When President Wilson screened “Birth of a Nation” (based on the book Clansman) at the White House in 1915, he didn’t just show a film – he sent a signal that legitimized racial violence under the banner of “free speech.”

The film’s extremely controversial nationwide release, protected and promoted by racists as free expression, helped fuel the resurging Ku Klux Klan and contributed to the tensions that erupted in the Red Summer of 1919, when white supremacist mobs violently attacked Black communities to destroy over 30 cities across America. Deaths still are underestimated to this day as the hidden mass graves of President Wilson’s “America First” campaign haven’t yet been properly recorded and exposed, let alone exhumed.

The film’s defenders falsely claimed they were protecting artistic freedom and historical expression. The bogus “freedom” argument provided cover for hate speech meant to incite and help coordinate campaigns of intimidation and violence.

The subsequent racial violence that exploded in 1919, after Wilson had pushed anti-liberal extremism for years, meant groundwork had been laid in normalized discrimination cloaked in the language of liberty.

Trump’s 2025 “ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP” executive order similarly falsely wraps itself in First Amendment language meant to rush the dismantling of content moderation systems. The rollback of AI safeguards announced by Twitter and Facebook – social media companies’ retreat from content oversight – means we’re seeing a similar pattern: official policies that enable and legitimize coordinated harassment under the guise of protecting freedom.

Just as Wilson’s actions went beyond a simple domestic terrorism film screening to signal broader social permission for low-level widespread violence, today’s changes represent more than mere policy shifts. They create an infrastructure where targeted harassment and discrimination can flourish while claiming constitutional protection.

The echoes of President Wilson’s reign of terror by 1915 “America First” adherents remind us that when government actions delegitimize safeguards against organized hate, the consequences can be far-reaching and extremely violent.

One hundred years ago, America suffered through one of the biggest outbreaks of racial violence against African Americans in its history, and few people know about it.

Few people know about it because there was no freedom allowed to talk about the violence, only freedom given for the hate speech to create it. America literally erased public mentions of the early 1900s racist riots, fire bombings and shootings.

Here’s a perfect example of the hypocrisy and propaganda tactics. At the same time this executive order claims to end ALL federal censorship… an opposite executive order was given to censor all federal speech (communications were ordered completely shutdown in the agency that warns about public safety risks). That’s the tightly controlled speech model of dictatorships for you, similar to how Goebbels centralized all radio for Hitler and labeled the heavy censorship as freedom for Nazis.

Mass graves from America First violence in 1921 still hidden and unstudied in 2024 should say it all. There was more than enough freedom granted for white supremacist hate speech, and none granted to talk about stopping it, because it suited the white men in power to keep things heavily lopsided that way.

Today Trump speaks in identical terms as a President Wilson about going back, rebirth of white nationalist power by removing safeguards meant to prevent racist violence. And somehow people don’t notice the obvious repeat. He claims ignorance of the century-old violent white nationalist hate campaigns he promotes, to normalize incitement as protected speech.

Ask yourself this: what is the role of technology then (planes with napalm) versus now (AI with crypto)?