Today the Chinese government runs “vocational education and training centers” that are used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims. Amnesty International has compared the “reeducation camps” to those run in the darkest hours of the Mao era when anyone suspected of not being loyal enough to the state or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faced serious punishment.
This week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was accused of suggesting that the United States could benefit from a similar reeducation program, one that could “deprogram” supporters of former Donald Trump, whom she compared to members of a cult.
“Maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members,” she said in an interview with CNN.
Beyond Deplorables?
Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump and who has largely blamed her loss on outside factors, infamously derided Trump supporters in the run-up to that election, suggesting half of them were in a “basket of deplorables.” She then described them as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic – you name it.”
Those same individuals are now Trump’s foot soldiers she further implied in her recent interview.
“And sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure,” Clinton added. “He’s only in it for himself.”
She went on to predict that Trump will likely be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, yet said that she believes President Biden can beat him again.
“One will wreck our democracy. One violates the law on a regular basis. One appeals to the worst in our collective psyche. The other gets things done,” Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “Why is that a hard choice?”
Trump Campaign Responded
A Trump-affiliated super PAC denounced Clinton’s comments early Friday, warning that she was calling for Trump supporters to be sent to reeducation camps.
“President Trump has said countless times that they are only coming after him, because he stands in their way from coming after you — and Hillary Clinton just confirmed that to be true,” Make America Great Again Inc. spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told TheHill.com. “Tens of millions of Americans will reject the Democrat Party’s re-education camp agenda in November 2024 when we make Donald Trump the 47th President of the United States.”
Election Denial
Though since the 2020 election, Hillary Clinton has spoken out about the threat of “election deniers” who did not accept Biden’s 2020 victory, following the 2016 election she repeatedly called Trump an “illegitimate president” and peddled the narrative that Russia and a combination of other factors stole the race from her.
Clinton famously remarked in 2017, “You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you,” and as NBC News even reported, Clinton has never been shy in offloading responsibility for her catastrophic loss.
She blamed Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, and the media, and she then blamed racism, and she blamed Barack Obama; she blamed sexism while also blaming women. All of that was also secondary to her overarching narrative: that Trump was an “illegitimate president.”
And now she is calling for “formal” deprogramming for those who support Trump. Does that sound the least bit like democracy?
Author Experience and Expertise:
A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
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