CNN likens Trump's term in office to Nazis on Kristallnacht

CNN's Christiane Amanpour took the opportunity of the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht to compare Donald Trump to Nazi's purging Jews from Germany.

"This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened," Amanpour said from London. "It was the Nazi's warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity, and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth.

"After four years of a modern day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden/Harris team pledges a return to norms."

While Amanpour used the comparison to deride Trump's demeanor and bluster, the only group in the US that has undertaken book burnings, public intimidation and threats, and organizing people by their identity group are the protestors and rioters that have been seen in America's streets since 10 weeks into the pandemic, after the death of George Floyd.

Antifa and BLM protestors have smashed shop windows, looted, and set fire to businesses. They have destroyed churches. They have marched into residential neighbourhoods and launched threats and intimidation tactics. This has happened in Americas biggest cities, but also in ones that rarely make the news, like Kenosha, Rochester, Louisville. It was not Trump or his supporters that were in the streets setting fire to vehicles or destroying property. An avowed Antifa allegiant stalked and killed a Trump supporter in Portland.

Antifa, BLM, and their supporters are not Nazis, and they do not have the backing of the military or the state. They have been seen threatening diners at restaurants, people in their homes, have proclaimed that all white people are racist, and have demanded that people of differing identity groups be treated according to their identity and race as opposed to on their individual merit.

Amanpour takes the stance that so many wealthy, educated Americans have taken, and have conflated Trump's attitude, which they perceive as uncouth, rude, and barbarous, with a fascist dictator who would murder 6 million people for his own edification.

Trump's impact will undoubtedly be remembered by the kind of vitriol here perpetrated by Amanpour. Yet Trump has won Nobel Peace Prize nominations for his diligent efforts and successes at attaining peace in the Middle East between Israel, to which he has been a staunch ally and friend, and her Arab neighbours. In his 47 years serving as senator and then vice president, Biden hasn't gotten close to normalizing relations between Israel and the rest of the region.