The Boys in Red Hats

What could have been a one-sided piece of propaganda about the infamous incident at the Lincoln Memorial instead becomes a reflective look at the bubbles in which each of us are trapped.

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How often I lament the low state of documentary film these days. There are more of them than ever, many of them on political topics, usually taking a particular point of view if not outright advocating for a cause. Last year saw a swath of documentaries leading up to the fall election that were little more than thinly disguised propaganda made for no other reason than to sway voters.

Some were so egregious they should’ve been required to be listed on FEC forms as campaign contributions.

So I did not hold high hopes for “The Boys in Red Hats,” a doc about the now-infamous incident on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 2019 when, it seemed, a group of MAGA-wearing young hooligans surrounded and taunted an elderly Native American man beating a drum.

Like many, I initially took it as an emblem of our times in which white supremacists seem proud to spout their poisonous hate in public. Subsequent video and testimony, showed that the boys did not initiate the confrontation, but were subjected to vile taunts by a despicable hate group called Black Hebrew Israelites.

Nathan Phillips, a former Marine and American Indian activist, waded into the group of boys beating his drum, possibly as a way to defuse the situation. He went up to one teen wearing a red “Make American Great Again” hat, Nick Sandman, beating his drum inches from his face for several minutes as the kid stood there with a defiant stare and a smirk on his face.

Director Jonathan Schroder is a graduate of the same northern Kentucky private school, Covington Catholic High, attended by those titular boys. It’s a fairly typical rich kids’ school, nearly all white, producing young men who will go on to Ivy League schools and lives of privilege. And in his narration, the director announces up front that he set out to make a film defending the boys.

But the doc is impressive in that he doesn’t just settle for amplifying the views of the “CovCath" crowd, as they call themselves. Schroder interviews parents of students, including a chaperone who was there at the incident, who defend the students. But he also talks to alumni who were sickened by it, even after seeing all the evidence.

And then, Schroder keeps on going. He talks to Black journalists, professors from liberal schools, Native American association, journalists who covered the story, and on and on. They bring a wide range of perspectives, some of which I agreed with, some of which I didn’t — presented fairly and fully.

It’s so rare in our tribalized culture to experience such a free exchange of diverse viewpoints, the experience was shocking and refreshing. It was like drinking from a clear spring after years of slurping swamp muck.

Anne Branigan, a journalist with The Root, talks convincingly about how each of the three groups represented — CovCath boys, Black Hebrew Israelietes and Native Americans — were acting in a tribalistic fashion. They were on a public stage, saw the cameras all around — and decided to put on a performance.

Schroder reaches into the history of the school, where students often employ cheers and displays of school pride as a way to deflect criticism or taunts from other schools at football games or whatnot. These purported miscreants had actually asked for a chaperone’s permission before beginning their display in D.C.

But, the film asks, do they not realize that, when confronted by people and viewpoints different from their own, how bizarre and even threatening it can seem to, as Schroder puts it, “throw a pep rally at it?”

Schroder and his main producer, Justin Jones, appear throughout the documentary themselves, discussing the film as they are making it. They ask how best to approach the process and challenge each other’s assumptions.

For example, Schroder is hostile to Phillips because he brazenly lied in his media appearances, including about his own military service, claiming to be a Vietnam veteran when he never left the U.S. But Jones pushes back, saying they need to be just as challenging of the statements and assumptions of the CovCath community.

The lesson that emerges is that everyone is in one way or another inside a bubble, whether by choice or circumstance, and that it can be difficult to remove yourself from it and view an encounter like this from someone else’s perspective. Such as how wearing a MAGA hat in the nation’s capital could be seen as a provocative act.

I think one CovCath dad puts it best when asked to view the incident from the perspective of a minority person: “I can’t. I’m too close to it. I know these boys.”

The film’s weakness is in painstakingly documenting Shroder’s attempt to get Sandman and Phillips on camera for interviews, essentially copying Michael Moore’s M.O. from “Roger & Me.” At one point he actually jumps in his car and drives hours to Phillips’ home to knock on his door, and then is surprised when the man reacts hostilely.

This stuff eats up screen time better spent talking to a host of fascinating people with divergent opinions — the beating heart of what this documentary is about.

“The Boys in Red Hats” starts from a place of red-hot certitude and ends in one of a cooler, and ultimately more satisfying, ambiguity. It’s the story of the Covington kids, of Nathan Phillips and Nick Sandman, of the way we seem to relish confrontation these days, shouting over listening.

But it’s also the story of Jonathan Schroder himself, a filmmaker who goes on a journey very different from the one he was expecting to undertake. He’s forced to examine his own conflicting feelings about going to the school, recalling an incident in which a teacher punched him in the head in the middle of class — and nothing happened to him. In that bubble, one of tradition and respecting authority, people just assumed the student had it coming.

The Covington boys may not have provoked the incident on those hallowed steps, or spewed racist insults as was erroneously charged. But they had also grown up in a tightly circumscribed community where they found it impossible to react to people so different from themselves with anything other than defensiveness and an assumed aura of superiority.

“I originally wanted to make this film to prove the boys in the red hats did nothing wrong,” Shroder says. “But as I listened to those on the other side of it, I realized they didn't do much right, either."

Truth — the real truth — is rarely as simple as we’d like. It’s rare for right and wrong to fall neatly into easy to categorize groups or behaviors. “The Boys in Red Hats” is an acknowledgement of the urgent need to look beyond ourselves.