'Line has been crossed' as Trump directly echoes Stalin: columnist

The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum on Friday warned American voters that former President Donald Trump has crossed a line that even racist demagogues such as George Wallace never did.

In particular, Applebaum shines a spotlight on the purportedly dehumanizing rhetoric that Trump has been deploying on the campaign trail, such as referring to his political opponents as "the enemy within" and as "vermin," which is the exact kind of rhetoric used by some of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th Century, including Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Pol Pot.

Even though Wallace infamously called to maintain permanent racial segregation in the southern United States during his ill-fated presidential campaigns, writes Applebaum, he did "not speak of his political opponents as 'vermin' or talk about them poisoning the nation’s blood."

"In the 2024 campaign, that line has been crossed," she warns. "Trump... has said of immigrants, 'They’re poisoning the blood of our country' and 'They’re destroying the blood of our country.' He has claimed that many have 'bad genes.' He has also been more explicit: 'They’re not humans; they’re animals'; they are 'cold-blooded killers.' He refers more broadly to his opponents—American citizens, some of whom are elected officials—as 'the enemy from within … sick people, radical-left lunatics.' Not only do they have no rights; they should be 'handled by,' he has said, 'if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.'"

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She then puts together a list of quotes from Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot that express similar sentiments to the ones that Trump is expressing, and she says that the purpose of such language has always been the same.

"In each of these very different societies, the purpose of this kind of rhetoric was the same. If you connect your opponents with disease, illness, and poisoned blood, if you dehumanize them as insects or animals, if you speak of squashing them or cleansing them as if they were pests or bacteria, then you can much more easily arrest them deprive them of rights, exclude them, or even kill them," she warns.

She also believes that Trump is making a deliberate choice of campaigning this way and not even making a pretense of toning down his rhetoric in the final stretch as he did in 2016, when he won.

"He and his campaign team believe that by using the tactics of the 1930s, they can win," she argues.

Read the whole column here.