The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left

by Dinesh D'Souza, David Cochran Heath (Narrator)

The explosive new book from Dinesh D'Souza, author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Hillary's America, America, and Obama's America.

What is "the big lie" of the Democratic Party? That conservatives—and President Donald Trump in particular—are fascists. Nazis, even. In a typical comment, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow says the Trump era is reminiscent of "what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor."

But in fact, this audacious lie is a complete inversion of the truth. Yes, there is a fascist threat in America—but that threat is from the Left and the Democratic Party. The Democratic left has an ideology virtually identical with fascism and routinely borrows tactics of intimidation and political terror from the Nazi Brownshirts.

To cover up their insidious fascist agenda, Democrats loudly accuse President Trump and other Republicans of being Nazis—an obvious lie, considering the GOP has been fighting the Democrats over slavery, genocide, racism and fascism from the beginning.

Now, finally, Dinesh D'Souza explodes the Left's big lie. He expertly exonerates President Trump and his supporters, then uncovers the Democratic Left's long, cozy relationship with Nazism: how the racist and genocidal acts of early Democrats inspired Adolf Hitler's campaign of death; how fascist philosophers influenced the great 20th century lions of the American Left; and how today's anti-free speech, anti-capitalist, anti-religious liberty, pro-violence Democratic Party is a frightening simulacrum of the Nazi Party.

Hitler coined the term "the big lie" to describe a lie that "the great masses of the people" will fall for precisely because of how bold and monstrous the lie is. In The Big Lie, D'Souza shows that the Democratic Left's orchestrated campaign to paint President Trump and conservatives as Nazis to cover up its own fascism is, in fact, the biggest lie of all.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Audiobook, American, Political Science

10 pages, Audible Audio

First published July 17, 2017

About the author

Dinesh D’Souza is a political commentator, bestselling author, filmmaker and a former policy analyst in the Reagan White House, Dinesh D'Souza graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1983. He served as John M. Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. D'Souza writes primarily about Christianity, patriotism and American politics.

Reviews

[Vheissu · Rating 1 out of 5]

I never thought that I would read a book that compares Abraham Lincoln with Adolf Hitler, but Dinesh D’Souza has written one for us (p. 62).

To be fair, Lincoln isn’t the target of D’Souza’s ire, and he doesn’t say that Lincoln “was just like Hitler in every respect.” D’Souza nevertheless believes that there are in today's America some who "are just like Hitler at least in some respects," namely, more or less, “The Left,” progressives, and the Democratic Party. They--not Donald Trump--are the ones who are just like Hitler in at least some respects. More or less. (p. 47).

D'Souza has an agenda and makes no bones about it: “the end of progressivism and the Democratic Party” (p. 28). He offers means to accomplish this overarching goal, including everything from the creation of "world class online universities" (p. 243) to "duct-taping Antifa thugs to lampposts and STOP signs" (p. 244). He also urges Republicans to find their “own clowns,” in order to combat the comedians on the Left. It's a tough job, but a "unified conservative movement and a unified GOP" (p. 234) are capable of conducting their "own denazification" (p. 235) of America's enemies.

The "Big Lie" in the title refers to Mr. D'Souza's belief that "America" was not responsible for slavery, genocide, concentration camps, and infanticide, but in truth it was "the 'Left,' progressives, and the Democratic Party that committed these crimes ” (pp. 92, 121). Democrats—and only Democrats, he emphasizes--created “concentration camps” (planation slavery) and committed genocide against American Indians (pp. 25, 103). Democrats, D'Souza laments, "have never admitted their racist history…never paid one penny of restitution for their crimes (p. 5; emphasis added).” D’Souza reluctantly concedes that “the Nazis killed far more people than the Democrats did” (p. 96), but kill the Democrats did. D’Souza plays the “Hitler card,” writing that “In some ways the progressive Democrats are even closer to the German Nazis than to the Italian fascists” (p. 25, 139). D’Souza gives Republicans credit for “the civil rights movement” (p. 4) of the 1960s.

D’Souza writes that the Democratic Party is “the party of slavery and Indian removal, of segregation and Jim Crow, of racial terrorism and the Ku Klux Klan, and of opposition to the civil rights movement of the 1960s” (p. 4). He states that “some of the institutions and practices uniquely associated with the Nazis—from genocide to the concentration camp—the Democrats in a sense got there first” (p. 26). D’Souza denounces the media’s “Nazi analogy” against Trump, which he claims is “the central organizing theme of Trump-related coverage in media and academia” (p.8). D’Souza is not shy about playing the victim card.

First, permit me a few preliminary comments. D’Souza’s explanations for the development of fascist/Nazi ideology are mostly conventional, as are his historical and political musings, although his explanations are grotesquely one-sided. Yes, the Democratic Party was the party of slavery and segregation. Southern Democrats in particular fought desegregation with every legal (and sometimes illegal) tool at their disposal. The Ku Klux Klan was “the domestic terrorist arm of the Democratic Party” (p. 25), says D’Souza, and Klansmen were overwhelmingly Democrats, but Masons and evangelical Christians were also Klansmen (see Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan ). On that we can agree. Whether the Democrats of 1832 are the same as the Democrats of 2017, or that the Republicans of 1856 are the same as the Republicans of 2017, seems implausible to me, but D’Souza wishes to indict the children for the crimes of their fathers, for which there is plenty of precedent in the Holy Bible (Numbers 14:18).

Of course, the American South today is solidly Republican, which begs the question, “Have Southerners changed their attitudes or only their party affiliation?

Even if the children are guilty of the crimes of their fathers, D’Souza’s understanding of American history is pitifully incomplete and occasionally flat out wrong. He admits as much, writing “I had no idea that the racism of the Democrats actually shaped and influenced the policies of Nazi Germany” (p. 118). D’Souza must be the only social scientists in America who didn’t already know that. D’Souza blames “progressives” for passing “the racist Immigration Law of 1924” (p. 120) without acknowledging that the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the White House in 1924, and that Coolidge was not a “progressive.”

Or take, for example, his mangled narrative of slavery in America. D’Souza’s claim that “America [didn’t impose slavery or segregation]—the Democrats did” is palpable nonsense (p. 121). Slavery in America existed long before there were Democrats, long before there was a United States, even. His claim that, among the Founders, only Jefferson “suspected” that Negroes may be less intelligent than whites, and that other founders (e.g., Hamilton) did not, is absurd (p. 131). Washington and Madison, among others, would beg to disagree.

D’Souza’s claim that “in 1860, the year before the Civil War, no Republican owned a slave; all of the four million slaves at the time were owned by Democrats” (p. 5) is nonsense and historically wrong. Francis P. Blair, Sr., of Silver Spring, Maryland, owned slaves and helped create the Republican Party (Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln , p. 460)! Historians can argue whether D’Souza’s claim that “Lincoln clearly wasn’t a racist” (p. 39) is valid. Lincoln was no bigot, he was anti-slavery but not necessarily an abolitionist (until late in his administration), and he was, above all, a Unionist. Lincoln, however, also expressed his belief that “You [Negroes] and we [whites] are different races…We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races” (Goodwin, p. 469). The reader can determine for herself whether such sentiments are racist. As a footnote, Lincoln campaigned for president in 1864 on the National Union ticket.

