On a recent rewatch of the 2018 film “BlackkKlansman,” a crime/comedy film directed by Spike Lee, I was blown away by the relevance of its themes in our present political climate. The film is an embellished version of the real-life events of Black police officer Ron Stallworth. In the 1970s, Stallworth infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and the movie follows this case. Its interplay between dark social issues and humor is masterful, and it helps make this important piece of commentary accessible to a wide audience.

I thought that the themes of white supremacy in the United States, the difficulty of working in a broken system and the ability of average Americans to perpetuate hatred were well-executed when I first watched the movie in 2018. Unfortunately, I now find that these themes are even more relevant today than they once were. After witnessing the death of George Floyd and Donald Trump’s second presidency, this movie now feels like a warning sign that we all missed.

This movie blends comedy and very serious topics that feel like they shouldn’t work, but absolutely do. John David Washington and Adam Driver are an amazing duo, and their acting can have you laughing moments before it makes your skin crawl as you see how despicable some of the people they encounter — and the system they operate within — can be.

While sometimes it can be a bit overstated, watching Washington’s character fool KKK “National Director” David Duke into thinking he is a white man over the phone and watching Driver’s character act racist to preserve his identity can be hilarious in its irony. It sounds rather odd, and by all accounts it absolutely is. However, it’s done tactfully – not taking away from its message while maintaining its humor.

The development of Stallworth and David Duke’s relationship is excellent. The phone conversations are a great recurring motif, but the true standout is in one early in the movie. Duke comments to Stallworth about his title change from “Grand Wizard” to “National Director.” Duke had an interesting approach to leadership for the KKK that I think we are witnessing firsthand in the contemporary right-wing. His philosophy is to make things appear more approachable by simultaneously euphemizing and dog whistling.

With less dramatic titles and pivoting to closed-door meetings instead of cross burnings, the Klan can be perceived as a legitimate organization rather than a terrorist group. It’s much easier to get people on board when your group appears more formal, and it makes it just as easy to spread your ideals and eventually radicalize people with that foot in the door. We see as much with our own president, Donald Trump, and right-wing politics in general. It can start with something that more people can get on board with, like removing transgender athletes from sports for “fairness.” It ends with the attempted eradication of this group of people from our society. Both of these examples of hatred are perfect in representing the progression that occurs in indoctrination.

Establishing this baseline and then tainting it until “average” Americans have been radicalized into hateful and violent individuals is key to the right-wing playbook. We see it very often in issues of race, which is another key theme of “BlackkKlansman.”

This movie perfectly captures what injustice, especially related to race, looks like in the United States. Innocent people are punished because of the color of their skin, while white perpetrators get to walk away with no consequence. The real-life lynching of Jesse Washington, retold in this movie, is a great example. Washington was a 17-year old Black farmhand in Waco, Texas, when he was wrongfully accused of rape. Even though the accusation was false, the jury of all-white townspeople immediately found him guilty, and sentenced him to death.

We have had over 100 years to learn from entirely too many tragic stories, but we have failed as a nation. All over the country, ICE agents are still perpetrating egregious acts of violence, like the shooting of Renée Good and the deaths of countless others. It starts with “keeping criminal immigrants out.” It ends with the killing of American citizens and innocent people while our government and “average” Americans claim that they deserved it.

I still have a hard time watching the end of this movie without crying. The end scene cuts abruptly to real-life footage of marches from both the KKK and BLM. Seeing a car drive through a crowd of peaceful BLM protesters and killing a woman named Heather Heyer is absolutely haunting and shows us just how far we are from reaching any semblance of equality in the U.S. I wish this movie didn’t age well, but now, I am begging you to watch it. Hopefully, we will learn to stem the bleeding of this centuries-old American wound.