Dinesh D'Souza

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In 1995 D'Souza published The End of Racism, in which he claimed that exaggerated claims of racism are holding back progress among African Americans in the US; he defended the Southern slave owner, and said that "The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well". D'Souza also called for a repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and argued: "Given the intensity of black rage and its appeal to a wide constituency, whites are right to be nervous. Black rage is a response to black suffering and failure, and reflects the irresistible temptation to attribute African American problems to a history of white racist oppression."

A reviewer for The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education responded to the book by posting a list of sixteen recent racist incidents against black people. Michael Bérubé, in a lengthy review article, referred to the book as "encyclopedic pseudoscience", calling it illogical and saying some of the book's policy recommendations are fascist; he stated that it is "so egregious an affront to human decency as to set a new and sorry standard for 'intellectual'".

The book was also panned by many other critics: John David Smith, in The Journal of Southern History, said D'Souza claims blacks are inferior and opines that "D'Souza bases his terribly insensitive, reactionary polemic on sound bite statistical and historical evidence, frequently gleaned out of context and patched together illogically. His book is flawed because he ignores the complex causes and severity of white racism, misrepresents Boas's arguments, and undervalues the matrix of ignorance, fear, and long-term economic inequality that he dubs black cultural pathology. How, according to his own logic, can allegedly inferior people uplift themselves without government assistance", adding that D'Souza's "biased diatribe trivializes serious pathologies, white and black, and adds little to our understanding of America's painful racial dilemma".

The prepublication version of the book contained a chapter dedicated to those portrayed by D'Souza as authentic racists, including many paleoconservatives, such as prominent philosopher and The Washington Times editor Samuel T. Francis, to whom he attributed several false quotes at the inaugural American Renaissance conference. A column by D'Souza in The Washington Post containing this material led to Francis being fired. D'Souza's account of Francis's speech was contradicted by video of the event. American Renaissance organizer Jared Taylor took legal action against D'Souza for several false claims, including that speakers had used racial slurs, resulting in publisher Free Press canceling the initial run and forcing D'Souza to rewrite portions of the book. Some observers, such as Baltimore Sun writer Gregory Kane noted that D'Souza's book bore many similarities to Taylor's 1992 work Paved with Good Intentions, despite D'Souza accusing Taylor of racism. Many right-wing critics, such as Lawrence Auster, believed that D'Souza was attacking Francis and others to protect himself from accusations of racism.

Paul Finkelman commented on what he called D'Souza's trivialization of racism, and said, in a review article called "The Rise of the New Racism", that much of what D'Souza says is untrue, and much is only partially true, and described the book as being "like a parody of scholarship, where selected 'facts' are pulled out of any recognizable context, and used to support a particular viewpoint". In Finkelman's opinion, the book exemplifies a "new racism", which "(1) denies the history of racial oppression in America; (2) rejects biological racism in favor of an attack on black culture; and (3) supports formal, de jure equality in order to attack civil rights laws that prohibit private discrimination and in order to undermine any public policies that might monitor equality and give it substantive meaning".

The conservative black economist Glenn Loury severed his ties with the American Enterprise Institute over the organization's role in the publication of the book. Loury wrote that the book "violated canons of civility and commonality", with D'Souza "determined to place poor, urban blacks outside the orbit of American civilization."

In the second chapter of his 2002 book, What's So Great About America, D'Souza argues that while colonialism was terrible, it had the unintended consequence of lifting third world countries up to Western civilization. D'Souza writes, "I realize that in saying these things I am opening the door for my critics, and the incorrigible enemies of the West, to say that I am justifying colonialism ... This is the purest nonsense. What I am doing is pointing out a historical fact: despite the corrupt and self-serving motives of [its] practitioners ... colonialism ... proved to be the mechanism that brought millions of nonwhite people into the orbit of Western freedom." He holds up the European colonization of India as an example, arguing that in the long run colonization was beneficial for India, because it introduced Western law, universities, infrastructure, and the like, while effectively ending human sacrifice, the practice of Sati, and other "charming indigenous customs".

