The Patriot Post® · Leftists Embrace Enemy Lists
Last week, self- and media-anointed President-elect Joe Biden issued a call for unity. “With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation,” he said. “It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.”
As Americans will ultimately realize, Biden left two important words off that statement: “Or else.” In short, leftists want to define unity and healing solely on their own terms, and those terms are crystal clear: One either “repents” for the “sin” of defying their “superior” wisdom by having supported President Donald Trump, or one will be made an “unperson,” in every Orwellian sense of the word.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama let America know exactly who is being targeted. “Let’s remember,” she lectured, “that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division.”
Biden himself also let it be known exactly who was being targeted — less than a month ago. On October 24, he called Trump supporters “chumps” at a rally in Pennsylvania. A week after that, he called them “ugly people” at a rally in Minnesota.
Unsurprisingly, this rhetoric pales in comparison to that of other leftists. A Twitter exchange between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and self-described Barack Obama staffer Michael Simon reveals the compilation of a Stalin-style enemies list has begun in earnest.
“Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future?” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted last week. “I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future.”
“Yes, we are,” replied Simon. “The Trump Accountability Project (@trumpaccproject) Every Administration staffer, campaign staffer, bundler, lawyer who represented them — everyone.”
These two are joined by “conservative” Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin. “Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not to follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into ‘polite’ society,” she proclaimed. “We have a list.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper offered up a similar threat: “I truly sympathize with those dealing with losing — it’s not easy — but at a certain point one has to think not only about what’s best for the nation (peaceful transfer of power) but how any future employers might see your character defined during adversity.”
Anyone still remember how the Left defined its own character during adversity? For four years, the outpouring of hate, hysteria, and name-calling, the exhortations for in-your-face confrontations — and, ultimately, the looting and burning of American cities — reached unprecedented levels. And through every day of it, Trump supporters were vilified, assaulted, and even murdered, all while the globalist oligarchs running Big Tech, the media, academia, Hollywood, and virtue-signaling corporations relentlessly reminded every one of those supporters they were bigoted, xenophobic, racist, irredeemable deplorables wholly beneath contempt — and utterly unworthy of consideration.
And now, on the cusp of regaining power they will attempt to make permanently unassailable, many of these self-professed champions of “tolerance,” “diversity,” and “inclusion” are in hot pursuit of a time-tested totalitarian agenda: Taking revenge against one’s perceived enemies.
Does it get more “or else” than that?
In 2014, Communist China established a Social Credit System that went fully operational this year. In 2019, columnist Steven W. Mosher explained how it works. “A low social credit score will exclude you from well-paid jobs, make it impossible for you to get a house or a car loan or even book a hotel room,” he wrote. “The government will slow down your internet connection, ban your children from attending private schools and even post your profile on a public blacklist for all to see.” Mosher further noted that “one of the ways that people can improve their own social credit score is to report on the supposed misdeeds of others.”
Compare that to the statement of purpose on the Trump Accountability Project website. “We should welcome in our fellow Americans with whom we differ politically,” it states. “But those who took a paycheck from the Trump Administration should not profit from their efforts to tear our democracy apart. The world should never forget those who, when faced with a decision, chose to put their money, their time, and their reputations behind separating children from their families, encouraging racism and anti-Semitism, and negligently causing the unnecessary loss of life and economic devastation from our country’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
If you can’t spot a distinction between the two worldviews, that’s because there is none, just as there is no distinction between China’s ambitions and those of former Clinton administration cabinet member Robert Reich, who also advocates for a Truth and Reconciliation Committee that will “name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice” enabled the Trump administration.
“There are hotheads and bellicose ideologues on both sides of the political spectrum,” columnist Jeff Jacoby insists. “But that doesn’t describe most voters, and it doesn’t describe Biden.”
Really? During a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania on September 17, “level-headed” Joe Biden blamed Trump for every single coronavirus death in the entire nation. “If the president had done his job … from the beginning, all the people would still be alive,” Biden asserted. “All the people — I’m not making this up. Just look at the data. Look at the data.”
Better to look at the proverbial writing on the wall. Better to ask oneself what kind of people simultaneously call for unity while vowing to destroy the lives of their opponents.
And not just those directly involved in supporting Trump. For the dedicated incrementalists on the Left, that is merely the opening volley. It won’t be long before even the most ordinary Americans who fail to march in lockstep with progressive dogma — “any R,” as Rubin puts it — will be targeted for destruction.
In her effort to explain the depredations of Nazi Germany, American political philosopher Hannah Arendt noted, “Evil lost its distinctive characteristic by which most people had until then recognized it. The Nazis redefined it as a civil norm.”
Is America ready for a “civil norm” of enemy lists, aided and abetted by the treasure trove of data Big Tech routinely extracts from Americans, often without their knowledge or consent?
On Tuesday, pop star and outspoken Democrat Katy Perry was accused of perpetuating white supremacy because she urged her fans to reach out to Trump-supporting family members.
That’s a good thing, as many equally “woke” Americans will soon discover that enemy lists are as expansive as those in charge choose them to be — and that the line between “social justice warrior” and “social pariah” is exceedingly thin.
Unity? As Jacoby and other equally naive Americans will ultimately discover, there’s no split-the-difference, “why can’t we all get along” compromise between Liberty and tyranny.
Update: The Trump Accountability Project now says on its website that “the project will no longer be active.” Don’t bank on the tyrants slinking away so easily.