If you can’t debate them, demonize them.
That’s the strategy the Biden team is implementing with increased force, as evidenced by a speech in Tempe, Arizona, Thursday, during which Joe Biden once more lashed out at the pro-Trump MAGA movement — deriding it as a threat to democracy.
Speaking at the Tempe Center for the Arts in an event honoring the late Senator John McCain — a Republican critic of Donald Trump — Biden asserted, per Reuters, that “[t]here is something dangerous happening in America.”
“There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA movement,” Biden added.
He went on to declare, “I believe very strongly that the defining feature of our democracy is our Constitution. I believe in free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power.”
NBC News further reported:
“All of us are being asked right now — what will we do to maintain our democracy,” Biden said. “Will we put partisanship aside, put country first? I say we must and we will.”
… Biden has avoided mentioning Trump’s legal woes directly lest he be seen as trying to influence the criminal prosecution of a political rival. But his warning cry about democracy’s fragile state is an unmistakable reference to Trump. It comes amid concerns about whether the “MAGA” supporters — those who have turned Trump’s campaign slogan into a political identity — would peacefully accept another defeat in the next election.
Biden’s talking point describing “MAGA Republicans” as dangerous and threats to democracy is not new. Last year, he called the “MAGA crowd” “the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history.”
That rhetoric has been echoed far and wide by Democrats and leftists in the media.
In just one example of this narrative, Fox News’ Juan Williams wrote at The Hill that the modern GOP is a “cult based on kowtowing to Trump’s delusion [that the election was stolen].” He went on to suggest that the country is close to a civil war.
Others are using terms such as “authoritarianism” and “insurrection” to paint Trump supporters in terrifying terms.
A Vox article titled “Call it Authoritarianism” claims Republicans’ election reform efforts are about rigging elections in their favor to create a one-party system similar to Venezuela’s.
Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) likewise has characterized election integrity legislation as a “a legislative continuation of what they did on January 6, which is to undermine our democracy, to undermine the integrity of our elections, to undermine the voting power, which is the essence of a democracy.”
An op-ed at the Courier-Journal states “Two Kentucky historians agree the GOP is steering the US straight toward authoritarianism.”
Fair Planet published “Study: US Republican Party is Embracing Authoritarianism,” in which the authors say the GOP is guilty of a “total disregard of democratic norms,” including of accepting political violence.
Over at The Bulwark, Benjamin Parker writes of “The GOP’s Telltale Signs of Authoritarianism.”
Making the case that the GOP has become a cult of Trump, Parker writes, “The Republican party is an authoritarian party, not just in its unabashed hostility to democracy and the rule of law, but also in its internal organization. It exhibits many of the classic signs of authoritarianism, with many of the attendant strengths and vulnerabilities.”
And Brian Klaas, in a The Washington Post piece titled “Republican authoritarianism is here to stay,” laments,
For the past decade, I’ve studied the rise of authoritarianism and the breakdown of democracy around the world. Traveling from Madagascar to Thailand and Belarus to Zambia, I’ve tried to understand how despotic politicians and authoritarian political parties systematically destroy democracy. And based on that research, I have some bad news: The party of Reagan and Romney is long dead. The party of Trump is here to stay.
The reasoning behind this highly coordinated rhetorical assault is clear: If Republicans have descended into authoritarianism, as leftists claim, then the answer, in their view, is to completely block them from engaging in the political system.
Ironically, by so doing, they’re proving themselves to be the true totalitarians who wish to completely remove the opposition from governance in order to clear the way for total, one-party rule.
We are already witnessing the way in which the Left is using this rhetoric to weaponize the levers of government and the criminal justice system to carry out a systematic campaign of political persecution, in part by using terms such as “sedition” to give exorbitant prison sentences to political opponents.
For instance, Joe Biggs, a Proud Boy leader convicted of seditious conspiracy for allegedly serving as an “instigator and leader” of the January 6 Capitol riot, was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison last month.
Enrique Tarrio, former Proud Boys chairman, was sentenced to 22 years for his involvement in January 6.
It is this Democrat-driven movement of political persecution and censorship of dissident voices — not MAGA Republicans — that is truly “the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history.”
