Speaker On Controversial COVID-19 Panel Compares Vaccine to Jewish Holocaust

Earlier this week, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) convened a panel for Covid-19 vaccine skeptics described as a “Second Look” at the vaccine. The five hour COVID panel was held in the Kennedy Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Office building. This room has also been the site to historically significant hearings such as Iran-Contra and Vietnam.

One of the panelists, Leigh Dundas, had previously protested at the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection, cheering on the rioters. A day before the riots, she posted a video of herself telling a crowd “we would be well within our rights” to take traitorous Americans “out back and shoot ‘em or hang ‘em.”

To promote the panel, Dundas spoke to Steel Truth Media, an online media platform for , where she referred to hospitals as the “new ovens of Auschwitz.” This is not the first time Dundas has compared COVID-19 vaccines to the Nazi regime. At a panel, Awaken America, Dundas called the vaccine genocide, comparing the COVID-19 vaccine to Nazi’s medical experimentation on medically vulnerable people. She has also referred to the COVID-19 vaccines as “a second Holocaust designed to eradicate our very humanity.”

Threatening language evoking historical horrors is inherently divisive, destructive, and deeply offensive. As the former chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, Senator Johnson’s decision to provide a platform to an individual who engages in such rhetoric only harms public dialogue and does a disservice to future pandemic preparedness.