Racism has always figured prominently in American history, culture, and politics, from even before independence. The French-Indian War (we called it “Indian” for a reason), and the War of Independence were thoroughly infused with racial politics. The British tried to form alliances with Indians and even Negro slaves during the revolution, and the Patriots returned the favor of annihilating and re-enslaving those who answered London’s call. Notable Patriots including George Washington, Thomas Gage, Henry Knox, and John Sullivan, among others, took the commanding general’s command to heart when in 1779 he instructed Gen. Sullivan to effect “the total destruction and devastation of their [Seneca and Cayuga] settlements … that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed” (Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 , p. 256; emphasis in original). Patriots were so infuriated by Indian “treachery” that militia leader George Rogers Clark vowed that “he would never spare Man, woman, or child of any of them [Indians] on whom he can lay his hands,” reasoning that “to excel them in barbarity was and is the only way to make war upon Indians” (Taylor, p. 260).

On the American genocide, D’Souza writes that “neither ‘the West’ nor ‘America’ is guilty of genocide; rather, Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party are” (p. 98). The opening of the West was “lebensraum, Democratic Party style” (p. 99). Jackson’s “Trail of Tears” was “comparable to the Bataan Death March of 1942—one of the worst Japanese atrocities of World War II” (p. 102). Significantly, D’Souza fails to mention the Indian wars that occurred during and after the U.S. Civil War, when Republicans controlled the federal government, including Dakota War of 1862, Colorado War (1863-65), Navajo War (1863), Sand Creek Massacre (1864), Snake Wars (1864-1868), Black Hawk War (1865–1872), the Yavapai War (1865-91), Powder River War (1865), Red Cloud's War (1866-1868), Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876), Comanche Wars (1867-1875), Nez Perce War (1877), Great Sioux War of 1876–77, Bannock’s War (1878), White River War (1879), Geronimo’s War (1881-1876), the Crow War (1887); (see History.com, "American-Indian Wars"). These were Republican wars of removal; Manifest Destiny was strikingly bipartisan and everywhere genocidal.

D’Souza’s misunderstanding (intentional ignorance?) of American history is mirrored in his confusion about Constructional law. Referring to the recent Trump Muslim Ban kerfuffle, he writes

Aliens who are not part of the American social compact don’t have any constitutional rights. Again, Trump’s denial that Illegal aliens have a constitutional right to be here is in the mainstream of the liberal tradition (p. 41).

Well, yes and no, since the two questions are different. One is, “Who can be here”? And the other is, “What rights do people have once they are here”? With respect to the Bill of Rights, the Constitution protects “persons”--not just “citizens”--rights to Due Process of law (Amendment V). Once here, you’re good to go.

D’Souza is also a bit ill-informed about the history of our Constitution, writing, “As the founders understood it, the main threat of freedom comes from the federal government” (p. 32). That is a fair characterization of the Anti-federalists, including Jefferson, the proto-Democrat, but not of the Federalists, who saw states as the main threat to their freedom (read property), including Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Monroe, Jay, and Adams.

His Constitutional comments include the question of abortion. He writes

To see the radicalism of the Left’s support for federally funded abortions, consider that abortion as a right is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. Yet even if one considers it a constitutional right, none of our other fundamental rights are funded by the government. We have a First Amendment right to speak our minds and practice our religion, yet the government subsidizes neither of these rights" (p. 163; emphasis added).

Is he kidding? Maybe this book was written before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer .

Ideologically, D’Souza offers mostly conventional clichés. He quotes Stanley Payne, “All of Hitler’s political ideas had their origins in the Enlightenment” (p. 44). This is not a controversial position since liberalism, Marxism, fascism, Nazism and all ideologies that claim progress in human affairs is possible if not inevitable all trace their origins to the European Enlightenment (p. 24). Yes, liberalism and Nazism are both spawn of the Enlightenment, but D’Souza emphasizes only the connections between progressivism, fascism, and Nazism, setting aside liberalism’s own relationship with the three. One thing that fascists, Nazis, and Democrats have in common is their commitment to “a powerful centralized state,” D’Souza claims (p. 85). This is the “states’ rights” argument that was frequently made by Southern Democrats, but has since been adopted by Republicans including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald J. Trump. “Contrary to leftist propaganda,” D’Souza proclaims, “there is nothing wrong with the concept of states’ rights” (238), even though it was the same Southern Democrats, defenders of Jim Crow all, denounced and condemned by D’Souza himself, who made the states’ rights argument. Strange bedfellows?

D’Souza explains that the basis of fascism was “ethnicity” and that of the Nazis was “race.” D’Souza never quite explains the difference between the two. Most social scientists today would explain both race and ethnicity as “socially constructed,” and not genetically pre-determined, objective physical categories.

D’Souza is particularly incensed and strongly animated by the Democrats’ “efforts to delegitimize” Trump’s election, an event he claims that has only “one precedent in American history, the election of 1860” (p. 13). Again, he is ignorant of actual American history, seemingly unfamiliar with the Republican Party’s refusal to accept the election of Democrat Samuel Tilden in 1876. The Republicans offered to end Reconstruction and abandon enforcement of various civil rights laws if the Democrats would accept Hayes as president. It was this unprincipled (criminal?) act by the Republicans that led directly to the worst aspects of Jim Crow laws, and not only in the Democratic South, but also in the Republican North. Those Jim Crow laws were ultimately repealed because of actions by a “strong central state” (p. 85), another irony that seems to escape D’Souza, who is committed to that all-time Southern Democrat meme, “states’ rights.”

D’Souza defames “progressive Democrats” who refuse to accept the results of the election rules and procedures” in the 2016 election (p. 15). I’m sure you can find more than a few left-wing Democrats who hold this opinion, but the Party and its members of Congress have accepted the results of the election and the president’s authority and cannot be held responsible for the hysterical reaction of others. D’Souza defends Trump against charges of racism by some of his supporters, writing, “If these racists and anti-Semites endorse Trump, Trump himself doesn’t endorse them” (p. 39). Typically, D’Souza creates many straw men that he can conveniently denounce. D’Souza echoes Jefferson and John Locke when he writes, “We are under no more obligations to obey an elected tyranny than the founders themselves were obliged to obey the tyrannical authority of the British Crown” (p. 33). So, even if Trump was duly elected, Americans have no obligation to obey him should he turn tyrannical.

D’Souza confuses matters by saying, “But even if the Russians hacked Hillary’s server, they weren’t the ones who chose Trump” (p. 12). As is commonly known, Mrs. Clinton’s server was never hacked, although many government sites have been repeatedly compromised, including that of the Office of Personnel Management. American intelligence agencies are agreed that the Russians hacked the server of the DNC and John Podesta’s emails, not Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

D’Souza derides Democratic Congressmen who boycotted Trump’s Inauguration, but doesn’t mention that Hillary Clinton was there, as was Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Presidential inaugurations have occasionally been controversial affairs; John Adams (who would today be considered a Republican) refused to attend Jefferson’s (who is considered by some the creator of what would become the Democratic Party) inauguration. So, there are precedents. There may be no precedents, however, for George W. Bush's reported comment on Trump's inaugural address as "weird shit."

