Who? Me? No! You!

  

President Trump took to FOXNEWS to decry left wing radicals who equate right wingers with Nazis.

Elon Musk, MAGA man, Trump Was Right About Everything

He points to the killing of Charlie Kirk as an expression of radical left wing dogma driving violent attacks on upstanding right wing advocates, as if lefties are just so violent and right wingers are just innocently speaking their minds and being violently attacked for expressing their opinions. And these violent attacks, Trump says are simply integral, part and parcel, inexorably connected to left wing ideology and their playbook.

(Of course, the left says exactly that about Trump and his MAGA adherents.) 

Charlottesville Unite The Right Marchers

He took special umbrage at the left characterizing the right as "Nazis." After Charlottesville, where United the Right (UTR)  demonstrators staged a torch light parade mimicking the Nazi torch light parades of the 1930's which was their signature stagecraft, and UTR men wore swastikas and other Nazi emblems and runes, Trump said there were very fine people on both sides.

Terrence O'Rourke

As Terrence O'Rourke, a New Hampshire Congressional candidate said at the time: "We are in a very divided state of mind nowadays, but as divided as we are, I would have thought that we could all agree on one thing: There is no such thing as a very fine Nazi."

Very Fine Nazis

Trump retreated, and said he didn't mean the Nazis were very fine, just the rest of the non Nazi UTR. (One advantage of Trump's imprecision of speech is you never can be quite sure what he means, or who he's talking about exactly, so he can always say you didn't understand what he was really saying.)

But looking at the UTR parade, it is difficult to tell who among the United The Right were not Nazis.

During his interview, Trump railed against the leftists whose rhetoric he said was direct incitement to the murder of Charlie Kirk and Trump added: "We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them."

Later, when reminded that this statement itself constitutes a incitement to violence, he said, well, he was talking about beating the hell out of them at the polls. (You didn't understand me. Of course we understood him, but he could not stick with what he actually meant.)

But this sort of endorsement of beatings and violence is longstanding and consistent with Trump: In November, 2015 when a Black Lives Matter activist was beaten in front of his stage at one of his rallies, he remarked, "what he was doing was so bad, maybe he should have been roughed up." Roughed as in beaten to a bloody pulp while Trump watched on approvingly, from the stage.

For those of us who've read a little history, we know that the street thugs of the Nazis was a very big part of their tactic to gain power. They simply walked along the street and beat up people who expressed any sort of opposition. When Goering was appointed to head the Reichstag (parliament), he encouraged his Nazi delegates to beat up opposing legislators and called his opponents "pigs" and "filthy Jews." In the halls of parliament. Beating people up, of course, makes democracy nigh on impossible--it's hard to debate contentious issues if you know it's going to end up in a brawl every time. There's only so much ultimate fight club a legislature can bear.

When mobs broke through windows and doors during the January 6, Capitol insurrection, and beat police officers unconscious Trump called those men "unbelievable patriots," and after they were convicted and sentenced in courts of law, he pardoned them. So he likes the ruffians, the real men, the manly man, and that is part of what he sells. It's what makes women feel safer with him in power. He's tough enough to protect them against all those imaginary illegal immigrant rapists. 

The cruelty is the point, as many have observed.

We sometimes forget how violent January 6th actually was, but look at this video, enlarge it and you will be reminded what these patriots, these ordinary tourists really were like.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/capitol-mob-violence-police.html

So, when Trump complains about the radical left being inflammatory,  is this not the kettle calling the pot black?

Is this not simply another instance of Trump following the advice of Joseph Goebbels n to simply, "accuse the other side of whatever they say you are doing wrong."

But if it quacks like a Nazi duck, and if it walks like a Nazi duck, then it likely is a Sieg Heil Nazi duck.