SC’s Mace calls Marjorie Taylor Greene’s vaccine ID Holocaust comparison ‘appalling’
South Carolina’s Lowcountry Congresswoman Nancy Mace called a tweet from U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene “appalling” in which the Georgia Republican compared vaccination passports or ID cards to Nazis forcing Jews to wear gold stars.
“Mask mandates are not even remotely comparable to the discrimination and persecution Jews faced during the Holocaust, and to insinuate the two are similar is disgraceful,” Mace, R-Daniels Island, tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “Given the rise of antisemitism around the world today, I find this comparison even more appalling.”
When asked whether Mace supported censoring or removing Greene, the freshman Congresswoman told The State she believes that “everyone has the right to their free speech, no matter how horrible many of us may find what they say.”
“Voters decide who goes to Congress — not other members or the media,” Mace said through a spokesperson. “I condemned remarks from (Rep. Alexandria Occasio-Cortez) comparing the border to concentration camps, so I believe it’s important to be consistent and to call out ignorant remarks like this regardless of the party of the person who says them.”
As vaccine distribution leads to the lifting of COVID-19 sanctions, some businesses have announced that they will require customers or clients to show proof that they have received the vaccine.
This has sparked backlash from conservatives, who worry about privacy. In the early Spring, they worried that the Biden administration would require vaccine passports in order for Americans to visit businesses or travel. The Biden administration said in April that it will not be requiring U.S. citizens to obtain a vaccine passport.
Mace is the latest person to sound off on Greene’s Holocaust comparisons, which have led to a push for her removal from Congress.
Tuesday morning, Greene tweeted the following:
“Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s forced Jewish people to wear a gold star. Vaccine passports & mask mandates create discrimination against unvaxxed people who trust their immune systems to a virus that is 99% survivable.”
In the past, Greene has made her stance against vaccine identification and passports clear, going so far as to call them “Biden’s mark of the beast.”
Tuesday was not the first time Greene compared mask wearing to the Holocaust. Over the weekend, in an interview, she compared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s continued requirement that House members wear masks to the Holocaust.
“You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany,” Greene said. “And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”
A petition to remove her from Congress began circulating over the weekend, and by 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, it had nearly 70,000 signatures.
House GOP leaders, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Whip Steve Scalise and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, condemned Greene’s comments on the House mask policy Tuesday.
This story was originally published May 25, 2021 at 12:42 PM.
