Echoes of Eastern Europe in the left’s playbook for America’s future

I’ve often reflected on Donald Trump’s charge that massive fraud occurred during the 2020 presidential election. While I’m not convinced the opposition cheated enough to change the outcome, I do agree with J.R. Dunn at American Thinker, who argues, “We’re not going to debate whether cheating in fact occurred in 2020 — the only ones who dispute that at this point are the bought, the braindead, and the comatose.”

My acceptance of this view stems largely from the behavior of Democratic Party operatives since 2020. They have used highly questionable tactics to influence election outcomes, including flooding the country with millions of illegal immigrants brought here as potential Democratic voters. In fact, Democrats have already started registering some of these new arrivals, who, grateful for benefits like living expenses, medical care, food, and shelter, are likely to vote in their favor.

The ruling left’s ideal outcome would involve the complete elimination of genuine opposition, leaving only allies or powerless coalition partners.

In states controlled by Democrats or those they are close to controlling, such as my home state of Pennsylvania, voter ID requirements are being removed. This change aims to enable individuals who shouldn’t have voting rights to cast ballots. Similarly, in 2020, ballots were widely mailed to addresses where registered voters once lived but may no longer reside. Democratic operatives likely visited these addresses to fill out ballots, while unguarded drop boxes in Democratic areas were reportedly filled with pro-Biden ballots late at night.

Recently, the Department of Justice has attempted to prevent Republican governors from removing noncitizens from voter rolls, as seen in a widely publicized case in Virginia. Congressional Democrats also strongly oppose limiting voting to only citizens, aligning with the party’s support for massive illegal immigration — essentially importing future Democratic voters.

These practices recall the “salami tactics” communist operatives used in Eastern Europe after World War II, which allowed them to gain power through seemingly constitutional means. Instead of the deep state and corporate media, as in today’s context, communists like Matyas Rakosi in Hungary and Klement Gottwald in Czechoslovakia relied on the Red Army to break up their democratic opposition.

Some of these gradualist tactics, pioneered by communist takeover strategists, echo what our Democratic Party and similar woke leftist parties in Europe are already doing. Much like today’s Democrats, the communists worked relentlessly to delegitimize any party to their right, including agrarian groups, nationalists, and even social democrats, labeling them as fascists and Nazis.

Much like slicing a salami, the political spectrum was gradually narrowed to the communists and their willing collaborators. These collaborators bear a striking resemblance to today's neoconservatives, who now seek favor with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz while denouncing Trump and MAGA Republicans as neo-Nazis.

The totalitarian left has long perfected the art of marginalizing opposition. During their rise to power, the communists welcomed bourgeois progressives, the Eastern and Central European equivalents of figures like George Will, Ken Adelman, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, and Dick and Liz Cheney. Applying “salami tactics,” they outlawed noncompliant parties and, where possible, jailed their leaders as “fascists.” This approach mirrors how today’s media and Democrats treat MAGA Republicans, whom President Biden recently denounced as “garbage.” The ruling left’s ideal outcome would involve the complete elimination of genuine opposition, leaving only allies or powerless coalition partners.

A future Democratic administration led by Harris and Walz could closely resemble the old communist model. The Democrats have already proposed measures like packing the Supreme Court with loyalists, granting statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to secure additional Senate seats, and federalizing elections while removing voter ID requirements — all under the guise of “saving our democracy.”

Meanwhile, Harris, Walz, and sympathetic media outlets express concern about allowing “disinformation” to circulate without government oversight. The totalitarian left, whether in the modern West or the former Soviet bloc, has always sought to throttle unwanted dissent.

That said, our homegrown version of leftist totalitarianism looks a lot kinkier than what the communists established. Unlike puritanical communist rule, our post-democratic regime is already abolishing gender distinctions, pushing gender-altering surgery for minors, and glorifying homosexual relations. This new form of the totalitarian left would be less about government ownership of resources than reconstructing social and moral behavior and rewarding parasitic capitalists who support those in power.

Although history never repeats itself exactly, troubling trends often have an unfortunate tendency to rhyme.