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Holocaust misappropriation by antivaxxers: A form of Holocaust denial

Antivaxxers have long misappropriated symbols of the Holocaust, such as the Yellow Star of David, to liken their “persecution” to the real persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. This misappropriation of the Holocaust is arguably a form of Holocaust denial.

Regular readers know that I’ve long documented the misappropriation of the Holocaust and Holocaust imagery by antivaxxers in order to spread fear, uncertainty, doubt, and, yes, loathing about vaccines. This tactic predates the COVID-19 pandemic by many years. As I started writing this, out of curiosity, I searched this blog and its predecessor on Blogger for references to the Holocaust by antivaxxers. I found that my first post first about this vile phenomenon dated back nearly 16 years, all the way back to 2005, when Mark Blaxill likened “vaccine-induced autism” to a “silent Holocaust” in a letter to TIME Magazine. It was a sentiment that über-quack Joe Mercola had echoed in a post whose URL has since been excluded from the almighty Wayback Machine at Archive.org and now redirects to a more recent post without Holocaust analogies. In that very same post, I noted a post in the antivaccine Evidence of Harm mailing list by Lenny Schafer, who runs the Schafer Autism Report, a propaganda site promoting the vaccine-autism link.

In that post, Schafer advocated referring to those of us pointing out that science did not support a link between mercury-containing thimerosal preservative that was in several childhood vaccines until around 2001 as autism Holocaust deniers:

Still Laidler’s conclusion is that “there may still be an autism epidemic in the United States” as quoted in the article makes this hit piece weak. In my opinion, our counter-propaganda is to characterize business like this as the work of autism holocaust deniers with an anti-child, pro-pharma agenda. 

A question to raise to the public is why is the government dragging its feet with finding out the numbers and the causes and instead does this steady stream of alibis-for-mercury research

You might wonder why I dug back so deep for this analogy, going back to posts that now have broken links, to find antivaxxers likening autism and vaccines to the Holocaust. The reason is simple. With the COVID-19 pandemic, everything old is new again, and people who seem shocked at the Holocaust analogies coming fast and furious from COVID-19 minimizers/deniers and antivaxxers (many of whom are the same people) shouldn’t be. Likening vaccines to the Holocaust has long been a tactic of the antivaccine movement. It’s just been turbocharged in the era of social media and the COVID-19 pandemic, and I’m going to argue why such analogies are a form of Holocaust denial. First, let’s discuss a relevant recent incident.

Stetson pushes back against Holocaust misappropriation

What prompted me to write this post is an incident that took place over the Memorial Day weekend, when social media noticed the owner of hatWRKS, a hat store in Nashville, selling Yellow Stars of David with the word “Vaccinated” emblazoned on them for $5 and likening “vaccine passports” to the Gestapo “requesting your papers.” Owner Gigi Gaskins even posted a photo of herself wearing one on Instagram. As it’s now been deleted, I’ll post this Tweet with a screenshot:

Great. Trucker caps with the Yellow Star of David for the “unvaccinated” too. Could anything scream “‘Merica!” more than that? In any event, Ms. Gaskin’s use of the Holocaust to sell antivaccine merchandise led to protests at her store:

These protests soon led the iconic hat company Stetson to announce that it would no longer sell its hats to hatWRKS:

After that, other major hat companies started canceling their distribution deals, including Tula Hats, Kangol Headwear, and Goorin Brothers, among others, none of which were particularly interested in being associated with the likes of Ms. Gaskin.

Initially, Ms. Gaskins was defiant:

And then she posted this:

Her defiance didn’t last long, however. Ultimately, faced with the loss of her business, Ms. Gaskins was forced to apologize for her misappropriation of a symbol of Jewish persecution during the Holocaust, but it really came across as a “notpology” to me:

Feeding the perception that this was a “notpology” were subsequent Instagram posts by her about the “mob” having come after her for her misuse of the Holocaust, one of which was loaded with false equivalence between her invocation of the Holocaust and Black Lives Matter:

No one was fooled:

Nor has Ms. Gaskins been anywhere near the only one making references to the Holocaust during the pandemic. The week before, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, for whom, it seems, no conspiracy theory is too outlandish, had made a similar analogy:

Not satisfied with that, she followed up with this a few minutes later:

Then, like Ms. Gaskins, Rep. Greene tried to walk back her previous statements a bit, except that she didn’t even offer a notpology:

The problem here is that the Nazi discrimination against Jews in the “early years” was part of the Holocaust. The Holocaust wasn’t just the mass slaughter of Jews in Nazi-occupied territories that began after the Nazi invasion of Poland and ramped up to genocide after the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Far from it! Without the years of the Nazis stoking fear and hatred of Jews among Germans, all to portray them as the “other” and less than human, the mass slaughter to come with the war would not have been possible.

