'What Hitler Wants': Dad Turns up to School Board Meeting in Hazmat Suit

A father in Pennsylvania who is opposed to mask mandates in schools took to the lectern at a recent meeting dressed in a hazmat suit.

Scott Brady, who owns a local painting business, spoke out against face coverings during a meeting of the Springfield School District Board where he told those present "this is what Hitler wants."

The warning came as part of an occasionally rambling speech that took place during the public comment section of the three-hour summit on Thursday, August 26.

Footage of his outburst was posted to Twitter by lawyer and former marine Ron Filipkowski and has already been viewed more than 400,000 times.

In the clip, Brady begins by explaining how his suit was certified for use in refineries, pharmaceutical companies and power plants.

"I have to wear this every day when I go to GlaxoSmithKline," he says

"When I go in and they are working on hepatitis, they are working on AIDs. This is what I have to wear and I don't want to wear it every day but it saves my life."

He adds: "But those masks and the doctor's mask that you're asking my kid to wear? They don't do nothing."

Brady's initial comments drew applause, before he launched into a series of claims that appeared to blend fact and fiction.

He says: "1985 outbreak. There was a monkey with a virus, they wore hazmat suits. E.T. came down, they quarantined the whole house. They had hazmat suits on."

The outbreak mentioned could be a reference to the human monkeypox outbreak which occurred in the Central African Republic in January 1984.

However, it could also be a mistaken reference to the 1995 film Outbreak about a monkey who infects the human population with a killer virus, especially as his comments include mention of another film, E.T.

He goes on to claim that standard masks have not been approved for use by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "Are they all OSHA certified, those masks?" he asks. "Are they certified by the FDA, the CDC and everybody else? No, but this is, [pointing to his suit] right here."

Brady's assertions are incorrect. Both OSHA and the CDC have recommended the use of these types of masks in preventing the spread of COVID-19. The FDA also approves the use of face coverings, based on CDC recommendations.

He goes on to explain that while he was happy for his daughter to wear masks during the first wave of the pandemic, he is opposed to making them mandatory as case "numbers got better" and instead wants it to be "optional."

One of the Springfield resident's main arguments appeared to be that his daughter would struggle to learn Spanish at school because of face coverings.

"You need to see the teacher's mouth, you need to see the expression," he explains. "If she can't see the teacher teaching them the mouth movements, she won't learn."

He goes on to cite another discredited claim that masks caused much of the bronchial pneumonia that killed millions during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. This claim is based on a viral tweet which also claimed Dr. Anthony Fauci was aware of this fact and wrote about it in 2008.

Reuters debunked this claim, explaining that the previous Fauci study made no mention of masks and actually found that bacterial pneumonia led to most deaths in cases where the individual suffered previous "viral damage," or an influenza infection.

Brady concluded his speech by telling those in attendance COVID-19 was "not a super-spreader."

"Stop watching the news, turn the TV off and become neighbors... because this is what Hitler wants. Hitler wants everybody divided," he said. "If we all stay divided, who wins? Hitler wins."

"We didn't do nothing in 2011 with the swine flu," he adds. "We didn't do anything for those things. Come on, stop! It's not this bad! "

His claims come just a day after a similar video surfaced showing another dad at a school board meeting attempting to prove a link between masks in schools and child sex trafficking.

According to LinkedIn, Brady is the owner and operator of PND Painting INC.

Brady's comments came just days prior to Governor Tom Wolf's announcement that masks would be required in all Pennsylvania public and private schools, as well as child care facilities.

The mandate will come into effect from Tuesday, September 7 and will require all students and staff to wear face coverings inside amid concerns over a statewide resurgence in COVID-19 case numbers.

Newsweek has reached out to Brady for comment.