We are witnessing something very worrying. The Democrats have long given themselves permission to make Donald Trump a target for violence by promoting their “Trump = Hitler” analogy. However, we’re now seeing people in the very heart of Congress leveling the same charges at the working stiffs carrying out duly-passed immigration laws. In other words, they are changing the permission structure for political violence.
Rep. John Larson (D-CT) is a 77-year-old white man from a working-class Connecticut background. Thanks to the wonders of social mobility in America, he went from growing up in public housing to becoming a politician who spent 15 years in the Connecticut statehouse before moving to the House of Representatives, where he’s occupied a seat for the past 26 years. He’s had some party appointments (e.g., Chair of the House Democratic Caucus), but most Americans have no idea who he is.
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Put simply, Larson is a generic Democrat politico who has espoused garden-variety Democrat causes over the years: climate change, abortion, big government, etc. What he’s never been known for, though, is being a firebrand in the way of the Squad members or the execrable Maxine Waters. But, as the saying goes, Autres temps, autres mœurs (in other times, other customs), and for Democrats, the times they definitely are a’changin’.
Since the American Civil War, accepted political discourse in America has involved advocating for and against policies, along with describing one’s opponents as ignorant or heartless. Nixon was castigated as a crook, while Reagan was an imbecile. (Although I must say that SNL once did a brilliant sketch mocking the Democrats’ certainty about Reagan’s idiocy.) George W. Bush was also an imbecile, although that was matched by his being an insane, violent madman.
Conservatives have tried to hold their own, although they’ve lacked the power that control over the media gave to Democrats. Carter was wishy-washy, Clinton was a sexual predator (a charge that stuck because the facts bore it out), and Obama was a racial demagogue. The attacks on Biden were also easy given the facts: The man was decomposing physically and mentally in real time, on camera. You didn’t have to stretch a lot for that one.
However, Trump was different. While the fringes called George W. Bush “Hitler” or a “Nazi,” the explosion of Nazi analogies and attacks on Donald Trump exceeded anything ever seen before in modern American politics.
This was not something one could dismiss as the ordinary rough-and-tumble of party animus. The Hitler charge is very different because it sets up permission to kill the politician. You don’t have the right to kill a politician because he’s stupid, weak, a racial demagogue, or a demented old man. However, all good people will kill Hitler. Indeed, not killing Hitler is a sign that you’re a bad person.
We’ve gotten inured to the incitement of the “Trump is Hitler, so you have a right to kill him” attacks, although they arguably led to two real assassination attempts on Trump in a ten-week window last year. Perhaps buoyed by those near successes, Democrats are escalating. What’s new is that the Hitlerian claims are now extending to government employees, specifically, ICE agents. If Trump is Hitler, these employees, who are simply carrying out long-standing American law, are his “Gestapo.”
These attacks have been loudly made on the streets and in the media by the usual suspects. What’s new is that Rep. Larson, that generic old white guy, just made them, too, urging his supporters to “rise up” against the new “SS and the Gestapo,” all in the form of ICE agents carrying out duly enacted American law:
Rep. John Larson (D-CT) attended an anti-immigration enforcement rally this week in Newington, Connecticut, where he called on “Americans to rise up” against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, whom he compared to Nazis.
“This is a time for good trouble. This is a time for Americans to rise up,” Larson can be heard telling a crowd at the rally.
Larson then declared ICE agents to be like Nazi Germany’s secret police, who played a significant role in the Holocaust.
“This is not Germany. That’s the SS and the Gestapo,” Larson said. “This is the United States of America. Unmask yourselves.”
No longer are the whackadoodles on the fringe calling out for obviously illegal activity. Suddenly, from within Congress itself, our legislators are creating that new permission structure: The laws we enacted are so evil that you, the public, are justified in attacking, even killing, those who carry out these laws.
The fact that Larson was speaking to an uninspiring crowd of old white hippies is irrelevant. What matters is that, in Trump’s second term, the order has gone out to the Democrat party, from the top down: It’s time for an insurrection.
By the way, Larson was not in Congress when he implicitly demanded violence against ICE, so his speech is no more protected than that of any other American citizen. I hope that the DOJ is considering that fact.