Introduction
The neo-conservative movement in the United States has strong intellectual origins. Many of its founding members were radicals--heavily influenced by Leon Trotsky--who eventually became disillusioned with the New Left and the Counterculture movement (Stintson, 2010). Thus, a growing number of college professors and other scholars eventually gathered into a group that began in the 1970s to lobby Republican governments.
Neoconservatives shifted to the right, but they never moved away from Trotsky’s internationalism. Thus, they began to embrace a neocolonial perspective in their intellectual struggle against Soviet Communism. They enthusiastically supported American military interventions abroad.
Their influence grew significantly under Ronald Reagan. One of the younger members of the neoconservative movement, Dinesh D’Souza, was fascinated by Reagan’s political style. D’Souza would go on to develop an academic career, and in his writings and media appearances, has consistently praised Reagan’s legacy (D’Souza 1999). Neoconservatives, in turn, also began to mold their movement with many of Reagan’s principles, most notably unregulated capitalism.
By the 2000s, the neoconservatives in American policy were hegemonic in the White House, and George W. Bush’s administration employed many of its representatives as advisors and executives. It is fairly certain that the neoconservatives’ intellectual influence was a significant driving force in the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (Vaisse 2010).
The Republican candidate John McCain lost the election in 2008, and neoconservatives naturally did not have the same influence as under George W. Bush, although they did engage in occasional overseas expansionist projects, such as in the toppling of Ukraine’s government in 2014 (Sakwa 2014). But, when Republicans came back to power in 2016, the overwhelming majority of neoconservatives did not support the new President, Donald Trump. It seemed natural, as Trump’s candidacy seemed to lean towards isolationism and tariffs, two policies traditionally opposed by neoconservatives. Furthermore, Trump emerged as a populist who addressed the frustrated white working class, whereas neoconservatives have always been intellectual elitists.
Dinesh D’Souza was one of the very few neoconservatives who did support Trump. At some point, D’Souza was an influential figure who had obvious academic talents, and despite his constant provocations scholars (such as Peter Singer and Michael Shermer) took him seriously and engaged with him in public debates. He made constant media appearances, and he became a visible pundit of the neoconservative movement. Yet, in 2014, he was sent to prison on electoral finance regulation charges, had difficulties in his personal life, and lost some of his public visibility. After Trump’s election, D’Souza has made a comeback as a media pundit, but not with the same level of notoriety as in previous years. He still makes occasional appearances in outlets such as Fox News. He has taken a stab at filmmaking, but his cinematographic skills have been widely panned; as an author, he still writes engaging books (which do appeal to a considerable number of readers).
As an India-born neoconservative Trump supporter, D’Souza may seem a sui generis intellectual. He has made some impact in the United States, and on account of his ethnicity, has some following among Indian-Americans (in India he is largely ignored). But D’Souza is not really that atypical. He is one of a long list of dark-skinned intellectuals who enthusiastically defend the historical experience of colonialism, and use their skin color as a sort of intellectual protection in this age of identity politics. He is a comprador intellectual. In this article, I will review what a comprador intellectual is, and why D’Souza fits that description perfectly.
What is a comprador intellectual?
Colonialism can be broadly defined as a system in which one nation exercises power over other nations without their consent. The main component of this definition is might -- military, political, economic, etc. Not surprisingly, empires have been fond of using symbols that represent aggression (e.g. eagles).
Yet, in the modern variant of colonialism, sheer force and might are never enough to conquer other nations. Very much as in Orwell’s 1984, power is not fully exercised until the minds of both the conquerors and the conquered are altered. Colonialism is a complex enterprise, and to fulfill its goals, it requires a minimum of support from the population of the conquering nation.
That is why modern empires do not rely exclusively on their armies. They also require intellectuals who, very much like ancient lyricists, sing praises of the empire itself. Such praises build a colonialist ethos in the population of the conquering nation, and as such, boost morale, which is always a crucial factor in any military campaign. It is safe to argue that Rudyard Kipling’s The White Man’s Burden did for colonialism as much as any single conventional American soldier fighting in the Philippines in 1900.
Empires also come to be aware that, under the workings of modern propaganda, the building of a colonialist ethos cannot entirely rely on the explicit singing of imperial praises. Thus, some degree of scholarly and academic cover is necessary. In such a manner, the bards of empire eventually turned into the scholars of Western universities that, under the cloak of academic discourse, built the mindset of the colonialist mentality.
Edward Said’s (1978) profound analysis of Orientalism as a discipline uncovers such tactics. In order to legitimatize the colonialist ethos, empires had to persuade public opinion not only of the benevolent intentions of colonialist expansion, but also of how colonialism would be good for colonized peoples themselves. And thus, with the purpose of justifying colonialism, 19th and 20th Century Western scholars went to great lengths to represent a distorted image of the East. In most of the Orientalist treatises, the East came out as a homogenized place marked by its sensual, effeminate, dangerous and, above all, uncivilized nature. European domination would save the Orientals from their own cultural doom.
Colonialist powers therefore attempted to persuade their own people that, indeed, colonialism is a noble cause, and it must be supported. Domestic populations must make sacrifices for the benefit of colonialist armies abroad. Yet, colonialist powers soon came to understand that, despite military advantages, they could not indefinitely rule without some minimum degree of consent from the colonized. And thus, mainly through the educational system established in the colonies, colonizers attempted to persuade the colonized that they were actually as the Orientalists had imagined them to be. This would ultimately serve to justify colonialism, not only in the minds of the colonialists, but also in the minds of the colonized. Thus began a process that Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1992) called the “colonization of the mind”.
