HomeBudget & Tax NewsShapiro: Joe Biden Is the Real Semi-Fascist

Shapiro: 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.

Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and Editor-in-Chief of DailyWire.com. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author; his latest book is “The Authoritarian Moment: How The Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.” To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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Ben Shapiro
Ben Shapiro
Ben Shapiro was hired by Creators Syndicate at age 17 to become the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. His columns are printed in major newspapers and websites including The Riverside Press-Enterprise and the Conservative Chronicle, Townhall.com, ABCNews.com, WorldNetDaily.com, Human Events, FrontPageMag.com, FamilySecurityMatters.com. His columns have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor,Chicago Sun-Times, Orlando Sentinel, The Honolulu Advertiser,The Arizona Republic, Claremont Review of Books and RealClearPolitics.com. He has been the subject of articles by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and The Christian Science Monitor; he has been quoted on "The Rush Limbaugh Show," "The Dr. Laura Show," at CBSNews.com, in the New York Press, The Washington Times, and The American Conservative.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Agree with Mr. Shapiro completely. The progressive element has one standard tool in their playbook: PROJECTION. Look at any number of issues & initiatives. They accuse their opponents of doing exactly what they are engaging in. On the other hand, some of the rhetoric coming from folks like former President Trump, Lindsey Graham & others is not helpful either. Somehow, we need to get a thoughtful, fully informed & rational debate underway in our political discourse. CIVILITY needs to make a huge comeback. Otherwise, for the first time in my life I truly question the future of our constitutional Republic…

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