|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[Craving even more FPM content? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more. Click here to sign up.]
Daily Wire commentator and filmmaker Matt Walsh’s new film is now in theaters earning a 99% favorable rating (as of this writing) among moviegoers on the Rotten Tomatoes site, despite being utterly ignored by the almost-entirely progressive industry of film critics, and despite a coordinated campaign to threaten theater owners to cancel the film’s showings. In the vein of his very successful mockumentary What is a Woman?, Am I Racist? stars Walsh going undercover (sort of) to expose the idiocy, hate, and race hustling of the so-called anti-racism field of social justice.
“Disguised” in skinny jeans and an ill-fitting man-bun wig, Walsh presents himself to various key anti-racist figures as undertaking a woke “journey” to understand how to shed his white privilege and unconscious racism. That “journey” earned quite a few laughs and even a few shocked gasps from the audience I sat with in the Dallas area.
It’s mind-boggling to observe that none of the progressives he targeted recognize Walsh or that he is obviously toying with them, until you understand that the Left largely occupies a bubble when it comes to right-wing media; we know their media stars but they don’t know ours, apart from a very few ubiquitous superstars like Ben Shapiro.
Whether it’s disrupting a circle of self-righteous self-flagellants being lectured by a black “expert” about their threatening whiteness, or commiserating with a white Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) “expert” about their “racist uncles,” Walsh manages to expose the lucrative scam and open anti-white bigotry behind these repugnant anti-racism thought leaders, some of whom are white themselves. Along the way, he learns that the process is all about committing to “do the work” – the never-ending, demeaning work – of de-centering one’s “whiteness” from all public and private spaces.
By contrast, Walsh also questions everyday Americans who remain untouched by the kinds of radical ideology that have infected our cultural elites. He heads for a biker bar on Main Street USA to ask the patrons – black and white – there and elsewhere in the community what they think about the need to de-center whiteness. Needless to say, he gets an earful about what nonsense that is from people who are refreshingly not obsessed with skin color and false notions of structural power dynamics.
One of the most disturbing sequences of the film features Saira Rao, founder of Race2Dinner, a group that arranges intimate dinner events to “help white women confront their own racism.” Rao and a partner “help” these masochistic white liberal women by berating them for their whiteness and trashing America as a racist hellhole, a privilege for which Rao charges thousands of dollars. It’s clear from the glimpses we get into one such dinner event that she is a race-mongering, anti-American sadist who enjoys pushing the dinner attendees to tears.
Astonishingly, a comically bewigged Walsh manages to get (or at least buy off) best-selling White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo to sit down with him for what she thought was a social justice documentary. She later said things “felt a little off” from the very beginning but she nevertheless went through with the interview – likely because she was paid $15,000 (which she later donated) to participate in it. In one of the funnier, even jaw-dropping, moments in the film, Walsh offers a few dollars in slavery reparations to his black producer Ben and convinces DiAngelo to chip in some cash as well, after she apologizes directly to Ben for her part in systemic racism.
How effective has the film been in terms of putting heat on these hoax-mongers? As soon as the principal anti-racist racists featured in the movie realized they’d been taken in by a Daily Wire operative in a Michael Moore-style documentary investigation, they deleted their X accounts. Robin DiAngelo even felt compelled to issue a statement addressing the film in which she described it as “a Borat-style mockumentary… designed to humiliate and discredit anti-racist educators and activists.” A delighted Walsh tweeted “She couldn’t be more correct in that assessment. Thank you, Robin!”
A key lesson here for conservative culture warriors is one drawn straight from the activist handbook called Rules for Radicals by the late Saul Alinsky, who arguably ranks second only to Karl Marx in terms of his influence on Left-wing strategy. Rule Number Five in that handbook reads, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.” This is a brilliant strategy which the Left mastered long ago and has wielded against the Right like a bludgeon, and which conservatives need to adopt themselves more often.
As conservatives, our instinct is to debate our opponents and explain why our ideas are true and better, but reason is useless against the true believers of the cult of social justice. They derail our rational approach by declaring not only that reason and facts are tools of white supremacist power, but also that our denial of racism is itself the strongest evidence of our racism. Although facts and truth are important weapons to wield in the culture war against those who have ears to hear, we cannot win without also going on the offensive by relentlessly mocking the Left’s stupid, destructive agenda. Am I Racist? is a master class in terms of throwing the Alinsky’s strategy right back in their faces.
The most important takeaway from Am I Racist? is not the comedy but the tragedy – not that anti-racism seems ridiculous to normal people, but that it is so vilely and intentionally divisive, that it subverts America in many ways, and that so many white people are so eager to demean themselves in order to assuage the undeserved racial guilt they have absorbed from relentless anti-white cultural messaging from the kinds of scam artists highlighted in this film.
These self-proclaimed anti-racists are actually full not of empathy and compassion but of either vicious hatred and contempt (if they’re non-white, like Rao) or self-loathing (if they’re white, like DiAngelo). Theirs is a sick, racist ideology that is not at all designed to heal racial issues, of course, but to exacerbate them – to rub raw, as Saul Alinsky put it, the resentment of the people. As Walsh and other normal people in the film suggest repeatedly, the only solution to racial tensions is the colorblind one: to treat everyone the same – as individuals who deserve to be treated with dignity and decency as fellow Americans.
But that is a solution the Left rejects – because it can’t be exploited for power or money.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior
Does this mean I am NOT a racist?
Boy, am I ever disappointed. ~
If you have to even ask that question, you OBVIOUSLY are!! 🙂
The concept of “racism” has been cheapened by overuse.
