Self-proclaimed “liberal snowflake” tackles the case for Trump.

Dinesh D’Souza, conservative writer, scholar, public intellectual, and filmmaker, spoke at Columbia on Tuesday. During this talk, he emphasized the dark history of the Democratic Party and worked to delegitimize the oft-repeated comparisons between Donald Trump and the likes of Mussolini and Hitler. Bwog sent Hillary-fanatic and proud leftist snowflake, Vivian Klotz, to cover the event. Her favorite moment of the evening was when D’Souza described Trump’s motivation as, “naked and forward thrusting.”

Dinesh D’Souza, like many of his conservative peers, seems most perturbed by the apparent lack of conservative viewpoints expressed in the media and in schools. Despite power resting in the hands of Republicans in the newly elected, unified government, he worries that the narratives expressed in schools across the country are only those of liberal academics, to the point that many students would be hard-pressed to describe what exactly conservatives are trying to conserve. This is dangerous, he warns, for if you can’t talk about these issues in an academic setting, they may never be considered appropriate to discuss and debate.

Before getting to his core argument, D’Souza laid a groundwork for his speech by examining the circumstances that led to Trump’s victory. He cited the president’s ability to court “Reagan Democrats” in a way that Republicans haven’t been able to since 1984, an issue explained by the notion that, “There is no place in the ‘liberal multicultural tent’ for white, working-class Americans.” D’Souza dismissed the idea that the popular vote is at all worth noting; the American people agreed upon the system of the electoral college, and now must abide by it, regardless of whether it fits their preferences in a given year.

Having established a common understanding about the legitimacy of Trump’s election, D’Souza was able to delve into his two-pronged main argument: despite common comparisons, Trump is unlike Mussolini and Hitler, and in fact, the Democratic party is that of racists and bigots. D’Souza used the superficial, partial explanation for the claim, which is that Trump is nationalist, militarist, racist, and a bigot. Nationalism, he explained, was not unique to Nazis, and therefore any nationalism the president displays does nothing to indict him. Furthermore, Trump isn’t particularly militarist–despite a constantly flip-flopping stance on the Iraq War, he has generally shown a distaste for battle.

Not only did D’Souza claim that Trump, “has nothing to apologize for,” on the topic of racism, but he went further to say that the left is to blame for bigotry in the United States. It is common, though in his view underemphasized, knowledge that the left was the party of bigotry and of the Ku Klux Klan. However, D’Souza believes that this is still the case. At the heart of his argument is a fundamental rejection of the story of political realignment.

According to most historians, the story goes something along the lines of the following. At the end of the Civil War, Republicans were wildly unpopular with white Southerners who wished to maintain control over slaves. Democrats were the party of small-government in an effort to court these voters and give them the freedom to do as they wished. At the turn of the twentieth century, progressivism, complete with its larger role of the government, arose as a response to incredibly wealthy and powerful individuals who had a disproportionate amount of power. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, won the presidency and enacted legislation in line with what many progressives desired, and the large-government New Deal programs of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt served to further cement the party’s image. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made this divide have more to do with race than it had before, and as a result, white southern voters moved away from the party that had split with “traditional values.”

D’Souza spoke of a different story of American history, one in which people are far less versed, where Democrat Woodrow Wilson essentially revived the KKK. He also speaks to surface flaws within the concept of realignment, including, but not limited to the notion that the Dixiecrats, “the racist Democrats,” actually returned to the Democratic party as their party disappeared.

On the whole, it was an event that boldly challenged the ideas that liberals take for granted. It was divisive, immensely partisan, and yet an important part of the ongoing dialogue occurring at Columbia.