Students at a national conservative conference had mixed reactions to Dinesh D’Souza, who spoke on the same day as the premiere of his newest film.
D’Souza, a conservative author and filmmaker, spoke at the National Conservative Student Conference in D.C. on Friday where he promoted his controversial new political documentary, “Death of a Nation.” He told students during his speech that the Nazis borrowed many of their ideas from the Democratic Party, and claimed that the debate over slavery in America during the 1800s was not a debate between the northern and southern states, but a debate between pro-slavery Democrats and anti-slavery Republicans.
Chevy Swanson, a member of the College Republicans at the University of Washington and one of the more than 1,000 participants at this year’s conference, said while he thought D’Souza made some good points, he didn’t always agree with his conclusions.
“He has this tendency to see everything he doesn’t like as leftist, and everything leftist is nuts, and it’s a little out there for me,” Swanson said. “If something is not his brand of right-wing politics or right-wing conservatism, then it’s not even conservatism to him; it’s just left-wing.”
The conference was hosted by Young America’s Foundation, one of the nation’s largest conservative youth outreach organizations. The organization has chapters on college campuses across the country and also owns former President Ronald Reagan’s ranch in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Amelia Schulte, an incoming freshman at Wake Forest University, said she appreciated D’Souza’s perspective as an alternative to the political bias she has seen in her grade and high school classes.
“I think you can take that history and learn that new information without necessarily accepting his conclusions,” she said.
During his speech, D’Souza criticized media coverage of his film, saying “they haven’t read any of the sources in my book.” The movie, he says, is “a riveting, emotional, pictorial description” and he claims his ideas are sourced from historical transcripts excavated by Yale legal scholar James Whitman.
“There are deep ties between the Nazis and the Democrats that progressive scholars have pushed under the rug,” he told the Washington Examiner. “They’ve suppressed them. Why? Because they’re an embarrassment to the progressive story line.”
D’Souza, who served as a policy analyst in the Reagan White House, said that Trump, like Reagan, is “a man of his time.”
“Reagan lived in an era of gentleman’s politics,” he said. “When Reagan made jokes, as he often did with Sam Donaldson on ABC News, Sam Donaldson would laugh uproariously. Reagan was a very jovial guy; he got along with his opponents.”
But D’Souza also said the Republican Party of today needs a “tough guy” like Trump, and claimed that ordinary Republicans’ support for the president is because of what he called “a less civil, more savage, and more barbaric environment than the Reagan years.”
D’Souza, whose recent presidential pardon for violation of campaign finance laws drew widespread criticism, said he thinks the “fabled blue wave” during the midterm elections will “turn out to be a lot more feeble than people think.”
Megan Warnecke, an incoming freshman at Purdue University, said she appreciated D’Souza’s speech, saying it helped her to see things from a new angle.
“I just kind of assume my education taught me everything I need to know, but now I realize it’s not true,” she said.
