patrick.net

(JTA) — Last month, Francois Amalega Bitondo was standing on a Montreal street, megaphone and cellphone in hand, protesting against COVID-19 vaccines. A bright yellow six-pointed star stood out against his black T-shirt.

The star, which read “unvaccinated,” was an explicit reference to the yellow Stars of David that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust. Others in the crowd were wearing them, too. Their implication: Those who refuse to be vaccinated are facing the same oppression as Jews did in the 1940s.

The message and badge put Bitondo and his fellow protesters into the company of a growing cadre of COVID-19 vaccine skeptics around the world who have invoked the Holocaust as they rail against regulations that increasingly marginalize those who choose not to be vaccinated against the virus. ...

“What they want to install from the first of September is exactly like the first of September 1941, when the Jews were supposed to wear the star,” Bitondo told JTA about Quebec’s launch of a “vaccine passport” on Sept. 1.

He added, “The government of Quebec is following a way that resembles what Hitler was doing, dividing the society in groups.” ...

Last week, the head of Chicago’s police union railed against the mayor’s plan to require officers to be vaccinated.

“We don’t want to be forced to do anything. Period,” the union chief said. “This ain’t Nazi f***ing Germany: ‘Step into the f***ing showers. The pills won’t hurt you.’” ...

He acknowledged that “we have not reached that extent” yet and that anti-vaxxers haven’t been enslaved or exterminated. But Bitondo fears that’s where things may be headed.

“Once the Jews were considered inferior, the Blacks were considered inferior, the Jews were put in concentration camps, Blacks were forced to be beaten and be slaves and were not considered human,” he said. “Today, the things that are going on, it feels like we’re following the same pattern.”