Fresh off his presidential pardon from Trump for a campaign-finance violation, D’Souza is angrier than ever - but still up to his usual practice of rearranging standard right-wing talking points into startlingly illogical new configurations in his film Death Of A Nation.
To thoroughly unpack the falsehoods, rhetorical sleights of hand, goalpost shifting, and general bad-faith arguments would require a monograph.
One example will suffice: To prove that Hitler wasn’t a “right-winger” but truly belongs to the left, D’Souza notes that the dictator is often deemed right-wing because he’s perceived as homophobic. (Well, yes.)
But in fact, that’s incorrect, because Hitler tolerated homosexuals in the brownshirts as long as they were good fighters; ergo, he wasn’t homophobic, and by extension he’s not right-wing.
Beyond the ridiculousness of the claim, D’Souza either missed the logical conclusion of his own argument—that to be right-wing is to be homophobic—or hopes the audience doesn’t clock the trap he’s set for himself.
That’s typical of D’Souza’s whirlwind barrage of assertions: One minute we’re learning that FDR thought of Mussolini as a kindred spirit, the next that the Nazi party program sounds like it was jointly written by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders because it has a healthcare plank.
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