Rep. Greene further betrays her knowledge of history, with this claim as the wearing of badges by Jews in Nazi Germany was first recommended—not yet mandated—by Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office, after Kristallnacht in November 1938. Wearing the Star wasn’t mandated until after the invasion of Poland in 1939, and then at first in only occupied territories. The badge was therefore not part of the “early” persecution of Jews by the Nazis, but only first appeared after nearly six years of increasing persecution. Indeed, the Nazis didn’t mandate the wearing of Yellow Stars of David in by Jews in Germany itself until 1942, by which time the exterminationist phase of the Holocaust was well under way. Finally, as the Holocaust Memorial Center points out, forcing Jews to wear badges identifying themselves as Jews was a practice of persecution that dates back at least as far back as the 13th century.

Antivaxxers, however, have a long history of misappropriating not just the Yellow Star of David, but the Holocaust, to portray themselves as persecuted.

A brief history of misappropriation of the Holocaust by antivaxxers

Just search this blog for [“antivaccine” AND “Holocaust”] or [“antivaccine” and “Nazi”] and you’ll find more examples than you’d care to read about of antivaxxers either likening autism (in their minds caused by vaccines, of course) or vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and medical experimentation by Josef Mengele. Indeed, it’s a common theme that’s been used by not just the rabid antivaccine conspiracy theorists, but even by the antivaxxers who most strive for “respectability.” For instance, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has used the analogy at least twice (that I’m aware of). For example, in 2015, RFK Jr. was featured in this news report:

But some parents fear information about the hazards of vaccines has been suppressed, largely because of what they call the pharmaceutical industry’s influence over health officials. Many parents believe their children have been damaged by vaccines. When Kennedy asked the crowd of a few hundred viewers how many parents had a child injured by vaccines, numerous hands went up.

“They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone,” Kennedy said. “This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”

Like Ms. Gaskins, RFK Jr., too, was forced to apologize and backtrack, but his “apology” was also a classic “notpology”:

“I want to apologize to all whom I offended by my use of the word holocaust to describe the autism epidemic,” Kennedy said in a statement. “I employed the term during an impromptu speech as I struggled to find an expression to convey the catastrophic tragedy of autism which has now destroyed the lives of over 20 million children and shattered their families.”

Or, as I put it at the time, in other words, to RFK Jr., the “vaccine-induced autism epidemic” is as bad as the Holocaust, but he won’t use the word “Holocaust” anymore because comparing autism to the Holocaust offends people. I also noted that this was not the first time RFK, Jr. had used Holocaust analogies with respect to vaccines. He had done it two years before, when he likened “vaccine-induced autism” to the Nazi death camps, and, for all I know, had been using such offensive analogies for much longer. Whether he still uses them or not, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he still does in private, among true believers, where he won’t be quoted publicly.

As I wrote at the time, RFK, Jr.’s reference to the Holocaust was unintentionally appropriate, just not in the way RFK, Jr. meant it. Such an attitude (“their brain is gone”) would not have been out of place in, ironically enough given all the Nazi analogies that antivaccinationists like to make, Nazi Germany. After all, one of the slogans used by Nazis to justify the T4 euthanasia program in which “mental defectives” were “euthanized” was “Lebensunwertes leben,” or “life unworthy of life.” True, he wasn’t advocating killing autistics. He did, however, express the same sort of attitude that allowed the T4 euthanasia program to be tolerated, even supported, by German civilians.

