Thread by @KevinMKruse

I'm trying not to clutter up my feed with responses to D'Souza tweets, but here he's publicly mocking a woman for mentioning one of my threads, so ... here we go.

https://twitter.com/dineshdsouza/status/1097710881335578624

In this clip, D'Souza claims I'm no expert on southern political history because I "only" wrote one book on it.

Sure, it won prizes from the Southern Historical Association and the American Political Science Association -- but it's only one book. Quantity over quality, I guess.

He claims *he's* the expert in this field, despite never earning a PhD, or an MA, or even a BA in History. I've asked him if he took any History classes at all, but he refuses to answer.

I guess he was too busy publishing pieces like this as editor of the Dartmouth Review.

If D'Souza *had* ever taken a history class, he wouldn't constantly be surprised by fairly basic facts in the field:

https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/765911079251681285

And if D'Souza *had* ever taken a history class, he wouldn't make allegations that we don't teach all these things that we actually do:

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/917020494573993985

And if D'Souza *had* ever taken a history class, he wouldn't lie that historians are hiding these things in the textbooks we write:

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1024768574701887493

In that clip, D'Souza says he likes to bring things down to "empirical particulars," but you'll note in all our exchanges I repeatedly offer evidence -- primary sources, links to books and articles, video and audio, etc. -- and he never does.

Yes, please do judge for yourself.

In that clip, he claims that Tower, Helms and Lott -- who were all southern Democrats who later became Republicans -- don't count as examples of southern Democrats who later became Republicans because ... they don't fit his personal definition? Because he's the expert? OK, sure.

Again, I've laid out the "empirical particulars" at great length, using actual evidence as opposed to his hand-waving

You can read them yourself -- Tower, Lott and Helms are #2, #12, and #13 in this thread:

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1013981446615322624

Now, D'Souza says in the clip, that in doing this, "Kruse plays a sly game, he counts as Dixiecrats people who are not Dixiecrats" -- and remember, they're not Dixiecrats because he says so.

This is some amazing projection. Let's look at how D'Souza plays this same sly game.

As I've noted in this thread, D'Souza plays incredibly fast and loose with his evidence, making sloppy mistakes that anyone who'd ever so much as taken a course in southern political history would never make.

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1024360878760779776

For instance, he counts Kerr Scott as a Dixiecrat, even though Kerr Scott was the leader of the North Carolina forces who worked *against* the 1948 Dixiecrat rebellion:

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1024371058286227458

Likewise, in that thread, when counting Dixiecrats who never switched parties in the late 1960s, he names several politicians who died before then.

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1024360923404939264

The biggest howler, of course, is the "Senator William Murray" that he just made up out of thin air.

That's not exactly sly, but it's certainly a game.

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1029037728665620480

We could go on and on, but it's clear who's playing fast and loose with evidence, the way no actual historian would.

D'Souza routinely likes to single me out, as if I'm the only historian who objects to his work, but that's not true. Here's a fun thread:

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/916709190269272067

And I'm not the only actual historian to take issue with our self-proclaimed expert.

Here's @rauchway:

https://twitter.com/rauchway/status/1022896628267536385

And here's @HC_Richardson:

https://twitter.com/HC_Richardson/status/1014923139774582784

And here's @TheTattooedProf:

https://twitter.com/TheTattooedProf/status/1015331990537756673

And on and on and on.

This isn't a case of "this guy at Princeton" versus Dinesh D'Souza. It's the historical profession aligned against him.

Now, in fairness, I should note that there *is* one professional historian who likes D'Souza, and whom D'Souza likes.

He happens to be a historian who famously founded a eugenics institute with funding from a leading segregationist.

For as much as Dinesh D'Souza likes to preen and pretend he's the expert who's dismissing dumb hecklers, actual historians think he's the heckler.

And not a very good one.