Regardless of who wins the American presidential election, the most interesting and constructive question surrounding this grim circus can already be asked and answered – namely, Where the Hell did Donald Trump come from?

There’s been a wash of articles with headlines reading ‘How (x) Created Trump’. The Federalist explains how Leftism is responsible for The Donald’s rise. ‘Au contraire,’ says the New York Times; ‘’twas the stupid party did the deed.’ Business Insider splits the difference and blames the Republican establishment. And this is just a small sample. I literally googled ‘how created donald trump’ and pulled the first couple of hits I got. There are 73 million more if you’d like to go poke around.

But my answer has always been the same: the liberal media created Donald Trump, virtually from scratch. He’s a New Yorker cartoonist’s caricature of a Republican come to life. As I wrote in these pages back in March:

The GOP has gobbled up the Left’s caricature of itself. As with all internalised oppressions — racist, sexist, homophobic, conservaphobic, whatever — it’s born in no small part of exhaustion. Republicans are understandably tired of fighting the Ebenezer Scrooge-meets-Elmer Fudd stereotype they’ve been assigned by the liberal media.

And so, in the current election cycle, they’ve decided to quit fighting the tide and support the most belligerent, inarticulate, plutomaniacal candidate they could find. They’ve internalised the most unjust parody of American conservatism; and when its avatar appeared, like some neo-feudal Dalai Lama, in the person of Donald Trump, they went absolutely mad for him. It was self-loathing at first sight.

Maybe you agree with me, or maybe you don’t. But just a week ago we were delivered a powerful reminder of how dangerously pervasive the Left’s slanderous characterization of Republicans really is — a reminder that appears already forgotten in the face of the wave anti-Trumpery. On the night of October 16-17, the Orange County GOP headquarters in Durham, North Carolina was firebombed; scrawled on an adjacent building was graffiti that read ‘NAZI REPUBLICANS LEAVE TOWN OR ELSE’.

There’s a twisted logic to this sort of terrorism. From George W. Bush to Trump himself (and even Tony Abbott), leftists have long slandered conservatives by comparing them to Hitler. And as the comparative virtues of killing baby Hitler was a hot-button topic in the Republican primary, we can hardly blame anyone for wishing to stop the rise of his theoretical successor. So, by the transitive property, ‘The Republicans are Nazis; it would be morally acceptable to use violence to prevent the Nazis from attaining power; therefore, it would be morally acceptable to use violence to prevent the Republicans from attaining power.’

Were the first principle true, I’d have trouble condemning the Durham bomber. I’d expect him to be legally prosecuted, yes, but I won’t shed a tear for those who admire or emulate the third-worst mass murderer in human history.

The problem, of course, is that Republicans aren’t Nazis. Not even close. The Republicans are the only major party who believe in the right for law-abiding citizens to bear arms, which might have saved the lives forty-nine gay and lesbian Americans from Omar Mateen’s rampage. They’re the staunchest proponent of Israel’s right to defend itself against Palestinian terrorism. Trump himself supported Brexit, and thus the formation of a German-dominated European superstate. And the list goes on and on. Republicans are, in fact, the political grouping that least resembles the Nazis of auld.

Yet none of this matters to those pundits who’ve recklessly and shamelessly compared conservatism to National Socialism. They’ve convinced a huge swath of the public that each successive Republican administration is another step towards the Fourth Reich. And the Durham terrorist attack is the natural conclusion of their propaganda.

One would like to think that, witnessing the grave repercussions of their lies, liberals will dispense with this particularly egregious hyperbole. I’m not holding my breath.