The Holocaust was trending on Twitter on Tuesday after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) compared the Trump administration’s migrant detention centers to concentration camps.
The remarks prompted fierce pushback from conservatives including House Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), pushing the discussion to forefront on social media.
{mosads}Ocasio-Cortez first made the comparison late Monday while speaking about Trump’s housing of immigrants near the souther border on Instagram Live. The New York Democrat, a regular critic of the president, said that the U.S. was “running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are.”
“If that doesn’t bother you … I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘never again’ means something,” she said, adding that she wasn’t using the phrase “never again” to “just throw bombs.”
Nazi Germany began erecting concentration camps in the 1930’s to hold Jewish people and other political prisoners under harsh conditions, later killing millions.
President Trump crackdown on illegal immigration has included the construction and expansion of multiple migrant detention centers along the southern border, with liberals and advocates decrying their conditions.
Cheney took major issue with the comparison, saying on Twitter on Tuesday that Ocasio-Cortez should spend some time learning “actual history.”
“6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust,” she said. “You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this.”
Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer asked on his daily news show whether the congresswoman owed an apology to “every Jew on this planet.”
Ocasio-Cortez stood by her comments, arguing that “shrieking Republicans” didn’t understand the difference between concentration camps and death camps.
She also responded directly to Cheney, asking, “what do YOU call building mass camps of people being detained without a trial?”