Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza contends our politics are their most combustible since just before the Civil War, and he says President Trump must lead the effort to destroy “plantation politics” and end the practice of using the power of government to punish political enemies.
D’Souza latest project is “Death of A Nation: Plantation Politics and the Making of the Democratic Party.” The film opens August 3.
While our politics are toxic today, the parallel between the elections of 2016 and 1860 may take some people by surprise. D’Souza says there’s a good reason for the comparison after the volcanic response by liberals to Trump’s victory.
“I don’t think there’s any precedent for it in our lifetime. You have to go further back,” said d’Souza.
“Lincoln would understand our moment. Let’s remember that in 1860, the Democrats, not just the Southern Democrats but the Northern Democrats, refused to accept the result of a free election. And so chaos resulted from that.
“The chaos now is taking a different form. It’s not an effort to break up the country. It’s rather an effort to oust Trump by any means necessary,” said D’Souza.
D’Souza says one of the greatest dangers Americans now face is the Democrats’ weaponization of government to exact political punishment on their enemies. He believes that’s the reason for the increased polarization in the U.S. and why he received a much harsher sentence for campaign finance violations than most other people.
“I attribute this mainly to the gangster-ization of the Democratic Party. If I can cite my own case as an example. I was charged by the Obama administration for exceeding campaign finance laws. They threw the weight of the federal government against me.
“Jimmy Carter would not have done that. That was the old Democratic Party. But under Obama and under Hillary, you had this turn in which the weapons of the state are used against political opponents. There’s no way to compromise with that. It’s not like we can have a middle position on that. We actually have to just stop it,” said D’Souza.
He says that’s the same conclusion Lincoln reached more than 150 years ago.
“Lincoln understood the same thing. Lincoln had made all kinds of bending concessions, but at some point he realized, ‘We had an election. I have an electoral mandate. I campaigned on it but now the American people have ratified it. So it’s their mandate, not mine, so I’m not going to give it up at any cost,'” said D’Souza.
“Lincoln said, ‘I would rather die than give it up.’ I think Trump has some of Lincoln’s solidity, some of Lincoln’s backbone. Unlike a lot of Republicans, when the media start attacking him, he doesn’t hide under his desk or run away from the room. He fights back and that’s the kind of spirit the Republican Party needs,” said said D’Souza.
The book is also a denunciation of what D’Souza calls plantation politics, which he says started as “an ethnic scheme” to keep black people in slavery but in complete dependence. He says slavery is now abolished but the Democrats still have the same mindset towards blacks, Latinos, and others.
‘The Democrats identify an ethnic group and they say, ‘We’re not going to campaign for your votes as individuals. We want your votes collectively, and we’re going to create an institutional dependency and inter-generational dependency on the Democratic Party. You’ll never get out of poverty, but we’ll take care of you forever and in exchange, you’ll agree to vote for us,'” said D’Souza.
D’Souza says Democrats like to argue that the two parties have switched roles on race and other issues since Lincoln’s day, but he says that’s just not true.
“Lincoln said the Republican Party stands for the idea that the hand that makes the corn has the right to put the corn in it’s own mouth. In other words, people have the right to keep the fruit of their labor. A hundred and fifty years later, those are the still the identifiable principles of the two parties.
“The Republican Party stands for keeping the fruits of your labor. The Democratic Party stands for wealth confiscation. Not a whole lot has changed,” said D’Souza.
The “Death of a Nation” project was well underway before Trump’s decision to pardon D’Souza earlier this year. D’Souza says he’s grateful to have basic rights again like voting and being able to own a firearm, but he says there are much deeper blessings as well.
“I feel in a broader sense that there’s lifted a cloud. It has taken this ‘felon’ badge that the left was trying to hang around my neck. It’s lifted that. It’s given me my full American dream back, so for that I’m both exhilarated and grateful,” said D’Souza.