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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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 please
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.
Or anywhere near the punk subculture I guess. I feel like it's something that I've been hyper aware of my entire life.
You need to point out you mean the skin head punks from American History X.
As there is a vast variety of sub cultures of punk, most of which despise the Neo Nazi Skins.
Most skin head punks have nothing to do with being a Nazi.
I was a SHARP skinhead involved with anti racist action, so my acquaintance with the situation was.... Intimate.
I was a SHARP skinhead
Thank you for your service!
Fuck yeah man. You're more hardcore than me that's for sure.
Fuck racists, racist punks especially so
Spoken like someone with little experience with actual punks. They traditionally were anti-establishment, anti-racist, and anti-fascist. They may not have been demographically the most diverse group ever. But actual punks were a pretty good crowd, even if they were purposefully misunderstood.