MSNBC guest compares GOP to Hitler and Mussolini
NYU Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat compared the GOP today to Hitler and Mussolini.
During a segment on MSNBC's Velshi on Saturday, panelists said that "radicals" are influencing mainstream conservatives and there are parallels to Hitler and Mussolini.
Guest host and Politico White House editor Sam Stein asked guests Vox Senior Correspondent Zack Beauchamp and New York University Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat about an article Beauchamp wrote on conservatives and the Republican Party no longer policing radicals in its ranks.
Beauchamp began by talking about "the distinction between conservatives and the radical right," and said, "There’s a consistent element of the population and intellectual vanguard that believes very firmly that the idea of equality of democracy is a mistake."
"It is the ideology of slaveholders, the Ku Klux Clan, of the John Birch Society, George Wallace's presidential run," he continued.
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Two MSNBC guests said mainstream conservatism has been taken over by "radicals" during a segment Saturday. (Photo by Kim Kulish/Corbis via Getty Images)
"But what had happened, at least as the conservative movement emerged after World War II as a coherent entity, is it attempted to align itself with these radicals on the theory that it could contain them and bring them into the political coalition, harness their incredibly, sort of, strong feelings and beliefs and turn them into votes for basically pretty normal tax cuts and anti-abortion politics, and the kind of things that really the things that animate mainstream conservatives," Beauchamp said.
"And this worked for a little bit. What happened is that over time, slowly, and ultimately culminating in Donald Trump, the radicals started to influence the mainstream conservatives, not the other way around," he continued.
"It wasn't the conservatives controlling the radicals. It was the radicals whose ideas, based on their shared hatred for liberalism and sort of the mainstream of American political society, that they gradually started to resemble each other to the point where the mainstream right was willing to fully capitulate to the radical right if it meant gaining political power," he continued.
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When asked if she agreed with Beauchamp's assessment, NYU Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat affirmed his view.
"So, I do agree and, in fact, my book is about all these case studies all over the world of when conservatives, like, starting with Mussolini and Hitler, conservatives brought these extremists and their militias into power thinking they could control them and ally with them and then the logic of authoritarianism is increasing radicalization," she said.
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"And, really, we’re going to have to find a new language because conservative no longer fits a party that perpetrated a coup and would do it again tomorrow because the GOP is unrepentant and also it’s very important to know that the GOP is now co-mingling and fusing at local and state level with extremists. There one-in-five local and state GOP officials has sympathies or affiliations with radical groups," she continued.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol Building on Dec. 16, 2021, in Washington. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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"And that’s why we also see the logic of the party eating its own as it becomes the far-right extremist party. The whole RINO phenomenon where moderates have to be pushed out. So, this has happened before in history. Also, when there’ve been military coups. It’s happened whenever you have far-right authoritarians that get to power," concluded Ben-Ghiat.
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