Bluestem isn't surprised to see more oafish remarks from endorsed Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen. Unfortunately, the latest oafishness goes beyond mere clodhopping, to flirt with the worst barbarism of the 20th century.
At TCJewfolk, Lonny Goldsmith reports in Jensen Says Mask Mandates Like Kristallnacht:
Scott Jensen, Minnesota’s Republican nominee for governor, likened mask mandates to Kristallnacht and Nazi book burnings at an event sponsored by Mask Off Minnesota this past spring, more than two years into COVID.
“As is the case with so many powerful initiatives like MaskOff, it starts with one thing, but it becomes another and another and it expands. If you remember, go back to World War II. If you look at the 1930s and you look at it carefully, we could see some things happening. Little things that people chose to push aside. ‘It’s going to be okay,’” Jensen said. “And then the little things grew into something bigger. Then there was a night called Kristallnacht. The night of the breaking glass. Then there was the book burning, and it kept growing and growing, and a guy named Hitler kept growing in power, and World War II came about. Well, in a way, I think that’s why you’re here today. You sense that something’s happening, and it’s growing little by little.”
Mask Off Minnesota is an interest group peddling in COVID-19 misinformation, claiming that masking and the covid vaccines don’t work. In fact, the vaccines dramatically reduce the likelihood of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, and face masks are proven to prevent infection. More than one million Americans have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
Jeepers, that take would seem to make Mask Off Minnesota kindred to the Scott Jensen who appeared on Bluestem Prairie in Saturday's post, Scott Jensen to speak--again--at "vaccine awareness" Global Health Freedom Summit.
Goldsmith reports on the reaction from the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas and the Anti-Defamation League :
Jensen, along with other Republican candidates Matt Birk (lieutenant governor), Kim Crockett (secretary of state), Jim Schultz (attorney general), Ryan Wilson (auditor), and all four candidates challenging the DFL members of congress, will be featured at a Republican Jewish Coalition forum on Tuesday night at the Barry Family Campus.
“Such comparisons are extremely wrong for all the reasons we’ve stated in the past,” said Ethan Roberts, the director of government affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, which has made at least two different statements on the issue. “We invite Dr. Jensen to meet with the JCRC to discuss why such comparisons are so damaging.”
The Anti-Defamation League said that comparisons like Jensen’s are “generally not indications of antisemitic animus; however, they are often used to further a political agenda. Such references are outrageous and may be profoundly hurtful to Jews, many of whom lost family members or carry memories of the trauma suffered by their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents during the destruction of European Jewry.”
Officials from the Jensen campaign and the RJC did not return emails seeking comment.
“Scott Jensen’s remarks are outrageous and offensive, but what’s just as disturbing is the fact that they’re part of a pattern. Dangerous rhetoric and conspiracy theories define who Scott Jensen is,” a spokesperson from Gov. Tim Walz’s campaign said. “Governor Walz can always be counted on to reject extremism and antisemitism.”
This isn’t the first time Minnesota Republicans have used Holocaust imagery in their opposition to masking and other COVID-related restrictions.
In July 2020, St. Cloud City Councilmember Paul Brandmire said at a city council meeting that COVID-positive individuals should be marked with a yellow star on their lapel. City council positions are non-partisan, but Brandmire was the GOP nominee for state house in District 14B in 2020.
That wasn't the only local Republican leader with state legislative ambitions to draw from the Holocaust meme well. Bluestem reported in Jewish Community Action calls out GOP's Julie Buria for yet another Holocaust-themed meme:
The Mesabi Tribune reported back in July, GOP-endorsed House candidate compares COVID-19 response to the Holocaust. She's retracted her apology, the paper reported on Tuesday, August 4:‘I was forced to’: GOP-endorsed candidate retracts apology. There's this gem: "Buria said multiple times in the meeting that “Jews are not offended,” " in the article. Peculiar, given the objection from Jewish Community Action.
Goldsmith continues:
A week later, the Facebook page of the Wabasha County Republican Party 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 person who originally posted the photo did so with the comment: “History is repeating!” Jennifer Carnahan, then the chair of the Minnesota GOP, claimed that the group’s Facebook had been hacked.
This wasn’t the first time Jensen, a one-term former state senator and family physician from Chaska, publicly made analogies between COVID and Nazis. In 2021, he signed on to an affidavit for a court petition from an organization called America’s Frontline Doctors, which opposed children being vaccinated against COVID-19. The petition compared the nationwide vaccination effort to Nazi doctors convicted at Nuremberg for experimenting on imprisoned Jews, Poles, and Russians without their consent, but Jensen told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that he read 10 of the 80 pages of the petition, and that it wasn’t finished when he signed it.
Jensen and Crockett have also had other issues this year. Jensen hosted Royce White, a former pro basketball player and GOP candidate in the fifth congressional district primary, on his podcast. White is a self-described antisemite, and is also a regular on the Blaze TV show of former sportswriter-turned-conservative commentator Jason Whitlock, where he has decried the “globalist agenda,” and in January complained of a “Jewish elite,” and that it’s a problem when it’s suggested that there is a Jewish elite, there are cries of antisemitism.
Crockett, at the Minnesota Republican Party Convention in May, showed a video that featured an image of Hungarian Jewish philanthropist George Soros manipulating strings attached to Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and Marc Elias, a noted voting rights attorney.
The Anti-Defamation League has said attacks against Soros use “longstanding antisemitic myths, particularly the notion that rich and powerful Jews work behind the scenes, plotting to control countries and manipulate global events.”
