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Jan. 13, 2025 - Dinesh D'Souza
45:22
THE FIRE NEXT TIME Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep999
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Thank you.
Thank you.
So many excuses, so much dodging of responsibility.
I'm going to pin down who's to blame.
I'm going to talk about what the real lesson is for the future.
And actor Stelio Cervantes joins me.
He's in L.A. He's going to talk about the fires, but also about his new film, which opens in a thousand theaters later this month.
It's called Between Borders.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
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The fires continue to rage in California and the normal explanations that are being surfaced or coughed up by the media don't really make any sense at all.
In fact, I think the striking thing about all this is the Avoidance of accountability on the part of Democratic officials in the state, starting with the governor, continuing with Mayor Karen Bass, and there's a lot of blame to go around.
I saw a recent interview with the LA Fire Chief, Kristen Crowley, and she said that she warned the mayor that There was $17 million cut from the department's budget, and this would, quote, I'm now quoting from a memo, severely limit the department's capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.
So for anyone who thinks they didn't know, yes, they did know, but this was not important to them.
They had other priorities.
What are those priorities?
Well, one of them clearly is DEI. And you see that, well, I don't know if you've seen the picture of the three Karens.
The three top officials are essentially all, first of all, all female.
They happen all to be named Karen or some variation of the name Karen.
One of them seems manifestly to be a trans.
And so...
This is what they go for.
They go for diversity.
And in fact, you can see videos of the fire chief talking about the fact that this is her, quote, real passion, diversity.
And so they're not emphasizing getting firemen.
They're probably turning away white guys who want to be firemen because the department is not diverse enough.
This is affirmative action in the way it's practiced in our time.
To get an idea of what this DEI looks like, here is a bill that is making its way through the Connecticut legislature.
Now we're talking about Connecticut, not California, but I'm giving you a sample of what DEI looks like.
And this is a bill that says we want to create a, quote, more diverse class of firefighters.
How do we do that?
Lower physical standards for women.
Specifically, women no longer have to do the, quote, 50-pound simulated vest test component of the physical ability test.
I mean, think about this.
Someone noted that when you carry firefighting gear, basic gear, not any add-ons, just the basic gear, it's 59 pounds.
So if you can't carry 50 pounds in the test, How can you actually function as a firefighter?
But the DEI people don't care about this because to them it's not about firefighting.
It's about diversity.
It's also another priority for the Democrats, the environment.
As Trump himself pointed out in his interview with Joe Rogan, there is essentially an ocean of water that comes crashing into the United States from Canada every year.
And this is water that's from melted snow.
It can be easily channeled and focused as to where the needs are.
Why is California chronically short of water?
Well, that's a policy decision by California to divert the water.
And apparently the reason is to appease the environmentalists.
Or not to say appease the environmentalists as though the environmentalists are out there and there's some pressure group.
They are out there.
The people running California see themselves as environmentalists.
And so they're like, no, we're not appeasing anybody.
We're doing what we think is right.
We are following the environmentalist playbook.
And we don't care if billions of tons of water are all just basically channeled right into the Pacific Ocean.
We don't need it.
What?
Why would we need it?
Could there be a fire?
Well, this is how they think.
So these are real villains because...
These are the people who are responsible not for creating the fire, and that's a whole separate issue.
How did the fires get started?
People go, well, it's due to climate change.
Well, this climate change starting...
Independent fires in different spots in California?
I mean, does climate change have that kind of surgical precision?
Let's start one fire in Pacific Palisades.
Let's start another fire over here, another fire over there.
I have in front of me a kind of a map of the dispersion of these fires.
Obviously, climate change has no ability to do that.
And naturally, the officials in California are trying to dodge blame.
Here is Gavin Newsom.
There's so much mistrust and finger pointing.
Let's stop the finger pointing.
I'm not interested in who's to blame.
Whenever I hear this phrase, I'm not interested in who's to blame, I know I'm looking at someone who is to blame.
Because people who are to blame always want to move the discussion away from who is to blame.
They want to discuss, oh, I'm only interested in how we move forward.
Yeah, but before we do that, let's figure out who the culprits are, because frankly, if you're responsible for the mess, maybe you're not the guy to lead us forward in solving the problem.
