When minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial candidate invoked Kristallnacht and Hitler at a recent rally against mask-wearing, it’s now a familiar scene: a public figure comparing life under COVID-19 restrictions to the Nazi regime.
But on Tuesday, former state Sen. Scott Jensen did something unusual: He doubled.
“I need to communicate about a bit of the uproar that has been in the media in recent years about whether or not I am insensitive to the Holocaust. I don’t think I will,” Jensen said in a video on Facebook. “When I make a comparison that says I’ve noticed that government policies gradually invade American freedoms, one piece at a time, and compare it to what happened in the 1930s, I think that’s a valid comparison. “
It was a markedly different technique from a cycle that has been repeated since the initial COVID outbreak in 2020: a public figure pointing out that mask orders and lockdown measures, instituted by Democrats, have something that is not unusual with Nazi policies, before reversing the next course. tension of Jewish teams and Holocaust memorial organizations. This was the case with Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson; Vickie Paladino, New York City Councilwoman; anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. ; and others.
But unlike those other characters, Jensen stood firm in his words by saying, “You might not find it flashy, it’s good. But that’s how I think, and you’re not my idea, police. “
Jensen, who won more than 90 percent of the Republican vote at the Aug. 9 number one in Minnesota, responding to a recording of him at an anti-mask rally in the state in April, where he said Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s COVID policies were comparable to Kristallnacht, the “night of damaged glass” that ushered in the Nazis’ massive anti-Semitic violence.
“If you take a look at the 1930s and look at them closely, we might see things happening, little things, that other people have chosen to separate: ‘It’s going to be okay. And then the little things have become something bigger,” Jensen. he said at the rally, in a videotaped speech. “Then there was a night called Kristallnacht, the night of damaged glass.
“Then there was the self-defer of books, and it kept growing, and a guy named Hitler kept gaining power, and World War II broke out. Well, in a way, I think that’s why you’re here today. We feel that anything is happening, and it grows little by little.
The rally sponsored through Mask Off Minnesota, an organization that spreads incorrect information about COVID-19. Jensen, a licensed physician, is not vaccinated and has made public comments in which he has questioned the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and other pandemic policies.
After Jensen’s initial comments were reported through T. C. Jewfolk, the condemnations came from the American Regional Jewish Committee, the Minnesota and Dakota Jewish Community Relations Council, and the leader of the progressive Jewish networking organization Jewish Community Action.
“Such comparisons are incredibly flawed,” Ethan Roberts, director of government affairs at the local JCRC, told TC Jewfolk. He invited Jensen to meet with the organization “to talk about why such comparisons are so damaging. “
The AJC criticized Jensen on Tuesday for doubling down on his comments.
“It is incredibly disappointing that Scott Jensen compared covid restrictions to Nazism earlier this year,” regional director Jacob Millner said in a statement. “It’s as disappointing as on Tuesday he said it was a valid comparison. Kristallnacht, a terrorist frenzy in Germany that destroyed Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues, is not a valid comparison.
Millner called on Jensen to “seek to increase the severity of the Holocaust. “
In Jensen’s video, he explained his comments in more detail referring to the famous poem “First they came here by. . . “through the German philosopher Martin Niemöller. “It talks about incrementalism,” Jensen said. In order for us to be informed of the wonderful kinds of terrible mistakes in human history, we have to go through more and ask ourselves what were the slow changes that may have alerted us. “
Jensen posted his video Tuesday hours before speaking at a Republican Jewish Committee applicant forum. Requests for comment were returned to the JCR. The RJC has not reacted publicly to Jensen’s comments to date, but the organization has criticized Republicans who have drawn comparisons between COVID policies and the Holocaust in the past.
Jensen, the only politician who doubled covid-Nazi comparisons. Last year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also subsidized comments she made accusing “Nazi vaccines” of “ruining our country,” after visiting the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. And apologize for making a similar comparison.
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