CHANTING: This summer, in Charlottesville, Virginia,
hundreds of far right demonstrators, including the Ku Klux Klan
and neo-Nazi militias...
..left violence and death in their wake.
SCREAMING: And beliefs once thought buried are now being resurrected.
Africans have benefited from their experience
with white supremacy.
You're talking nonsense.
How can you deny that?
Sorry?
The founders of the Ku Klux Klan were Liberal Democrats.
They weren't that liberal, were they?
Oh, yes, they were.
But extremism at the margins is just an ugly expression
of a deeper, broader crisis engulfing the mainstream.
White America is in pain.
So I want to go beyond the few bigots making headlines
to reveal the many who are suffering in silence.
We've seen more overdose deaths than I've seen ever in my 17 years.
Is the American dream dead?
Yeah, it's dead.
I'm Gary Younge.
I reported from America for 12 years.
I saw Obama come and go.
Yes, we can.
Throughout that time, I saw no end of white journalists
interrogate what his presidency meant for black America.
Now I want to flip the script.
We will make America great again!
God bless you and goodnight!
It's time to talk about white people.
I've long had a love-hate relationship with America.
My wife's American, so are my kids.
I've covered Katrina, Bush and gun deaths.
I've seen it divided, I've seen its racism,
but I've never seen it this bad.
It's easy to forget that America was a slave state for 200 years,
an apartheid state, where segregation was enforced
by law for 100 years, and it was only just over 50 years
ago that African-Americans were guaranteed the right to vote.
Now, it's at a crossroads.
Within one generation, white people will be a minority
and racial anxiety is building.
They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists.
The most extreme product of that anxiety is the newly
emboldened far right.
CHANTING: Richard Spencer was front and centre of the far right
summer of discontent.
Everyone here, come out to Charlottesville, it's
going to be a lot of fun.
America was a white country and it belongs to us.
Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory.
CHEERING: Spencer coined the term "alt right".
In July 2016, Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon
boasted that his website - Breitbart News -
was a platform for the alt right.
I had my own encounter with Spencer just three weeks before the violence
erupted in Charlottesville.
No-one could have known exactly what was coming,
but even then, it felt to me like something was brewing.
I'm quite conflicted about interviewing Richard Spencer.
He's the leader of what they call the alt right, which I think
is a new word for fascism, and ordinarily, giving someone
like that oxygen is something I think journalists shouldn't do.
But here's the difference - Spencer and people like him credit
themselves with providing the intellectual underpinnings
for the Trump revolution and I fear they might be right.
They certainly swim in the same pool as some of Trump's advisors.
African-Americans have a long history of being lynched
and murdered quite brutally in this country.
Racism is far from over.
My kids are American.
I...have skin in this game, and it's black skin,
in a game where the rules are stacked against them.
This is a group of people with very dangerous ideas,
who have the ear of the most powerful man in the world,
so I'm going to go and try and speak to their intellectual leader.
CHATTER Hello.
I'm from Channel 4.
What is your name?
Gary Younge.
Gary Younge?
All right.
If you could have yourself and your crew...
So if you guys could turn that off, until you sign these.
VOICEOVER: We were told not to film their faces.
White pride, it seems, has its limits.
And here, in White Bluff, Tennessee, it also has its opponents.
Send a message, loud and clear, racists are not welcome here.
CHANTING: Now is the time!
For them!
To hear!
From us!
This is not their decision!
Let me hear y'all yell it out, y'all!
SHOUTING We were asleep at the wheel.
We can no longer find comfort in silence.
We have to dig up all the courage we have to take a stand
for what's morally right.
Disagreement is fine, but these people, they would
like to shut us up.
They would like to say...
To sway the state of Tennessee to not allow us to meet here.
That is thuggish behaviour and they have the gall
to accuse us of fascism.
I find that quite astonishing and thoroughly contemptible.
CHANTING OUTSIDE They say that fascism doesn't
show up in fancy dress, but it's doing a damn good job here.
Blazers, suited, booted, couldn't look smarter,
couldn't be more dangerous.
