A brilliant film emerged from these skirmishes – but its core insight still takes work to unpack. For generations, a persistent myth that black families were irreparably broken by sloth and hedonism had been perpetuated by US culture. Congress’s landmark 1965 Moynihan Report, for example, blamed persistent racial inequality not on stymied economic opportunity but on the “tangle of pathologies” within the black family. Later, politicians circulated stereotypes of checked-out “crackheads” and lazy “welfare queens” to tar black women as incubators of thugs, delinquents, and “superpredators”. American History X made the bold move of shifting the spotlight away from the maligned black family and on to the sphere of the white family, where it illuminated a domestic scene that was a fertile ground for incubating racist ideas.
Resurgence? it never went away.
Yeah my favorite is people who say things like “I’m the 1940s USA/Canada/aus/etc fought fascism, what happened”?
No, they fought GERMANY. tons of those soldiers came back home and became John Birchers or klansmen or Christofascist evangelicals any other kind of fascist.
Shooting nazis does not an anti fascist make, perplexingly.
Also, the US was VERY hesitant to enter the European war. There was a lot of support for the Nazis in the US. From some high ranking people. Like the first director of the OSS and the Dulles brothers (instrumental in forming the CIA and NATO). They wanted a separate peace with Germany, and to enter the European war against the Soviets. But luckily FDR was unmovable in his support of the Soviets against the Nazis.
The latter point is not particularly surprising. Many people fight in wars because they have no choice or out of patriotism, or a combination of those plus other factors.
Another important point is that there are varying degrees of racism. Some people might have the badly mistaken view that a certain skin color is better or worse at certain jobs, for example, but that doesn’t mean that they would endorse genocide.
Some skin colors ARE worse at certain jobs
Like, I’m white, I could never play Mike Tyson in a movie
Counterpoint: that would be hilarious
Edit: without blackface only
Just get the voice right and people will suspend disbelief.
Also, talk about toads. A lot.
And a lot of guys just want to kill someone. They’ll listen to anyone who says someone’s a bad guy who can be morally murdered.
Another important point is that there are varying degrees of racism.
No, not really. You could, if you really wanted to, distinguish between two different “wings” or “traditions” of white supremacist ideology (which, of course, is the only “racism” there actually is) - the eliminationist and the exploitative.
They are not mutually exclusive - the Nazis, for instance, followed both policies when they exploited Slavic people for labor with the full understanding that all Slavic people would be eliminated as soon as their labor was no longer needed by the (so-called) “master race”.
What an astonishingly reductive and inaccurate statement.
Here’s but a small token of FDR’s statements on the matter.
https://youtu.be/qrNDwyj4u1w?si=c-ZuF7_UOWJQH0wz
Anti-fascist rhetoric was clear and popular, even in nations that would be arguably considered fascist themselves today, like Segregation Era America and the British Empire.
Tons of those soldiers might have continued being a racist after being drafted to fight Nazis, but just as many learned exactly what path they were following and changed course.
FDR’s political coalition even pretty much directly evolved into the Civil Rights Movement.
The simple reality is that 20th century politics was never simple but progressive thought thoroughly won out over ideologies of hate and actively worked to undo the centuries of damage done by colonial era white supremacist thought.
It was hardly a perfect process, and it’s one that continues to this day, but to pretend it was simply just nations butting heads to the common man is dangerously revisionist.
The allied nations fought fascism. They knew what it was, could describe it better than many do today, and the leadership was clear in their opposition, even if often confusingly hypocritical, and often beset by internal opposition. That not every person in 1940 was completely on board with it is simply the human condition.
Mostly agree but in my own experience it’s not WW2 vets that went Birch/KKK etc., but their kids.
Your experience is wrong. KKK and others existed just fine before and during WWII.
It’s high water mark was the 20s for sure, but when we talk about the outwardly visible racists, goddamn the baby boom represents
As opposed to their parents who protested Ruby Bridges?
My grandma wrote letters to American GIs deployed in Europe during the second world war. She kept the letters she got back.
There were letters outright praising Hitler and hoping the allied powers would take up the fight against the Reds.
It’s been smoldering and festering in the background for so long the internet just gave us a clear view into it. If they really think there’s a resurgence they’ve never been anywhere rural for the past 40 years as a minority.
Great film, but I’d argue what was ahead of its time was the criticism of toxic masculinity. And it avoided the Fight Club trap of people misunderstanding that it was a critique of that mindset and glorifying the dark side of the protagonist/antagonist.
No. The answer is no it did not. What a weird question
If you add a question mark to the end of your headline, do you sound like a non-committal ass?
Only say said question wearing hipster glasses while releasing a butterfly.
That’s OP’s headline.
That’s BBC’s headline…
Yes and the handmaid’s tale solidified it.
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No.
Counterpoint: yes.
This movie has a some seriously cringe-worthy moments in it. For instance, it blames the main character’s extremification on the actions of one black person - the white firefighter dad being shot by the (thoroughly stereotyped) black drug dealer - without addressing the fact that being extremified by that would necessitate pre-existing white supremacist beliefs on the part of the main character. And that’s just where it starts.