Nor is RFK Jr. the only one. For instance, “Dr. Bob” Sears has been known to go full Godwin over vaccine mandates himself, suggesting that the unvaccinated would have to wear a “Scarlet V,” as Jews under the Nazis had to wear the Yellow Star. He, too, was forced to back off and apologize in an addendum to his original Facebook post:

I will admit that his apology appeared to be a bit more heartfelt than those of RFK Jr. or Ms. Gaskins:

Apology: The original version of this post went beyond the Scarlet V analogy to stating that this discrimination could go so far as to warrant wearing yellow stars as a way to identify people who are unvaccinated. Use of such imagery, I now realize, was completely unfair and inappropriate. The holocaust suffered by the Jewish people was an atrocity of which nothing could ever compare. I know that I share the hope of everyone around the world that nothing will ever come close to it. As an explanation (inadequate though it is), it was my sole intention to only draw an historical parallel to the discrimination felt by a people who were wrongly isolated from society because of their religion and who they were as a people. I realize, now, that there is no separating just the initial discrimination put upon the Jewish people from the atrocities and holocaust that followed it. They were one and the same, and the symbol of the yellow star was such a clear part of that dark time in history. To allude to this symbol as a parallel to the type of discrimination occurring today is unfair, inaccurate, and was a mistake on my part. I apologize directly to each and every one of you whom I offended.

It should still be telling that “Dr. Bob” thought that the Yellow Star of David was a good analogy to the “discrimination” against antivaxxers. Fortunately, I “immortalized” the original version of Dr. Bob’s post here. Let’s just say that Dr. Bob knew exactly what he was doing, as he did it with a “wink, wink, nudge, nudge”:

Disclaimer: This post is not intended as a reference to a holocaust. Rather, it’s intended to raise the issue of prejudice and discrimination. Others have likenend vaccine injury to a holocaust. Instead, we are talking about families who choose to not vaccinate. No holocaust here.

Right, Dr. Bob. At least the blowback shamed him into backing off and apologizing. I hope he learned his lesson.

I could go on and on and on with examples of antivaxxers using this sort of analogy, such as when Anne Dachel over at that wretched hive of scum and antivax quackery Age of Autism likened suggestions that the names of nonvaccinating families be made public to the Jews of Budapest in 1940 under Nazi rule or the science showing that vaccines don’t cause autism to Germans saying “we didn’t know” about the Holocaust, when another antivaxxer likened vaccine mandates to 1935 Nazi Germany, and when Laura Hayes wrote about “stopping” the “vaccine Holocaust.” There have been so many Holocaust and Nazi comparisons, more than I can count, ranging from invoking Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor at Auschwitz known for conducting horrific medical experiments on prisoners, to general invocations of the Holocaust as an appropriate metaphor for “vaccine-induced autism,” to Hilary Butler calling the unvaccinated the “new Jews,” to Mike Adams predictably (being Mike Adams) setting up a website called Vaccine Holocaust. And don’t even get me started on how many times I’ve encountered antivaxxers have likening vaccines to eugenics.

Then there was this protest from 2019 in Poland, in which antivaxxers dressed up as Auschwitz inmates. I kid you not:

I just don’t know how anyone could do such a thing. It goes beyond ignorance.

Then, I noticed something for the first time in 2015.

Enter the Yellow Star of David

Beginning around or about 2015, I started noticing a new phenomenon, antivaxxers putting badges on themselves patterned after the Yellow Star of David that the Nazis had required Jews to wear. The first example was a woman named Heather Barajas, who posted a photo of herself and her child to Facebook wearing such a badge. True, at the time, the badge she designed was not a Yellow Star, but she made the analogy quite explicit in her post (now removed):

Heather Barajas co-opts the Holocaust

Even before Barajas, some antivaxxers tried dressing up as Auschwitz prisoners in one of the most offensive examples of cosplay I can imagine:

Finally, leave it to Del Bigtree to co-opt the Yellow Star of David himself, this time in 2019, less than a year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the US, while giving a speech before the Brooklyn Orthodox Jews who were resisting measles vaccination mandates in the middle of an outbreak of—you guessed it!—measles:

ICAN and the Holocaust

Around the same time, Yellow Stars of David started popping up all over antivaccine social media:

Unsurprisingly, since the pandemic hit, it hasn’t just been antivaxxers co-opting this symbol, but COVID-19 conspiracy theorists who deny the severity of the pandemic or view it as a “plandemic.” Examples abound, such as an antivaxxer likening the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines to the “COVIDcaust“:

COVIDcaust, misusing the Holocaust

And anti-“lockdown” protesters:

COVID-19 cranks and the Holocaust
COVID certificate vs. "Holocaust"

And it’s not just the US and UK, either:

Holocaust misuse in Czechoslovakia

Sadly, since 2015—and, even worse, since the pandemic hit 15 months ago—the number of examples I could cite of antivaxxers and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists claiming the Yellow Star of David is beyond counting. It’s just one more example of how antivaxxers have long co-opted the imagery of the Holocaust for their own ends.

