President Wilson and the KKK?
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TommyC1776
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« on: May 28, 2007, 08:18:02 PM »

I saw that President Wilson was quoted in a movie back in 1915 with saying something about the KKK.  I didn't know he supported the KKK.  I knew he was racist but I didn't know about the KKK part and him.
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DuEbrithil
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« Reply #1 on: May 28, 2007, 09:13:51 PM »

Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People explained the Ku Klux Klan of the late 1860s as the natural outgrowth of Reconstruction, a lawless reaction to a lawless period. Wilson noted that the Klan “began to attempt by intimidation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action.” [31]. In short, Wilson accepted the Southern version of Reconstruction with Southern whites being victimized.

Wilson's words were repeatedly quoted in the film The Birth of a Nation, which has come under fire for racism. Thomas Dixon, author of the novel The Clansman upon which the film is based, was one of Wilson's graduate school classmates at Johns Hopkins in 1883-1884. Dixon arranged a special White House preview (this was the first time a film was shown in the White House) without telling Wilson what the film was about. Wilson most likely did not make the statement, "It is like writing history with lightning, my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." That was invented by a Hollywood press agent. In fact, Wilson felt he had been tricked by Dixon and publicly said he did not like the film; Wilson blocked its showing during the war.[32] In a 1923 letter to Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas Wilson noted of the reborn Klan, “...no more obnoxious or harmful organization has ever shown itself in our affairs.” [33]
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TommyC1776
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« Reply #2 on: May 29, 2007, 11:33:31 AM »

o. ok. so that wasn't Wilson's quote.  Why would a produce lie though?  Did Wilson like blacks at all?
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MODU
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« Reply #3 on: May 29, 2007, 11:45:36 AM »

I saw that President Wilson was quoted in a movie back in 1915 with saying something about the KKK.  I didn't know he supported the KKK.  I knew he was racist but I didn't know about the KKK part and him.

hahaha . . . you know, without DuEbrithil's response, your initial comment makes no sense.  Tongue
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YRABNNRM
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« Reply #4 on: May 29, 2007, 12:10:12 PM »

Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People explained the Ku Klux Klan of the late 1860s as the natural outgrowth of Reconstruction, a lawless reaction to a lawless period. Wilson noted that the Klan “began to attempt by intimidation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action.” [31]. In short, Wilson accepted the Southern version of Reconstruction with Southern whites being victimized.

Wilson's words were repeatedly quoted in the film The Birth of a Nation, which has come under fire for racism. Thomas Dixon, author of the novel The Clansman upon which the film is based, was one of Wilson's graduate school classmates at Johns Hopkins in 1883-1884. Dixon arranged a special White House preview (this was the first time a film was shown in the White House) without telling Wilson what the film was about. Wilson most likely did not make the statement, "It is like writing history with lightning, my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." That was invented by a Hollywood press agent. In fact, Wilson felt he had been tricked by Dixon and publicly said he did not like the film; Wilson blocked its showing during the war.[32] In a 1923 letter to Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas Wilson noted of the reborn Klan, “...no more obnoxious or harmful organization has ever shown itself in our affairs.” [33]

You get an F for plagiarism.
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12th Doctor
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« Reply #5 on: May 29, 2007, 12:51:00 PM »

I saw that President Wilson was quoted in a movie back in 1915 with saying something about the KKK.  I didn't know he supported the KKK.  I knew he was racist but I didn't know about the KKK part and him.

He wasn't quoted in  movie, he made a quote about a movie.  The movie was The Birth of a Nation which was essencially a pro-KKK/shamlessly racist and pro-southern "version" of the historical events of the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Wilson was quoted as saying "The only terrible thing about it is that it is all so horribly true."  Which, of course, it wasn't, but it is proof of the fact, if any was needed, that Wilson was, deep down, a racist who supported the Klan.
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TommyC1776
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« Reply #6 on: May 29, 2007, 02:44:10 PM »

I saw that President Wilson was quoted in a movie back in 1915 with saying something about the KKK.  I didn't know he supported the KKK.  I knew he was racist but I didn't know about the KKK part and him.

hahaha . . . you know, without DuEbrithil's response, your initial comment makes no sense.  Tongue

sorry.
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Dr. Cynic
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« Reply #7 on: May 29, 2007, 04:02:36 PM »

How many here have seen the film?... I'm just curious.

