Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, January 4, 2019

In a speech just a few days ago, black congressman Hank Johnson showed that the gap between his wing of the Democratic Party and the Republicans is unbridgeable. His conception of reality is so vastly different from that of most whites that it justifies — even begs for — separation.

In his speech, the congressman said that the circumstances that brought Donald Trump to power were like those that brought Adolf Hitler to power, adding that “our democracy teeters on the brink of failure.” He said the president and his supporters “want to return America back to a time when white men and white privilege went unchallenged.” He decried the entrenched, historical “racism” of America while simultaneously claiming the “far-right” is un-American. He appears to see no contradiction in those views.

Congressman Johnson is best known for warning that the island of Guam could “tip over and capsize” if a naval base were installed. He later claimed he was joking, but the video shows otherwise. The year he said this, he was reelected by a margin of almost 50 percent. Every two years, he racks up voter margins rarely seen outside Baathist Iraq. He is politically invulnerable despite suffering from Hepatitis C for two decades, a disease that reportedly puts him in a “mental fog.” He will probably represent his majority-black Georgia district until he dies or retires.

Black racial consciousness dominates Hank Johnson’s thinking. In 2016, he refused to condemn Keith Ellison’s black nationalist past when asked by conservative reporters. He said there was nothing “really objectionable” about a plan to partition the United States and create a black ethnostate, calling it “a thoughtful discussion on possibilities.” While Mr. Johnson said he was not currently in favor of partition, he said that when he was in college “there was a time when I would have been.”

In 2013, Mr. Johnson argued that the National Rifle Association opposed President Obama’s gun control policies because a “black person being the president of the United States” was something the organization and its members “cannot get over.” In 2009, he condemned Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst against President Obama, when Mr. Wilson accused the president of lying about illegal immigrants benefiting from Obamacare. If Congressman Wilson were not “rebuked,” Congressman Johnson said, “we’ll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside intimidating people.” (Congressman Wilson was right: Illegal immigrants face no questions about immigration status when they patronize community health clinics funded by Obamacare.)

In his most recent speech, Mr. Johnson declared, “The lofty ideas of freedom and liberty that America was founded upon are being overtaken by a vigorous resurgence of bigotry, hate, cruelty, and ignorance.” Yet in the same speech, he said, “Ironically, the wise and learned Framers of our constitution never intended for the rights and privileges guaranteed thereunder to apply to dark-skinned human beings or to women. The white male property owners who were the great thinkers who framed the Constitution meant for its protections to apply only amongst themselves.” He can’t seem to make up his mind what America really is or was.

Mr. Johnson also warned that democracy was under attack as part of “a trend sweeping the world.” As examples he worried that “countries like Poland and Hungary, are electing far-right, conservative, nationalist leaders who are rolling back democracy.” This is not a critique of democracy; it is a black man from Georgia complaining that Poles and Hungarians are electing people he doesn’t like.

Mr. Johnson argued that “authoritarian” leaders in Eastern Europe are pushing laws that “do away with freedom of speech and freedom of the press and they are strangling the independence of their judicial systems.” Of course, Britain, France, Germany, and other Western European countries have already abolished free speech for citizens that question immigration too closely. Congressman Johnson seems to favor a similar system. In 2012, he stated “we need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations.” Now ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, the congressman is in a position to push such a measure.

Congressman Johnson also contradicted himself on globalism. He criticized the “Brexit” referendum because it was “right-wing, anti-immigrant inspired” and hurt world trade: “The financial hub of the European hub is leaving the European Union. That’s like New York seceding from the United States of America.” Yet later in the same speech, he said, “Right wing authoritarians are laisseiz-faire free market capitalists with insatiable thirst for more and more profits.” Lasseiz-faire capitalists would not support Brexit or President Trump’s tariff policy.

Conservative media have pounced on Congressman Johnson’s attack on the president’s supporters:

Donald Trump supporters are older, less educated, less prosperous, and they are dying early, their lifespans are decreasing, and many of them are dying from alcoholism, drug overdoses, liver disease, or simply a broken heart caused by economic despair.

Congressman Johnson also referred to majorities who vote because of “hatred, lies, ignorance and selfishness,” and who are supported the “powerful domestic enemy of democracy [that] has emerged from the dark shadows of America” — i.e. President Trump.

Mr. Johnson told his audience to watch out for the worst: “Tyranny in the form of slavery has been a reality in this country before and we must be diligent to ensure that it does not happen again.” This was like former vice president Joe Biden’s declaration to a black audience that the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket was “going to put y’all back in chains.”

Congressman Johnson compared President Trump to Adolf Hitler in several ways. He asked his audience to compare anti-Semitism with “all Latinos crossing our borders are rapists, drug dealers, and murderers. Does that sound familiar?” He added that “much like Hitler took over the Nazi party, Trump has taken over the Republican party,” and claimed that the Nazi regime was wanted to “unite the blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan German people against the Jews, the Italians, the Polish, anybody else.” Italy was Germany’s main ally in the Second World War.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) repeatedly compares Trump to Hitler: “Americans, particularly black Americans, can’t afford to make that same mistake about the harm that could be done by a man named Hitler or a man named Trump.” pic.twitter.com/av3zjGmPnO — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 3, 2019

Congressman Johnson also warned that the Supreme Court could endanger the liberties of non-whites, alluding to the high court’s recent approval of President Trump’s travel ban and to the relocation of Japanese during the Second World War. “Can you imagine how they decided who was Japanese and who was not?” Congressman Johnson asked. “They probably put all the oriental people in internment, whether or not you were from China or Thailand. They all look the same, right?” This did not happen, of course, and China was an ally during World War II. Life magazine even published a guide in December 1941 to help Americans tell “friendly Chinese” from “enemy alien Japs.”

Mr. Johnson has simple views: American history mostly racism, sexism, and discrimination, and Donald Trump is essentially Hitler.

The group that sponsored the speech, the Atlanta NAACP, made Congressman Johnson the keynote speaker for its jubilee celebration.

The Atlanta chapter wants to destroy Stone Mountain’s portrait of Confederate leaders, “whatever the cost,” and claims all Confederate memorials are “unpatriotic and traitorous.” It also enjoys corporate sponsorship from such corporations as Coca-Cola (a “gold level” sponsor) and Citizens Trust Bank (a “copper level” sponsor).

As for the congressman, the best thing that can be said in his defense is that he once believed in separation. He was right: We should not have to exist under the same government.