In The Origins of Totalitarianism, a massive work first published in 1951, Hannah Arendt, a refugee from Nazism, noted striking similarities between Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes. In both of those state-of-the-art tyrannies, the governing classes forged a mutually profitable alliance with society’s criminal elements. These totalitarian governments, which were concerned with ferreting out and removing opposition, took full advantage of their unsavory connections.
They enlisted inveterate criminals to spread terror, lest anyone question their ruthlessness in settling scores. The designation that the father of the late Hitler biographer Joachim Fest ascribed to the Third Reich as a “Verbrecherstaat” (criminal state) was true in two senses. Not only did the Nazis break those laws that characterize civilized societies. They also incorporated criminals into their political operation and often rewarded them. But the party leadership also eliminated some of these hellraisers when they were no longer useful, as Hitler did with the Brown Shirts in 1934.
Readers who suspect I intend to attribute these characteristics to the government that the Democratic Party and its allies are inflicting upon us have guessed correctly.
The Democrats seem to have taken their cues from earlier totalitarians in the way they have built bridges to the nation’s thug population. Not only did Democratic leaders like Kamala Harris spend last summer inciting Black Lives Matter and Antifa mobs and bailing out these practitioners of violence, Democratic appointees in the military, up to and including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, are teaching soldiers to revere BLM vandals while being put on guard against “domestic terrorists”—i.e., Republican voters. Antiwhite mobs that burn down cities and shoot police have been redefined as “antiracists” and are depicted as the natural allies of soldiers and the Secret Service.
Similarly, the lawlessness at our southern border has been abetted by the Biden Administration to enlarge the constituency of the Democratic Party. Indeed, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has removed from his advisory board anyone who still clings to the idea of legally required border control. No wonder Kamala Harris laughed when asked whether she would visit the Southern Texas border.
A “crisis” caused by the continuing invasion of illegals does not exist for Harris. Violating entry laws may be exactly what she wants if it results in turning Texas blue. Unlike the Trump voters who are treated as racists and terrorists, the illegals rushing across our Southern border can benefit the present regime.
Nor is it of any concern to the Democratic administration that drug cartels and MS-13 are entering the United States from Mexico. These criminals may also assist the present administration by keeping the Democrats’ opposition from the polls, an activity that the obliging BLM performed last November. Indeed, BLM was given a place at the table of honor when the electronic media giants and other woke capitalists and, not surprisingly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, planned the necessary steps to ensure the electoral defeat of President Trump.
In our large cities, run by the Democrats, those with illegally held firearms are routinely released without bail, even after they have committed criminal acts. Illegals with multiple criminal offenses are encouraged to stay in the country under the Biden Administration, without any danger of deportation. But law-abiding citizens who are gun-owners have earned the hostility of the Democratic Party, which holds these people, not real criminals, responsible for gun violence. If we could only remove firearms from these troublesome conservative voters while weakening and possibly defunding the police, this seems to be the message, we might be able to deal with domestic crime.
What is being aimed at here is quite practical. The Democrats plan to punish people they hate, e.g., those who cling to their Bibles and guns, while turning a blind eye to the violence perpetrated by their present or would-be voters. Democratic politicians, who do nothing to bring down crime and—as in the cases of the district attorneys in Philadelphia and Los Angeles—happily release violent criminals, are not displeasing Democratic voters. These enablers of crime are kept securely in their positions, as they make war on the working and commercial classes.
A recent incident in Washington, during which an Uber Eats driver was killed as two teenage girls occupied and crashed his car, shows how Democratic interests encourage the pampering of criminals. The mayor, Muriel Bowser, an exuberant BLM celebrant, tried to shift blame from the teenage murderers onto their hapless victim.
Bowser tweeted that the driver of the auto that the killers were stealing did not do enough to protect his property from being stolen. She thereby scolded the victim, and by implication, exonerated the murderers. This need hardly surprise us. The killers’ families may be among Bowser’s most loyal constituents, and the homicidal girls may be released in time to vote for her reelection. Who says Democrats, at least in the short run, are hurting themselves by becoming the party of criminals?