In August of last year, I wrote an article titled The Revolution Isn’t Coming, It’s Here. Unfortunately, I now have to write that the Revolution of 2020 succeeded.
I wrote that the first thing the left would attack will be free speech. “Revolution cannot take place where there is true diversity of thought. A revolution cannot exist in the same space as liberty.”
This is exactly what we are seeing across America today.
Totalitarianism requires power. Unless you have the strength of the military behind you, seizing power requires an underlying pretext or a moral justification. Totalitarians of old like Lenin, Mao, and Adolph Hitler, couldn’t just declare an end to free speech and free press. Even they, at least in the beginning, had to find an impetus.
For Adolph Hitler, the impetus was the Reichstag Fire of 1933. The Reichstag was home to the German parliament. Hitler hatched a plan to burn down the Reichstag and blame the Communists. This was the pretext for vilifying his chief political opposition and exercising greater control over Germany.
Although it is not entirely clear who started the fire, a fire indeed was started. Then the German press immediately reported that “the government is of the opinion that the situation is such that a danger to the state and nation existed and still exists.” The very next day, the Reichstag Fire Decree was signed into law. And thus wide swaths of civil liberties were swept away in Germany.
The rest, they say, is history.
Striking Parallels
You don’t have to be a student of history to recognize the striking parallels of today.
Following the riot on Capitol Hill, Twitter banned the President of the United States from its site…for life. Facebook followed suit. And all on the basis that Trump incited a violent insurrection.
I’ve listened to the president’s entire speech. And I’m left with the conviction that only those with a predisposed negative view of Donald Trump could interpret his words as incendiary.
Consider the worst line: “fight like hell”. That is more bombastic than incendiary.
Re-interpreting “fight like hell” to mean “riot at the Capitol” fits the caricature that Trump’s critics have painted of him rather than the true character of Trump and his supporters. Consider all of the other peaceful Trump rallies, protests, and demonstrations over the past four years. Violence is well outside of the norm for such gatherings.
There is also mounting evidence (here and here) that ANTIFA took part in the Capitol riots. And that most certainly does fit their profile.
But the caricature of Trump is that he is dictatorial, narcissistic, and even unhinged while his supporters are deplorable, fearful, loyal, conspiratorial, and perhaps a little mindless. Just the sort of people who would channel Trump’s inner Hitler and actually storm the Capitol.
Inconsistencies in the Narrative
But even if Trump supporters are mindless acolytes, they were highly selective about which orders to take literally. The mob that stormed the Capitol failed to heed Trump’s message in the same speech to resist “peacefully and patriotically”. And the fact that critics are ignoring that quote in favor of the more narrative-friendly “fight like hell” line leads me to believe that a negative predisposition towards Trump played a large role in re-inventing Trump’s words as an incitement to violence.
Herein lies the crux of the matter. If at best you view Trump supporters as fringe and conspiracy-driven who believe everything their leader tells them or at worst you see them as violent hate-filled white supremacists, then you are prime fodder for another iteration of the great Reichstag lie.
The new Reichstag lie is that it’s Trump and his supporters that are a threat to democracy. Meanwhile Democrats plan to eliminate the Electoral College and legalize millions of illegal immigrants for votes. The lie claims that Trump and his supporters are the violent insurrectionists. Meanwhile the same Democrat leaders applauded the violent burning and rioting of groups like ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter during the summer of 2020. Remember when dissent was “patriotic”?
And in the week following the Capitol Hill riots, the new Reichstag lie was on the lips of every mainstream news organization, newspaper, and Democrat politician.
Pearl Harbor?
Left-wing politicians and celebrities who still cannot bring themselves to say “Islamic terrorism” are now sparing no hyperbole condemning Conservatives for threatening our very democracy.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) compared the events to Pearl Harbor and said “Now Jan. 6 will go down as one of the darkest days in recent American history: A final warning to our nation about the consequences of a demagogic president, the people who enabled him, the captive media that parrots his lies and the people who followed him as he attempts to push America to the brink of ruin.”
House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) was nearly in tears as she called it an “assault on our Democracy” before issuing ominous warnings about prosecution for those GOP lawmakers who “aided and abetted”.
Political commentator, Jennifer Rubin, said on MSNBC “We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican party. We have to level them. Because if there are survivors, if there are people who weather this storm they will do it again. What we should be doing is shunning these people. Shaming these people is a statement of moral indignation that these people are not fit for polite society.”
Subsequently, a crackdown has taken place of epic proportions.
Criminalized Dissent
The Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, Bennie Thompson (D), called for Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – both of whom questioned the veracity of the 2020 presidential election – to be placed on the “no fly” list. A group of nearly 6,000 lawyers called for their disbarring.
121 faculty members of Chapman University have demanded the resignation of John Eastman, a Professor of Constitutional Law. And this because he is a member of the Trump legal team challenging the elections. Faculty and students from Ivy League universities banded together to call for an outright ban on anyone wanting to speak at their universities who repeated the “lie” of election fraud.
Parler had become a Conservative alternative to Twitter. It has now been de-platformed by Google, Amazon, and Apple making it nearly impossible for such a thing to exist. CNN – even after Anderson Cooper hosted radical left-wing “Insurgence USA” on his show this summer (the same man captured at the Capitol riots posing as a MAGA supporter) – called for television and cable providers to drop OAN and Newsmax for promoting “extremism”. Even in sports, the Professional Golf Association (PGA) canceled plans to play the 2022 championship tournament at Trump National Golf Club. The list goes on and on.
The New Reichstag Lie
This is pure and unadulterated suppression of political opposition. Hitler would be proud.
In this ironic morality play, the Democrats cast Donald Trump as the revolutionary fascist and his supporters as the mindless acolytes. Meanwhile, they themselves play the vigilant heroes of justice, democracy, and moral decency. But those Conservative Christians who see through the new Reichstag lie are witnessing a different tale. We’re watching The Emperor’s New Clothes played out in real-time.
But there is hope in this.
God still sits on His throne (Isaiah 6) and this troubling time will serve to remind us that our hope lies in God, not in man. And let us not forget that the Winston Churchills, the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, and the Anne Franks of the world were forged during such a time as this.
Stay strong, my fellow Conservative Christians. We are in for a bumpy ride.