Wilson showed the film in the White House and loved it... Personally, anything that glorifies the KKK is a load of crap.
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DuEbrithil
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« Reply #8 on: May 29, 2007, 04:49:07 PM »

Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People explained the Ku Klux Klan of the late 1860s as the natural outgrowth of Reconstruction, a lawless reaction to a lawless period. Wilson noted that the Klan “began to attempt by intimidation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action.” [31]. In short, Wilson accepted the Southern version of Reconstruction with Southern whites being victimized.

Wilson's words were repeatedly quoted in the film The Birth of a Nation, which has come under fire for racism. Thomas Dixon, author of the novel The Clansman upon which the film is based, was one of Wilson's graduate school classmates at Johns Hopkins in 1883-1884. Dixon arranged a special White House preview (this was the first time a film was shown in the White House) without telling Wilson what the film was about. Wilson most likely did not make the statement, "It is like writing history with lightning, my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." That was invented by a Hollywood press agent. In fact, Wilson felt he had been tricked by Dixon and publicly said he did not like the film; Wilson blocked its showing during the war.[32] In a 1923 letter to Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas Wilson noted of the reborn Klan, “...no more obnoxious or harmful organization has ever shown itself in our affairs.” [33]

You get an F for plagiarism.
meh
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Jaggerjack
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« Reply #9 on: May 29, 2007, 05:31:32 PM »

o. ok. so that wasn't Wilson's quote.  Why would a produce lie though?  Did Wilson like blacks at all?
No. He resegregated the government. He was just standard of the common man that period. But what's ironic is that even though he came under fire from blacks, he also got attacked by southern whites.
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Sam Spade
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« Reply #10 on: May 29, 2007, 10:17:20 PM »

How many here have seen the film?... I'm just curious.

Wilson showed the film in the White House and loved it... Personally, anything that glorifies the KKK is a load of crap.

That's just plain stupid.  Would be similar to hating Wagner b/c he railed against the Jews constantly or (fill-in-the-blank) 20th century American composer b/c they were openly homosexual.

Basically, Birth of a Nation is the film that created Hollywood, not to mention pioneering about half of the film techniques presently in use worldwide nowadays.  In order to call oneself a "film buff", Birth of a Nation is really one of the few movies you have to at least see once.

I have seen the movie (two times now) and regardless of what you think of the subject matter (and the fact that the movie helped in rebirth of the KKK during the early 1920s), it is probably one of the 10 greatest films ever made - the story is compelling, the romantic subplot bewitching, and the fight sequences look completely realistic (even by today's standards).

He wasn't quoted in  movie, he made a quote about a movie.  The movie was The Birth of a Nation which was essencially a pro-KKK/shamlessly racist and pro-southern "version" of the historical events of the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Wilson was quoted as saying "The only terrible thing about it is that it is all so horribly true."  Which, of course, it wasn't, but it is proof of the fact, if any was needed, that Wilson was, deep down, a racist who supported the Klan.

Actually, KucinichforPrez is correct here.  D.W. Griffith placed a quote in the film from Wilson's book "The History of the American People", written while Wilson was President of Princeton University, which read:

"The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation...till at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern Country."
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« Reply #11 on: May 29, 2007, 10:28:51 PM »

If you want to watch the movie, you can here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6688165513470959198&q=birth+of+a+nation
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« Reply #12 on: May 30, 2007, 01:04:08 AM »

How many here have seen the film?... I'm just curious.

I've seen it, two or three times now and I own the tape as well. Very good movie and it pioneered the modern movie industry. Of course, during reconstruction southerners WERE victimized by carpetbaggers and the federal government and that's a travesty that should never ever be forgiven.
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Dr. Cynic
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« Reply #13 on: May 30, 2007, 01:15:12 AM »

How many here have seen the film?... I'm just curious.

Wilson showed the film in the White House and loved it... Personally, anything that glorifies the KKK is a load of crap.

That's just plain stupid.  Would be similar to hating Wagner b/c he railed against the Jews constantly or (fill-in-the-blank) 20th century American composer b/c they were openly homosexual.

Basically, Birth of a Nation is the film that created Hollywood, not to mention pioneering about half of the film techniques presently in use worldwide nowadays.  In order to call oneself a "film buff", Birth of a Nation is really one of the few movies you have to at least see once.

I have seen the movie (two times now) and regardless of what you think of the subject matter (and the fact that the movie helped in rebirth of the KKK during the early 1920s), it is probably one of the 10 greatest films ever made - the story is compelling, the romantic subplot bewitching, and the fight sequences look completely realistic (even by today's standards).

