Anchorage mayor defends anti-maskers who wore yellow Stars of David

• Published date: 01 October 2021
• Author: BEN SALES/JTA
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson opposes both mask and vaccine mandates, but as as Alaska experiences a severe COVID-19 outbreak, the Anchorage Assembly put a mask mandate on its agenda Wednesday. City residents protesting the proposed mandate showed up wearing the stars, which read "Do not comply."

Throughout the pandemic, opponents of public health measures and vaccination have worn yellow Stars of David at demonstrations and legislative hearings — drawing a parallel between their protest and the suffering endured by millions of Jews who were forced to wear the yellow stars before being murdered by the Nazis.

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Other Republican politicians — including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, as well as Jewish Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel — have also compared public health measures to Nazism. Jewish groups and antisemitism watchdogs have broadly called such comparisons an inappropriate trivialization of the Holocaust.

But speaking to the local lawmakers (who did not end up voting on the mask ordinance Wednesday), Bronson — a Republican who said this summer that he was...