D’Souza also excuses Donald Trump’s rants against Muslims, Mexican, and American judges as being “insensitive” but not bigoted (p. 40). He assures us that the president is “no Hitler” (p.47) and that “Trump is clearly not insane” (p. 43).

D’Souza is not above playing the “victim card.” He writes that “the leftists are the ones who are in their faces, harassing the Trump supporters, threatening them, breaking and burning things, and engaging in skirmishes with the cops” (p. 19). Like many who think they know American history but apparently do not, D’Souza must be unaware that the Boston Tea Party also broke a few “things” and that the perpetrators are today considered Patriots.

D’Souza claims that, like the Nazis, Democrats engage in “consciousness raising,” meaning that racial conflicts have to be invented, so that peoples’ anger can be directed toward social change. “Their grievances,” opines D’Souza, “have to be created or at least interpreted for them, and they have to be stirred up to get off their butts and take action” (p.77). Ironically perhaps, this kind of “consciousness raising” seems to be the raisons d'être for D’Souza’s own book. He notes that, like fascists and Nazis, Democrats make “affirmation and celebration of ethnic identity as the basis of political motivation and participation” (p. 81)

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing I can say here will (in all probability) cause the people who are in total denial about the American left to pick this book up and give it a fair read. No discussion or explanation of the title and subject matter will move those whose mind(s) is(are) already immovably set.

Look the facts in the book are facts. It's not a book of slanted views and opinions, it's a book of what has happened and what is happening. Even if you are are sure you'll disagree with the conclusions my humble recommendation is that you at least give the book an open minded read.

If you (you know) are able.

[Amora · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you enjoyed reading Jonah Goldberg’s hit book Liberal Fascism there’s no reason why you shouldn’t read this as well. D’Souza throughly covers the history of fascism and how it is rooted in the belief that we all belong to the state, rather than the state belonging to us. This belief, of course, is antithetical to classical liberalism and far from a right-wing belief. To make his case he cites several historians ranging from Edwin Black to Gotz Aly. He’s fair and even cites Robert Paxton, who heavily disagrees with D’Souza. In the movie he is interviewed with nothing cut.

[April Raine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book Review:

I wish this book was satire. Most of DSouza’s sources are websites (dot.coms) and he cites sources only sporadically. He doesn’t even have endnotes for direct quotes! He has zero integrity as a scholar, with statements like (I’m paraphrasing) ‘There is no evidence to back this up, but why would anyone make it up.’ His illogical arguments go like this: Person A was a communist who became a fascist, therefore all communists are fascists. Or Antifa are violent towards their opponents and so were Nazis. Therefore Antifa and the Left in general are the Nazis of today. Nazis were artists and writers who liked organic food, just like liberals! So weak.His logic also claims that every resistance movement is pretty much Nazism. He struggles hard to make these connections. He pretty much creates his own definition of fascism.

This book is a hodge podge of Wikipedia research, 99 percent of it irrelevant to his thesis. It is overrun by false statements, which of course are not cited. The author leaves out information in attempts to bolster his weak argument, for example, the time Trump questioned a judge’s ability because of his race, becomes Trump once called a judge Mexican. He never provides strong evidence to support his thesis, in fact he constantly undermines his own argument. Listing all these occurrences would add pages to this review.

One example: He writes Trump doesn’t promote violence followed by a quote from Trump about wanting to punch someone in the face. Or Trump saying “I knocked the shit out of her” on Twitter. He writes Trump is a mentally stable person, followed by the statement “Clearly there’s a method to his madness.” Despite all the fighting Trump has done with the FBI he writes: “Authoritarians undermine legitimate structures of authority; has Trump or the GOP done this?” It is difficult to believe this guy is for real.

He writes progressives glorify violence, I find it difficult to believe 1960s civil rights activists being beaten and attacked by dogs and fire hoses relished in the glorification of violence. He thinks the Left is holding the right captive. He wants to finish off the Left so “Their power over us is gone.” He thinks that there is some big leftist conspiracy to erase the history of fascism. Even PBS is “propaganda.” He writes that progress in America is “civil rights or women going to work.” D’Souza says progressives like Cornel West care about race; and who else cared about race? Hitler. He seriously tries to connect Cornel West to Hitler. He equates Nazi Eugenics with Planned Parenthood. I wish I was making this up.

He says the Right wants to protect the rights of Americans to pursue happiness, I guess the Right doesn’t think having healthcare or lower taxes makes people happy. According to the author the only revolution the Right supports is the American Revolution, and its creation of “bourgeois capitalism.”

This book is so awful I was actually hoping he would make at least ONE good point, but halfway through, his idiotic ideas became so tiresome. And when the book does become interesting it is difficult to believe him. The best he can do is bring up the fact that the genocide of American Indians happened while Andrew Jackson was president, and Democrats were slave owners. No ground breaking research here. He focuses on Hitler’s admiration of American racism, painting a picture that the only racists in US history were Democrats.

The author tries very hard to sound intelligent, and to come across like he knows what he’s talking about, but he constantly betrays himself with statements like “history is divided into two classes.” Um, I could see historically society has been divided by class, but history? Come on D’Souza.

There is also something really pertinent he leaves out of his history, probably because it would go against his ridiculous thesis. He never mentions that when the Democratic Party began to support civil rights, all those racist Democrats became Republicans.

It’s really just too easy to discredit D’Souza’s Big Lie. It also is the most ridiculous book I’ve ever read. The absurdities are so numerous I can’t touch on them all.. (Page 137-8, and the author’s take on the one drop rule is especially absurd.) Another gem: “For the past few decades...eugenics has marched under a new banner, the banner of pro-choice.” The scary part is he calls for a culture war and advocates violence against what he perceives as a leftist conspiracy.

[Makenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant and exhaustively researched. You can't deny the truth when you have all the proof!

[JT C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Big Lie is one of those books that forces you to open your eyes and truly see the war going on behind the scenes of American politics. A war that is very quickly - that I as well as Dinesh believes - coming to a head. Dinesh carefully lays out the ideologically obscure notion of Fascism as not an exclusively "Right" brainchild but an exclusively "Left" one. Dinesh destroys this facade of "Trumpian Fascism" with point after point of deep scholarly digging that pulls back the curtain on actual Leftist Fascism and how the Left actually, in some ways, laid the groundwork for Nazism and Italian Fascism. Whether it was FDR's New Deal and his implementation of the NRA (National Recovery Administration) to which the Italian dictator Mussolini commented "Ecco un ditatore" which translates to "Behold a dictator" or the German press praising "American eugenic accomplishments as the model - biological courts, forced sterilization, detention for the socially inadequate debates on euthanasia" which laid the groundwork for their own macabre experiments.

I always become skeptical about reading political books because it's hard to sift through what is factual and what is partisan. While I realize that Dinesh is Right-leaning I also realize that he's a particularly smart scholar who is yet to be proven wrong on any of the points he makes and that's a hard track record to be skeptical of. Something that also eases my skepticism is the fact that there're 30 pages of sources used. I even took the liberty of looking a few of them up and they are indeed reputable sources. This is an odd time to be a Conservative because you are constantly being hailed as a "white supremacist, homophobic, xenophobic, racist, uneducated, misogynist, fascist, nazi." This is the Big Lie at work as it is easy to see the real fascists are the ones violently rioting and attacking our democracy by trying to overthrow President Trump who was democratically elected to lead the Free World. The time has come to fight back with logic and our resounding voices that say "no" to the real fascists of our time. The American Left.

