00:00This secret terrorist society was founded in 1865 following the defeat of the Confederate army in the southern United States.
00:06The idea of the clan is to maintain the supremacy of the white race and all means are good to achieve this.
00:12Intimidation, assault, murder.
00:14The government learned of this violence and the organization was dissolved in 1869.
00:19But in 1915, everything changed because of a film, Birth of a Nation.
00:23The film, adapted from the 1906 book by Thomas Dixon and directed by D.W. Griffith, is in many ways one of the most important films in American cinema.
00:34It is considered the first Hollywood blockbuster and revolutionized the codes of cinema thanks to its innovative production,
00:40but also to a dynamic editing and narration that had never been seen before at the time.
00:45It was the first film to be screened at the White House and the first film to have a sequel, along with The Fall of a Nation, released in 1916.
00:52a film that has completely disappeared today.
00:55So we have a technically ultra-important film in the way of making cinema and telling a story through this medium,
01:01but the problem is what the film tells.
01:03It is a kind of ultra-racist and grotesque propaganda, directing the narrative from the point of view of the southerners
01:08and presenting black Americans as savages whose only goal was to harm the white race,
01:12obviously making the Ku Klux Klan look like valiant knights who came to save the widow and the orphan.
01:17The film is therefore not based on any historical truth,
01:19depicts the ideal of some Southerners who feel nostalgia for the time when slavery was still in force.
01:25Birth of a Nation was a huge success, grossing over $50 million,
01:29and its influence is such that the Ku Klux Klan, which had disappeared for decades,
01:34rose from the ashes following this success and reached its peak with more than 5 million members in the 1920s.
01:40The impact on minorities, and specifically the Black community, will be terrible.
01:44Violence will increase and cinema proves that its influence can be total, in both good and bad ways.
01:51The Klan includes in its rituals what it sees in the film, such as the burning cross,
01:54and used the latter as a propaganda tool until the end of the 1970s.
01:58The Klan's influence began to decline sharply after World War II.
02:02but his nauseating ideology continues to make noise in North America,
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