President-elect Joe Biden compared Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels on Friday, saying they shared responsibility with President Donald Trump for the riot on Capitol Hill.
Biden declined to say that Cruz and Howley should resign, but said they should be defeated at their next elections.
“They’re part of the ‘big lie,'” Biden said, saying that they had spread false information about the election being stolen.
They’re part of the big lie, the big lie. I was being reminded by a friend of mine, and maybe you were with me, I can’t recall, when we told that, you know, Goebbels and the great lie, you keep repeating the law, repeating the lie. Well, there was a print that when Dresden [in Germany] was bombed, firebombed [in WOrld War II], there were 250 people that were killed — was it 2,500 people that were killed? And Goebbels said no, 25,000 — or 250,000 were killed. And our papers printed that. Our papers printed it. It’s big lie [sic]. People will notice — it’s one thing for one man, or one woman, to repeat the lie over and over and over again. By the way, Trump said [sic] that before he ran. If you say it enough, I’m going to convince you, I’ll say it enough, “The press is bad, the press is bad, the press is bad, the press is bad.” If he’s the only one saying it, that’s one thing. But the acolytes that follow him, like Cruz and others, they are as responsible as he is. And so, it’s not about whether or not they get impeached. It’s about whether or not they help — can continue to hold power because of the disgust the American people have for their actions. There are decent people out there who actually believe these lies. Because they’ve heard it again and again.
It is not clear what Trump quote Biden was referring to, but in fact, 25,000 people were killed in the firebombing of Dresden. The National World War II Museum notes that 25,000 is not even the highest estimate:
A widely accepted estimate is 35,000 killed during the 37 hours of terror. Rival claims go far higher. The German government, however, proposes 25,000 as a defensible guess. Since so many victims were immolated after the attacks, we will likely never know the precise number.
While Goebbels is associated with the “big lie” idea, he is often misquoted. Goebbels himself accused the British of using the “big lie” as a propaganda technique.
Biden also compared Trump to Goebbels during the 2020 presidential campaign. As Breitbart News noted at the time:
Biden compared Trump to Goebbels in an interview with MSNBC. “He’s sort of like Goebbels,” Biden told Stephannie Ruhle. “You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge.”
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Goebbels, as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum notes, was a radical antisemite and one of Adolf Hitler’s closest aides. He whipped up anti-Jewish hatred among the German people and is among those directly responsible for the Holocaust:
Joseph Goebbels was a National Socialist politician and propagandist. He held several roles in the Nazi Party. He served as Nazi Party chief for Greater Berlin from 1926 until 1945. From 1929 until 1945 he was Reich leader of propaganda. In 1933, Adolf Hitler appointed Goebbels Reich Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, a position he held until 1945. Goebbels was an unconditional follower of Hitler and a radical antisemite.
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Goebbels remained close to Hitler until Hitler committed suicide as Russian soldiers approached his command bunker under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin on April 30, 1945. In his political testament, Hitler had named Goebbels to be Germany’s new Reich Chancellor. However, Goebbels rejected any possibility of surrender to the Allies. He had no illusions concerning his fate should Germany surrender. He wrote in his diary in March 1943, “We are already so enmeshed above all in the Jewish Question that there is no escape for us.” Instead Goebbels and his wife Magda arranged to poison their six children. They then committed suicide on May 1, 1945. Nazi control of public information ended with Goebbels’ suicide and the collapse of the regime in May 1945.
The Republican Jewish Coalition demanded that Biden apologize on Saturday evening, and retired Democratic state lawmaker Dov Hikind did so on Sunday.
Biden ignored calls from the above Jewish groups to apologize.
Biden also released a video ad in October comparing Trump to Nazi dictator and mass murderer Adolf Hitler.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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