[Annie B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book in itself is exactly what its title says: A big lie!

D'Souza is well known as a charlatan and demagogue, and it boggles my mind why so many of these reviews here simply believe a man who has no academic credentials, does not understand the meaning and importance of proper research and documentation. I am a literary and history researcher and it is more than obvious that Souza is desperately trying to tell and argue for a new history story dragging "arguments" and "documents" by head and shoulder. It is noteworthy that D'Souza is a convicted felon, a shady figure. Anybody who has read at least a handful of history books from academics and scholars (who are non-partisan!) will realize that this book is absolute hogwash, an attempt to rewrite history after his gusto just so that it fits his racist and hateful narrative. Make no mistake, I am not a Democrat, but this book should be pulled off the shelves on the grounds of incitement and sedition.

[Jim Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

D'Souza has hit a home run with his new book. Disclaimer: I am 72 years old. I am old enough to have learned about Germany, Italy and Japan during WWII; something that seems neglected in our current education system. D'Souza lays out in easily understood terms where and how both Nazism and Fascism originated and what each stood for.

Today people so easily make reference to others being Fascists and Nazis and frankly they have no idea what they are talking about. Who should read this book? Everyone! Unfortunately those on the Left will NOT read the book because they do not want to know the truth about how the leaders on the Left have been lying to Americans for decades. Those on the Right will read it because they know something is wrong in today's America but probably don't know exactly what it is. This book will educate both the Left and the Right. The real question is what each side will take from what D'Souza has written. My fear is that the rank and file from both the Left and the Right will ignore the facts because "their leaders surely wouldn't lie to them", right?

I was shocked as how Nazi Germany used many of the Left's policies and programs when designing their far left policies and programs throughout Germany. In America the Left segregated the Blacks in America, in Germany the Jews but the programs were very similar. Mussolini on the other hand did not agree with Hitler's Germany but went along for the ride because it was prudent for him to do so.

Today when you watch the riots (not protests) on American streets you see the equivalent of Germany's Brown Shirts, and Italy's Black Shirts in the violent tactics that are clearly on display under the guise that they are anti-Fascists and anti-Nazis. This is part of the Big Lie so eloquently covered in D'Souza's book.

Does anyone other than me find it strange that today's rioters call the opposition Fascists and Nazis but never accuse anyone of having the same beliefs of WWII Japan?

[Rachel Hershberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books uncovers the truth and gives the raw and honest side of history that the Left has successfully covered up for years. It'll challenge the way you used to think while delivering well-cited facts that are indisputable. If you're conservative, read it. If you're liberal, read it.

[James Francis McEnanly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slightly ahead of its time.

I started reading this book at the end of July. I was close to the end when the Charlottesville riot occurred. Dr. D'Souza described the forces behind it, as well as the mania for destroying statues with uncanny accuracy.
This book tells how it is the Left, not the right in this country that resembles the Nazis, and in fact inspired them in both tactics and rhetoric. After finishing this book, I am wondering why the Democratic Party is still with us.

[The Void of Abyss · Rating 1 out of 5]

Imprisoned for fraud in 2014 the frauds that he commits with his books are unfortunately legal.

I LISTENED to some of Dinesh D’Souza’s recent speeches and interviews about his new book, called The Big Lie, which was published a few days ago (on 31 July 2017). I do not have the book, but I assume that what he has been saying in his recent appearances resembles what he has written.

Last year in Hillary’s America, D’Souza used significant omissions to make its argument (“the Democrats are the ‘real racists'”) seem tenable, omitting many significant facts — like the fact that the Ku Klux Klan endorsed Republican Calvin Coolidge for president in 1924, and the fact that the Jewish takeover of the Democratic Party caused Southern segregationists in huge numbers to switch to the Republican party in the 1960s and ’70s, corresponding to what was called Nixon’s Southern strategy.

D’Souza’s relationship with the truth does not seem to have improved in the past year.

Broadly speaking, D’Souza’s new work seems to be a repeat performance of Hillary’s America, the message of which boils down to “Democrats are the Real Racists,” except that now it’s “Democrats are the Real Nazis.”

D’Souza refers to violence of Antifa and “the irony of using fascist tactics to fight fascism.”

There is nothing ironic here, unless one begins by accepting the leftist and Jewish premise that “Nazis” and Fascists invented political violence. In fact the paramilitary Brownshirts organization was created to protect National-Socialist meetings against attacks by leftists.

In general, like the rest of the National Review crowd, D’Souza proceeds from assumptions that are Jew-approved.

An important point of dishonesty in D’Souza’s presentation is his reference to images from concentration camps supposedly proving the Holocaust. Those images are really the foundation of the general demonization of Adolf Hitler and National-Socialism, with Fascism being demonized mainly by association with that. But in fact those images do not prove anything. The fact that D’Souza leans on this shows again that he is pandering to popular misconceptions and basically lacks seriousness.

D’Souza summarizes Hitler’s description of the Big Lie — without bothering to mention that Hitler was accusing the Jews of using the Big Lie. This has to be deliberate dishonesty and a deliberate omission on D’Souza’s part.

As examples of the leftist “Big Lie,” D’Souza points to the accusation that Trump is a fascist, and the accusation that Trump is a “racist.”

In fact, Trump’s movement does resemble a less than fully developed fascism, insofar as its message is nationalist and populist. It is also certain that Trump gets a lot of support from White people based on the perception that he represents the interests of White people. That is what those on the left call “racist.” So what? I don’t see Trump doing back flips to avoid such labels.

In general, D’Souza’s presentation is about fear of labels, and about applying those feared labels to others instead of bringing reason to bear. For an educated person, this is on its face not a very convincing kind of argument. Nonetheless I shall dismantle some of D’Souza’s major claims.

Eugenic Sterilization

Since Jews have created in the mind of the public a spurious link between eugenic sterilization and the Holocaust, D’Souza would like to identify the movement for eugenic sterilization in the United States with “progressives.” By the same token, however, D’Souza definitely does not want to identify it with Republicans.

Perhaps D’Souza never bothered to find out that the first American states to enact forced eugenic sterilization laws were all Republican states.

James Franklin Hanly, the governor of Indiana who signed the first eugenic sterilization bill into law in 1907, was a Republican.

In 1909 Washington, California, and Connecticut all had eugenic sterilization bills signed into law by Republican governors. In 1911 eugenic sterilization was signed into law by Iowa’s Republican governor Beryl F. Carroll. The first five states to adopt eugenic sterilization had it signed into law by Republican governors.

The Southern and Democratic states were slower to adopt the practice, possibly because of the influence of Christianity in those states.

Dinesh D’Souza calls Madison Grant, author of The Passing of the Great Race, a progressive, and maybe he was — but Madison Grant was also a Republican and a friend of President Theodore Roosevelt (who called himself a progressive).

