OPINION:
President Joe Biden, facing historically low Presidential approval ratings and in serious danger of dragging his party down during the 2022 Congressional elections, has recently taken to describing Republicans as fascists and semi-fascists.
The name-calling should surprise no one. Mr. Biden’s Democrats and their policies have ushered in an era of generationally high inflation, the highest fuel prices in history, and by the standard economic definition, a full-blown recession. There is a distinct lack of national borders, the housing market is crashing and with it, jobs and economic prosperity. In short, Democrats cannot run on their record, so stirring up fear has become their default position.
Leading the charge is the President who less than two years ago promised to unite Americans, even those who didn’t vote for him. Rather than do that, Joe Biden has taken the label fascist and placed it firmly at the feet of Republicans. During a recent speech to high-dollar Democrat donors in Maryland, Biden was quoted as saying, “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the—I’m going to say something—it’s semi-fascism.”
While most folks realize being a fascist is a bad thing when they are asked point blank, many struggle to provide any meaningful definition. Accordingly, that may be the best place to begin this commentary. What exactly is a fascist?
Merriam-Webster, dictionary.com and the Cambridge dictionary all describe multiple elements in the definition, including a political regime, having totalitarian aspirations, government control of the marketplace, distribution of misinformation and propaganda and severe repression of criticism or opposition. Fascists often exercise violent suppression of opposition and to use threats and force to intimidate others into compliance.
How ironic then that Biden and the Democrats are accusing the GOP of being fascists. Even a casual glimpse at recent history shows example after example of the American left exhibiting textbook fascist tendencies.
Totalitarian Tendencies:
Historically, fascist movements. including the rise of both Mussolini and Hitler, often begin with usurping the authority of the legislative branch of government by taking grand executive action. Biden did exactly that in August by declaring more than $300 billion in student loans would not have to be paid back by those who took out the loans. Biden neglected to mention the bill will be paid by taxpayers. The US Constitution makes no provision for the President (the executive branch) to commit taxpayer funds without legislative action, but Biden chose to attempt the gargantuan expenditure anyway, simply on his say-so.
Democrats who don’t like decisions coming out of the Constitutionally-approved Supreme Court Justices have proposed expanding the number of Justices and appointing all the new ones themselves. Sounds totalitarian. Rather than play by the rules, fascists forcefully try to change the entire game to meet their demands.
Government Control of the Market-Place:
Biden’s first action as President was to cancel permits on the Keystone pipeline. The President also took great joy in cancelling oil leases on federal lands. These policies dropped America from energy independence and drove world oil prices through the roof. These actions have had a huge impact on the American market economy and have negatively impacted literally every American.
California Democrats recently put combustion engines on the clock, passing a law prohibiting new combustion engine vehicles from being sold in California beginning in 2035. There is no specific infrastructure plan for how to support electric vehicles and ironically just days after their announcement California asked residents not to charge their electric cars in an effort to save energy. But common sense be damned. The Democrats have decreed they will determine what is best in the marketplace.
It was the Democrat President’s administration that insisted on renewing mask mandates on airlines long after the rest of the world had stopped wearing them, and continued to push mask mandates until a federal court forced his administration to stop. The airlines didn’t want them and the public didn’t want them, but again, the Democrats were sure they knew best.
Propaganda and Misinformation:
It was the Democrat administration of Joe Biden who in 2022 created the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board. Its task was to determine what was true and accurate and disseminate that information to the American public, and to repress what they deemed to be inaccurate. The government was going to determine what you could and could not hear. Sounds downright anti-American.
Biden selected Nina Jankowicz to lead his “Ministry of Truth” as it became known. Jankowicz once tweeted, “Free speech is not and has never been guaranteed on a private platform” referring to social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook.
That might explain why Twitter banned stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election cycle and Facebook throttled down distribution of the story so that it reached nearly no one. A poll this past week showed nearly 80% of Americans believe Biden would have lost the 2020 election had people had the facts from the Biden laptop story at that time, but the opposition was actively suppressed.
Violence and Intimidation:
You likely remember the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and the Antifa protests at about the same time. All over America they burned down neighborhoods, businesses and government buildings and set fire to cars in the street. Antifa attacked Federal buildings in Portland, Oregon every single night for roughly three months. People were accosted in restaurants and not allowed to continue eating unless they uttered the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” Intimidation and threats were used to promote an agenda.
A 2020 Princeton University study showed hundreds of the so-called “protests” turned into violent, destructive riots. A report by the head of Property Claims Services, an entity the insurance industry has looked to for decades to understand the cost of protest-related insurance claims, found that 2020 protests cost more than $2 billion in damage. Similar estimates were released by the Insurance Information Institute.
Biden’s Department of Justice-led FBI has named parents worried about their local school board agendas as potential domestic terrorists. An FBI document leaked in August of 2022 cited supporters of the Second Amendment and people who fly the “Gadsden Flag” and/or the “Betsy Ross Flag” as likely domestic terrorists. Since when did supporting an existing and ratified amendment to the US Constitution and the waving the original US flag become revolutionary?
Biden’s only hope to minimize the losses for his party in the 2022 elections is to instill fear. His campaign kick-off speech focused heavily on Donald Trump and MAGA. Trump of course, isn’t on the ballot this year, but remains a not-so-subtle dog whistle for Democrats everywhere and Biden hopes his anti-Trump bluster and GOP fascist comments can bring unhappy moderates back to his side.
“MAGA Republicans have made their choice…They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies,” Mr. Biden said. Noticeably absent from Biden’s comments was the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign/Democrat Party-funded dossier on Donald Trump and the Russians, which after nearly three years and $30 million was proven to be a pack of lies.
Obama CIA Director John Brennan took to the CNN airwaves for the entire length of the Mueller investigation, implying he had inside information implicating Trump, despite having briefed then-President Obama during the summer of 2020 that the file was a political dirty trick that had originated out of the Clinton campaign. More shadows of lies from the left.
Other Biden intelligence community allies built a fire of lies during the Trump era and constantly sprayed it with kerosene. The “whistleblower” who made the claims about Trump’s call with the President of Ukraine that ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment, was an intelligence officer, left over from the Obama years. He wasn’t actually on the phone call in question, instead, he heard about it secondhand from two other intel officers, both of whom then promptly went to work for Rep. Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment effort for Democrats in the House. The entire narrative was crafted to encourage chaos and had no interest in the truth.
So who is really the fascist?
As a child in the schoolyard or playground, it was not uncommon to hear one kid call another by a derogatory name. A frequent retort was “I know you are but what am I?” This same principle may well be applied to President Biden if he continues to toss around the “fascist” label. By bringing the term to the forefront, Biden risks shedding light on the many and varied ways he and his political party have been and continue to exhibit classic fascist tendencies.
• Tim Constantine is a columnist with The Washington TImes.
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