Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Monday that Republicans were the first to invoke the Holocaust when they criticized her accusation that the U.S. government is running “concentration camps” on the southern border.
Ocasio-Cortez ignited a firestorm when she used the phrase “Never Again” in a June 17 Instagram livestream immediately after comparing illegal immigrant detention facilities to concentration camps. The phrase is used widely by Jews in reference to the Holocaust.
But Ocasio-Cortez denied she was referring to the Holocaust in her comments and tweeted Monday that Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming was the first to invoke the Holocaust when she said the New York Democrat’s analogy demeaned the memory of the 6 million Jews who were killed during the events of 1939 through 1945.
“This is a deliberate, intentional, wild jump made by Republicans (frankly, often) for the explicit purpose of eliciting + manipulating pain for political purposes,” she tweeted.
If you doubt it, here’s the original tweet. This is a deliberate, intentional, wild jump made by Republicans (frankly, often) for the explicit purpose of eliciting + manipulating pain for political purposes.
Meanwhile, kids are still dying.https://t.co/LTS1RnoXGS
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 24, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet came after U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum spokesperson Andrew Hollinger said the museum “unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary.” (RELATED: Largest US Holocaust Museum Condemns Holocaust Analogies Following Ocasio-Cortez’s Concentration Camp Comparision)
“That position has repeatedly and unambiguously been made clear in the Museum’s official statement on the matter — a statement that is reiterated and reaffirmed now,” Hollinger said Monday.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a meeting of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform June 12, 2019 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York said in a letter on June 18 it was “deeply disturbed” by Ocasio-Cortez’s use of the terms “concentration camp” and “Never Again” in her June livestream.
“We urge you to refrain from using terminology evocative of the Holocaust to voice concerns about contemporary political issues,” the letter read.
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