Unlike Roosevelt, however, Madison Grant was unequivocally a racist. Can we really say that a man who advocates racism is on the left? From one perspective, maintaining a race is the most profound form of conservatism. From the perspective of the followers of Ayn Rand, however, racism is “collectivism” and therefore on the left. That is the kind of pigeonholing that Dinesh D’Souza promotes.

What is Conservative?

It goes back to a semantic question about what is “right,” what is “left,” and what is “conservative.” These terms do not mean the same today as they meant 100 years ago.

During the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, the meaning of the word “liberal” changed drastically. Westbrook Pegler, a dogged critic of the New Deal, wrote this in his column of 21 September 1953:

The truth is that our entire people have been brainwashed by the Roosevelt-Truman administrations for the last 20 years. The result is that today most of us don’t even know what our constitutional rights really are. We are afraid to say that Hitler was right about communism and Soviet Russia. Words which formerly had honest meanings now mean exactly the reverse to most of us. Those few who stubbornly insist on using the word “liberal” in its old, genuine meaning, are almost totally misunderstood. We even know we will be misunderstood when we use it. […]

I am one of the most liberal liberals in the country. But those who use the name “liberal” as their designation of a line of thought put me down as a reactionary. Well, I am. I hit back when I am hit. That is my reaction to abusive action. Suppose then that we say I am a reactionary liberal. These two political clichés are supposed to be mutually contradictory, although they really are not as any person must admit who knows the meanings of plain American words. [Westbrook Pegler, Reading Eagle, 21 September 1953]

Pegler tells us that before FDR, a liberal was somebody who wanted free markets and less interference from government. That political orientation today is called conservative.

So, if what now passes for conservative used to be liberal, what was conservative? I will give you a clue. Being conservative 100 years ago was not about less government. Conservatives 100 years ago used to recognize that individual freedom had a downside to it.

From Tory Socialism to National-Socialism

In the UK, in fact, there was a concept known as Tory Socialism. You could be a Tory, which is to say a member of the Conservative Party, and also a socialist.

Niles Carpenter wrote in 1922 that Tory Socialism was a form of “political mediaevalist reaction” that was also known in the 19th century as the Young England movement, and its most prominent advocate was Benjamin Disraeli.

… Young England started among a group of Oxford students. Disraeli became the leader, and although the group went to pieces in 1845, the more vital of its principles have carried on to the present day. Disraeli and his followers sought “to reconcile the working classes to the Throne, the Church, and the Aristocracy”; that is, to restore feudalism at its best. This theory was supported by a practical policy, at once progressive and reactionary. [Niles Carpenter, Guild Socialism, 1922: p. 41]
Carpenter says that the Tory Socialists claimed to be the real “friends of the people” unlike the liberal free-traders. The general idea was an alliance of the traditional institutions of Britain with the working class, against the bourgeoisie, which had dominated politics since 1832.

At the turn of the 20th century, a prominent advocate of Tory Socialism was the writer G.S. Street, who authored an essay by that name.

During the 20th century, the British prime ministers Stanley Baldwin (1935-1937) (who was nominally opposed to socialism but called moderate in policy) and Harold MacMillan (1957-1963) have been characterized by others as practitioners of Tory Socialism.

In Germany, the modern welfare state was invented in the 1880s, not by a red socialist Jew like Ferdinand Lasalle but by a military man, Count Otto von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, who was not a member of any party but had been relying on the support of the Conservative Party since 1873. The introduction of the welfare state in Germany brought the working class into the conservative fold, forming an effective coalition against the commercial class (as well as the far left) just as Tory Socialism had intended in England.

A German Communist member of the Reichstag named Karl Korsch, who left Germany in 1933 and ended up in the United States, teaching at Tulane University, referred to Bismarck’s policies as “a kind of Tory Socialism.”

I have pointed out in an earlier installment of What Would Hitler Do? that Adolf Hitler in some ways walked in Bismarck’s footsteps, doing the same kind of thing as Bismarck but more of it.

The fact that such a thing as Tory Socialism could exist, and the fact that Hitler’s movement can be categorized in this way, is important, because Dinesh D’Souza takes for granted that socialism and conservatism are never the same thing. D’Souza follows the customs of National Review, using only political concepts from the postwar period, after the period of brainwashing under Roosevelt and Truman that Westbrook Pegler described in 1953.

National-Socialism and the Crisis of Marxism

In his speech at Trinity University earlier this year, Dinesh D’Souza claims that Italian Fascism grew out of the “Crisis of Marxism” that happened after the First World War. Most of us who have heard of this Crisis of Marxism know it as the event that spawned Cultural Marxism, a mutant branch of Marxism that no longer made its appeal to the workers but to discontented minorities of every possible kind, and also made an issue of sexual repression.

D’Souza does not even mention the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism as a product of this Crisis of Marxism. Instead, he says:

And out of that Crisis of Marxism came two new variations of Marxism…. The first was Leninist Bolshevism, and the other was Italian Fascism. This is the undisputed truth of history. [D’Souza, Speech at Trinity University, 2017]
Of course D’Souza is wrong when he says that it is an undisputed truth of history. He immediately contradicts himself on that point when he goes on to say that there was “a very important progressive coverup project” after the Second World War, “to camouflage the close associations of the political left with Fascism and Nazism, and to move Fascism and Nazism from the left, where they were always understood to be, into the right-wing column.”

Whether National-Socialism and Fascism are to be called left or right is a question of definition. Since D’Souza is working with National Review‘s definitions, and cannot conceive how an expansion of government could be used for essentially conservative ends, of course he tags National-Socialism and Fascism as leftist.

The fomentors of proletarian class-struggle, however, always understood Fascism and National-Socialism, with their goal of class-reconciliation, as something fundamentally different from what they were trying to do.

Karl Korsch, the German Communist I mentioned earlier, wrote about the products of the Crisis of Marxism in 1931, and what he says is probably more accurate than what D’Souza says. Mind you, D’Souza has said that it was undisputed — or at least undisputed until after the Second World War — that Fascism was one of the two products of the Crisis of Marxism.

First, Korsch wrote in 1931 that there were two movements within Marxism that had continued since before the First World War. These were “the reformist state socialism of the social democratic parties” and “communist anti-imperialism.”

Korsch also named three new movements, resulting from the Crisis of Marxism, that rejected Marx’s eschatology. These three innovative movements Korsch identified as: “unionist reformism, revolutionary syndicalism, and Leninist Bolshevism.”

In Karl Korsch’s account of the products of the Crisis of Marxism, from 1931, Fascism and National-Socialism do not appear.

In 1940, Korsch went on to explain that Fascism and National-Socialism were, from his Communist perspective, counterrevolutionary. He favored the summation of Italian Marxist Ignazio Silone who said, “Fascism is a counterrevolution against a revolution that never took place.”

In other words, Fascism consists of measures taken to secure the loyalty of the workers (including removal of incorrigible troublemakers from society) so that a proletarian revolution cannot happen. That might not be a right-wing thing to do, but in the big picture it is certainly conservative, in the most important conceivable way.

Verdict

The kind of argument that D’Souza presents seems to be directed primarily to stupid and cowardly people who live in fear of being tarred with some taboo label. Republican status-seekers who live in fear of having anyone know their true racial attitudes might be excited over a production like Hillary’s America or The Big Lie that allows them to deflect the accusation that they most fear at somebody else.

