Biden’s Nuremberg Rally

On September 1, 2022, the 83^rd anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland, Joe Biden stood before an ominous red and black backdrop and declared that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” We have heard this kind of rhetoric before. And because we have heard it before, we know where it leads.

On March 23, 1933, the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, spoke before the Reichstag, arguing that an Enabling Act that gave him dictatorial powers was urgently needed in light of an imminent threat to the nation. Hitler claimed that in 1918, Marxist organizations had seized power in Germany, leading to “a time of boundless misfortune for Germany, that is to say the working German Volk [people].” But he assured the Reichstag deputies that “the German Volk itself has increasingly turned away from concepts, parties, and associations which, in its eyes, are responsible for these conditions.”

On Thursday, Joe Biden declared: “American manufacturing has come alive across the Heartland, and the future will be made in America — no matter what the white supremacists and the extremists say,” as if America-First patriots, whom Biden was busy smearing as white supremacists and extremists, were against American manufacturing. “I made a bet on you, the American people,” Biden continued, “and that bet is paying off. Proving that from darkness — the darkness of Charlottesville, of COVID, of gun violence, of insurrection — we can see the light. Light is now visible.” The thrust of the speech was that America had formidable internal enemies but was already in the process of defeating them.

In his Enabling Act speech, Hitler also made the point that the Reich had formidable enemies, but was already in the process of defeating them. He spoke of “the necessity of thoroughly rejecting the ideas, organizations, and men in which one gradually and rightly began to recognize the underlying causes of our decay.” He stated that “the program for the reconstruction of the Volk and the Reich is determined by the magnitude of the distress crippling our political, moral and economic life. Filled with the conviction that the causes of this collapse lie in internal damage to the body of our Volk, the Government of the National Revolution aims to eliminate the afflictions from our völkisch life which would, in future, continue to foil any real recovery.” Hitler accused the Communists of “pillaging, arson, raids on the railway, assassination attempts, and so on–all these things are morally sanctioned by Communist theory.”

This is not a facile “Everyone I don’t like is Hitler”-type comparison. These resonances are real and ominous. For the first time ever in over two hundred years of American history, a president has declared that his primary political opposition stands outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse. The logical next step is the one Hitler took: he blamed one of his strongest adversaries, the Communist Party, for the Reichstag Fire, and outlawed it accordingly. With the Communist deputies barred from being present, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, and Germany’s unfortunate fourteen-year experiment with a representative republic was over.

Biden drew a distinction between the “MAGA Republicans” he claimed were a threat to the nation itself and the good Republicans: “Now, I want to be very clear — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans.  Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans. But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.”

The next step will be for Biden and his henchmen to force Republicans to join up with the uniparty pseudo-Republicans who allow the Democrats to implement their full hard-Left agenda, Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and Adam Kinzinger and all the rest, and to denounce and repudiate Trump and any idea of making America great again. And what will happen to those who do not? They’ll be prevented from taking any Congressional seats to which they’re elected, and even arrested as enemies of “our democracy.” That’s what Hitler did with the Communists. Soon the only elected officials all over the country will be hard-Left Democrats and their Republican stooges.

Do you think it couldn’t possibly happen here? Well, did you ever think that a president of the United States would stand in front of a couple of Marines and a strongly Naziesque backdrop and denounce his legitimate political opposition as enemies of the state? Joe Biden could end up being remembered as one of the most consequential presidents in American history: the one who destroyed the republic.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 25 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.