01x01 - The Disturbing Confidence of Ignorance

[bunniefuu]

This is Aby Osceola.

She is from the Seminole nation.

Her story goes deep into

the history of this continent.

She reminds me of my mother.

But despite the resemblance,

they each come,

although through not totally

unrelated events,

from different strands of history.

Aby's role is played by Caisa,

a Swedish actress, of both Colombian

and Native-American ancestry.

It is said that the Seminole Nation

never signed any treaty with

the United States government.

That's why they are called

the invincible tribe.

But for now,

it is about another story.

In that larger story,

there are three words that summarize

the whole history of humanity:

civilization, colonization,

extermination.

These words run forcibly through

Western World history,

the same way they drill

to the core of US history.

And it's not so much about winners

and losers,

or between conqueror or conquered,

nor between colonist and colonized.

The forces involved here are

less visible than g*nf*re,

class property, or political crusades.

But they are no less powerful.

Entire civilizations

in the Western Hemisphere

were wantonly destroyed,

setting the Western World

on a path of

greed and destruction.

For History is the fruit of power.

And power is crucial to the story.

Which then always becomes at best,

a story about those who won.

And clearly,

this needs to be challenged.

Some guys care a lot for me

But my excitement they can't ban

Because I still await my primitive mate

We've had a date since the world began

My prehistoric man

For, it is about who we are today.

About what we have become

as a people.

And on what side

of history we are.

What side of the truth.

A certain view of history contends

that the historical narrative

is just one fiction among others.

It is not. There is no such thing

as "alternative facts".

EXTERMINATE ALL THE BRURES

PART I

December 1836, Seminole and Maroons

encampment (today's Florida)

This is the day we fight.

Chieftain Yah-h*-Cuchee,

we must leave.

We are the ones

who arrived latest here.

Kwame-Micco, we are family now.

You stay.

Yes, but family is not

meant to bring harm!

They bring harm to our nation!

Not you.

It's better we surrender.

So you and your people

can have time to run and hide.

This is our land.

The white man wants our land.

We will fight together.

Or we will die together.

And it will be a great honor.

All is well, then.

I do not want to spill Seminole blood,

to k*ll Seminole children,

Seminole women.

Give us back the American

property you stole

from our good fellowmen planters

and settlers

and I let you move

to the Indian Territory

the US government has

provided for your people.

You call human beings

your property?

These are sl*ves!

You steal land You steal life

You steal humans.

What kind of species are you?

This kind!

CHRISTMAS CATALOGUE

"All Jews and Negroes ought

really to be exterminated.

We shall be victorious.

The other races will disappear

and die out,"

said the White Aryan Resistance

in 1991, in Sweden.

2016, 25 years later, a well-known

Swedish department store,

wanted something new

for its Christmas catalog.

The store wanted to pay tribute

to what Sweden is today:

a largely multicultural society.

To wear St. Lucia's white gown,

a popular 18th century tradition it

chose a 9-year-old dark-skinned boy.

The innocent boy had

a shy smile on his lips.

It was the smile, more than anything

else, that was not taken well.

In Sweden, one of the most tolerant

country in Europe,

like everywhere else in the world,

Hate is on the rise again,

This is genocide on white people.

You make me puke.

When do we start deporting

those foreigners?

We have people coming into the country

or trying to come in

and we're stopping a lot of them

These aren't people.

These are animals.

ANIMALS

This is not immigration,

this is invasion.

You need to be afraid, because

they are coming for you.

We have to do something to increase

our birth rate

or the vacuum that's created

will be filled by people

that don't believe in our values here

in Western civilization

and we're seeing it happen in the

Netherlands and all across Europe

The white establishment

is now the minority.

Things will only change, unfortunately,

when we'll resort to a civil w*r.

Doing the work the military regime

didn't do, k*lling about 30 000!

k*lling

We want to make a good impression.

It's respectful.

Because we don't want to look like

a filthy Romanian or something."

FILTHY

You will not replace us!

THE DREAM

In reaffirming the greatness

of our nation,

we understand that greatness

is never a given.

It must be earned.

It is time for us to realize

that we are too great a nation

to limit ourselves to small dreams.

Much time has passed since Jefferson

arrived for his inauguration.

The years and changes accumulate.

But the themes of this day

he would know:

our nation's grand story of courage

and its simple dream of dignity.

We are one nation and their pain

is our pain.

Theirs dreams are our dreams

and their success will be our success.

Though we march to the music of our

time, our mission is timeless.

Together, we will make

America strong again.

We will make America

wealthy again.

We will make America

proud again.

We will make America safe again.

And, yes, together, we will make

America great again.

Thank you, God bless you,

and God bless America.

Thank you,

God bless America.

We sometimes make mistakes.

We have not been perfect.

But if you look at the track record,

as you say, America was not born

as a colonial power.

Well, actually it was

America was born as a colonial power.

