumbent Rep. David Lislegard, DFL-Aurora, who will face Buria in November's general election, tweeted an apology "on behalf of our region" on Twitter.
"This whole situation is unfortunate and not who we want to be. To the Jewish community please accept an apology on behalf of our region," Lislegard tweeted. "Words really do matter, I ask that we all be more thoughtful in our remarks and our actions." . . .
Both Brandmire and Buria lost their House bids.
The screengrab at the top of this page is from TC Jewfolks article, Wabasha County GOP Links Nazis, Mask Ordinance; Board Member Resigns"
After claiming Monday night that the Wabasha County Republican Party Facebook page had been hacked, Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan tweeted that an anti-Semitic post that compared the Holocaust to Gov. Tim Walz’s mask mandate was made by a board member.
On Monday afternoon, the organization shared a photo of a Nazi officer speaking to a man wearing a Star of David pinned to his jacket. The text above the photo said “Just put on the star and quit complaining, it’s really not that hard,” and below the photo: “Just put on the mask and quit complaining.” The original poster had the photo with the comment: “History is repeating!”
The post — and the group’s Facebook page — were deleted later Monday night.
“This post is appalling. As we stated over the weekend, to compare public health measures to Nazi orders for Jews to wear yellow badges is reprehensible and wholly inaccurate,” said Steve Hunegs, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. “We demand the Republican Party of Wabasha County remove the post and apologize. We are requesting a meeting with GOP Chair Jennifer Carnahan to express our dismay and demand a plan to halt these absurd and offensive comparisons.”
Carnahan did apologize for the post on behalf of the county and state GOP.
Carnahan was made aware of the post by a tweet from Jewish Community Action.
Wabasha County is southeast of Red Wing and north of Rochester along the Mississippi River. The post has drawn more than 50 comments condemning the group for the post.
The Facebook post came two days after a Marshall, Minn. couple was asked to leave that city’s Walmart after wearing masks with swastikas on them. They has been banned from all Walmart stores for a year. (Video is here, but here’s your language warning).
“What happened today at our store in Marshall, MN is unacceptable. We strive to provide a safe and comfortable shopping environment for all our customers and will not tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment in any aspect of our business,” a Walmart statement said. “We are asking everyone to wear face coverings when they enter our stores for their safety and the safety of others and it’s unfortunate that some individuals have taken this pandemic as an opportunity to create a distressing situation for customers and associates in our store.”
The swastika mask drew a rebuke from Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“We denounce this hate symbol and all hate speech targeting the Jewish community and stand in solidarity with those impacted by the bigotry these individuals displayed,” he told KARE 11 “All Americans must work to dismantle the systemic racism that continues to target minority communities.”
The first incident comparing the Holocaust to the mask ordinance came last week when St. Cloud City Councilman Paul Brandmire said that COVID-positive individuals should be marked with a yellow star on their lapel. Jewish Community Action, in its tweet calling for the post to removed, noted that this came after a recent call by the Minnesota Rabbinical Association for Walz to enact a statewide mask ordinance.
Given this persistance of this offensive analogy, Bluestem hopes folks across the political spectrum listen to leaders in Jewish communities and own up to the hurtfulness of these statements.
Screengrab: The deleted Wabasha County GOP post, via TC Jewfolk.
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