MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow might as well have been standing in front of a corkboard with newspaper clippings and red twine during Monday’s edition of her eponymous show. The ranting Maddow opened her once-a-week show with an over 25-minute screed where she stitched together a bizarre argument that tied the recent increase in anti-Semitism in the U.S. to the Ku Klux Klan (not the pro-Hamas crowd), to an anti-Semitic Army general in 1939, and ultimately to former President Trump’s recent campaign rhetoric.
Maddow started the show fairly measured as she rightfully decried the recent surge in anti-Semitic incidents across the country ranging from vandalism of synagogues to a rash of bomb threats against them. But things took a turn when, instead of blaming the October 7 terrorist attack and the extremists supporting Hamas, she seemed to link them to white supremacists:
They know what to do at Beth Israel in Jackson. They've had to do this before. In 1967, which was just four years after a Klansman murdered Medgar Evers in his driveway, in Jackson, in 1967 the Klan also bombed the Beth Israel synagogue in Jackson, the very same synagogue that was evacuated for the bomb threats this weekend. Beth Israel in Jackson was bombed by the Klan in 1967, the rabbi of that congregation had his house bombed that year too.
She even suggested the bomb threats represented the political “climate right now in the United States of America. This too is what it's like in our country right now.”
“How does this kind of terroristic menace work? What does it accomplish? Why is this a political tactic?” she rhetorically asked before answering.
Her answer involved the 1939 congressional testimony of then-former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army General George Van Horn Moseley. In his testimony, Moseley praised Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and called for an American eugenics program to sterilize Jews (Click “expand”):
Well, General Moseley told the Congress in 1939, “The first thing I would do if I was in the White House, gentlemen, I would issue an order immediately discharging every communist now in the government of the United States. He told Congress, quote, “I believe in watching our breed in America very carefully.” He told Congress that Hitler and Germany had, quote, “solved the racial problem.”
By 1939, General Moseley was publicly advocating and speaking toward – publicly advocating for the sterilization of all Jewish immigrants in America. This man had been deputy chief of staff of the United States Army.
“General Moseley had put himself forward to the leading fascist groups in America as a potential military dictator for the United States, which is what they were working for and which is what he thought we needed in this country,” she added.
You can see where this is going.
Giving a synopsis of how Moseley was able to have those beliefs and spread them to others (and seemingly suggesting they were incredibly popular), Maddow opined, “If you get people exercised enough about the threat, if you use just the right words, you get them exercised enough about the threat…they're liable to do things they would never otherwise agree to.”
That sounds like the rhetoric used by the liberal media and Democrats for the last seven years, claiming the GOP was bringing back Jim Crow and installing a dictator. It sounds like the kind of rhetoric that would lead leftist extremists to try assassinating U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, attempting to assassinate Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-NY), and shooting up the Republican baseball practice like one of Maddow’s fans did.
But no, it reminded her of Trump. “But we are having this weird moment in American news and politics right now where half the country is shouting about how the Republican presidential nominee keeps quoting those dictators. He keeps saying the kinds of things, the exact kind of things that Hitler and Mussolini said as they ascended to and consolidated power,” she said.
She proclaimed, “He doesn't mind being compared to those people” and proceeded to suggest Republicans were hungry for all those terrible things.
Who’s the one trying to stoke fear?
The transcript is below. CLick "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show
December 18, 2023
9:08:12 p.m. Eastern(…)
RACHEL MADDOW: That same day, that same synagogue in D.C. Got a bomb threat. Like all these other synagogues all across the country.
And, yes, in Mississippi after the threats to the four different airports and to the northern Mississippi synagogues on Thursday, on Sunday the bomb threat was to the largest synagogue in the whole state, Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson. They had emergency responders on site all day, all services and programs canceled.
They know what to do at Beth Israel in Jackson. They've had to do this before. In 1967, which was just four years after a Klansman murdered Medgar Evers in his driveway, in Jackson, in 1967 the Klan also bombed the Beth Israel synagogue in Jackson, the very same synagogue that was evacuated for the bomb threats this weekend. Beth Israel in Jackson was bombed by the Klan in 1967, the rabbi of that congregation had his house bombed that year too.
And, you know, yesterday it all comes back, evacuated again. Bomb threats. Across the country there were hundreds of them. This too is part of the climate right now in the United States of America. This too is what it's like in our country right now.
(…)
9:10:39 p.m. Eastern
How does this kind of terroristic menace work? What does it accomplish? Why is this a political tactic?
Sometimes it's easier to see in other time periods or in other time places than it is to see in our own. So, consider this, it is from our country but it's from a long time ago, 1939. 1939, a congressional committee took testimony, very high-profile testimony, got a lot of attention at the time. They took testimony from one of the most famous Army generals in the United States, his name was General George Van Horn Moseley. Until not long before this committee testimony, General George Van Horn Moseley had been the deputy chief of staff of the U.S. Army; some very very very senior person in the United States military. Deputy chief of staff of the Army.
He goes before the Congress and he testifies in 1939 that he believed there were more than 6 million communists in the United States of America and more than 90 percent of them had to be Jews. By then, General Moseley had put himself forward to the leading fascist groups in America as a potential military dictator for the United States, which is what they were working for and which is what he thought we needed in this country.
And why would we need a dictator instead of our democracy? Well, General Moseley told the Congress in 1939, “The first thing I would do if I was in the White House, gentlemen, I would issue an order immediately discharging every communist now in the government of the United States. He told congress, quote, “I believe in watching our breed in America very carefully.” He told Congress that Hitler and Germany had, quote, “solved the racial problem.”
By 1939, General Moseley was publicly advocating and speaking toward – publicly advocating for the sterilization of all Jewish immigrants in America. This man had been deputy chief of staff of the United States army.
(…)
9:15:01 p.m. Eastern
If there's some kind of, you know, existential threat that not only lurks in the world, but it's coming from here at home, coming from within somehow, well, you would do almost anything to stop it, right? You would agree to things you’d agree to do things you’d never otherwise agree to because it’s an emergency. If you get people exercised enough about the threat, if you use just the right words, you get them exercised enough about the threat and who’s to blame for the threat; and frankly, who’s to blame for everything, it doesn't have to be rational, you just get people emotionally exercised enough about it, get people afraid enough about it and they're liable to do things they would never otherwise agree to.
(…)
9:16:28 p.m. Eastern
That rhetoric, that propaganda, that language, that political tactic didn't just work in the countries that turned into dictatorships in the 1930s, that political tactic worked on a lot of Americans here just as well as it worked abroad. Because it's an effective political tactic.
And, you know, nobody is a Nazi but a Nazi, nobody is Hitler but Hitler. Nobody is Mussolini but Mussolini. Right? There is no point in making and there’s no cause to make any sort of modern analogy to the fascist dictatorships of the 1930s. But we are having this weird moment in American news and politics right now where half the country is shouting about how the Republican presidential nominee keeps quoting those dictators. He keeps saying the kinds of things, the exact kind of things that Hitler and Mussolini said as they ascended to and consolidated power.
And you see the names of those dictators and you see the discussion of that period in history all over the news right now because he is saying those things. He is effectively quoting Mussolini and Hitler in some of their most effective propaganda shtick tactics. But pointing out he's saying Hitleresque and Mussoliniesque things turns out to not be enough to make him stop saying those things. He doesn't mind being compared to those people.
(…)