All these processes, however, require constant reinforcement. Colonialism now reached a point where Western scholars are no longer fully useful in the colonization of the mind. A more advanced and perverse form of colonialism emerges in which it is the colonized themselves who address Western audiences and tell them how horrible the colonized cultures are, and how desperately they need the white man to save them.
Colonialist power has never been exercised in an absolutely direct manner. Some level of local cooperation is always needed. Cortes could hardly have conquered the Aztecs without the aid of Malinche (Todorov 1996). In the dynamics of colonialism, colonial powers are constantly on the lookout for such native informants. But, in the more elaborate forms of colonialism, these native informants turn into full collaborators in colonial degradation.
Thus, in the relationship between master and slave, or colonizers and colonized, there are always native middlemen who press hard on their fellow natives, but get some minor privilege from the oppressor. Malcolm X eloquently expressed this concept by differentiating between the “field Negro” and the “house Negro” (Robinson 2001: 40). Whereas the former did the backbreaking work in the fields, the latter had a comparatively more comfortable life inside the house. But that perk came with a flip side: the house Negro had to report on the field Negro to the white master.
Ultimately, the house Negro internalized the love for the white master. And, even after the formal end of slavery, colonialism still casts its long shadow over people of color who hate what they are, and love what they are not. Frantz Fanon explored these disturbing psychological dynamics in Black Skin, White Masks. Focusing on his experience as a black man in the Caribbean, Fanon came to realize that colonialism managed to make people of African descent feel embarrassed about themselves, both physically and mentally. This is evident not only in the desperate attempts to bleach the skin with all sorts of dermatological treatments (many of which can be quite dangerous), but also in the effort to abandon their native African roots and embrace Eurocentric behaviors and opinions (Fanon 1967).
Alas, this is not a phenomenon exclusively related to people of African descent. In the 21st Century, it has become even more so with brown people, i.e., people of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent, as those areas of the world are now the new targets of Western imperial expansion. Thus, Hamid Dabashi has eloquently updated Fanon’s thesis by analyzing how brown people metaphorically wear the white mask; hence the title of his influential book, Brown Skin, White Masks.
Dabashi analyzes the workings of some intellectuals born in Middle Eastern or South Asian countries who eventually move to Western nations and, once established there, dehumanize their own culture and, with a scholarly cloak, justify Western colonialist aggression (Dabashi 2011). They of course find favor with media, who use them as their “token brown.” As identity politics grow in Western media, brown intellectuals singing imperial praises satisfy the demand that only people of color can criticize fellow people of color.
Dabashi likens these “token browns” to the compradors of Portuguese colonialism. In their dealings with economic affairs in China, Portuguese colonialists often sought the aid of compradors (buyers), local traders who would buy merchandise for their European masters, and thus serve as middlemen in economic exploitation. Dabashi thinks that brown authors who come to dehumanize their own culture serve the same purpose as the compradors of Portuguese colonialism. Dabashi thus calls them “comprador intellectuals.”
In Brown Skin White Masks, Dabashi focuses on comprador intellectuals such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Azar Nafisi and Irshaad Manji. He only makes a couple of references to Dinesh D’Souza. But, of all brown comprador intellectuals, Dinesh D’Souza is perhaps the most media-savvy, although not necessarily the most academic. Nevertheless, throughout his writings, films and media appearances, D’Souza neatly fits the model of a comprador intellectual, as laid out by Dabashi. Although there has recently been a wave of revisionists who attempt a defense of colonialism (Niall Ferguson, Bruce Gilley, etc.), they are mostly white. D’Souza, on account of his origins and skin color, aspires to be the one Third World author who grants legitimacy to empires, by expressing his gratitude for having been colonized.
The concept of comprador intellectual is heavily embedded in psychoanalytic views. However, we must not lose sight of its political-institutional dimension. Comprador intellectuals have typically served as the buffer between imperial oppressors and the oppressed. In class struggle, they provide a service to the bourgeois elites, by masquerading as proletarians yet defending the interests of the dominant class.
Admittedly, D’Souza’s comments have been so incendiary that analysts may be tempted to describe him simply as a “hack.” But he is more than just a hack, because unlike authors such as Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh, D’Souza does provide intellectual ammunition to grant legitimacy to neocolonial projects. This quality makes him even more dangerous than mediocre figures such as Coulter or Limbaugh.
D’Souza is far from being a serious academic of the same caliber as other neocolonial apologists (such as Niall Ferguson or Robert Kagan), but he is very media-savvy. He is a skillful debater, and enjoys engaging opponents in discussions. This has endeared him to members of the conservative movement, who frequently uphold him as one of their most important assets in the culture and ideology wars. For that reason, a thorough debunking of D’Souza’s neocolonial views is necessary.
D'Souza has written on a wide array of issues (racism, Christianity, Islam, morality), but here I shall address his views on colonialism, as a point of entry to a holistic critique of what he stands for.
No cheers for colonialism
D’Souza has persistently tried to defend perhaps the most important icon of European colonialism, Christopher Columbus. He insists that Columbus “discovered” America, therefore implying that Native Americans were somehow either invisible or inexistent. D’Souza typically degrades non-Western populations, to the point that, when Europeans encounter them, he calls that a “discovery,” as if somehow they were just resources, not human beings.
