Instead, Josey Wales just wants to be left alone. Our protagonist is not running around meting out his own brand of justice or building his own country. But this is not a “fascist” theme (as the film’s original director, Philip Kaufman, supposedly believed). The second thing today’s Woketards would never allow is the story’s central theme, which is stridently anti-government. Obviously, Carter would never be forgiven in this day and age, so there would be no Outlaw Josey Wales. Nevertheless, Eastwood defended Carter, telling one interviewer he believed Carter had renounced those beliefs and that this was commendable. It should be said that, at the time, neither Eastwood nor anyone associated with the film had any knowledge of Carter’s noxious political beliefs. But there’s still no way - even though his novel openly rejects these racist views (as I’ll explain below) - that Carter (who died in 1980) would get published today, much less see his book adapted into a studio film. But, of course, what that means is that he was a Democrat. In his home state of Alabama, Carter was a rank segregationist who started his own Ku Klux Klan group and then wrote speeches for George Wallace.

And it’s so much more primarily due to the very things that would most offend today’s intolerant left.įirst off, because of the man who created Josey Wales, novelist Forrest Carter, this project would never get off the ground today. What sounds like, and what some dumb critics at the time wrote off as, Death Wish on the Prairie, is so much more. And now, backed by federal authority, those same murderers are under orders to hunt down Wales, this “hard put and desperate man.” In his mind, life as a fugitive is preferable to professing loyalty to a government he despises, a government that legitimized those who murdered his family with military commissions. So Josey joins the Confederate cause as a guerilla fighter, and after the war’s over, he still refuses to surrender. But when a group of pro-Confederate “bushwhackers” finds him, he’s sitting by his wife and son’s grave looking like a man who’s given up on everything. A montage of practice shooting leads us to believe he’s preparing himself for revenge. With his home and family gone, Josey has no idea what to do with himself.

And then, for no apparent reason (other than they can), a band of pro-Union Jayhawkers (or red legs) burn his home, murder his son, and rape and murder his wife. Josey Wales is directed by its star, Clint Eastwood, and when we meet his title character, he’s a family man, a farmer. That alone makes it something worth cherishing and celebrating. Everything about The Outlaw Josey Wales, Clint Eastwood’s 1976 Western masterpiece, would offend today’s Woke Hitler Youth.

Philip kaufman outlaw josey wales