That's Gavin Newsom.
Now, we also see from a lot of people in the media, oh, you know, let's not point fingers of blame.
The Democrats really can't do anything.
There's nothing we could have done to prevent this.
Stop right there.
Let's say that's true.
There's nothing you could do to prevent it.
So, what you're saying is that human action is helpless in the face of these relatively local fires in the greater Los Angeles area.
Okay?
If human beings are so helpless in the face of these fires, what makes you think you can regulate the entire temperature of the planet?
Because after all, fighting climate change is about essentially monitoring, regulating, limiting, controlling the temperature of the whole globe.
And if you can't do it in localized California, what makes you think you can do it universally?
How stupid can you be?
How arrogant can you be?
So this is disingenuousness of a very high level.
I'm reminded a little bit of these Hollywood movies because, you know, in movies, they always portray the greedy businessman.
As the evil guy.
Even if it's a terrorist movie, notice the terrorists are never like Islamic terrorists.
They tend to be like some Eastern European guy from some obscure Eastern European country because it's relatively painless for Hollywood to dump on that country, the former Romania, Turkmenistan.
These are people from Turkmenistan as opposed to these are people from Iran.
These are people from Syria.
These are people from Turkey.
The places that actually are likely to spawn the kind of bad guys for these types of plots.
But you notice one type of villain that rarely, if ever, appears in a Hollywood movie.
The bureaucrat.
The incompetent, vicious, callous bureaucrat is very rarely the villain of Hollywood movies.
And yet, those are the villains in the fire scandal in California.
Now, here is Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong.
He is the CEO of the LA Times.
Not a bad guy, by the way.
In fact, he's the very guy who fired or encouraged to resign the entire editorial board of the LA Times.
This guy bought the LA Times, I think, for a while.
He was just sitting there thinking, you know, the LA Times is a prestigious organization.
And then he realized that this is a left-wing cabal that doesn't listen to other points of view.
They're narrow-minded.
They miss the big story because they're focused on the wrong thing.
And so he's trying seriously to broaden the coverage of the LA Times.
It's probably still going to tilt left, but maybe not as left.
Well, here's Dr. Pat Soon-Shong.
Wildfire disaster proves why competence, not party, matters in electing leaders.
Competence matters.
I don't really agree with this.
And here's my comment on it.
Wrong.
The Democrats are very competent at raising taxes, imposing gratuitous regulations, importing illegals, promoting identity politics, advancing cultural degeneracy.
They're good at those things.
They achieve the results that they seek.
So party does matter, and ideology does matter.
Why?
Because ideology sets the goals that competence serves.
It depends what you want to be competent at doing.
That's the question at issue here.
And then here's the Atlantic Monthly in a recent headline.
How well-intentioned policies fueled LA's fires.
So here's the Atlantic beginning to recognize we can't say that this is unrelated to the environmental agenda, because it is.
We can't say that this is unrelated to DEI, because it is.
So let's just try to purify the motives of the California Democrats.
They were well-meaning, Dinesh.
They intended to do good.
So yes, the results may be bad.
And it is incredibly sad how we try to normalize this bad stuff these days.
I mean, the thing about it is, when it comes to the left-wing media, the Atlantic, I mean, you could have, the Democrats could plunge the economy into total chaos and catastrophe.
You could have nuclear war erupt because of democratic policies, and yet we'd be assured, Dinesh, the Democrats' motives were good.
They didn't mean to achieve these results.
Their hearts are in the right place.
This is the one-sided analysis that is applied by the left.
In sum, I think where we are in all this stuff is that there needs to be a real accounting.
And the ultimate accounting in a democratic society always comes from the voters.
The voters of California, right now, you're getting what you voted for.
You voted for Karen Bass, you're getting Karen Bass.
You voted for Newsom, you're getting Newsom.
All the stuff that you complain about, you as a group, not you individually, but collectively.
Voted for.
And so if you want a different outcome, you need to have a different set of leaders.
I know there are some people in California who are hopeful that finally, belatedly, at least now, the last straw, this will happen in California.
And I certainly pray, I certainly hope that they're right.
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Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast a friend.
He is Stelio Cervante.
