Author and MSNBC columnist Ruth Ben-Ghiat told host Jonathan Capehart on Sunday that there’s “a war, actually, on Blacks” in America being waged by Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the rest of the GOP, who are “criminalizing Black people” so that White kids don’t feel “guilty” and instead can “feel like, you know, victims.”

Ben-Ghiat and Nevada Democrat and Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Rep. Steven Horsford joined Capehart for The Sunday Show on MSNBC. Horsford said that there is a “ban on blackness,” and Ben-Ghiat agreed and expanded on the phrase after Capehart claimed that “information, books, and libraries” are being attacked.

He asked the author how that plays into the “authoritarian playbook you talk so often about.”

Ben-Ghiat called Republicans “authoritarian’ and replied that “there’s a war on blackness at the ballot box, disenfranchising Blacks. There’s a war actually on Blacks at their places of employment, through the suppression of diversity and inclusion initiatives. And there’s the war on blackness and education.”

Both guests characterized opposition to “wokeness” from candidates like DeSantis as racism or signs of aspiring to dictatorship, and Ben-Ghiat claimed that Republicans are “erasing” and “rewriting history in ways that satisfy, you know, White people.”

Capehart talked about Trump’s often repeated claim that his supporters are the “real” targets and he’s just “in the way,” and said, “This is standard for him on the campaign trail and standard for dictators, no?”

The author agreed and looped DeSantis in again, saying:

If we relate this to to the questions of race and education, you know, it’s it’s making, creating an educational and emotional environment so Whites feel that they’re under attack all the time. And criminalizing Black people and non-Whites in general, and non-Christian Whites, is part of this game to keep people in a state of tension.

And, you know, the Prager curriculum that Ron DeSantis is adopting, which is not accredited, by the way, it’s a it’s a propaganda outfit. And all of these GOP, you know, education measures, they want, they say, they all have the same language, that they want to remove emotional distress like sources, things that make people feel, White people feel guilty. And and so they can feel like, you know, victims.

“This is an incredible conversation,” said Capehart.

Watch the clips above, via MSNBC.

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