{UAH} DEMOCRATS LIKE BIDEN HAVE BEEN FALSELY CALLING REPUBLICANS FASCISTS FOR ALMOST 60 YEARS

Democrats like Biden have been falsely calling Republicans fascists for almost 60 years

ByChristopher Tremoglie

 

Last week, Robert Reich, former secretary of labor during the Clinton administration, tweeted, “Just wondering if ‘DeSantis’ is now officially a synonym for ‘fascist.'” Later in the week, President Joe Biden, once touted as the great unifier, referred to former President Donald Trump and his supporters as “semi-fascist.” These words are just the latest in a long line of Democrats falsely accusing Republicans of being fascists, a disgusting practice that began in 1964.

Aside from being old, foolish, and completely untrue, this trope is nothing new. Furthermore, this has nothing to do with President Trump or “MAGA.” For nearly 60 years, Democratic politicians, pundits, and activists have compared Republican political leaders to fascists, Nazis, and even Adolf Hitler. It’s nothing more than the latest production of Democratic political theater.

Consider the history of Democrats. After their history of promoting slavery and segregation, Democrats began to describe Republicans as “fascists” in 1964. While campaigning for president, Barry Goldwater was targeted by Pat Brown, then California’s left-wing governor. Of Goldwater’s candidacy, Brown said, “The stench of fascism is in the air.”

A few years after that, the target was Richard Nixon. Nixon’s reputation is forever tarnished in history because of the Watergate scandal. Yet, until then, he was viewed as a political force. In December 1973, theCall published an article titled “Dump Nixon! Stop the fascist tide.” One does not have to go into great detail about its contents to describe the editorial. Then, after Nixon won the presidency in 1968, late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) said Nixon “was a fascist pig.”

Gerald Ford followed Nixon as president and as a Republican who was called a fascist. In 1974, a member of the ACLU criticized Ford for his lack of punitive action against Richard Nixon.

“If [President] Ford’s principle had been the rule in Nuremberg,” he said, “the Nazi leaders would have been let off and only the people, who carried out their schemes would have been tried,” the ACLU said at the time.

Additionally, in the Gerald Ford Library museum, a document describes an interaction with a woman in 1975 in which Ford was harassed and repeatedly called a “fascist” and a “fascist pig.”

On the other hand, former President Ronald Reagan was treated quite differently from Ford — and quite differently from any other president. Listening to some of the comments by Democrats about Reagan, one would have thought he was the Antichrist and another dreadful fascist. But just like the hyperbolic outrage over Goldwater and Nixon, Democrats were once again wrong about Reagan and any rise or link to fascism.

Consider some of the comments Democrats made about Reagan. In 2016, Larry Elder, called the “blackface of white supremacy” during his 2021 California gubernatorial campaign by some on the Left, wrote how former Rep. Willie Clay (D-MO) once said Reagan was “trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf.”

Then, there was Los Angeles Times cartoonist Paul Conrad. He featured artwork of Reagan devising a fascist putsch in a darkened Munich beer hall. Esquire magazine featured an article by Harry Stein, who claimed that people who supported Reagan were like the “good Germans” in “Hitler’s Germany.”

George W. Bush had numerous people call him a fascist or Nazi or compare him to Hitler. This started when he announced his candidacy for president and after winning a close election against Al Gore. After the invasion of Iraq, Bush might have had it worse than Reagan, comparatively speaking. Yet, still, there was never any rise of fascism. Maybe those who are really problematic are not Republican leaders but the ones using offensive, unsubstantiated hyperbole.

From Goldwater to Trump to DeSantis, each “fascist” was supposedly going to be worse than the “fascist” before. Yet each time these frivolous claims never came to fruition, Democrats would call the next Republican politician a fascist, with the caveat that they “really meant it this time.” Yet, despite all these warnings and doomsday predictions about fascism, here we are, in 2022, still waiting for the advent of the Fourth Reich.

No one should take it seriously any time a Democrat calls a Republican a fascist, Joe Biden included. Such accusations are insulting and offensive. The only people who believe such outlandish nonsense are unhinged fanatics. There’s no legitimacy to these claims and certainly no realistic fascist threat — and anyone who says otherwise is not a serious person.