Hello
Someone told me that the Mexican TV will broadcast the American movie "Birth of a Nation" today. I was somehow suprised, cause I am well aware this movie is forbidden in the United States and Europe as it protraits a somewhat different opinion about what happened after the US Civil War and the role of the Afro-American population.
I can't speak for Europe, but our First Amendment protects the movie and it is perfectly legal in the United States, infact when I first saw it I rented it from Blockbuster, a major US Movie Rental Chain. Furthermore, it's not the sympathy to the Confederacy, which is pretty widespread in the United States, but rather the sympathy towards the Klan that is controversial. However, regardless of what one thinks of the politics, most film professionals agree that it was an excellent production, one of the greatest of all time, and perhaps even the greatest of the era...sometimes we need to appreciate art even if we find the politics associated with it to be distasteful.
I do believe that the Civil War was a battle between a more "traditional" agrarian society and a modern capitalist industrialization. At that time, Mexican conservatives hoped a southern victory would strenghten the Empire against the radical left that eventualy won our own war, eventhough the southerners themselves were the main authors of the 1847 occupation (other writers claim the South was ready to give out New Mexico back if the Empire turned against the Union).
This person, an American who studies Medicine here was like "hey you that seem a far-right simpatizer you must be thrilled with this movie" but frankly this is no true at all. I know that this movie somehow favors the KuKluxKlan who where rabidly anti-Mexican, anti-Catholic and anti-Orthodox too. I feel more identfied with the Afro-American causes, and the revolutionary movement of the Black Panthers and others.
I'm not here to defend the Klan, especially the Klan of the 20th Century which committed many Atrocities, but I would like to point out that the Original Klan portrayed in the Movie was not the anti-Catholic anti-Orthodox organization that it became in the 1920's; the original Klan was formed in response to Atrocities committed by the Occupation government and their allies, and this Klan included such people as Roman Catholics in their ranks, and was disbanded upon the ending of Reconstruction in 1877...the 20th Century organization that was later 'resurrected' was an entirely different institution with different goals and a different philosophy.
Now, why doing this on Martin Luther King's day? It's a stupidity. I almost imagine tomorrows newspapers with waves of diplomatic protests from the US government, and from Afro-American organizations who are after all the only ones who would support our own causes.
It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if our traitor government does this in purpose to weaken those who are also against the "Iron Wall" that Bush wants to build in the "border". After all, why support a country whose government, TV and printed media blatantly teach racial prejuidces and bigotry?
You mean on Lee-Jackson day? This isn't MLK day for every State
