Rush Interview with Dinesh D'Souza
Dinesh D’Souza
What a timely interview — with one of the most erudite conservative thinkers of the era, whose must-read new book, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left, is especially important in the wake of what happened in Charlottesville:
RUSH: Dinesh D’Souza! How are you?
D’SOUZA: Rush, I am doing great. I’m on the book tour, and excited about this new one. It’s causing a stir, and I wanted it to, and so I’m glad it’s having its intended effect.
RUSH: Really? Why would calling the Democrats a bunch of Nazis be causing a stir? I can’t imagine.
D’SOUZA: [Laughs] As you know, in the last book, Hillary’s America, I took on the race card. The left has been playing that card very successfully for almost a generation. So successfully, in fact, that they persuaded a former head of the Republican National Committee to go to black churches and apologize for the Republican Party’s “racist history.” Even though the Republican Party has been the party of emancipation, shutting down the Klan, fighting segregation, and so on.
Since Trump’s election, I noticed that the left has pivoted from the race card to the fascism card or the Nazi card. It’s not an abandonment of the race card, Rush, because Hitler was a racist. So the race card is still alive, but it’s now inside the fascism card. And that’s what I take on in this new book.
RUSH: It’s kind of like the opioid crisis in traditionally Democrat strongholds. Somehow the Republicans and Trump are being blamed, when the cause of it, aside from doctors and pill prescription factors, is the lack of economic opportunity brought about by Democrat policy. They’re literally killing off their own voters, who aren’t working. They have to turn to something. Yet Republicans end up getting blamed for it. It’s almost like this civil rights issue.
By the way, welcome back to The Limbaugh Letter and the Limbaugh broadcast empire here. We always enjoy talking to you. Dinesh, tell us about the title of the book, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left. What’s the big lie? Can you explain without giving too much of the book away?
D’SOUZA: Absolutely. The tip of the iceberg is the accusation that Trump is a fascist, that conservatives are the neo-Nazi party. But the bigger lie is the notion that fascism and Nazism are phenomena of the right. This, of course, predates Trump. We’ve been hearing this, really, since World War II. This is part of the progressive narrative that is taught in the textbooks; it’s almost the conventional wisdom. Even many conservatives believe it.
Now, what gives the lie a plausibility is that in World War II, the Soviet Union, the communists, were on one side; the fascists — Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany — were on the other side. So if communism is on the left, then fascism seems to be on the right. But the reason that’s misleading is that sometimes ideologies that are on the same side, that are very close to each other, that differ only on fine points of doctrine, nevertheless get into very bitter fights over doctrine or over territory and power.
Think, for example, of the centuries-old fights between the Catholics and the Protestants, or even between the Shia and the Sunni. The Shia and the Sunni are both inside the house of Islam, they agree on 99 percent of their beliefs, and yet they’ve been fighting for centuries.
RUSH: I’ve often thought that most people make the mistake, Dinesh, when they try to chart ideologies. They do it in a circle. I don’t think you can. You have to use a straight line, and you put moderate or centrism right in the middle. And communism, socialism, and Nazism are all going to be on the left side of that line. There’s no connection to the right; they don’t ever connect with conservativism.
D’SOUZA: You couldn’t be more right about that. Recently I heard Bernie Sanders railing about “right-wing extremists.” It got me thinking: who’s a right-wing extremist? If you put state power on the left side of the line, then on the right side of the line you would have individual rights and limited government. So a right-wing extremist would want virtually no government, going from street to street and uprooting every stop sign. That’s right-wing extremism. The three great collectivist movements of the 20th century were all of the left: progressivism, communism, and fascism.
“The tip of the iceberg is the false
accusation that Trump is a
fascist, that conservatives are
neo-Nazis. But the bigger lie
is that fascism and Nazism
are phenomena of the right.”
— Dinesh D’Souza
RUSH: Look, you’ve bitten off a lot here, Dinesh, and I bet they’re shocked. I mean, they convicted you on that flimsy campaign donation thing, and I’m sure they thought they had intimidated you into silence — here you’ve come roaring back. And you actually “went there.” You are trying to overcome decades of a misappropriated narrative, and you’re now making a direct connection between the left and Nazism.
Our side is scared to death of the left’s skills at messaging, and nobody I know on our side would tackle this. Do you think it’s possible to rework the definitions of “fascism” and “Nazism” back to their proper historical meaning as leftist ideologies? Do you think this book can actually get that process going, and make it work?
D’SOUZA: Rush, I think it can. Here’s why: It’s one thing to have an argument over definitions. Part of what’s happened is that the left has, after World War II, redefined fascism into something that it’s really not. So they’ll say something like: “Trump is a fascist because he’s an ultranationalist. Trump wants to make America great again in the same way that Hitler wanted to make Germany great again.”
The problem with this is that nationalism is not really a defining feature of fascism at all. I’m from India, and Gandhi, the founder of modern India, was a nationalist. Mandela was a nationalist in South Africa. All the anticolonial leaders were nationalists. Winston Churchill and de Gaulle were nationalists. Obviously, these people aren’t fascists. So, fascism means something else; it doesn’t mean nationalism. The core meaning of fascism is the powerful centralized state.