Antivaxxers and misappropriation: A form of Holocaust denial

As I’ve documented above, antivaxxers have long misappropriated comparisons to the Holocaust and even Holocaust imagery, such as the Yellow Star and the uniforms of Auschwitz inmates, in order to portray themselves as persecuted. Of course, the Holocaust isn’t the only historical example of persecution that antivaxxers like to misappropriate. They’ve been known to refer to themselves as the “new civil rights movement” when they are anything but. The Holocaust, however, is the most offensive of their misappropriations, because of the magnitude of the false equivalence that antivaxxers claim when they use it and the history to which they are lashing themselves.

That false equivalence might seem risible and so ridiculous as to be utterly dismissible at first. Specifically, by likening themselves to victims of the Holocaust, antivaxxers (and antimaskers) would have people believe that being encouraged or required to get a vaccine to protect oneself and one’s children against a disease that has produced a deadly pandemic with a death toll in the millions— 600,000 in the US alone—is the same as the genocidal program of labeling, persecution, and extermination of Jews that took place in the Third Reich 80 years ago. I used to mock them for it by posting this particular meme:

The Hitler antivaccine Holocaust
Because vaccine mandates are exactly like what Hitler did to the Jews!

In the age of COVID-19, though, I’m not laughing so much any more. Maybe I should never have been laughing. The reason is that, by comparing what is an objective good (vaccination) to one of the greatest acts of evil ever perpetrated in history (the Holocaust) and likening themselves to victims of the latter, antivaxxers are arguably engaging a form of Holocaust denial. The comparison is so ludicrously inappropriate, such an incredible false equivalence, that it can’t help but promote the idea, shared by Holocaust deniers, that the Holocaust wasn’t so bad. After all, it’s mind-numbingly obvious that the inconveniences that antivaxxers experience is nowhere near the level of persecution that Jews and the other victims of the Nazi regime suffered during the Holocaust. At the very least, such a comparison downplays the severity of the Holocaust, maybe not to the level of outright Holocaust denial, but then there are gradations of Holocaust denial.

At worst, as Sarah Bond, associate professor of history at the University of Iowa, wrote in The Washington Post yesterday, the misappropriation of symbols of Jewish suffering is profoundly antisemitic:

And in appropriating deep symbols of Jewish pain, these bad actors undermine not only the gravity, nuance and suffering of the Holocaust, but also of centuries of historical antisemitism, in service to their need to be public martyrs. They cast about for some touchstone for their perceived injustice, landing on the Holocaust as the ultimate exemplar of persecution in the modern era. In so doing, Holocaust-invokers add themselves to a long and sad history of borrowing the pain of others to lend credence to their own.

By invoking the Gold Star, Greene and many other evangelical followers of QAnon and former president Donald Trump are linking themselves with a much longer history of Christian antisemitism. Use of the color yellow for the purposes of discriminating against, excluding and expelling Jews goes back hundreds of years.

After listing example after example of how labels such as the Yellow Star have been used over the centuries to label and facilitate the persecution of Jews, Bond then brings it home:

The dubious power of this kind of false analogy relies on making you think the Holocaust has an equal weight as an optional vaccine or a mask mandate does. The more insidious work of this false equivalence is how easily it can erode the gravity of the original evil. When non-Jews appropriate the Star of David for their own aims, they contribute to the erasure of the historical suffering of Jews — from medieval to modern times. The problem here isn’t just the gross misuse of a historical symbol, it’s the impact on the explicitly Jewish suffering associated with that symbol.

That is why the misappropriation of the Holocaust and symbols of Jewish oppression by the Nazis is, at minimum, a false equivalence and at worst antisemitic and a form of Holocaust denial.

Leave it, again, to Mike Adams to show what I mean when he expresses extreme puzzlement that Jews find the misuse of the Holocaust and Holocaust imagery by the likes of him to be extremely offensive:

Joseph Mengele and his cohorts injected chemicals into Jewish captives during the Holocaust and watched them be tortured to death from it, including children. They loved experimenting on twins – Hitler’s fascination. They would cut their brains open and cut out parts to see what happened. With no anesthesia or painkillers, these “patients” were tortured in horror, and viewed not as humans, but were nothing more than lab animals to the Nazis, just like Americans are to the vaccine manufacturers now.