I would like to welcome you all here to the 2017
America Renaissance Conference.
Race realism, for our people are not to be heading for the tar pits.
It will be important that we grasp these truths that
we're talking about.
APPLAUSE So long as there's been racism, there's been seemingly
intelligent people desperate to lend it an intellectual veneer.
I thought I might read to you correspondence I've had
with the non-white supporters of America Renaissance.
"I am a black, a Nigerian, but I see the rationality "of racialism
and the hierarchy of races.
"Trust me, I live in Nigeria.
"Most blacks and browns just find it convenient
to ignore "the facts of race, but deep down inside,
we all know the truth.
"I hope the white race can wake up quickly,
before it gets swamped."
I've got a couple more of these.
Are they interesting?
Do you want to hear any more?
Here's a letter from a guy who said, "You are my hero
and inspiration "and, by the way, I am a young black
patriot who supports your cause..."
There's only so much of this any reasonable person can take.
Is he coming?
Richard, how do you do?
Erm...
Er...
So are you the interviewer?
I'm the interviewer.
I'm Gary Younge.
Nice to see you.
Erm...
You're from England, or...?
I am from England, yes.
Where are you from?
I was born in Massachusetts and I grew up in Texas, and I've...
lived all over.
I guess I'm more originally from England, or...
Even from Normandy, in fact, and Germany.
Really?
Yeah.
You want to create a...
..a nation of white people, dispossessed white
people, is that right?
So the FSNA is an ideal that it would be a state
for all people of the white race.
It would be our homeland, it would be our safe space.
Safe space?
Yes.
Why do you need a safe space?
Why...?
Why do Jews need a safe space?
Do you want a safe space?
Do you want a nation where you always have a right to return?
That's ultimately yours?
Do you want that?
Do I want a nation that I always have a right to return?
I...
as someone who was born in Britain, can always go back to Britain -
but it's not based on race.
Well...
It's based...
It was ultimately an ethno state - it was based on ethnicity.
When?
Certainly it was based on the people...
It was based on many nations...
When was being a citizen of Britain based on being white?
They didn't need...
The concept of citizenship is a modern construct
that was totally unnecessary.
You know there were black people in Britain since Roman times?
You know that?
I'm just asking you when...
Did they have the same social prestige as...as white Britons?
Some of them did, yeah.
There are...
There are actual plaques to some of them.
Well...
You need to learn your history.
I know history.
I mean, you can always...
Obviously not well enough.
Obviously...
You can always find...
You can always find amusing exceptions...
Obviously not well enough...
But none of that actually proves anything.
Do I want a white ethnostate?
A state I can't live in?
No.
Why would you be against that?
Sorry?
Why would you be against it?
Well, let me see.
There was slavery, that was a kind of form of reference...
So therefore we can't have an ethno state?
There was apartheid and...
That didn't work out so well.
It didn't work out well for us, no.
It didn't work out well for anybody.
It was a very, very bad idea and...
Africans have benefited from their experience with white
supremacy and we just have to look at the...
Really?
I'm just going to leave that out there.
You know, that is not even worth challenging.
You have that.
Africans have...
Life...
Look at the average...
Look at the average life of an African-American
in the United States - it's far better than any
African living in Africa.
So slavery was good for them?
Look, they benefited from being in a different
nation than their own.
No doubt.
Really?
No doubt.
How can you deny that?
Sorry?
How can you deny such an obvious fact?
It's such a ridiculous notion.
How is it ridiculous?
It's such a ridiculous notion that people forcibly removed
from their homes and taken to this country to work for nothing,
for a couple of centuries, that that benefited them.
I'm against it.
Have you ever, for a second, considered that if they were able
to stay in the countries where they were born and lived
and weren't forcibly removed, that those continents might be
in a better state now?
I seriously doubt that.
How is your life's work panning out?
Do you feel that you are gaining influence?
Yeah!
So you say that like it's obvious.
It's not obvious to me, but you feel that you're gaining influence?
People are now aware of the term alt right.
