October 8, 2023

The Democrats are making no effort to hide their totalitarian impulses. Certainly, Hillary Clinton isn’t. In an interview this week with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. she suggested that Trump supporters were part of a cult and needed formal deprogramming. 

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Whatever the reason, you know, make America great again was a bid for nostalgia to return to a place where people could be in charge of their lives, feel empowered, say what they want, insult whoever came in their way. And that was really attractive to a significant portion of the Republican base. So, it is like a cult.

And somebody has to break that momentum. 

Amanpour was visibly taken aback at this candor, but didn’t press her as to how and for whom this deprogramming was to occur. In the past, whenever a Republican candidate for any office made an outrageous comment — and this was supremely outrageous — every candidate of his party would be asked if he agreed with it. I’d suggest the RNC encourage its candidates to take the same tack.

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Babylon Bee, my favorite satire site, made hay of this interview, “Viewers are perplexed by a CNN interview featuring a deranged old lady who recently escaped from an elder care facility, angrily ranting about wanting to ‘deprogram’ half of the nation’s population.”

But there’s nothing new and nothing funny about the totalitarian impulse on the Left. Last January a Rasmussen survey indicated that one-third of Democrats thought children should be removed from the homes of unvaccinated parents (despite the very low rate of COVID infections and mortality in children) and a whopping 50% of them wanted to imprison the unvaccinated.

Nor do we lack evidence that the Democrats have captured the intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies and used them to harass, muzzle, imprison and “unperson” those who dare to disagree with them.

Indeed, the same week Hillary advocated deprogramming, Newsweek (which just a few years ago claimed we are all socialists now) reported that the FBI seeks to track and counter Trump supporters.

The FBI and DHS report concludes: “Sociopolitical developments — such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence — will almost certainly spur some domestic terrorists to try to engage in violence.”

The threats listed in that paragraph are all clearly associated with America’s right and in particular with Trump’s MAGA supporters. Right after January 6, the FBI co-authored a restricted report (“Domestic Violent Extremists Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach, Elevated Domestic Terrorism Threat of Violence Likely Amid Political Transitions and Beyond”) in which it shifted the definition of AGAAVE (“anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism”) from “furtherance of ideological agendas” to “furtherance of political and/or social agendas.” For the first time, such groups could be so labeled because of their politics.