Godwin’s Law is a popular internet adage that argues the longer an online discussion goes on, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. For those not familiar with probabilities, when a probability approaches 1, that simply means it’s inevitable. Coined in 1990, Godwin’s Law – much like Neo in the third franchise movie – has gone beyond the internet simulation and become part of the mainstream narrative in real life.
These days, the word Nazi or fascist or Hitler is used with such wanton abandon that it has ceased to have any meaning and tells us more about the user than the subject.It’s a sign of desperation and flop sweat. And the Democrats – after swapping Harris for Biden – are reeking of desperation as the election enters the home stretch. Their chosen candidate is stuck in an interview doom loop where she appears largely unrelatable in most settings while their opponent is a sui generis politician whose years on reality TV have made him the master of retail politics. This was in ample evidence during Kamala Harris’ last CNN townhall where she appeared to hit the ‘word salad’ cul-de-sac more often than not, and where almost every answer seemed to be that Donald Trump is worse.
Crisis in Gaza? Trump is a fascist.
Will the Harris presidency be different from a Biden one? Trump is a fascist.
Will taxes become higher? Trump is a fascist.
Why has Harris reserved most of her policy positions? Trump is a fascist.
What would she do differently? Trump is a… You get the drift.
The Harris amplification of the F-word comes after John Kelly, Trump’s Chief of Staff between 2017 and 2019, used the word to describe him. The received wisdom is that the F-word was to shore up wavering Democrats – both Jews worried that Harris won’t back Israel or anti-Israel folks who think the USA supports the Netanyahu regime too much.
In the last few weeks, most of the mainstream American media – which has always leaned liberal – has even given up the pretence of covering this election in an unbiased manner. Trump supporters like to call it Trump Derangement Syndrome and it appears to have extended to other Trump surrogates like JD Vance and Elon Musk.
Consider Trump’s McDonald’s visit. News outlets went out of their way to downplay it, with some even fact-checking it, as if Trump was actually hired by McDonald’s. Despite surviving two assassination attempts, he has received largely negative coverage, with one conservative outlet stating that 95% of the coverage after Trump’s second assassination attempt was negative.
Similarly, most anti-Trump news is always played up. Consider the alacrity with which The Atlantic and The New York Times published back-to-back interviews with R Kelly, who appeared to wait until the 11th hour before warning America about the dangers of voting for Trump.
Outlets also reported the allegations against Trump by Stacey Williams, who alleged that Trump groped her in 1993 at Trump Tower while in the presence of Jeffrey Epstein, a story that was first broken by The Guardian rather than any American media publication.
Ironically, there has been near radio silence about the allegations against Second Gentleman Doug Elmhoff and the claims that he physically assaulted his former girlfriend in 2012. Instead he has been propped up as a new epitome of masculinity. Does the maxim about believing all women cease to exist when the woman in question is accusing someone who is from the Dem side?
Similarly, there’s hardly any coverage about Joe Biden saying “you gotta lock him up” at a rally about Donald Trump, a deeply disturbing statement considering that the President of the United States is saying that about a direct rival. There’s no denying that the DOJ and other federal establishments have gone to extraordinary lengths to prosecute a former president. If it was any country other than the USA, where a rival was targeted like that, then various democracy indices would be downgraded in an instant.
On the other hand, even the most inconsequential pro-Harris coverage is played up to inane levels. Take comedian Stephen Colbert, who recently compared Kamala Harris’ reply to hecklers with Neo realising he’s the Chosen One.
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Harris hardly faced any criticism from mainstream outlets for holding a townhall with Maria Shriver that didn’t allow questions, and yet the bit about Trump spending 40 minutes dancing to music at a rally was widely covered. While Musk’s closeness to Trump is played up, Soros and many other billionaires backing the Dems hardly invite the same level of coverage. Of course, one can hardly expect unbiased coverage where most media organisations ‘endorse’ candidates, but even then, Trump appears to have caused some deep visceral cleavage in the liberal American psyche.
But Harris jumping on the bandwagon suggests desperation because recently, she very cleverly dodged the Hillary trap of calling Trump supporters ‘deplorables’. All the tea leaves point to Democrats becoming oddly panicky, with Obama hectoring black men and Harris courting washed-up Republicans, many of whom will forever be associated with many of America’s wars across the world.
The F-tag, on the other hand, just doesn’t fly.
As Bret Stephens notes in a New York Times op-ed: “…while Trump can rightly be described as demagogic, meanspirited, authoritarian-minded — even a plain old jerk — most people think of fascist regimes as places where secret police terrorise ordinary citizens, free media doesn’t exist and protest is forbidden. That’s probably not what most Americans remember of their experience of the Trump years, when this newspaper more than doubled its circulation and Trump’s loudest critics could be heard from the minute Joe Scarborough woke them up to the hour Rachel Maddow put them to sleep.”
One of the more recent Dem mis-steps has been going from the party of free speech to one that wants to restrict it when they consider it a micro-aggression. They seem to have bet the party on weird ideological hills to die on. For example, it’s a no-brainer that grown men shouldn’t use female toilets or that men shouldn’t compete in women’s sports at any level. Or that children should not be allowed to transition. Calling Trump the F-word is very much part of the modern progressive playbook, one that Harris had avoided till now.
After all, thundering follows the law of diminishing returns, as the boy who cried wolf realised. One would have thought that a mainstream party of one of the world’s oldest democracies would know that as well.