Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

GOP Aide Says ‘Democrats Are Doing What Hitler Did’

An aide to a New York state senator compared Democrats and a survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting to Nazis in a Facebook post.

“The Democrats are doing exactly what Hitler did… He used the youth to disarm and control the people. This is scary!” Anthony Testaverde, an aide to Sen. Martin Golden, wrote on Saturday,

Testaverde also shared a photo of a shooting survivor with his right arm extended, comparing it to a photo of Hitler doing a Nazi salute, and captioned it “I knew something was off about this kid.”

Golden, a Republican from Brooklyn, issued a statement condemning his aide’s actions, The New York Post reported.

“The views expressed in this social media post are wrong and offensive as they are misguided,” he said. “At my direction the post that was ‘shared’ has been deleted.”

It is unknown if disciplinary action will be taken against Testaverde, but Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat running for Golden’s seat, tweeted that he wanted Testaverde fired.

“No one who espouses such despicable hated and idiocy deserves one dime of taxpayer money,” he wrote, adding that if he does not fire Testaverde, then Golden is “complicit in spewing the same hatred.”

Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.