May 24, 2021, 10:20 p.m.
Washington (dpa) “Disturbing”, “nasty madness”: a congresswoman for the US Republicans compares the mask requirement with wearing the yellow star. The verdict on Greene’s statement is unanimous across all parties.
Marjorie Taylor Greene at a press conference in Washington.
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Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has compared the mask requirement in the US House of Representatives with the Holocaust and thus sparked outrage.
Greene – an ardent supporter of ex-President Donald Trump – had linked the mask requirement on Real America’s Voice with the obligation to wear a Jewish star and said: “You know, we can look back on a time in history when people they were told they had to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put on trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. “
Greene defended her words over the weekend. “I didn’t say anything wrong,” she told the broadcaster 12 News. “I think that every sane Jewish person disliked what was happening in Nazi Germany, and that every sane Jewish person did not like what happens with an overbearing mask requirement.” The American Jewish Congress asked Greene to apologize. “You can never compare health-related restrictions with yellow stars, gas chambers and other Nazi atrocities.”
Greene’s words met with outrage from both Democrats and Republicans. “This is bad madness,” wrote about the Republican congresswoman and Trump critic Liz Cheney on Twitter. Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern called it “more than disturbing” that Greene compared the systematic murder of six million Jews to wearing a mask. He demanded Greene’s resignation.
The US health authority CDC recently issued new guidelines that the wearing of masks is no longer necessary, even indoors, given the advances in the vaccination campaign. The chairman of the House of Representatives, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi, has so far not lifted the mask requirement in the parliamentary chamber with reference to unvaccinated MPs. Greene described Pelosi as “insane” in her recent remarks.
According to a poll by CNN in the middle of the month, all Democratic congressmen were vaccinated against Covid-19 at the time, but less than half of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. The newspaper “Savannah Morning News” from Greene’s state of Georgia reported at the end of March that the MP would not be vaccinated. Greene, 46, has openly promoted QAnon conspiracy theories in the past. Its supporters believe, for example, that Trump tried to expose systematic child abuse by satanist politicians of the US Democrats.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210524-99-720534 / 2
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