White House Hosts Pundit Who Compares Left To Nazis

Image by Media Matters

By Daniel J. Solomon August 7, 2017

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon welcomed to his office last week a right-wing pundit who has claimed that the American left is descended from Nazism.

Dinesh D’Souza went to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Friday to share insights from his new book, “The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left,” with White House staff. He met with Bannon, the former proprietor of the right-wing website Breitbart News, and the controversial national security aide Sebastian Gorka. D’Souza is said to be in the runnong for a possible communications position there.

The American left “are the ones who use Nazi bullying and intimidating tactics and subscribe to a full-blown fascist ideology,” D’Souza writes in his book, which has been promoted on right-wing talk radio.

D’Souza was once a mainstream conservative figure, but has in the past decade written a number of polemics against former President Barack Obama and other left-wing politicians that have seen him largely exiled to the far-right fringes. He was convicted three years ago of making illegal donations to a New York Senate campaign.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO