D'Souza: the Democratic Party, of Obama but also of Bernie [Sanders], of Elizabeth Warren is fascist in the classic meaning of the term, in the dictionary meaning of the term.

If you look up fascism, the economic part of it, it basically says state-run capitalism, state-directed capitalism, that’s the meaning of fascism,” D’Souza said at the Young America’s Foundation National Conservative Student Conference on Friday.

“We often accuse the left of being socialist but in reality these guys aren’t socialists, because what do socialist countries do? Socialist countries nationalize industries. The government takes over the energy industry, the government takes over the banks. Now, notice under Obamacare we still have private insurance companies, we still have private hospitals but the government is directing them. The government is fixing the price. The government is telling them what to do,” he added.

D’Souza said government “direction and control” expanded under President Obama in the health, energy and education sectors.

“That’s why Bernie and Hillary wanted free college. Their idea was the government now gets to direct even private colleges in telling them what to do. So my point is this is not socialism: if it was socialism the government would have taken over all this stuff. This is actually fascism, state-directed capitalism. That’s what fascism means and, in that respect, fascism is with us now,” he said.

D’Souza: Trump Joins Gandhi, Churchill, Mandela, Founding Fathers as Nationalists

The truth of it is nationalism is not a defining feature of fascism; that’s a lie and it can easily be shown to be a lie by simply looking at people around the world who

were or are nationalists. So, for example, I’m originally from India; Gandhi was a nationalist. Mandela was a nationalist in South Africa. The American founders were nationalists. Winston Churchill was a nationalist, so was de Gaulle in France,” he said. “All the anti-colonial leaders were nationalists. Now, obviously all these men were not fascists. So it’s simply if ultra-nationalism were to define fascism, then they would be so the notion that fascism is nationalism is clearly erroneous.”