Marjorie Taylor Greene’s managing to upset the far-right (and that’s saying something, since that’s her voting base) with incoherent rants on COVID restrictions, which she’s repeatedly compared to the Holocaust. She first embarrassed the Republican party with a temper tantrum over masks on the House floor, which left her with a lighter paycheck as she tore up Nancy Pelosi’s directive on the subject. In doing so, she accused the House Majority Leader of fostering a Holocaust-style environment while suggesting that she’s being made to wear the Star of David. In response, multiple GOP lawmakers (including Rep. Liz Cheney, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, and Rep. Peter Meijer) accused MTG of “evil lunacy,” and then she went even further while repeating her Holocaust remarks. Days later, she’s drawing criticism from the far-right’s Ben Shapiro.
The latest round of MTG bizarro thinking began when she tweeted about a grocery store that aimed to create badge notifications of their vaccinated status. “Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s forced Jewish people to wear a gold star,” Greene wrote. “Vaccine passports & mask mandates create discrimination against unvaxxed people who trust their immune systems to a virus that is 99% survivable.”
Shapiro, who writes for the Jewish Journal among his other endeavors, responded to Greene while calling her words “demented nonsense.” He added, “It is nothing like the Holocaust, and any comparison thereto is both insulting and insane.”
This is demented nonsense. It is nothing like the Holocaust, and any comparison thereto is both insulting and insane. https://t.co/LORlcBdyw1
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 25, 2021
Greene was not deterred and denied that she’s making a Holocaust analogy at all (although that’s what she did), and she added, “Stop feeding into the left wing media attacks on me. Everyone should be concerned about the squads support for terrorists and discrimination against unvaxxed people. Why aren’t they?” That last part’s a reference to AOC, who has criticized the U.S. sale of arms to Israel in light of the current developments with Palestine.
I never compared it to the Holocaust, only the discrimination against Jews in early Nazi years.
Stop feeding into the left wing media attacks on me.
Everyone should be concerned about the squads support for terrorists and discrimination against unvaxxed people.
Why aren’t they? https://t.co/z1zotvegg9— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) May 25, 2021
However, Shapiro is not alone (not even close) in calling out Greene over her Holocaust comparison, and other Republicans are slowly climbing aboard that perspective. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (via CNN correspondent Lauren Fox) described Greene’s latest round as “once again an outrageous and reprehensible comment,” although he stopped short of commenting upon whether action should be taken beyond removing her from House committees.
Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy issued a statement to she same effect. “Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,” McCarthy said via NBC News. “The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling.”
As Lauren Fox also notes, though, Nancy Pelosi isn’t impressed by McCarthy’s overdue statement: “Leader McCarthy waited days to even issue a statement in response to one of his Members demeaning the Holocaust, and he clearly intends to continue to welcome Marjorie Taylor Greene in the GOP.”