Greenberg: Sen. Scott Wiener’s Shockingly Reckless Nazi Analogy

We stand for principled debate and fairness in women’s sports, but a recent statement by San Francisco’s Senator Scott Wiener, a lightning-rod of an elected official in the State Legislature, who recently compared America’s efforts to regulate transgender participation in athletics to 1930s Nazi Germany fascism, is a disgraceful statement that poisons discourse and dishonors history.

Wiener’s claim that universities like Penn and UVA are “collaborating” with fascists today by “folding like cheap tents” is not only inflammatory and disrespectful but also a gross misuse of historical memory. This reckless rhetoric demands Wiener’s apology, serious reflection, and his resignation from California’s legislative Jewish caucus in Sacramento.

The term “fascism” is not a rhetorical toy. It evokes the horrors of Nazi Germany—genocide, totalitarianism, and the systematic slaughter of millions of Jews. For Wiener, a Jewish elected official, to equate modern sports regulations with the atrocities of the 1930s is profoundly insensitive.

We value historical context, and Wiener’s analogy trivializes the Holocaust’s unique and horrific devastation, where six million Jews and others perished. Regulating transgender participation in women’s sports, rooted in concerns about biological fairness (even CA governor Newsom said it was unfair) and competitive equity, bears no resemblance at all to war, fascism and Nazi state-sponsored violence. Such a comparison cheapens victims’ suffering and muddies a policy debate that deserves clarity.

Wiener’s use of “infiltration” to describe transgender athletes is equally egregious. It paints a marginalized group as a malevolent force, implying deceit rather than engaging with the complex interplay of biology, fairness, and inclusion in sports. We support maintaining sex-based categories in athletics to protect opportunities for biological females, grounded in scientific evidence of the obvious physical differences.

Wiener then goes on to accuse universities of “collaborating” and warns that “history will remember,” invoking the immorality of actual Nazi enablers during WWII. This manipulative tactic, especially from someone whose Jewish identity should heighten sensitivity to the Holocaust’s weight, is shameful. His statement exploits genocide’s legacy to shame institutions navigating complex legal, governmental and social pressures. Penn and UVA may face criticism for their policy approaches, but likening their actions to Nazi complicity is downright absurd.

In recent years, public officials have similarly made insensitive and controversial comments which have received widespread condemnation. Candace Owens (June 2025), compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler in a social media post. Michael Higgins, President of Ireland (January 2025), during the 80th Auschwitz commemoration, compared the horrors of the Holocaust to the situation in Gaza. Zohran Mamdani, NYC Mayoral Candidate (June 2025), refused to denounce the slogan “globalize the Intifada” and compared actions to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, invoking Holocaust imagery to frame contemporary political issues.

As a Jewish elected official, Scott Wiener bears a unique responsibility to wield attempted historical analogies with care. His statement was an exploitative misuse of historical trauma and inflammatory rhetoric for political effect, undermining both the transgender sports debate and the sanctity of Holocaust memory. We reject his inflammatory and disrespectful rhetoric. Wiener must issue a public apology for his egregious misstep and resign from the legislative Jewish caucus; his words betray the trust and responsibility tied to representing San Francisco’s Jewish interests.