Since August of last year, the so-called alt-right has become an unavoidable tumor on the American conscience. In the wake of the Charlottesville protests, where Heather Heyer was killed by a white supremacist who drove his car into a group of counter-protesters, coverage of, and conversation about, the alt-right has grown tenfold. Profiles of the likes of Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos appeared on front pages everywhere and, at a point, some began to argue that such journalism was normalizing these extremist ideologies. Into this contested landscape comes the documentary “Alt-Right: Age of Rage,” a film that dives headfirst into the fierce and ugly battle of the alt-right and their polar opposite, Antifa, which has spilled from the internet and onto the streets. Of course, the question that has to be asked is: Does anybody want to spend any more time with Spencer and his belligerently bigoted ilk?
‘Age of Rage,’ of course, is banking on the fact that people are still interested in hearing what the faces of the alt-right have to say. Particularly, what they have to say about their opposition, Antifa — the anti-fascist left-wing activists that act as a counter to the alt-right, who also take up a good chunk of ‘Age of Rage.’ This fierce opposition between the far right and the far left forms the backbone of the film: Spencer and fellow white supremacist Jared Taylor are thematically paired against Antifa activist Daryle Lamont Jenkins and Mark Potok, a former senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, among several others who populate the film. But instead of deeply investigating the complex and often toxic ideology behind the alt-right, the film is more interested in exploring how exactly these groups feel about each other — an interesting but far less gratifying angle.
Gary Joshua Garrison 