He is a multilingual actor, originally from South Africa.
He has been in over a hundred films, including, I'm happy to say, a film that Debbie and I produced together, Infidel.
But his other credits, What Remains, Running for Grace, Nefarious, a great movie, and The Chosen.
He's won the Screen Actors Guild Award, the American Movie Award, and you can follow him on X at Stelio, S-T-E-L-I-O, Savante, S-A-V-A-N-T-E.
The film we're here to talk about.
Debbie and I watched it last night.
Really wonderful movie.
Very moving and powerful.
It's called Between Borders.
It's in theaters January 26-28.
And you can get tickets at Between Borders.
Betweenbordersmovie.com.
Stelio, welcome.
Thanks for joining me.
I cannot help but ask you, because I know you're in Los Angeles, you are a witness to a catastrophe going on around you.
I'm sure it's affected you and many people you know.
The unknown factor is,
you know, What's still coming?
Because we've now been upgraded to severe weather fire warnings specifically for our area.
The amount of friends that have lost homes, that have burned to the ground.
There's nothing left.
Memories that are gone forever.
The firefighters themselves have lost their homes, first responders, yet they are on the front lines.
These men and women are heroes.
Don't know where we'd be without them.
And we ourselves, thank God my wife, daughter, and I are safe.
As far as our home, we have no control of that because of what's yet to come.
And yes, the lack of responsibility and lack of preparation is staggering.
It is unacceptable.
We live in a constitutional republic.
This is not a monarchy.
I am, and millions of us are fed up with our leaders who are just...
Throwing down ridiculous excuses to justify why what happened happened.
Climate change is not responsible for a lack of water in our fire hydrants.
Climate change is not responsible for pouring out billions of gallons worth of water into the ocean to protect fish.
You know, climate change is not responsible for our firefighter shortages, our firefighting departments.
And this is from firefighter friends we have that we know.
They are the same size they were 40, 50 years ago.
We've not expanded our fire departments because we've been more concerned with other things that, frankly, are irrelevant at this point.
Beyond that, we refuse to clear our brush.
And it's not just the fires we're fading.
Facing Dinesh, there are looters.
The amount of arsonists they've arrested because of the lawlessness and the crime we face on the streets is out of control.
Sadly, there are a lot of mentally ill homeless now.
They're trying to get into our buildings, too.
And again, but for the grace of God, we're here and grateful for it.
It does also remind me of what happened with...
You know, with North Carolina, with the hurricanes we had recently, where is our government and our state?
They're AWOL. They take our tax money.
We pay higher taxes here in California than anywhere else.
They're useless.
And it's enough already.
The most important thing is prayer, saving lives, saving people's homes.
But simultaneously, if our politicians accuse our journalists of being divisive for asking questions, something's wrong here.
You know, I saw an interesting post by the fellow Patrick Soong, who owns the LA Times, and he said the issue here is not partisan politics or ideology, it's competence.
And I thought to myself, in part that is surely correct, but in part it seems to me wrong, because it is partisanship and ideology.
That caused the Democrats, who have essentially a one-party state in California, to have other priorities.
And you mentioned some of them.
Their priorities are DEI. Their priorities are the obscure fish that the environmentalists want to protect, and therefore they divert the water.
So it's not that the Democrats are incompetent.
They're actually competent at achieving their priorities.
Protecting against the possibility of this kind of carnage is evidently not one of their priorities.
Do you agree?
In this case, I would because we live in a one-party state, and I don't care if it's Republican or Democrat.
I always feel that there needs to be a balance.
I am an independent myself, but I've had it with Warden Newsome.
When COVID happened here, everything from weed shops to, you know, bottle stores.
Everything that was deemed essential did not include the church.
They'd show up at our church every week.
It wasn't a matter of whether we'd get fined.
It was a matter of how much.
So priorities are definitely not in the right place.
If you're in a fire department, if you are a fire chief, and you are not prepared, why are you not speaking or communicating with your department heads at Power& Water?
You know, why aren't the different department heads communicating with our mayor?
Why is our mayor not prepared?
Why, especially when we know we're a state that is extremely vulnerable when it comes to earthquakes, if we can't even handle fires, God help us when an earthquake comes along, but because we should be ready for earthquakes, we should be that much more prepared for fires.
