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Joe Biden Is the Real Semi-Fascist

This week, President Joe Biden — in search of a new label to pin on his political opponents after the failure of his “ultra-MAGA” branding, which prompted peals of laughter rather than shudders of horror — landed on a new slur with which to tar those who don’t support his agenda: they are, he said, semi-fascists. Speaking with a crowd of Democratic donors in Maryland, Biden reportedly said, “What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s semi-fascism.”

Now, Democratic politicians painting half of Americans as beneath contempt is old hat. Former President Barack Obama, of course, said that Americans who didn’t support him in 2008 were merely bitter bigots, clinging to “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.” Hillary Clinton was more pithy: she called them a “basket of deplorables.” So, “semi-fascist” shouldn’t come as much of a shock.

But that smear is particularly galling coming from Biden the same week in which he announced, without any constitutional authority whatsoever, that he was erasing some $500 billion in student loan debts — the single largest executive action in American history. Biden justified that action on the basis of a nonexistent COVID-19 emergency. He has justified similar usurpations on similar grounds: He illegally tasked his Occupational Safety and Health Administration with forcing vaccines on some 80 million people on the basis of a “public health emergency”; he used his Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to try to propagate an eviction moratorium on the same basis; he bragged in July that he will reshape the American economy on his own if Congress doesn’t act in order to forestall a supposed “climate change emergency.”

If we’re talking about semi-fascism, this stuff qualifies.

The history of fascism, after all, does not begin with a dictator simply marching into a nation’s capital and seizing total power. It more frequently begins with the destruction of the legislative branch at the hands of centralization of executive power. Adolf Hitler didn’t just declare himself dictator; dictatorial power preceded him in the chancellor’s office by several years, dating back to Heinrich Bruning invoking emergency powers under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution in 1930. Benito Mussolini came to power under constitutional means in 1922 and didn’t consolidate his rule until 1925. Fascism, in other words, is a gradual process. And that process starts with executive branch actors accreting authority they were never given.

Because our political discourse has devolved into middle-school histrionics — “Everyone I don’t like is Hitler!” — we fail to notice the gradual slide into tyranny, ignoring it on behalf of spectacular headlines and reactionary rhetoric. Standing up to that process isn’t semi-fascism; it’s the opposite.

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Ben Shapiro

Ben Shapiro, 37, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers "How To Destroy America In Three Easy Steps," "The Right Side Of History," and "Bullies."

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2 Comments

  1. You restore my faith in the generation behind mine, Ben. Thank you for your wit and intelligence! Both are needed in these Twilight Zone times.

  2. Here’s a couple of real example of fascism, in case you hadn’t noticed. The Democrats just destroyed the historical precedents of Executive Privilege and protected Attorney client privilege. Not to mention the ridiculous claim that Trump illegally had top secret documents when the President is, and has always been, legally the only person who can de-classify government documents. Remember that the DOJ reviewed the documents Trump had at Mar-a-Lago in June and simply requested he “add another lock” to the room where they were secured. Remember also, that they didn’t allow Trump’s attorneys to be present during their illegal raid so anything they find is automatically inadmissible, because it could have been planted. Just like the FBI planted evidence in the discredited Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping trial.

    We’ve also seen again and again that the “rule of law” doesn’t apply to Democrats. Laws don’t apply to the drug addicted Hunter Biden, who we get to watch on video smoking crack and cavorting with Prostitutes while waving an illegal firearm. Just like it’s OK for him to fly around the world on Air Force 2, making illegal “pay for play” deals that his Dad says he knows nothing about, even though he’s met with all of Hunter’s business partners and gets his 10% right off the top. Just like it’s OK to fly Pelosi’s son (on our dime) on Air Force 2 to Singapore and Taiwan so he can make investments in computer chip companies while his Mom pretends to be standing up for Taiwan.

    Just like the laws don’t apply to Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Peter Strozk, Christopher Steele, Michael Sussman, and all the mainstream and social media who colluded and conspired for four years, two impeachments and one “Special Prosecutor” investigation to oust a duly elected President. Just like the different application of laws that have sentenced jail time for over 200 protesters for walking around the Capitol on Jan. 6, but never arrested the thousands of BLM and ANTIFA real rioters who burned down dozens of cities in the summer of 2020. Riots in which two dozen were killed and thousands of police officers were injured. Now, because of the Democrat and BLM supported “defund the police” and “no bail” policies, more Americans have been killed in our cities in the last year than civilian Ukrainians have been killed in the Russian invasion. Not to mention the hundred thousand citizens killed every year by the Chinese made fentanyl flowing across our wide open border that also allows in millions of unvaccinated illegals along with cartels, criminals, terrorists (54 caught so far) that we have no idea how many have come in that haven’t been caught.

    Biden calls half the country fascists but clearly nothing could be more fascists than his weaponization of all the three letter agencies (the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, the IRS, and even the DOD) agains the political opposition as well as all of his illegal executive orders. Unless there is a Republican Tsunami, and not just a “red wave” in November we are so far down the Socialist/Communist “rabbit hole” that our once great Republic will be gone forever.

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