The Birth Of A Nation

DW Griffith's 1915 silent classic tells the story of two families in the American Civil War and Reconstruction era and is considered a landmark in film history, marking the arrival of cinema as a force in popular culture. It was the first motion picture screened in the White House to the very liberal President Woodrow Wilson.

As it was adapted from the novel The Clansman, you start to get a hint of why the alt-rightist could be a keen fan – and it's not just for the cinematography and Lillian Gish's charms. The movie was highly controversial for its portrayal of African-Americans (some played by white actors in blackface) as grotesques, sexually predating white women.

By contrast, the Ku Klux Klan are lionised, defending the South from 'uppity N***ers' and assorted carpetbaggers sent across the Mason-Dixon line by the DC establishment. Indeed, it became a powerful recruiting sergeant for the men in pointy hoods and rejuvenated the night-riders to terrorise and lynch members of black communities across the South until the civil rights movement rose up in the 1960s.

The Green Berets

John Wayne (who else?) pulls on the khaki one more time for this counterpoint to the counter culture's growing anti-war movement, to propagate a narrative that fantasises an American victory over the commie 'gooks' in Vietnam.

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Special Forces grunts with solid European names like McGee, Muldoon and Kowalski fight the good fight without a whiff of Agent Orange or napalm to disturb the good fight. There is even a member of the "Lügenpresse" (David Janssen) in tow who sees the error of his ways in the smiling, grateful eyes of the south Vietnamese who've yet to hear tell of the My Lai massacre or carpet bombing.

The Pentagon and President Johnson were basically executive producers of the movie. Legendary Chicago movie critic Roger Ebert gave it zero stars and said it depicted war in terms of "cowboys and Indians."

The Alamo

John Wayne once again, directing and starring in this re-telling of the defeat of swarms of Mexican illegal immigrants (aka General Santa Anna's army) invading Texas.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the American defenders of the former mission in San Antonio are the toughest of patriots imbued with a "no-surrender morale".

Plenty of touchstones for the alt-right film buff with Jim Bowie (they love big knives) and Davy Crockett representing key American frontier myths of rugged individualism, right-to-bear arms minutemen and volunteer militias defending the border.

Crescendos with an incredible battle scene in which the heroes go down in glorious, bullet-splattered defeat (my mum was in tears).

Top Gun

Despite claims of homo-erotic sub-text the hoo-ha, gung-ho naval aviator yarn starring Tom Cruise as 'Maverick,' is an allegoric tale of America's rediscovery of its confidence in the age of Reagan, following the strength-sapping lily-livered liberalism of Jimmy Carter et al.

A post-script to the movie was when Cruise went on to work with Paul Newman on The Color of Money, the remake of The Hustler. Newman, a Hollywood liberal from back in the day, challenged the all-American beefcake, denouncing the cloying triumphalism of Top Gun.

As a result, Cruise signed up for Born On The Fourth Of July, Oliver Stone's indictment of the blind patriotism of America's youth exploited to wage a dirty war in the jungles of Vietnam.

Anything with Chuck Norris....

The all punching-kicking Chuck is the poster boy (he's now 76) of alt-right machismo. His beat 'em up shlock spans 30 years and includes cult classics such as Invasion U.S.A, The Delta Force and Lone Wolf McQuade, although his best film was his first: the martial arts classic with Bruce Lee, The Way Of The Dragon.

Chuck is on-message in real life as well. A committed Christian, he believes in creationism, and is an outspoken Republican who has opposed gay marriage.

Falling Down

This fin-de-siècle noir thriller introduces the "angry white man" to the big screen. William "D-Fens" Foster (Michael Douglas) is a middle-aged under-achiever who has recently been laid off and is under a restraining order keeping him away from his recently divorced wife Beth and their child, Adele.

Stuck in a traffic jam, Foster does the unthinkable in urban America and abandons his car in the middle of traffic and begins an odyssey across the dystopian Los Angeles.

This pilgrim's progress sees Foster in ever more violent encounters with immigrant store owners, murderous brown-skinned gangbangers, corporate bamboozling in the shape of a fast-food chain, rich white golfers ('the elite') and finally dying in a shoot-out with the police ('the establishment'), as a forgotten VHS plays home movies of a happier yesterday that may or may not ever have existed...THE END