A Republican Alaskan legislator compared coronavirus safety measures to Nazi tactics in a fiery email exchange between the 40 members of the state’s House of Representatives last week.

Hitler, Rep. Ben Carpenter later contended, was not a white supremacist but “fearful of the Jewish nation, and that drove him into some unfathomable atrocities.”

The furor ignited after the announcement of protocols for legislators returning to the state capital. They included the need to pass a health screening for the coronavirus, and then a requirement to wear a sticker showing they had successfully passed the screening.

Carpenter emailed his fellow state legislators – later leaked to a local news website – complaining angrily about the measure being taken as the legislature set to reconvene. “How about an arm band that won’t fall off like a sticker will? If my sticker falls off, do I get a new one or do I get public shaming too? Are the stickers available as a yellow Star of David?” he asked.

Two of his Jewish colleagues were quick to respond.

“Keep your Holocaust jokes to yourself,” wrote one, Democratic Rep. Grier Hopkins. He called Carpenter’s comment “a flippant, ignorant and disgusting remark,” telling him that while he was free to debate about constitutional rights, he must “NOT joke about how testing for a virus equates to genocide.”

Hopkins added: “Putting other people at risk because somebody doesn’t want to get a medical test to make sure they’re not carrying a disease that will kill others is NOT the same as labeling and targeting a group of people for genocide through hatred or ignorance.”