D’Souza Goes from Bad to Worse

…And you thought The Purge series was bad.

Documentary filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza has just released his new piece, Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time? A film that tries to implicate an image of Donald Trump as the new Abraham Lincoln, and the Liberals as a modern Nazi Germany. Okay, just let that sink in.

It’s two theories that go beyond opinion and straight into fiction.

D’Souza’s argument is underdeveloped with zero evidence to compliment his outrageous claims. Rotten Tomatoes couldn’t even salvage a score to give this film because it is just flat out horrendous. It’s as if no one told the director that there are virtually no similarities between either Trump and Lincoln, or Democrats and White Supremacists. Instead, D’Souza tries to take criticism of the Republican Party by Liberals and throw it back in their face. It lacks any believable development, and is more like a second grader’s rebuttal to a rival’s “yo mama” joke. What this film does show is that D’Souza has no storytelling ability, and lacks a sophisticated understanding of American history and politics.

…Or maybe D’Souza never meant to try and create support for the White House administration. Perhaps he was trying to use irony to do the exact opposite.

Then Death of a Nation would make sense as a sarcastic outlook on modern political culture. D’Souza’s film is the new A Modest Proposal (a satire by Jonathan Swift that involves eating children to increase economic revenue). As a satirical documentary, the film accomplishes precisely what it is intended for. It creates a universe full of preposterous and laughable comparisons between entirely distinct parties to proclaim just how regressive our government actually is.

It’s the new absurdist movement!

Except, this isn’t what D’Souza intended. Death of a Nation doesn’t purposefully use sarcasm; it represents his actual point of view.

Trump as Lincoln

Okay, they both are technically labeled as Republican, but the term meant something entirely different back in 1864. There was a political shift between parties and views during the 19th and 20th century; Republicans views resemble those of modern Democrats and vice versa. So, accurately speaking, President Trump and Abraham Lincoln are not of the same party because their policies and opinions are on completely opposite sides of the spectrum.

Also, let’s make it perfectly clear that Trump does not have an America to save. If anything, his rise to Presidency has created a more polar divide between parties and its people. The country is again cut in half between Southern Conservative states and a progressive Northeast and West.

D’Souza tries to save his argument by making Trump appear as an American divine figure that is pulling the working class out of its struggle, which is simply not true. The American working class is specifically used to classify White males who work in either agriculture or industrial jobs. Trump’s entire presidential campaign was used to appeal to this economic sector, and make it seem like they were in a lower caste than they were. He manifested a controlling image of a demographic who were supposedly oppressed by the Obama administration. How did he do so?

By scapegoating other demographics that include: Liberals, Muslims, and Hispanics to exploit White America’s fear.

However, this situation is repulsively incomparable to what Abraham Lincoln faced. To start, Lincoln was a supporter of human rights and a man who understood the political complications that needed to be dealt with in order to succeed. You can’t compare the man who abolished slavery to someone who knowingly separated children from their parents.

The description of the film’s trailer shows how uneducated D’Souza is about political history:

“Now the target of the Democrats is President Trump and his supporters. The Left calls them racists, White supremacists and fascists. These charges are used to justify driving Trump from office and discrediting the right ‘by any means necessary.’ But which is the party of the slave plantation? Which is the party that invented white supremacy? Which is the party that praised fascist dictators and shaped their genocidal policies and was in turn praised by them?” – Dinesh D’Souza

This might have been true…. in 1825, but welcome to modern America where conservatives actively blame minorities as the source of their problems.

Furthermore, D’Souza’s film fails to work his controversial thesis, because in the end, it simply doesn’t have enough concrete information to be convincing.

Lincoln’s country fell apart and he put it back together, whilst Donald Trump works to divide the people within what was a progressive country. Trump’s wall wasn’t just intended across the Southern border, but it was a metaphysical ploy to separate his followers from the rest of the country who wanted a more accepting United States.

I don’t even want to go into how foolish D’Souza is for comparing one of the most tyrannical and cruel regimes of all time, the Nazis, to the American Democratic party. If anything, it’s the conservative policies that are singling out other races and making them emigrate to other nations, not the liberal ones.

One thing I do want to point out, though, is that this documentary tries to accomplish what Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will did for Hitler. In that 1930s film, Riefenstahl was able to revolutionize documentary filmmaking into a staged art. The shots of the entire Nazi army (which were the inspiration for George Lucas’ imperial army shot), along with the godlike stance and portrayal of Hitler, gave the documentary genre a new look. It was the new source of propaganda that was extremely calculated and (sadly to say) successful.

Nonetheless, Death of a Nation isn’t able to withstand such an effect because it is inaccurate as a whole. Only the fanatics of the Presidency reign will go out of their way to defend D’Souza’s film, which isn’t saying much. If there aren’t enough ironic aspects to this documentary, it even latches onto a title that is similar to one of the most problematic films of all time. That’s right, the Ku Klux Klan revival film, The Birth of a Nation.

Although D.W. Griffith was one of the founding fathers of American Cinema, it is known that his longest work is incredibly offensive and perpetuates a culture of hate. All things that D’Souza manages to do in his conservative documentary, while trying to state that Liberals are the White supremacists. Give me a break. The inspiration for this film did not spark from D’Souza’s righteous spark to stand up for what is universally right, but from deceit. It’s radicalism at its finest.

To make a documentary, the director has to be informed, and countless hours of research need to be invested into the project. Otherwise, it’s just going to crash and burn. There is a reason for the making of this film, though. Earlier this year, D’Souza was pardoned by the President from a five year parole sentence. So, all this movie is, is D’Souza’s attempt to give his gratitude to Trump.

Politics are essential in moviemaking. The two will always be intertwined, and throughout time have done great things for the world. It gives future generations a visual perspective into history to further comprehend what happened in the past. The filmmaker will always have his opinion rooted in the film because separating personal thought from someone’s creation is impossible. Otherwise, it would be strictly non-bias journalists who contribute to nonfiction film. It’s no excuse though, to mold an unfathomable political world and claim it to be truth through stupid and illogical narration.

Congratulations to Trump, though. He’s for once endorsing something that clearly represents how dull-witted his following and administration is.

D’Souza, please pull a Wiseau and The Room, and accept the film to be something it isn’t: a satire that projects irony to represent society. It might save your career as a filmmaker.

If you want a more in-depth analysis of this director’s piece of…. work, check out this article on The Outline. 

-Franco Machado-Pesce