Dinesh D'Souza, Filmmaker Pardoned by Trump Who Shared Tweets With Hashtag #BurntheJews, Invited to Speak at Stanford

A far-right author and filmmaker who suggested the rally held last year by white nationalists in Charlottesville was staged may speak at Stanford University.

Dinesh D'Souza was invited to speak at the California-based institution by the Stanford College Republicans (SCR), who submitted a standard grant application to the Undergraduate Senate to host the controversial filmmaker.

According to The Stanford Daily, the group requested $6,000 in funds for the event from the Undergraduate Senate, with $3,500 going toward security. The report added that should the funding request be approved, the SCR would still require the approval of the university's Student Activities and Leadership group.

Should both parties give their consent to the talk, the Indian-born American political commentator, who was pardoned by President Donald Trump for a felony conviction of making illegal campaign contributions in 2012, will appear at the university on January 16.

Last week, D'Souza was among those peddling a conspiracy theory that the mail bombs sent to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire philanthropist George Soros, among other prominent Democrats, were a false flag to distract voters ahead of the midterms.

I hear the FBI squeezed lemon juice on the suspicious packages and a very faint lettering revealed a single word: DEMOCRATS

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) October 24, 2018

"I hear the FBI squeezed lemon juice on the suspicious packages and a very faint lettering revealed a single word: DEMOCRATS," he wrote on Twitter.

The 57-year-old is not new to controversy. In February, in the wake of the shooting in which 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were killed, D'Souza mocked the school shooting survivors after Florida lawmakers voted down a bill to ban assault weapons.

Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs https://t.co/Vg3mXYvb4c

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) February 20, 2018

In the past, D'Souza accused former President Barack Obama of carrying out the "anti-colonial" agenda of his father while in office and retweeted posts with the hashtags #burntheJews and #bringbackslavery.

The latter incident saw him at the center of a Twitter controversy in January, after retweeting messages that promoted his film Death of a Nation—whose trailer compares Trump to Abraham Lincolnwhen users noticed they contained highly offensive hashtags.

The first tweet shared by D'Souza, which featured the hashtag #burntheJews, was spotted by Twitter users and widely shared, prompting the pundit to respond, "I did not see the hashtag. Just trying to share the trailer on social media."

His claim that he had simply failed to spot the hashtag was not well received by Twitter, with many users expressing disbelief that the filmmaker could have missed the offensive wording when he shared the message.

D'Souza's invitation is the latest in a list of controversial speakers SCR has brought to Stanford over the last 12 months.

GettyImages-1009181406
Dinesh D'Souza attends the Washington, D.C., premiere of his film "Death of a Nation" at E Street Cinema. Shannon Finney/Getty Images

In November 2017, SCR was among the organizers of an event that saw self-proclaimed Islamophobe Robert Spencer appear on campus. Meanwhile, in June, as part of its "Make Stanford Great Again" event, SCR hosted Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens of conservative nonprofit organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA). The former, who co-founded TPUSA, was ranked by conservative Newsmax as the seventh most influential Republican under 30 years of age, while The Dallas Morning News credited him with leading the "millennial assault" for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

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About the writer


Dan Cancian is currently a reporter for Newsweek based in London, England. Prior to joining Newsweek in January 2018, he ... Read more

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