‘The whole film,” says Stan Douglas, “is a bizarre racist fantasy. I watched it numerous times – but then stopped because I was so horrified.” The Canadian artist is talking about The Birth of a Nation, one of the most controversial films in Hollywood history, a three-hour silent drama directed by DW Griffith based on an earlier, obsolete novel by Thomas Dixon Jr. After its release in 1915, it provoked riots across the US for its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. The film is widely deemed responsible for reinvigorating the Klan’s reputation and bolstering its membership. Despite attempts to...
Monitoring Antisemitism Intel
