For those of you who don't know the plot of the movie, Edward Norton plays a neo-Nazi gang leader in California who goes to prison for curb stomping a black guy who tried to rob his family's house. In prison he figures out the Aryan Brotherhood is just in it for the money, flips them off, and gets raped by said AB guys. Then a black guy saves his life.

Upon release, he stops his adoring kid brother from following in his footsteps, then his brother gets shot in cold blood by a black kid he was beefing with. The end.

The message is "hate makes people do bad things." The implication is that anything that inspires radical feelings in people, whether black or white, is imaginary. The moral exemplars of the movie are people like Norton's sister and mother, whose only lines are versions of "stop your nasty rhetoric and enjoy life with us." In that respect, the movie is oddly familiar of the New Atheist billboards proclaiming "God probably isn't real. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

After Edward Norton figures out the lead neo-Nazis are grifters, he and his brother simply tear down all their Hitler decorations and prepare to live life blissfully unconcerned with race. No attempt is made to grapple with their dad getting murdered by a black guy he was helping, or DEI firefighters at their dad's job, or black crime, etc. All that stuff is now irrelevant.

Whether the people who made the movie actually believed this message is an interesting question. In the late 90s, white Americans were in a much, much better position than they are now. One imagines that questions of black violence were mostly just stories in the paper not only to the crew, but most Americans themselves. (But also, the director is obviously Jewish.)

In the movie there's a white nationalist scene of at least 50-60 skinheads who throw scream metal parties where they make out with their girlfriends. The idea of this in California today is so ridiculous it's basically an insane thought. For one thing, girls actually seem to like boys in this movie.

Because this is the 90s, the plot tries to be relatively evenhanded. The black teacher rebukes the Jewish teacher's knee-jerk reaction to the rebellious kid brother and exhibits genuine empathy to white people. Incredibly, he's also the guy that says his life got better when he learned to let the past be the past.

In the infamous dinner argument scene, Edward Norton spits about 20 arguments at the Jewish teacher, who simply responds with moral indignation instead of deigning to argue the point. One could say this is a trenchant social critique.

To summarize, if white people were still a relatively prosperous, homogenous 90% of the country, and if men and women still liked each other, people might be able to bury their heads deep enough in the sand that this movie might be considered an important masterpiece.