The soft socialism of Hillary Clinton tends to grow up into the rabid Cold War socialism of Russia and Eastern Europe, and China.

Vilification of Donald Trump continues as the mainstream media’s favorite sport. Leading the pack are the cartoonists, who wallow in depicting him as the authoritarian National Socialist Adolf Hitler.



The funny little führry mustache is easy to draw, easy to recognize. These liberal-progressives, who are so quick to condemn Trump for his foul mouth, are willing to link Trump to the Nazis more quickly than you can say “hypocrite” auf Deutsch.

But Donald Trump, who certainly has a foul mouth, isn’t channeling the Third Reich. Trump is showcasing only … Donald Trump.

Not so Bernie Sanders. He is pushing the ideology of socialism. And socialism is essentially what Hillary Clinton is selling too, when she’s being serious. When she’s not, it’s just cheating, lying, and stealing, like Eva Perón. Why don’t the cartoonists depict the socialist Sanders as … well, that’s the problem. Who’s a recognizable socialist?

Nikita Who?

There are Communists, of course, and we’ll get to them, but they’re different — although the difference between Communists and socialists may be something like the difference between Sanders and Clinton.

Still, personifying socialism is a challenge. Karl Marx is considered the father of socialism, but how recognizable would a cartoon drawing of Marx be? Anyone who doesn’t know which U. S. president the city of Washington DC was named after is not likely to recognize a cartoon drawing of Marx. But how many of even the more astute people — people who at least could answer the question: What color was George Washington’s white horse? — would recognize a cartoon drawing of Marx?

Of course, the cartoonists could skip the intellectual-socialist phase of collectivist authoritarian government and go right to its brother, hard-core gulag Communism, but that doesn’t really solve their problem. Who’s a recognizable hard-core Communist barbarian? Joseph Stalin was certainly a barbarian, but is he recognizable today? Probably not. Nikita Khrushchev? Nikita who?

There’s Mao Tse Tung, of course, who was even more proficient than Stalin at killing people, but he was Chinese, and depicting a non-Caucasian in a funny way, even at Halloween, might encroach on the safe space so many people, most especially college students, seem to need today. So we’re stuck with Hitler.

Somehow Mass Murder Became Sexy

Hitler was a nasty piece of work, no doubt, but he was a junior, or really only a freshman, to Stalin when it came to killing people. A limerick by the late Robert Conquest is pertinent:

There was a great Marxist named Lenin,

Who did two or three million men in.

That’s a lot to have done in,

But where he did one in

That grand Marxist Stalin did ten in.

Conquest estimates Stalin probably killed not less than 13 to 15 million people—in pursuit of Marx’s socialism. Given socialism’s history, you might have thought Sanders would have come up with a different name for whatever his philosophy is.

Margaret Thatcher famously said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Oscar Wilde said the problem with socialism was that it took too many evenings. That line may not seem quite so funny to people who spent 20 years of evenings in the gulag.

Running out of other people’s money is certainly one problem with socialism, but not the only one. Socialism is inherently authoritarian, which is why it is the younger brother of Communism and a first cousin of the authoritarian progressivism of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama. And Bernie and Hillary. After all, how do the socialists get other people’s money? They take it. That means people will hide their money, which means the state must employ spies and guys, and guys with guns. And crooked agents like Lois Lerner to run crooked agencies like the Internal Revenue Service.

Even Soft Socialism Means Suffering

Even in socialism’s most benevolent form it brings suffering. In Canada, from 1993 to 2009, an estimated 25,000 to 63,000 women died prematurely from having to wait for medical treatment, according to the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank. The number for men is lower, which means socialism may be worse for women than for men.

Of course, 25,000 Canadians isn’t in Hitler’s league (six million Jews); and Hitler wasn’t in Stalin’s league (13 million Russians); and Stalin wasn’t in Mao’s league (65 million Chinese). But do numbers count? Was Stalin really worse than Hitler? 2.167 times worse?

Canada’s socialism is as benevolent as it gets. But socialism, however innocently conceived, tends to grow up to be like the rabid Cold War socialism of Russia and Eastern Europe, and China. The suffering then was legendary. But legends don’t travel well in 140 characters, so that suffering is almost unknown to the iPhone generation, who are Bernie Sanders’s and also probably Hillary Clinton’s supporters.

The socialism of Sanders and the progressivism of Clinton are inherently authoritarian, which is why, if any of the current presidential candidates deserve to be depicted as the German house painter turned National Socialist monster with the funny little mustache, those two do.