A lot of silent era white supremacist garbage is able to fly under the radar of modern viewers because they have a very simplistic view of the KKK, seeing only the pointy hats and burning crosses.
In fact, the movement as much more insidious and had numerous ways of sneaking its message across.
In fact, the movement as much more insidious and had numerous ways of sneaking its message across.
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The response may be "Would a racist make a movie like that?" without considering the propensity for KKK members to coopt and appropriate Native American culture for themselves.
"Cherokee princesses" in the family line were used to deflect accusations of racial impurity.
"DW Griffith wrote good roles for women! Isn't that at odds with white nationalism? They aren't feminists."
The suffrage movement was heavily infiltrated and white supremacy was marketed as a feminist cause, protecting women for sexual assault.
The first woman senator's platform was lynching en masse to protect "virtue"
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-woman-who-was-the-first-female-senator-and-the-last-senator-to-be-an-enslaver-she-served-for-just-one-day-180985462/
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2018/11/14/murder-madge-oberholtzer-rape-poison-and-kkk-d-c-stevenson/1978705002/
White supremacy recruits through flattery and "focus on the art not the message" was the strategy from the very beginning, Thomas Dixon confessed as much in writing.
Worked like a charm and still does work.
Funny how she kept "accidentally" falling in with white nationalists.
She was not under contract, Griffith was indie, she fought for the role and stole it from Blanche Sweet by acting out the interracial rape scene for Griffith.
And since then, I found an interview of Gish bashing the civil rights movement just weeks after the Birmingham church bombing. That's a special kind of nasty.