Anyone who’s gotten beyond an 8th-grade American history class knows the labels “Republican” and “Democrat” have gone through a lot of changes. Lincoln was a Republican, as was Theodore Roosevelt, but the racists and anti-federalists in today’s GOP would hardly embrace their views on emancipation and land policy. George Wallace was a Democrat, but what Democratic politician today invokes his hate and nativism?
On top of that, until a few generations or so ago, bigots, misogynists and xenophobes existed in nearly every political party—as far back as the Founders, most of whom did not consider African Americans, women or indigenous people equal to rich white property owners.
Still, our nation’s tragic, complicated history of building its economy on the backs of black slaves, and stealing land from the original inhabitants, committing genocide in the process, did not stop convicted criminal and frequent Fox News talking head Dinesh D’Souza from claiming that Hitler got his worst ideas from America’s Democrats.
While more than a few pundits, journalists and bloggers compare Trump to fascists and nazis (see the stories equating his Boy Scout speech to a Hitler Youth Rally), D’Souza says it’s the opposite: Democrats are the party of fascism, which he explained this morning on Fox & Friends:
Fascism has always been on the left. I also point out three ideas that Hitler got, very destructive, genocidal ideas from the Democratic Party. So, one of them you mentioned, Hitler is sitting in Landsberg Prison and he's frustrated because the British and the French have conquered large parts of Asia and Africa, and Hitler goes, "There's nothing left for us." And then he says, "Wait a minute, in America, the Jacksonian Democrats drove the American Indians off their land, dispossessed them, enslaved them." He goes, "That's what I'm going to do. I’m going to throw the Poles, the Slavs, the eastern Europeans, the Russians off their land.
Sure, because Andrew Jackson was the world’s first ruler to drive people off their land, dispossess them and enslave them. Yup, it never happened before Jackson, so naturally that’s where Hitler got his ideas.
Fox host Steve Doocy neglected to mention that, among today’s Democratic party, Andrew Jackson is hardly considered a model president—a slave owner and Indian hater whose Native American policies led to brutal removals, including the infamous Trail of Tears.
Doocy might’ve pointed out that when President Obama suggested removing Jackson’s image from the twenty dollar bill, and replacing it with a woman (it would be Harriet Tubman), it was Donald Trump who objected, calling Obama’s move politically correct. Well, hell yes it was correct—politically, historically, and every other way!
Further, as the Jackson-Tubman controversy intensified, Republican Rep. Steven King of Iowa introduced legislation prohibiting the federal government from redesigning its currency, while Doocy’s own Fox & Friends, along with other Republicans, also objected to removing Jackson from the twenty. So who, really, is the party of Jackson?
Oh, and did I mention Donald Trump hung a portrait of the Indian killer in the Oval Office, and then made a pilgrimage to Jackson’s tomb shortly after being sworn in? "Trump is the first president to so openly admire and point to Jackson as a model,” said one of Jackson’s biographers.
So, D’Souza says Hitler got his racist, murderous policies from America’s Democrats, and to make his case he invokes a Democrat who many Americans have disowned, except President Trump and his Republican cronies.