D’Souza (1995: 348) praises Columbus for bringing European civilization to the Western hemisphere. But how exactly is that a merit? The arrival of Europeans meant slavery, inequality, colonial domination, and a massive reduction of native population. Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of the United States offers an apt description of Columbus’s questionable character. D’Souza claims that Columbus did actually have moral intentions upon his arrival to the Americas, viewing natives as innocent men untainted by sin. But his view was extremely paternalistic (he valued them only insofar as they were child-like), and he felt no moral qualms about enslaving them. In fact, he deliberately fooled some natives into believing that he was a messenger of the gods, by predicting an eclipse in 1504 (Delaney 2012).
At any rate, D’Souza admits that Columbus’s idyllic view of natives did not last long. Why, then, did he change his views? According to D’Souza, this was because Columbus came to realize how brutal indigenous peoples actually were: “On his second voyage Columbus was horrified to discover that a number of sailors he left behind had been killed... by Arawaks”. D’Souza is referring here (although not explicitly) to the massacre of sailors at the Navidad Fort in 1493. Indeed, the sailors were massacred, but most accounts agree that, according to later investigations done by Columbus himself, the massacre was a response to the harassing and criminal behavior of the sailors against the local tribes, especially the taking of women and gold (Aizenstat 2017: 217). It is indisputable that, in the history of European colonialism in the Americas, natives committed atrocities. But who invaded whom in the first place?
In his attempt to degrade Native Americans, D’Souza (1995: 348) claims that many tribes were cannibalistic, most notably the Aztecs. This is a common trope of authors trying to justify colonialism that goes back to Francisco de Vitoria’s reasoning in the 16th Century: under this view, somehow, the Spanish conquest could have been justified because they saved the lives of the victims of cannibalism (Pinon 2016: 18). But such writers fail to consider that the brutal conquest killed far more people than the number it hypothetically saved.
It is not even altogether certain that cannibalism has ever existed. This is still a matter of debate among scholars, but one particular thesis, put forth by William Arens, is that cannibalism only existed in the minds of the European colonizers, who were eager to find a motive to justify their conquest (Arens 1979). Be that as it may, even if cannibalism did indeed take place among Native American tribes, it is still relevant to bring Michel de Montaigne’s philosophical point in the 16th Century, as laid out in his famous essay, Of Cannibals: are native acts of cannibalism any worse than the brutal acts of religious intolerance that were so typical of Europe at the time? (Celestin 1996: 59). This is not an excuse of cannibalism, but it is an argument against D’Souza’s pretension of Western moral superiority and justification for conquest.
Another way D’Souza recurrently tries to degrade Native Americans is by claiming (1995: 352) that they were so irrational that they believed the Europeans were gods, and easily surrendered to them without a fight. This is another very common trope amongst colonialist authors, but it is most likely a myth. Gananath Obeyesekere (1997) has extensively and persuasively argued that the whole idea that Hawaiians believed Captain Cook to be a god was actually developed long after Cook’s death, by the European sailors themselves. In Obeyesekere’s view, all human beings are sufficiently rational not to confuse human beings with spiritual beings of another realm, and the idea that this is not so, is no more than just a self-serving colonialist myth of Western superiority. The same reasoning applies to the alleged identification of Cortes as Quetzalcoatl.
D’Souza attempts to sugarcoat European expansion in the Western hemisphere by claiming that there was no real genocide, because most deaths were caused by germs. There is some truth to this claim, but D’Souza underplays the brutal deeds of conquistadors. There is no mention in his writings of the vile behavior of Pizarro against Atahualpa and the massacre at Cajamarca in 1532, or the Cholula massacre ordered by Cortes in 1519.
Strangely, though, D’Souza does acknowledge some abuses committed by the American government in its expansion towards Native American territory in the first half of the 19th Century. He pays special attention to the infamous Trail of Tears (the series of forced relocations pressed upon Native Americans by Andrew Jackson in the 1830s). But this is not genuine post-colonial criticism. D’Souza only mentions the Trail of Tears as a way to cast aspersions on the Democratic Party of which Jackson was a member. D’Souza (2016: 163) wants to argue that contemporary Democrats are as racist as Jackson was: “For Jackson, the Trail of Tears represented the culmination of his lifelong efforts. Far from being a disaster, this ugly chapter in U.S. history was one of the original ‘achievements’ of the newly formed Democratic Party. Moreover, the way the Jackson Democrats treated the Indians was not an aberration. Rather, it was only the beginning of a long subsequent Democratic Party history of dispossession, cruelty, bigotry, and theft.”
Apart from this episode, D’Souza omits any mention of the abuses committed by Western imperialism against Native Americans. These omissions are not surprising, because D’Souza is keen on insisting that some cultures are superior to others, and naturally, Western civilization stands at the top. This again is a very weak claim, but it is frequently made by defenders of empire. Who decides what counts as criteria for cultural superiority? Ultimately, Westerners themselves come up with criteria that serve as a self-righteous justification for their alleged cultural superiority.
For example, D’Souza claims (1995: 353) that Western civilization gave the world a doctrine of Human Rights. This is a very arrogant claim, as there have been antecedents of the concept of Human Rights in non-Western civilizations (Forsythe 2017: 390). D’Souza leaves aside the fact that, as it now stands, the doctrine of Human Rights may itself be a form of colonialist imposition, for it may not truly reflect natural universal rights. For years, spokespeople of non-Western countries have raised criticisms against the individualist presumptions of the Western concept of Human Rights (Widdows 2014: 125).
At any rate, even if D’Souza were right in claiming that Western civilization gave the world a doctrine of Human Rights, he very conveniently leaves aside the massive hypocrisy behind it. Western imperial powers delight themselves in criticizing female genital mutilation in some remote corner of East Africa, and frequently use it as an excuse to invade countries and depredate resources (as in the brutally honest American chant, “nuke their ass, take their gas”). Yet very seldom do these imperial powers criticize the horrors of Guantánamo or Gaza. D’Souza, predictably, has never written about these basic violations of Human Rights.
