Dinesh D'Souza's movie presents a new take on Obama
Dinesh D’Souza
Dinesh D’Souza is the part-time Rancho Santa Fe resident and full-time conservative behind “2016: Obama’s America.” This new documentary argues that our 44th president is motivated by his African father — a Kenyan who barely knew his son, but advocated the end of colonial power around the world — rather than America’s founding fathers.
On the political right, D’Souza is a powerful force. “If you were to make a list of the 25 or 30 most influential intellectual thinkers of the conservative movement,” said Jon Fleischman, publisher of FlashReport, a conservative online site, “Dinesh has risen into that category.”
Yet even many of admirers shrink from D’Souza’s current cause. “2016” is not yet in wide release — the movie, which opened in Houston two weeks ago, debuts today in Nashville and Kalispell, Mont. — but its thesis is drawn from two D’Souza books, the upcoming “2016” and “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.” When “Roots” was published in 2010, some of its toughest critics were fellow Obama-bashers.
The book, The Weekly Standard charged, is rife with “misstatements of fact, leaps in logic, and pointlessly elaborate argumentation.”
Ramesh Ponnuru, a National Review senior editor, agreed: “Again and again, the author attributes Obama’s positions to anti-colonialism when less exotic explanations would be given for any other politician who took the same positions.”
D’Souza, 51, didn’t mind these brickbats. Since “Illiberal Education,” his 1991 attack on political correctness in higher education, he’s courted controversy. This Indian-American declared “The End of Racism” in a 1995 book; a dozen years later, in “The Enemy at Home,” he placed much of the blame for 9/11 on the American left.
“He is most well-known for thrusting his arguments into whatever hornet’s nest he can find,” Fleischman said. “He uses controversies to educate people on the issues.”
Besides, that Obama-as-anti-colonial-crusader position? Other may regard it as indefensible; D’Souza insists it’s indispensable: “You plug in the colonial theory and everything about Obama makes sense. You pull it out and it doesn’t.”
Life-changing
Born in Mumbai, D’Souza first traveled to the United States in 1978 to attend an Arizona high school as part of a Rotary Club exchange program. He quickly determined to stay in the States, if not that state. Accepted at Dartmouth, he moved to New Hampshire and set out to become an American and star of the conservative movement.
“I think he’s a perfect example of what an American is,” said Gerald Molen, 77, the Oscar-winning producer (“Schindler’s List”) who came out of semi-retirement to co-produce “2016.” “Here’s a guy who was born in India, comes to America and says, ‘Wow, look at all the opportunity!’”
As an editor and writer for conservative Dartmouth publications, he assaulted affirmative action and other liberal causes. After graduating with an English degree, Phi Beta Kappa, he became an editor at Policy Review, a conservative journal. In 1988, he became an adviser in the Reagan White House. The next year, he took a position at the American Enterprise Institute and soon after became the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
