Dinesh D’Souza is a controversial right-wing figure who is a darling of the darkest parts of conservative circles. He’s beloved for his books and films, which he claims expose the “true history” of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic party itself. Outside of conservative bubbles, his books and films are seen for what they are: cheap, dishonest propaganda.
In 2014, Dinesh D’Souza pled guilty to campaign finance fraud. He illegally created straw donors to contribute to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long. D’Souza admitted in court that he knew it was illegal as he entered his guilty plea and asked the judge for a light sentence. From Politico:
“I knew that causing a campaign contribution to be made in the name of another was wrong and something the law forbids,” D’Souza said, according to Newsday. “I deeply regret my conduct.”
As former U.S. Attorney, Joyce Alene notes this is a blatant signal to Michael Cohen and other Trump allies to “stay strong.”
So, aside from knowingly committing campaign finance fraud and churning out right-wing propaganda, what else is D’Souza known for? For many of the same racist themes and conspiracies that just got Roseanne Barr canceled from television. He has routinely used Twitter to lob racist and homophobic insults at President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, among others. Here is a sampling of some of his lowest moments.
And he spread the racist birther business, while claiming not to be a birther.
After Florida teen Trayvon Martin was murdered, Dinesh D’Souza sent this message to the world on Twitter, comparing Trayvon Martin to Obama.
And then there is this despicable tweet targeting Barack and Michelle Obama.
D’Souza spread the dumb conspiracy that the Charlottesville white supremacist rally was staged.
When the teenage survivors of the Stoneman-Douglas High School mass shooting visited the Florida capitol only days after seeing their peers murdered, D’Souza mocked them for crying and expressing disbelief as they watched their state representatives vote down a bill to ban assault weapons.
D’Souza mocked Beverly Johnson, one of the women who accused Alabama’s Roy Moore of sexually assaulting her as a teen.
He called Rosa Parks “overrated.”
D’Souza has spread some of the most vulgar lies about George Soros, including the very same ones recently promoted by Roseanne Barr. From Media Matters:
Author Dinesh D’Souza, speaking with C-SPAN at a FreedomFest event in July, claimed that his new book The Big Lie shows that billionaire philanthropist George Soros “was a kind of collection boy for Hitler” and that Soros admitted as much during an old interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes. D’Souza also claimed there was an “eerie parallel” between Soros and Josef Mengele, a physician at Auschwitz who selected victims for the gas chambers and performed deadly experiments on prisoners, because, D’Souza said, both defended their crimes by saying that if they hadn’t done them, someone else would have. Since the C-SPAN interview (and besides in his book), D’Souza has pushed the claim on Twitter, in The Daily Caller, and in an interview with far-right troll Stefan Molyneux.
It is absolutely unbelievable with that deplorable body of evidence that anyone would pardon this vile, hateful excuse for a human. And yet, here we are. None of this will stop until Congress acts like the check they were intended to be. The unraveling of our republic is happening before our very eyes and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are sitting on their hands.
Find a candidate and work your ass off. It’s time to wind down this dark chapter of American history and begin again.
Thursday, May 31, 2018 · 4:09:50 PM +00:00 · Jen Hayden
Mother Jones has even more about D’Souza’s despicable background, including outing several of his classmates during his days at Dartmouth.
D’Souza’s extremism traces back to his college days, when he was an editor of the Dartmouth Review, the leading conservative college publication of the early 1980s. (Wendy Long was a Dartmouth student and served as a trustee of the Review in the 1990s.) In that post, D’Souza became a hero to young conservatives across the nation (and the right-wing foundations looking to fund them). While he helmed the Review, it published a “lighthearted interview with a former Klan leader”—accompanied by a staged photo of a black person hanging from a tree—and an assault on affirmative action titled, “Dis Sho Ain’t No Jive, Bro,” which was written in Ebonics. (“Now we be comin’ to Dartmut and be up over our ‘fros in studies, but we still be not graduatin’ Phi Beta Kappa.”) The “Jive” article caused Jack Kemp, a conservative icon mindful of the right’s problems with minority outreach, to resign from the Review‘s advisory board. Decades later, it’s clear that D’Souza chose the path of the foul at an early point. But he also had trouble with trustworthiness—as I discovered in an early encounter.
In 1982, I attended—that is, snuck into—a conference for conservative students journalists held at the New York Athletic Club and sponsored by foundations eager to spread the conservative gospel on college campuses. D’Souza was received at this affair as royalty. And at lunch, I had the good fortune to share a table with him. There he bragged about the Review having made use of a list of Dartmouth alumni it had somehow procured—without the university’s approval—for a mailing. (The university maintained the Review had misappropriated the list and committed a copyright violation.) He and his surrounding acolytes also gloated over an infamous Review article that had outed members of Dartmouth’s Gay Student Association and published excerpts of letters written by the group’s members. (As a result of this article, some members of the group had their sexual orientation disclosed to friends and family members.)