Dinesh D’Souza on The Big Switch of Racists From the Democrats to the Republicans (spoiler alert: It didn’t happen).

Starting at about 20:56 of this YouTube video from Louder with Crowder Dinesh D’Souza describes the real history of the supposed “Big Switch.”   Transcript below the video. 

ADDENDUM, 11/10/16:  Also see an abbreviated list of pertinent facts, here, or the full list here, that I culled from D’Souza’s book Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party. In my opinion the title of the book is unfortunate. The book is actually the story of American history than it is a polemic about Hillary.

Crowder (20:56) :  A lot of people my age that’s what they do, they believe in the switch.  Well you know before it was in the civil rights act and then they all switched.  Then all the Democrats became not racist and Republicans became racist.  I want you to take the ball and go with that because obviously it’s your realm of expertise.  One thing I never hear them say, and I’ve brought this up on the show, well what about FDR then?  Is he claimed by your people or is he claimed by Republicans since he wasn’t a racist.  How does that work? And they go hummina hummina hummina hummina well not all of them.  Maybe explain it for our audience who has bought into that lie.

D’Souza (21:27):  Well all the three progressive heroes of the twentieth century, and I’m thinking here of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Johnson, are very bad on the race issue.  All of ‘em.  Now generally the left concedes on Wilson, they can’t deny that he expanded , uh, expanded segregation in the federal government.  They know he screened the pro Ku Klux Klan movie in the white house.  They don’t stress this but they know that led to a Ku Klux Klan revival.  Now FDR, ah, they’ve been pretty clever in camouflaging FDRs dirty deeds.  And FDR’s dirty deeds were two.  This is the deal he made with the Democratic racists to get the New Deal through.  Ah number one, ah, they said to him FDR you have to agree to block all anti-lynching laws. Block all anti-lynching laws.  And FDR agreed.  And the second thing was they said blacks mainly work in domestic  service and agricultural labor.  We want you to exclude those from most new deal programs. And FDR agreed again.  So this is the way in which FDR was in bed with some of the worst guys.

Crowder  (22:28): Let me ask you a quick question for devil’s advocate sake.  Um, would they say well he blocked lynching laws because there were already laws on the book, or did they just gloss over it entirely?

D’Souza (22:36):  No there were laws on the books but the Republicans were proposing anti-lynching legislation that would override, if you will, these state laws on lynching; that there would be a federal prohibition, ah, on state lynching laws.  FDR had no states rights issue with any of this of course but what it was is that it was a prudential pact that he made, ah, with the racists in the Democratic Party. Um, so that’s FDR.  Lyndon Johnson , ah, cynical, ah, wanted to keep blacks, by his own words, “on the plantation.” Uh, and he figured out that, ah, that the civil rights act was the way to go. Now interestingly more Republicans proportionally voted for that civil rights act in ’64, and the voting rights act in ’65, and the fair housing bill in ’68, than Democrats did.  This is not well known, and this has allowed Democrats to say “Well Lyndon Johnson…” and then they hijack the whole civil rights movement as if they did it.  But in fact the opposition to the civil rights movement came from the Democrat Party.  The infamous sheriff , Bull Conner, Democrat.  Ah, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus  who stood in the schoolhouse door blocked black kids from getting into school, Democrat.  Um, and so the, ah, if the democrats had been the only party in America, no Republicans, none of those laws would have passed.

Crowder  (23:48): Yeah.  Well and also they would have been much more effective at blocking if they’d have hired a good guard back then, but they were all black so it was a problem.  Um, so we’re moving down, I know the Strom Thurmond  case, right, people always bring that up.  That is their, boom, trump card.  Outside of him, could they argue a swap took place?  Whether it be directly, you know, political affiliation, or e, or even culturally, sort of in the political ah divide lines in the south?

D’Souza (24:12):  Now, there was, the swap that they talk about did not take place.  But there was a different swap that did take place that has nothing to do with race.  So for example the swap that did not take place, if you look at the Dixiecrats, we make a list of them, it’s a pretty big list, Strom Thurmond is the only one who moved over to the Republican Party.  So this is a case hinging on one guy.  Uh, the rest of the Dixiecrats, they were happy to be Democrats.  They went right back into the Democratic party.  They were lionized  by the Democrats ‘till the day they died.  A good example of this is Robert Byrd, former member of the Ku Klux Klan. I mean Obama went to his funeral, Bill Clinton was there.  Clinton by the way made a very interesting statement.  He goes You can’t blame good ole’ Robert Byrd for being in the Klan because, and now I open quotes, “You had to be in the Klan to advance in the Democratic Party.”  Kind of a very interesting admission.  You had to be..

Crowder  (23:48): It’s, it’s also important to note context.  I saw this.  Robert Byrd didn’t dabble in the Klan.  He didn’t do it as a necessity.  He was high up there.  He practically had Klan dental and a company car. Let’s not kid ourselves.

