Nazis and Nazi symbolism have been in the news a lot lately.

Surprisingly, it isn’t all coming from rallies at Confederate statues.

Some of it is coming from the modern anti-vaccine movement.

Vaccines and the Holocaust

Most people understand what the Holocaust was.

Or do they…

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the Holocaust as “the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.”

As often as folks in the modern anti-vaccine movement use the word Holocaust, it makes you wonder sometimes if they really understand what it means.

Among the most recent (2015) to demonstrate “the violent rhetoric of the anti-vaccine movement” has been Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., when he said that:

“They get the shot. That night they have a fever of 103. They go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

Kennedy certainly isn’t the only or even the first to describe a vaccine holocaust though.

That wasn’t even his first time…

As the keynote speaker at the 2013 Autism One conference, Kennedy reportedly compared Dr. Paul Offit to a Nazi war criminal and said that “To my mind this is like the Nazi death camps.” He was reportedly referring to kids who he and others thought developed autism after being vaccinated.

Actually, after calling Dr. Offit a liar, he talked about how his father would talk to him about Vietnam:

“He used to talk about Vietnam and about how we were dropping napalm on villages and he said, ‘what’s the difference between us and the Nazis. What is the difference between us and the Nazis…’

And these people, these people should be in prison…

I would do a lot to see Paul Offit and all of these “good people” behind bars.

…Is it hyperbole that I think these people should be thrown in jail?

They should be thrown in jail and the key should be thrown away.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

And yes, in the Q&A, when asked “why hasn’t the CDC acknowledged autism as an epidemic,” even though he said in his speech that they had admitted that it was, he replied that he couldn’t get into someone else’s head to tell why they were doing something.

Kennedy also went on and on about science and research that supports a link between vaccines and autism and continues with the idea that kids get just as much thimerosal as ever because of the thimerosal in flu vaccines, leaving out the fact that thimerosal flu vaccines are a thing…

But before Kennedy, in 2010, Claire Dwoskin of the NVIC, CMSRI, and the Dwoskin Family Foundation wrote that:

“At least his daughter is alive, smiling, educated and enjoying life. That cannot be said for the hundreds of thousands of vaccine injured children in the US. What his daughter went through is NOTHING compared to what the families of autistic children go through every day of their lives. No disease can match this record of human devastation. Vaccines are a holocaust of poison on our children’s brains and immune systems. Shame on you all.”

Claire Dwoskin

Dwoskin and Kennedy haven’t continued to say vaccines are a holocaust, at least not in public.

The one person that most commonly uses holocaust imagery when talking about vaccines, and who will likely never stop, is the Health Ranger – Mike Adams.

Adams has used the “vaccine holocaust” term for years and has now created a dedicated website exposing his ideas of a conspiracy of a “media cover-up of vaccine violence against children.”

Adams has also called for making a “Nuremberg List” of all of the people working in Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Biotech, with individuals from “mass media, politics, government regulation bodies, finance, and from wherever appropriate,” including their names and “their observed crimes against humanity.”

Surprisingly, using the term even draws some disagreement among folks who think that vaccines do cause autism and that we are in an ‘age’ of an autism epidemic.

“I haven’t read it yet, but it looks very much like the view shared by most of our readers and myself – corruption at the CDC and big pharma leading to a vaccine-induced catastrophe – a holocaust…”

Dan Olmsted on The Autistic Holocaust – The Reason Our Children Keep Getting Sick

In discussing the book, The Autistic Holocaust – The Reason Our Children Keep Getting Sick, Dan Olmsted found that one participant had “a strong view that the choice of the word “Holocaust” is not appropriate and does not serve the interests of our children.”

Another thought that “Holocaust is a word with too powerful associations to be of much use describing anything other than the crimes of the Nazis.”

And still, the site he founded continues to publish articles like:

• A Dozen Things We Can Do RIGHT NOW to Help Stop the Vaccine Holocaust
• Rabbi Handler on Vaccines, Politics and the Autism Holocaust

Yes, they interviewed an anti-vaccine Rabbi who is upset with the CDC and NYC health department over their warnings about metzitzah b’peh (oral suction) during traditional bris milah (circumcision). The concern is that oral suctioning can spread herpes (cold sores) to the newborn baby, which can be fatal. And it still does…

“Webster’s dictionary defines a holocaust as follows: “great or total destruction of life, especially by fire.”

Yes, there is a vaccine-triggered holocaust of autism and autoimmune diseases, like asthma, diabetes, Crohn’s disease, and various forms of ADHD and brain damage.

As one of the last living survivors of Hitler’s Nazi Holocaust, I am outraged that the Anti-Defamation League and other politically-Liberal Jewish organizations have claimed exclusive ownership of this very powerful English word and blocked its use by Autism activists.”

