Times of Israel: US far-right extremists are now calling social distancing a Nazi policy
By Eric Cortellessa
For Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, the Michigan rally was personal.
She was on her computer Wednesday, working from home, when she came across a picture on social media of the woman holding the “Heil Whitmer” sign.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, that must just be some crazy right-wing outlier,’” she said. “But then I looked closer and realized that this was an organized protest, that there were many people there, and that it was in my hometown.”
Soifer grew up 10 minutes from the capitol building in Lansing where the protest was held. She was born in Sparrow Hospital, less than a mile down the road. Demonstrators caused a massive traffic jam Wednesday, and the long line of cars blocked off the hospital’s front entrance.
The images of the rally, she said, haunt her. The men and women holding machine guns and waving confederate flags, wearing MAGA hats and Nazi insignia. They were not wearing masks or gloves. “Clearly a demonstration against social distancing,” Soifer told The Times of Israel. “The confluence of so much danger, all coming together like a storm.”
“It was just shocking to see that those with such a hateful agenda and ideology would actually be located in one’s hometown.”