July 29: An Indian American conservative has resurrected a version of a folksy nightmare attributed to Karl Marx that a clever capitalist could attractively package communism and sell it to the highest bidder to make money.

Dinesh D'Souza, who was policy adviser to Ronald Reagan when he was President, has done a hatchet job on Hillary Clinton and is currently laughing all the way to the bank from the proceeds of his documentary comparing America's former First Lady and Democratic presidential nominee to Eva Peron, who was Argentina's First Lady for six years.

D'Souza's documentary, Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, released selectively in conservative strongholds such as Texas earlier this month and shown nationwide in theatres from the eve of the just-concluded Democratic convention in Philadelphia has already collected $5.2 million at the box office.

To date, it is the top-grossing documentary in 2016 because of the Indian American's perfect sense of timing: feeding into the worst fears of Clinton-haters who run into tens of millions across America as she prepares to hit the campaign trail to be President.

According to film industry statistics, Hillary's America now stands at number 10 in the history of political documentaries in the US in terms of box office collections. It has already overtaken the most popular documentary of its genre in recent times, liberal film-maker Michael Moore's Where to Invade Next.

Moore's film is an indictment of US's lifestyle in comparison to Europe's focusing on Finland, Slovenia, Portugal and France, among others.

Hillary's America accuses Hillary Clinton and her husband, two-term President Bill Clinton, of being "depraved crooks". Democrats are portrayed in the film as "the party of corruption".

At a time when red necks, hard core evangelicals and the extreme Right are frothing at their mouths in anger over the possibility of the Clintons returning to the White House, D'Souza's financially shrewd recipe to stoke their anger is being lapped up in theatres.

For another segment of the potential audience, Democrats are charged in the documentary with past association with the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan, slavery, forced sterilisation and black lynchings.

Hollywood's box office statistics revealed that from just five theatres in Texas where the film was running to a full house immediately before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, it grossed $77,500 in a few days. Currently, Hillary's America, is being shown in 1,217 theatres across the US, mostly to full houses.

Faced with intense criticism from liberals of Hillary Clinton's portrayal as another Eva Peron, who was made famous by the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita, D'Souza yesterday launched a website for the documentary as well.

The website, http://hillarysamericathemovie.com/evidence, claims to offer evidence that what the film-maker says about the Democratic Party in the documentary is historically correct. It quotes former Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and others in support of the allegations against the party.

Respectable film reviewers, for example, in Los Angeles Times have said the documentary "does not even qualify as effectively executed propaganda". Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has, however, endorsed the film and praised its Indian American creator.

Mumbai-born D'Souza arrived in the US as an exchange student through Rotary International in 1978 and stayed on to become an American citizen in 1991. He describes himself as a political commentator.

In August 2010, D'Souza was named president of The King's College, a Christian arts institution in New York City. Two years later, in October 2012, allegations surfaced that D'Souza, who espouses "Christian and family values", had shared a hotel room with a girlfriend although he was still married.

He was forced to resign his presidency of the college in the ensuing storm.

Since then D'Souza has kept a low profile although he produced a documentary four years ago on President Barack Obama. The film, 2016: Obama's America was also dubbed a hatchet job on the first black President of the US although it did well at the box office, especially among those who believe Obama is a Muslim and was not born in the US.