{"id":16912,"date":"2017-06-11T21:49:53","date_gmt":"2017-06-11T21:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/?p=16912"},"modified":"2017-12-21T21:00:14","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T21:00:14","slug":"demonization-leads-to-extermination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/?p=16912","title":{"rendered":"Demonization Leads To Extermination"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Understanding Trump Derangement Syndrome<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently, a long-time liberal reader of WND emailed me the following message \u2013 under the subject line, \u201cThe Real Republican Agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHello Mr. Kupelian! I just found this on Facebook, and it\u2019s a perfect description of Donald Trump, his administration and the Republican Party. It shows why so many Americans are appalled and horrified by Donald Trump and his minions:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t round up the ill, the disabled, the undesirables and kill them in gas chambers. But you can take away their medicine and let them die.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t lynch a black man under a burning cross. But you can shoot him with a policeman\u2019s gun.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t force a woman to wear a burqa and beat her if she steps outside. But you can rape her, fail to prosecute the rapist and deny her health care for the pre-existing<\/i> rape, deny her an abortion for the resulting pregnancy, deny her maternity care, deny her maternity leave and pay, and block her avenues to rebuild her life.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t round up the foreign-born, confiscate their property, and imprison them in detainment camps in the American west (again). But you can block them at the border and deny them re-entry, deny them reunion with their families, homes and lives, even though they have legal immigration status.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t put the poor in labor camps. But you can tax them so heavily, and make the cost of education so burdensome, that they and further generations can never ever escape.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t go back to \u2018separate but equal\u2019 schools. But you can appoint Betsy DeVos and let her do this through funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t own a plantation that profits off the backs of little children. But you can look at the budget and say, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s no money for food stamps for hungry children, but there are bottomless tax cuts for the wealthiest white men.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t appoint a Klansman. But you can appoint Jeff Sessions.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t appoint a Nazi. But you can get right up in the presidential administration as \u2018Alt-Right.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Republican Party is Evil, re-branded to succeed in our legal environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t be Hitler. But you can be Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sender, who has debated with me via email for years, signed off by saying, \u201cDon\u2019t like this? Well too bad. It\u2019s absolutely true!\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, what\u2019s \u201cabsolutely true\u201d would be one of two opposing propositions: Either Donald Trump is a modern Hitler and his supporters the equivalent of Nazis, slave-owners and Klansmen as depicted in this colorful but basically accurate characterization of the left\u2019s view of Trump\u2019s presidency \u2013 or else the people claiming this are not just staggeringly delusional, but reckless as well.<\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s agree on what is indisputably true: The left frequently compares Trump to Hitler,<\/i> and I\u2019m not talking about just Facebook rants and anti-Trump protest signs. The Washington Post, as I documented last October in a pre-election article titled \u201c5 Washington Post writers liken Trump to Hitler,\u201d<\/span><\/a> spent 2016 explicitly and continually comparing Donald J. Trump to one of history\u2019s most evil and universally reviled genocidal monsters.<\/p>\n

Specifically, five different Post writers, one after the other, cited Trump\u2019s \u201cHitlerian thinking,\u201d claimed his rise was \u201cuncannily reminiscent\u201d of Hitler\u2019s, evoked \u201cNazi sympathizers,\u201d called Trump a Hitler-like \u201cmegalomaniacal demagogue,\u201d and, of course, pegged him as a dangerous \u201csociopathic liar\u201d in the tradition of Hitler.<\/p>\n

In reality \u2013 and I wish I didn\u2019t have to keep pointing this out \u2013 Hitler murdered 11 million innocent people, while Trump, a billionaire New York real estate developer who wrote one of the best-selling business books of all time and got himself elected president, has never killed anyone.<\/p>\n

By why quibble over details? Those on the left \u2013 including the Democratic Party, its propaganda wing (the \u201cmainstream media\u201d) and many in the permanent federal bureaucracy (the \u201cdeep state\u201d) \u2013 feel so threatened by Trump\u2019s presidency they are engaged in an ongoing do-or-die campaign to destroy him in multiple ways, including by spending almost a year falsely accusing him of being a traitor who colluded with Russia to rig the election.<\/p>\n

To accomplish all this, they must seriously demonize him.<\/p>\n

But constantly likening Trump to Hitler (and his supporters, administration, policies and political party to Nazis, Klansmen and slave-holders) is not merely totally insane. It\u2019s also extremely dangerous to American society. Not only does it further polarize and divide a once-unified nation, but worse, it gives implicit permission to members of \u201cthe resistance\u201d to commit whatever lawless and\/or violent acts might occur to their enraged minds in hopes of overturning, at all costs, what they see as America\u2019s new Nazi regime.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s examine more closely what is at the very heart of this ongoing attempt to overturn the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