Of all the people on Earth, you would think Jewish people know this, remember this, or at least their grandparents or parents warned them of this. Study history or you’re doomed to repeat it.

The scientists who create vaccines now are cut from the same cloth as the scientists who concocted the deadly chemicals for the gas chambers of the Holocaust. Jews in America need to wake up, because Israel can’t help you now. They are under forced vaccination already, countrywide, with vaccine passports already in place. Are you seeing the similarities yet? 

And:

Unbelievable that Israel, the Jewish homeland, uses Nazi-style chemical medicine and mRNA gene-altering, gene-mutating, blood-clot-causing inoculations that have yet to be tested for safety or efficacy. What in God’s world are they thinking? Why are citizens accepting this slow-walk into the “gas chambers” of chemical medicine, where you die early from all kinds of neurological disorders, blood disorders and other dysfunctions the MDs just can’t seem to explain or solve for you.

Fellow Jews, pay close attention to a man who has spoken out to protect millions of Jewish people around the planet. Mike Adams of Natural News has published more truths about the Holocaust than any other health and safety news publisher, anywhere. The research runs deep.

It should be more like, “The research runs derp.” I’m sorry, but I laughed out loud (very derisively) at Adams’ claim (written by his lackey S.D. Wells) that he has published “more truths about the Holocaust than any other health and safety news publisher, anywhere.”

The bottom line is that Mike Adams and his ilk, the ones likening COVID-19 vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, are no friends of Jews. In misappropriating the symbols and language of the Holocaust, they are engaging in a form of Holocaust minimization, if not outright denial.

ADDENDUM: After this post went live, someone pointed out this Twitter thread to me, an excellent additional reason why antivaxxers co-opting the Holocaust is stupid, ignorant, and offensive:

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

55 replies on “Holocaust misappropriation by antivaxxers: A form of Holocaust denial”

A. Just as comparing being asked to wear masks to slavery shows that you do not really understand the profound horrors of slavery.

B. One thing about the RFK Jr. that did and still does trouble me is that he apologized for comparing it to the holocaust, but never apologized to the autism community for alleging they have no brains – which, as you point out, is part of the dehumanization that justified killing people with disabilities during the Holocaust.

C. The fact that this person felt it’s okay is a reflection of how widespread and trivialized this has become now among groups that are, by and large, privileged.

The only appropriation that I see is assuming that the Jews were the only target. Gays, Gypsies, Retarded, Handicapped , Freedom lovers, etc…..were persecuted as well.
Just like Palestinians are slaughtered today.
Just like Armenians by the Turks.
Just like Ukrainians had a far worse holocaust under communists.
Just like Chinese had a far worse holocaust under Mao.
As one of the abovementioned categories I feel insulted.
I will wear my mark of the beast when they come for me.
In the meantime I will continue to enjoy my clean body.

Dr. Gorski,

I’m an ‘orthodox’ Jewish citizen of Israel.

That commenter, steve, stated some historical facts.

None of his points were completely false:

General severe persecution (presumably including murder) of various categories.

Palestinians massacred in Jordan, with the help if Zia – Black September: ~25,000
Armenian Genocide by Turks: ~1.5 million
Ukrainian Holodomor: ~3.5 million
Communist democides (Maoist China and USSR) ~40-150 million (various estimates)

He claims to be in one of the victim groups above.

He claims to be offended by lack of mention of other groups or implication that only Jews were victims of genocide/holocaust.

That’s his opinion, that’s his feeling and it is not based on any distortion at all in his post, that you respond to seemingly hysterically, banning him for ‘antisemitism such as [his]’.

You spend an awful lot of time and effort methodically presenting actual evidence favoring conclusions you’ve come to in various areas, why the blatant over-reaction?

Or are you just giving the guy the brown-shirt treatment because he implied fundamental Christianity beliefs (mark of the beast) that you conflate with being concurrent to some kind of anti-unwanted medical intervention stance that you find abhorrent?

Whether or not that commenter’s opinion was antisemitism or not, your response was a total loss.

