Overwrought Nazi Analogies for Me, but Not for Thee?

Earlier this week, Lucasfilm severed ties with "The Mandalorian" actress Gina Carano after a hyperbolic social media post in which she compared current political imperiousness and cancel culture in the United States — and the treatment of "wrong-thinking" Americans who hold views at odds with those of ruling class elites — to the 1930s-era treatment of German Jewry by the then-ascendant Nazi regime.

"Most people today don't realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews," Carano wrote in her now-deleted post.

Let's first stipulate that Carano's post (which, it must be reiterated, is now deleted) was over-the-top. As bad as cancel culture is in the United States in the year 2021 — and it is very, very bad, and will only get worse — it is both rhetorically inflammatory and dishonorable to the memories of exterminated European Jews to compare the present plight of us American conservatives with the nightmarish regime of Kristallnacht (to say nothing, of course, of the Shoah itself).

The mere fact that blue-checked conservatives on Twitter often openly joke about being forcibly deported to "the camps" reveals how unlikely such a scenario, in reality, actually is.

But Carano deleted the post. And more broadly: Let those among us who have not ever made a gratuitous and regrettable social media post cast the first stone.

Carano's tale, in isolation, would be bemusing but hardly newsworthy. What makes this story affirmatively galling is how it yet again evinces an ever-widening chasm between ruling class elites and the dissident "deplorables" over whom they deign to rule.

As radio host and blogger Erick Erickson pointed out Thursday morning, "The Mandalorian" star Pedro Pascal has a still-active tweet from 2018, captioned with "#ThisIsAmerica" and juxtaposing photos of concentration camp-bound Jews in prisoner clothing with what appear to be illegal alien children detained behind bars at the U.S. southern border (a practice largely begun by then-President Barack Obama, actually). Naturally, Carano was fired for her deleted post, but Pascal will keep his perch.

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More generally, the American left has spent large swaths of the past four years hysterically comparing then-President Donald Trump, whose daughter is an Orthodox Jew and who is likely the most aggressively pro-Jewish president in American history, to Adolf Hitler.

It would be trite, not to mention impossible, to enumerate all the examples. The armchair sloganeering and rote analogizing were truly ubiquitous across CNN, MSNBC and the other myriad bastions of progressive media or cultural clout. It became old hat to compare antifa, properly understood as a domestic terror organization, to the valiant American patriots who stormed the beach of Normandy on D-Day — thus equating the Trump administration with the Third Reich.

But even more egregious was then-President-elect Joe Biden's post-Capitol riot comparison of Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo. — brilliant constitutional attorneys in their previous careers who, in challenging part of the 2020 Electoral College results, did something Democrats have done each time a Republican has won the presidency this century — to infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, a man who arguably has more Jewish blood on his hands than anyone besides Hitler and Heinrich Himmler themselves.

Speaking two days after the Capitol riot, Biden expressly invoked Goebbels' name and accused Cruz and Hawley of helping to spread the "big lie." (Cruz, it should be noted, is by word and deed likely the single most philo-Semitic and pro-Israel member of either house of Congress.) The smear was quickly parroted by other national Democratic leaders.

Biden's slur was, in a nutshell, revolting. It is, or at least ought to be, far beneath the dignity of the leader of the free world to casually besmirch high-ranking political foes as active, literal Nazis. But Biden's remarkable Freudian slip did not occur in a vacuum; rather, it was the natural culmination of a yearslong leftist campaign, which commenced in the pre-Trump era but rapidly accelerated during the 45th president's tumultuous tenure, to equate conservatism with Nazism. Perhaps some on the left earnestly believe this, and some believe it to merely be tactically helpful. It is unclear.

What is clear is how deeply shameful the whole spectacle is. And not just shameful, but deeply hypocritical. Just ask Gina Carano, who was canceled for a post that was relatively subdued compared with Biden's slander. Conservatives might be forgiven for wondering if Biden himself should be canceled next.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 02/12/21 The Limits of 'Free Speech'
• 01/29/21 Populism's irony is not lost on the non-elietes
• 01/25/21 The Conservative Path Forward in the Biden-Harris Era
• 01/15/21 Trump's Parting Shot To China Should Be Full U.S. Recognition of Taiwan
• 12/31/20 It Can't Get Any Worse Than 2020. Here's a 2021 Political Wish List
• 12/18/20 Immigration Politics Went Away During COVID-19. It's Coming Back
• 12/11/20 Hunter Biden Saga Personifies Ruling Class Power and Conceit
• 12/04/20 There's No Stopping America's Political Realignment
• 11/13/20 Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Is Idiotic and Immoral
• 11/06/20 The Election Battle Is Just Beginning
• 10/30/20 The Closing Argument for the American Regime
• 10/23/20 How to Prepare for a Contested Election
• 10/16/20 Will Conservatives Finally Awaken to the Big Tech Threat?
• 10/09/20 Biden-Harris Would Deal a Huge Blow to Religious Liberty
• 10/02/20 The Do-or-Die Moment for the Trump Presidency
• 09/25/20 Republicans, Confirm a Supreme Court Justice Immediately
• 09/18/20 Where Does Never Trump Now Stand?
• 09/11/20 Where Is Joe Biden's Supreme Court List?
• 09/04/20 The Dems Hold the Nation Hostage
• 08/31/20 Trump and Netanyahu Debunk the Failed Consensus
• 08/21/20 Trump and Netanyahu debunk the failed consensus
• 08/06/20 High stakes of Americanists v. civilizational arsonists
• 07/31/20 The Crisis of the Conservative Legal Movement
• 07/24/20 The Ruling Class Has Sold Out the American People on Communist China
• 07/17/20 Intersectionality Vs. America
• 07/10/20 President Trump Emerges as Defender of the American Regime
• 07/03/20 How to Salvage a Pandemic Independence Day
• 06/26/20 This time the 'regime change' is BY Americans AGAINST America
• 06/12/20 How to Fall in Love With America Again
• 06/12/20 A Tale of Two Americas
• 06/05/20 Evil enforcers
• 05/28/20 Trump Is on the Ballot -- Not His Twitter Feed
• 05/22/20 Confronting the Chinese Communist Party Is America's Generational Challenge
• 05/15/20 The Case for Israeli Annexation
• 05/08/20 Will Trump stand with the voters who elected him, or will he shill for the elites who heap scorn upon him every day?
• 05/01/20 Bill de Blasio Highlights the Far Left's Jewish Problem
• 04/24/20 Will There Be Another Great Awakening?
• 04/17/20 Stop the Insane Coronavirus Jailbreaks
• 04/13/20 The American Media Hits Rock Bottom
• 04/03/20 The Moral Incoherence of Andrew Cuomo
• 03/27/20 Coronavirus Is Communist China's Chernobyl
• 03/20/20 How to Save a Presidency