Universal Won’t Release The Hunt, but the “Satirical” Movie’s Backstory Is Eerily Familiar

As Variety reports, Universal Pictures has canceled the September 27 release of The Hunt, a “satirical social thriller.” Given one character’s reference to “slaughtering a dozen deplorables,” potential viewers might wonder about the satire part, and the identity of the “elites” who hunt down the deplorables.

“The specter of white supremacy haunts America. Let us empower the government to crush it,” notes Angelo Codevilla in American Greatness. Just yesterday, “the deplorables” were the “racist, sexist, homophobic” types, clinging to God and guns. Today, Codevilla explains, the ruling class has shifted to “indicting roughly 72 percent of the population as white supremacists, likely violent.”

The desire to wage war on ordinary Americans “had long been bubbling in the ruling class’s basements,” and Codevilla cites the Department of Homeland Security’s, “Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1979-2008.” This 2012 study classified persons who it judged to be “suspicious of centralized federal authority” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right wing terrorists.”

Consider also Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right, from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. This 2013 study warns about the “anti-federalist movement,” whose members “espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights.” They also support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self-government, so these potential terrorists sound a lot like the people who support the Independent Institute and read Reason magazine.

Consider also Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, an April 2009 publication of the Department of Homeland Security, then ruled by former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano. These rightwing extremists are “mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority.” The “possible passage of new restrictions on firearms” also disturbs them.

Those disturbed by such government studies might find a preview of The Hunt in the federal campaign against Randy Weaver and his family, vilified in the establishment media as “white separatists.” As Anthony Gregory recalled, “an FBI sniper shot Vicki Weaver in the head as she held her ten-month-old baby at her home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The sniper also shot her husband Randy Weaver in the back, trying to kill him. Their son was shot in the back and killed the day before by U.S. Marshals on the family’s property.” In subsequent hearings, Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Randy Weaver whether his children wore Nazi armbands and shouted Nazi slogans at neighbors.

So something like The Hunt has already occurred, and could easily take place again on a broader scale. Potential targets might recall the scene from The Day of the Jackal where Inspector Claude Lebel (Michael Lonsdale) tells Madame de Montpellier (Delphine Seyrig), “be in no doubt as to the seriousness of your position.”