I didn’t say that his historical facts are inaccurate, but I’ll elaborate. Whenever one discusses the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, it is a very common tactic of antisemites and Holocaust deniers to say, “What about…?” and then start mentioning the Armenian genocide, the killing fields of Pol Pot, the toll of Soviet polices, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, etc. It’s a technique of distraction and deflection. It even has a name: Whataboutism. In this case, it was whataboutism used to defend the misappropriation of the Yellow Star as no big deal because of all the other genocides. The fact is that, while, yes, many other groups were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, the Jews were central to the Holocaust, as a friend of mine wrote two decades ago:

https://web.archive.org/web/20041229140846/http://veritas3.holocaust-history.org/jews-central

A brief quote:

To minimize or trivialize the “Jewishness” of the Final Solution is to seriously understate, if not, unintentionally perhaps, deny its essence. This does not mean that the suffering of other groups is to be ignored; on the contrary, it was terrible. But without the Holocaust, without the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, the others live. The term “holocaust” was coined to describe the uniquely Jewish aspect of the Final Solution. It does not seek to negate the suffering of the other victims.

Albert Speer put it well:

The hatred of the Jews was Hitler’s driving force and central point, perhaps even the only element that moved him. The German people, German greatness, the Reich, all that meant nothing to him in the final analysis. Thus, the closing sentence of his Testament sought to commit us Germans to a merciless hatred of the Jews after the apocalyptic downfall. I was present in the Reichstag session of January 30, 1939 when Hitler guaranteed that, in the event of another war, the Jews, not the Germans, would be exterminated. This sentence was said with such certainty that I would never have doubted his intent of carrying through with it.

The bottom line is that I don’t really care all that much if anyone thinks my response was a “total loss.” I’ve been at this long enough to recognize the disingenuous use of the “What about the other victims of the Holocaust?” gambit in the service of deflecting the main point. That’s what Steve did, and, worse, he did it in the service of antivaccine disinformation.

@ Orac

I’m not sure, as a Jew, I agree with your reasoning to ban Steve. Yep, Jews were targeted by the Nazis in a way no other group was; but he is absolutely right that the Nazis slaughtered many other groups. In fact, as a percentage of total population more Roma (gypsies) were killed in the Concentration Camps. There is new discussions regarding the Ukrainians under Stalin, at least a portion of the deaths were not due to his actions. Mao, during the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, was responsible for more deaths than any of the others; but didn’t target specific groups, just an insane rampage of Chinese against Chinese for alleged disagreements.

And he is partially right about the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. If you were to study the Tnach (Bible) and Talmud you would find that Israel is betraying the Covenant to be a Light Unto the Nations, e.g., “be kind to the stranger in your midst, for were ye not strangers in the Land of Egypt” etc. And Israel is in breach of international law. After the 6 Day War they were told by UN and others they had absolutely NO right to resources and land on the then West Bank, but immediately they began taking water, then settlers with Israeli government doing nothing, now actively supporting settlers in Palestinian Authority. If any other nations did was Israel is doing, besides almost entire world already condemning, so would the U.S, We turn a blind eye. Criticizing Israel is not anti-semitism. If it were, as a Jew along with many others who agree with me, we would all be “self-hating” Jews, which we are not. Of course, some who criticize Israel are anti-semites; but NOT the majority. Israel is a racist state, born with Jewish genes, all rights and privileges, otherwise, at best, second class citizen. I highly recommend you read: Rabbi Reuven Hammer (2016 Apr 21). The Status of Non-Jews in Jewish Law and Lore Today. He does a great job of explaining Bible and Talmud in how Jews should treat non-Jews.

I can think of other reasons to ban Steve; but not his one comment above.

Of course, it is your blog and you have every right to use it as you want.

He’s staying banned, as he has contributed nothing of value to the comments since he slithered in a few days ago and his “What about the other victims of the Holocaust?” gambit is a transparent “whataboutism” that I’ve encountered MANY times before. Its purpose is nearly ALWAYS to deflect and obfuscate. If the use of this particular gambit has ever NOT been disingenuous, I’ve yet to see it.

Dr. Gorski,

Thanks for your response, as usual you explain your reasoning thoroughly, with context.

“I will continue to enjoy my clean body.”

That explains the blindness.

Ms. Gaskins not on how she was not out “to make a profit” rings hollow in light of her, you know, selling badges and trucker hats.

I’m thinking about YOLOing on that thought. If this makes Mark Levin and the mindless hords of protesters go there to protest Stetson, I’ll be right across the street selling the hand-blown, fully functional, personalized souvenir truck nuts.

