Sometimes bluffs are bluffs.
Sometimes rhetoric is rhetoric.
Back in the 1930s, many dismissed the Third Reich’s stated ambitions of ethnic cleansing in Europe as rhetorical red meat for the humiliated and incensed base in Germany following the disastrous Treaty of Versailles following the First World War.
…And then came the Polish invasion.
Sometimes rhetoric isn’t just rhetoric.
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When people tell you what they’re planning to do — especially when they wield the mighty power of the state — it might be wise to take them seriously.
The most infamous call for “camps for adults” perhaps came from Hillary Clinton in 2015.
Via NBC Philadelphia (emphasis added):
Hillary Rodham Clinton says the nation's political class could use "camps for adults" to foster cooperation but too many leaders get backed into partisan corners and refuse to work together.
Clinton offered a bipartisan, feel-good message Thursday during a paid speech to camp counselors in the weeks before her expected presidential campaign launch. She was presented with a gray sweatshirt emblazoned with "Camp David" — the presidential retreat in Maryland — but otherwise steered clear of her prospective campaign, pointing to a "huge fun deficit" in the nation and the need for politicians of all stripes to reach across the aisle.
"We really need camps for adults," Clinton said at the American Camp Association, New York and New Jersey's Tri State CAMP Conference. "Maybe mix it up a little bit." Playing on the colors of U.S. politics, she imagined a red cabin and a blue cabin where people "have to come together and actually listen to each other. Wouldn't that be a novel idea?"
Of course, in isolation, this could be dismissed as a silly idea rather than a Soviet-style forced relocation of political dissidents — but consider the cacophony of other major Democrat leaders who have called for the same thing without the veneer of “fun.”
Here is self-professed “authority on religious cults” calling for “deprogramming” for “all of America” to counter Trump’s influence on CNN in January 2021, via Daily Caller (emphasis added):
An authority on religious cults told CNN Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s influence has been so great that “all of America needs to be deprogrammed” from his personality and polices.
“This is a radical personality change in the mental health literature,” Steven Hassan told CNN’s “New Day” when asked how Trump supporters leading average lives could have participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“It’s called the dissociative disorder, questioning of identity. And the bottom line is, all of America needs deprogramming because we’ve all been negatively influenced by Donald Trump,” said Hassan, a mental health counselor and author of “Cult of Trump.”
And check out corporate state media DEI superstar Eugene Robinson, issuing similar threats to target white Republicans in January 2021:
We have, there are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed. It’s as if they are members of a cult, the Trump-ist cult, and have to be deprogrammed. Do you have any idea how we start that process, much less complete it?
Well, Eugene, the Soviets certainly had an idea or two.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. This compilation is essentially six straight minutes of Democrats and their apparatchiks calling for the same.