In truth, D’Souza only pays lip service to Human Rights as a sign of cultural superiority (2012: 40), because his preferred criteria are very materialistic (and therefore Western, once again circularly using a Western concept to proclaim Western superiority): “To take one measure of success that everybody seems to want -- economic development—it is obvious that the West is vastly ahead of everyone else. There is simply no comparison between, say, the per capita income of Europe and America and that of the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. If sub-Saharan Africa were to sink into the ocean tomorrow, the world economy would be largely unaffected.”
Apart from the racist undertone of his hypothetical scenario (he seems to be delighted by the prospect of the extinction of the black race as Africa sinks), D’Souza assumes that economic development is what “everybody wants”. This is far from being the case. Because they have not been exposed to the rat-race mentality of industrialized societies, many populations in the so-called “Third World” are not so concerned with economic development, and place greater priority on other more basic spiritual values, such as happiness. And, as I will explain further below, the so-called “development” of the West has to a large extent come about by impoverishing the rest of the world, in a vicious process of depredation that has long been promoted by imperialism.
D’Souza insists (2012: 38) that everyone on Earth is eager to follow the Western model of development and consumption, and uses his native India as an example: “[In India] people go to work in Western suits and ties, even though this attire seems utterly unsuited to India's hot climate… Yet tens of millions of American students do not know this. When I tell high-school and college students about it in my lectures, they profess ignorance, even indignation. The reason is that they have been getting a very different message from their professors. ‘The Indians are being forced to live like this,’ they insist. ‘It is what the British inflicted on them.’ Well, perhaps; but the British left India in 1947, and India became free. The Indians could easily have cast off their suits and ties and returned to their native garb”.
As this quote makes clear, D’Souza naively believes that, just because a country is formally independent, it is no longer colonized. But of course, it does not work that way. If India (or any other country in the so-called “Third World”) is mimicking Western models of development, that is itself a consequence of colonialism. The British may no longer use bayonets to force Indian businessmen to wear suits, but the prior decades of colonization of Indian minds ensured that they would follow Western cultural and economic guidelines, even if they think they are doing it freely.
Indeed, D’Souza’s economic views are very problematic as a whole. As part of his thesis of Western cultural superiority, he claims (2012: 60) that capitalism is a Western invention, and for that reason, the rest of the world should be grateful. He is of course absolutely right that the origins of capitalism are in the modern Europe. But, it is extremely dubious that giving birth to capitalism should be something to be proud of, let alone that the rest of the world should be grateful for it. Critical historians have long discussed this point, and the consensus among progressive scholars is that capitalism’s origins and dynamics have been so destructive, that indeed those nations in which capitalism was born ought to acknowledge their role in having underdeveloped the rest of the world, and consequently, should admit that being the originators of capitalism is not something to be proud of (Galeano 1997).
As Lenin very well described it, imperialism is the final phase of capitalism. Precisely because of capitalism, European powers sought expansion into Asia, Africa and Latin America, and in the process, exploited local populations. Even after the formal end of colonialism, neocolonialism persists and the global capitalist system has established a division of labor that reflects the former colonial relations: “center” countries produce advanced manufacture with skilled labor, whereas as “periphery” countries produce raw material with unskilled labor. The end result is huge global inequalities (Wallerstein 1997).
D’Souza insists (2012: 60) that the global economic disparities have nothing to do with colonialism: “It makes no sense to claim that the West grew rich and powerful by taking everybody else's stuff for a simple reason: there wasn't very much to take… before British rule, there were no rubber trees in Malaya, nor cocoa trees in West Africa, nor tea in India. The British brought the rubber tree to Malaya from South America. They brought tea to India from China. And they taught the Africans to grow cocoa, a crop the native people had previously never heard of.”
That may very well be the case for those specific rubrics. But D’Souza conveniently ignores the huge amount of natural resources that not only the British, but all colonial powers, plundered from their colonies (especially in Africa), as so eloquently explained by Walter Rodney (2012) in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Most European powers established monopoly trade relations with their colonies, thus not allowing local tradesmen to export merchandise at competitive prices. And even the British, who publicly defended free trade as a concept, hypocritically developed monopolies through the East India Company.
D’Souza also wants to exculpate Europe from Africa’s poverty, by claiming (2011: 192) that “most of Africa was only colonized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.” This should actually count as an argument against Western colonialism. Granted, European colonialism in Africa was shorter-lived than in the Americas. But, the harm done has been more intense. This is a testament to the brutality of European colonialism, as it managed to do so much harm in so little time. Furthermore, D’Souza naively seems to believe that in Africa, colonialism is over, when in fact it persists as neocolonialism, in greater intensity than anywhere else in the world.
In any case, the greatest economic exploitation of colonial systems was not so much in the extraction of natural resources, but rather in exploitative labor. Wherever European powers have gone, brutal working conditions, whether as slavery, indentured labor, or sweatshop work, have been present. “Exploitation” is the only way to describe it.
D’Souza wants to proclaim Western cultural singularity by claiming that, somehow, only Western industriousness and discipline could come up with a capitalist system. In this, he is not removed from Max Weber’s (2012) extremely Eurocentric views. But the historical truth unacknowledged by D’Souza is that, without the massive influx of metals and commodities coming from the Americas, Asia and Africa beginning in the 16th Century, Europe would not have achieved its wealth. Capitalism only truly began to arise in the 16th Century, because it had colonies from which to get resources savagely extracted with forced native labor. Without those resources, all the ingenuity, industriousness and discipline that Weber (exaggeratedly) attributed to Europeans would not have amounted to much.
