Newt Gingrich Defends Comparing 'Socialist' Agenda of Democrats to Nazis, Stalinist Russia

In a stop on his book tour, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appeared on NBC's Today, where he defended his claim that the "socialist" political agenda of President Obama and the Democrats poses as great a threat to the U.S. as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin once did.

In "To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine," Gingrich writes that the administration is "a corrupt bureaucracy which uses manipulation, bribery, and dishonesty to steamroll the will of the people and destroy America's core values."

Today host Meredith Viera asked Gingrich if such claims weren't hyperbolic, if not inflammatory. Gingrich did not back down.

VIEIRA: Before we get to the primaries, let's talk a little bit about a statement in your book that's, that's drawing a lot of attention. You say that Obama and the Democrats are pushing what you call "the secular socialist agenda" and you write, quote, "The secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did." Can you honestly compare what's going on with the Democrats to Nazi Germany?

GINGRICH: It's not a question of how evil they were. Nazi Germany was terrible. Stalinist Russia was terrible. Maoist China was terrible. It's a question of finality. Had we lost either of those contests we'd have become a radically different country. The secular socialist agenda, clearly, is for an America fundamentally different than America has been for the last 400 years.

VIEIRA: But when you hear that term "Nazi," that's one of those inflammatory words that can turn people off to any message you might have.

GINGRICH: Look the fact is that if you look at the threat they presented to the American way of life, I'm not talking about the moral equivalence. I'm talking about the finality of losing.

VIEIRA: I'm not talking about the mass murder and genocide.

GINGRICH: I'm not talking about mass murder. I condemn, as every American should, Mao's China, Stalin's Russia and, and Hitler's Germany. But they represented a fundamental threat to the survival of America as a country based on a creator giving us rights. A country based in individual freedom and a country in which the government was subordinate to people. In a sense what the election is about today, is Washington dominant or are the citizens dominant? And I do believe that Obama's secular socialist machine threatens to impose in this country a series of bureaucratic decisions that are very dangerous.