A general rule that reasonable people are aware of in the year 2022 is that when complaining about something that is not actual genocide, you should avoid equating it with the Holocaust. Is the thing that you want to suggest is just like the Holocaust the systematic murder of millions of people from a specific religious or ethnic group? Is it a policy of mass extermination through concentration camps, mass shootings, and gas chambers? Great news, you can compare it to the Holocaust. But what if it’s really not like any of that? Let’s say it’s merely a conversation about taxing the rich. Or a whiny complaint about people allegedly being mean to the 1 percent. Or any minor inconvenience that the majority of the population handles without throwing a massive hissy fit. If that’s the case, we’re sorry to report that you’re going to have to come up with a Holocaust-free analogy.

Unfortunately, the people who are somehow unaware of this rule, or know about it and don’t care, appear to be the loudest. Take Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also known as the living embodiment of the lesser-known phrase “The apple fell extremely far from the tree.” Junior spoke at a rally against vaccine mandates over the weekend, and boy, did he take the whole “this is just like the Holocaust” line and run with it. Whereas other idiotic commentators have been content to claim that vaccine mandates are on par with Nazi-era identification policies, Junior took things several revolting steps further, and suggested Anne Frank had it better off than people being asked to get a life-saving inoculation.

“Even in Hitler Germany [sic], you [could] cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did,” he told the crowd assembled at the Lincoln Memorial. “I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible.”

There is truly so much to unpack here, the least of all being that Frank and her family hid in the Netherlands, not Germany. Beyond that though, Junior’s assertion that Jewish people living in Europe circa the Holocaust had it better than anti-vaxxers residing in the U.S. is one of the most insane things we’ve heard in some time. “Even in Hitler Germany”? Does he hear the words coming out of this mouth? No one should ever say “Even in Hitler Germany” unless the next thing they say is “actually, wait, almost nothing is as bad as Hitler Germany. How embarrassing that I was about to suggest otherwise.” We also love that Junior is willing to concede that people lost their lives during the Holocaust (“many died, true”), but wants to stress that at least some people made it (“it was possible”). In his mind, such odds are apparently better than living under a regime that is not actually doing anything other than trying to get more people vaccinated for their own safety and for the good of society. Finally, we’re pretty sure that if an anti-vaxxer wants to hide in an attic somewhere, no one is going to go looking for them, let alone drag them out and send them to a concentration camp. In fact, many people refusing to get vaccinated are living perfectly happy lives at the moment and are not in fear of anything, let alone being murdered. Speaking of which, does Junior know what happened to Anne Frank at the end of her time in the attic? Because he strangely glossed over that.

In response to RFK’s comments, the Auschwitz Memorial tweeted, “Exploiting of the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany - including children like Anne Frank - in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay.”

Unfortunately, Junior seemingly had an extremely receptive audience for his historically inaccurate bullshit, since, according to CNN, he wasn‘t the only one at the rally likening the vaccine push to genocide:

Sunday’s event, billed as a protest against vaccine mandates, featured speakers repeatedly spreading misinformation about vaccines and showcased several bigoted comparisons to the Holocaust. At least one man was seen displaying a yellow Star of David, which Jews were required by law to wear as an identifier in Nazi Germany.

While language referencing totalitarianism was common throughout the speeches, references to the Holocaust were found largely on signs, one of which read, “Make the Nuremberg Code great again!” and another read, “Bring back the Nuremberg Trials.” The Nuremberg Code delineated “permissible medical experiments” on human subjects and stated that such experiments must be for the good of society and satisfy moral, ethical and legal concepts. The code was established during the prosecution of German doctors who subjected Jews to torturous medical experiments.

Another sign with clear anti-Semitic sentiments read, “Corrupt, N.I.H., Big Pharma Mafia, Big C.D.C. Cartel; Big Fraud Media: Your circumcision is dividing America! You all have foreskin-blood stained money in your thug hands!!”

Also over the weekend, conservative commentator Bari Weiss went on Bill Maher’s show to declare that she’s simply “done with COVID,” a statement that may have been less inflammatory than RFK’s comments but was equally absurd given that COVID is not actually done with us. Calling it “ridiculous” that the vaccines haven’t caused a return to completely normal, pre-pandemic life, Weiss claimed that ongoing public health restrictions, like vaccine mandates and mask policies, will be “remembered by the younger generation as a catastrophic moral crime.” A moral crime! She then claimed that many of her “liberal and progressive” friends agree with her but are too afraid to say so out of worry they will be “smeared” as anti-vaxxers, Trump supporters, or science-deniers.

In response to Weiss’s temper tantrum, CNN medical analyst Jonathan Reiner tweeted: “I’m glad she’s done with it but 3600 Americans died yesterday and over 860k have died in the last 2 years. Yes you were told that vaccines would bring us out of this but 25% of this country refuse to vax. Grow up.” Later, in an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta, Reiner put Weiss’s selfishness into perspective, noting, “my colleagues in hospitals all around the country went in to care for people dying from this virus. And continue to do that every single day…and for the first year of this pandemic, they did that without any protection of a vaccine. That’s the sacrifice they made.”

Then, in an actually apt pandemic analogy, he likened the U.S. to a sinking boat, and the measures to protect people as an effort to bail out the water. “And now we have people like Bari Weiss basically saying, ‘I’m done. I’m not bailing the water out anymore.’ And when somebody who is relatively young and relatively healthy says that, what they’re saying is: ‘I’ll be okay if I get this virus. Screw you. Doesn’t matter to me what happens to you.’ That’s the message I get from her.”

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