And this fact is a difficult

one to admit.

For it bears the fatal capacity

to disrupt the core story

we have been told all these years and

the very foundation of this country.

It's not an easy story to tell.

Because the story still

continues today.

A story of the search for purity

and for a godly Kingdom.

A story of survival and violence.

A search for origin 400 years after

the voyage that is said

to have "made the nation."

1962, Brooklyn, New York.

This is me in the middle.

The author.

I am not sure how I ended up here.

Although I might have my suspicion.

This is British explorer Henry Morton

Stanley. On the Congo river.

This is me with Henry.

My parents are working there for the

newly independent republic of Congo,

like a few hundred

other Haitian nationals,

hired by the UN to replace the Belgians

who had fled their former colony.

New York, 1964.

to public school P.S. 138 in Brooklyn.

Between Nostrand and Rogers.

First time in the snow.

My mother and my cousin

came down for the picture,

before going to their factory jobs

in the Garment District.

On our way to Congo again,

after General Mobutu's 1965 coup.

Despite his crimes, Mobutu Sese Seko

Kuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga,

would remain a welcome guest

everywhere for the next 30 years.

It helps when you are one

of the richest men in the world

and you control an extravagant

assortment of copper,

uranium, cobalt,

diamonds and gold.

We traveled a lot

because of another dictator.

Nelson Rockefeller,

future vice president of the US

But it doesn't feel like an exile.

I am with family.

I am an immigrant from a "sh*thole"

country, like he said.

There is this one short

simple sentence,

that sums up the history of the Western

World and the European continent.

At the turn of the twentieth century,

a Polish writer named Joseph Conrad,

who often thought in French

but wrote in English,

succeeded in putting it into words in

his novel entitled "Heart of Darkness".

This sentence, spoken by Kurtz,

the main character of Conrad's book,

will be the last on the civilizing task

of the white men

among the savages of Africa.

And this sentence says nothing

about Europe

as the original home of humanism,

democracy and welfare.

It says nothing about anything

to be rightly proud of.

It simply tells the truth

we prefer to forget.

The English word "exterminate,"

from the Latin "extermino,"

means "drive over the border to death,

banish for life."

The object of the action is seldom

a single individual,

but usually whole groups,

such as quitch grass, rats, or people.

The term "brutes," of course, reduces

the object to its mere animal status,

AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS

Hugo Vieira da Silva, 2016

Africans have been called beasts

ever since their very first contact

with Europeans

who described them

as "rude and beastly."

It is in the seventeenth century,

that Thomas Hobbes said to a friend:

"Some men are of so cruel a nature,

as to take a delight in k*lling men

more than you should to k*ll a bird".

This is Sven Lindqvist.

A man I now call a friend.

He wrote the book entitled:

"Exterminate all the brutes."

This is also his story.

Sven told me:

In an Algerian town,

in the desert named Salah,

the Scottish explorer Alexander Gordon

Laing, was attacked and robbed.

He had five saber cuts on the crown of

his head and three on the left temple.

The one on his left cheekbone

fractured his jawbone and slit his ear.

A dreadful gash in his neck scratched

his windpipe; and so on.

Laing was attacked in January 1825.

But fear is timeless.

"A man may destroy everything

within himself, wrote Conrad.

Love and hate and belief

and even doubt.

But as long as he clings to life,

he cannot destroy fear.

Fear always remains."

Perhaps in fear we seek an increased

perception of life?

A more competing form of existence?

I am frightened; therefore I exist.

The more frightened I am,

the more I exist?

There was a land

named Tsenacommacah,

which means "densely inhabited land."

It was a powerful confederacy of more

than 30 nations, led by Wahunsonacock,

better known as the father

of Pocahontas.

On May 14, 1607,

104 English men and boys

landed on Tsenacommacah,

on the bank of the Powhatan River,

and decided to establish a settlement.

But soon enough, it was very clear

that they lacked a supply line

and proved unable or unwilling to grow

crops or hunt for their own sustenance.

Military leader John Smith threatened

to k*ll all the women and children

if the Powhatans would not feed

and clothe the settlers

as well as provide them

with land and labor.

The leader of the Powhatan confederacy,

Wahunsonacock, entreated the invaders:

"Why should you take by force that

from us which you can have by love?

Why should you destroy us,

who have provided you with food?

What can you get by w*r?

What is the cause of your jealousy?

You see us unarmed and willing

to supply your wants,

if you will come in a friendly manner,

and not with swords and g*ns,

as to invade an enemy."

Smith's threat was carried out.

After all, he worked for

the "Virginia Company of London",

a for-profit enterprise.

w*r against the Powhatans

started in August 1609

and the elimination

was the order of the day.

Sven tells me:

"You already know enough.

So do I.

It is not knowledge we lack.

What is missing is the courage

to understand what we know

and to draw conclusions."

