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On Facebook last week, Dauphinais, a Republican who represents the 44th General Assembly District in the towns of Killingly and Plainfield in Windham County, compared the governor to the Fuhrer in response to an article posted about state employees who have not been compliant with COVID-19 vaccine and testing mandates.
“King Lamont aka Hitler dictating what we must inject into our bodies to feed our family!” she posted under a story about compliance.
The backlash to Dauphinais’ original comments was swift and harsh, with many calling for her to issue a public apology for making the comparison.
“The representative's comments are disgusting, repulsive, and disrespectful to the history and memory of victims of the Holocaust,” Lamont’s communications director Max Reiss stated.
“Such anti-Semitic rhetoric has no place in state government, and no place in our public discourse.”
However, Dauphinais took things in another direction, posting a lengthier diatribe the following day on Friday, Oct. 8 in which she invoked Nazi concentration camps, book burnings, and other actions that took place during Hitler’s reign interspersed with comments about Lamont’s COVID-19 mandates.
“This Governor is dividing us, calling on those that are vaccinated to discriminate against those that are unvaccinated,” she posted. “Segregating us from our work places coercing people to make unwanted medical choices in order to keep their jobs, pay their mortgages, and feed their families.
“This is no longer (the) land of the free.”
Dauphinais also disagreed with the assessment of her initial statement, saying that her comments “were neither anti-Semitic nor factually inaccurate.”
“This Governor, with the help of the one-party rule we have in this state right now, has taken dictatorial powers for himself for what will be almost 2 full years when this latest extension expires,” she continued. “Hitler too was a dictator enabled by the rule of the single Nazi party.
“What’s worse, the Governor is using these dictatorial powers to force an experimental medicine, with unknown and untold side effects, onto the public at large.
“This dictatorial madness must stop. Nonetheless, I do want to take this opportunity to not apologize but clarify to Governor Lamont, for I was not clear that I meant that he was acting like Hitler in the early 1930’s – to date, he has not called for putting the unvaccinated in camps," she added.
Deputy Majority Leader Rep. Geoff Luxenberg, a Democrat, expressed outrage at Dauphinais' comments in a lengthy statement.
“To be clear, common-sense measures to protect people from preventable disease and death is not comparable to the mass murder of millions of innocent people,” he said. “I had ancestors who died in the Holocaust and I can assure you - if they were here now - they wouldn’t normalize or tolerate a comparison that equates public health vaccination policy disagreements to Nazi Genocide by ill-informed elected officials.
“This false equivalency comparing Ned Lamont to Hitler offends me, my family, and all reasonable people of all faiths, or no faith, everywhere.”
House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora also spoke out against his fellow party member’s comments.
“Representative Dauphinais’ outrageous comparison was disrespectful, and her comments were wholly inappropriate for the serious conversation about whether state government should mandate vaccines on workers as a condition of their employment.”
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