Rabbi William Handler

Rabbi Handler has been called out for other controversial opinions too, including that he supported a Rabbi who molested his own daughter and that he is against child protective services investigating and the state prosecuting those who physically abuse or sexually abuse children in the Orthodox Jewish community, instead advocating that a rabbinical counsel should do it instead.

Dr. Bob has even gotten in on the Holocaust imagery to scare parents about California’s vaccine laws:

“…So I tell them they don’t have to whisper. They can say it loud and clear, with confidence. Ya, I guess you don’t want to advertise it around the neighborhood – that will come soon enough. Scarlet “V” anyone? No, not scarlet. Let’s make it yellow. And not a V – a star would be better. That way everyone can know at first glance who is safe to be around and who is not. That way, if your old doctor and his children are walking down the street, they can easily identify your kids and quickly cross to the other side before they get too close.

Ask your Assemblyperson which color and shape they think would be most appropriate.

Disclaimer: This post is not intended as a reference to a holocaust. Rather, it’s intended to raise the issue of prejudice and discrimination. Others have likenend vaccine injury to a holocaust. Instead, we are talking about families who choose to not vaccinate. No holocaust here.”

Dr. Bob Sears on The Vaccine Whisperers

And unbelievably, there are others.

Also in California, Wakefield‘s anti-vaccine movie Vaxxed was introduced at a screening in Roseville by a speaker who said that:

“It is WE who are going to have to work non-stop to put an end to this ever-increasing medical tyranny, this abominable Vaccine Holocaust, this present evil…

For those who think “holocaust” is too strong a word, I assure you it is not.

“Holocaust” is defined as “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale”, and that is indeed what vaccinations are doing to those who receive them, which can often be observed in the short term, always in the long term, and for generations to come as you will learn as you study these issues more.”

Laura Hayes

And if it isn’t the Holocaust, many anti-vaccine folks still find ways to invoke Godwin’s Law – “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler rapidly increases.”

There is even a band about refusing vaccines with a song called Vaccine Gestapo.

Remember when Rob Schneider tweeted that California lawmakers were Nazis for passing a law that required parents to get educated before getting a vaccine exemption?

“Mandates effectively use schoolchildren as research subjects without informed consent, in violation of the Nuremberg Code.”

AAPS Executive Director Jane M. Orient, M.D.

Schneider also talked about the Nuremberg Laws. That one was surprising, as most other folks who are anti-vaccine invoke the Nuremberg Code instead.

Of course, both are offensive. As is bringing up the Holocaust when talking about vaccines, vaccine mandates, or autism.

What to Know About Vaccines and the Holocaust

That they would invoke the Holocaust when talking about vaccines and autism, and compare doctors and lawmakers to Nazis, tells you a lot about the modern anti-vaccine movement.

More on Vaccines and that Holocaust

• Doc Says Anti-Vaxxers Are Treated Like Jews in Nazi Germany
• Dr. Bob Sears of Weekly Cover Fame Compares Anti-Vaxxers to Jews Under Nazis
• California Doctor Invokes Holocaust Analogy, Compares Non-Vaccinating Parents To Persecuted Jews
• Can antivaccinationists knock it off with the autism Holocaust analogies already? (RFK, Jr. edition)
• 7 Ways Anti-Vaxxers Are Worse than You Ever Could Have Imagined
• The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 24: Antivaxers threaten to dox Boston Herald employees over the newspaper’s use of imagery much less offensive than what antivaxers use on a daily basis
• The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 21: Oh, wait, maybe I am antivaccine after all
• The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 18: Dr. Bob goes full Godwin over SB 277
• The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 17: More Nazis versus freedom!
• The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 15: California SB 277, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the vaccine “holocaust”
• The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 5 ( argumentum ad Nazium edition, 2011)
• Dr. Bob Sears serves his typical anti-vaccine effluvium, seasoned with self-pity and accompanied by a side of anti-Semitism
• The autism “Holocaust”? Why antivaccine advocates are not autism advocates
• The violent rhetoric of the antivaccine movement: “Vaccine Holocaust” and potential impending attacks on journalists
• Anti vaccine cult uses Hitler’s Big Lie – laughable strategy
• Can antivaccinationists knock it off with the autism Holocaust analogies already?
• School vaccine mandates are against the Nuremberg Code
• Anti-Semitic vaccine deniers – continued attacks on Prof. Reiss
• Anti Semitic hate speech of the antivaccine cult
• So I friended some anti-vaccine people on Facebook…
• Keep it up, anti-vaccine nuts, you’re your own worst enemy