In other words, Dinesh D’Souza is not making a contribution to rational public discourse at all.

Beyond that, he is suggesting to people who need to get over the stigma of being called “racist” or “Nazi” that instead they should cherish that stigma as they apply it to somebody else. Thus they become ever more deeply entrenched in their own cowardice and dishonesty.

D’Souza is himself a very dishonest man. In 2014, he was convicted of fraud. As a writer, Dinesh D’Souza is still committing fraud.

D’Souza comes to us from a highly corrupt society that has also given us storekeepers who systematically overcharge customers by small increments, anticipating that few will complain. These people are opportunists and crooks.

Allowing an Indian to come to the United States and to tell our people what to think about political matters is almost as unwise, I would suggest, as allowing a Somali to become a policeman.

Hadding Scott

[Ronald J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent companion to Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, only this book goes much further and equates much of the Nazi/Italian platform to the Democratic party. It's a scholarly work, citing historians from all sides, and how the Democrats have covered up their racist history (The Big Lie). This history has been so distorted, and both D'Souza and Goldberg have done yeoman's work to correct the lies and revisionist history. Highly recommended.

[Owlseyes]

[Allen Bagby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Knockout Blow

Not as exhaustive as Goldberg's Liberal Fascism but far more to the most powerful points. Great insights and analysis. A refreshingly quick punch into the philosophical gut of the lying leftist.

[Denise Spicer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains loads of historical information on Fascism and Nazism. The author explains how a purposeful program arose amongst academics, media, and politicians to change the public perception of those ideologies. They were originally left-leaning, socialist philosophies but are currently (and inaccurately) portrayed as right-wing. The book also exposes the true racist ideology behind Margaret Sanger’s birth control agenda (currently incorporated by Planned Parenthood.) The main point of this well researched (lots of End Notes for those interested in further research) book is spelled out best on p. 196. “The Left dominates academia, Hollywood and the media.” Very insightful.

[Donna Partow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kept me awake until 3am

I lost a good night's sleep because I literally couldn't put this book down. It's that compelling. It's that important. I hope this will become a first-class documentary. But I'd rather see movies made that expose the villains described on these pages.

Highly recommended

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/review/R3FVDDI...

This is a book of history and polemics.

The history is rock solid and extremely interesting. Author Dinesh D'Souza has read broadly in political theory and history and he brings that knowledge base to current developments.

One of D'Souza's principle thesis is that history has been "retconned." "Retcon" is a comic book term meaning "retroactive continuity." Periodically, comic books have to update their storylines, so as, for example, to kee Peter Parker perpetually in high school or college. When this happens, all necessary bits of past storylines are brought into conformity with the new past imagined for the character.

The retcon in the case of American history is the fascination of the Progressives with the Nazis, and vice versa. Notwithstanding the the effort of the last 70 years to present the Nazis as psychopathic anti-intellectuals, this ignores the fact that the Nazis presented themselves as scientific supermen who would cold-bloodedly apply cutting edge science to the problems of society. And their program did exactly that both with respect to engineering projects and biology. The Progressives likewise fancied themselves as cold-blooded technocrats who were not going to let human empathy stand in the way of a bright, shiny future, as anyone who recalls Justice Holmes stern statement in Buck v. Bell that "three generations of imbeciles are enough" will recognize. Both the Nazis and the Progressives were nationalists. The Nazis modeled their eugenics legislation on similar legislation passed by the Progressives. Mussolini was idolized by New Dealers, perhaps for the same reason that some leftist journalists during the Obama administration wistfully spoke of Communist China's ability to dispense with inconvenient partisan politics.

The Nazis also admired America's racial policies, which is where D'Souza's polemical side comes into play. As D'Souza presents the story, America's execrable racial history is not so much "America's racial history" as it is the "Democrat's racial history." Every time that modern leftists condemn America, they are actually condemning some feature of American society that was a mainstay of the Democrat party. Slavery, for example, was exclusive to the Democrat party, not to America. Every Republican at the outbreak of the Civil War opposed slavery; every slave-owner was a Democrat. The same is true for segregation. When leftists attacked Confederate statues in 2017, those were statues of Democrats put up by Democrats to maintain a solid Democrat south. D'Souza's polemical strategy seems to be that when people point to American racism, Americans should point to the Democrat party, which is, after all, the only institution that supported slavery that remains, particularly in an age when Confederate statues are torn down.

And that does seem strange. Why is the hot passion of political purity directed at everything, except the one actual institution that disloyally seceded from the United States in the name of slavery?

D'Souza's answer is the Big Lie whereby the partisans of the Left have worked tirelessly to change the narrative, to make racism America's sin so that Democrats can walk away from their past.

As part of his polemical-historical narrative, D'Souza seeks to tie Nazism to the modern left. In this apparently contrarian effort, he is helped by a few facts. First, Nazism began as a party of the Left - the terms "socialism" and "workers" in the name were not an accident. Likewise, Mussolini was a Socialist, as were many of the original Fascists. Second, the program of Fascism was essentially that of Leftist Socialism. The difference between Fascism and Communism was that Fascism made the nation primary, whereas Communism made social class primary. The two approaches to Socialism diverged as a result of World War I when Mussolini, among others, saw how nationalism trumped social class.

D'Souza brings the narrative to the present with a discussion of American Gleischaltung, the process by which American institutions are "self-coordinating" with radical leftism. This weekend, for example, entire NFL teams chose to disrespect the national anthem in the name of some vague political protest. The result has been massive protests by Americans who feel that their cherished symbols of national pride have been insulted. This narrative seems to fit into the leftist anti-nationalist versus nationalism, with identity politics substituting for social class.

D'Souza accurately points out how much leftist violence, whether "Antifa" or otherwise, resembles Brownshirt tactics of the 1920s and 1930s.

D'Souza also discusses the "repressive tolerance" of Herbert Marcuse, whose writing seem to anticipate the hypocritical, psychotic time we are living through where the forces of tolerance are the most intolerant.

The D'Souza who wrote this book is radicalized by his politically motivated prosecution. He advocates that conservatives fight the left using the techniques that the left has used:

"So I’m sorely tempted to propose that Trump turn this same deadly apparatus of government on the Left. Why shouldn’t we deploy the IRS, the NSA, and the FBI against the Left in the same way that Obama went after the Tea Party? Why not have the IRS investigate Michael Moore in the same way that the Obama administration had the FBI investigate me? After all, if we don’t do to them what they have been doing to us, how else are we going to get them to stop? Won’t they stop bullying and terrorizing us only when they see that we too can bully and terrorize them? Personally I’d love to see Obama occupy the bunk bed I vacated at my confinement center.

There’s even precedent for the approach I’m discussing. During the Civil War Lincoln learned that Confederate soldiers were killing captured black federal troops or selling them into slavery rather than treating them as lawful prisoners of war. Lincoln promptly issued an Order of Retaliation. It said, “It is therefore ordered that for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed, and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works.”9

Despite the evident harshness of his order, Lincoln knew this was the only way to change Confederate behavior. And it did. But that was wartime, and, upon reflection, we’re in a different situation. We’re not in a civil war, at least not yet, and we don’t want ourselves to become the instruments of lawlessness. Fortunately, we don’t have to, and there is a better solution—a solution that worked. Last November we put the gangsterism of Obama and Hillary before the American people and the American people said, “enough,” and threw the bums out."

