The central theme of the film is an examination of the darker parts of the history of the Democratic Party, going back at least as far as the early 19th century. There appears to be a strong focus on racism, such as the Democratic Party’s history of support for slavery and segregation. “Who are these Democrats?” asks D’Souza in the video. “It’s time to go behind the curtain and discover the soul of the Democratic Party.” [1] The trailer for Hillary’s America has proven controversial for its use of racist imagery, including fictionalised footage of the Klu Klux Klan, to paint a picture of the Democratic party’s early roots in opposition to abolitionism. But producer Gerald Molen told the Hollywood Reporter such narratives were entirely justified “to show exactly where the Democratic party came from”. He said: “Democrats don’t want to talk about it. They like to say racism was the fault of Republicans. That is pure bullshit … They don’t teach the history of Democrats and slavery. Students know nothing about history, nothing about America. They don’t know 600,000 people died in the civil war, most of them trying to protect black Americans from Democrats who supported slavery.” [3] [10] “The Democrats want us to believe they’re the party of equal rights and human rights and civil rights. The truth is the Democrats are the party of slavery, and Indian removal, of broken treaties and the Trail of Tears, they’re the party of segregation and Jim Crow and lynching and the Ku Klux Klan, they’re the party of Japanese internment, and opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Bill of 1968,” he said. “This is their actual history so what they do is they try to cover it up.” [7] D’Souza said Democratic politicians attempt to hide their party’s past connections to segregation by “blaming America” as a whole. “The reality is America didn’t do it, the Democrats did. Now, another story from the Democrats is they changed, that somehow recently they became enlightened and they became the good guys and the bad guys all became the Republicans. This is the story of the so-called switch,” he said. “But the truth of it is there never was a switch. The Democrats now are the same as they always were.” D’Souza said former President Abraham Lincoln described slavery as “you work, I eat.” According to D’Souza, that defines the modern Democratic Party. “This concept of ‘you work, I eat’ is still the center of the politics of the Democratic Party. They were playing plantation politics back then and they are playing plantation politics right now,” D’Souza said. [7]
While a historical survey, D’Souza’s film clearly looks to argue that Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton should not be elected president. [1] According to D’Souza, the idea for this movie began “when the Obama administration tried to shut me up.” D’Souza suggests he learned from his run-in with the Obama administration that “all crime is about stealing.” [2] But, he said, “The big criminals are still at large,” as video is shown of Clinton defending the deletion of emails from her private email server. “The system doesn’t go after them – because they run the system,” D’Souza says. [9] D’Souza concludes his screed by establishing the sky-high stakes of this coming Presidential election: if God-fearing, well-meaning, red-blooded conservatives can’t band together to take back the nation, the most valuable nation the world has ever produced will be stolen by physical manifestation of evil… the wicked witch of the west: Hillary Clinton. The timing of the very Clinton critical docu also works perfectly leading into the Democrats’ Philadelphia convention, which starts on July 25 and runs until July 28. [6] D’Souza said he was locked up for 8 months in a “federal confinement center” for a “relatively minor campaign finance infraction” following the release of his film,2016, about President Obama. “If that film got me eight months in the slammer, this new movie is going to earn me life in prison,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). “It’s time to take the gloves off.” [7]
This is not the first time that D’Souza has attempted to influence the results of a presidential election with a documentary. In 2012, D’Souza released the film 2016: Obama’s America, which argued that President Barack Obama’s worldview was crafted by overseas anti-colonial ideology and if re-elected, the application of this ideology would harm America. While the film was commercially successful, it failed to prevent Obama from securing a second term that November. 2016: Obama’s America was criticized by many on the Left, including Richard Brody, film critic for the New Yorker, who called it “a work of propaganda that offers base innuendo in lieu of argument.” The trailer for Hillary’s America has already gotten as of Tuesday afternoon over 430,000 views and more than 2,400 likes. Produced by Gerald R. Molen, who also helped produce Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, Hillary’s America is slated for release in July.
