NC Democrat compares GOP impeachment vote to Nazis making Hitler a dictator
The Republican Party’s decision to stand behind President Donald Trump could send America down a path similar to Nazi Germany’s, a North Carolina Democratic leader implied this week.
On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted against removing Trump from office despite his impeachment. Bobbie Richardson, a former state lawmaker from Franklin County who is now the second-in-command at the N.C. Democratic Party, posted Thursday on her Facebook page that the Senate vote “will be as pivotal” as when Germany made Adolf Hitler a dictator in 1933.
In the image Richardson posted, photos of Trump and Hitler are side by side, over a block of text.
“A Senate vote to acquit Trump, presided over by the chief justice, will be as pivotal as the German Reichstag’s 1933 passage of the Enabling Act, which gave unchecked power to Hitler,” the post says. “Never did Hitler’s enablers think, ‘Now I shall empower a madman.’ Yet they did it, bit by bit.”
After being contacted by The News & Observer about that post, and another post from this weekend that also seemed to compare Republicans to Nazis, Richardson deleted them and apologized.
“I meant no offense with my posts, but I understand that they were inappropriate and I have removed them,” she said in a written statement. “I deeply regret letting my emotions get the best of me, apologize for any harm caused, and will work to be more thoughtful moving forward.”
In 1933 there was a fire at the building where Germany’s version of Congress, the Reichstag, met. Although historians now believe it might have been a “false flag” arson secretly set by the Nazis themselves, at the time the Nazis blamed communists.
The ensuing public outrage led lawmakers to pass a new law, called the “Reichstag Fire Decree,” which eliminated the free press, the ability of citizens to protest the government and other civil liberties. Soon after, they also passed the law that Richardson’s post mentioned — which gave Hitler dictatorial powers. Germany opened its first concentration camp, at Dachau, that same year.
Comparing all of that to what Republicans did in Trump’s impeachment trial is “reprehensible,” said Michael Whatley, the chairman of the N.C. GOP. In a written statement to The News & Observer, he said Richardson should step down from her role in the Democratic Party.
“Comparing the president to a man who committed unspeakable atrocities, including the systematic murder of more than six million Jews, is disgraceful,” Whatley said.
Not the only post
Richardson posts frequently to her Facebook page, mostly about news articles and civil rights issues. But Thursday wasn’t the first time she has posted comparisons between Republican leaders and Nazis.
Last Saturday, after Senate Republicans voted to block any witnesses from being able to testify in the president’s impeachment trial, Richardson posted an image of the American flag turning into the Nazi flag; it also contained what appeared to be commentary on Republicans’ often-changing defenses of Trump’s actions during impeachment and other scandals.
The image begins with an American flag, along with the words: “It never happened.” Through four more stages, the American flag is gradually replaced by a Nazi flag. The words change along the way as well, to “It happened, but it wasn’t illegal” and then finally to “It happened, we’re proud of it, and you’re a traitor for questioning it.”
Robert Howard, a spokesman for the North Carolina Democratic Party, said the party does not condone such posts.
Nazi comparisons aren’t unheard of in North Carolina politics, and it’s a bipartisan phenomenon. Republican Rep. Larry Pittman, a state lawmaker from Cabarrus County near Charlotte, has on multiple occasions compared Abraham Lincoln to Hitler.
Earlier this month, he also told the N&O that the anti-Confederate protesters who tore down Silent Sam at UNC-Chapel Hill “are no better than ISIS.”
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 6:04 PM with the headline "NC Democrat compares GOP impeachment vote to Nazis making Hitler a dictator."