Mussolini, who established the first fascist regime in the world, put it very well when he said: “Everything within the state, and nothing outside the state.” What he really meant is that the state is like an organism, a living creature, and each individual is a cell inside that organism. The cell has no value of itself; its only value is what it does to serve the larger organism. Now, does that sound like the platform of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party?
RUSH: Well, exactly. Look at this recent Google firing, a good example of leftist fascism. The Google employee who wrote that so-called manifesto was fired for putting politically incorrect ideas about diversity in a memo that went companywide. And the fascist anti-free-speech mentality running rampant in universities is infecting other areas of American society, including corporations.
So people who claim they stand for diversity and openness and tolerance, actually stand for none of it, and end up calling the people who are trying to propose openness and tolerance “fascists.” The state of education in the country today is such that you’re right, people who think believing in your own country and wanting it to be great is fascism. I marvel that they’ve had as much success with this as they’ve had.
D’SOUZA: Yes, the Google incident
What a timely interview — with one of the most erudite conservative thinkers of the era, whose must-read new book, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left, is especially important in the wake of what happened in Charlottesville:
RUSH: Dinesh D’Souza! How are you?
D’SOUZA: Rush, I am doing great. I’m on the book tour, and excited about this new one. It’s causing a stir, and I wanted it to, and so I’m glad it’s having its intended effect.
RUSH: Really? Why would calling the Democrats a bunch of Nazis be causing a stir? I can’t imagine.
D’SOUZA: [Laughs] As you know, in the last book, Hillary’s America, I took on the race card. The left has been playing that card very successfully for almost a generation. So successfully, in fact, that they persuaded a former head of the Republican National Committee to go to black churches and apologize for the Republican Party’s “racist history.” Even though the Republican Party has been the party of emancipation, shutting down the Klan, fighting segregation, and so on.
Since Trump’s election, I noticed that the left has pivoted from the race card to the fascism card or the Nazi card. It’s not an abandonment of the race card, Rush, because Hitler was a racist. So the race card is still alive, but it’s now inside the fascism card. And that’s what I take on in this new book.
RUSH: It’s kind of like the opioid crisis in traditionally Democrat strongholds. Somehow the Republicans and Trump are being blamed, when the cause of it, aside from doctors and pill prescription factors, is the lack of economic opportunity brought about by Democrat policy. They’re literally killing off their own voters, who aren’t working. They have to turn to something. Yet Republicans end up getting blamed for it. It’s almost like this civil rights issue.
By the way, welcome back to The Limbaugh Letter and the Limbaugh broadcast empire here. We always enjoy talking to you. Dinesh, tell us about the title of the book, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left. What’s the big lie? Can you explain without giving too much of the book away?
D’SOUZA: Absolutely. The tip of the iceberg is the accusation that Trump is a fascist, that conservatives are the neo-Nazi party. But the bigger lie is the notion that fascism and Nazism are phenomena of the right. This, of course, predates Trump. We’ve been hearing this, really, since World War II. This is part of the progressive narrative that is taught in the textbooks; it’s almost the conventional wisdom. Even many conservatives believe it.
Now, what gives the lie a plausibility is that in World War II, the Soviet Union, the communists, were on one side; the fascists — Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany — were on the other side. So if communism is on the left, then fascism seems to be on the right. But the reason that’s misleading is that sometimes ideologies that are on the same side, that are very close to each other, that differ only on fine points of doctrine, nevertheless get into very bitter fights over doctrine or over territory and power.
Think, for example, of the centuries-old fights between the Catholics and the Protestants, or even between the Shia and the Sunni. The Shia and the Sunni are both inside the house of Islam, they agree on 99 percent of their beliefs, and yet they’ve been fighting for centuries.
RUSH: I’ve often thought that most people make the mistake, Dinesh, when they try to chart ideologies. They do it in a circle. I don’t think you can. You have to use a straight line, and you put moderate or centrism right in the middle. And communism, socialism, and Nazism are all going to be on the left side of that line. There’s no connection to the right; they don’t ever connect with conservativism.
D’SOUZA: You couldn’t be more right about that. Recently I heard Bernie Sanders railing about “right-wing extremists.” It got me thinking: who’s a right-wing extremist? If you put state power on the left side of the line, then on the right side of the line you would have individual rights and limited government. So a right-wing extremist would want virtually no government, going from street to street and uprooting every stop sign. That’s right-wing extremism. The three great collectivist movements of the 20th century were all of the left: progressivism, communism, and fascism.
“The tip of the iceberg is the false
accusation that Trump is a
fascist, that conservatives are
neo-Nazis. But the bigger lie
is that fascism and Nazism
are phenomena of the right.”
— Dinesh D’Souza
RUSH: Look, you’ve bitten off a lot here, Dinesh, and I bet they’re shocked. I mean, they convicted you on that flimsy campaign donation thing, and I’m sure they thought they had intimidated you into silence — here you’ve come roaring back. And you actually “went there.” You are trying to overcome decades of a misappropriated narrative, and you’re now making a direct connection between the left and Nazism.
