‘White with Fear’ probes GOP’s illicit racial tactics
It’s a fact that no Democrat presidential candidate since 1964 has garnered a majority of the white vote. And Andrew Goldberg’s documentary “White with Fear” suggests there’s but one reason for that – strategic racism. More to the point, Republicans systematically planting fear in the minds of white suburbia by purposely using buzzwords like illegal alien, thug, gangbanger, terrorist and other pejorative nouns to invoke frightening images of black and brown folks laying waste to all whitey holds dear.
For this, we have Richard Nixon to thank. Well, he and scheming campaign aides such as Pat Buchanan and former Fox News boss, Roger Ailes, who’ve beaten the drum for decades about losing our country and its way of life to “the other.” To hear Goldberg’s film tell it, the GOP loves hate, cynically and callously using it to successfully snooker gullible voters.
Goldberg and a host of talking heads – including Hillary Clinton, podcaster Steve Bannon, pundit Eddie Glaude, comedian Assif Mandvi and former Trump staffers Rick Gates and Sam Nunberg – lay it all out in clear, concise chronological order. Beginning with Nixon, Goldberg walks us through the evolution of this hate strategy and how white Americans have become increasingly receptive to the lie, aided and abetted by right-wing media. Particularly conservative news outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax and Breitbart echoing GOP talking points such as “great replacement” and “critical race theory” at nauseam to get the desired effect, even though there’s zero evidence to support such claims.
There’s little here that you haven’t heard before, but it’s impressive how fluidly the movie encompasses a half century in which covert racism has grown and thrived, much to the detriment of the Democratic Party. It’s also depressing how easily Americans have accepted this myth of black-on-white violence. Voters believe what they want to believe, and that’s the problem, according to the movie, which debuted in theaters just before Trump’s win over Kamala Harris last November. Now streaming on various platforms, the slickly packaged production makes it an easy watch, although some MAGA followers may disagree.
At least Goldberg comes with receipts, employing statistics, expert commentary and purveyors of the decades-long ruse coming clean about what they’ve done to divide America to win elections. If that doesn’t make you boiling mad, I don’t know what will. And it’s for that reason that “White with Fear” earns my vote as one of the more incisive political docs in recent years.
Movie review
White with Fear
Rated: Not rated
Featuring: Hillary Clinton, Steve Bannon, Eddie Glaude, Rick Gates, Sam Nunberg and Assif Mandvi
Director: Andrew Goldberg
Writer: Andrew Goldberg
Runtime: 86 minutes
Where: Currently streaming on demand
Grade: B
