Yet another Republican lawmaker has drawn a comparison between the Holocaust and vaccine mandates prompted by the still-raging COVID-19 pandemic. Yet another “apology” has been issued for such comments. And if history is any indicator, when the public handwringing period cools and the performative apologies from the offending party end, nothing will change, really.
There will be some other Republican somewhere down the road who will draw the comparison. And there won’t be any calls for censure from GOP leadership. There won’t be any real course correction or internal reflection done. There might be a slap on the wrist in private and forced apologies in public. There may even be some tangible consequences like the removal of that person from a committee assignment. But beyond that, history has shown of late, that’s about it.
It’ll just keep happening this way as long as Americans keep electing those individuals into office, or if the responsible person is not removed from their perch of great privilege as an elected official in the United States.
Much debate has already been devoted to whether these lawmakers who make these statements do so out of malice or ignorance or both. Frankly, I don’t care whether I figure that part out. I don’t need a psychological assessment or profile on a person who tries to compare life-saving, pandemic-squelching health restrictions to the literal Holocaust. It’s a bad faith argument steeped in antisemitism. It’s a bad faith argument made by people who know they benefit from the outrage they spark as well as they know their own name. I see the formula, and it’s brilliant in its cruel simplicity: Say something horrible. Feign ignorance. Apologize. Collect campaign contributions. Rinse. Repeat.
Be honest: Did you even know who Rep. Warren Davidson was before he tweeted the message: “This has been done before. #DoNotComply” and then attached a Nazi-era health pass to the missive? Did you even know he existed before he did this while quote-tweeting Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s reminder for residents to wear a mask and take their vaccine cards with them when they ventured out for the weekend? If you aren’t from Ohio, if you aren’t a congressional nerd, if you aren’t really plugged into the national political landscape member by member, and if you aren’t a reporter, chances are very good that you did not know who the hell Davidson was until now.
If you do know Davidson, well, then I assume I don’t need to tell you much else. You know that he was elected in a special election in 2016 to replace Rep. John Boehner just as staunch right-wing conservatism was surging through the House unchecked. You know that when he was elected, he was immediately recruited to the uber right-wing House Freedom Caucus, and you know that when it came to certifying electors for the 2020 election, Davidson cast his lot with former President Donald Trump and objected to the count even after the insurrection at the Capitol left hundreds of people injured and others dead.
What Davidson did with this tweet beyond offending huge swaths of people, and rightfully so, is show that where popularity or recognition lacks, it can be made up by other means, like by expressing abhorrent views on social media. Some of his more popular counterparts in the GOP, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have made their careers this way. But Davidson is no Greene. Not yet.
He has not yet seared his name into the public consciousness by spewing conspiracy theories and sowing hatred at every turn and during every media appearance. Unlike Greene, he didn’t drag out his apology. No, he folded much faster. It took him less than a day. It took Greene literal weeks to apologize for saying that mask mandates on the House floor were akin to Nazi control of the Jewish population during the Holocaust. (It should be noted that at that point, she had already been removed from her committee assignments after her comments online encouraging political violence surfaced.)
She had already suggested too, quite publicly, that the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, was a “false flag” operation. And before that, Greene said space lasers controlled by Jewish financiers were responsible for the wildfires of 2018. Greene hauled in huge sums of cash in her first three months of office—just over $3 million—thanks to her bombast. Just this week, she’s back to her grift again. She was banned from Twitter for ignoring multiple warnings and persistently posting misinformation about COVID-19. In fundraising emails, she said she needed donations to fight “communist Democrats” and the “Silicon Valley Cartel” after she was “censored.”
In comparison, Davidson has barely raised $3 million over the whole of his career. He also sits on the powerful House Committee for Financial Services. He’s got a lot to lose if he makes too much noise, but he’s also got quite a bit to gain if he can manipulate outrage to his advantage. He may actually think that mask mandates are akin to Nazism. He might not. In the end, what he really thinks doesn’t matter as much as what he’s willing to say. Time will tell if this comment helped him on the back end or hurt him in the front. But for certain, his apology cost him nothing.