They're now aware of my name, to a degree, I don't
want to sound like a narcissist.
They're aware that there is a whole other version of the right out
there that is based on identity, that's based on race and nation.
The average person in the United States wasn't aware
that there is some other vision for the right.
Now, millions upon millions of people are aware
of it and it has a name.
To what extent do you feel...
that Trump shares your viewpoints?
I mean...
I don't think he shares the ideal of the ethno state.
I don't think he shares my conscious thinking about race,
or the conscious thinking about race of most people in this building.
But does he have nationalist feelings?
I think that's clear.
I mean, he wouldn't have run the campaign that he ran
if he didn't feel some sense of loss, that America has lost
something, and that he didn't feel that I'm a part of a greater
extended family that is the American people.
We are losing our nations, here in the United States,
in Britain, across the world.
I'm not losing my nation - I'm British.
You're not losing your nation, because you're winning
this democratic battle.
Why am I winning?
What am I winning?
I'm living in the place of my birth, just like you.
But that's not REALLY your home.
You're telling me where my home is?
Could you just take this?
That's not REALLY your home and you know it as well as I do.
Oh, no, I do not know it.
No, I do not know it.
You don't get to tell me where my home is.
But YOU know that's not your REAL home.
Please don't tell me...
Your ancestors...
Please don't tell me what I know.
..didn't built it.
Sorry?
Listen, my ancestors built it tenfold and weren't paid for it.
My mother came to Britain with a British passport,
my granny Cat came, my great-grandparents,
great-great-grandparents, were taken to Barbados as slaves
and worked for the Brits.
Don't tell me my people didn't build it.
I...
You?
It's like saying that African-Americans...
You could have enslaved someone else?
..built the United States.
They did!
They literally built the White House.
Because we MADE them do it!
Oh-ho!
And you're proud of that?
You're proud of that?
Well, it's had bad consequences, but the fact is, yes,
I am ultimately proud of it.
You're proud of slavery?
I'm ultimately proud of my ancestors because...
You're proud of slavery?
I...
I embrace all of this.
Cos your ancestors did that?
I embrace all of it.
Good for you.
We changed history.
Oh, yes, you did.
We create world history.
You changed history, that is absolutely...
Well, you didn't CREATE world history...
Oh, come on.
There's no world history without us in it.
There's no world history without US in it.
You don't get this wealth without us in it.
Really?
Yeah.
So you're really proud of your racism, aren't you?
You're really proud to be a bigot.
I'm proud to be a white man.
You're proud to...
That's different from being proud to be a bigot.
If Africans had never existed, world history would be...almost
exactly the same as it is today.
You just keep saying...
Because WE are the genius that drives it.
..ignorant things.
How do you DENY that?
Sorry?
How can you really deny that?
You're talking nonsense.
How am I talking nonsense?
You'll never be an Englishman.
You don't get to tell me what I will be.
I do, actually, because my name's Richard Spencer.
HE LAUGHS "My name is Richard Spencer and I approve this message"?
Yes.
And so...
You're ridiculous.
You're a ridiculous person.
I actually do get to tell you that you're not an Englishman.
You...
You don't get to tell me anything.
You're a ridiculous man.
You don't...
The interview's over.
You've got nothing to say.
You've proved yourself.
Saying, "You've got nothing to say," is not really an argument.
No, no, no.
The arguments that I've given are arguments.
But this is the end cos you've got nothing to say.
I was looking for someone who could give some intellectual
ballast to what's going on in this country, in terms of race,
in terms of white people, but I found the wrong guy
because you don't know what you're talking about.
Spencer is a huckster.
Most white Americans don't share his world view,
but that doesn't mean he's not dangerous.
He's feeding off a crisis that's economic, political and cultural
and encouraging people to see it through a racial lens.
Across white America, there's a sense of loss and despair.
A recent poll shows that almost half of white Americans think
they're under attack.
And a third think the country needs to do more to preserve
its white European heritage.
Next, I want to go beyond the fringes to see what's causing
this anxiety and find out how deep it goes.
