Contributor: Hollywood will stop fueling racism when audiences demand better

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Set us as preferred Exploiting racism has been a profitable strategy in Hollywood since the dawn of filmmaking: 111 years ago, D.W.Griffith’s film “The Birth of a Nation” was incredibly popular and influential, while also being so racist that it was considered controversial even in its own day.

The industry saw immediately just how lucrative fear could be.More than a century later, there is always someone in the entertainment media willing to trade in racist tropes for money, as well as an audience ready to receive them.Two new films, “Citizen Vigilante” and “Run, Fight, Hide: Infidels,” demonstrate that streaming platforms and social media no longer simply distribute controversial content but in fact thrive on content that provokes, polarizes and sustains attention, regardless of the social cost.Both of these xenophobic and Islamophobic films are being pushed as “anti-woke” vehicles, deliberately engineered to bypass traditional critical reception and capitalize on a fractured media ecosystem.

“Citizen Vigilante,” which features an American protagonist killing dark-skinned immigrants and Muslims in an unnamed European setting, was denied a rating certificate by the German government for inciting violence.Yet despite that determination, the film secured global reach through decentralized digital distribution and high-profile promotion from Elon Musk.Similarly, “Run, Fight, Hide: Infidels” — a campus siege narrative evoking 1980s action film nostalgia that leans heavily into outdated, post-9/11 anxieties — relies on a built-in conservative media apparatus to guarantee financial returns.

The film is produced by the conservative media figure Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire, which he co-founded.It is a sequel to a 2020 film that was their film company’s premiere.But while promoters of such films f...