(At the Defeat the Mandates rally in Washington DC) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unfavorably compare the conditions under which they are living to those faced by Jews living under the Nazis. “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland,” Kennedy said in remarks his own wife called “reprehensible and insensitive.” “You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”

… There were signs reading “STOP SEGREGATION,” “SEGREGATION IS NEVER THE SOLUTION,” “JOE BIDEN IS A VACCINE RACIST,” “RESIST MEDICAL TYRANNY” (this was accompanied by a swastika made of syringes), “‘You must never be fearful about what you’re doing, when it is right’—Rosa Parks,” “SEGREGATING MANDATES HAVE NO PLACE IN A FREE SOCIETY” (this was accompanied by a prohibitory sign over the phrase “Jim Crow 2.0”), “STOP THE VACCINE HOLOCAUST,” and “AMERICA=LIBERTY, MANDATES=SLAVERY.” The person holding this last sign was a pleasant and healthy-looking man named Eric, from San Diego.

“America’s built on freedom of choice,” he said when I asked him if he could unpack his sign a bit. “Now, what they’re trying to do is mandate something that you don’t have a choice to do, so that’s why it means slavery. Because slavery, as you well know, you can’t have a choice. It’s either you’re a slave, or you die. So we’re trying to let people know the other side: ‘Hey, you have a choice. You’re an American, you’re in a nation that gives you those liberties.’ Just because people push one narrative and try to give you information that just causes fear and doubt? No, look to the other side and see what the facts are as well.”