D'Souza concludes on a rousing note:

"Are we conservatives and Republicans up for the task ahead? Yes, I believe so. Look at our history. We’re the party that fought a great war to end slavery, fought lynching and segregation, shut down the Ku Klux Klan, opposed eugenics and forced sterilization, and resisted the incipient fascism of the street thugs in the 1960s. In sum, we’re the party that has, for a century and a half, combated the fascism of the political Left. We’ve won before, and we can win again. We have the power now to stop them. We just have to do it. In the words of that slogan from the 1960s, “If not now, when? If not us, who?”

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as I expected. He makes it sound like there is one big lie, one big plot constructed by all the Leftists in America throughout the decades. That would be impossible to prove even if it were true. D'Souza gives Democrats too much credit for mass coordination.

So many times D'Souza uses phrases like "The Progressives did this..." or "The Leftists planned that..." But who? Did what exactly? You can't look at the effect of one man and credit the cause to the entire party. Instead I think it's various individuals leaning toward a leftist political worldview in different ways, as the paradigm shifts. It's not one club plotting for world takeover.

To be fair, D'Souza draws some useful comparisons between fascists in the early 20th century and Leftists today. He exposes some nasty histories of Democrats involved in racism, segregation, and the Klan. He does have some good facts in here (assuming his writing is heavily footnoted in print, as I didn't get to check).

I think D'Souza is a much better speechwriter than he is a book author. I still want to read a few of his other works, but I'll be much more choosy from now on.

[Xenophon Hendrix · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is preaching to the choir. He knows that he is preaching to the choir. He's intentionally preaching to the choir. I'm not really the choir. You can learn stuff from this book, but you'll need to check everything with additional sources.

I do think the author is correct in asserting that fascists and Nazis are more akin to progressives than they are to conservatives. One only has to spend a few hours reading about what fascists and Nazis actually believe and do to realize there is nothing conservative about them. They are collectivists who promote – nearly worship – a strong central state and who stamp out any diversity of thought.

[Dwayne Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a mixed bag of mostly informative, enraging facts and speculation about the political left and its allegiance to fascism. The big lie is the left decrying fascism.

My main problem is that it's biased toward Christians, Conservatives, and Republicans who apparently are staunch guardians of virtue. For example, it claims Trump to be opposed to fascism, yet ignores his pro-protectionist policies and his approval of attacks on property rights (Kelo v. City of New London). The left has a horrendous history of fascists, including the KKK, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Obama; but apparently the right does not and are knights in the battle for the Constitution and individual rights. Its call to action is partially a fight fire with fire, unprincipled rally.

The book is worth reading. It makes many valid accusations. But bring several grains of salt with you. #NoneOfTheAbove

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read. D'Souza gives a factual accounting of the history of fascism and nazism and how they are intertwined with the ideology of the democratic party. He also provides a condensed history of the left wing and progressive movements in this country. Anyone interested in our country, history, or politics today owes it to themselves to read this well written account of the big lie the left would like to foist on the unsuspecting and uneducated in our population.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched, thought provoking, & insightful. The author connects the dots with historical facts as he reveals the sullied past of progressives & shows how a great deal of the policies & actions of the Nazi's are directly attributable to the segregation policies pushed by Democrats of the 1920's & 30's in America.
The author also shows how the anti-fascist resistance movement of today is actually a pro-fascist movement.

[Christopher Backa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook. A well researched book. It's scary to read how the left has twisted our history to hide their connections to European Fascism. The progressive era wasn't so progressive. There is a poison in our political system thanks to them.

[Darrylgann · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an informative book!

Glad we have Denish on our side. You figured most great thinkers come from the universities are from the left. Thorough and very informative. I learned a lot. Can't wait for the documentary coming from this book.

[Bobbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book to help people determine who the real Fascists are in America

[Michael Marstellar · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Donald Trump is Hitler!" Well, I don't see him having a secret Gestapoesk police force rounding-up people, beating them up and arresting anyone who says disparaging things about him like Hitler did. "You're a fascist!" - ANTIFA protester with face covered violently suppressing free speech. This is what is called irony! Moreover, what's more interesting is Donald Trump was never leveled a racist and/or fascist ...Until he ran for President against Democrats.

Hitler did say, "The bigger the lie the more people will believe it." Far Left followers have taken this to heart by calling anyone who opposes them or disagrees with them Nazis. With the intention that if they call someone Nazi long enough the masses will believe it. Just watching TV or reading social media I know this to be true. But it wasn't until I read THE BIG LIE that I didn't know to the depth of the history links between the modern Far Left Democrats and Fascism. Their hatred of capitalism, their suppression of Free Speech and their flat-out opposition toward anyone who opposes them.

Napoleon once said history is written by the victors. So, it is not all surprising that the victors of the cultural war ...to this point: The Left have manipulated and revised history to make it appear that Conservatives are the modern day fascists when in fact it is they who are the PROGRESSIVES of Fascism.

If we just look at the history of the Democratic Party up unto the Present we see continuous examples of this fascism e.g. Southern Democrats starting a Civil War to maintain slavery. Woodrow Wilson instituting segregation at the Federal Level. FDR's New Deal program and his overloading of the Supreme Court to push through his New Deal policies, FDR's Housing Authority denying Blacks housing or denying Blacks Social Security under his new Social Security benefits program. JFK calling Hitler a Legend. LBJ referring to the Civil Rights Act as The N***** Bill or Congressional Democrats led by at one time KKK leader Robert Byrd trying to filibuster the Civil Rights Act in an attempt to "kill it" ...then at his death being praised by President Obama and Secretary of State H. Clinton as a great man and a mentor.

If the past election's failure by the Democrats and their Progressive ideology has shown to the majority of reasonable people is the violence, lunacy and intolerance of the Far Left when they lose so much so that the Lie is starting to crumble.

Transference: "In relevant psychology literature, the perpetrator of some terrible action blames it not on himself, but, incredibly, on the victim of the offense." p. 1
"But even if the Russians hacked Hillary's server, they weren't the ones who chose Trump over Hillary. The American voters did." p. 12
"Not since Lincoln has an American president faced greater resistance to his legitimacy than Trump." p.13 "'The Nordic races appear to be definitely superior to the Romans." Hostility toward Hitler, JFK insisted, stems largely from jealousy. "The Germans really are too good - that's why people conspire against them."' (- J.F. Kennedy) p.28

"Here is Democrat Robert Byrd, 'conscience of the Senate,' lionized by Obama, Hillary and Bill when he died in 2010, speaking during the war about his reluctance to fight a racially integrated military: 'I am loyal to my country and know but reverence to her flag BUT I shall never submit to fight beneath that banner with a negro by my side.'" p.130
"In a letter to journalist John Lawrence, a Mussolini admirer, FDR confessed, 'I don't mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman." p. 179

"Another New Republic editor, George Soule, praised the New Deal for its kinship to Mussolini's policies: 'We are trying out the economics of fascism." "In 1934, the leftist economist William Pepperell, journeyed from his home base of Columbia University to the International Congress on Philosophy in Prague where he considered a creative hybrid of socialism and fascism." p. 181

