Canadian Jews outraged after anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist creates t-shirt comparing inoculation drive to the Holocaust.
Outrage erupted in Canada’s Jewish community after a Vancouver anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist created a t-shirt comparing COVID-19 vaccinations to the Holocaust.
Canadian television network CTV reports that Susan Standfield’s t-shirt shows a yellow Star of David in the style of those that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis, marked with the words “Covid Caust.”
Standfield is known locally as an anti-vaccine conspiracist, and has made other t-shirts that denounce vaccinations and question the dangers of the coronavirus, such as “real men don’t wear masks” and “immune by nature.”
Standfield appears to consider herself akin to a Jew during the Holocaust, claiming in an Instagram video, “We are the official yellow star class in Canada, so that’s why I made that design.”
“People like me that have my values and live my life and say, ‘Well I don’t have to wear a mask and I’m not being vaccinated and I have liberty and democracy,’ we are systematically being targeted,” she claimed.
She added that Canada’s vaccination drive should be seen as a Nazi-style attempt at the mass extermination of disabled and indigenous people.
“My design is an act of solidarity among all persecuted people,” she told CTV.
Vancouver resident and former chair of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Dr. Michael Elterman, told CTV, “My first reaction was that it’s irrational, because the whole idea of a vaccine is to save people’s lives and yet this person seems to be associating this logo with the Holocaust, with the genocide of a people.”
“It’s irrational, it makes no sense,” he emphasized.
He also condemned Standfield, saying she was “including probably one of the most horrific pieces of Jewish history. It’s a time in our history when we were identified for genocide, it was a hurtful time.”
Michael Mostyn, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, condemned Standfield “in the strongest possible terms” for what he called “trafficking in Holocaust imagery in order to promote COVID-19 conspiracy theories.”
“There can be no comparison between masks and vaccines, which are intended to save lives, and the cruel murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators,” he said.