So the GOP office in Hillsborough, North Carolina was firebombed overnight Saturday into Sunday. On an adjacent building the perpetrators spray painted a swastika and the words "Nazi Republicans get out of town or else".
I’m not one who gives into conspiracy theories, but the first thought that came to my mind upon hearing of the firebombing was: this seems as suspicious as the Reichstag Fire in 1933.
In that incident the fire was blamed on a young Communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, who was eventually tried and executed. Hitler (who had become Chancellor of Germany less than a month earlier) used the Reichstag Fire as an excuse to go to President Hindenburg and ask for a few little things to be suspended. Little things like most basic rights; freedom of the press, public assembly, habeas corpus. Just to name a few. The sad part is that these basic rights were never re-instated during the rest of the Nazi reign.
Admittedly, the county in which the North Carolina firebombing took place (Orange County) is heavily Democratic, having given President Obama 70% of their vote in the 2012 election. Certainly there is no love loss for Republicans there.
But something seems amiss. This sort of violence has not been the modus operandi of Democrats in this election cycle. Maybe in 1968, but not this year. This sort of violence has all the earmarks of another party that’s home to deplorables in 2016. Would they possibly try to gain sympathy in a swing state by firebombing one of their own party offices? Nothing surprises me this year.
Though never proven, the Reichstag Fire is often thought to be an early example of a False Flag operation — carried out by the Nazis in an effort to gain further political and social control. The fire at the GOP office in Hillsborough caused me a moment of pause today. It’s unfortunate in this great country that the thought even entered my mind. Yet it did.