"...W.E.B. DuBois said Hitler's dictatorship was 'absolutely necessary to get the state in order.' Hitler, DuBois said, 'showed Germany a way out' by making of his country a 'content and prosperous whole.' DuBois even contrasted American racism, which he considered irrational, with Nazi anti-Semitism, which he said was based on 'reasoned prejudice or economic fear.'" p. 182

When journalist Irving Cobb visited Mussolini in 1926 he said to him, 'Do you know, your excellency, what a great many Americans call you? They call you the Italian Roosevelt.' Mussolini was thrilled. 'For that,' he replied, 'I am very glad and proud. Roosevelt I greatly admired.'" p. 182

"On May 11, 1933, the nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter, in an article titled 'Roosevelt's Dictatorial Recovery Measures,' praised FDR for 'carrying out experiments that are bold. In a favorable review of FDR's book, the Volkischer Beobachter concluded that while maintaining a 'fictional appearance of democracy,' in reality FDR's 'fundamental political course...is thoroughly inflected by a strong national socialism.'" p.183

[Della Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rush may be technically correct in saying everything in this book is accurate--I'm not well-versed enough in history to know. But there are certainly plenty of distortions, half-truths and lies by omission in it. The time D'Souza did for campaign finance violations must have really made him bitter. Disclaimer: I am a Never-Trump Republican/Conservative and went into this book with a bias. Make no mistake, this is a Trump-apologist book, clothed as a book of history. I listened to it on audiobook, since I had tried the print version and found it too boring. If you don't want to bother with the whole thing, just read the very last bit, in which he dispenses advice to Republicans and Conservatives going forward. It's quite scary, but more on that in a moment. The basic theme is that fascism is a leftwing, not rightwing, ism. That's it. There is a lot of cherry-picking from the words, deeds and writings of famous fascists, such as Hitler and Mussolini to support this. In D'Souza's world, it's more or less impossible for anybody truly on the right to be guilty of, say, genocides and other violent racist behavior. So when discussing the Ku Klux Klan, which he does at length, he makes a point of saying "Democrat racists", "Democrat slaveholders", etc., over and over. President Andrew Jackson, famous for rough treatments of the Indians, presents a problem to him. He has a D behind his name, so far,so good, but it turns out that he was admired by a number of famous Republicans, including Trump. D'Souza explains this by saying that these people were probably mistaken and misled about Jackson's history. He ends up by endorsing the replacement of Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill--because she was a Republican! Whether she would be if alive today is anybody's guess, but in the world created by this book, nobody ever changes their minds about anything, and there is no nuance. So when late W. Virginia Robert Byrd's membership in the Klan is discussed, which it is at length, he neglects to mention that Byrd later renounced it, told young people to avoid it and described it as one of the biggest mistakes of his life.(For additional irony, Byrd explained his former membership in part because they were anti-communist--hey, wait a minute, I thought all these nasty groups are supposed to be LEFT-wing--oh well) D'Souza isn't alone in this--whenever people like Mark Levin go on their frequent long rants about the racist history of the Democrat party, they seldom mention Byrd's change of heart, or the possibility that that's the reason he was forgiven by fellow Democrats. As I mentioned earlier, the very last part of the book is most disturbing. Naturally, Never-Trump conservatives like me are treated as part of the problem, because we insist on playing with some rules of decency. He applauds Trump's social media behavior, suggests doxxing people in AntiFa and and endorses 5-10 year prison sentences for rioters. I'm all for tough sentences when people have hurt or killed others in these settings, but 5-10 years for breaking a window or throwing something at the police? It seems they should be prosecuted according to the statutes where they live. For example, Battle of Seattle WTO rioters should have been prosecuted in accordance with the laws of Washington, and D'Souza, who elsewhere praised states'rights, should stay out of it. He also gave favorable mentions to nutcase Mike Cernovich, a famous fake news purveyor and James O'Keefe, who may have once done some good work exposing ACORN, but has since been more Keystone Kops than 60 Minutes. He even gave credence to the ridiculous "spirit cooking" story. He wants to carry out revanchist proceedings against people in the Obama administration. He basically wants to up the ante with the left with street theatre and sharp-elbowed protest tactics. It would be interesting to see what people in law enforcement think of these ideas, since it is bound to make their job harder. The left will also up the ante, I'm sure and the level of incivility will spiral upward. The book went to press before the Charlottesville episode. I would have like to hear him explain why the people behind Heather Heyer's death called their efforts "Unite the Right." If they had read his book, they would know that they're on the left.

[Tyson Adams · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dinesh has a long history of sophistry and is generally regarded as a bit of a joke.

Whilst he should be applauded for not backing away from the troubling history of America, he uses this history to imply things that are demonstrably false. He also distorts and cherry picks to further his arguments, particularly leaving out important context.

This is covered in some detail in an article here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/1...

[Maria Wroblewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, Dinesh is on the money with his research and commentary. However, as usual, he goes overboard with his facts by going much further than needed to make his point. That is why I gave it 4 u of 5 stars.

[Dan Keefer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have NOT read this entire book, and for good reason. The subtitle peaked my interest. I wondered by what logic this author could claim that the American "left"is rooted in the Nazi party. He tries to make the point that racism belongs in the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. As with the majority of "experts", D'Souza distorts history to support his nonsensical premise.

Slavery existed in the New World centuries before either political party existed. As the United States was created, the majority of slaves were in the South because it was had an agrarian way of life . . . hands were needed and slaves were cheap labor. While plantations rarely existed in the North, racism flourished there as well. People typically fear those who don't look and act like themselves.

So, at that point in time D'Souza correctly states that slavery could be set in the lap of Democrats. True, at that time.

Republicans didn't exist until Lincoln ran for President in 1860. They were made up of abolitionists, largely from the Northern states where the economy didn't rely on farming, etc. The party of Lincoln did oppose slavery to various degrees for various reasons.

The author's Big Lie is in failing to look at what happened during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. At THAT time, the majority of Southerners WERE democrats, became Dixiecrats, sided with the Republicans against Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society that included the Civil Rights movement. A little later the Dixiecrat-Republican coalition resulted in most of the Southern Democrats officially becoming Republican. That is why most Southern states have been traditionally red states.
The coasts have been blues states, and the states in the middle have been up for grabs.

Later in the book, the author equates Democrats with Nazism because they both sought a strong national government. However, he fails to point out that Hitler did so to achieve his dictatorship while, while the Democrats were compelled to do so in order to secure the inalienable rights promised by the U.S. Constitution that some states refused to grant on their own. Republicans have leaned more to "states rights", which the South used as a reason to secede in the 1860s.

In other words, the Democrats have changed as have Republicans. Most of the country's confirmed racists switched parties. The party of Lincoln exists in name only. Now many Republicans are abolitionists when it comes to individual rights based on race, gender and political views.

I recommend this book for readers who come to it as Trump supporters with no inkling of American history. I got the book to see just how the author turned reality on its head, and once I found out, I no longer wished to laugh at D'Souza's "logic" and "history".

PS - I looked it up: "Regnery Publishing | The Leader in Conservative Books". In other words, they publish a conservative view rather than real history or research.