National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent suggested that America is on the path to a genocide similar to the Holocaust by posting an image on Facebook of Jews being rounded up by Nazis and commenting, “Soulless sheep to slaughter. Not me.”
Nugent's post came just hours after he was condemned by the civil rights organization the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for posting an anti-Semitic image to his Facebook page.
Nugent's latest image depicts the rounding up of Jews in Nazi Germany and is accompanied by the text, “Back when I learned about the Holocaust in school, I remember thinking, 'How did Hitler get MILLIONS of people to follow along blindly and NOT fight back?' Then I realized I am watching my fellow Americans take the same path”:
Earlier on February 8, Nugent shared an image headlined, “So who is really behind gun control?” with Israeli flags next to faces of 12 Jewish American politicians and gun violence prevention advocates. Some of the pictures feature descriptions such as “Jew York city mayor Mikey Bloomberg.” Nugent captioned the image, “Know these punks. They hate freedom, they hate good over evil, they would deny us the basic human right to self defense & to KEEP & BEAR ARMS while many of them have tax paid hired ARMED security! Know them well. Tell every1 you know how evil they are. Let us raise maximum hell to shut them down.”
ADL responded by calling for Nugent to remove the image with organization CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt characterizing Nugent's post as “conspiratorial anti-Semitism.”
Nugent, who has a lengthy history of invoking the Holocaust to demonize his critics, was previously condemned by the ADL for comparing Jewish filmmaker Harvey Weinstein to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.