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It is fair to say that following Joe Biden’s extraordinary speech at Independence Hall on Thursday evening, emotions were running. Speaking against a menacing black and red backdrop, Biden effectively declared war on President Donald Trump and his supporters, accusing them of threatening the “very foundations of our republic.”
Republicans naturally reacted with outcry. Daily Wire chief Ben Shapiro, often considered the conservative voice of rationality, described it as the “most demagogic, outrageous, and divisive speech I have ever seen from an American president,” adding that Biden had “essentially declared all those who oppose him and his agenda enemies of the republic.” Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused Biden of “slandering tens of millions of Americans as fascists.”
Yet many went beyond this level of pushback. Dozens of conservative activists, journalists and commentators denounced the speech as Hitlerian. Meanwhile, the hashtag #pedohitler became one of Twitter’s top trends. “Joe Biden is Hitler,” wrote Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Former presidential appointee Nick Adams went a step further, arguing: “I don’t think Hitler ever said anything about the Jews that was as straightforwardly evil as Biden said about me, a Trump supporter, last night.”
Invoking Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany is known as Reductio ad Hitlerum, Latin for “Reduction to Hitler,” one of the most common forms of association fallacy. It is a tactic used by people of all creeds and colors, although it rarely manages to change hearts and minds. An obvious example of this comes directly from the modern progressive movement, which continually slandered Donald Trump as the next coming of Hitler during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Apart from being quite blatantly false, the comparison demeans the victims of the Holocaust and the Second World War. Around six million Jews and other targeted populations were slaughtered as part of the Nazi program of ethnic cleansing. No matter how malign one may consider Biden to be, a similar scenario taking place at his direction remains unimaginable.
Nazi Germany was more than just evil. It was subversive, depraved, and pornographic. Call Joe Biden a rambling, wannabe tyrant by all means, but likening him to the man who created an industrialized death machine is a hill no respectable conservative should wish to die on.
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Ben Kew is English Editor of El American. He studied politics and modern languages at the University of Bristol where he developed a passion for the Americas and anti-communist movements. He previously worked as a national security correspondent for Breitbart News. He has also written for The Spectator, Spiked, PanAm Post, and The Independent
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Ben Kew es editor en inglés de El American. Estudió política y lenguas modernas en la Universidad de Bristol, donde desarrolló una pasión por las Américas y los movimientos anticomunistas. Anteriormente trabajó como corresponsal de seguridad nacional para Breitbart News. También ha escrito para The Spectator, Spiked, PanAm Post y The Independent.