Just What Is Behind Joe Biden’s Outrageous Attacks on the Opposition?
In two speeches in the last days, U.S. President Biden has pushed the polarization of U.S. politics to a new level, characterizing the movement loyal to Donald Trump as one of “white supremacists and extremists,” who are inciting violence against their opponents. Speaking in Philadelphia on Sept. 1, he insisted that Trump’s movement has crossed the line of what is acceptable in politics, calling the “extreme MAGA Republicans” a threat to the nation. (MAGA stands for “Make America Great Again”, Trump’s campaign slogan.)
Just days before, the U.S. President had referred to Trump supporters as “semi-fascists”. This drew immediate howls of protest, with some Republican officials asking if he was calling the nearly 74 million voters who cast ballots for Trump in 2020 semi-fascists! Biden tried to walk back a step from this in his Labor Day address in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Sept. 5, saying that “not every Republican embraces that extreme ideology” of the hard-core Trump base, but then directed his fire at Congressional Republicans. The MAGA Republicans in the Congress, he said, act “full of anger, violence, hate and division”. They “don’t just threaten our personal rights and our economic security. They embrace political violence.”
Joe Biden, who described himself as a “unifier” during his 2020 campaign, appears to have been pushed to such provocations by leading Democrats, as part of a campaign strategy designed to energize the base in the run-up to the November congressional elections. But it is having a backfire effect, especially as polls show support for Trump has revived following the FBI/DOJ raid on his Mar-a-Lago resort, an event which seems to confirm his claim that he is a victim of a political vendetta (cf. SAS 33/22). In addition, it is to be expected that the “anti-inflation” bill will do nothing to curb inflation, but will inflict more “pain” on Americans, as called for by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
A more astute view was expressed by one senior strategist, who commented that the raid on Mar a Lago and Biden’s inflammatory rhetoric against Trump’s base are actually a diversion, aimed at deflecting from serious discussion of the deepening global crises, with the war in Ukraine, soaring prices, shortages of energy and food, etc. The millions of Americans affected by the economic breakdown and threat of war, instead of being able to focus on solutions, are riled up into phony “left” versus “right” countergangs, with the intense polarization enhancing the prospect of violent reactions on all sides.
This in turn fuels demands for increased police-state surveillance and more aggressive counter-measures. Combined with censorship to reinforce narratives, the American people are being subjected to a kind of hybrid warfare, designed to induce complacency and submission. The problem for those running this scenario is that this time, reality may overwhelm the narratives, opening the door for a break out of the confines of a “Rules-Based Order” which benefits only the wealthy few.
