Did American History X foreshadow the resurgence of white nationalism in the US?
Did American History X foreshadow the resurgence of white nationalism in the US?
In 1998, a brutal, controversial indie film portrayed a bleak vision of race relations in the US that appears to have predicted a growing 21st-Century movement, writes Tom Joudrey.
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.
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I remember watching it and it being a comment on racism at the time, no foreshadowing of the future involved.
Same with Romper Stomper for Aus which was released 6 years before American History X.
Yeah, I'm from an area of the country where the events of the movie aren't far fetched. It wasn't predicting anything, it was just showing you what was going on in the places where people don't like to look.
Same. I saw it all around me. Like I knew openly neo-Nazi folks. I could have 100% seen it happening.
Growing up in the So-Cal punk scene I saw these people every time I went to a show. Dudes with boots and "wife beater" tank tops holding a confederate flag at a Voodoo Glowskulls show come to mind especially.
The punk shows I've been to I think would kill any Nazi punk stupid enough to show up. I'm relatively newish to the scene though and in Seattle. Is this a regional thing, different eras thing?
Different eras. There was a whole punk skinhead subculture, and a sub-subculture within it that were Nazis. Most skinheads were explicitly anti-racist, so needless to say the two factions did not exactly get along...
The Dead Kennedys even wrote a song called "Nazi Punks Fuck Off"
When it came out tho I remember thinking that a neo-nazi/nationalist movement could never happen (on a large scale) in any Western nation ... yet here we are with that exact thing almost worldwide now.
I remember thinking that a neo-nazi/nationalist movement could never happen (on a large scale) in any Western nation.
I have to ask, how old were you when you thought that?
Those already existed in the UK and other western nations for decades.
This is England is a movie about the skinhead/nationalist groups in the Uk in 1983.
Hell, The Blue Brothers had a joke about Illinois Nazis in 1980.
Groups like this have existed for decades.
Here's the Blues Brothers scene that first introduces them. In case anyone else was like me and instantly wanted to watch it.
Yes, but that's the thing... the media portrayed the far-right as laughable "fringe movements" back then - we didn't have the internet, and the connection between capitalist societies and the far-right (whose violence protects them) was pretty much hidden from us by the very people who empower the far-right when working-class people get uppity.
Worldwide they haven't.
My version of this is seeing losers on 4chan trying to be edgy, didn't know it would be a fucking breeding ground years later that would lead to the storming of the US Capitol and multiple militia groups forming.
Exactly. It was annoying but not overwhelming. Now we've got politicians catering to the nazi/nationalist crowd like they're some kind of demi-god.
Tbf it’s always been overt the top, but after moot sold it, it got way worse.
Why would you think that a nationalist or fascist movement could never happen in the Western world given what had already happened during the twentieth century? I'm not trying to be a piece of shit, I'm honestly curious.
Not answering for girlfreddy but I'd also like to chime in. I don't know how to say this, but like America used to feel different 30 years ago. Even though rights were slow coming for women in the workplace and eventually gay people, it felt like we were always either stopped or moving slowly forward. Maybe it was just a sheltered existence, having all of the benefits of a pretty damn good public school system in a quiet corner of the suburban area, but I fucking swear, there was like a clear line to this nation becoming some kind of next civilization and it felt like everyone shared it for a minute there.
I don't know if it was 9/11 or the Neoliberal creep. Maybe the 08' crash, or the Obama election and the feelings that came after. I can tell you though some time around 2010-2011 I started telling people that white supremacists and fascists were coming. I'm sure it was a bunch of little things, but they all started to click around then. I watched this movie with my mom, and now I'd largely consider her the equivalent of a Nazi. She doesn't think she is, but she's also brainwashed to the point where she gave up our relationship over being unable to confront her christofacist ideas. She liked the movie and was disturbed by the racism back when we watched it.
A lot of all this can be pinned to Regan and his welfare queen bullshit that he purposely put out to race bait and fire up the right. Still, they all kinda stood by and just stewed in their closeted prejudice to the point where all this shit felt like a legitimate surprise when it began to snowball together. A lot of it is intertwined with their feelings on Obama for sure. A half black guy made most of the people around him look like lame dumpy hicks. A lot of America couldn't process that so they started to try to delude their reasoning, rather then coming to terms with it. He's a black Muslim, with a fake birth certificate. He's a weed smoking smooth talker. He's a new world order pawn of the elites. They still hate him so much that Q made a detour and said his wife is a secret transsexual and by reason he a closeted fraud...
Anyway, got off track. But again, I'll stand behind it that none of this somehow felt possible pre 2000, and largely still into like 08'. At least to a much younger and naive me.
Edit: rereading this, I kinda wander a lot. Sorry if it detracted at all from the convo. I'm gonna leave it though cause it still feels personal and true, and I'd be sad to delete this after all the memories I got to think back on. I am old.
Got to add, it didn't just happen in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan.
There were fascists in every country in the world, and a lot of them stayed in power after WW2.