This movie pretty much does the opposite of what it purports to do. It’s basically liberal “non-racialism” that doesn’t challenge, queston or even acknowledge the existence of the very thing the current normalization of overt far-right ideology draws upon - the fundamental white supremacist ideology the US (and the rest of “western civilization”) was built upon.
without addressing the fact that being extremified by that would necessitate pre-existing white supremacist beliefs on the part of the main character
But they do explore that. They clearly show that he was already developing racist ideals influenced by his father even before the murder. The father’s death was just the tipping point.
They clearly show that he was already developing racist ideals
I don’t remember seeing that… I could be wrong - I saw it a long time ago and it’s not really a movie I’d return to. It simply doesn’t tell you anything useful about the far-right or the intimate connection it enjoys with the status quo we exist under.
I have never seen USian media that isn’t terrifically negligent when portraying the true nature of right-wing ideology - and I’m afraid I don’t see anything about this movie that makes it an exception.
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The flashback where he’s eating dinner with his family and talks about his cool black teacher and his father goes on a racist tirade. It shoes the seeds of racism were put in him since he was a kid. The whole point of the scene is to show he didn’t just wake up hating blacks one day. It was a process that started home.
Anyway, I respect your opinion even if I don’t agree with it.
There was definitely a scene where they’re sitting at the dinner table and the father is railing against affirmative action because his department hired a black firefighter.
Yeah, someone’s forgetting the movie. Derek Vineyard’s dad was your classic closer white racist who had no problem dropping n-bombs at the table, and Derek was an impressionable teen at the time. And in the midst of this, his hero firefighter father is murdered, and Derek takes what can be construed as a realistic, however irrational, tack, by following his father’s words in an effort to determine why his father was murdered.
dad was your classic closer white racist who had no problem dropping n-bombs at the table
It seems people are still having a really hard time understanding the difference between personally-held bigotry and institutionalized white supremacism. Placing the blame on Vineyard’s father for his children’s white supremacist beliefs is exactly the liberal “non-racism” I was referring to - it protects institutionalized white supremacism by pretending that “racism” is merely “bad feels” perpetrated by those “other/uneducated/poor/non-liberal bad whites.”
Unfortunately - that is not how white supremacism works… and the movie completely ignores that.
What do you want? Do you want a shot in utero where the switches for white supremacy are flipped? I’m not sure you’ll ever find what you’re looking for. I think the whole inherent racism thing is a switch that is or is not flipped during one’s development and the movie tried to tackle the issue within the 100 or so minutes it was given. At the very least it identified a facet of white supremacism.
I suppose perhaps I’m ignorant, but you seem to say that the interactions we experience in the film are secondary to something more systemic, and while I suppose I can say yeah, I agree, to just shurg off these things and say no, that want it, Derek was born hading black dudes, I think is a little shortsighted. Frankly, if you don’t put stock in the interactions the movie depicts, then what hope do you have?
I was born in the 80s and grew up with racism at my dinner table in a similar fashion, and when I was 15 I didn’t quite understand this movie in the same way I do at 36. I make efforts to not flip the switch for my kids at every opportunity. To hear you say it’s institutionalized makes me feel like it’s hopeless, and my babies, in spite of their colorblind nature now, will ultimately latch on to some rationale to hate people who don’t like like them, because it’s just in our nature.
What do you want?
Lots of things.
Do you want a shot in utero where the switches for white supremacy are flipped?
No.
I think the whole inherent racism thing
There is no such thing as “inherent racism” - in the same way that there is no such thing as “inherent Islamism” or “inherent monarchism.”
but you seem to say that the interactions we experience in the film are secondary to something more systemic
Yes.
Frankly, if you don’t put stock in the interactions the movie depicts, then what hope do you have?
Actually, if white supremacism worked the way the movie depicts it would be utterly hopeless - we’d be left with no option other than to declare that white supremacism and the reason it exists defies understanding… which it simply doesn’t. That is the liberal conceit of the movie - that racialization is (somehow) “natural” to humans when it so obviously isn’t.
To hear you say it’s institutionalized makes me feel like it’s hopeless,
That which is institutionalized can be dismantled - we are literally dismantling a small piece of it right now.
and my babies, in spite of their colorblind nature now
Your babies are not “colorblind” - not being able to see “race” is not some disability (you know… especially considering that “scientific racism” is literally pseudo-science despite the fact that it dictates so much of our reality in “western” society). What you meant to say is that your children have not been socialized into viewing the world through a white supremacist lens.
That is impossible to avoid - white supremacism is not something you are born with, it is something you are born into. White people don’t get to opt out of it, black people don’t get to opt out of it - that is what is meant when we talk about our society being fundamentally white supremacist. It cannot be avoided - but it’s conceits can be understood, it’s camouflage ripped away, it’s tenets debunked, and, ultimately, the institutions that rest upon it can be thoroughly discredited. That is one of the main reasons the alt-right exists - people becoming more and more aware of how deep the white supremacism iceberg goes frightens them. There’s a good reason we call their ilk reactionaries.
