An Alaska legislator felt so liberated in his disdain for a coronavirus safety measure requiring lawmakers to wear health screening stickers that he compared it to Adolf Hitler making Jewish people wear the Star of David during the Holocaust, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Republican state Rep. Ben Carpenter emailed all 40 members of the Alaska House of Representatives Friday: “How about an arm band that won’t fall off like a sticker will?”
“If my sticker falls off, do I get a new one or do I get public shaming too? Are the stickers available as a yellow Star of David,” he added. Fitting ridicule and the predictable non-apology followed Sunday.
Two Jewish legislators responded to the email immediately, the Anchorage Daily News reported. “Ben, This is disgusting,” Democratic Rep. Grier Hopkins wrote. “Keep your Holocaust jokes to yourself.”
Another Democrat, Rep. Andy Josephson, called the comparison nonsense. “I don’t think a tag that we’re cleared to enter the building is akin to being shipped to a concentration camp,” he said. “It’s more akin to needing a boarding pass when you get through TSA. This is that.”
After being appropriately held to task for the statement, Carpenter wrote an op-ed explaining his statement on the Republican news site Must Read Alaska. “My email comments have been perceived by many to be offensive. For any offense taken, I apologize because my words are my responsibility. It was not my intent to be offensive; quite the opposite,” he wrote. “I take my responsibility as the voice of the people who elected me very seriously. I also hold the Jewish people in the highest regard. I do not take myself so seriously that I cannot recognize that the words I wrote, and those attributed to me, do not adequately reflect the esteem I hold for either group of people. I hope to correct that error now.”
Carpenter then went on to explain why he used the analogy. “I do not want to minimize the tragic loss of life but I must call attention to the disproportionate government response,” he wrote. “Without a miracle cure, it is likely that as we open the Alaskan economy back up, we will experience more COVID-19 illnesses.
“The fear associated with the illness isn’t going away. We must not allow our response to our fear to drive us to accept additional security at the expense of our liberty. The price to maintain the freedom and liberties we take for granted is high. We must be willing to pay the price or we will lose both.”