Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told a group of people Saturday that if elected president in 2020, he will “go to war” with white nationalism and racism. Sanders said he would use every tool at his disposal, including executive orders.
Speaking to a crowd of mostly African Americans at the Young Leaders Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Sanders described his family background as being Jewish and from Poland.
“My father’s whole family was wiped out by Hitler and his white nationalism,” said Sanders, who is one of many Democratic presidential hopefuls in 2020. “Too many people have fought over the years, too many people have died against racism to let it resurface and flourish in America.”
Then he made his declaration.
“We will go to war against white nationalism and racism in every aspect of our lives,” he said.
We will go to war with White Nationalism. pic.twitter.com/HVtDI0eweQ
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 17, 2019
Sanders told the crowd that whenever someone hurts or kills someone because of their skin color, that’s it’s “not just a hate crime,” but that it is also “domestic terrorism.”
He said that if such attacks are carried out in America, then “we’re gonna throw the full force of the law against those people.”
Then the senator said things would move forward by actions and not just words. He said he would have a government, administration and cabinet “that looks like America.”
“And when we combat white nationalism and when we combat racism, we are gonna use all the laws in our power, including executive orders in every area to make certain that we end the discrimination which now exists in heatlh care, where black women are dying three times the rate of white women when they give birth,” Sanders said.
Sanders added he will end “redlining” in housing discrimination and “end the absurdity of black kids leaving school much more deeply in debt than white kids.”
Meanwhile, as Sanders was making his speech on Saturday, a protest on the other side of the country took place in Portland, Oregon, with a counterprotest staged by an Antifa group.
Fox News contributor Dan Bongino said Antifa was “a domestic terror organization committed to attacking civil liberties and free speech.” Bongino’s tweet accompanied a video from another tweet that show the Portland protests in what looks like Antifa members attempting to pull people from a bus while swinging fists at them.
Sanders did not mention whether or not groups like Antifa, a leftist group, would be targeted as domestic terrorists, despite Bongino’s remarks and then President Donald Trump this week calling Antifa a terrorist organization.
