As we have reported, the anti-mask groups have present a number of false claims about pandemic safety measures, including claims about masks being a violation of human rights. The hyperbole recently hit a new height with this:

(I blacked the name of the young woman because she might be a teenager.)

This post, which compared being denied service for not wearing a mask to anti-black discrimination and the Holocaust, generated a lot of support from the members of the Hugs over Masks group.

I can't believe this needs to be said, but there is nothing even remotely similar to a masking bylaw to prevent the spread of a potentially lethal virus to Jim Crow laws, and systemic, legalized racism in the US that arose after the abolition of slavery.

Being told you cannot go into a story because you are not wearing a mask which is a temporary public safety measure doesn't make you Rosa Parks anymore than refusing to wear a seatbelt or a motorcycle helmet does.

Needless to say, to compare efforts to fight #COVID19 with the attempt to exterminate every last living Jewish person on the face of the Earth is to miss entirely what happened in the Holocaust and go so far past hyperbole there isn't a word for it.

The comparison belittles what anti-black racism was (and is! It isn't over, folks!) and the extent of the cruel inhumanity of the genocide of millions of people.. Needless to say, none of the organizers attempted to, at the very least, point out the odiousness of the comparison.