House Majority Whip: GOP Rhetoric Has US ‘On Track to Repeat’ Nazi Germany

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) speaks during a hearing before House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis at Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 23, 2022. Alex Wong/Getty Images

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Nov. 4 likened the current political climate in the United States to that of Nazi Germany, blaming Republicans’ “demonization” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the recent attack on her husband and an overall decrease in civility across the aisle.

“This country is on track to repeat what happened in Germany when it was the greatest democracy going, when it elected a chancellor that then co-opted the media,” Clyburn contended in an interview with Fox News Digital.

“This past president called the press the enemy of the people,” he continued. “That is a bunch of crap. And that is what’s going on in this country.”

The representative’s comments followed what many perceived to be a divisive speech on Wednesday from President Joe Biden, who railed against “extreme MAGA” Republicans and accused them of trying to “suppress the right of voters and subvert the electoral system itself.”

During that speech, Biden seemed to liken Paul Pelosi’s alleged attacker to those who participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots—an event he claimed was incited “by a president repeating over and over again the Big Lie that the election of 2020 had been stolen.”

Additionally, Biden made similar comments in a speech in September, during which he accused former President Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans” of posing a threat to “the very foundations of our democracy.”

However, Clyburn, in the Fox interview, held that Biden’s rhetoric was incomparable to that of the Republicans as the president’s attacks were leveled at a “philosophy,” not a person.

Further, when asked why voters should support Democrats in the upcoming election given the country’s current economic woes, the South Carolinian said: “I think that people should be voting in their own self-interest. And their self-interest is much more than what you may or may not be paying for gas or a loaf of bread.”

Holding that the preservation of democracy should be a top priority, Clyburn added: “The question is, are we going to have a society that everyone can participate in? Or are we going to have an autocracy?”

Since the 2020 election, many Democrats have denounced the concern of some Republicans that potential fraud may have influenced the results as “the Big Lie” or “election denialism.”

However, Democrats have contested the results of presidential elections in the past as well.

In 2005, Clyburn was among a group of Democrats who objected to awarding Ohio’s electoral votes to then-President George W. Bush, claiming that votes had been “transferred” from Democratic candidate John Kerry using electronic voting machines.

But that objection, Clyburn said, did not amount to election denialism.

“It’s totally different,” he said. “We didn’t call anybody about a change in the votes. We just voted on a process. To protest a process is what we did. Nobody stormed the Capitol. Nobody disrupted the count. We only voted to protest a process, which is a legitimate thing in this country.”

Republicans, meanwhile, have called out what they described as hypocrisy from Democrats on the issue of the 2020 election. In June, the Republican National Committee released a list of more than 150 times Democrats denied the validity of election results.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Republican National Committee for comment.