Our side is scared to death of the left’s skills at messaging, and nobody I know on our side would tackle this. Do you think it’s possible to rework the definitions of “fascism” and “Nazism” back to their proper historical meaning as leftist ideologies? Do you think this book can actually get that process going, and make it work?
D’SOUZA: Rush, I think it can. Here’s why: It’s one thing to have an argument over definitions. Part of what’s happened is that the left has, after World War II, redefined fascism into something that it’s really not. So they’ll say something like: “Trump is a fascist because he’s an ultranationalist. Trump wants to make America great again in the same way that Hitler wanted to make Germany great again.”
The problem with this is that nationalism is not really a defining feature of fascism at all. I’m from India, and Gandhi, the founder of modern India, was a nationalist. Mandela was a nationalist in South Africa. All the anticolonial leaders were nationalists. Winston Churchill and de Gaulle were nationalists. Obviously, these people aren’t fascists. So, fascism means something else; it doesn’t mean nationalism. The core meaning of fascism is the powerful centralized state.
Mussolini, who established the first fascist regime in the world, put it very well when he said: “Everything within the state, and nothing outside the state.” What he really meant is that the state is like an organism, a living creature, and each individual is a cell inside that organism. The cell has no value of itself; its only value is what it does to serve the larger organism. Now, does that sound like the platform of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party?
RUSH: Well, exactly. Look at this recent Google firing, a good example of leftist fascism. The Google employee who wrote that so-called manifesto was fired for putting politically incorrect ideas about diversity in a memo that went companywide. And the fascist anti-free-speech mentality running rampant in universities is infecting other areas of American society, including corporations.
So people who claim they stand for diversity and openness and tolerance, actually stand for none of it, and end up calling the people who are trying to propose openness and tolerance “fascists.” The state of education in the country today is such that you’re right, people who think believing in your own country and wanting it to be great is fascism. I marvel that they’ve had as much success with this as they’ve had.
D’SOUZA: Yes, the Google incident
If you want to understand the causes of today's combination of statism and ideological street violence and their similarities to 1920s and 30s European fascism you should read the analyses and predictions from Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff.
Ayn Rand analyzed the anti-reason, altruist, collectivist, and statist roots of the similarities between fascism and the increasingly violent American left in her 1965 "The Cashing in: The Student 'Rebellion'", 1970 "The Left: Old and New", and 1965 "The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus". In 1962 her "The Fascist New Frontier" analyzed the ideological trends in the Kennedy administration. These are reprinted in her anthologies Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Return of the Primitive, and The Ayn Rand Column.
As early as 1944 she wrote in a letter to an author she liked: "If you are disappointed in all the socialists you know—are you fooling yourself by thinking that they betray their ideal? Don't you realize that they are produced by their ideal, that they are its logical, consistent exponents—and the only types who could be? Do you really think that all the horrors perpetrated by altruists and socialists were due to the mistakes or hypocrisy of their leaders? ... They were not hypocritical, nor were they 'mistaken.' They were frighteningly consistent - in true accordance with their idea. That idea could produce no other results.... Fascism, Nazism, Communism and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme—collectivism." [Emphasis added]
Leonard Peikoff's 1982 book The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America https://estore.aynrand.org/p/520/the-... is an expansion of his lecture series given in response to the the New Left violent takeovers of university buildings and more as it expanded in the late 1960s -- which was the precursor to today's leftist violence. His "Nazism and Contemporary America: The Ominous Parallels", was described in part: The course of 3 lectures "asks and answers the question: What is required - economically, politically, morally, psychologically and philosophically -- to turn a country into a totalitarian dictatorship, how did the Nazis do it, and is it happening here?" The "lectures present the ideology of the Nazis, and demonstrate that it was indispensable to the central policies and practices which they employed to acquire and retain totalitarian power in Germany. Occasional references to Italian Fascism and Russian Communism supplement the discussion of Nazism".
The rise to power of the Nazis -- the National Socialist Party -- was a political compromise between the German left and right: the left was communist and the right was heavily traditionalist, religious, and nationalist. Both were anti-reason, altruist, collectivist and statist. There was no "right" in the sense of American individualism (to the extent today's "right" is consistent with individualism at all); in that sense the Nazis were leftists, but in the context of Germany the Nazis were a combination of both left and right.
The American progressives in the 'Red decade' not only idolized the communist "idealism", they extolled the 'efficiency' of the fascists in the 1920s and 30s (Mussolini "made the trains run on time"). The German battle between the communists and the fascists was an internal power struggle by collectivists. Following the breakup of the Hitler-Stalin pact, which the apologists for communism had favored, the communists propagandized everyone opposed to them, including capitalism, as "fascist". The communist sympathizers in America followed like lemmings.
We still hear it today as progressives -- now too embarrassed by both European fascism and the Soviet communists -- accuse their opponents of "fascism". The recent resurrection of the German communist Antifa movement within the American left is the latest example. It is why they lump the relatively inconsequential 'white supremacists' as representative of an individualist American right under the anti-concept "alt right". But the ominous parallels between America today and the German Wiemar Republic is at root the intellectual dominance of anti-reason and sacrifice.