So. If anyone sees a powder-coated, psychedelically-stylized, airbrushed, bristly pair of truck nuts in the easily identified testicular torsion configuration, it functiions as a hide-a-bong. In case you’re at a Motel Six and need to borrow one or something.

How is Del able to blithely march around wearing a yellow Star of David amongst people who may have actually lost family members or have some who suffered in the Holocaust? More nerve than brains!
He appears at events attended by the Orthodox in Brooklyn and Monsey.

-btw- last week’s Highwire featured a substitute ( Dr Meehan) because Del was sick: I couldn’t get more information only- he got blood, minor surgery, couldn’t walk, doctors helped. No Covid or cancer. He didn’t look really terrible ( brief message).

Sorry if this is a double..

Del blithely walks around wearing a yellow Star of David in Brooklyn and Monsey where many in the audience may know survivors of the Holocaust or lost family members

Almost as bad: anti-vaxxers ( AoA) saying that they are the new Civil Rights Movement. No. they aren’t. No hangings or Sundown towns. Not Apartheid. either.

No shame..

-btw- I have no new news on Del’s illness : he appeared briefly on last week’s Highwire saying that he couldn’t walk, got blood, minor surgery in a hospital, doctors helped him. No Covid or cancer.

Del will be back today 11am PDT: he has a promo ( @ high wire talk). He looks….
not terrible but not his usual boisterous, tanned self.

I guess he’ll be well enough to mis-inform people with crap.

Fellow Jews, pay close attention to a man who has spoken out to protect millions of Jewish people around the planet. Mike Adams of Natural News has published more truths about the Holocaust than any other health and safety news publisher, anywhere.

“How do you do, fellow kids?”

I made the same argument on Dorit’s facebook wall a year ago. I was unaware of the extent of their appropriation. It absolutely is a form of Holocaust denial because they are inverting what actually happened: Nazis were not vaccinating Jews in ghettos or camps. Historical knowledge is fragile enough, history of the Holocaust even more so. Removing the specificity surrounding it, degrading it with their fanatical bullshit enables it to happen again. Ironically choosing to wear a Star of David signals they have more in common with Nazis than not. These are the same people who fantasize about liquidating Democrats, scientists, doctors, antifa, BLM, among others.

Kyle- I know of no more well written about , scholarly, voluminous history than that of the Holocaust: perhaps Stalin’s Soviet Union may equal this volume of robust , not fragile history.

Leonard, I think Kyle was referring to the “popular psyche,” for lack of a better term until the coffee kicks in.

Kyle and Narad- Although I agree with the general sentiment that all history is ‘fragile’ in the human psyche and has to be relearned with every new generation, I fail to see how Holocaust history is more fragile than any other history, in fact probably more robust, even if grossly misused as explained in many different ways on this blog and it’s associated commentary

Another instance of misappropriating Holocaust imagery – this headline on ABC News’ website today:

“AZ planning to use Nazi gas for executions: Report”

The gas in question is hydrogen cyanide, which has been used in executions in decades past in multiple states including California.

One can certainly make a case that death by HCN constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Comparing executions of killers to the Holocaust and shouting “Nazi!” is another way of minimizing what the Nazis did and an insult to their victims.

As an aside..

I’m not sure where I got this information but I’ll probably find it eventually ( I read most of the references in the Wikipedia article on Del, heard an interview on PRN, other diverse tidbits across the net, fatherly.com)-

— his original name was his father’s but he uses Bigtree, his maternal grandfather’s. his mother IIRC is part Russian Jewish from NYC but her father is a Native person ( Oneida or Mohawk) from northern NY state. So if his maternal grandmother and mother are Jewish…. !

There is other weird crap about his family in Boulder who seemed to have had a combination church/ alt med business
( PRN interview) He was originally an actor ( surprise!) and director.( I seem to have seen a commercial with someone who resembles Del for OTC pain meds)
His credits include a short film he made with his wife which involve her taking a bath and talking about her experiences including a ( supposed to be) ZINGER ending! called “Sex and Sensuality” or similar.

In the interview, he notes how neither he nor his children were ever vaccinated.
No degrees in bio, medicine, psych or anything else that I can find. Film school in Vancouver only.

There is other weird crap about his family in Boulder who seemed to have had a combination church/ alt med business
Grifting is the family business. Del merely saw a more profitable direction.

