Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian tried to exert some moral authority in an Aug. 14 column:
Most people understand that the current super-heated rhetoric being dished out by Democratic Party presidential candidates and others just amounts to cynical political calculation – intended to help Democrats regain the White House and the Senate, and therefore the courts, next year.
Yet, there is a very clear, if sometimes unspoken, additional message inherent in such rhetoric. Stay with me here:
* Call the president names – “he’s a racist,” “a bigot” or “xenophobe” – and the unspoken but clear message is: “He’s a person of bad character, unworthy of being president, and must be defeated at the ballot box next year.”
* Call the president a criminal – “he colluded with the Russians,” “obstructed justice” or “cheated on his taxes” – and the unspoken but clear message is: “He is guilty of impeachable offences and must be removed from office by Congress, and then criminally prosecuted once he’s out of office.”
* But what about continually calling the president another Adolf Hitler, a genocidal monster who murdered 11 million people?
This utterly deranged comparison started back in 2016, when, asnthis writer reported, no fewer than five different Washington Post writers likened Trump to Hitler during the run-up to the election. Today, the drumbeat has grown ever more brazen and hardcore, with recent examples including CNN host Don Lemon comparing Trump to Hitler on-air and Democrat presidential candidate “Beto” O’Rourke hysterically likening the Trump administration to “the Third Reich.”
Now, ask yourself honestly: If you were a German citizen living in Germany during the Third Reich, what would be the only truly moral response to Adolf Hitler?
We all know the answer.
There were at least 16 different plots to assassinate Hitler, including most famously “Operation Valkyrie” (the so-called “20 July Plot”), which was made into a blockbuster movie starring Tom Cruise as the heroic German army officer, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg. Even the revered Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was hanged by German authorities for his alleged role in this particular plot. The people who attempted to assassinate Hitler – to slay a vicious criminal psychopath, to stop a genocide, to end a terrible war – are rightly regarded, to this very day, all over the world, as patriots and heroes.
That, whether consciously or not, is the actual message that today’s reckless pretenders – whether they are pretend journalists desperately vying for ratings or pretend statesmen desperately vying to become leader of the free world – are broadcasting every day.
You know who else loved to describe a president as another Adolf Hitler, a genocidal monster who murdered 11 million people? The website that Kupelian runs.
Likening President Obama to Hitler or other Nazis was practically a staple attack at WND. It had a columnist Hilmar von Campe, who practically reveled in doing so. Kupelian's boss, Joseph Farah, demanded that a minister not give the invocation at Obama's inauguration, citing Obama's "evil policies" and adding, "I'm sure you would not want to invoke God's blessing on the inauguration of a figure like Adolf Hitler, whose rise to power brought the destruction of millions of lives." Farah even worked an Obama-Hitler comparsion into his bogus birther crusade, declaring that tyhey were similarly ineligible to hold their leadership positions.
WND-published author Anita Dittman loved the comparion too, insisting that "Liberals’ blind idolization of Obama mirrored Germany’s hypnotic fascination with Hitler, Dittman said of the racist tyrant whose vitriolic rhetoric dehumanized the Jewish people as a prelude to his attempts at total annihilation." (Ironically, Kupelian has repeatedly displayed his blind loyalty to Trump.) It even published a column defending the smear and insisting that those who complained about it "are out of ideas or have too much time on their hands."
Did Kupelian freat about inflaming violent attacks Obama when he published those attacks the way? Doubtful -- Kupelian has his own personal hatred of Obama that's so pathological that he actually accused Obama of perpetrating the "date rape of America." Near as we can tell, Kupelian would not have minded an assassination attempt or two on Obama; heck, he's so filled with hate that he might have easily been moved to perpetrate one.
Given all this newfound outrage, will Kupelian reflect on his website's past extreme rhetoric and issue a heartfelt apology to Obama for inciting its readers to consider assassination? Even more doubtful -- has WND ever apologized for anything without being threatened with a lawsuit first?
(And we haven't even gotten to the fact that WND also loved to liken Obama to the Antichrist.)
WND has regularly freaked out about Trump-Hitler comparision, deliberately oblivious to the fact that it did the exact same thing to Obama. Kupelian is being as dishonest and hypocritical now as his website was then.
Kupelian's cynical double standard doesn't build confidence that WND deserves to live.
