Kansas GOP County Chairman Defends Cartoon Equating Being Told To Wear A Mask For Public Safety To Extermination In The Holocaust

Michael Levenson, New York Times, July 4, 2020:

The governor of Kansas has called on a Republican county chairman to remove a cartoon from his newspaper's Facebook page that invokes the Holocaust to criticize her order requiring Kansans to wear masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The cartoon, posted on the Facebook page of The Anderson County Review, shows the state's Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, wearing a mask emblazoned with the Star of David against a backdrop of people being loaded onto a cattle car.

"Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask … and step onto the cattle car," reads a caption on the cartoon, which was posted on Friday, the same day an order by Ms. Kelly went into effect requiring Kansans to wear masks in public spaces and in places where social distancing is not possible.

The Anderson County Review is owned by Dane Hicks, the chairman of the Anderson County Republican Party. Mr. Hicks defended the cartoon, which he said he had made himself and planned to publish in the newspaper ...

"Apologies: To whom exactly?" he wrote. "The critics on the Facebook page? Facebook is a cesspool and I only participate to develop readership." He added that he "intended no slight" to Jews or Holocaust survivors. ...

Ms. Kelly said the cartoon should be taken down. ...

The Kansas Democratic Party also denounced the cartoon. ...

Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, said ... "Kelly is taking action to save lives, so to compare it to mass murder is odious."