An Idaho state legislator was under fire on Monday for remarks she made in a media interview that compared coronavirus restrictions on individual movement to Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jews.
Heather Scott — a Republican who represents District 1 in the Idaho state legislature — told Houston-based podcast host Jess Fields that Idaho Governor Brad Little was a “little Hitler” for preventing “non-essential” workers in the state from going to work during the pandemic.
“I mean, that’s no different than Nazi Germany, where you had government telling people, ‘You are an essential worker or a nonessential worker,’ and the nonessential workers got put on a train,” Scott said, referencing the deportation of millions of Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis to concentration camps in cattle trains.
Scott’s remarks immediately sparked an outraged reaction from local community leaders.
“Mass murder and genocide is not the same thing as deciding which businesses should essentially stay open and which should stay closed,” Rabbi Tamar Malino of Spokane’s Temple Beth Shalom told the Idaho State Journal.
Brenda Hammond, president of the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force, said in an email: “It makes my heart heavy to hear a comment from an elected official that shows such deep disregard and lack of respect for what the Jewish people experienced during the time of the Holocaust. It also shows an extreme ignorance of history.”
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) tweeted, “Idaho State Rep. Heather Scott’s comparison of stay-at-home orders during the pandemic to Nazi death camps is unfathomably offensive and an unforgivable affront to victims of the Holocaust. She should apologize immediately.”
Scott defended her remarks on Monday, writing on her Facebook page that her “recent analogies are poignant and relative to our times.”
The Algemeiner (c) 2019 .
{Matzav.com}
This is terrible. Trump should resign.
If people keep saying, and perhaps even believing, that the corona is a secret operation to implement the arrest and deportation to imprisonment camps of hundred or thousands of people, some being driven to suicide and other possibly executed with no trial and no death sentence, are we surprised that people compare this to nazis?
If a significant number of people appears to support such an operation, justifying it with supposedly horrible crimes perpetrated against children (usual accusation for blood libels) what should we Yidden expect next?
Not the restrictions are compared to Nazi but those behind the spreading of the virus from the labs are compared to Nazis.
2 things. 1) Trump didn’t say that so i’m not sure why he should resign over someone’s ignorance. 2) in my opinion any politician or public official that says anything about or makes any comparison to the holocaust needs to have a sit down with a holocaust survivor to hear their stories. the results of all these dumb comments are always the same the person will get up and say “i apologize for what i said it was very offensive” if she would have made a comment about slavery this would have had a completely different turn out. apology is not enough she needs to step down. politicians can’t be so stupid
Her idiocy has nothing to do with anti semitism.
The Idaho Governor is trying to save people’s lives, the Nazi’s ymch”sh were trying to kill people.
As a Jew I am not offended by her remarks. She’s just an idiot.
Disagreeing with someone’s idea of how to best save people’s lives by comparing them to geonocidal maniacs is just stupid.
She should resign because she’s mentally unfit to serve her constituents. Not because she’s insensitive to Jews. (Even though that, incidentally, is true as well.)
Rabbi Tamar Malino!! At least write rabbi, not Rabbi