Where are we?
Where are we?
And Mayor Bass...
Again, there just aren't even enough words for how much we're seething locally.
There was an Irish journalist who asked a very valid question because this is not a partisan issue.
Most of the people who are friends who've lost homes voted for Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass.
But she could not answer his question.
She was completely mum on it, refused to speak.
We haven't slept in days, and we're not special.
The entire...
The state of Southern California, part of the state right now, is struggling and suffering the carnage that's been laid on our landscape.
I mean, again, I've just never...
Palisades is gone.
It just doesn't even exist.
The pictures tell the stories.
Let's take a pause.
When we come back, I'm going to talk more with Stelio Cervantes about the new film, Between Borders.
By the way, it's in theaters January 26th through 28th.
You can get tickets at betweenbordersmovie.com.
We'll be right back to talk about it.
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From all of us here at MyPillow, I'm back with acclaimed actor Stelio Cervante.
He is a Screen Actors Guild nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.
He has wonderful credits, including What Remains, Infidel, Nefarious, The Chosen.
The film we're talking about is Between Borders.
Opens in a thousand theaters January 6th through 28th.
BetweenBordersMovie.com.
That's the website.
That's where you can get tickets.
You can also get tickets from Fathom.
Stelio, let's talk about this film.
Debbie and I watched it last night.
Absolutely captivating film.
It tells a story about a lovely family, husband and wife, two children.
They're caught in the sort of politics of the, I would call it the post-Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union as it is beginning to break up.
And they have this migratory journey from the Eastern Bloc through Russia to America.
Talk a little bit about the plot because I was really struck at how simply and yet beautifully plotted this is.
It's the kind of thing we just don't get from Hollywood anymore.
But it's almost like it's the old Hollywood formula of...
Good characters, interesting people, a well-threaded plot, the build-up to a climax, and then a very powerful message coming through at the end.
Talk a little bit about the setting and the plot of this movie.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
So, yeah, Mark Freiberger, along with Isaac Norris and Adam Schulberg, and I hope I'm not butchering his last name, wrote a brilliant script that is based on the true-life story of Violetta Petrosian and her husband, Ivan Petrosian.
Their struggle as Armenians being persecuted first in Azerbaijan and then in Russia.
Violeta is just superbly portrayed by Elizabeth Tabish, who the audience will know from The Chosen.
The lead for the prosecution is played by Elizabeth Mitchell.
Ivan Petrosyan is portrayed by Patrick Sabongui.
And I portrayed Duane, who's one of the lay missionaries that plants a church through the film, which is non-linear.
Kind of parallel, simultaneous stories.
We learned that they are applying for political asylum in the United States, and that having overcome adversity in two countries where they were never given choices because they were atheist and communist, the lay missionaries love on them, and Violette feels, as you've seen in the trailer, for the first time in her life.
And it's a great message of story of hope and faith.
She actually is allowed to make a choice.
She has free will.
And it's based on a true story, and it took place roughly about two decades ago.
Stelio, what strikes me about the Christian message in this film is that there is very little, I would say, preaching or sermonizing in the film.
You do have a Russian pastor.
And at one point, I think, almost shot through the window, you can kind of see him giving a Christian message.
But a lot of the Christianity comes through by example.
In other words, it seems like the lead characters who are resistant at the beginning to Christianity see the example of people who help them with apparently no motive of self-interest.
And this is what puzzles them.
And then they begin to say, wow, there must be something to this after all.
I mean, your own character.
Here you are, a guy in New York, and you've packed up and you've moved to this godforsaken part of the world.
You're helping people you don't know and have never met before.
What possible explanation can there be for that, if not some kind of inexplicable love that comes out of Christianity?
Completely.
I think that's very well said.
This is not a melodramatic.
Perhaps a cheesy Christian film that we've seen in years past.
We do believe, and this is the strength of his script, that characters through their behavior rather than their dialogue or seeing a person as an accomplishment or a sales target that they're trying to convince, it's completely the opposite of that, is the laying down of somebody's life.
And that's the strength of a character-driven film is...
