To those who have been following American politics closely over the past decade, the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is not a shock. Even the most cursory of glances at the political division in this country could tell you that this was a matter of when, not if.
When Trump first came on the scene announcing his intention to run for president, Democratic politicians and members of the activist media did their level best to portray him as the second coming of Adolf Hitler and his supporters as modern-day Nazis. The effort to paint the right as a pernicious threat to “democracy” has not abated since 2016. Indeed, it has intensified.
Earlier this year, the left had an utter meltdown when Trump railed against illegal immigration. The Hitler comparisons were not rare.
But when it comes to one of history’s darkest moments, Trump is professing ignorance.
Facing criticism for repeatedly harnessing rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump insisted he had no idea that one of the world’s most reviled and infamous figures once used similar words. The Nazi dictator spoke of impure Jewish blood “poisoning” Aryan German blood to dehumanize Jews and justify the systemic murder of millions during the Holocaust.
“I never knew that Hitler said it,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday, volunteering once again that he never read Hitler’s biographical manifesto, “Mein Kampf.”
In 2021, The Inquirer published an op-ed in which the author argued that it is perfectly fine to pretend that Trump is the same as the Führer.
Many people find it offensive to use the Holocaust as a yardstick for the political excesses of the last four years that culminated in the storming of Washington on Jan. 6. They believe that to mention Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler in the same breath, as Spike Lee did on Sunday in an awards speech, disrespects the millions of innocent victims and survivors, diminishing the enormity of the Nazis’ crimes.
As a son of Holocaust survivors and a grandson of four murdered Jews, I might be expected to agree. But I do not.
I think Trump’s ability to incite followers under the banner of white nationalism has enabled us to better understand Hitler’s sway over the Germans, connecting us to the real people in the old black-and-white photo images and newsreels that show the masses with arms outstretched toward their führer.
Salon did something similar in a piece taking issue with Trump questioning the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
It is a question I often hear people ask during conversations about the rise of Adolf Hitler: If I had been alive in Germany when the Nazis took power, would I have had the courage to side against them?
Thanks to the 2020 presidential election, there is now a convenient way to answer that query. Hitler rose to power because he told a Big Lie. Millions of people believed that Big Lie because they held more sinister beliefs; millions more likely didn't believe it, but weren't willing to denounce it as an outright lie at the time.
The same dynamic is true regarding Donald Trump's claim that Joe Biden stole the election from him. It is a Big Lie being embraced to advance a racist, anti-democratic agenda. Anyone who doesn't stand up to that Big Lie today would have likely been complicit in Hitler's Big Lie last century. Anyone who actually believes Trump's Big Lie ... do I need to finish that sentence?
This is only a small sampling of the lengths to which folks on the left have gone to demonize Trump and his supporters. Rather than giving principled arguments against his positions, they chose to stretch the boundaries of hyperbole to trick people into believing America was facing the resurgence of the Third Reich. They helped to create a political environment in which people can become more easily radicalized and moved to violent action.
We already know how the media would be reacting if someone had taken a shot at President Joe Biden. They would immediately blame Trump and conservative media for inciting the attack just as they did with the riot at the U.S. Capitol Building. Who will they blame for the attempt on Trump’s life?
Unfortunately, we already know the answer to that question as well.
As more information emerges about the circumstances surrounding the shooting and the gunman’s motives, it is doubtful that Democrats and their close friends and allies in the activist media will engage in any kind of introspection. They won’t consider toning down their rhetoric. Instead, they are probably commiserating on how they can spin this to Biden’s benefit at this very moment.
The ultimate responsibility for the shooting lies with the man who pulled the trigger. But the fact that our once-vaunted Fourth Estate cannot be counted on to refrain from using this incident for political purposes shows that our nation is probably in more trouble than we think.