Key Points
When American History X was released in 1998, 25 years ago, it warned of a gathering storm of white supremacist violence..
In the film, a thriving neo-Nazi movement recruits charismatic leaders, scapegoats immigrants, exploits the unprecedented connectivity ushered in by the internet age, and capitalises on long-festering racial grievances in white families all of which combust into open racial warfare..
Dorothy Roberts, a sociologist who has devoted decades studying anti-black tropes, tells BBC Culture that American History X was revelatory in how it held a magnifying glass up to racism within white households but that the film was also guilty of reproducing damaging myths about black people...
While it's true that the 1990s saw a surge in films from black producers and directors including Spike Lee, Julie Dash, and Carl Franklin they were largely overshadowed by blockbuster films with embedded racial stereotypes, such as Frank Darabont's The Green Mile or Disney's Aladdin, and, as Nafkote Tamirat has observed, movies that stripped history of racial exploitation from their conflicts so "audiences could enjoy the tragedy without the guilt"..
Alexandra Stern, author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate, and Andy Campbell, author of We Are Proud Boys, agree that the internet's chat rooms, message boards, and tweet storms acted as a potent accelerant for the alt-right fulfilling what American History X explicitly described as the future of radical organising..
