Told by the operatives in the rooms where it happened, White With Fear is an explosive deep dive into the decades-long quest by America's conservative political machine to amass power by exploiting...
“White With Fear” is a searing, provocative documentary that delivers a much-needed reckoning with one of the ugliest, yet most enduring, political strategies in American history: the deliberate stoking of racial animosity for personal and partisan gain. Far from a theoretical analysis, this film offers a blunt, clear-eyed look at how politicians have repeatedly exploited White fear as a tool to consolidate power, suppress opposition, and sway elections — a strategy with a disturbing legacy stretching from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump.
What makes the documentary so compelling is the way it traces this history with both depth and immediacy. The documentary lays out how American politics, particularly on the right, constructed a racialized understanding of crime and social unrest. It’s a ploy that turns non-White Americans into scapegoats for broader anxieties about change, identity, and national decline. The film makes a convincing case that Nixon’s infamous “Southern Strategy” (where the candidate ended attempts to appeal to African American voters in the Northern states and instead tried harder to appeal to white conservative voters in the South) wasn’t an isolated tactic, but the foundation of a political playbook that continues to shape elections and public discourse.
The parallels to Trump’s 2016 campaign (and the years since) are drawn with precision. It’s not just that Trump revived Nixon’s tactics, it’s that he supercharged them for the modern media landscape by weaponizing culture wars and racial grievances into the centerpiece of his political brand. The film’s exploration of this reboot is both fascinating and disturbing, as it exposes how effective and damaging this strategy remains in a currently (and continuously) fractured America.
The documentary benefits from an impressive roster of interview subjects that includes a cross-section of politicians, journalists, campaign operatives, and even disillusioned former MAGA supporters. Figures like Hillary Clinton, Steve Bannon, Rep. Jamie Raskin, former Fox News journalist Carl Cameron, and The Lincoln Project’s Stuart Stevens offer firsthand accounts from the front lines of America’s political battles. Their insights lend the film both authority and urgency, revealing how these tactics aren’t abstract debates but decisions made in rooms by people with the power to reshape national narratives.
Visually and editorially, the film is sharp and well-paced. Archival news clips, campaign ads, and political speeches are interwoven with interviews in a way that makes sense, illustrating how fear-mongering rhetoric has evolved but remained fundamentally the same. It should go without saying that the film doesn’t pretend to be neutral, because it definitely is not. Director Andrew Goldberg‘s focus on exposing a deliberate, destructive political strategy may strike some as too one-sided, but his thesis is backed by meticulous research and historical precedent that is damning. Voters on both sides of the political aisle should care and pay attention.
The most chilling thing about it all is how the documentary makes clear that this isn’t just another history lesson. The culture war theatrics, the weaponized narratives of victimization, and the deliberate demonization of immigrants, Muslims, and people of color are tactics that are still shaping America’s political present and future. The film suggests in a not-so-subtle way that the Republican Party’s continued embrace of these strategies signals not just a party in decline, but a democracy under siege.
For politically-minded viewers, “White With Fear” should be categorized as essential viewing. It presents an incisive, unsettling, and vital examination of how America got here, and why the fight over race and power remains at the heart of the country’s politics.