Characters in very adverse circumstances that you are drawn into that elicit some sort of response and you connect with them.
It does have a very powerful third act and again being based on a true story.
In reading the script, I wasn't sure which way it was going to go.
I was almost nervous because the judge is extremely discerning.
And being an immigrant myself, you're never really quite sure which way it's going to go, but I thought it was handled meticulously.
And knowing Violetta Petrosian and Ivan Petrosian having done another film that was involved with them, Elizabeth and Patrick captured them extremely honestly.
I think this film with its message of hope and faith is very poignant.
It's an exciting time to see a film like this because...
There aren't enough films like this that are out there.
We're mostly bombarded with the mainstream, you know, superhero comic book films.
This is deeper than that.
And I think, especially for audience of The Chosen, it's definitely the kind of message and film that they will flock to.
You know, what struck me, Stelio, and I think Debbie too, is that...
You sometimes expect the films to go over the top if you're talking, for example, about this family being persecuted.
They need to be in a dungeon.
They need to be locked up for years.
They need to be subject to tortures.
The interesting thing about this film is how understated it is.
It makes a lot out of incidents that on the surface seem small.
A little girl wants a toy monkey as a gift.
And that is beautifully kind of carried out or executed, that scene.
These kind of Russian goonish cops come down on the young family.
But again...
They don't beat them up.
There's no brutalization.
But on the other hand, nevertheless, the message of persecution comes through in a very subtle and believable way.
And ultimately, of course, in the film, it gets through even to its intended audience.
I mean, the audience in the plot itself.
Yes, I think that's very well noted.
I mean, look, they do see a neighbor being executed.
But the minimalist film style that was employed here was excellent.
They just let the characters tell the story.
And because it's based on true-life characters that were handled with extreme care, there's not a false or forced note in the film.
And even beyond that, we're blessed enough to have Violetta and Ivan with us.
And, you know, we premiered at the Armenian Film Society.
Crowds came out to support it.
We had Violetta there in the audience and then in the Q&A afterwards with her family and to be able to see them and the way that kind of Mark and Isaac and Lonnie gave them a voice is tremendous.
This is an immigrant story and I think it's one that again offers just a very uplifting message of hope.
Especially for those of us living in California right now, it's not like everybody's rushing to go out to the movie theaters, but there is a theme beyond the spoken in the spiritual realm.
And for me, it was a very rewarding experience shooting this.
We filmed it in Bucharest and in Constanza, which is a city overlooking the Black Sea.
Celia, let's close out by having you reflect upon the experience of being a Christian actor.
In a relatively, well, not relatively, highly secular and in some cases anti-Christian Hollywood culture.
How has it been for you?
Have you been able to, I mean, you have a lot of credits behind you, but I'm sure that there are other roles that are closed to you because you are seen as, you have the Christian label, if you will, attached to you.
Talk a little bit about that.
What impact does it mean being a Christian in Hollywood?
You know, that's a very difficult question to answer because, first of all, I don't see myself as a Christian actor.
99% of my career has been mainstream.
It's not been in Christian films.
I've turned a lot of them down, mostly in the past, simply because artistic integrity was not necessarily of a high level.
You know, when we did Infidel together, The day before it came out, I had several friends who did not like that I was in a film with Jim Caviezel that Dinesh D'Souza produced.
And I found it kind of ironic because there are millions of people who know the name of every A-list celebrity that ever worked with Harvey Weinstein.
I don't know that I have the Christian label on me.
God has blessed me and anything and everything that is good in my life, including my career.
All I could do is say I hope that somehow in my choices, in which I do need to learn to be more discerning, I have reflected the goodness and love of Jesus Christ.
But most of the projects I do are not Christian projects.
And that's fine with me.
What it does is it allows me an opportunity to love on people.
I'm very heavily involved with my church and with ministry.
And I actually just finished a non-Christian film, but it is an Israeli October 7th film based on the lives of three hostages.
We filmed it in Tbilisi.
I have another project I did with Cyrus called Sarah's Oil, which is a kingdom story film that does have a Christian message.
So again, I do happen to...
The Lord finds me with these projects.
They are...
A lot of true stories.
It's not easy being a Christian.
