British MP makes antisemitic comments on BBC Radio 5 Live comparing coronavirus health passes to Nazi Germany
The Tory MP Marcus Fysh made highly inappropriate comments about the pandemic restrictions on BBC Radio 5 Live comparing the coronavirus health passes to atrocities in Nazi Germany. The Conservative party politician said: “We are not a ‘papers please’ society. This is not Nazi Germany.” His comments were widely criticised as “completely unacceptable” by listeners, as well as other MPs and civil society, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the UK.
These parallels between the current restrictions and Nazi Germany have also been made by politicians in other European countries. In the Netherlands, the right-wing MP Thierry Baudet, known for his antisemitic comments on social media, tweeted that unvaccinated people “were the new Jews” and “those away from the exclusions were the new Nazis’.
This language is deeply offensive towards victims and survivors of the Holocaust, as it severely downplays the horrors experienced. Comparisons between the unvaccinated today and Jews in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories are part of a concerning proliferation of antisemitic conspiracy theories emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic. A recent study by Get the Trolls Out! project called ‘Antisemitism and anti-vax discourse in Europe. A report on conspiracy ideologies and anti-Jewish hatred on Facebook and Twitter’, has shown how anti-vaccination discourses are often fuelled by antisemitic narratives and stereotypes. In addition to comparisons of the current restrictions to Nazi Germany, the Jewish community is also used as a scapegoat, and accused of seeking power and profit from the pandemic. The government should be in the frontline of combatting antisemitism and disinformation, not leading it.