He wasn't quoted in  movie, he made a quote about a movie.  The movie was The Birth of a Nation which was essencially a pro-KKK/shamlessly racist and pro-southern "version" of the historical events of the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Wilson was quoted as saying "The only terrible thing about it is that it is all so horribly true."  Which, of course, it wasn't, but it is proof of the fact, if any was needed, that Wilson was, deep down, a racist who supported the Klan.

Actually, KucinichforPrez is correct here.  D.W. Griffith placed a quote in the film from Wilson's book "The History of the American People", written while Wilson was President of Princeton University, which read:

"The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation...till at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern Country."

Well Sam, I have seen the movie a couple of times... And no matter what the plot or how good the film was according to critics, or even cinematically, the fact that it launched a rebirth of the Ku Kluxers is more than enough reason for me to think it was garbage. The modern Klan was never anything more than a bunch of Halloween costume wearing rascists who, as you well know, terrorized anyone different from them. The film may have been a cinematic masterpiece, but it's role in reorganizing the terroristic organization known as the Ku Klux Klan,  leaves me sick to my stomach.

People today complain about Al Queda recruitment videos. How in the blue hell was this any different? Just because it was an American film, and it used revolutionary cinematic acheivements that would evolve and lead to what Hollywood is today, that doesn't make it an innocent film. Maybe being from a northern state, I'm not as sympathetic to the film as a southerner would be.
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Colin
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« Reply #14 on: May 30, 2007, 11:04:28 AM »
« Edited: May 31, 2007, 09:48:15 AM by Senator Colin Wixted »

Personally, Lawrence, I would consider Birth of a Nation to be in the same catagory as the film Triumph of the Will, the "documentary" of Hitler's 1934 Nuremberg rallies. While both depict horrid organizations in a positive light, the KKK and the Nazis, both do have some redeeming aspects due to purely artistic means. States and Sam are right in saying that Birth of a Nation basically created modern cinema and broke us out of the short silent movie and into the long, complex, epic film. Triumph of the Will has influence everything from post-War American advertising, let's use Nazi propoganda to sell laundry detergent, to movies such as Star Wars. The sort of cinematography used in Triumph of the Will is still used to convey menacing power and might within movies today.

I'm not saying that either is much different from an al-Qaeda training video in what they set out to achieve but they are different in the way they had legacy beyond their horrid ideas that they promoted. This of course doesn't make Wilson any less virulently racist. In my opinion Wilson is probably the most open and the most virulently racist President who held the office after the Civil War, even in comparison with other Presidents of the era and those from the late 18th century. He was more racist and more open about his racism than even the norms of the day.
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ilikeverin
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« Reply #15 on: May 30, 2007, 05:20:23 PM »

How many here have seen the film?... I'm just curious.

I've seen it, two or three times now and I own the tape as well. Very good movie and it pioneered the modern movie industry. Of course, during reconstruction southerners WERE victimized by carpetbaggers and the federal government and that's a travesty that should never ever be forgiven.

Actually, for the most part the "victimizers" were scalawags, not carpetbaggers.  I do agree Reconstruction was a bit... err... overzealous at times (military governors?  srsly?), but it was in a reaction to the certainly overzealous actions of some Southerners (black codes, "Redeemers").
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Sam Spade
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« Reply #16 on: May 30, 2007, 10:12:55 PM »

Colin is right here, and I would pause for a moment to say that if an Al-Qaeda film had similar effects as Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation, I would praise it, much as I praise those two movies.

Look, I even thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was a very good piece of filmmaking, even though most of it was entirely untrue.
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migrendel
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« Reply #17 on: June 01, 2007, 01:53:11 PM »

