State Senator Jessica Garvin, R-Duncan, urged voters to ignore the “disgusting” Facebook post written by Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman John Bennett as he compared the COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates to the Holocaust.
After the post was published, droves of Republican lawmakers and leaders criticized Bennett’s comments. Several of his supporters harassed those who opposed his remarks.
“Once other members of the Republican Party began denouncing the comparison, Chairman Bennett doubled down, following up with a video basically shaming anyone who didn’t agree with his comparison,” Garvin wrote in an emailed letter to her constituents.
During the Holocaust, millions of Jewish men, women and children were murdered in gas chambers, starved, tortured and shot. Their bodies buried in mass graves or incinerated in crematoriums.
Garvin shared a personal story with her constituents about a German family member who suffered through that global tragedy.
“My husband’s grandfather fought during World War II and fell in love with the most precious German woman that God ever made,” she wrote. “I remember the one and only time I ever heard her speak of the Holocaust; she had family who served in Hitler’s Army and others who helped Jews escape the horror. She lived through that and, eventually, my husband’s grandfather sent her to live in the States until his return home to America.”
Continuing, “I’ll never forget the trembling in her voice and the tears rolling down her face as she shared her story. Although born in Germany, Grandma McBee was an American patriot who loved and supported the U.S, respected her elected officials, regardless if she agreed with them, and taught her children, many of whom served in the U.S. military, to love and support their country too.”
Garvin called Bennett’s comments insulting to her family and others who had loved ones who lived through that tragedy as well as the millions of families who lost loved ones.
“Because we disagree with him, we’re called RINOs ( Republicans in Name Only) and accused of being ‘fake Republicans.’ Every day, we’re threatened with being voted out, harassed on social media, and receive emails telling us how horrible we are,” the senator wrote.
Garvin referenced former President Ronald Reagan who said, “The person who agrees with you 80% of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20% traitor.”
Seeing the Reagan quote reminded Garvin that “just because I don’t agree with Chairman Bennett 20% of the time doesn’t make me a traitor to my party or not a patriot. A patriot is someone who loves and supports their country, just like Grandma McBee. She had a thick German accent, loved German food, and celebrated German traditions during the holidays, but that didn’t make her less of an American patriot than her neighbor.”
In the seven-minute video, Bennett claims mandated vaccines and mask usage is an attack on individual liberties, “and the government is using the private sector to do that business for them.”
A Facebook post about the Star of David and Holocaust comparison applies to the current debate about COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates, the GOP chairman claims.
“When they put that on the Jews, they weren’t sending them directly to the gas chamber. This came before that,” he said. “This is communist. This is totalitarian. And if we don’t do something now this is going to end in the exact same result. It’s not about the star; it’s about a totalitarian government” pushing vaccines. Later in the video, he called for his supporters to act.
“Let’s lock arms at the gates of freedom,” he said. “Patriots, let’s rethink what’s happening here. It’s our time to gather around the liberty tree.”