Q97.9, Portland's number one hit music station.
Good morning.
What's going on?
It's Ryan Gavin hanging with you.
Another beautiful day here in vacation land.
More music coming up on the Q.
A far cry from the supremacist posturing and Nazi chants, Portland,
Maine is experiencing an unfamiliar pain.
95% white, it gives the outward appearance
of an all-American idyll - small towns and tight communities,
a car in every driveway and a chicken in every pot.
Prosperity, security, stability and not a black face in sight.
But dig deep enough and even here you can unearth
the roots of white anxiety.
SIREN WAILS Every day in Maine, someone dies of a drug overdose.
This small picturesque state has been ravaged by addiction
to opiate-based painkillers known as opioids.
So where are we going, Angela?
We're going to a public bus for an unresponsive male.
Paramedic Angela Calva is at the front line
of treating this epidemic.
I'm with her on a drug-related call-out.
I don't.
The patient asked us not to film her.
Last year, more Americans died of drug overdoses than were killed
in the entire Vietnam War and they were
disproportionately white.
No, I'm good.
OK.
You're not worried, you're not going to get another call
about her in half an hour?
We definitely could.
It happens pretty frequently.
You never know.
We could see them in ten minutes from now,
we could see them later tonight.
Like many other American cities, the opioid crisis has changed
the face of Portland.
So this is Oxford Street.
The shelters, a lot of folks hang out here.
Right.
We get called down here a lot.
Has the situation in Portland gotten a lot worse?
I suppose, if I think back, we might go months and not
have an overdose call.
And we had a day, not too long ago, where I think we did...
..14 overdoses over the course of a shift.
I mean, you know, the whole landscape of the city
has just changed.
Has it affected you personally?
Yes, personally, it has.
One of my younger sister struggles with addiction problems.
When you're riding around, are you thinking, "This
could be my sister?"
All the time.
Really?
I think of it all the time.
Yeah, I don't think that there's a shift that goes by that I don't
wonder if I will run across her on a call.
It's a daily struggle and you wonder...
"How is she?
Is she alive?"
You know, "Has she overdosed recently?"
It scares me that I could be put in that situation, to,
to find out that it's my own sister in need of help.
The majority of people, certainly in this area,
in this state, probably in the country, are
somehow affected...
..by addiction issues.
Yeah.
And many of those people come from relatively
wealthy, stable homes.
Andrew Kazoulis was 22 when his doctor first
prescribed him opioids.
I grew up in a small town, middle class, very white.
I was a sports all-star.
So you were like an all-American boy?
Yes, definitely, from an all-American family.
So how did you slip into opioid misuse?
It began after an injury, a back injury, severe back injury.
Lots of prescription drugs.
Very quickly the prescription drugs were removed and I was left
with an emotional addiction, a mental addiction and a very
physical addiction to the opiates, and very quickly I transitioned over
to street drugs.
If you're white, middle-class, it's much easier to remove
the negative consequences of a use disorder.
You have money to fix problems or to keep things private.
People are more willing to say, "They had their stuff together,
they live in a big house."
"They're from a nice family."
Exactly.
And doctors are also...
"Maybe they did actually lose the prescription,
so I'm going to write "them another one - even though I
just gave them one."
You're less likely to go to jail, less likely
to have any kind of, you know, negative
criminal consequence.
I, myself...
I don't have a criminal record.
I did some very interesting things to support my habit and to find
relief, and transitioning out of that without a criminal
record at all...
I think it speaks for itself.
This...this is crack cocaine.
It's as innocent-looking as candy, but it's turning our
cities into battle zones.
When black America was blighted by a drugs epidemic,
it was seen as a crisis of crime and culture.
They were arrested at three times the rate of whites.
When you commit a third crime, you will be put away
and put away for good.
Three strikes and you are out.
By the end of Clinton's presidency in 2000, there were more
African-Americans in prison than had been enslaved in 1850.
Now white America is facing a similar problem, it's
understood as a health crisis.
We're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money
on the opioid crisis.