D’Souza is so insensitive to the sufferings of the Third World, that he even claims (2011: 187) that being paid extremely low wages is a good thing for Third World laborers, because it stimulates further investments from foreign corporations. This is the typical argument of neoliberal colonialists who contend that child laborers in sweatshops throughout Asia should be grateful to Nike because, if it were not for the corporation, they would be starving.
D’Souza is simply blind to the evils of capitalism. Very much as the ideology of colonialism embraces the myth that empires do a great service to colonized countries, neoliberalism constructs the narrative that economic exploitation is good for the exploited. Naturally enough, in his enthusiasm for colonialism, D’Souza embraces both narratives, thus proving Lenin right in that, ultimately, capitalism and imperialism are two sides of the same coin.
D’Souza also continuously misrepresents what critics of colonialism and neocolonialism want. He seems to believe that anti-colonialism hopes for massive transfer of funds from wealthy nations to poor nations, as a sort of global Robin Hood crusade. Anti-colonialist movements have never had such hopes. They recognize that so-called “foreign aid” ultimately strengthens the economic dependency that anti-colonialists precisely want to get rid of. Furthermore, this foreign aid supports local dictators who ultimately serve the interests of neocolonial powers. What anti-colonialists want is not a transfer of funds, but rather a transformation of the unjust global system that so easily allows for the exploitation of the formerly colonized countries.
Apart from capitalism, D’Souza claims that the other two great European institutions exported by colonialism, and that colonized countries should be grateful for, are democracy and science. Again, his argument claims too much. Yes, democracy did evolve and mature as a result of particular historical circumstances in Western societies. But again, it is simply not true that the non-Western world had not experienced any form of democracy prior to the arrival of Western colonialism. Anthropologists and historians have reported on multiple examples of democratic institutions in traditional Chinese villages, African tribal moots, ancient Indian republics and Native American societies (Muhlberger and Paine 1993).
Furthermore, very much as with Human Rights, the Western colonialist pride over democracy is undermined by hypocrisy. D’Souza claims (2011: 194) that African nations have been and remain abjectly poor, not because of European colonial depredation, but because they have not established the rule of law, and dictators thrive. There is no doubt that Africa and most of the rest of the Third World is plagued with native dictators, but who kept them in power and provided support for them in the first place? The list of dictators supported by the American Empire is too long, but here are just a few of the most prominent names: Teodoro Obiang, the House of Saud, Paul Kagame, the Hashemite dynasty, Ismail Oumar Guelle. D’Souza correctly points out that many of these dictators use the language of anti-colonialism, but he does not seem to be aware that, were it not for neocolonialism, they would not stay in power.
As for science, again, D’Souza is too Eurocentric in his approach. Yes, Europe in the 17th Century went through a significant scientific revolution. But, as Jack Goody so eloquently argued in The Theft of History (2012), the scientific achievements of China, India and Islam have been consistently undermined by the colonialist mentality, and a fairer writing of History would require that the contributions of these civilizations be placed on a par with the scientific revolution of the West.
D’Souza makes a big deal of the philosophy of Al Ghazali, as an example of Islamic obstacles to science (2012: 61-62): “the Greeks came up with the notion that the universe as a whole makes sense, that it operates in accordance with laws, that these laws are accessible in principle to human reason, and that they can be expressed in the language of mathematics. It is important to realize that there is no logical reason why these things should be true. The influential Muslim writer al-Ghazali denies them. In The Incoherence of Philosophy, he argues that reason and logic are useless in apprehending the universe because Allah intervenes at every single moment to make things happen in the way that they do. This represented the Muslim version of the belief in an ‘enchanted universe’ governed by spirits that is characteristic of many ancient peoples.”
Undoubtedly, Al Ghazali’s theory (commonly known as “occasionalism” in philosophy) would have represented some obstacle to the causal scientific understanding of nature. But D’Souza conveniently leaves aside the fact that Western philosophy has also had its share of occasionalist philosophers (such as Malebranche), even at a much later time (seven centuries) than Al Ghazali. Again, in typical Eurocentric fashion (ultimately catering to the narrative of colonialist History), D’Souza overblows some factors in non-Western history, but dismisses those same factors when they are present in Western history.
As a way of lionizing Western Civilization, throughout his writings D’Souza is very fond of degrading non-Western cultures by constantly describing them as terrible places. For example, about his native India, he says (2005: 34), “Because I had a happy childhood in India, I have many nice things to say about my native country, but if I had to choose one word to describe life there, I probably wouldn’t choose ‘liberating.’” He then mentions the caste system, the payment of dowry and arranged marriages.
His criticisms also extend to foot-binding in China, the veil in Islam, clitoral mutilation in East Africa, and sati (the burning of widows at their husbands’ funerals) in India. These criticisms are of course legitimate. But, as Gayatri Spivak has consistently argued, they ultimately serve the colonialist agenda. In the case of sati, for example, one must never lose sight of the fact that this ancient Indian custom was used by the British as a way to think of themselves as “white men saving brown women from brown men” (Sanders 2006: 33), and thus, justify their colonial rule.
