MSNBC Guests Compare GOP to Mussolini, Hitler – Opinion

On Saturday, two MSNBC guests claimed that “radicals” control mainstream conservatives, and there is an equivalence to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

Guest host Sam Stein, also the Politico White House editor, filled in on MSNBC’s “Velshi” and asked his guests, New York University Professor Ruth Ban-Ghiat and Vox Senior Correspondent Zack Beauchamp, about an article written by Beauchamp. Fox News reports that the article was about conservatives, and how the Republican Party is no longer policeing radicals within their ranks. Beauchamp began the article by mentioning “the distinction between conservatives and the radical right.” He continued:

“There’s a consistent element of the population and intellectual vanguard that believes very firmly that the idea of equality of democracy is a mistake … It is the ideology of slaveholders, the Ku Klux Clan, of the John Birch Society, George Wallace’s presidential run.”

Beauchamp noted conservatives today are different than those that “emerged after World War II.”

“But what had happened, at least as the conservative movement emerged after World War II as a coherent entity, is it attempted to align itself with these radicals on the theory that it could contain them and bring them into the political coalition, harness their incredibly, sort of, strong feelings and beliefs and turn them into votes for basically pretty normal tax cuts and anti-abortion politics, and the kind of things that really the things that animate mainstream conservatives.”

Beauchamp mentioned conservatives “culminating in Donald Trump” as he continued his statement:

“And this worked for a little bit. What happened is that over time, slowly, and ultimately culminating in Donald Trump, the radicals started to influence the mainstream conservatives, not the other way around,” he continued … It wasn’t the conservatives controlling the radicals. It was the radicals whose ideas, based on their shared hatred for liberalism and sort of the mainstream of American political society, that they gradually started to resemble each other to the point where the mainstream right was willing to fully capitulate to the radical right if it meant gaining political power.”

The GOP won the support of Hispanic voters in 2020. The GOP is working hard to secure the Hispanic majority vote by 2022.

Last week we reported that President Joe Biden is disapprovalled by the vast majority of Hispanic voters.

It seems like the public is seeing the damage that far-left policies are causing, whether it’s leftist DA’s, State Assemblies, or Congress.

When NYU Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat was asked whether she agreed with Beauchamp’s evaluation, she said:

“So, I do agree and, in fact, my book is about all these case studies all over the world of when conservatives, like, starting with Mussolini and Hitler, conservatives brought these extremists and their militias into power thinking they could control them and ally with them and then the logic of authoritarianism is increasing radicalization.”

She went on:

“And, really, we’re going to have to find a new language because conservative no longer fits a party that perpetrated a coup and would do it again tomorrow because the GOP is unrepentant and also it’s very important to know that the GOP is now co-mingling and fusing at local and state level with extremists. There one-in-five local and state GOP officials has sympathies or affiliations with radical groups.”

Ben-Ghiat concluded:

“And that’s why we also see the logic of the party eating its own as it becomes the far-right extremist party. This is the whole RINO phenomenon, where moderates must be pushed aside. This has been done before in history. Also, when there’ve been military coups. It’s happened whenever you have far-right authoritarians that get to power.”

It’s ironic hearing the left speak about authoritarians and extremism. Although the Democratic Party has some extreme members, its leftist base embraces extremism. Governors like Gavin Newsom are just a few of those who support it. Newsom, notably, has kept the COVID-19 State of Emergency still intact, locking people in their homes, setting curfews, mandating vaccines, and shutting down in-person learning while sending his children to private schools — all of which sounds like something an authoritarian would do.

When the 2020 Summer riots took place, we heard nary a peep from MSNBC about them, as host Ali Velshi stood in front of a burning building, characterizing the situation as “mostly a protest” and not “unruly.”

I’m still not over this pic.twitter.com/9pnDw8WAFw

— Jordan Chamberlain (@jordylancaster) July 23, 2020

It is not being bought by voters. Voters are fed up with rising crime, inflation, the crisis at the southern border, and the devastating withdrawal from Afghanistan, along other worries. They want to see the House and Senate turn blue into red.