ALTRIGHT: AGE OF RAGE
US, 2018, 104 minutes, Colour.
Daryle Lamont Jenkins, Richard Spencer, Mark Potock, Jared Taylor, Andrew Breitbart, David Duke.
Directed by Adam Bhala Lough.
For American audiences, this 2018 documentary is a reminder of the predominance of white supremacist movements in the US in the 2010s, and the movement feeling endorsed by the nomination of Donald Trump for the Republican Party, his election to the presidency. Segments of his speeches are included in this film. However, it was made as a contemporary look at the supremacist stances, not so much the Proud Boys and other militant groups but, rather, the intellectuals who advocate white superiority. The film climaxes in the clashes and protests in Charlottesville West Virginia in 2017 and the 20-year-old supremacist who drove his car into the crowds, killing a woman and injuring many others. This episode went around the world,
As the years have gone on, this documentary serves to give the background of the development of the supremacist movements, especially with the many interviews on screen presence of the founder, Richard Spencer, and his close associates. There are also many interviews with of lectures by Jared Taylor, a well spoken gentlemanly type but with extreme racist, supremacist and segregationalist attitudes. And there are some moments with Andrew Breitbart, the founder of the media agency, and some scenes with David Duke, head of the Ku Klux Klan.
On the anti-fascists side, Antifa, there is the strong spokesman, Daryle Lamont Jenkins, who appears throughout the film, big, confident, a campaigner, along with his many supporters and protesters.
The sequences in Charlottesville are quite frightening in terms of the two bases for the protest groups, the physical clashes, the non-intervention of the police force, then their interventions.
However, viewed later, after the defeat of President Trump and his attempts to overturn the election verdicts, but especially in the footage of the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021 (and the Charlottesville riot indicates passions, those who would be present, fighting and clash spirit), the tone of the film takes a different turn with the presidency of Joe Biden.
The film is against white supremacists but gives them quite an amount of screen time to present their case. Bloggers exhibit the same kind of partisanship. The following two items from the IMDb give an indication of tone and hostility: interestingly, the first blogger calls himself The Sovereign!
The-Sovereign8 July 2020
This is nothing more than propaganda film to make Antifa look good, when they're the real threat to America.
Complete and total propaganda.
eqrangerst2 February 2019
This movie is just another reason I am learning to loathe Netflix. The sheer number of Leftist propaganda pieces they produce/endorse is getting ridiculous.
This excuse for a 'documentary' is just another example of that trash. The reporting is extraordinarily dishonest and biased. Antifa and SPLC are human rights advocates and victims? Please, they're both terrorist organizations with different play books.