Contrary to common misrepresentations, this does not mean that postcolonial critics embrace full-blown cultural relativism, and frown upon any criticism of non-Western cultures. But, it does mean that, in order to be truly liberated, the subaltern (i.e., the colonized) must be heard. Authors such as D’Souza do not allow the victims of patriarchal violence to speak for themselves, and they ultimately just replace patriarchal violence with colonialist epistemic violence. Before rushing to criticize the hijab, Western critics should first ask Muslim women themselves what the hijab means to them. D’Souza never does so, because in his colonialist arrogance, he is not interested in listening to the victims of colonialism.
D’Souza is also upset by the fact that multiculturalists are eager to criticize bad things that happen in the Western world (homophobia, domestic violence, racism, etc.), but when those same things happen in the non-Western world, they remain quiet. He is right that, indeed, some hypocrisy does exist among Western multiculturalists. But again, that criticism can only come after hearing the alleged victims themselves, and not just speaking on their behalf. D’Souza pretends to speak on behalf of brown women and brown gays and lesbians, without giving them an opportunity to speak for themselves.
As an Indian, D’Souza continuously expresses his gratitude to British colonialism, as part of this narrative of white men coming to the rescue of brown men and women. Yet, he seems to be aware that his own arguments are very weak, for he constantly acknowledges that, for past generations of Indians, colonialism was harmful. However, he insists that for his generation, colonialism has been good, as it has allowed him to assimilate into the alleged great good things of Western civilization. That is why, in his own words, “as an Indian myself who has greatly benefited from this colonial legacy, I am quite willing to give two cheers for colonialism. I say ‘two’ and not ‘three’ in deference to my ancestors” (2011: 191).
He is very fond of Muhammad Ali’s observation when, upon returning from a boxing match in Zaire, he was asked about Africa, to which he answered: “Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat!” (D’Souza 2012: 56). Ali was implying that Africa is in a terrible state, and despite the fact that his grandfather was a slave, he is happy to live in America, and not in Africa. Yet, what D’Souza misses once again, is that Africa is in a terrible state largely because Western colonialism made it so. D’Souza is grateful to colonialism because it brought India closer to Western civilization. But, he should come to understand that, were it not for the crimes of colonialism, India would probably be in much better shape today.
Much more than the British imperialism of the past, D’Souza is eager to defend the aggressive imperialistic policies of his new country, the United States. He is not under the illusion that the US is not an empire. But again, he thinks it is a good empire (2011: 198), because it uses its influence for good things. Unlike past empires, it does not ask tributes from subsidiaries. In D’Souza’s view, the goals of US imperialism are quite benign: “America’s foreign policy goals are basically to encourage people to trade with us.”
Again, this is a very naïve view. All modern Western Empires have paid lip service to the benefits of trade, and they have all tried to justify their imperial aggressions by just claiming that they just want economic exchange, because ultimately, commerce is not zero-sum. Even if it were true that US foreign policy is just to encourage trade (which of course it is not), it is absolutely clear that American corporations engage in very unfair trade, and this amounts to the economic exploitation that characterizes neocolonialism. Commerce need not be zero-sum, but the way the global neocolonial economic system is designed, it is very much zero-sum: for the most part, neocolonial powers get rich at the expense of Third World nations.
Apart from trade, D’Souza also praises America as an enforcer of peace (2011: 198): “The world needs a policeman, and in case you haven’t yet figured it out, the United States has that job.” This is yet another tired old attempt at imperial self-justification. The Romans spoke of pax romana, the British of pax britannica, and now D’Souza makes a similar claim for America. All empires like to think of themselves as honest policemen, when in truth, they are just thieves wearing a police badge.
It is possible to argue that the world does need a policeman. But D’Souza’s conception of who should fill that role is extremely problematic. If we are to seek a global policeman who truly administers justice, then it must be a multi-lateral effort that effectively represents all the inhabitants of the world, not just the citizens of the privileged neocolonial powers. For all its faults, the United Nations is the best working model of that multi-lateral policeman. Yet D’Souza, in typical imperialistic arrogance, believes that only the countries touched by the blessings of Western civilization, are called to fulfill that job, and for that reason, the United Nations cannot be relied upon.
From comprador intellectual to conspiracy theorist
As outrageous as he may be, D’Souza is not alone in the claims he makes. After all, the comprador intellectual is a staple of colonialism, and there have always been brown people thanking the British and the American Empires for their oppression. In the class structure of oppression, comprador intellectuals have typically served as buffers to thwart rebellion. Many of the arguments that D’Souza makes have unfortunately also been made by Third World intellectuals such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Deepak Lal, Dambisa Moyo, and others.
Yet, over the last eight years, D’Souza has strayed from views that are rather conventional in a sector of academic life, and has opened a path of his own, venturing into very strange claims that border on wild conspiracy theories. This may reflect his embracing of Donald Trump’s politics, unlike conventional academic supporters of the Republican Party. Trump is emblematic of the type of mentality that Richard Hofstadter acutely described in The Paranoid Style in American Politics (2016). Part of his appeal and popularity rely on voicing suspicions about political rivals, and coming up with outrageous conspiracy theories.
Not fortuitously, Trump has approved of Alex Jones, the radio host who constantly comes up with conspiracy theories about American political life. Trump himself has argued that climate change is a hoax fabricated by the Chinese in alliance with leftist scientists, and he publicly held the view that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
D’Souza has very clearly disassociated himself from that conspiracy theory regarding Obama’s birth. He has also explicitly rejected the conspiracy claim that Obama is a secret Muslim. But, as he has made Obama the focus of intense criticism over the last few years, D’Souza has embraced the paranoid style that Hofstadter referred to.
