Former BNP leader Nick Griffin compares lockdown to Auschwitz

The former leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, has compared Britain’s lockdown rules to Auschwitz.

In a tweet, Mr Griffin wrote: “‘Science can set us free’ – Matt Hancock. There’s a slogan to put over the main gate into the lockdown concentration camp as the doctors experiment on the inmates.”

The phrase “science can set us free” is an allusion to the infamous slogan atop the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work sets you free”), and the camp is known not only for the murder of untold numbers of Jews but also the hideous scientific experiments carried out on inmates.

In case there was any doubt about Mr Griffin’s meaning, the tweet included a picture of Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, signing a book of commitment to Holocaust education.

Comparisons of lockdown rules, regardless of politics, with the Holocaust are a form of minimisation of the Holocaust and an insult to the Jewish community and right-thinking people, and they do nothing to further the public debate.