In a review of the book, economist Thomas Sowell wrote that D'Souza's book exposed the fallacies and hypocrisies of various criticisms of the United States by the Islamic world, "domestic multiculturalist cults," those who seek reparations for slavery, and the worldwide intelligentsia. According to Sowell: "Perhaps it takes somebody from outside to truly appreciate all the blessings that too many native-born Americans take for granted. D'Souza understands how rare—sometimes unique—these blessings are." Sowell also wrote that D'Souza challenges the notion that all world cultures are equal: "D'Souza challenges one of the central premises of today's intelligentsia: The equality of all cultures. 'If one begins with the multicultural premise that all cultures are equal, then the world as it is makes very little sense,' he says. Some cultures have completely outperformed others in providing the things that all people seek—health, food, housing, security, and the amenities of life."

In early 2007, D'Souza published The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11, in which he argues that the American cultural left was in large part responsible for the Muslim anger that led to the September 11 attacks. He argues that Muslims do not hate America because of its freedom and democracy, but because they perceive America to be imposing its moral depravity (support for sexual licentiousness) on the world. D'Souza also argues that the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse was a result of "the sexual immodesty of liberal America", and asserts that the conditions of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay "are comparable to the accommodations in mid-level Middle Eastern hotels."

The book was criticized in major American newspapers and magazines and described as, among other things, "the worst nonfiction book about terrorism published by a major house since 9/11" and "a national disgrace". Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times described it as "a nasty stewpot of intellectually untenable premises and irresponsible speculation that frequently reads like a Saturday Night Live parody of the crackpot right."

D'Souza's book caused controversy in the conservative movement. His conservative critics widely mocked his thesis that the cultural left was responsible for 9/11. In response, D'Souza posted a 6,500-word essay on National Review Online, and NRO subsequently published a litany of responses from conservative authors who accused D'Souza of character assassination, elitism and pseudo-intellectualism.

The September 2010 book by D'Souza, The Roots of Obama's Rage (published in condensed form in a September 2010 Forbes op-ed), interprets President Barack Obama's past and how it formed his beliefs. D'Souza states that Obama is "living out his father's dream", so that "[i]ncredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s", who, D'Souza goes on to describe as a "philandering, inebriated African socialist". The book appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list for four weeks in October–November 2010.

Ryan Chittum, in an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, described the Forbes article as "a fact-twisting, error-laden piece of paranoia ... the worst kind of smear journalism—a singularly disgusting work". Commentators on both the right and left strongly disputed assertions made about Obama in the book and article. The left-leaning Media Matters for America wrote that "The Roots of Obama's Rage [was] rooted in lies". Daniel Larison of The American Conservative stated: "Dinesh D'Souza has authored what may possibly be the most ridiculous piece of Obama analysis yet written ... All in all, D'Souza's article reads like a bad conspiracy theory." Larison criticized D'Souza's suggestion that Obama is anti-business, citing a lack of evidence. Andrew Ferguson of The Weekly Standard wrote, "D'Souza always sees absence of evidence as evidence of something or other ... There is, indeed, a name for the beliefs that motivate President Obama, but it's not anticolonialism; it's not even socialism. It's liberalism!". The magazine published D'Souza's letter, in which he expressed surprise "at the petty, vindictive tone of Andrew Ferguson's review".

D'Souza wrote the book America: Imagine the World Without Her on which his 2014 film of the same name is based. When the warehouse club Costco pulled the book from its shelves shortly before the film's release, conservative media and fans on social media criticized the move. Costco said it pulled the book due to low sales. D'Souza disputed the explanation, saying the book had only been out a few weeks and had surged to No. 1 on Amazon.com, while Costco stocked hundreds of much lower-selling books. He and other conservatives asserted it was pulled because one of Costco's co-founders, James Sinegal, supported Obama's politics. Costco reordered the book and cited the documentary's release and related interest for the reorder.

In July 2017, D'Souza published The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left. In the book, D'Souza asserts that the 2016 Democratic Party platform was similar to the platform of the Third Reich. The statement received media attention in 2018 when repeated by Donald Trump Jr. PolitiFact gave the claim its "Pants-on-Fire" rating, noting that "only a small number of elements of the two platforms are clearly similar, and those are so uncontroversial that they appear in the Republican platform as well." Historians refuted the assertion, with University of Maryland historian and Barack Obama critic Jeffrey Herf saying, "There is not the slightest, tiny sliver in which this could be even somewhat accurate." In another review of the book, historian Nicole Hemmer, then of the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, wrote: "For a book about secret Nazis, The Big Lie is surprisingly dull ... The Big Lie thus adds little to the no-you're-the-fascist genre on the right". New York Times columnist Ross Douthat criticized the book, saying it was a "plea-for-attention" by D'Souza, and that the author had "become a hack". Douthat further stated, "Because D'Souza has become a professional deceiver, what he adds are extraordinary elisions, sweeping calumnies and laughable leaps."

