mr. d'souza, you write in your book that if you read the nazi platform without knowing its source, you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were reading the 2016 platform of the democratic party. >> guest: the nazis issued an official platform. it had, i believe, 25 points to it. and if you go down the list, you basically realize that they want a minimum wage, they want to have a national health care system, they -- as you read down, you bin to realize, wait a minute, this runs against everything i've been taught. because we've been taught, this has been an idea since world war ii, that fascism is on the right, that fascism is somehow a right-wing phenomena. hitler was a right-winger. but you realize this is collectivism. this bears an eerie resemblance to socialism and to a lot of the -- if not the ingredients of obama, certainly the ingredients of elizabeth warren, bernie sanders wing of the democratic party. >> host: so, very quickly, a definition of fascism, socialism, marxism. how close -- and how close are the political philosophies? >> guest: socialism refers to the workers owning the means of production. later communism talked about the state owning the means of production. fascism is very similar. fascism simply mean that is the state, while not owning the means of production, directs them. so state-directed capitalism, that's fascism. modern progressivism is more like fascism than it is like socialism because, if you think about it, let's look at obamacare. in obamacare does the government own the hospitals? no. does it own, does it pay the doctors directly? no. there are private companies that do that, but the government controls them. so modern progressivism being state-directed capitalism is closer to fascism than socialism. >> host: you spend quite a bit of time with benito mussolini in your book. why? >> guest: many people link fascism with hitler, but oddly enough hitler never called himself a fascist. if you read mine cam of, the word -- mine camp -- hitler wanted to marry nationalism with socialism. but the key difference was that hitler was a racist. hitler was an anti-semite, and he made this anti-semitism and bigotry a central part of national socialism. mussolini was not a racist. mussolini ultimately represents you may say pure farcism. and -- fascism. and mussolini came to power in the 1920s, hitler came to power in 1933. hitler revered mussolini, he said mussolini was the last of the caesars. so you're looking for fascism at the beginning, at its point of origin, you have to look at mussolini. >> host: and you're saying that fascism is a left-wing political cause. >> guest: fascism was recognized to be left wing not only by the fascists, but by the anti-fascists. and this is all at time. later there was a revisionism in which progressive writers and historian the redefined fascism and tried to move into it the right-wing column. but take mussolini. mussolini was the most famous marxist from italy. he was the leader of the italian socialist party, he was the editor of its magazine, and his fascism grew out of socialism. essentially, mussolini goes the prophesies of marx are not coming true. why. and out of that exploration fascism grew out of marxism. so i'm not actually saying anything all that controversial. this is actual undisputed history. there were dozens of original fascists in germany, in italy, in spain, in england. all of them came from the left. they were from the labour party in england, the socialist party in france, the communist party, one of mussolini's closest advisers was the head of the communist party, and after the war he went back to being a communist. so this is the actual history that i excavate in the book. why? because it has burning relevance to what's going on today. today we have anti-fascists who dress like fascists, they look exactly like the black shirts of mussolini, they behave like fascists. they go out and they beat people up, they burn things, they overturn cars, they block speakers from speaking. this is exactly what the fascists did, but they call themselves anti-fascists, so they claim to be fighting fascism. how to you fight fascism while doing fascist stuff? that's the paradox i unravel in the book. >> host: why do you think that since world war ii, as you say, we've considered fascism, naziism to be on the right? >> guest: the fascism in the '30s was very much in bed with the left and, in fact, when finish here's a small tip. when fdr came to power, he did not add -- admire hitler, but he revered mussolini. fdr felt mussolini was much ahead of him in implementing progressive principles. fdr would dispatch delegation toss italy to study mussolini's fascism to bring it here. so all of this is the actual history of our country. now, after world war ii, you know, the gas chambers, auschwitz, naziism and fascism became morally abhorrent. they became associated with the holocaust, so the progressives who were coming to dominate the academy, they were like, whoa, if people associate fascism with the left, we're through. so we've got the figure out how to move fascism into the right-wing column. now, in order to pull that off you need to be dominant in academia, pretty dominant in the media. in other words, you have to be able to pull off a big lie. and the big lie is itself a fascist concept that was promulgated by hitler. hitler says the people can catch a small lie because they can compare it to their experience. but if you give them a big lie or, it's really hard to get your head around it. it's so big that you don't know where to attack it. it encompasses a lot of smaller lies. part of my expose in the book is to show one of the biggest lies we're living with now, a fascist big lie, is that fascism is wrongly attributed to the right whereas it has always been understood to belong on the left. >> host: you call it transference. >> guest: it's a phenomenon in psychology in which people take things that they do and blame them on other people. hitler did this. hitler say that is the jews pose a threat to the world. hitler posed a threat. the jews are trying to take over and make everybody like them. that's what the nazis did. when they took over, they enforced a cultural conformity