Kansas GOP Official Shares Cartoon Comparing Mandatory Masks to the Holocaust

The Anderson County Review, a local Kansas newspaper owned by Anderson County Republican Party chairman Dane Hicks, shared a cartoon comparing mandatory masks to the Holocaust.

The cartoon featured an image of Kansas Governor Laura Kelly wearing a mask with the Star of David on it, set against a backdrop of people being forced onto a cattle car. The image was posted on the Anderson County Review Facebook page, and was captioned: “Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask…and step onto the cattle car.”

In an email to reporters that he made public, Hicks admitted that he personally photo-shopped the image. He called Governor Kelly’s order “totalitarian,” and added that he had “more evidence" of that kind of totalitarianism in Kelly’s actions, in an editorial cartoon sort of way, than Trump’s critics do,” referring to comparisons critics of the president have made between his presidency and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

Asked how he would respond to complaints that the post was offensive, Hicks wrote:

“Apologies: To whom exactly? The critics on the Facebook page? Facebook is a cesspool and I only participate to develop readership. I post much of my writing there and my trolls are like family. I like to refer to them as my narcissistic flea circus - I make them jump and I give them free rein to attack me for my views and only rebuke them for vulgar language. I would never apologize to them. They're liberal Marxist parasites who are literally applauding and in some cases taking part in the burning and commandeering of both public and private property in our country. As a traditional American, they are my enemy.”

Hicks did write that, “If there are [H]olocaust survivors or their relatives or Jews who take offense to the image, I would certainly apologize and I intended to slight to them” but added, “then again, they [Holocaust survivors and Jews] better than anyone should appreciate the harbingers of government overreach and the present but tender seedlings of tyranny.”

Hicks removed the Facebook post of the cartoon the following day, without apologizing. However, he later said he apologized to “those directly affected.”

Hicks is neither the first nor the only Republican official to make this offensive comparison: State Legislators in Alaska, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Idaho have made similar statements over the past few months.