In an article for The American Conservative, historian and philosopher Paul Gottfried, who has written extensively on the subject of fascism, harshly criticized a PragerU video hosted by D'Souza which maintained that fascism was a leftist ideology. D'Souza also maintained that Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile, who influenced Italian fascism, was a leftist, to which Gottfried noted that this contradicted the research by "almost all scholars of Gentile's work, from across the political spectrum, who view him, as I do in my study of fascism, as the most distinguished intellectual of the revolutionary right."

D'Souza's Christian apologetics books, What's So Great About Christianity and Life After Death: The Evidence, were both on The New York Times Best Seller list.

D'Souza wrote and co-directed the documentary-style polemical film 2016: Obama's America. Through interviews and reenactments, the film compares the similarities in the lives of D'Souza and President Barack Obama. D'Souza suggested that early influences on Obama affected the decisions he made as president. The film's tagline is "Love him or hate him, you don't know him." The film has been criticized on the grounds that what D'Souza claims to be an investigation of Obama includes considerable projection, speculation, and selective borrowing from Obama's autobiography, to prove D'Souza's own narrative. In a "Fact Check" of the film, the Associated Press found that D'Souza provided little or no evidence for most of his claims, noted that several allegations were factually false, and described the film's central thesis as "almost entirely subjective and a logical stretch at best."

After a limited release beginning July 13, 2012, the film expanded to over 1,000 theaters in late August 2012, and reached more than 2,000 theaters before the end of September 2012, eventually grossing more than $33.4 million. It is the fifth highest-grossing documentary-style film in the United States during the last four decades, and the second highest-grossing political documentary.

The Obama administration described the film as "an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear the president". Later, when D'Souza was indicted for violating election law, D'Souza and his co-producers alleged that he was selectively prosecuted, and that the indictment was politically motivated retribution for the success of the film.

In March 2013, D'Souza announced work on a documentary-style film titled America: Imagine the World Without Her for release in 2014. America was marketed to political conservatives and through Christian marketing firms. The Washington Times states that D'Souza is saying that Americans no longer have past heroes like Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan, but "we do have us" in "our struggle for the restoration of America."

Lions Gate Entertainment released America in three theaters on June 27, 2014 and expanded its distribution on the weekend of the U.S. holiday Independence Day on July 4, 2014. CinemaScore reported that the opening-weekend audiences gave the film an "A+" grade. The film grossed $14.4 million, which made it the highest-grossing documentary in the United States in 2014.

The film review website Metacritic surveyed 11 movie critics and assessed 10 reviews as negative and 1 as mixed, with none being positive. It gave an aggregate score of 15 out of 100, which indicates "overwhelming dislike". The similar website Rotten Tomatoes surveyed 24 critics and, categorizing the reviews as positive or negative, assessed 22 as negative and 2 as positive. Of the 24 reviews, it determined an average rating of 2.9 out of 10. The website gave the film an overall score of 8% and said of the consensus, "Passionate but poorly constructed, America preaches to the choir." The Hollywood Reporter's Paul Bond said the film performed well in its limited theatrical release, "overcoming several negative reviews in the mainstream media". Bond reported, "Conservatives ... seem thrilled with the movie."

On July 25, 2016, D'Souza released the documentary film Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party. The film criticizes the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton, the presumptive (and ultimate) Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 2016.

The film was universally panned by professional film critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 4%, based on 27 professional reviews, with an average rating of 1.7/10. The critics consensus on the site reads, "Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party finds Dinesh D'Souza once again preaching to the right-wing choir—albeit less effectively than ever." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score of 1 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike". It is the lowest-rated film on the website.

Peter Sobczynski wrote, "Hillary's America may well be the single dumbest documentary that I have ever seen in my life." A July 2016 review in Variety characterized D'Souza as "a right-wing conspiracy wingnut, the kind of "thinker" who takes off from Barack Obama birther theories and just keeps going, spinning out a web of comic-book liberal evil." Alex Shephard of The New Republic said:

Some conservatives viewed the film more positively. John Fund of the National Review stated that "[the film] is over the top in places and definitely selective, but the troubling facts are accurate and extensively documented in the D'Souza book that accompanies the movie." He also called the film "intensely patriotic". On July 23, 2016, Donald Trump, who was then running as the Republican presidential nominee against Clinton, called on supporters to see the film.

