Why Vaccine and Mask Mandates Are NOT Like the Holocaust

Despite all of their power and influence, Evangelical Christians love to cosplay as innocent victims relentlessly persecuted by the godless forces of Satan. I suspect that a fair number of bible-thumpers were legitimately disappointed that Barack Hussein Obama spent eight years in office without breaking down their doors so he could take all their guns and institute Sharia Law, as they so publicly feared/desired. 

The pandemic has afforded these self-styled martyrs an opportunity to really boost their cosplay victimhood by pretending that mask mandates and vaccine passports are roughly analogous to how the Nazis treated Jews during the Holocaust or pretty much the same thing. 

This time around the threat isn’t a vague, abstract delusion that a moderate President was perpetually on the verge of declaring martial law and declaring himself God-Emperor for life but rather a very real set of rules designed to protect public safety during an unprecedented health crisis that crazed Conservatives are convinced marks the first step in a process that will end with them being herded into camps for extermination. 

I’ve seen lots of memes comparing reasonable public safety precautions to the slaughter of six million Jews. They’ve all come from Christians. Even the most self-loathing and Conservative Jew isn’t going to compare not being let into a Foo Fighters concert because you chose not to do something free and relatively painless, like getting vaccinated for your own health and the health of those around you, with watching your children get gassed because of your religion. 

The anti-vaxx brigade have decided that Anthony Fauci, a selfless public servant, is secretly or not so secretly a monstrous ghoul only out for money, fame and power while people who transparently are monstrous ghouls only out for money, fame and power like Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are secretly selfless public servants. 

They’ve determined that the most trustworthy people and institutions are by definition not to be trusted while the least trustworthy people should be heralded as truth-tellers and patriots. 

I should not have to explain why the public safety measures involved with COVID 19 are not the same as murdering literally half the Jews in the world out of genocidal hatred but it looks like some folks honestly don’t seem to understand the difference so I’ll make it crystal clear for y’all. 

The biggest and most important difference between requiring vaccination to go to concerts or public events and the Holocaust is that these public safety measures are designed to KEEP PEOPLE ALIVE. 

That’s what they’re fundamentally all about: keeping people from dying of COVID and/or passing COVID on to loved ones, friends and co-workers. The Holocaust, in sharp contrast, was all about MURDERING PEOPLE. 

Those Gold Stars that you see cavalierly posted on memes about the brutality and evil of asking people to be responsible and act in the public interest were used to indicate that someone was marked for the ugliest, most painful kind of death. A vaccine passport, or a bracelet indicating that someone is vaccinated, on the other hand, simply indicates that they’ve behaved responsibly and are consequently much less of a public health risk than people who stubbornly refuse to get vaccinated for any number of reasons, many of them bullshit. 

To review, the Holocaust was all about murdering people out of genocidal hatred while the safety measures employed to combat a nasty and murderous pandemic are designed to KEEP people from dying horrible deaths. 

They’re really not the same thing at all. In fact, they’re pretty much the opposite. One was about death, the other is about life. 

So if you are posting memes comparing COVID to the Holocaust, stop it. Just stop it. Immediately. Talk to a Jew. Learn about the Holocaust and maybe you can finally be a force for good in the universe instead of a potent disseminator of misinformation and false equivalencies. 

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