Most of Asia was fascist ruled at one point or another. South America was almost completely ruled by various fascist dictators for most of the second half of the century.
But the more on topic point is that a large percentage of Americans of the time, had wanted the US to join WW2 on the side of the Germans. There were men who were sent to kill Nazis who had marched in support of the Nazis at Madison Square Garden.
That's not even counting the KKK, which was falling apart due to the leadership embezzling funds, but just a decade prior had enjoyed hundreds of thousands of members.
In 1930 the Klan had membership counting 11 Governors, 16 US Senators, and roughly 75 members of the House.
The Klan then had a resurgence in the 1950s, and well into the 70s all in response to the civil rights movement.
The Klan might be treated like a joke these days, but the sort of families that have multiple generations of klansman, don't teach love and understanding to their children.
There are little towns in the south that have been cultivating their racism since long before the civil war.
Hell, the state of Oregon was so racist that the banned black people entirely. The people who did that had kids who joined the Klan, so on and so forth, and now there are still places in eastern Oregon that black and brown people have to avoid on fear of death.
White nationalism has been part of who we are as a nation for a very long time. Thankfully its popularity is fading, which only makes the adherents louder and more dangerous.
... on a large scale.
In the 90's it was still not nationwide. Now it is, in America, Canada, the UK, Israel, China, and even some African nations have become nationalist ... but back when this movie came out that was unheard of.
Yeah, that's a lack of understanding on your part. John birch society, national alliance in the US. OKC bombings were largely inspired by literature put out by the thankfully dead founder of the national alliance. National front in the UK. Israel... I mean was founded in coalition with nationalist terrorists so I don't know where that's coming from.
And stormfront has been around forever. Preceding Alex Jones?
I'm over 60 so not misunderstanding anything. And you're calling Jewish people "national terrorists" is fucking nazi bs.
Gtfo asshole.
Israel... I mean was founded in coalition with nationalist terrorists so I don't know where that's coming from.
I hate to tell you, but this isn't hyperbolic. Israel was absolutely founded in part by an ultra-nationalist, ethno-supremacist, terrorist organization. Founding members of Lehi went on to form Likud as well.
I'm calling Irgun nationalist terrorists, who were in coalition in founding Israel alongside Labor Zionists(who I don't believe are nationalist terrorists). If you don't think that label applies to Irgun you're a whole hell of a lot more fascist adjacent than I am.
Being 20 years older than me and ignorant ain't something I'm impressed by.
Shit, I posted to defend you and we weren't even talking about the same group. I forgot about Irgun, that was another one. I was talking about Lehi.
They were very close to each other regardless and both are strong influences on the current Likud.
It just continues to blow my mind that people are so unwilling to look at the beyond questionable ethical underpinnings surrounding the formation of Israel. It is and was an extension of western colonialism. I don't even see how this is remotely controversial to say, and yet a lot of people lose their fucking minds if you even bring it up.
Lehi formed from Irgun anyway.
Not going to claim to know their thoughts, but they said Israel, not Jews. There is a real difference. One is a government the other is a cultural identity/religion.
When it came out I was dealing with National Alliance, Baltimore Hammerskins, and to a lesser extent the Pagans motorcycle gang in my area of Northern Maryland. It was far from historical if you were actively around white supremacist areas, particularly the rust belt or around orange county California. I remember visiting OC in the aughts and everyone confused me for a nazi, some waitress chick showed me her Himmler tattoo.
Exactly. I knew kids from middle school who ended up getting really radicalized and became white supremacists. Moved away but at least one of them became a murderer so... yeah.
It reminds me of how everyone was amazed by Gamergate in the 2010s and then the rise of trump around the alt-right. Or the current "angry males" bullshit with tate and the wannabes.
Mostly it just made me think of being a gamer in the late 90s/early 2000s. Plenty of message boards were full of "weird comments" and some folk even pointed out how blatantly a few neonazi handbooks were being followed in terms of recruitment. Like, I distinctly remember feeling really uncomfortable in my Unreal Tournament clan because one of the guys "was an asshole" but nobody else thought it. I didn't want to deal with him but I also couldn't play UT unless I did. Fortunately I ended up breaking ties because nobody else wanted to play OFP/ArmA after UT2k4 was "fun but not the same".
Its been the same shit for decades. And even today, if you care about something as simple as "maybe don't call people 'gay' as an insult" or "that comment is insensitive", people lose their shit and call you the modern day equivalent of an SJW. And, in the interim, neonazis are following those same publicly available recruitment handbooks and are doing a great job of making people comfortable with spewing bigotry because "it is just a joke". Until it isn't.
And we also see the same "oh, they are just misguided" kid gloves. It makes me IMMENSELY angry when influencers like Disguised Toast or Ludwig or Charlie/Moistcritical (although, he has let his chud flag openly fly a few times) will try to position themselves as "a left leaning centrist" but will openly praise and defend people like ishowspeed or sneako who threaten women with rape and scream misogyny but "are really talented and great at building their brand" or "just have a difference of opinion". Rather than call them deranged right-wing lunatics.