Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) took aim at Covid vaccine card mandates in Washington, DC with a Nazi Germany comparison, only to find numerous critics blasting the message, including the Auschwitz Memorial Museum.
Davidson tweeted in response to a message from DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, who reminded residents of the US capital that the city will require proof of Covid vaccination for people 12 and up, and photo IDs for those 18 and older, beginning on Saturday. Masking in public is also mandatory.
Bowser’s tweet received plenty of criticism from lawmakers, but the response to stand out the most may have been Davidson’s, who wrote, “This has been done before,” adding a picture of an identification card used in Nazi Germany.
The card documented the origin of its holder, and was part of the Nazi segregationist policy primarily targeting Jews.
“Let’s recall that the Nazis dehumanized Jewish people before segregating them, segregated them before imprisoning them, imprisoned them before enslaving them, and enslaved them before massacring them,” Davidson wrote in a followup tweet.
The Auschwitz Memorial Musuem accused Davidson of “exploiting” the “tragedy” of all those who suffered under Nazi Germany and blasted the tweet as a “sad symptom of moral and intellectual decay.”
Many Democrats also expressed outrage over Davidson’s comparison and demanded an apology.
Pandemic restrictions and contested vaccine mandates have led to several Republicans using Nazi Germany in their arguments against government overreach in the US.
In a March interview, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-North Carolina) said that the idea of introducing vaccine passports “smack of 1940s Nazi Germany,” while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) found herself embroiled in major controversy in June, over repeatedly drawing paralles between US policies and Nazi practices. After pressure from her own party, Greene apologized and visited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
However, she later doubled down on the comparison, using the the term “vaccine Nazis” when opposing Covid mandates during a November interview.
“I'm sorry. I know I'm using the word ‘Nazi’ and everybody gets mad when I say it, but that's exactly what [mandates] are,” she said.