GOP Chairman Defends Comparing Unvaccinated to Jews in Nazi Germany
The Chairman of the Republican Party in Oklahoma has defended a controversial social media post he made that compared COVID vaccine mandates to the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
In a Facebook video that spanned close to seven minutes on Sunday, GOP Chairman John Bennett revealed that he was the individual who wrote the controversial social media post uploaded to the Oklahoma Republican Party page on Friday that included a photo of a yellow Star of David with the word "Unvaccinated" on it.
The Facebook post on Friday, which has been criticized by other Republicans in Oklahoma, compared COVID vaccine mandates to the emblems that Jewish people were forced to wear in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.
Bennett's post also called on residents to urge state officials to ban businesses from requiring employees to be vaccinated to work.
Despite Bennett's comments, there are currently no plans for vaccine passports to be introduced in Oklahoma, while Governor Kevin Stitt has confirmed that he will not mandate COVID vaccines, according to The Oklahoman.
Addressing the post during the video on Sunday, Bennett said that "here in the United States of America, we've got mandated vaccines, we've got mandated mask-wearing.
"They're closing down businesses, they're closing down churches. This is a direct attack on our liberties, and the government is using the private sector to do that business for them."
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Bennett then referenced the comparison made between conditions for Jewish people during Nazi Germany and vaccine mandates, saying: "If we don't do something now, it's going to end in the same exact result as we saw when nobody stood up whenever the Jews were told that they had to wear that star."
He then defended his use of the imagery, saying that "the Star of David, when they put that on the Jews, they weren't sending them directly to the gas chambers, they weren't sending them directly to the [incinerator], this was leading up to that.
"They gave them a star to put on and they couldn't go to the grocery store, they couldn't go out in public, they couldn't do anything without having that star on their shirt. Take away the star and add a vaccine passport."
Toward the end of the video, Bennett then turned his attention to Republican colleagues who criticized him over the weekend for using the imagery.
"Instead of supporting liberty and freedom here in Oklahoma, they said I shouldn't have referenced that star," Bennett said. "Well, it's not about the star. What it's about is a totalitarian government pushing communist agenda on top of forcing people, against their own liberties, to get this vaccine."
In a joint statement on Friday, several top Republicans, including Stitt, Lieutenant Governor Matt Pinnell and Senators Jim Inhofe and James Lankford, criticized Bennett.
"It is irresponsible and wrong to compare an effective vaccine — developed by President Trump's Operation Warp Speed — to the horrors of the Holocaust," the officials wrote.
"People should have the liberty to choose if they take the vaccine, but we should never compare the unvaccinated to the victims of the Holocaust."
Newsweek has contacted the Oklahoma Republican Party for comment.
