For decades, Democratic activists have compared Republican political leaders to Adolf Hitler.
On CBS Evening News, correspondent Daniel Schorr said: “It is now clear that the [presidential candidate’s] interview with Der Spiegel, with its hard line appealing to right-wing elements in Germany, was only the start of a move to link up with his opposite numbers in Germany.” When the nominee accepted the Republican nomination, Democratic California Gov. Pat Brown claimed that “The stench of fascism is in the air.”
The Republican nominee in these instances was Barry Goldwater. The year was 1964. As history would inevitably show, Barry Goldwater was not a fascist or a follower of Hitler.
Years later, Democratic Representative William Clay of Missouri stated that the president was “trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf.” Paul Conrad, a cartoonist from the Los Angeles Times, drew a panel depicting the president plotting a fascist putsch in a darkened Munich beer hall. Harry Stein wrote in Esquire that the voters who supported the president were like the “good Germans” in “Hitler’s Germany.”
John Roth, a Holocaust scholar from Claremont College, wrote: “I could not help remembering how 40 years ago economic turmoil had conspired with Nazi nationalism and militarism—all intensified by Germany’s defeat in World War I—to send the world reeling into catastrophe… It is not entirely mistaken to contemplate our postelection state with fear and trembling.”
The aforementioned president was Ronald Reagan—whose term was nearly 40 years ago. As history would inevitably show, Reagan did not replace the Bill of Rights with Mein Kampf.
Billionaire Democratic contributor George Soros once said that the Republican President “[displays the] supremacist ideology of Nazi Germany,” and that his administration used rhetoric that echoes his childhood in occupied Hungary. “When I hear [him] say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,'” Soros said, “it reminds me of the Germans.” Soros added that “the [president’s] administration and the Nazi and communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear… Indeed, the president’s administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and communist propaganda machines.”
Former Vice President Al Gore said that “[his] executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations, from PBS to CBS to Newsweek… and every day, they unleash squadrons of digital brown shirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.” Actor/singer and activist Harry Belafonte, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called the president a racist. When asked whether the number and prominence of blacks in the president’s administration perhaps suggested a lack of racism, Belafonte asserted that “Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich.”
The person referred to in these scenarios was Republican president George W. Bush. He was president around the time most current Penn students were young children. As history would inevitably show, the United States did not become the Third Reich.
During the presidential campaign, Madonna opened one of her concerts by comparing the Republican nominee to Hitler in a video montage. The animated comedy Family Guy featured a scene in which characters were transported back to Nazi Germany and tried to blend in wearing uniforms, one of which had a campaign button of the Republican nominee for President.
The Republican nominee referred to above was John McCain when he ran for president in 2008, when most of the current student body was still in grade school. Yes, the same John McCain the country gushed over when he died in August (including the University of Pennsylvania).
The same type of fearmongering was bestowed upon Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. In fact, Mitt Romney was so much a Nazi, that four years after his campaign, many of those who previously called him Hitler now wanted him to run as president.
(Image: stormfront.org)
Democrats are obsessed with falsely labeling those with whom they disagree as Hitler. They have been doing so for over half a century. Calling Donald Trump a Nazi, or insinuating he is a fascist, has been ongoing since he became the Republican frontrunner in 2016. With the horrible tragedy at the Tree of Life synagogue, the Democrats—including some Penn Democrats—have circled the wagons linking President Trump with the attack in Pittsburgh. With such Penn Democrat social media commentary as “The Trumpist main-streaming of Neo-Nazism…,” this serves as nothing more than a scare tactic repeatedly used by Democrats to exploit tragedy for political gain.
Yet, as history has showed, every time Democrats have claimed a politician was on the precipice of turning the United States into the Fourth Reich, facts ultimately revealed it to not be true.
Bill Maher, liberal comedian and host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, acknowledged this erroneous tactic in November 2016. At the time, Maher said, “I know liberals made a big mistake because we attacked ….[President George W. Bush] like he was the end of the world,” Maher told panelist David Frum, a former speechwriter for Bush. “He wasn’t.”
Maher continued: “And Mitt Romney, we attacked that way. I gave Obama a million dollars, I was so afraid of Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney wouldn’t have changed my life that much, or yours. Or John McCain.”
“They were honorable men who we disagreed with. And we should have kept it that way. So we cried wolf. And that was wrong,” Maher said. He then proceeded to insinuate Trump was a fascist.
Goldwater, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Romney, McCain, and Trump have been either Republican candidates for president or actual presidents. Each has been declared Hitler or fascist. None of it has even been remotely close to being true.
However, Democrats have continued these tactics with no end in sight. Their historically divisive and irrational hatred for all things opposite of their beliefs is dangerous. There is no fascist or Hitler threat. There never has been. There is only a Trump threat which constitutes the dismantling of left-wing ideas and legislation. The irony being the political actions they take in the aftermath of tragedies like the one at Tree of Life synagogue are closer to Reichstag Fire fascism than any of the fallacious claims they regurgitate.
When one group constantly proclaims people Hitler/fascist and it never turns out to be true, it is unequivocally clear that the strategy is based on fearmongering. When this practice has been employed for almost sixty years, it is pretty clear the Democrats must sit on a throne of lies to attempt to sway public opinion.
Attack a politician’s arguments or their policies to prove a point. Use legitimate data to show how they are wrong and support the argument with facts. Baseless and unsubstantiated claims laced with ad hominem attacks does nothing but appeal to fringe elements lurking in the political spectrum. If an argument is predicated upon calling a Republican candidate Hitler, which history has repeatedly shown to be false, then maybe the people with the problem are the ones using divisive, unsubstantiated hyperbolic rhetoric to get a point across and not (insert Republican president name here).