D’Souza’s views may be thoroughly objectionable, but there is no denying that his writing and speaking style is very clear, and for the most part, his books have been well-researched (although, of course, there are plenty of factual omissions that ultimately serve his colonialist agenda), and they have preserved an academic tone. However, when dealing with Obama, D’Souza’s style has changed, and he no longer seems to be addressing academic audiences, but rather readers who have a soft spot for conspiracy mongering.
This is also evident in his turn towards filmmaking. His first film, 2016: Obama’s America, implies, in its narration and visual style, that there is something perverse hidden beneath Obama’s charisma, and that D’Souza is out to uncover it. In Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, he also portrays himself as a sort of detective who breaks into the secret archives of the Democratic Party to uncover a massive trove of facts that Democratic politicians have conspired to keep hidden.
D’Souza has formulated the conspiracy theory according to which Obama is a secret anti-colonialist. This is in fact not altogether surprising. Research in cognitive psychology has documented that individuals who vehemently adhere to a particular view dichotomize the world in such a manner that anybody not holding every detail of their view is ultimately seen as a representative of the opposite view (Brotherton 2015). But, as part of cognitive dissonance, even when it seems clear that the person does not truly hold the opposite view, individuals are likely to argue that secretly they do hold those views.
These psychological principles may apply to D’Souza. His enthusiasm for colonialism is so big, that anybody he dislikes (for whatever reason), becomes an anti-colonialist in his mind, even when there is no evidence to support that opinion.
D’Souza (2011: 37) focuses on some meaningless details to make the case that Obama is a secret anti-colonialist. He makes much of the fact that Obama removed Churchill’s bust from his Oval Office. Churchill, of course, was emblematically imperialistic, and D’Souza took that as a sign that Obama’s mission was to decolonize the world. The truth is much simpler: the bust was a loan from sculptor Jacob Epstein to George W. Bush while he was in office, and when Obama took office, the term of the loan had already expired (Chalabi 2016).
In his film, 2016: Obama’s America, D’Souza claims that Obama sides with Argentina in its dispute over the Falkland Islands with the United Kingdom. Again, this is seen by D’Souza as an anti-colonialist act, whereas in fact Obama was simply going along with the consensus of the Organization of American States, which supports a fellow nation of the Western hemisphere. If anything, Obama’s move was a continuation of the Monroe Doctrine – an expression of the United States’ own imperialistic drive in Latin America.
In the same film, D’Souza claims that Obama supports Palestine in its conflict with Israel. Again, D’Souza correctly sees that Israel’s stand is colonialist, but incorrectly believes that Obama’s stand is anti-colonialist. It is true that Obama publicly condemned the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, but that hardly amounts to anti-colonialism. As Muhammad Shtayyeh argues, under Obama, “instead, time and again, the United States lobbied against Palestinian diplomacy to protect the two-state solution from the efforts of the Israeli prime minister to destroy it once and for all. The United States not only vetoed an otherwise unanimous Security Council resolution condemning settlement construction drafted with language that mirrored Washington’s policy statements, but it even attempted to block the listing of the Nativity Church in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem as a Unesco World Heritage Site” (Shtayyeh 2016).
Rather than rely on actual policy or even public speeches, D’Souza resorts to biographical details to make the case that Obama was a secret anti-colonialist. In D’Souza’s conspiracy theory, Obama actually ruled the United States under the guiding principles of his father, to the point that, in D’Souza’s view (2011: 180), “The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s—a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash), raging against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions.”
D’Souza’s favorite piece of evidence is Obama’s own memoir, Dreams from My Father. D’Souza places great importance on the title of that book, as it does not refer to the dreams of Obama’s father, but rather, dreams from Obama’s father. This small grammatical detail, according to D’Souza, reveals that Barack Obama Sr. passed on his ideology to his son, making anti-colonialism the driving ideology during Obama’s presidency.
It is true that Barack Obama Senior held some anti-colonialist views, given that he lived in Kenya during the times it was a British colony. Yet, that has little relevance to Barack Obama Jr.’s actual views or policies. Obama was not raised by his father, and only met him a few times. Yet, D’Souza argues that inasmuch as Obama’s mother spoke to young Barack candidly about his father, he identified with his father and his worldview.
This psychological argument is not altogether implausible, but it remains too speculative. The only way Obama can be assessed as an anti-colonialist is by fact-checking his actual political deeds. And, unfortunately, he was a loyal prosecutor of American imperialism. He ordered the assassination of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan without the Pakistani government’s permission, violating the rules of national sovereignty (as empires are fond of doing); there is even suspicion that Bin Laden had the intention to surrender, but Obama gave the order to kill him nevertheless (Dreazen 2011).
Unfortunately, ever since he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama has received much undeserved adulation from liberals and centrists, as the sort of non-confrontational African American leader who is capable of launching the United States into a post-racial paradise. Yet, as many critics have acutely observed, this post-racial scenario is mere fantasy (racism is alive and kicking, and certainly on the rise in the Trump era). If anything, as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2014) aptly observes, racism in the United States rests now on a “colorblind” basis, in which the refusal to confront race inequalities further facilitates racial oppression. Obama’s aura as the post-racial maverick contributed to these dynamics of oppression, and this was particularly the case in his foreign policy.
