Far left salami tactics are working

Paul Gottfried in Chronicles draws an apt comparison with the Communist salami tactics in Eastern Europe 1945-48 and what is happening now.
'One does not have to relish the Confederate cause to distinguish it from the Third Reich. Indeed, one can lament the South’s decision to secede, and one may surely disapprove of the practice of slavery. But it is madness or an act of political mischief to equate the Southern battle flag with the symbol of one of the most murderous movements in human history? Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were hardly predecessors of Nazi leaders.
'After World War II, the Communists gradually discredited all opposition on the right as tainted with fascist associations. They repeatedly characterized non-Communists as “fascist” and as being somehow related to Hitler’s Third Reich. They did it by slicing away at the margins of their opposition, turning a mainstream conservative establishment against its right flank. This resort to a fictitious guilt-by-association allowed the Communists to discredit any resistance that stood in their way while assuming total control. Critics of this strategy use the German slang term anbräunen (“browning”) to describe how the already dominant left invests everything that opposes it with the brown hue of the Brownshirts of the Third Reich.
'The totalitarian left, whether Communist or woke, has never abandoned the privilege of deciding for the right what is fascist or pro-Nazi. Those who avail themselves of this privilege always conceal their ultimate end, which is total domination, achieved by smearing one’s opposition with the Nazi brush. In the end, the retreating opposition surrenders everything out of fear of being identified with fascism or its updated version of “systemic white racism.”
'Here we come back to the American conservative establishment, which, despite minor skirmishes, continues to retreat until it has become, as I have noted in Chronicles, the “late-coming left.” The equation of the Confederate battle flag with the Swastika clearly represents the woke left’s attempt to “Nazify” something that it wishes to render unacceptable, and this move has met with no significant pushback.

'Do Fox News conservatives find it inappropriate to make a needed distinction between a longtime American historical symbol and a symbol of genocidal crimes? Have they become so craven that even here they give ground to the left? Such gutlessness has no place in what claims to be the right. These questions needed to be addressed. Otherwise, the salami tactics will go on until an already weakened opposition no longer looks even remotely credible.'