Incidentally, that is the value I would also place on his apology. It means nothing. It is empty. Perhaps his “Jewish friends” feel comforted by his backpedaling, but as person raised in a blended Jewish household and as the granddaughter of a man who helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp, his statement rings altogether hollow.
“Bad things happen when governments dehumanize people. Sometimes there is a next step, to systematically segregate them. Unfortunately, any reference to how the Nazis actually did that prevents a focus on anything other than the Holocaust,” Davidson wrote.
Davidson says he feels “horrible” for having offended anyone, but as of 6:45 PM on Jan. 13, the original tweet was still up.
Ben Kamens, press secretary for Illinois Democrat Rep. Chuy Garcia and an executive board member at large for the bipartisan Congressional Jewish Staff Association, told Daily Kos he reached out to Davidson’s office asking for the original post to be taken down. There was no response. Kamens also asked for an apology. There was no response.
Another lawmaker, Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, even confronted Davidson on the floor. Davidson tweeted out his apology the next morning.
It was noted that the communications director for Rep. Warren Davidson appeared to have updated their profile on Twitter sometime after the original Holocaust comparison tweet went up to “former Hill communicator.”
The “former” communications director did not return multiple requests for comment. Davidson’s office also did not return request for comment about staff changes in light of the tweet.
Kamens told Daily Kos: “I personally think it is unacceptable that an elected member of Congress sworn to work for the people would twist history of the mass genocide of 6 million European Jews to justify his anti-vaxx agenda. This is especially troubling at a time when more than 841,000 Americans have already passed away due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
He added: ”To do this, and send this out from an official account is abhorrent, and the so-called apology did nothing to absolve his past tweets, which still remain up at this moment. Both Congressman Davidson and his staff need to receive formal education on the horrors of the Holocaust so they can understand the gravity of those events in an accurate historical context.”
That may help. It may not. But what could help is if during this year’s midterms, Ohioans ran Davidson out on a rail by overwhelmingly voting him out of office. Recent history has shown there is no sense depending on GOP leadership to curb the worst behavior of its members. Not while they are rewarded for it. Not while they can profit off of it.
The power to stop men like Davidson and women like Greene lies, albeit imperfectly, with the people.
There will be some other Republican somewhere down the road who will draw the comparison. And there won’t be any calls for censure from GOP leadership. There won’t be any real course correction or internal reflection done. There might be a slap on the wrist in private and forced apologies in public. There may even be some tangible consequences like the removal of that person from a committee assignment. But beyond that, history has shown of late, that’s about it.
It’ll just keep happening this way as long as Americans keep electing those individuals into office, or if the responsible person is not removed from their perch of great privilege as an elected official in the United States.
Much debate has already been devoted to whether these lawmakers who make these statements do so out of malice or ignorance or both. Frankly, I don’t care whether I figure that part out. I don’t need a psychological assessment or profile on a person who tries to compare life-saving, pandemic-squelching health restrictions to the literal Holocaust. It’s a bad faith argument steeped in antisemitism. It’s a bad faith argument made by people who know they benefit from the outrage they spark as well as they know their own name. I see the formula, and it’s brilliant in its cruel simplicity: Say something horrible. Feign ignorance. Apologize. Collect campaign contributions. Rinse. Repeat.
Be honest: Did you even know who Rep. Warren Davidson was before he tweeted the message: “This has been done before. #DoNotComply” and then attached a Nazi-era health pass to the missive? Did you even know he existed before he did this while quote-tweeting Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s reminder for residents to wear a mask and take their vaccine cards with them when they ventured out for the weekend? If you aren’t from Ohio, if you aren’t a congressional nerd, if you aren’t really plugged into the national political landscape member by member, and if you aren’t a reporter, chances are very good that you did not know who the hell Davidson was until now.
If you do know Davidson, well, then I assume I don’t need to tell you much else. You know that he was elected in a special election in 2016 to replace Rep. John Boehner just as staunch right-wing conservatism was surging through the House unchecked. You know that when he was elected, he was immediately recruited to the uber right-wing House Freedom Caucus, and you know that when it came to certifying electors for the 2020 election, Davidson cast his lot with former President Donald Trump and objected to the count even after the insurrection at the Capitol left hundreds of people injured and others dead.
