Unlike many other issue-oriented documentaries that capitalize on the controversy of the moment and round up a group of talking-head “experts” on a subject to expound on the extremes of said topic, director Andrew Goldberg’s White With Fear is a beautifully balanced— yet still quite alarming—examination of the practice of fear-mongering. More, it explores how the practice, while hardly new, has been used with surgical precision by politicians (let’s be honest, mostly Republicans) to make white Americans feel threatened and victimized in the hope of gaining votes.
Goldberg takes us back to Richard Nixon’s “law and order” platform, which many point out was code for suppressing Black Americans in larger cities. And Nixon won twice spouting promises about safety that helped his white base feel like there must be a danger, with his policies being the only way to feel protected. But compared to today’s strategic false claims about immigrants from Mexico and South America, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and Replacement Theory, Nixon’s brand of prejudice seems almost quaint. T
he film also draws meaningful parallels between the rise of the conservative outlet Fox News and the spread of these beliefs into the political arena. The truth of these claims becomes secondary; if you feel it in your gut to be true or have a hint of truth, that's good enough for most. Most of the testimony in White With Fear is given by people actually around when these practices were conceived, such as former Fox News reporter Carl Cameron; Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon; and others in the know. The film also includes revealing interviews with Hillary Clinton, Lincoln Project co-founder Stuart Stevens, and other experts who have taken a step back from emotion and politics to simply examine the trends. The filmmakers walk us through how in the decades since Nixon, the American conservative machine has grown more powerful and successful in exploiting and weaponizing racial divisions and pumping up this belief among white voters that they are somehow the victims, both of internal and external forces, especially in the aftermath of Barack Obama's election.
According to the movie, Donald Trump didn’t invent this type of fear-mongering, but he certainly made it the cornerstone of his campaign, moving away from policy-centered messages and making his public events more about stirring up the while middle and working classes and rallying the troops around a hate-focused rhetoric. Modern politics has been changed forever by this shift, and some of the folks interviewed in this film are the reason for it. If anything, the film feels slightly dated because it doesn’t deal much with Trump’s most recent election (but it does make it clear that his refusal to pronounce Kamala Harris’s name correctly was an extension of his racially-tinged tactics).
The film is scary, but factual, and the concern is partly rooted in how such tactics and untruths have been allowed to increase in popularity, virtually unchecked. Even today, egregious fictions are pushed out into the world with an alarming regularity, perhaps to overwhelm those bothering to fact check. But these practices are just part of today’s Republican playbook to such a degree that no one bothers to mention it any longer. White With Fear is alarming without being alarmist, and I’m guessing few on either side will argue with its messages about the state of American politics today.
The Chicago premiere of White With Fear will take place on Wednesday, May 21, 7pm, at the Landmark Century Center Cinema (tickets available here). A Q&A with director Andrew Goldberg will follow the screening. The film will be released on June 3 via all streaming platforms.
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