Dinesh D’Souza’s new movie, Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time? is out, accompanied by his new book by the same title. Although it opened decently in its first weekend at 13th place, grossing $2.3 million, it is the weakest box office opening of his documentaries to date.
Everything is normal in Hollywood, however. They still hate him, and Hollywood Reporter labeled his conservative film an “alt-right doc.”
Jim Crow and Ku Klux Klan
His new film expands on a theme he has covered earlier, which is that almost everything people think is bad about American history – slavery, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, and eugenics – come from the Democrats. He adds to that awful legacy by showing that the Jim Crow laws of the deep south directly inspired the Nazis as they formulated their racial laws in the 1930s.
The “Switch”
To the extent that Democrats are willing to acknowledge their dark past, they make the facetious claim that the parties somehow “switched sides” in the 1960s. This falsification of history is now being taught in universities by left-leaning professors.
However, D’Souza shows that out of the 200 so-called Dixiecrats, who opposed the civil rights movement, only two of them switched sides. The rest remained lifelong Democrats and were even lionized as party heroes, such as Hillary Clinton’s mentor Robert Byrd.
Most blacks switched in the 1930s under the New Deal, while the Democrats were still the party of Ku Klux Klan, according to Death of a Nation.
Dinesh D’Sousa
Not Impressed
Left-wing reviewers have not been impressed by D’Souza’s movie. The Outline, for instance, dismisses all his movies as a selection of a few quotes or expressions taken out of context to build a strawman case with no substance. The classical example is the argument that the Nazis were socialists because they named their ideology “national socialism.”
Leftists dismiss this as mere tactics. Nazis weren’t real socialists, they claim, but merely used the label as a method to gain voters. Interestingly, this is the same argument they use to dismiss the communist atrocities. “That wasn’t real socialism” is the most commonly used excuse for failed socialist experiments on the left.
Common Pattern
Do the critics have a point? Judging from D’Souza alone, it is hard to tell, as he makes broad claims from limited data. It is easy to see why a leftist will dismiss it as cherry picking to create a narrative.
A far stronger case can be made if we include other left-wing parties with a similar story as the Democratic Party. The most important case is the current hero of Bernie Sanders: the Social Democrats in Sweden. In a recent Swedish documentary, the party's hidden history reveals a damning record of anti-Semitism, racism, and direct collaboration with the Nazi regime during World War II.
And eugenics? The Social Democrats were the leading party in Europe to promote racial purity, directly inspiring the Nazi regime. Here is what is interesting: Like the Democratic Party, the Social Democrats also “switched” in the 1960s, cunningly rebranding themselves as the champion of anti-racism and civil rights, recasting the right as racist.
When viewing these histories in parallel, D’Souza’s case becomes far stronger. It wasn’t just the Democrats who tried to cover up their racist past. Similar parties in other countries did the same and for the same reason.
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