Bonilla-Silva recognizes the dangers of colorblind and post-racial discourse, and their implications for neocolonial aggression in the Obama era. His assessment is worth quoting at length:
I now review more targeted predictions I made during the election based on President Obama’s first four years in office. First, based on promises and remarks Obama made during the campaign, I predicted he would increase the size of the military, wait longer than planned for withdrawing from Iraq, increase the scope of the military intervention in Afghanistan, and, more problematically, bomb Pakistan if he got “actionable intelligence.” Here I was wrong only in failing to predict the true scope of the president’s involvement in the Middle East and other regions. While millions of leftists mobilized to end Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been very little challenge, or even discussion, of Obama’s imperial foreign policy… In several respects, Obama has gone beyond his Republican predecessor, particularly in his redefinition of executive power to wage war, kill any person deemed an enemy (including Americans) without trial, use unmanned drones to terrorize populations in multiple countries. (2014: ch. 11)
This should be the final nail in the coffin for Obama’s saintly image, and in fact, it should even encourage discussion about the merits of his Nobel Peace Prize, in the same manner that Kissinger’s Nobel Prize has been disputed. Yet, sadly, D’Souza’s preposterous claims have actually done the opposite. They have driven liberals and centrists to rally behind Obama, so as to defend him from such absurd claims, while ignoring the fact that the Obama administration was actually very aggressive in its neocolonial approach.
Obama thus intensified drone attacks on alleged terrorists in Pakistan, causing enormous collateral damage. In an outrageous colonialist act, his administration announced that any person of military age who died in drone attacks would be considered a combatant, regardless of whether or not they were actually armed or engaged in terrorist organizations (Harrison 2015). These drone operations are clearly a violation of international law (Sterio 2012). Obama was also the main political actor in the NATO bombing campaign against Libya that led to the toppling and execution of Muammar Gaddafi. Whatever one’s assessment of Gaddafi, it is still the case that neocolonialist greed for Libyan oil was a factor, along with concern about the role that Gaddafi was playing as a leader of independent African development.
As Cornel West persuasively argues, “we have to be very honest, let us not be deceived: Nixon, Bush, Obama, they’re war criminals… They have killed innocent people in the name of the struggle for freedom, but they’re suspending the law, very much like Wall Street criminals. The law is suspended for them, but the law applies for the rest of us” (McKay 2013). D’Souza could have articulated a sound critique of Obama by criticizing his aggressive imperialist policies, but instead, he chose the lamentable path of criticizing Obama for allegedly being an anti-colonialist. D’Souza hopes to endear himself to the colonialist elites, and thus neatly fits the mold of a comprador intellectual.
The world would probably be a much better place if D’Souza were right in his characterization of Obama as an anti-colonialist. Unfortunately, D’Souza is dead wrong. Very much as European powers ultimately relied on dark-skinned compradors to maintain control in the colonies, the American elite relied on a dark-skinned President to try to disguise its aggressive imperialistic character. This once again reaffirms the role of comprador intellectuals in maintaining the status quo. Perhaps the most unnoticed harm of imperialism has been the colonizing of the mind of brown-skinned intellectuals, such as Dinesh D’Souza.
D'Souza’s disdain for Obama unsurprisingly led him to become a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. D’Souza seems to be captivated by Trump’s rhetoric of hidden forces that are lurking in the darkness, waiting to strike a fatal blow to America and the West. Despite Trump’s worrying tendencies toward authoritarianism, D’Souza is quick to come out in his defense (2018: ch. 7): “Trump is not an authoritarian. If he were, would he permit himself to be flayed across all platforms in every form of media, from the daily news to the commentators to the late-night comedians? Mussolini and Hitler would have dispatched their goons and shut those people down overnight.”
Likewise, in a betrayal of his alleged Enlightenment cosmopolitanism (the same philosophy that sustained the imperialist views of J.S. Mill and other imperialist ideologues), D’Souza defends Trump’s aggressive nationalism (2018: ch. 7): “Trump’s nationalism is nothing more than traditional American patriotism, surrounded by the familiar symbols of the flag, the anthem and soldiers’ graves.” And, in a stunning contradiction of his previous views as a comprador intellectual, he seems to say that anti-colonialism is a good thing because it has a nationalist aspect: “It should be emphasized that nationalism is not a distinguishing feature of fascism or Nazism. To take a few examples, Gandhi was a nationalist, as was Mandela. Other anticolonial leaders were, to a man, nationalists.”
D’Souza has reaped fruits from his defense of Trump. Under the Obama administration, he was sentenced on electoral finance violation charges (and, in his typical conspiratorial style, alleged that Obama had a personal interest in bringing him down). In 2018, Trump offered a pardon to D’Souza (Zucker 2018).
This unqualified support for Trump has led D’Souza to embrace even more incoherent views vis-à-vis his positions in the past. As a counter to the so-called “New Atheist Movement,”
at some point in his career D’Souza became a Christian apologist. His book What’s so Great About Christianity is an energetic defense of the Christian faith. His Christian apologetics are also informed by his comprador intellectual status, as he frequently makes the case that Christianity is superior to Hinduism in many aspects.
Being part of a religious minority in India, and expressing views that Christianity is superior to Hinduism, one would assume that D’Souza would have qualms about supporting Narendra Modi. After all, Modi’s record on religious tolerance in India is not a positive one, and even though Muslims are the primary target, Christians have not been spared (Wallen 2020). Yet, D’Souza does not seem to care much about that. D’Souza (2019) has tweeted messages such as this: “I’m not an unqualified fan of Narendra Modi but his re-election in India is another affirmation of the triumph of Trumpian nationalism over the cosmopolitan socialism of the Congress party. For the left, the reckoning is now worldwide.” Evidently, D’Souza’s enthusiasm for Trump is a priority, and in his political calculation, if that comes to ditching some of the ideals he stood for only a few years ago, so be it. This lack of ideological integrity is yet another trait of the comprador intellectual.
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