WATCH: Clarence Thomas links progressivism to history’s worst regimes in Texas remarks 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas delivered remarks on the foundations of progressivism Wednesday, tracing its rise to some of the 20th century’s most oppressive regimes.

“Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Mao were all intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration is based,” he said at the University of Texas at Austin.

Thomas said it was “no surprise that the progressives embraced eugenics,” including abortion, and launched “sterilization programs on those deemed by the experts of the day to be unfit to reproduce.”

He cautioned against embracing forms of government seen elsewhere, including socialism, which is gaining traction today.

“The socialism of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China proceeded to kill tens of millions more of their own people,” he said. “This is what happens when natural rights give way to higher-good notions of history or progress or, as Thomas Sowell has written, ‘the visions of the anointed.’”

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