Always, you will often attend screeners or house parties, and sometimes the Holy Spirit discerns and just says it's time to get out of here, and that's what you do.
But I'm very grateful.
I have a lot of friends in the business that are not believers, but we're there for each other.
I'm there for them.
And, you know, every opportunity is laid out before us and we've got to discern whether we're going to take it or not.
So I have absolutely no complaints.
I have nothing but gratitude.
Tell you, it's been a pleasure knowing you and working with you, and we appreciate your staying in touch with us.
We're thrilled about the new film Between Borders, the website BetweenBordersMovie.com.
It's in theaters, a lot of theaters, January 26th through 28th.
Get your tickets.
Tell you, Cervante, a real pleasure.
Thank you for joining me.
Thank you.
Thank you both so much for having me.
I really appreciate you.
Thank you, Dinesh.
I'm discussing my book, The Big Lie.
Now, in a paperback.
And the question I want to focus on today is the issue of Nazi racism, or more specifically, anti-Semitism.
And I want to ask whether this anti-Semitism is right-wing or left-wing.
In other words, is it coming from the right or from the left?
This will help us understand better whether Hitler himself and the Nazis were left-wing or right-wing.
In looking at antisemitism, I'm not trying to inquire, like, what is it about the Jews that stirred the hate in Hitler and the Nazis?
I want to look at the opposite, which is, what is it about Hitler and the Nazis that made them hate Jews so much?
Where did this antagonism come from?
I want to get at the psychological root of antisemitism, and then we're going to compare it to the roots of democratic racism in the United States.
The true source of Nazi hatred for the Jews is taken up in an important recent book by a German historian.
His name is Gotts Alley.
A-L-Y. And Alley says that you think of anti-Semitism as, oh, it's very ancient.
It goes back to Christian antagonism toward Jews.
And Alley goes, no, modern anti-Semitism is not that.
It's completely different.
It has to be distinguished from the old Christian animus toward Jews.
He says that the old anti-Semitism wasn't technically anti-Semitism.
Christians may not have liked Jews, but you don't like the Jews because of what they believe.
It's kind of like saying, "I don't like Mormons because of what they believe." I don't like Hindus because of what they believe.
I'm not saying I don't.
I'm just saying that one could say that.
Religious hostility is always curable.
And what I mean by that is if I say to someone, hey, I don't like you because you're Hindu, he's like, guess what?
Last month I converted to Christianity.
Do you like me now?
And I'd be like, yeah.
So the point being that racism and anti-Semitism in their meaning, in their true meaning, are based upon immutable characteristics, things you can't change.
And Hitler's anti-Semitism was like that.
Hitler didn't believe, oh, if a Jew converts to Christianity, then no problem.
He's one of us now.
He's a brother in Christ, not at all.
It was, in fact, the Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
That's the heart of antisemitism.
Now, modern antisemitism defines Jews not as a religious group, but as a racial group.
So there's no escape hatch, so to speak.
And Ali goes on to say that...
Anti-Semitism is different than racism because racism involves looking down at people.
These people are inferior.
They're nothing.
What have they ever invented?
What have they ever amounted to?
What have they ever contributed to civilization?
They're such low people.
This is the chant of racism.
But Ali says that doesn't really work with the Jews.
They've contributed a lot.
You look at the number of Jewish scholars, Nobel laureates, inventors, scientists, musicians.
You can't look down on the Jew.
It's almost like you have to look up to him.
And so now we're talking about something a little different, which is a certain degree of envy.
The idea is that the Jew is successful because he's a bad guy.
His wickedness makes him more successful.
Now you're getting a little closer to what the Nazis believed and what Hitler himself believed.
Now, anti-Semitism of this sort Which resents the Jew, not for failure, but for success, has a history in Germany that predates Hitler.
Here's William Marr, by the way, a left-wing agitator.
He founded the German League of Anti-Semites in 1879, and he says that his motivation for hating Jews is that the Jews outperformed ordinary Germans.
The Jews are too good.
He goes, quote, we are no longer equal to the challenge of this foreign tribe.
In other words, we hate them because they're better than us.
Historian Heinrich von Treischk, another 19th century anti-Semite, he says the Jews who are coming into Germany are all young, ambitious, business types, salesman types, entrepreneur types, and he contrasts them.
