Retired General and Clinton administration appointee Barry McCaffery compared conservative Americans supporting President Donald Trump to pre-war 1930’s NAZIs. Photo courtesy US Department of Defense.

During a September 27 interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, former Clinton Drug Tzar General (retired, USA) Barry McCaffery ramped up the rhetoric against so-called “MAGA Republicans”. McCaffrey actually claimed “what we are seeing is a parallel to the 1930s in Nazi Germany… This is worth being extremely concerned about”.

The General also called Trump MAGA loyalists “a lawless cult and it’s a major threat to the armed forces of the United States and our security.” This stigmatizing of American citizens by a retired General officer would normally be met by immediate criticism by a media doing its job. Predictably, media coverage offered only applause for McCaffery.

Ironically, McCaffery can make a comparison between now in the US and 1930s Germany if that comparison was about the shameful rhetoric stigmatizing a group of Americans. This progressive hyperbole needs to stop before it follows further what happened in 1930s Germany with that group of stigmatized citizens.

First, Barry McCaffrey’s comments were not an aberration on the left. In the runup to the 2022 mid-term elections, Joe Biden stood in front of US Marine Guards in front of iconic Liberty Hall and called MAGA Republicans a “semi-fascist” threat to Democracy.

Around the same time as McCaffrey’s interview, Biden called MAGA Republicans a dangerous threat to the nation. He said “There is something dangerous happening in America. There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA movement”.

We’ve all seen the mainstream media interviews, with progressive pundits who call MAGA Republicans threats. We’ve all seen the Left’s dehumanizing descriptions of “MAGA” (or just Republicans). We’ve moved way beyond the “deplorables” comment of Hillary Clinton, which was criticized by media of the time.

MSNBC Commentator Malcolm Nance claimed that MAGA is an “insurgency”, and Americans “may have to fight them before it kills (them)”. Nance also claimed “Here in the United States—to characterize that to understand just what kind of terrorism we might be dealing with… we have 30% of the population of the United States who no longer believe in the democratic norms that we established in the founding of the country.” Nance claimed the threat included 74 million Americans, the number who voted for Trump.

Question the media leaves open: What does the Left consider the existential “MAGA” threat? The 74 million who voted Republican in the last election? The majority in the Republican party who support Trump against Biden in the 2024 election (with Trump defeating Biden in hypothetical matchups)?

The comparison with the Nazi rhetoric against groups of German citizens, like the German Jews, is quite similar (though it is too bad the Left felt the need to devolve to Nazi comparisons). According to the Holocaust Museum website “A key part of Nazi ideology was to define the enemy and those who posed a threat… promoting the myth of the ‘national community’ and identifying those who should be excluded.”

Propaganda served to “define the enemy as a cohesive group”. It took years of stigmatizing certain groups of German citizens to bring the death camps. Though we are a far point from even the discriminatory “Nuremberg Race Laws” of 1935, we see the attempts to define “MAGA” citizens as a threat.

As the left is aware, MAGA is not a party, and not even a caucus in Congress. MAGA stands for “Make America Great Again” which Bill Clinton claimed he wanted for the nation in 1991. Of course, with those like Malcolm Nance, the easiest way to identify this “hated” group is to identify the 74 million who voted Republican in 2020. Friends, family, co-workers, service members, veterans become the enemy under this Nazi-like rhetoric.

In further comparison for the real danger, Nazi Propaganda Chief Joseph Goebbels claimed “if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth”, and continually spouted lies about groups he hated. Goebbels also claimed “Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets of hatred”.

America under Biden has been a mess, similar to the level of the massive problems of Germany under the Weimar Republic of the 1920s and early 30s. America has experienced border mayhem, inflation, crime, a botched Afghanistan withdrawal, etc. Biden’s designation of a group of American citizens as targets of hatred diverts the frustrations from this administration.

Retired General McCaffrey’s comments were shameful, particularly as many of those he led while in the military voted Republican in the 2020 election. That includes me, as I was an Infantry lieutenant in a division McCaffrey commanded in the early 90s.

The 74 million Americans who voted Republican are loyal citizens who love our nation and the Constitution. Many of us swore the oath and fought in combat to defend the Constitution. It is beyond un-American to stigmatize a loyal group of Americans as an “insurgency” of “semi-fascists”, and even a “threat to the armed forces”.

History teaches the dangers of these accusations. “We The People” in our nation “under God” must respect one another if the nation is to survive.

Bill Connor is an Orangeburg, S.C. attorney, Army Infantry Colonel and author of the book “Articles from War.” The Standard newspaper is available in print and online. You may find videos available on at TheStandardSC on Rumble. The bulk of TheStandardSC video media channel has been censored by dominant social media groups like YouTube. YouTube, owed by Alphabet (Google), removed and destroyed almost all of our video work without permission or remuneration. That has stopped all potential donations from our many supporters on that venue. If you want to continue to see independent thought and reports please “like”, comment, share with a friend, and donate to support The Standard on this page to assure the continued availability of news that is ignored too often by the dominant media.

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