Antisemitic rhetoric continues to be used by some opponents of COVID-19 measures
CBC
Belle Jarniewski leaned back from her computer, seething with anger after she finished watching a video on Reddit showing a Winnipeg restaurateur accosting public health enforcement officers.
"I'm still shaking after listening to that rant. That was unbelievable," she said.
The video shows Shea Ritchie, the owner of Chaise Lounge locations on Corydon Avenue and Provencher Boulevard, speaking with officers giving him tickets on Sept. 24 for allowing diners who choose not to be vaccinated to dine inside his restaurant.
"If they're so dangerous, shouldn't we be identifying them with something bright, like a yellow star?" Ritchie says in the video, which he filmed and posted to his personal Facebook page and that has since been circulating on social media.
"Why don't you put them in a camp until they finally comply?"
Jarniewski, the executive director of the Jewish Heritage Centre and a member of the Canadian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, said this type of rhetoric has become more rampant during the pandemic.
"We've seen these anti-vaxxer protests that are trying to compare the restrictions for COVID to the Holocaust," she said. "I have to say, he's gone much further than anyone I personally have seen or heard about."