Trump accused of \u2018Ethnic Cleansing\u2019<\/b><\/h4>\n

It\u2019s no coincidence the word \u201cmad\u201d is used to mean both angry and insane, for being angry enough can make you insane. As I write in \u201cHow Evil<\/span> Works\u201d<\/span>:<\/a> <\/span>\u201cIntense hatred has a way of morphing inexorably into full-blown, epic madness. Indeed, hate is like spiritual plutonium, possessing bizarre, explosive, and transformative qualities of which we are largely unaware. It is the means by which evil itself blooms on this earth, especially when rage is focused and magnified by a malignant worldview.\u201d<\/p>\n

The worst, most depraved acts of evil you can think of \u2013 war, mass-terrorism, genocide \u2013 are preceded by the total demonization of the adversary, just as we\u2019re seeing in the left\u2019s hysterically evil characterizations of President Trump.<\/p>\n

In a Jerusalem Post op-ed headlined \u201cThe Genocide Mechanism,\u201d<\/span><\/a> Israeli counterterrorism expert Itamar Marcus showed how effective demonization can lead to unthinkable, society-ravaging extremes of violence. All that is required to erase the last vestige of conscience and restraint from an angry segment of the population already prone to violence is to engage in \u201ca very specific kind of demonization.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an example he cites Rwanda, which in 1994 saw its majority Hutu population massacre some 800,000 minority Tutsis \u2013 basically neighbors slaughtering neighbors, mostly with machetes \u2013 in the space of three months. That\u2019s close to 9,000 men, women and children slaughtered every single day<\/i> between April and July of that year. How could such an otherworldly and hellish genocide occur?<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Rwanda,\u201d explained Marcus, \u201cthe Hutus taught that the Tutsis were cockroaches and snakes. Tutsi women were portrayed as cunning seductresses who used beauty and sexual power to conquer the Hutus.\u201d Moreover, he added, \u201cRadio Rwanda repeatedly broadcast a warning that Hutus were about to be attacked by Tutsis, to convince the Hutus that they needed to attack first to protect themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

So \u201cthis demonization,\u201d he said, \u201cincluded two specific components:<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, the victims had to be perceived as a clear and present threat, so that the killers were convinced they were acting in self-defense. Second, the victims were dehumanized, so that the killers convinced themselves that they were not destroying real human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

With this in mind, consider all the feverishly evil characterizations we encounter daily regarding America\u2019s 45th president, including recently a Philadelphia bishop for the United Church of Christ who, at a public rally, declared that Trump\u2019s new budget proposal was designed for \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span> \u2013 something very close to genocide.<\/p>\n

And what about the anti-Trump diatribe at the top of this article? You\u2019ll notice it both dehumanizes the president and his party, and also portrays them as posing an imminent threat to millions of innocents.<\/p>\n

Then ask yourself: If this description were actually true \u2013 if Trump were<\/i> today\u2019s Hitler and his policies the modern equivalent to \u201cgas chambers,\u201d \u201cburning crosses,\u201d \u201cdetainment camps,\u201d \u201clabor camps,\u201d \u201cplantations that profit off the backs of little children\u201d and Ku Klux Klan \u201clynchings\u201d \u2013 what kind of desperate revolutionary violence wouldn\u2019t<\/i> be morally permissible, even morally imperative<\/i>, to stop it?<\/p>\n

As I reminded readers in last October\u2019s article<\/span><\/a> on the Washington Post:<\/p>\n

There were at least 16 different plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler, including most famously \u201cOperation Valkyrie\u201d (the so-called \u201c20 July Plot\u201d), which was made into a blockbuster movie starring Tom Cruise as the heroic German army officer, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg. Even the revered Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was executed by German authorities for his role in this particular plot. The people who attempted to assassinate Hitler \u2013 to slay a psychopathic monster, to stop a genocide, to end a terrible war \u2013 are rightly regarded as patriots and heroes.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, what does this say about the Washington Post \u2013 and others in the \u201cmainstream media\u201d who consider themselves America\u2019s arbiters of truth \u2013 continually comparing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with Hitler? Does such \u201cjournalism\u201d legitimize threats and violent attacks on Trump and his supporters?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I arrived at this chilling conclusion: \u201cIf someone, God forbid \u2013 convinced he is a modern-day von Stauffenberg, heroically attempting to rid the world of this generation\u2019s Hitler \u2013 were to shoot Donald Trump, would the Washington Post deserve any of the blame? I say yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

At War with Reality<\/b><\/h4>\n

Beyond the left\u2019s post-election meltdown and its ongoing campaign to overturn voters\u2019 decision by demonizing Trump in hopes of crippling, impeaching and prosecuting him, there is yet a second reason the left hates the right \u2013 a reason even more vexing and profound.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s often correctly observed that although the right regards the left as misguided, na\u00efve and wrong, the left sees the right as not only wrong, but malicious<\/i> and evil.<\/i> Why would that be?<\/p>\n

To unfold this mystery, ask yourself why the left is so perpetually enraged when \u2013 to pick a few examples at random \u2013 ordinary Americans:<\/p>\n