"The Birth of a Nation", I think, is arguably the most significant film ever made, though less for its aesthetic achievement than for the fact that it introduced our modern conventions of film.  If one views films made prior to that point, they were largely set pieces, even mere apercus, and almost always of brief duration.  Though many of Griffith's earlier films like "The Lonedale Operator" and "A Corner in the Wheat" attempted to form a coherent narrative, "The Birth of a Nation" was the first film that ever really proved that a film could tell a story of literary sweep and scope.  Yes, the film reflects Southern racial attitudes of the World War I era, and yes, it often displays a troweled-on Victorian sentimentality (one intertitle reads "Bitter memories will not allow the poor bruised heart of the South to forget.").  However, there could be no modern film without this epochal work, and to condemn the fact that Wilson appreciated the sea-change at hand is simply foolish.
Despite that fact that all filmmakers since are indebted to Griffith's innovations, I cannot accept, however, that this film is the artistic equal of "Triumph of the Will", one of the greatest films ever made.  After the decline of silent film, I think, films suffered an irrevocable aesthetic decline.  Now, the emphasis of filmmaking was dramatic verisimilitude conveyed through dialogue, rather than the composition of arresting, beautiful images.  Film, which had once been an almost painterly art, now tended toward mimesis.  The most aesthetically minded filmmakers tried to circumvent this by either ignoring sound filmmaking (e.g. Carl Theodor Dreyer in "The Passion of Joan of Arc) or using it for jarring and/or comedic effect (e.g. Chaplin in "City Lights" and "Modern Times"). 
Of all early sound films, "Triumph of the Will" best maintains the tradition of visual hegemony while incorporating realistic sound.  There are mighty moments that take the breath away, like Hitler's descent from the sky, with all its implicit kinship with the symbolism of the divine.  There is the camera's almost pornographic fixation on recording every detail, every nuance, undertaken with unmistakeably erotic intent during the Hitler Youth rally scene.  Even the scene where party officials eat their meal forms a glorious cadenza, a human side to all of this monumental pageantry.
Since the obvious and necessary focus of history has been on who and what the Nazis chose to obliterate, we forget that the Nazis conversely worshipped an ideal of beauty.  Though diffuse in its canonical definitions and historical origins, the Aryan notion of beauty could, at its most potent and pure, reduce anyone to dithyrambs.  Though some critics have charged that a film undertaken with the intent of advancing a political ideology inevitably subjugates art, as a characteristically morose and dogged Susan Sontag contended, I feel that Leni Riefenstahl's ability to make fascism seductive for even those diametrically opposed to its precepts distinguishes her among the first rank of artists.  Of the other films mentioned, like "Fahrenheit 9/11", they do not possess 1/100th of Leni Riefenstahl's genius, but, to be fair, neither do almost all films.
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Sam Spade
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« Reply #18 on: June 01, 2007, 04:28:25 PM »

Migrendel, my statement above did not place Fahrenheit 9/11 in the same breadth as Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation; rather it was meant to provide contrast with Al-Qaeda quality filmmaking.

Furthermore, Victorian sentimentality was still a key facet of artistic creation at the time Birth of a Nation was produced; to criticize the film for using techniques that would strongly connect its material to the movie viewers of its time is quite uncalled for.

I do tend to agree with your remark that advancing a political ideology does not inherently subjugate art. 

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migrendel
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« Reply #19 on: June 02, 2007, 11:18:20 AM »
« Edited: February 04, 2008, 01:25:41 AM by migrendel »

I'm sorry if I misunderstood your assessment of Fahrenheit 9/11.
However, I disagree with your argument about the Victorian sentimentality.
The fact that Griffith so extensively employed the conventions of the popular arts of his time can only be adduced to show that his aesthetic sense was not a timeless, classical one, like Riefenstahl's, but the product of social considerations that would inevitably become outmoded.  The possibilities that this raises about Griffith, namely, that he was pursuing a mass audience or he was genuinely afflicted with a quintessentially and uniquely Victorian sense of style, both indicate that he did not possess an enduring artistic vision.  To give a literary analogy, a typically Victorian writer seems very dated when compared to Thomas Hardy or George Eliot, because such writer made extensive use of melodrama as opposed to Hardy and Eliot's emphasis on psychological introspection.
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« Reply #20 on: June 02, 2007, 04:24:43 PM »

Wilson was a racist, prohibitionist and an idealistic fool.
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DuEbrithil
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« Reply #21 on: June 02, 2007, 04:34:10 PM »


yeah, because those 14 points really sucked
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« Reply #22 on: June 02, 2007, 04:59:26 PM »

Yes they did, because they gave rise to the great evil of neoconservatism, an ideology of no value whatsoever that deserves total and complete destruction. It could've been avoided with Wilson never spewing his crap.

DEATH TO NEOCONSERVATISM.
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Verily
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« Reply #23 on: June 02, 2007, 05:24:05 PM »

Yes they did, because they gave rise to the great evil of neoconservatism, an ideology of no value whatsoever that deserves total and complete destruction. It could've been avoided with Wilson never spewing his crap.

DEATH TO NEOCONSERVATISM.

It also led to Liberal Internationalism, an ideology you seem to embrace. Moreover, neoconservatism can't even be argued to have existed until the 1970s, and didn't really exist until the last 1980s. Blaming Wilson for it makes you look like (more of) an idiot.
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