It is a convenient propaganda technique to dismiss a political opponent by calling a person by a vile name, or by comparing them to some evil person in history. Since World War II and the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler has been a person that very few would want to be associated with, and on Wednesday of this week, Joy Reid, the host of MSNBC’s The Reid Out, compared the threat of Donald Trump becoming president to Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933.
But Reid took it a little further and smeared the entire Republican base to followers of the National Socialist (Nazi) dictator.
“I go to the 1930s when the New York Times was doing style pieces on Adolf Hitler and saying, ‘Oh, he’s gonna moderate himself when he gets into office and actual power is in his hands,’” Reid said. “I feel like that’s happening again because people don’t want to come at the voter. But these voters are actively saying, ‘Yes, we want a dictatorship. Yes, we want him to be a dictator. Yes, we like autocracy.’ And it’s just not being examined.”
Certainly, we must recognize that Hitler is not the only person in history who did horrible things — and we should further recognize that there are many others, even in our own country, who would be willing to impose a dictatorship and commit murders to do so. But nothing Trump has ever said would indicate that he is one of those people.
First of all, this comparison of Trump to Hitler was made the first time he ran, before he even took office. For example, his campaign theme of “Make America Great Again” was compared to Hitler’s saying he wanted to restore German greatness. But if saying that one wants their country to be great is Hitlerian, then one would have to say Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were both Hitlers, because both used the phrase, “Let’s Make America Great Again.” When a person is running for office, especially against an incumbent, as was the case with both Reagan and Clinton, it is their challenge to convince the voters that something has gone wrong in the country — and that it was better before the incumbent took over four years earlier. Who can forget Reagan’s closing argument in his debate with President Jimmy Carter, when he asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
If autocracy and dictatorship mean one-person rule, then that designation would certainly fit our present occupant of the White House, President Joe Biden. After all, Biden is ignoring the law and the Constitution and simply imposing his policy views on issues as varied as open borders, and taking money from American taxpayers to pay off student loans.
Adolf Hitler used hatred of the Jews in Germany for his political gain. The Jews were targets for various reasons, one of which was that many prominent Jews were wealthy. How is that different from the leftist demand of “taxing the rich?” Sadly, there are many who somehow feel better when a wealthier person gets taxed, despite it not improving their own life in any way.
One might also note that leftists in the media, academia, and in the popular culture like to dismiss anyone who opposes their efforts to impose all sorts of things on Americans as “fascists” or “Nazis.” But Nazi is simply short for National Socialist, which was the name of Hitler’s political party. He was certainly no libertarian, or devotee of limited, constitutional government. At no time did Hitler praise the concept of the free market. While he allowed private enterprise, it was heavily regulated by his National Socialist government. He even railed at the “big department stores,” which sounds quite a bit like modern left-wing rhetoric. Rather than impose new regulations on business when he was president, Trump removed many regulations from business — over the objections of avowed socialists such as Bernie Sanders and those who prefer the designation of “progressives.”
Reid’s comparison of Trump supporters — the entire Republican base — to Hitler supporters is not unique, as one might remember Hillary Clinton’s reference to the supporters of Trump as “a basket full of deplorables.” When Reid argues that Trump’s supporters are “set on revenge,” one might consider that Maxine Waters, a far-left Democrat member of Congress, demanded that her fellow progressives should confront Trump supporters at the gas pump or in restaurants and “get in their face” (which is actually the crime of assault). Since then, all over the country, Americans minding their own business while wearing a MAGA cap have been harassed, intimidated, and in some cases, even physically assaulted. Many Americans who do not buy into the Left’s Cultural Marxism (such as DEI and CRT) find themselves losing jobs, denied promotions, and even denied employment to begin with.
Conservative speakers are regularly denied the opportunity to speak on college campuses, and social-media platforms routinely censor views they do not like. So who are the fascists here?
Reid even smeared “white Christians” for their support of Trump during coverage of the Iowa caucuses.
One must ask, just who is more like Hitler?
