Democrats charge that Republicans are led by Fascists is absurd

by Scott S Powell

       President Biden referred to Donald Trump and roughly half the country that supports him as “semi-fascists” during a recent fund-raising speech.  A week ago, Robert Reich, a prominent media commentator and former U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, suggested that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was a “fascist.” While some would attribute these comments to election year name-calling, referring to the two front-running Republican Party leaders as “fascist” actually reveals just how unprincipled, deceitful or blind the Democrat Party leadership really is.   

     The reason for the popularity of both Trump and DeSantis is that they both focus on delivering solutions to everyday problems that people care about.  Philosophically, they share a limited government and law and order approach to governing that emphasizes individual freedom and responsibility. Both Trump and DeSantis believe that the primary role of government is to protect the unalienable rights of the people, which is almost the antithesis of fascism. Fascists believe that peoples’ rights come from the state, and that the state has absolute power over the people.

      If there are fascists in America today, they are found on the left side of the political spectrum, embedded in the Democrat Party. And that is consistent with the history of fascism in both Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, where fascism grew out of the socialism of the left. Adolph Hitler rode to power as the leader of the National Socialist Party. Benito Mussolini was a revolutionary socialist up until 1919, whereupon he forged the paramilitary fascist movement that propelled him into becoming prime minister in 1922, and paved the way for his total seizure of power and the establishment of a one-party totalitarian state, which ultimately joined in alliance with the Nazi Party of Germany.

      In his September 1 prime-time speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, complete with a dark red backdrop and the flanking of military guards, President Biden claimed he had the way to win the “battle for the soul of the nation.” His militant speech repeatedly disparaged supporters of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and condemned anyone who questioned the honesty and legitimacy of the 2020 elections. He also specifically charged  those people as being threats to “democracy.”

      In fact, Biden’s staged speech with his many references to “democracy” were more reminiscent of Mussolini’s edict—"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”—than they were connected with of the ideas and safeguards that have made the United States the oldest, freest and most successful constitutional republic in the history of mankind.

      Trump and the MAGA supporters are the antithesis of fascists, for their general love for freedom hinges on minimizing interference from the state. Additionally they have a natural  inclination to embrace solutions coming from individual creativity and entrepreneurial initiative rather than government programs.  Their instincts and choices clearly reflect a preference for freedom. And freedom is the polar opposite of fascism.

      Whereas the Republican Party recognizes the virtue of freedom,  the Biden Democrat Party has different priorities.  What is a matter of record regarding changes in the Democrat Party since the rise of Barack Obama is increasing intolerance and the embrace of radical ideology. And now Democrats want to extend that party control into the state by eliminating their opposition.  And as we survey the last five years, that control is ever expanding and includes using schools to demoralize and indoctrinate children, and extending influence into the establishment and social media to control what people say or think.  Cancel culture and censorship have now been normalized by the Democrat Party. This is a harbinger of fascism not a free society.

      Fascism is a system wherein businesses are coopted to serve the state. During the prior Democrat administration of Barack Obama, unprecedented controls by the state enveloped about one-third of the U.S. economy in three sectors—health care, banking and energy. While there is evidence that the American media was harnessed by the CIA in Operation Mockingbird to influence the media to support Cold War objectives in the 1950s and 1960s, the cooption of the media and social media by the FBI and other government agencies for partisan reasons favoring Biden and disparaging Trump is a new and troubling development.

      It has always been a high priority of fascist totalitarian states to bring the major media under state control. Mussolini contended that “Fascism requires militant journalism.” Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda for Hitler’s Third Reich described the secret of propaganda and the media as a process by which “people who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without realizing that they are being immersed in it.”

      The rise of social media in America poses an additional challenge because it promotes a kind of groupthink conformity that subtly marginalizes and silences opposing views. It might even be that propaganda in a pluralistic and free nation like America is more effective in shaping thought and attitudes than in fascist totalitarian societies with state-controlled propaganda because people there are more cynical and distrustful of media messaging.

      The good news is that American voters from across the political spectrum continue to wake up and see the latent fascist tendencies of the Democrat Party. Let’s hope that will steepen and broaden that red wave coming on November 8.

__________________________

 

Scott S. Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute. His new book, Rediscovering America, has been #1 Amazon New Release in the history genre for eight weeks. Found here at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637581599. Reach him at scottp@discovery.org

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  The real threat to world peace is Xi Jinping not Vladimir Putin Scott S. Powell      Wake up everyone. If you found supply chain delays intolerable in the delivery of cars and appliances as a result of Covid, things will get much worse if Taiwan falls to the mainland CCP. The great threat to world peace is not the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, but rather it is Mainland China’s PLA Navy and Air Force—and their daily aerial penetration of Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone and armed patrols in and around islands belonging to smaller neighbors, such as Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines.        The fact is that Ukraine ranks in the top ten most corrupt countries in the world, and, in Europe, Ukraine is the second most corrupt country after Putin’s Russia. Not only is the Russian-Ukraine conflict not a fight with which we should get involved, the United States needs to focus and marshal its foreign aid and military asse...
Read more
The Greatest Risk to Americans is the Federal Government, Not Bank Failures by Scott S. Powell 3-20-2023        One of the benefits of bankruptcy and economic failure of banks, financial exchanges and businesses is that such events shine light on the direct and indirect causes of insolvency. The recent failure of two major banks—Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank—and the forced bailout and recapitalization of First Republic Bank, have caused some chatter projecting these developments is as harbingers of falling dominoes—leading to the collapse of the U.S. financial system.       Globalist Deep State players may be pushing that narrative to promote fear which can prompt banks runs for the purpose of consolidation and centralization of banking institutions, which is a necessary stage to roll out a   central bank digital currency (CBDC). But Americans should not be fooled. The balance sheets of American banks are stronger t...
Read more
  The United States is Already in World War III by Scott S. Powell        Since war is universally understood as a military engagement between two opposing nations or groups of nations in alliance with each other, few realize that the United States is already in a war—a world war. It’s not a shooting war like World War I and World War II, but the stakes are just as high and deadly. Waged by globalist elites and marketed under banners such as “the Green New Deal,” “Build Back Better,” and the “Great Reset,” this war is being waged by cabals and organizations both within and from outside our borders. In short we face irregular and unrestricted warfare against the sovereignty of the United States—the world’s oldest constitutional republic that has provided more freedom and opportunity to its citizens than any other government in the history of mankind.       Once you understand the basic facts behind this total unrestricted war, everyth...
Read more