It has become a meaningless term
It’s like the “fascist” slur.
Yea. everybody is racis’.
Go ahead Dave, tell us exactly what is a racist? Is it like your understanding of what a woman is?
Come on, show us your smarts…..we’re waiting.
You’re probably a culturalist. Nothing wrong with that, though leftists will tell you there is.
Being Racists there’s two sides of the Coin Jackson Sharpton and Farrakhan and the Liberal Democrats
Senator Robert Byrd was a grand Kleagle in the KKK.
That means he was fully involved and recruited 130 into the group.
He was also an honored liberal Democrat.
The dumbbitch got punked due to her greed, lethargy, and lackluster I.Q.
Now half the fun is witnessing this fool delete her social media account and tailspin into panic.
Hopefully, this expose’ will infuse some spine in these idiot CEOs that pay to have this DEI garbage pushed in their companies.
“Hopefully, this expose’ will infuse some spine in these idiot CEOs that pay to have this DEI garbage pushed in their companies.” – The democrat economy seems to be doing that for them.
Definitely going to see this just to witness the manifestation of what FPM has been warning us about for decades.
Guilt trips are weaponized in the arsenal of Marxist psych-ops.
And they’ve discovered a multi-BILLION dollar “free money” machine called the “self-feeding extortion loop.”
If you don’t pay up, you’ll be targeted online and in public for cancellation, and if that doesn’t work, they’ll burn the city down. And they’ve unionized their foot soldiers.
BLM’s piggy bank inspired our entire Federal Gov’t to appreciate the virtues of extortion.
That requires people to believe they are guilty for things they didn’t do. Crazy.
“As conservatives, our instinct is to debate our opponents and explain why our ideas are true and better, but reason is useless against the true believers of the cult of social justice.”
You’re joking.
There’s nothing rational about Adam and Eve, A Talking Snake, Original Sin, The Fall of Man, Noah’s Ark, An Immaculate Conception, A Virgin Birth, The Parting of the Red Sea, etc., etc., etc.
The cults of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed are as closed to reason as the cult of social justice.
Dear THX 1138:
You were busy today explaining “true” Christianity again.
I would caution the uninformed in your audience NOT to take Biblical counsel from a self professed atheist such as yourself.
Now, regarding your objections to certain incredible sounding Bible passages, I urge you to read and contemplate the following:
1 Corinthians 1:27
Kent
Immaculate conception and a virgin birth is already doable by man, so is fire from the sky, and the destruction of a city in an instant. We also know everything visible came from a single point in space/time. The universe was created. A nice asteroid in an ocean would give 40 days and 40 nights of rain, or more, We can even bring the dead back to life. Maybe your understanding is lacking.
And then there are the objectivist devotees of Ayn Rand in the cult of atheistic rationalism. Guess you’re not so different after all.
The header on this article needs a fix. You have to put something like “anti-racism” in quotation marks. I was confused at first. Right wingers don’t want anti-racism dismantled. We are very much anti-racism. Always be wary of using the twisted language of the left and make sure words mean what they should mean.
Oh how I wish!
Irregardless ~
White guilt got Obama elected twice and may do the same for Harris.
Only partially true.
2008 was a terrible year for Republicans nationwide. There was lots of backlash against Bush Jr for Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the Great Recession. Bush and Cheney ruined the GOP among the youth voters.
Obama had the best performance by a Democrat in a presidential election since LBJ. He won states that the Dems hadn’t won in decades, such as Indiana and North Carolina. He turned once GOP strongholds Colorado, Virginia, and Nevada blue. He got Georgia and Texas to shift hard to the left.
I’m glad he made this film. You see, I’m racist and proud, if being proud of an ancestry that gave the world anticeptic surgery, vitamins, antibiotics, radio communications, train travel, aircraft, refrigeration, representative government, and a Christian culture that values the dignity of “The Least of the Brethren” is considered racist. We live longer, healthier lives than our predecessors because we cherish new ideas, irregardless of their racial origin. Our racist country is one where someone born at the bottom of the social ladder may rise as high as his/her ambition takes them. Anyone who thinks that is racist is, well, racist.
I don’t get why the right keeps making documentaries like this.
You can’t build a foundation for the future on controversy. Average everyday people simply do not care.
If you want to change people’s minds, make art and media that reflects your values. The Right abandoned Hollywood in the 60s, and it’s not a coincidence that American pop culture has only shifted leftward.
The Right should take notes from Japan’s entertainment industry.
But as long as pop-culture ignorant Trads like Matt Walsh continue to control the conservative movement, they will continue to lose the culture war to the left.
Not to mention that Matt Walsh is a NeverTrump Republican who backed Evan McMullin in 2016, and NeverTrump darling Ron DeSantis in 2024. He had to literally be dragged kicking and screaming into voting for Trump in 2020. He and the other NeverTrump types at the Daily Wire are not to be trusted.
Biblically, loving your neighbour is something you do, not something you feel. That’s why Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan, when He was asked the question “Who is my neighbour?”, rather than facilitating a therapy group exploring people’s feelings about the Romans. When we act justly towards our neighbours, the feelings of respect and affection will follow, whereas if we navel gaze about our feelings, we may never do anything constructive.
You are only a racist if you are white…
We saw the movie the other night, and the next day I got a text from the City of Malibu announcing the latest in their Malibu Library Speaker Series, “Diiscussion on How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.” The author of “Algorithms of Oppression” is the featured speaker.