across germany. so ironically, hitler was taking his own homicidal, destructive, power-hungry ideas and trying to foist them on a scapegoat, the jews. we're seeing the same thing in politics today. the left is blaming the right for patterns of behavior that it itself invented and indulges in. >> host: in "the big lie," you also have a chapter on george soros. >> guest: yes. it's not a chapter on soros, but it's a section on soros because soros claims to be the great anti-fascist. in fact, soros funds a lot of the anti-fascist parties. and what i do is i say, okay, well, here's some -- you know, soros will talk about, for example, the fact that he's inspired by libertarianism, by carl topper and the open society. in reality as you look at the soros' past, his sort of secret history, if you will, you realize that soros -- along with a mentor of his -- was a kind of collection boy for hitler. this seems harsh to say, but it's true. it was discussed by steve kroft in an interview with soros in which -- >> host: for "60 minutes." >> guest: he says you would go around confiscating the property of the jews and turning it over to the nazis, right? and how can you feel good about that. and soros goes, i don't feel bad about that at all. he goes, let's remember that if i didn't do it, somebody would do it, right? now, this gets me thinking because, because i remember a very powerful scene. this actually involves joseph mention la, the killer of auschwitz, the crazed doctor. he escaped after the war and went to argentina, and one of his sons tracked him down and confronted his father and said, dad, how could you do the things you did in auschwitz? and guess what he said? if i didn't do them, somebody else would have. in other words, here were these captive people, and i as a scientist simply saw the opportunity to make them into research specimens, so don't blame me because the bad stuff would have gone on anyway. so here is an eerie parallel between what i would call the mengele defense and george soros out of his own mouth. i don't blame anybody for what they did at the age of 15, but as a mature george soros now reflecting upon his past, there's a lot of dark secrets there. >> host: now, dinesh d'souza, tell me if i'm wrong in think reading of this, but do you connect mengele to planned parenthood in some hidden arc? >> guest: i connect them in this way, that the collectivists on the left have always had a problem, and that is what do we do with disposable people. the collectivist view is we at the top are going to run society, but there are some disposable people we need to get rid of. now, remember that the nazis started not with gas chambers, they started with sterilization. and where do they get those ideas? they got them directly from the left. the american left. why? pause the american left was -- because the american left was in the forefront of the eugenics movement. margaret sanger was an inspiration for the early nazis, and in 1933 the nazis imposed forced sterilization. remember the american eugenicists supported not voluntary, but mandatory sterilization. the nazis then moved on from that. the next idea was euthanasia. where'd they get that? from the american progressive. american progressives were saying if sterilization doesn't work, euthanasia. and one of the american eugenicist leaders said we need gas chambers. he literally advocated gas chambers, and the nazis got it from him, from him. now, mengele, when he went to argentina, was in hiding. he was sheltered by neo-nazis there and they told him, listen, if you want to support yourself, you need a profession. he became an abortionist. i'm not kidding. he set up shop as an abortionist in south america and carried out abortions until his death by drowning. so it is not a flight of the imagination. there actually is a deep connection between the same kind of eugenics philosophy that bred margaret sanger on the one hand and the nazi sterilization programs on the other. >> host: this is dinesh d'souza's latest book, "the big lie: exposing the nazi roots of the american left." thank you for being on booktv. >> guest: my pleasure. >> and it's thanksgiving weekend on booktv, four days of nonfiction authors and books. this holiday you'll see many recent book fairs and festivals including the national book festival and the brooklyn book festival as well as past "in depth" programs with eric ma taxis and lynne olson and last week's national book awards. also this weekend on our "after words" program, christopher bedford examines donald trump's leadership as a businessman, politician and president of the united states. and rebecca frazier provides a history of the mayflower voyage and the lives of settlers through the eyes of the winslows, a puritan family that travels to america in 1620. that's a few of the programs you'll see this thanksgiving weekend on booktv on c-span2. television for serious readers. for a complete schedule, visit booktv.org. >> here's a look at some books being published this week. in 1917, best selling author arthur herman explores how president woodrow wilson and vladimir lenden reshape -- lenin reshaped geopolitics. roger kimball presents a collection of essays on populism. also being published this week, listening in by cybersecurity expert susan landdau. in the book she looks at the future of cyber threats. george mason university law professor f.h. buckley examines how corruption is impacting the economy in "the republic of virtue." and in "clashing over commerce," dartmouth college economics professor douglas irwin looks at the history of united states trade policy. look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on c-span2. .. southern festival of books. it's my pleasure to have the opportunity to introduce jonathan eig, this morning. an author i really really admire. i have been reading his work for years and he's here to talk by his new book, his biography of mohammed ali.

Related Keywords

Italy , Germany , United States , Spain , Argentina , Las Vegas , Nevada , France , America , American , Roger Kimball , Mussolini , Hitler , George Soros , Douglas Irwin , Lynne Olson , Elizabeth Warren , Woodrow Wilson , Margaret Sanger , Benito Mussolini , Rebecca Frazier ,