CBC condemns comparisons of COVID restrictions to Nazi Germany after calling Trump ‘Hitler’ for four years

The article is purportedly about those Canadian citizens and business who are opposed to vaccine mandates. But instead of noting that these people have concerns about the state of their businesses and the government overreach, Rachel Bergen notes that "Comparisons to the Nazi era are becoming a common sight at demonstrations against public health measures aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19." This, she notes, is seen as antisemitic.

October 10, 2021

Bergen spoke to the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, who said that "To suggest that these restrictions in any way, shape or form are comparable to the suffering of what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust is unconscionable."

Bergen wrote that these comparative comments by anti-vaccine mandate protestors "are representative of what seems to be a shared belief among a fringe of those vehemently opposed to COVID-19 restrictions: that vaccine mandates and passports and other rules to curb the spread of the coronavirus are similar to the ways the Nazis mistreated Jews and other ethnic groups."

She condemns the use of imagery from that time period in the protest effort to speak against vaccine mandates. The use of yellow stars, images of Anne Frank, and other symbols to make the comparative between one government's far-reaching segregation measures and another is seen as a form of hatred against Jews.

Bergen then digs into the pasts of some of the most vocal anti-vaccine mandate protestors and claims that they have been antisemitic for a long time, and this is just one more iteration of their bias.

But if comparing contemporary government leaders and policies is antisemitic, then the CBC must be antisemitic too, because for much of the Trump administration they compared the former American president to Hitler, and his policies to that of the Nazi regime.

In 2016, even prior to Trump's win of the general presidential election against Hillary Clinton, the CBC's Don Pittis ran a headline that read: "Why we have to talk about Hitler when we discuss Trump and Sanders."

Pittis wrote that "it remains useful to apply lessons from Europe's interwar period to what is happening in the current US presidential election campaign." He noted that the comparisons abounded at the time, which they did, citing stories from USA Today and the Financial Times, and claiming that Trump's views on Islamic terrorism and immigration likened him to Nazis.

He made a direct comparison between what Germans wanted from their leaders as Trump voters wanted from theirs, saying Nazis "wanted a return to the good times they had had before the war. They wanted jobs and good foot. They wanted their pride back. they wanted to make Germany great again."

And he pulled quotes from an expert at Oxford who said that economic hardship and political extremism went hand-in-hand. Pittis then advised Americans how to "avoid what happened in Germany" by continuing "to honour their democratic institutions."

The CBC claimed that making a comparison between contemporary political matters and the Nazis is antisemitic, but it is something they have done themselves, on more than one occasion.

Anti-vaccine mandate protestors have made comparisons between the 20th century's most notorious genocidal authoritarian regime. Politicians have made the comparisons, and been roundly denounced for it. However, the comparisons made between Hitler and Trump during the past four years have been seen as, as Pittis said, as not only reasonable but necessary.

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