While these are the most recent attacks on Jews in regional politics, Bluestem has chronicled other examples. Here in South Dakota, there was that time in 2019 when SD Gov Noem blamed Soros' money for pipeline protests; cuts tribes out of anti-protest bills talk as she promoted her "riot boosting" laws, which were later laughed out of court.
Noem's Soros fearmongering echoed 2018 posts, Hagedorn campaign embraces NRCC's anti-semitic anti-Soros ad condemned by Jewish Community Relations Council and Hagedorn campaign changes tune on control of NRCC anti-Semitic ad, but still a-ok with content.
And there was that time when state representative Jeremy Munson, R-Lake Crystal and the late first congressional district congressmen Jim Hagedorn were called out in our post Nazi namecalling: two Southern MN Republicans lose their wits about Warren, insulin critics.
Iffy analogies seem to have been a norm for some Minnesota Republicans.
But we digress. At the Minnesota Reformer, Michelle Griffith reports in Scott Jensen likens COVID-19 public health policies to Kristallnacht, Nazism:
Republican nominee for governor Scott Jensen is set to appear Tuesday at a Republican Jewish Coalition event.
He may want to clarify to the group some remarks he made in April in which he off-handedly compared recent public health policies to Hitler’s rise.
Jensen was speaking to a group called MaskOffMN, which calls the government’s response to COVID-19 “a fraud.” The group also alleges the COVID-19 vaccines are not proven safe nor effective and warns that “A Peacetime Emergency could still be reinstated in Minnesota at any time, with all its mask mandates, lockdowns, and tyranny.”
Jensen was among like-minded people at the event — as of earlier this year Jensen was not vaccinated and once referred to COVID-19 as a “mild four day respiratory illness.”
Jensen sought to explain why it was important to ask questions of our government, and he seemed to imply that groups like MaskOffMN that resist government public health policies would help prevent a repeat of Nazism.
“If you look at the 1930’s and you look at it carefully, we could see something’s happening. Little things that people chose to push aside. ‘It’s going to be okay.’ And then the little things grew into something bigger. Then there was a night called Kristallnacht. The night of the breaking glass,” said Jensen, whose comments were also reported Monday by TCJewfolk.
He’s referring to two nights in November 1938 when violent mobs destroyed synagogues and plundered Jewish homes and businesses.
Jensen traced more history: “Then there was the book burning, and it kept growing and growing, and a guy named Hitler kept growing in power, and World War II came about.”
He concluded by telling the group, which was meeting at Tobies in Hinckley, that they are a bulwark: “Well, in a way, I think that’s why you’re here today. You sense that something’s happening, and it’s growing little by little.”
Officials from Jensen’s campaign and the Republican Jewish Coalition did not immediately respond to the Reformer’s requests for comment.
Ethan Roberts, the director of government affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, said in an email to the Reformer, “Such comparisons are extremely wrong for all the reasons we’ve stated in the past.”
(The inappropriate comparisons have been a staple of pandemic-era right wing discourse.)
In April of 2020, after protestors compared Gov. Tim Walz to Hitler, the JCRC said, “Contemporary comparisons to Nazis, coming from anywhere on the political spectrum, are almost always historically inaccurate, insult the memory of the Holocaust’s victims and survivors, and are deeply hurtful to most Jews and others whose communities were victimized.”
Roberts concluded: “We invite Dr. Jensen to meet with the JCRC to discuss why such comparisons are so damaging.”
And at Racket's Flyover, there's the succinct Man Who Thinks COVID Regs = Nazism Could Be Your Governor, subtitle Still Hot Garbage: Scott Jensen Compared Mask Mandates to Kristallnacht:
When those on the right aren’t getting their way, they sure love to compare what they’re going through to Nazi Germany. Last April, GOP governor candidate Scott Jensen decided to invoke Hitler while speaking at a MaskOffMN meeting, making the dumb argument that mask mandates are a slippery slope toward another Holocaust. TC Jewfolk dug up and shared the Jensen clip this morning: “If you look at the 1930s and you look at it carefully, we could see some things happening. Little things that people chose to push aside. Then there was a night called Kristallnacht.” (Kristallnacht was a multi-day coordinated wave of violence in which the Nazi party tore through Jewish homes, religious sites, and businesses.) “Then there was the book burning, and it kept growing and growing, and a guy named Hitler kept growing in power, and World War II came about,” Jensen continued.
Basically, Jensen is making the argument that mask mandates during a pandemic are akin the things that lead to actual atrocities against humanity. Gotcha. Jensen, who is also a practicing physician, has been known to say dumb shit in the past, including dismissing Covid as a “mild four-day respiratory illness,” saying he plans to gut the medical board if elected (because he is frequently under investigation), and claiming that most of the folks who’ve died of Covid only had a couple years left in them anyway.
Jensen is scheduled to appear at a Republican Jewish Coalition event tomorrow. We sure hope they school him on that “guy named Hitler.”
We concur.
Photo: Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen speaks as supporters cheer behind him at an Apple Valley rally in May. Bluestem would hope that with his track record of awful analogies, he might be a little less fingerpointy. Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer.
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In Jensen’s Defense, we had a mask mandate and now Republicans are turning to book burnings, political violence and fascism, so it is understandable that he is trying to find a cause for his party’s Nazification.
Unfortunately he is unwilling to place blame where it belongs, on his party’s leaders, or the right wing media that is rallying the dumbfucks against democracy, so he is reaching into the bag of Republican scapegoats to blame something he hates for the fact that they have become a party of violent authoritarians.
Posted by: Lb2s | Aug 24, 2022 at 06:47 AM