Grab a dictionary and look up “to deny”. Making hyperbolic comparisons about holocaust is not denial of it.
It’s ironic how you cover these hyperbolic comparisons and then you make your own hyperbolic comparison to holocaust denial.
Funny how you’re not writing about Fauci’s emails and recent developments.

I skipped around Del’s latest episode ( see 2:25,00-on)

A few weeks ago he felt weak and had tachycardia and shortness of breath: he knows lots of doctors ( ER, Fx’al, woo) one said go to the hospital. They found 8.5 hemoglobin and wanted to do more tests but he left. He flew to various places and was sick again, he thought Covid, but negative test; doc gave him Ivermectin (!!!!) he got worse, hemoglobin 4.8 but he didn’t want to get blood because it may have come from Covid vaccinated people. They couldn’t use his wife’s pure blood for 10 days. He knows a cancer doctor who works in Tijuana and Cancun who said that they trace blood donors better in Mexico but he was too weak to fly commercially so someone donated their private plane for him . Still, he was too weak but a doctor got him one unit of “clean” blood in Texas before his flight to Cancun. Doctors there found that he had internal haemmorrhoids and needed surgery ( he realised that he had had them but didn’t connect it with his symptoms) he got 5 units total to get to 10 or 10.5. They tested for many poisons as Del’s puppy died suddenly when he got sick. He shows more photos which look even worse than the others I saw.

You can see here how woo and CT beliefs interfere with common sense. When I was in school, one day my father looked whiter and somewhat deflated – for lack of a better word- I knew enough to call professionals, Bleeding ulcers from aspirin usage,

People take medical advice from Del.

“…hemoglobin 4.8 but he didn’t want to get blood because it may have come from Covid vaccinated people.”

That’s an impressive level of crazy.

Also, if internal hemorrhoids was the cause of such profound anemia, that implies passing noticeable blood over a long period. Hard to comprehend the level of denial that would let things go so far.

Sorry to hear about the puppy.

Going from 8’s to 4’s like that makes me hope those doctor calling it blood loss d/t internal hemorrhoids didn’t miss/blow off a more serious upstream cause of bleeing such as an ulcer.

Denice said, “…so someone donated their private plane for him…”

I smell an RFK, Jr.

Yes, I know – There are a lot of wealthy kooks including his millionaire benefactors and Joe Merde-ola.

… Or it is just a false flag crisis by Dull to get a nice Cancun vacation and begging rights for his morons to fund it. (Konspiracees!! Konspiracees everywhere!!)

Have fun.

Hmm, 5 Units of blood from a private clinic in Cancun to a completely unvaccinated person. Why, what could ever go wrong? Del reads like the male verson of Brandy Vaughan when it comes to ignoriing clearly ominous symptons and not trusting SBM. Mind you, his minions will instantly blame us if he dies from his own medical mistrust and paranoia. The ironic thing is, some of the medical mistrust that his parent(s) foisted upon him growing likely came from bad experiences with the same type of crank/quack physicians he now trusts implicitly as “medical experts”–aka greedy, incompetent medical grifters.

@ Drs Chris and Bacon:

You might want to listen/ watch Del relate the tale himself in its full, woo-fraught glory- I actually may have inadvertently toned it down a little to cut down on length.
see thehighwire.com or via @ highwiretalk : it’s at the 2:25:00 mark, perhaps about 20 minutes or so.

I feel a visceral hatred and anger when I see the Yellow Star appropriated for some bullshit cause. Especially when it’s anti-vaxxers.

I am not a violent person (more or a wimp, really). I would never harm or wish harm* on anyone mentioned or in the photos on this post. But I would read all their obituaries with great pleasure.

*Maybe a little wish. Something non-violent, like getting audited by the IRS.

Of course, U wouldn’t take the middle ground. Like with give them vaginal warts or something.

I might go a little violent, like thinking some people deserve to step on a Lego.

Then there is all the overt and dog-whistled anti-antisemitism in AV circles which to me makes the appropriation even worse.

There’s one good thing about this yellow star: it makes it plain that the people wearing them are anti-Semitic racists. So, you know at a glance and don’t have to waste time in pointless conversation.

Obviously she couldn’t hack it the real world of nursing. Far easier to join the band of merry crooks and naive in the alt world. No difficult patients to deal with.

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