Far-right figures and conspiracy theorists Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene have defended a Fox News personality’s comparison of White House chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who performed lethal medical experiments and assisted in mass killings inside concentration camps.
Lara Logan, a former 60 Minutes correspondent working with Fox News, was dropped by her agency UTA following her remarks on the network’s Fox News Primetime in November.
“What you see in Dr Fauci – this is what people say to me: that he doesn’t represent science to them. He represents Josef Mengele,” she said as a commentator on the programme. “And I am talking about people all around the world [who] are saying this.”
On his InfoWars network on 2 February, Jones – who claims that Ms Logan was “deplatformed” and “attacked” for her remarks – said she made a “very fair comparison”.
“I think it’s a fair comparison,” congresswoman Ms Greene added.
“It’s basically been a big human experiment, right? That’s what Covid-19 vaccines have been. That’s what Covid-19 has been,” she said. “I tend to agree with Lara Logan and I think most people do as well.”
The Georgia congresswoman has repeatedly invoked the genocide of European Jews and systematic mass killings under the Nazi regime to criticise basic public health guidance and vaccination efforts against a crisis that has killed nearly 900,000 people in the US.
Earlier last year, she claimed gas chambers and Nazis’ forced application of yellow stars on Jews were “exactly the type of abuse” as a mask requirements on the House floor.
“Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s [sic] forced Jewish people to wear a gold star,” she wrote on Twitter last May.
In July, she apologised for comparing mask-wearing requirements at the Capitol to the Holocaust after visiting the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, but days later she called efforts to ramp-up vaccine distribution “medical brown shirts”.
But months later, after her remarks were widely condemned, including by Republican leadership, she told Steve Bannon’s podcast that “vaccine Nazis” are “ruining the country.”
“I know I’m using the word ‘Nazi’ and everybody gets mad when I say it, but that’s exactly what they are,” she said.
The congresswoman also told Jones on Wednesday that wearing a mask during the ongoing pandemic is “truly mentally ill” and falsely added that masks “don’t work”.
Ms Greene – who has said she is not vaccinated against Covid-19 – owns stocks in at least three vaccine manufacturers, including shares in AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.
Meanwhile, the congresswoman – armed with baseless claims and conspiracy theories – has called for the nation’s leading infectious disease expert to be imprisoned.
After “repeated violations” against the platform’s Covid-19 misinformation policy, Twitter permanently suspended her account last month.
The Independent has requested comment from Ms Greene’s congressional office as well as House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy.
