- The Anderson County Review, a newspaper in Kansas, last Friday published a cartoon likening the state’s COVID-19 face-covering mandate to the Holocaust.
- The cartoon depicted Gov. Laura Kelly wearing a face mask emblazoned with a Star of David while behind her people were herded onto a cattle train.
- Over the weekend the paper received widespread criticism, including from Kelly, but the newspaper’s publisher, Dane Hicks, refused to take it down. Hicks is the chairman of a county GOP party.
- But on Sunday, the paper removed the cartoon from its Facebook page, and Hicks apologised.
- “After some heartfelt and educational conversations with Jewish leaders in the US and abroad, I can acknowledge the imagery in my recent editorial cartoon … was deeply hurtful,” he wrote.
A Kansas county Republican Party chairman and newspaper proprietor has apologised after his publication posted a cartoon on its Facebook page likening a state face-covering mandate to the Holocaust.
The cartoon, published on the newspaper’s Facebook page on Friday, depicted Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, wearing a protective mask with a Star of David emblazoned on it.
In the background, people are being directed into rail cars alongside the caption “Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask … and step onto the cattle car.”
After criticism, Dane Hicks, the owner and publisher of The Anderson County Review, posted a statement on Facebook on Sunday announcing that he was removing the cartoon.
Read the article by Tim Porter in Business Insider Australia.