Republican Lawmaker Wears Yellow Star of David To Protest Vaccine Mandates: ‘We’re All Jews’
Today in Wildly Inappropriate Holocaust Comparisons is the story of a Washington state lawmaker who wore a yellow Star of David to protest Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Republican state representative Jim Walsh posted a Facebook video showing him speaking to conservatives in a gym while wearing the Star.
“It’s an echo from history,” he wrote on Facebook. “In the current context, we’re all Jews.”
The event was held this past weekend, and was organized by a group called Washingtonians for Change, which billed it as a “Patriot Gathering.”
Washington hasn’t imposed a statewide Covid-19 vaccine mandate, though for now it does require businesses to ensure that unvaccinated employees wear a mask.
In an interview with the Seattle Times, Walsh said most of the people at the event were also wearing the Star of David, and that he was given one before his speech. He said the people in attendance are “deeply concerned about vaccine passports and vaccine segregation.”
Walsh went on to compare vaccine mandates to Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the practice of racial segregation in 1896.
Walsh, who serves on the Education Committee, has refused to say whether he’s vaccinated.
When asked by the Times if Walsh could understand how wearing a yellow Star of David might offend people, he replied that “some people are offended by having to provide vaccine documentation at their work.”
Walsh’s theatrics evoke the nonsense spouted last month by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who compared the House of Representatives’ Covid rules to how Jews were treated in Nazi Germany. She specifically mentioned the Star of David.
You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.
