'White with Fear' Exposes America's Dark Side
Let's address the elephant in the room, also known as the Republican Party. This review will probably not sit well with a lot of people since this is, after all, a predominantly conservative country. The general population is still white, which resulted in Donald Trump's 2024 comeback victory. Also, a lot of young people didn't vote. Shame on them. Director Andrew Goldberg's documentary White with Fear is a fascinating study into the bigotry of American politics that was cultivated during the Nixon era and has been amassing power ever since. Goldberg's history lesson stems from a long line of politicians to news outlets pumping terror regarding people of color. It's a blood-boiling film that doesn't just say "Donald Trump is racist" but also explores how and why discrimination is a winning playing card for conservatives throughout history.
Unlike a Michael Moore film that focuses primarily on Democratic figures while having hostile interviews with Republicans (cough, cough, Charlton Heston), White with Fear fairly invites subjects from both sides to address the camera. The list of interviewed Conservatives includes Steve Bannon, Tim Miller (former spokesman, Republican National Committee), Sam Nunberg (Political advisor for Trump for president in 2016), and Katie McHugh (former writer/producer for Breitbart News). Some of the details revealed are disturbing, although, at this point in the middle of a collapsing moral country, it isn't a big surprise. What is surprising is how xenophobia has been utilized since the Nixon administration.
Richard Nixon implemented a political system that was designed to spread panic without admitting it was racist. Nixon kept saying that they were going to restore law and order. Decades later, Trump used the same exact words, drawing inspiration from Nixon's playbook. It's all about the blacks and illegal immigrants who are labeled as dangerous, so uneducated voters can rush to the polls to vote for Trump.
Why doesn't Trump use the conservatives' talking points about tax cuts for the middle class or promoting small government? Because as one of the subjects who worked for Trump on his 2016 campaign said, "that shit is boring." You're not going to win on that. You need to propagate terror to scared voters so they can come out in masses to vote against their own best interests.
As the documentary points out, it's worse to be called a racist instead of being one. Many Americans wearing MAGA hats honestly believe they are not discriminatory, while their vote says the opposite. Not all Trump supporters are racists. Some of the more wealthy ones, like Clint Eastwood, just want tax cuts for the rich.
After 9/11, Americans targeted their rage on Muslims by assaulting them. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Trump makes me miss George W. Bush. After the attack on America, Bush told the public that Muslims are peaceful people. Not the enemy. At least Bush had the integrity not to spread animosity towards Muslims. Except, Bush's words didn't reflect his actions when he bombed Baghdad and then invaded Iraq under the pretense that they had nuclear weapons. A few years later, it was proven that Saddam Hussein wasn't carrying a nuclear arsenal. In order to keep people afraid, the Department of Homeland Security made a color-coded terror chart, which went from green, which is safe, to red for danger. Frequently, the Bush administration kept upping the temperature, placing the code at orange, just slightly below red.
The institutional racism the Conservatives have been using for decades has also been used by Democrats, going back to the Japanese internment camps during World War II. Today, there are a few bad apples in the Democratic Party, but it pales in comparison to the Republican agenda. With the arrival of Donald Trump, the Republicans have been gifted the opportunity to say what they were hiding through coded language for years. Trump's vile racialism is no longer taboo in politics. It's a winning card for the party.
White with Fear is a terrifying reminder of how much harder you have to prove yourself if you're of color, as the entire system is against you. So why are we so racist? Is it because of the growth of Fox News or our President spewing disgusting rhetoric? Partially. The main issue is that a large majority of Americans fear that one day, they will become the minority. And you know what? They're right. Demographically, things are beginning to change. When enough of the elderly voters die off, more people of color will make the country equal in its citizenship, knocking the whites off the top of the food chain.
Andrew Goldberg's White with Fear is a multilayered film that brilliantly depicts what's wrong with our country. From George Floyd's murder by a police officer, then transitioning to the disinformation toward Critical Race Theory, America is in a very dark place. Some of the points made are common knowledge. We know Fox News is an evil entity that would like nothing more than to kick all the immigrants (who aren't white) out of the country. It's easy to see that Trump is bigoted. But we don't know the specificity of the Republicans’ long-standing racial bias and how their culture war works. Ranging from Trump calling the Charlottesville white supremacists "very fine people on both sides" to referring to COVID as the China Virus and Kung-Flu, there's a lot this documentary unpacks within its tight 86-minute length.
Not only is White with Fear a very good film. But an important one that calls on the people to take action. It's not a perfect movie. There's some editing that looks a bit choppy, and the overdramatic music in the film sounds like something you'd hear in a trailer. Otherwise, you owe it to yourself to see this documentary. Some people might say this is political propoganda only showing the Republicans as racists. But if the Republicans look like a duck and quack like a duck, then they're ducks.
White with Fear will have a premiere in Chicago on Wednesday, March 21 at 7pm at the Landmark Century Center before becoming available to stream wide on June 3. https://www.tickettailor.com/events/area23afilms/1667509