What Davidson did with this tweet beyond offending huge swaths of people, and rightfully so, is show that where popularity or recognition lacks, it can be made up by other means, like by expressing abhorrent views on social media. Some of his more popular counterparts in the GOP, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have made their careers this way. But Davidson is no Greene. Not yet.
He has not yet seared his name into the public consciousness by spewing conspiracy theories and sowing hatred at every turn and during every media appearance. Unlike Greene, he didn’t drag out his apology. No, he folded much faster. It took him less than a day. It took Greene literal weeks to apologize for saying that mask mandates on the House floor were akin to Nazi control of the Jewish population during the Holocaust. (It should be noted that at that point, she had already been removed from her committee assignments after her comments online encouraging political violence surfaced.)
She had already suggested too, quite publicly, that the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, was a “false flag” operation. And before that, Greene said space lasers controlled by Jewish financiers were responsible for the wildfires of 2018. Greene hauled in huge sums of cash in her first three months of office—just over $3 million—thanks to her bombast. Just this week, she’s back to her grift again. She was banned from Twitter for ignoring multiple warnings and persistently posting misinformation about COVID-19. In fundraising emails, she said she needed donations to fight “communist Democrats” and the “Silicon Valley Cartel” after she was “censored.”
In comparison, Davidson has barely raised $3 million over the whole of his career. He also sits on the powerful House Committee for Financial Services. He’s got a lot to lose if he makes too much noise, but he’s also got quite a bit to gain if he can manipulate outrage to his advantage. He may actually think that mask mandates are akin to Nazism. He might not. In the end, what he really thinks doesn’t matter as much as what he’s willing to say. Time will tell if this comment helped him on the back end or hurt him in the front. But for certain, his apology cost him nothing.
Incidentally, that is the value I would also place on his apology. It means nothing. It is empty. Perhaps his “Jewish friends” feel comforted by his backpedaling, but as person raised in a blended Jewish household and as the granddaughter of a man who helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp, his statement rings altogether hollow.
“Bad things happen when governments dehumanize people. Sometimes there is a next step, to systematically segregate them. Unfortunately, any reference to how the Nazis actually did that prevents a focus on anything other than the Holocaust,” Davidson wrote.
Davidson says he feels “horrible” for having offended anyone, but as of 6:45 PM on Jan. 13, the original tweet was still up.
Ben Kamens, press secretary for Illinois Democrat Rep. Chuy Garcia and an executive board member at large for the bipartisan Congressional Jewish Staff Association, told Daily Kos he reached out to Davidson’s office asking for the original post to be taken down. There was no response. Kamens also asked for an apology. There was no response.
Another lawmaker, Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, even confronted Davidson on the floor. Davidson tweeted out his apology the next morning.
It was noted that the communications director for Rep. Warren Davidson appeared to have updated their profile on Twitter sometime after the original Holocaust comparison tweet went up to “former Hill communicator.”
The “former” communications director did not return multiple requests for comment. Davidson’s office also did not return request for comment about staff changes in light of the tweet.
Kamens told Daily Kos: “I personally think it is unacceptable that an elected member of Congress sworn to work for the people would twist history of the mass genocide of 6 million European Jews to justify his anti-vaxx agenda. This is especially troubling at a time when more than 841,000 Americans have already passed away due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
He added: ”To do this, and send this out from an official account is abhorrent, and the so-called apology did nothing to absolve his past tweets, which still remain up at this moment. Both Congressman Davidson and his staff need to receive formal education on the horrors of the Holocaust so they can understand the gravity of those events in an accurate historical context.”
That may help. It may not. But what could help is if during this year’s midterms, Ohioans ran Davidson out on a rail by overwhelmingly voting him out of office. Recent history has shown there is no sense depending on GOP leadership to curb the worst behavior of its members. Not while they are rewarded for it. Not while they can profit off of it.
The power to stop men like Davidson and women like Greene lies, albeit imperfectly, with the people.