On January 23, 2017 the film was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards, Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Dinesh D'Souza), Worst Actress (Rebekah Turner and Mikaela Krantz, for playing Hillary Clinton), Worst Director (Dinesh D'Souza and Bruce Schooley), and Worst Screenplay. In response to the Razzie nominations, D'Souza stated that he was "actually quite honored" and called the nominations "petty revenge" in response to Trump's election victory, also stating that "the film might have played an important role in the election." D'Souza appeared in the video announcing the film as having won four of the five possible Razzies repeating his view that the nominations were awarded in response to Trump's election victory.

Death of a Nation had its world premiere in Los Angeles, California on July 30, 2018. A showing in Washington, D.C. on August 1, 2018 was co-hosted by D'Souza and President Donald Trump's son Donald Trump Jr.

The film Death of a Nation centers around drawing parallels between the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. Death of a Nation explores the role of the Democratic Party in opposing both presidents. In the film, D'Souza accuses the Democratic Party—both historically and presently—of racism, white supremacy, and fascism. D'Souza further argues that the political left attempt to falsely push claims of racism, white supremacy, and fascism onto the political right for political gain. He claims that the modern political left is currently using these types of accusations in attempts to remove Trump from office "by any means necessary."

The film includes numerous falsehoods and has received criticism from historians regarding aspects of historical accuracy. The film characterizes Adolf Hitler as a liberal; historians characterize Hitler and the Nazis as being far-right. It also claims that Hitler was a LGBTQ sympathizer, whereas the Nazis murdered thousands of gay men and imprisoned homosexuals in concentration camps.

On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 0% based on 11 reviews, with an average rating of 1.9/10. On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 1 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike". PostTrak reported that filmgoers gave the film a score of 4 out of 5 stars, while The Hollywood Reporter wrote that those polled by CinemaScore (which was paid by Death of a Nation's filmmakers to conduct polls of audiences) gave it a grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

On its opening weekend, the film grossed $2.3 million on 1,032 screens, the lowest wide release for a D'Souza film. As of August 19, 2018, the film has grossed $5.3 million.

In May 2022, D'Souza released 2000 Mules, a film that falsely alleges Democrat-aligned individuals were paid to illegally collect and deposit ballots into drop boxes in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election. The film was based on research by True the Vote. Former president Donald Trump praised the film as exposing "great election fraud".

The Associated Press reported the film was based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data. The Dispatch, a conservative online magazine, found that "The film's ballot harvesting theory is full of holes", and mentioned that "D'Souza has a history of promoting false and misleading claims".

D'Souza has appeared on numerous national television networks and programs. Six days after the September 11, 2001, attacks, D'Souza appeared on Politically Incorrect hosted by Bill Maher. He disputed the assertion that terrorists were cowards by saying, "Look at what they did. You have a whole bunch of guys who were willing to give their life; none of them backed out. All of them slammed themselves into pieces of concrete. These are warriors." Maher agreed with D'Souza's comments and said, "We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from two thousand miles away."

During an interview on The Colbert Report on January 16, 2007, while promoting his book The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, D'Souza maintained that liberals had some responsibility for the September 11 attacks. He said liberals' "penchant for interference" had a decided effect in convincing the Carter administration to withdraw support from the Shah, which brought on Muslim fundamentalists' control of the Iranian government. He also said that the distorted representation of American culture on television is one source of resentment of the United States by Muslims worldwide. D'Souza believes that traditional Muslims are not too different from traditional Jews and Christians in America. Towards the end of the interview, he admitted that he and Islamic militants share some of the same negative beliefs about liberal Americans.

In late February 2017, students at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, stole more than 200 flyers advertising D'Souza's planned appearance at the university the first week of March. D'Souza called the protest "pathetic", and suggested the demonstrators "Come out and debate me. In the best case you may win; in the worst, you'll learn something". Twin brothers Manfred and Jonah Wendt, co-founders of the student conservative group Tigers for Liberty, had passed around 600 notices of D'Souza's visit to campus. Those returned by the protesters contained negative comments about D'Souza.

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