By Stephen D. Foster, Jr. / 03.21.2016
This pastor’s church should be heavily taxed for this kind of political speech.
Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is the first Jewish candidate to win a state primary in American history, pulling off the feat in New Hampshire last month in an incredible upset of Hillary Clinton.
The self-described Democratic Socialist has excited crowds across the country with his vow to reign in Wall Street and end income inequality. Sanders is particularly popular with young people who see him as a desperately needed agent of change who can turn the system around and ensure a better future for all Americans.
And it’s because college students support him that one Christian televangelist is calling Sanders the next Adolf Hitler. You know, the Nazi Germany dictator who ordered the extermination of six million Jews during World War II. Yeah, that Hitler.
During a sermon, disgraced pastor Jim Bakker openly compared Sanders to Hitler citing his socialist beliefs and claimed that if he’s elected every American will be dead in a year.
“One of the most popular politicians right now is a socialist — And who is his biggest following? The young people of America, from the colleges. Maybe you understand a little bit what it felt like to live when Hitler was reigning and the church had to sit by and keep watching it and watching until millions, tens of millions — they had to build factories to kill people. All it takes is a couple bombs and all of America will be dead within a year, less than a year, just months.”
Bakkers audience, of course, consisted of a bunch of easily frightened old conservative white people.
There are many problems with Bakker’s comparison.
First of all, while young people are flocking to Sander’s campaign, they are doing so on their own volition while Hitler and the Nazi Party actually went into schools to indoctrinate the German youth to get their support.
Second, Bernie Sanders is a Democratic Socialist, which is totally different from a National Socialist.
As Sanders explained in November, Democratic Socialism “builds on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed economic rights for all Americans.”
“And it builds on what Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1968 when he stated that, ‘This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.’ It builds on the success of many other countries around the world that have done a far better job than we have in protecting the needs of their working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor.”
Indeed, Sanders believes in “economic equality, universal health care, Wall Street reform, universal college education, paid family leave.”
In addition, Sanders also seeks “political reforms to limit the power of the wealthy so there is “democratic socialism for working families, not just Wall Street, billionaires and large corporations”
National Socialism, on the other hand, is a brutal and authoritarian fascist ideology practiced by the Nazis and other right-wing groups who believe in a racial hierarchy with whites at the top. Nazis support policies that push national power, demonize intellectualism, subjugate women, punish homosexuality, censor the free press, and are over-obsessed with Christianity among multiple other aspects you can find by clicking here.
Need proof of Trump’s fascism? Well, there’s the fact that he’ll soon have his own version of Hitler’s Brownshirts. Then there’s the fact that legendary investigative journalist Carl Bernstein explained why Trump is a fascist. There’s this excellent comparison made by the Daily Show. And there’s the fact that neo-Nazis show up to support Trump at his rallies.
Seriously, Jim Bakker is either oblivious to the real fascism being pushed by Trump or he supports Trump and just wants to shift the accusations of fascism to Sanders to protect the Republican front-runner. Either way, Bakker and his church should face steep taxes for engaging in political speech, especially the kind that pushes outright lies.