White with Fear

Many of us would likely agree that “truth” is a hard commodity to come by these days, especially in political and social matters. One need only look to the increasingly bombastic claims coming from each end of the spectrum to see that their agendas and perspectives are being driven by their respective polarized viewpoints, some of which probably contain kernels of truth but that have been significantly enhanced with ample doses of hyperbole and exaggeration. So what are we to believe? That’s a good question, one that this latest documentary from director Andrew Goldberg seeks to address, primarily from the standpoint of how right-wing conservative media and politicians have been deliberately engineering well-orchestrated campaigns of disinformation/propaganda/indoctrination (choose whatever word best suits you) to sway the hearts and minds of a largely uninformed and unquestioning public. Beginning with the Nixon presidency and continuing to the present day, this constituency’s game plan, according to an array of observers and experts, has been (and still is) based on implementing programming designed to play on the fears of White Americans who have come to believe they are targets for ever-increasing degrees of victimization and marginalization. Isolated incidents are blown out of proportion to make them seem like the norm, and threats to their well-being are seen as coming from all directions, potential dangers generally attributed to such scapegoats as immigrants, minorities and members of certain religious sects (the specific alleged perpetrators all being easy to figure out). And these dire warnings are typically packaged in gruesome, graphic, frightening detail and embellished with outright fabrications for maximum impact to fan the flames of support for their manufactured validity (after all, fear can be a powerful motivator and source of common ground in scenarios like this). Hence, individuals who might ordinarily not consider themselves racist or prejudice...