That is progress.
It's also the definition of white privilege.
No matter how low a white American falls, it could always be worse.
They could always be black.
But that doesn't make Andrew any less fragile.
You've been five years sober.
Have you had to struggle during that time?
A few years ago, I had the unfortunate experience
of finding my roommate - both of us in sobriety -
overdosed and passed away.
I found him dead and I was the one that called his mom,
so I know what that's like, and so I felt vulnerable then.
I still feel vulnerable now.
I bet.
You know, life is...
you know, has its ups and downs.
Andrew is one of the lucky ones.
Tens of thousands of white Americans don't make it.
The opioid epidemic is part of a broader, bleaker
trend in white America.
They're the only racial group for whom life expectancy
is actually falling.
They're being claimed by drugs, suicide and alcohol.
They're not merely desperate - they're dying of despair.
Next, I'm heading deep into the Rust Belt, where not
just people but entire communities are dying.
I want to discover how economic desperation is undermining the basic
idea of what it means to be a white working-class American
and how that in turn is fuelling racial resentment.
For many decades, we've enriched foreign industry at the expense
of American industry.
Rusted out factories, scattered like tombstones
across the landscape of our nation.
One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores with not even
a thought about the millions and millions of American workers
that were left behind.
When Donald Trump mourned America's industrial decline
in his inaugural address, he could have been talking
about the next stop on my journey - Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
His message of economic patriotism hit home in this former steel town.
Until relatively recently, skilled work and economic security
were taken as a birthright for many white working-class Americans.
Steel - the basic material upon which 20th-century man has
built his foundations for the good life.
And with that promise came the optimism so characteristic
of America that each year would be better than the next and each
generation wealthier and healthier than the last.
But that sense of white entitlement was grounded
in another American ideal - capitalism.
And over the past 30 years, capitalism has not been kind
to places like Johnstown.
Jobs went where unions were weaker and labour was cheaper.
The factories closed down.
I'm here because it's impossible to understand Trump's election
or the appeal of the far right without grasping how fast and far
the expectations of the white working class have fallen.
How long have you been working here?
A little over nine years.
A little over nine.
Are you from Johnstown?
Yes.
Born and raised.
I heard this place was, like, hopping in the day.
Back in the day, yes.
Back in the day.
Not no more.
A lot of people have left town, there's no jobs.
If you're going to have a life or a steady income, you know,
you need to get out of here because there's nothing here.
How does that make you feel about your home town?
SHE SIGHS I expect a lot of towns go this way.
You know, when the steel mills died and the coal died...
It's hard.
It's sad, it's very sad.
How much is that?
4.19.
Can I join you?
Sure, go right ahead.
I'm going to get another cup of coffee here.
Here you are, sweetie.
How are you doing.
Good, good.
How about yourself?
Not too bad.
You're from England, huh?
From England.
God bless the Queen, you know.
Princess Diana is everybody's sweetheart.
Yeah.
Yeah, she had to die first, though, before that happened.
Um, so are you from Johnstown?
Yeah.
And did you work in the mills?
Yes, I did.
And then what happened?
Then the mills just died up, dried up, just like this town.
Do you think white America gets a rough deal?
Yeah, definitely.
There's not many white Americans left.
They're a dying breed.
You know, it's going to be yellow-white Americans,
African-American, white American.
You know what I'm saying?
It's just the cultures are coming together,
blending and blending, and pretty soon we'll
just be one colour.
Do you think they're in peril, white Americans?
Yes.
Why is that?
Because of the mixture, you know.
Like, if you're white and you want to stay white, well,
you don't interbreed.
Is the American dream dead?
Yeah, it's dead.
It's not coming back.
Like I say, they just pouring them in, pouring them in.
What did you think of Trump's phrase - "Make America great again"?
It was good on TV.
You're fired, you know?
You liked that?
I liked them on TV.
You know, but I don't like...
I voted for him, all right, but it was cos he's...
He's supposedly going to make America great.
And what's he done now?
So far, he hasn't done anything.
