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Kansas Lawmaker Compares Vax Mandate to Holocaust—Then Blames Media

Rep. Brenda Landwehr claimed that vaccine mandates amount to “racism against the modern-day Jew.”

At a Kansas state hearing on Friday on federal vaccine mandates, Rep. Brenda Landwehr compared COVID-19 masking and vaccine measures to the Holocaust not once but twice in just a few minutes. According to the Kansas City Star, she claimed that condemning anti-mask, anti-vax Kansans is like “racism against the modern day Jew,” which she defined as “anyone who disagrees” with COVID mitigation efforts. A few minutes later, she said a Democratic senator’s use of the phrase “go down a path” reminded her of a Nazi Germany documentary she had seen. After Cornell Beard, a union president, testified that vaccine mandates were akin to the yellow stars in Nazi Germany, Landwehr said, “Do I believe that’s what we’re trying to do? I hope not.”

None of the ten committee members spoke up to condemn her comments. After the hearing, Landwehr claimed they weren’t anti-Semitic. “If you want to read something into it and make it into a bigger story that’s on you guys that’s not on me,” she told reporters.