Government Employee Compares Parkland Student David Hogg to Nazi in Facebook Post
An Interior Department official stirred up controversy in a recent Facebook post when he compared a photo of Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor and gun control advocate David Hogg raising his hand to a Nazi salute.
"Is this child giving a nazi [sic] salute?" asked Kevin Sabo, acting chief of the Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs at the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation.
"What the hell is the left doing to these kids?" the Facebook post also asked, according to a report from Talking Points Memo.
Hogg, 17, has become one of the most visible activists after the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which killed 14 students and three staff members.
The picture Sabo referred to was from the March 24 March for Our Lives event, which became one of the largest youth-organized demonstrations since the Vietnam War era.
Sabo wrote the remarks above a post titled "Uh oh" from Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commenter. Sabo has previously pushed conspiracy theories, according to Talking Points Memo. On his public Facebook page, in a since deleted March 24 post, Sabo linked Parkland students to Nazis, The Hill reported. “The Nazis took everyone’s guns away too," he wrote. "A lot of similarities with these kids.”
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In another Facebook post, Sabo shared a theory that the mass shooting at the Florida high school was a "false flag" operation linked to Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and also to the CIA's “Project MKUltra mind control techniques," Talking Points Memo said.
In 2016, Sabo held a career position in budget analysis at the Department of Interior and was promoted to acting chief of the Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs, according to Talking Points Memo.
In the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, conspiracy theorists have labeled Hogg a crisis actor and compared him to Adolf Hitler. In an interview with Vice, Hogg said he isn't afraid to address the theories. “I don’t care,” Hogg said. “I don’t. I have bigger, more important things to focus on than these stupid conspiracies that aren’t true in any way, shape or form, have no validity, and don’t hold their weight."
Hogg also spoke about conspiracy theorists who go after survivors. "To go after a witness of a school shooting, it’s pathetic," he told Vice.