All political groups bear responsibility for the dilution of the Holocaust

OSCAR KASPI-CRUTCHETT: Anti-vaxxer Holocaust comparisons are not random acts of desecration, but a form of point-scoring accepted as ‘fair-game’ by Left and Right alike

ACROSS THE WORLD, anti-vax movements have deployed the symbols of the Holocaust for political gain. We have seen two approaches in particular: First, anti-vax activists have equated their status as a besieged minority to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

Under this narrative, vaccine mandates and vaccine passports are compared to the Nuremberg laws which segregated German-Jews from public life and social prejudice against the unvaccinated is equated, dubiously, with antisemitic racism.

The second strategy, linked inextricably to the first, has been to equate public health measures with authoritarianism and specifically, fascism. In Australia, this has played out as follows: If anti-vaxxers are the Jews, then the Australian Government is the Third Reich.

Thus, the ‘plan-demic’ has been compared to the Reichstag Fire, the Victorian Government’s new pandemic laws are termed ‘Dan’s Enabling Acts’ and Covid quarantine facilities labelled concentration camps.

On a more epic scale, anti-vax activists have often referred to the World Health Organisation, State and Federal Governments and the United Nations as brutal, totalitarian regimes, or as outright ‘Nazi’ organisations.

Such comparisons have been met with a mixture of horror, outrage, and wordless bemusement by the vaccinated Australian public. In a rare incident of national consensus, all sides of Australian politics appear disgusted with anti-vax efforts to instrumentalise the Holocaust.

Amongst progressives, the reception has been particularly acrimonious, with widespread condemnation of the “appropriation” of this genocide in liberal media outlets, encapsulated by the following mindset: “Only the deplorable fringe would dare invoke the Holocaust for political gain - it is simply off-limits.”