D’Souza  (23:48):  Well and ah and ah and the Grand Wizard I believe is the one who said to him, you know, young Bob, you got a lot a talent you need to go into politics.  This was from Byrd’s own account of how he first went into politics. So, you know

Crowder  (25:22): He said the N word on national television, was it 2001 or 2004, repeatedly , in a racist context.  You got a lot of white n-words, you know you have white N-words out there, and he said it twice, like he didn’t even realize you don’t say this any more.  So it’s not like he left it in the past in the seventies, this was still seepin’ through in the two thousands.

D’Souza  (25:41):  Well you got a guy like David Duke, and you know, and he’s, the Republican Party repudiates him, denounces him, doesn’t want anything to do with him, ah and yet people say “Well he’s a Republican.”   Byrd was a member in full standing of the Democratic Party, never repudiated.  Hillary calls him, when he dies, her mentor.  So this is the difference.  The Democratic Party loves these guys.  It makes them, feels at home with them.  Whereas the Republican Party always tried to hit the eject button.

Crowder  (26:07): Gosh you got a, yeah Robert Byrd, big influence but I’ve  got hot sauce black voters! Doesn’t that make up for…  The worst pandering.  It’s like the aunt who shows up at the barbeque who’s like I got a funny story.  You’re like no, no stop

D’Souza  (26:23):  Now, now, coming back to the switch the the it is true that the re that the blacks who used to be Republicans, ah the party of Lincoln, did move over to the Democratic Party, but they didn’t do it because of race.  They did it in the thirties because of the promises and actual economic  benefits of the New Deal.  So you may almost say that blacks were bribed into it.  They they knew that they were leaving the party of Lincoln and emancipation and the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendment and they were joining the party of segregation and the Ku Klux Klan.  Now, white Republicans, white Democrats did move over to the Republican but that was between the seventies and the nineties; basically in the Reagan era.  Again this has nothing to do with bigotry, uh Reagan was appealing to patriotism, free markets, traditional values, Christianity, and that’s, those are the issues that caused the non-racist south to swivel over to the Republican Party.

Crowder  (27:17):  Which makes it even more interesting if it occurred before what they need to be the timeline for their swap because it would only reiterate the idea that racists found ah solace in the Democratic Party.

D’Souza  (27:27):  Right so the big switch is really a big scam.  I mean it’s ah it’s a last ditch defense of the of the Democrats.  See the first thing is they kinda have to admit they were involved in slavery so they go Dinesh why are we talking about the anti-bellum crimes of the Democratic Party. And I go well I’m I’m also talking about the post-bellum climbs crimes of the Democratic Party.  Ah who who invented segregation?  Who passed all the segregation laws in the south?  Who started the Ku Klux Klan? Who revived the Ku Klux Klan? Who used the Klan as the domestic terrorist arm of a political party for thirty years? Who was in bed with Fascism in the thirties? Who interned the Japanese Americans in World War Two?  So then they go , because they now realize this is getting uncomfortably close to the present, that they then go well, big switch! Big switch!  So the big switch is like the lawyer who said that initially my client was not on the scene.  Then yes he was on the scene but you know he didn’t , he wasn’t the one who fired the fatal shot.  And then finally well yeah he did but it was in self defense.  So we have this kind of migrating leftist attempt to exonerate the Democratic Party which in fact has been not only implicated has been the perpetrator of the vilest deeds of American history.

Crowder  (28:33): Gosh that is a that is a great a put it in a nutshell. So let me bring it to the final point and because they’ll say well let’s  get past what happened in the twenties thirties forties fifties sixties seventies let’s go past that.  Today racism is owned by the Republican Party. I maintain that listen no party owns racism.  I don’t say the Democratic Party today is a party of racism. I don’t believe that.  Nor do I believe that the Republican Party is a party of racism.  But they argue the opposite.  Racism only exists in the Republican Party today.

D’Souza  (29:00): Neither you know neither party is involved  in racism in the old sense.  And so for example a good metaphor of this would be the Klan. The Klan today is essentially defunct.  There’s no real effective organization called the Klan.  I mean the Klan used to have two to five million members.  They could march tens of thousands of people down fifth avenue in the twenties, burning crosses and shouting racist slogans.  That Klan does not exist.  But I would argue, I was actually reading a book by the historian Kenneth Stampp, and it’s on the old slave plantation.  It’s called The Peculiar Institution. And he describes the five features of the slave plantation.  I think this is really interesting because all the five features he mentions are present today.  But they’re present on the urban plantations that the democrats are running in the inner cities.  And so Kenneth Stampp says number one on the typical old slave plantation you have ramshackle dwellings.  Houses but they’re in disarray.  Second you have the family structure is all broken down, a lot if illegitimacy, whose kids are whose, you don’t really know, that’s the nature of slavery.  Third, a lot of the violence that’s necessary to hold the, to keep the place together because slavery is based on coercion, you have to force people, you have to whip them, beat them, etc.  Fourth, everybody has a minimum provision.  You get food, you get health care, but nobody gets ahead.  Nobody gets a good education.  No ladders of opportunity.  Nihilism, hopelessness, and despair.  So you take all these elements and ask, “How’s it really different today in inner city Oakland, or Detroit, or Chicago?  I think the main difference is that in the old days the Democrats who ran those slave plantations too, wanted to steal people’s labor.  They wanted labor, and they wanted labor for free.  Now what they want is votes.  They want votes, and they don’t care about these people. And that’s why they remain in misery and the Democrats are perfectly happy to keep ‘em there as long as they keep voting eighty to ninety percent for the party that’s running the plantation.

