Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party (2016) review

Dir. Dinesh D’Souza

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party more-or-less concludes this anti-Democratic Party, political trilogy of D’Souza’s that all came to fruition with his film 2016: Obama’s America four years ago and continued with America: Imagine a World Without Her two years ago. The former documentary was an admittedly strong one, using President Barack Obama’s autobiographical account of his father as a way to try and get inside of a president that had been an enigma even during his historic presidential campaign in 2008. The latter, however, was a far less personal, but misguided documentary that abandoned its thesis of imagining a world where America never formed in favor of trying to critique anti-capitalist rhetoric spewed by, none other than, members of the Democratic Party.

Hillary’s America arrives amidst another election year in America, arguably the rowdiest one, with two of the most disliked candidates in history. In celebration of such, D’Souza, who returns to filmmaking a convicted felon, following illegal campaign donations that basically sent him to a halfway house-style prison for eight months and probation for five years, decides to put a magnifying glass above the history of the Democratic Party, examining their tactics and motives into getting their way.

Through cheesy, uncommonly bland set-design and dialog, he frames his story as if he’s going into a museum that recounts the history of the party, wandering his way into the “Authorized personnel only” part of the building, where he then “uncovers” the true secrets of the party’s long history. He goes all the way back to President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, who devoted his campaign to enacting Native American genocide and soliciting their land to white settlers at bargain basement prices in order to form a country. In addition, D’Souza “uncovers” the way the hardened, pro-slavery Democrats tried to stop the anti-slavery Republicans and their leader Abraham Lincoln. Despite slavery eventually being abolished, D’Souza states that Democrats stood in the way of every attempt the Republicans made to right the wrongs of American history. He says that, typical of the party, they use “mob-like” tactics in order to get their ways, and goes on to show – through a barely intelligible infographic – how the notorious “party-switch,” where Republicans and Democrats had a massive platform-overhaul and essentially flip-flopped, is actually nothing more than a blanket rumor.

Most of this, however, is fact and it’s facts that you learn in history classes throughout your middle school and high school career, so why D’Souza has to “uncover” this information, I’m not particularly sure. The statements in the first half of this film are largely true, but the sweeping generalizations D’Souza makes discredits their relevance almost instantaneously. D’Souza’s point of reference that the Democrats operate like gangs comes from his experience with rough and tumble individuals he allegedly met in prison (shown in terribly dramatized sequences showing a frail D’Souza trying to go about his daily routine inside a cold prison with several men looking to give him a hard time) that told him about the gang-life. He states that while Democrats have championed ideas such as economic opportunity, social justice, and racial equality, they have worked against it too, creating “urban plantations” like the inner-cities for minorities.

D’Souza claims that modern-day Democrats operate against these ideas and have long predicated themselves on that platform since their inception, and with the “party-switch,” effectively made the Republicans appear as the bad guys looking to dismantle all that the Democrats worked for. All of that is up for debate, but you can’t propose such ideas without examining the fact that the modern-day Republicans have been wickedly discriminatory when it comes to minority rights, abortion, and social issues. You can’t claim one is the devil acting as a savior without posing a logical alternative.

Where does the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton come into play with all of this? D’Souza says she is the thesis of all this corruption in the second half of this documentary. He chronicles, not Benghazi, surprisingly, but her and her husband Bill’s shadiness when it came to using the Clinton Foundation to gather funds for the Haiti earthquake on top of the notorious “email scandal.” During this segment, D’Souza brings strong points to try and shed light on the woman who will likely become the next President of the United States and what that means for her and her husband, who have largely operated under suspicious circumstances.

D’Souza isn’t wrong to bring up these points about Clinton nor does he present inadequate reasons as to why Clinton shouldn’t win the forthcoming election. However, what he does successfully do is emptily pander to the demographic of people that support the Republican Party, loathe Hillary, and will unquestioningly accept his rhetoric and presentation of history as truth without thinking about the fact that they’ve been told this before and it doesn’t much relate to the present. Bringing up Jackson’s despicable actions, Saul Alinksy’s method of getting a free meal and calling it social justice, and Lincoln’s campaign to end slavery do not do much in the way of defining the current platforms of the Republican and Democratic Party, which are both hopelessly divided and deplorably corrupt.

Hillary’s America is a great deal of fodder ridiculously cloaked as an underground, investigative look at the history and story “they” don’t want you to know. D’Souza paints himself as someone arrested, tried, convicted, and jailed because of political beliefs and not because of a rule-violation, as if making a documentary about President Obama lead to Obama actually locking the door of his “jail cell” because of his actions. There’s a stench of desperation in the air throughout the course of Hillary’s America and my judgment will be it will have the success of not getting Clinton elected the same way that Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 did with not getting George W. Bush elected for a second term and D’Souza’s first film 2016: Obama’s America did with not getting Obama elected for a second term.

My review of 2016: Obama’s America
My review of America: Imagine the World Without Her
My review of Death of a Nation
My review of Vindicating Trump

Directed by: Dinesh D’Souza.