Dinesh D’Souza’s newest film will not only make the controversial claim that Donald Trump has a lot in common with Honest Abe Lincoln, but will also suggest that Democrats were once too racist even for Nazis.
According to a clip, the film, Death of a Nation, from the conservative provocateur contains a scene where several Nazis are discussing how they should identify Jews in the 1930s.
“How does the American identify the Negro?” asks one Nazi.
“One drop rule. Any discernible black ancestry makes one count as black,” says another.
“Even if someone acts white, they could still be counted as black?” a third Nazi asks.
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That’s when D’Souza, who narrates the documentary, intones: “As for the Democratic one-drop rule, incredibly the Nazis found it too racist even for them.”
The D’Souza film is likely to draw intense criticism. Despite plenty of negative publicity surrounding his first film, 2016: Obama’s America, it earned $33.4 million domestically in 2012 and became the second most popular political documentary after Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.
D’Souza’s primary source for the conversation comes from Yale legal scholar James Whitman’s book, Hitler’s American Model.
“The basic idea that the Nazis got the Nuremberg laws from America is not original with Whitman, but he fleshes it out in more detail than anyone had previously, Whitman is a progressive and he downplays the Democratic party’s role, although he does not deny it,” says D’Souza.
“The meeting we dramatize in the film occurred on June 5, 1934, shortly after Hitler’s ascent to power,” he says. “Present was a young justice ministry lawyer named Heinrich Krieger, who had studied in Arkansas and had done research into American race law.”
D’Souza says he also used as a source the book Racism, by George Fredrickson.
“Krieger knew and the Nazis knew what most American textbooks suppress — namely that every segregation law in the American South was passed by a Democratic legislature, signed by a Democratic governor and enforced by Democratic officials,” says D’Souza.
Death of a Nation premieres in Los Angeles on Tuesday where several prominent conservatives in Hollywood and in politics are expected to walk the red carpet. The movie opens wide Aug. 3.
July 30, 10:45 am The story’s headline and copy has been updated to clarify D’Souza’s claims.