Crowder  (30:46): Well it’s a good point. I mean you can look at Milwaukee.  I said well Milwaukee’s been run entirely by leftist Democrats for over half a century and someone said Nuh Uh and they pointed out there was a socialist there.  An actual socialist.  A socialist, I’m “alright, I’ll give you that one,” about sixty something years.  And these are the results, and I don’t think anyone could argue with the results as far as leftist cities versus certainly more, I guess, conservative right wing limited government petri dishes like Texas or Dallas.  But ah they argue culturally that ah you know racism is more alive on the right, and I, you know I just don’t see it.  I see it across all spectrums and ah I try and be even handed with that.

D’Souza  (31:21): Well let’s probe this for a moment  Stephen though because it’s an important issue.  Take something like people say well who’s the party of state’s rights today? Well, the Republican Party. But that proves nothing because there’s nothing wrong with defending state’s rights as long as the principle is not being used to uphold slavery.  State’s rights is an honorable principle that’s right in the Constitution.  It was used for bad cause in 1860.  And that’s put the idea in somewhat of a bad odor.  But it doesn’t mean some guy who wants state’s rights because he wants , wants local governments to pass laws on abortion or on gun rights is therefore some kind of a closet um you know ah a confederate.

Crowder  (32:01): Right. Well the problem is that is was the whole confederate uproar a while ago where people were defending confederacy and the confederacy under state’s rights, and I’m going no because that does  supercede natural rights  and people being free.  I think it’s a good thing that they lost. You know and I have to agree. But that kinda hurts , you know, an intellectual argument that that you or I would make. And that was a little bit of a set back.

D’Souza  (35:23): Yeah part of what we  do here is we show the importance of Lincoln to the Republican tradition and to establishing the principles of modern American conservatism. Uh the Democratic Party was the party of the segregationist south, and to be honest the Democrats if you will, yeah well you have to ask well, how did the south become so monolithically racist in the early part of the twentieth century.  And the reason was the Democrats had political strategies to make it that way.  They found ways to capitalize on white supremacy in order to suppress the black vote in order to weaken the Republican Party.

Crowder  (32:53): Right and the theme isn’t all that different from today, right? It was divide and conquer and black lives matter.  They are seeking to create more racial divide.  I’ve talked about this.  I know you have a, you know you have nephews and nieces I believe, who are about my age. Our generation of black Americans, my generation of black Americans, will be worse off than the two previous.  If you look at Korryn Gaines.  If you look at the way a lot of these these kids are being raised because a lot of people my age are raising children at this point, right?  Um, it is it is scary. And it’s very different from even the eighties or nineties where I was raised as a kid, where we had black friends and we didn’t even think about it.  Now there is so much more racial divide.  Um, you have white content you have white entertainment, you have black entertainment.  And if one crosses that line, if you just see it on twitter, they are excoriated by the black community.  There have been some steps taken back, and I recon that’s by design.  Um you see it by big leftists who they have a vested interest in us being divided and and stoking the fires for racial war.

D’Souza  (33:47): And well this is why we’ve seen no race progress and a good deal of regress under Obama.  One  might have expected or hoped for something different.  Ah, with Hillary I think she’s a different bird than Obama is by the way.  And even though the two of them have common threads and they both were tutored by Alinsky or by Alinskyites. Ah I think the difference is that Obama at the end of the day is an ideologue.  And ah his ideology to my way of thinking is pathetic, it’s twisted, it’s deformed, it reflects Obama’s own miserable childhood.  Ah but nevertheless he believes it for a man.  He believes he’s making America and the world better.  Um and ah Hillary on the other hand I think the Clintons are not that way.  Ah they’re more like Bonnie and Clyde.  These are two grifters, they’re two ripoff artists. They belong right out of Mark Twain.  They were running rackets in the Arkansas days stealing fifty cents here making a buck over there.  When they got to the White House they were renting the Lincoln Bedroom there, lifting pictures off the walls and taking curious out of the cabinets.  I mean they’re selling pardons to big time racketeers and felons.  So this is how they operate, and this is what I think we’re up for.  Not so much an ideological America but a gangsterized America, and that’s what the Clintons represent.