President Wilson and the KKK?

[Colin]

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.