It's not surprising that Ted feels Trump has done little for Johnstown.
Most of Trump's votes came from the rich,
but I think his appeal among poor whites is a product
of their desperation.
They feel more pessimistic about their future
than any other group.
Almost two-thirds of the white working class think the country has
changed for the worse since the '50s.
Jeff Baxter spent over 30 years working in the steel mills.
I started out as a labourer up in the Coke plant.
This is where the blast furnace was and this whole
area was just glowing.
So, kind of orange?
Yeah, like the sun landed there, you know.
You voted for Obama.
Yes.
How do you think he did?
Not too good.
He didn't bring any jobs in.
So you feel like Obama promised changes but then didn't deliver.
Right.
And then you voted for Trump.
Yes, I did.
Was that the first time you voted Republican?
Yes.
I was listening, he said he's going to make America great -
I figured that's what we need.
We need somebody like that to change it.
What's he delivering?
Well, in our area, they're opening up two more mines.
You want the America of your childhood.
Yeah.
You want that glow of the furnace back.
Yeah, I want jobs back.
Obama won this county narrowly in 2008, but Trump took
it with a landslide.
Many on the left here think Trump's appeal can be explained
purely by economics.
I disagree.
Race played a decisive role.
I'm meeting Democratic Congressional candidate Erin McClelland.
You walk into this town and you can feel the oppression.
You can cut it with a knife, it infects your lungs and you see
people that are devastated and that's where I think
"Make America great" comes in.
These people are...
They're amazing and they're strong and they're resilient
and they just want a fair deal.
They just want a good job.
And I watched them all turn and say they were going
to vote for Donald Trump.
They're lifelong Democrats, they're smart, they're good,
they're honest, and they saw something in him that
was going to save them.
And I guess, for me, I wanted to bring them back
to something that was better, that was positive,
so the race was very personal.
You could put half of Trump supporters into what I call
the basket of deplorables.
LAUGHTER Right?
The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic,
Islamophobic, you name it.
Yeah, I was in the office and it was on a computer, I saw it, and...
Yeah, I remember thinking about all those people that I...my
friends that I go and have a drink with on Monday nights
at open mic night.
And I thought about every one of them that are going to vote
for Donald Trump and I knew they were, and...
I was offended.
I was.
Didn't Donald Trump run a campaign for white people and particularly
for white Americans and for white Christians?
Wasn't it a case actually that identity politics in this
election actually won?
It did.
He counted on that and then he grabbed on to a certain part
of the Democratic base in the Rust Belt and pulled them
in with definitely a racial divide, but I think more importantly
an economic message.
African-Americans mostly didn't vote for Trump, did they?
No.
Latinos mostly didn't vote for Trump.
No.
So why did Trump's message resonate with white voters
and not black voters?
If it was the economy, then black voters who are even
poorer would have flocked to that message, too.
The frustration that black voters have had with racial disparity
has gone on for a very, very long time, whereas anger
and frustration with white voters is a relatively new thing
since the downturn of manufacturing.
This idea of the economic ladder of opportunity that
leads to prosperity, the American dream, and they've
watched that disintegrate, where I think the black population
has always had so much oppression that they haven't had that
taken away from them.
The white American working class has lost almost
everything but its whiteness.
Not only is its wealth draining, its health failing and its jobs
leaving, it's now being outbred at home, outpriced by Mexico
and out-traded by China.
Feeling under assault both at home and abroad,
and abandoned by the establishment, it's hardly surprising they'd fall
for populist jingoism.
We're coming out of rural Pennsylvania into the South.
The North thinks of itself as being superior.
Northerners think the Southerners are hillbillies, racist,
which comes from the Civil War.
We're 150 years away from white people having a war
in America over slavery.
I like this South.
I like the food, the music, and I like the fact that everybody
in the South has known some kind of pain.
If you're a white family, then you've lost people and land
and respect during the Civil War.
If you're African-American, just 50-odd years ago,
you couldn't vote and you lived under an apartheid state,
so everybody there knows some kind of pain, which to me makes
it more interesting.