With the hard-working, kind of labor-loving German.
So, we're picking up on a theme here, a theme that was then amplified by an economist in Hitler's own day, a guy named Gottfried Fader.
And Hitler became a huge follower and disciple of Fader.
Fader gave a talk, which was called, interestingly enough, How and by what means is capitalism to be?
Eliminated.
You can look it up.
You can get the talk.
Read it.
It's pretty fascinating.
But basically, Fader says there are two types of capitalists.
There's productive capitalism.
This is the working class guy who does a good day's labor with a lot of sweat.
He's producing something.
He's building a road.
He's building a dam.
He's building a house.
This is productive capitalism.
But then, says Fader, you have finance capitalism.
These are the...
This is basically the Wall Street guys.
This is the investor class.
This is the people who deal with money.
And, says Feder, they don't make anything.
They don't make any dams.
They don't make any roads.
They don't make any houses.
They just play with money.
And so, the idea here is that productive capitalism good, finance capitalism bad.
And Hitler latches on to this.
He praises the ordinary Nordic German for being a hard worker and being involved in productive capitalism.
And he denounces finance capitalism that he associates with, guess what?
No surprise, the Jews.
Now, notice here that the roots of Hitler's anger against finance capitalism, very similar to what in America we would call Occupy Wall Street, Elizabeth Warren.
Wall Street is evil.
What do those people really create?
All they deal with is money.
Hitler's coming out of that ideological soil.
Here's Hitler, I'm quoting him now, that the Jews accumulate wealth, quote, without putting in the sweat and effort required of all other mortals.
Hitler says Jewish domination of international finance, quote, corrupts all honest work.
And so the parallel between Hitler's condemnation of finance capitalism And, you know, just listen to it.
Look at the Democrats and when they denounce, who do they denounce?
Have you ever heard Democrats denouncing, for example, Procter& Gamble?
No.
Have you ever heard them denouncing General Mills?
No.
Do they run down companies that are building things?
No.
They attack Wall Street.
They attack finance.
In other words, they have embraced the Hitlerian distinction between productive capitalism and finance capitalism.
There's a book called Hitler's Table Talk.
It was made not by Hitler himself.
Based on recordings kept by one of Hitler's private secretaries over many years, the whole duration of the war, I think all the way up to 1944, Hitler's conversations.
And these have now been transcribed into this book, Hitler's Table Talk, and you get basically the private Hitler.
Hitler talking in private with just a few people around him.
And I'm just going to read a couple of sentences.
The Jew is said to be gifted, says Hitler.
But what is this gift?
His only gift is that of juggling with other people's property, swindling each and everyone.
Suppose I find by chance a picture that I believe to be a Titian.
In other words, by the great painter Titian.
Hitler says, I tell the owner what I think of it and I offer him a price.
In a similar case, the Jew begins by declaring the picture is valueless.
It's worthless.
He buys it for a song and sells it at a profit of 5,000%.
So here you get Hitler's idea of the Jew.
He's a trickster.
He's a scoundrel.
He looks at the picture, he goes, hmm, we have here a Titian.
Obviously, I'm not going to disclose that this is a priceless painting.
I'll pretend like it's completely valueless.
So, the lesson that's coming out here is that for Hitler and for the Nazis, the Jews are bad because they are the capitalist par excellence.
In other words, Hitler's hatred of capitalism and his hatred of Jews is one and the same.
The Jew is seen...
As the embodiment of trade.
Think of Shylock, the moneylender and the merchant of Venice.
This is Hitler's idea of who Jews are.
They deal underhandedly with money.
And so the point I'm getting at is that the anti-Semitism here does have an ideological coloration.
It's not just, we didn't like the Jews.
No.
It is an ideological hatred coming from the left, tagging the Jews with the label of being, in a way, greedy, wicked capitalists.
I'll say more about this.
I'll say more about this when I pick up on this tomorrow.
But I want to show that Hitler's hatred of Jews is very similar to the weird anti-Semitism of somebody else who happens also to be Jewish.
And that, of course, is the founder, if you will, of the rival ideology to capitalism, Karl Marx.
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