Scott Jensen compares COVID-19 protocols to Nazi policies

Minnesota GOP gubernatorial nominee Dr. Scott Jensen will appear at a Republican Jewish Coalition event on Tuesday. However, resurfaced comments show Jensen seeming to think that pandemic-era COVID-19 policies are comparable to Nazi-era antisemitic aggression.

Video of Jensen speaking to a COVID-19 conspiracy theorist group called MaskOffMN in April is recirculating online, where he called for resistance to COVID policies to prevent another Adolf Hitler-level rise of authoritarianism.

“If you look at the 1930s and you look at it carefully, we could see something’s happening,” Jensen said. “Little things that people chose to push aside. And then the little things grew into something bigger. Then there was a night called Kristallnacht, the night of the breaking glass.”

MN GOP gubernatorial nominee Scott Jensen compared the state’s COVID-19 policies to Nazism: “If you look at the 1930s … We could see some things happening. Little things that people chose to push aside. ‘It’s going to be okay’ … Then there was a night called Kristallnacht.” pic.twitter.com/zHCRFP2OYq

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) August 22, 2022

Kristallnacht was a 1938 anti-Jewish riot perpetrated by Nazi groups where Jewish businesses and places of worship in Germany and Austria were destroyed and ransacked. Thousands of Jewish people were also gathered and incarcerated into concentration camps during this event.

Jensen has centered much of his campaign on the government’s response to COVID, and he previously called for civil disobedience against public health policies enacted by the state and federal government. Jensen is a practicing family physician that is not vaccinated for COVID and instead spreads questionable-to-false theories about the public health crisis.

Incumbent governor Tim Walz (D) will face Jensen in the general election in November.