Now, I need to go where the pain is still real
and the war is still raging.
The South is haunted by its history.
During the Civil War, white Americans fought
each other to the death.
The Northern Yankees wanted to abolish slavery
and the Confederacy in the South wanted to keep it.
The wounds never healed.
Round here, the Confederate flag still flies proudly.
Just outside Nashville, I stop at a junk shop
run by Nicky Gilmore.
Your shop is full of so much stuff.
Yeah.
And what's this fella here?
This does depict the rebel flag, which is, uh, a bit of a hot topic.
How do you relate to it?
I'm a proud Southerner.
However, I'm not necessarily proud of what, I think,
extremely racist groups have taken this flag to represent.
You and I both know the Civil War was basically about slavery.
Thank God we lost.
Thank God we lost, you know?
But it doesn't mean that we still don't want to honour our dead.
They didn't know why they were fighting.
They didn't know where they were going.
You're talking about 14-year-olds.
A lot of them fought for food, for clothing, for shelter,
because it was better than the conditions
they were living in.
You know, and when they say, "South's going to do it again,
South's going to rise", well, I don't think it should.
I think we all need to take a minute and calm down and realise that...
..yeah, that was probably for the best.
I sympathise with Nicky.
You can be proud of where you're from without being proud
of everything your people did.
But I don't agree with her.
That flag stands for the denial of my freedom.
# I am a poor wayfaring stranger # Travelling through...
# My next stop is New Orleans...
CROWD SHOUTS ..where this summer, the city removed their statue
of Confederate General Robert E Lee.
But while some Southerners fight over their past,
others like to live in it.
I met a doyenne of New Orleans high society, Jean Rice,
who was keen to show me around one of the city's historic
houses, now a museum.
Hi there, Jean.
Hi, how are you, Gary?
I'm fine.
Thank you for coming.
It's a pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
I wanted you to see this lovely home.
It's part of the history of New Orleans.
Who would have lived here?
Well, originally it was a plantation.
My Irish ancestors, they had slaves, and when the Union forces came
in and the Union forces said to them, "You're free," and they had
been in the family for so many years, they didn't know where to go
or what to do.
So they didn't want to be free?
No, because they were treated so well, they were like paid
employees, that type of thing.
Wow.
It's a beautiful house with an ugly history,
built on the proceeds of slavery.
Jean introduced me to her friends, including her neighbour,
Republican State Senator Conrad Appel.
Do you feel judged as white Southerners?
Do you feel like the rest of America is looking down on you?
Absolutely.
Absolutely, the media in this country...
All you got to do is turn on the television, all you do
is read the newspaper.
They judge people like us in a negative light on a regular basis.
We have fundamental principles that are totally opposite
of many of the principles espoused by the folks that live
in the Northeast and the West Coast.
So, yes, we're looked down upon and it hurts us.
We hurt inside.
I'm very proud to be a Southerner.
I'm a proponent of Robert E Lee.
Now, I know...
That's controversial.
Yes!
But I think Robert E Lee, what I like about him -
he never did have slaves of his own.
His father-in-law willed him a number of slaves
which he freed immediately.
So why they took down these historical statues
is beyond my comprehension, because they represent a history.
I mean, we have very fundamental principles, the conservative -
I call us conservative - let me say the core voters that
elected Donald Trump.
White Americans voted for Trump but African-Americans didn't,
either in the South or the North, and nor did Latinos.
I mean, it was primarily white Americans who voted for him.
Why do you think that was?
It's a habit.
It's a habit?
That's what I think.
Actually, the founders of the Ku Klux Klan
were liberal Democrats.
They weren't that liberal, were they?
Oh, yes, they were.
Well, they hung black people for being black,
so they couldn't have been that liberal.
Well, liberal...
If I looked at them, I wouldn't think, "Here come
a bunch of liberals!"
And I see your point.
But the concept of liberal here is maybe different
from your concept of liberal.
I like Jean.
The trouble is, what she said simply wasn't true.
Lee did own slaves.
