The California Reich (1975)

This might be one of the best arguments against censorship I’ve ever seen. For an hour, following some members of the American National Socialist White People’s Party, we encounter some of the most ignorant and bigoted products of modern day education and society that have ever been committed to film. What’s more, these are not extremists in any sort of zealous and rabble-rousing sort of fashion, these are family men, with wives and children, extolling the virtues of Adolf Hitler and his Arian supremacist philosophies. America is for the whites, even though they are themselves no more indigenous to that continent than the blacks they wish to repatriate to Africa. Adult points of view are readily challenged by other adult views, but when you witness the indoctrination of children enthusiastic to please their Swistika-wearing fathers, or indeed when those very fathers are adorned by more modern medal ribbons and serve in today’s armed forces, you really do have to sit back and wonder if someone ought not to intervene - for the sake of the children? Then again, might that not be the very sort of authoritarian government action this condemns? I say that, but what really makes this work is the lack of production intervention; of narration. There is no interpretation of their points of view, their beliefs and their dogma. Every word here is straight from their own mouths. Their very ordinariness cannot fail to remind us of just how Fascism rose to prominence in Europe in the first place - with considerable complicity from democratic institutions reflecting aspects of the public’s dissatisfaction with their situation. Clearly, these folks haven’t the numbers to challenge for election, even at the most local elements of government, but their own beliefs - though odious and obnoxious, are presented succinctly and with a rationale that does go some way to explaining a little of how toxic views like this can take hold when there are perceptions of unfairness at large amongst the disenfranchised. It’s provocative and though some of the characters do seem to know how to perform to the camera of the documentary film makers, it has an authenticity to it, too, and it's really quite scary.