The rhetoric being employed by the GOP today — as we’ve witnessed in an overabundance at the first Republican Presidential Candidates debate on Aug. 23, but has been a steady, worsening drumbeat for the last decade — has become all but indistinguishable from the rhetoric levied by the worst authoritarians, demagogues, despots and dictators in human history. Need proof? Take the quiz below and see how you do.

Who said it?

1. “Do you want a patriot who speaks the truth? Do you want incremental reform, which is what you’re hearing about, or do you want revolution?” 
2. “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.”
3. “We’re not going to give up on destroying the healthcare system for the American people.”
4. “As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.”
5. “That’s God testing me. He said, ‘You know, you did it once.’ And I said, ‘Did I do a great job, God? I’m the only one who could do it.'”
6. “If there’s a chance that someone may be inclined to be an enemy of the country, then I think you have to err on the side of caution.”
7. “Better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake.”
8. “The whole point of their immigration policy is to … replace the population.”
9. “Jews will not replace us!”
10. “The sick are victims of their own imagination.”
11. “Fake News”
12. “Lying press!”
13. “I don’t care how sick you are. I don’t care if you just came back from the doctor, and he gave you the worst possible prognosis, meaning it’s over. You won’t be around in two weeks… Get out and vote. And then all we’re going to say is, ‘We love you and we will remember you always.” 
14. “It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence… and the economic independence of the nation.”
15. “The press is… Truly the enemy of the people.”
    

Answers:

1. Vivek Ramaswamy, Aug. 23, 2023
2. Mao Zedong, 1927
3. Rep. Paul Ryan, March 12, 2013
4. Adolf Hitler, April 12, 1921
5. Donald J. Trump, Aug. 17, 2020
6. Ron DeSantis, November 26, 2015
7. Pol Pot, slogan of the Khmer Rouge
8. Tucker Carlson, May 15, 2022
9. White supremacists’ chant from the Unite The Right rally, Aug. 11–12, 2017
10. Pol Pot, Aug. 1976
11. Donald J. Trump, countless times
12. Weimar Republic and then Nazi Germany propagandists
13. Donald J. Trump, Nov. 6, 2016
14. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
15. Donald J. Trump, April 5, 2019