The Klan weren't liberals.
Facts matter.
It's impossible for anyone to understand the present
if they delude themselves about the past.
Keen to find out how deep this myth-making goes,
I went across town to the House of Blues to meet Trae Crowder.
Crowder!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE He calls himself the Liberal Redneck.
The guys that are super pro rebel flag are the same types of guys
you see running around screaming about, "America, hell, yeah!"
"You don't like it, you can get the fuck out!
"It's my right as an American to fly that flag!"
Buddy...
Screaming about your rights as an American while rocking
the Confederate flag is like arguing against gay marriage
with a dick in your mouth.
CHEERING The Confederate flag...
Mm-hmm?
Is it complicated, do you think?
Is it complicated?
Absolutely 100%.
The massacre in Charleston - to me that's where the flag became
totally irredeemable.
That's when a guy went into the black church...
Dylann Roof went into a black church and killed a bunch of people.
And he wrapped himself in the Confederate flag
at every opportunity he had.
From that point on, I was like, "There's no redeeming the flag,
"there's no taking it back.
It's dead, it's gone.
"We have to just move on past it."
Do you think America has ever recovered from the Civil War?
I don't think the South has.
I mean, shit, we were wrong, we were the bad guys.
But I just think that has just lasted ever since then with the rest
of the country kind of looking at us like the enemy.
Thank you guys very much.
I'm Trae Crowder.
Thank you.
White flight from the past can only take you so far.
History has a habit of catching up with you.
APPLAUSE These historical symbols have meaning in the present.
In few places is this more evident than the last stop
of my journey, Mississippi.
Mississippi scares me.
Once you know what's happened here, all the blood that's been spilled,
all the people who've been killed, it kind of makes everything dark.
There are ghosts in these trees.
All of that misery, all of that blood, all of that hatred and...
..inhumanity surrounds you, it overwhelms you, it
kind of suffocates you.
Philadelphia, Mississippi, is notorious for the murder 50 years
ago of three civil rights activists which inspired the film
Mississippi Burning.
The three young civil rights workers came out
of Mount Zion Baptist Church and were then arrested
by the local sheriff.
He was working in collusion with the local Klan and so he held
them at the jail until the Klan escorted them out of town
and stopped them here.
And then they shot the three of them - each in the head.
It took six weeks to find their bodies.
There's a section of white America that would like to bury the lessons
of these murders with the bodies of the victims.
But there's nothing to say that an incident like this
couldn't happen again.
Bishop Clay Foster Lee was a young local pastor
here when the murders took place.
That was a period of time when...
..the white Southerner was scared to death that everything
that they had known was going to be taken away from them
by the African-American people.
But what you really had was a Klan situation.
I felt like I was a sore thumb because my thinking was very
different from most of the people.
Were there attempts on your life?
The sheriff and the deputy sheriff and the Klan began to say,
"That traitor cannot preach for our children," you know.
So they thought you were a traitor?
Oh, yes.
To white people?
Oh, yeah.
Ku Klux Klan, you see, a week before I was to preach,
they said to me, "Well, we've been told you won't arrive
alive if you leave to go."
It's indicative of just how jumbled up everything was.
There was a kind of a blind spot there that just ate away at me.
But do you think that blind spot remains among white Americans
about things relating to race?
I think in the South it does.
It really bothers me.
Is segregation today as entrenched as it was in those times?
I think it's there.
I'm an optimist for the most part, but I'll be honest with you,
I'm not very optimistic about this.
So segregation is back, then?
Yeah.
In my mind it is.
Yeah.
I share Bishop Clay's pessimism.
While some white Americans are willing to embrace America's
multicultural future...
DISTANT CHANTING: No Klan!
No hate!
No racists in our state!
..more and more are finding comfort in a toxic blend of white supremacy,
nationalist nostalgia and cheap populism...
You'll never be an Englishman.
You don't get to tell me...
Yeah, I do.
..that has risen far faster and higher than
I ever thought possible.
Fear is winning.
America is losing.
Subtitles by Ericsson