Thoughts on American History X

Rating: 10/10 (11 December 2007)

The movie was written by McKenna (presumably Gentile), and put out by New Line (Jewish owned). It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall at the production meetings as they tried to balance the need to make an interesting movie (letting a Nazi make his case) against the need for Semitical Correctness.... I truly wonder where the writer's opinions lie. The indications are that he has a good deal more sympathy for the skins' case than the Jews' because the former is strongly drawn, while the latter is barely sketched.
The guts of the movie are the speeches by Derek. Of these speeches, the best is his dinner-table destruction of the Jewish cant put out by the Elliot Gould character courting his mother in which he demolishes the Jew's inevitable excuse explanations of poverty and racism for Rodney King and the L.A. riots. Edward Norton is a fine actor, and is quite persuasive as a strong and principled skinhead. He is much less plausible as a post-prison reformed soul, but that is a script problem. We are supposed to believe that the principles he stated and defended at the risk of his life have been changed because he encountered a funny Black man and some corrupt White racists in prison. This failure of characterization was probably made necessary by the dictates of Semitical Correctness at New Line. I'm sure McKenna realizes that Derek would be nothing but entrenched in his beliefs by a stint in prison.
In fact, at no point are the racist beliefs of the main characters Derek and younger brother Daniel challenged. By challenged, I mean shown to be logically or evidentially impaired. Instead, they are attacked modern-style, by fem-think. We see kicked-to-the-curb Gould saying "I'm sorry" to Derek's mother, his tragic gaze suggesting his horror at a son so far gone. Perhaps the Jews at New Line think fifty years of maceration in their agitprop have the rest of us accepting their "perfect and persecuted" self-portrait. Perhaps they really do think that raised eyebrows, shaken heads and baleful stares and speech codes and prison sentences are strictest refutation. Hell, simple coherence -- let alone logic -- seems too much to ask of Hollywood these days.
Gould was perfect casting. At once patronizing and effeminate, he is the precise foil to Norton's master-of-my-own-house masculinity. It's not just that a poorly educated skin makes mincemeat of him in argument, but that his Jewish dogma is so ugly. In Norton's combative integrity we see the Old America, made up of free and responsible White men. In Gould we see the coming World Slave State, where the thinking is done for us, and it remains only to Accept.
The part that bodes thinking on is that this movie is about an inch from being quaint. As in, Oh, how cute, that little white mouse is crouching in the corner, baring its teeth in self-defense!, as our ugly Jewish hand reaches in to pick it up to feed it to the snake. Isn't that precious. Such stirring words and sculpted pecs! What a man he might have been two hundred years ago! But thanks to TV, we are all Jews now....