For we know now

when the story started.

We know now, when race, color,

and blood

became institutionalized

for the first time.

We saw it taking form

with the Crusades

when the Christian kingdoms

of northern Spain,

together with the church leadership

and other European monarchies,

decided to take over Muslim-controlled

trade routes to the Far East.

The ultimate goal of the Church

and the European rulers

was never just about

winning souls to Christianity.

It was also about gaining wealth

and power through annihilation.

In 1478, the Pope approved

the establishment

of the Spanish Inquisition,

which had to investigate

the "cleanliness of blood"

of Moorish and Jewish converts.

"Clean blood" was Christian/European;

"unclean blood" was savage,

non-Christian.

This is the origin of the ideology

of white supremacy.

For the first time in the world,

the concept of race based on "blood"

was used as law.

White supremacy made

it possible for Europeans

to think it was acceptable to enslave

or exterminate other peoples.

That led to the mass deportations

of Jews from Spain in 1492,

and Muslims in the following decades.

It happened with the forced deportation

of more than ten million Africans

from the human motherland.

It happened to Native peoples

in what came to be called

the United States of America.

And again in the 20th century,

without any contrition,

it happened during the Holocaust.

The road to Auschwitz was paved

in the earliest days of Christendom.

And this road also leads

"straight to the heart of America."

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL

Leni Riefenstahl, 1935

Olympiastadion, Berlin

A people which does not hold

with the purity of its race, perish!

The Germans have been made the sole

scapegoats for ideas of extermination

that are actually a common

European heritage.

Racial researcher, Berlin, 1930

There was a discussion in Germany,

in the seventies, over the question:

is the n*zi extermination

of the Jews unique or not?

Geneticist, Berlin, 1930

All historical events are unique

and not copies of each other.

But they can be compared.

There are similarities

and differences

between the extermination of the Jews

and other mass murders.

I have seen these images before.

They are always the same. Everywhere.

In ancient and modern times.

The ridicule of their display.

It is their banality that

gets me every time.

FANATICISM, EXPLOITATION, sl*very,

CONQUEST, CONTEMPT FOR ALIENS

Then the outcome will not be

the victory of Jewry,

but rather the annihilation

of the Jewish race in Europe.

Blackfeet Indian communities of Montana

as documented by Walter

McClintock (1870-1949)

No one points out that during

Hitler's childhood,

a major element in the European

view of mankind was the conviction

that "inferior races" were by nature

condemned to extinction.

The truly charitable attitude

of the superior races

consisted in helping

them on their way.

All German historians participating

in this debate

seemed to look in the same direction.

None looks to the West.

But Hitler did.

He had found his models.

HOME MOVIES

Eva Braun, 1940-1945

Of course, one man alone

did not single handedly engineer

the k*lling of more

than 6 million Jews.

G. Krupp receives the golden medal

of the n*zi Party, 1940

Hundreds of thousands of enablers,

were also there to plan, execute,

or to simply profit from it.

Renowned industrialist Henry Ford

gave the n*zi party

all the profit from cars

sold in Germany.

And every year,

an additional 350 000 dollars was

allocated for Hitler's birthday.

While millions of others, committed

themselves, to remaining silent.

Madison Square Garden German-American

Bund's Rally, February, 1939

If you ask what we are actively

fighting for under our charter,

first, a socially just white,

Gentile ruled United States.

Second, Gentile-controlled

labor unions,

free from Jewish Moscow-directed

domination.

- I want some music.

- I'm not against it, Klutzky.

MOLOCH

Alexander Sokurov, 1999

The essence of this story is fragile.

It requires renunciation

of all prejudices.

Modesty and humility

are needed here.

IT'S NOT ABOUT LOVE

Raoul Peck, 1997

THE YOUNG KARL MARX

Raoul Peck, 2017

THE SCHOOL OF POWER

Raoul Peck, 2009

I AM NOTYOUR n*gro

Raoul Peck, 2017

Why do I bring myself

into this story?

Where do I fit in it?

As a filmmaker, I am compelled to stay

hidden in the background.

Restrained, moderate, balanced,

judicious, neutral even.

You learn to avoid becoming

the subject of your film.

It's not about you.

Unless the story is bigger than you.

In that case, you go for broke.

Neutrality is not an option.

And those who seek history

with an upbeat ending,

redemption, or reconciliation,

may search in vain.

Such a conclusion

cannot be expected.

In the late-fifteenth century,

Europeans started

to colonize the New World.

Crossing the Atlantic,

Columbus, an Italian,

landed on an Island that

he claimed for Spain.

In 1497, John Cabot,

also an Italian,

claimed another territory

for the King of England.

In 1500 Pedro Alvares Cabral,

a Portuguese,

serving his own king,

reached Brazil.

Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed through

a piece of land to find the Pacific.

He claimed it for Spain.

Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese,

also did the same for Spain and died

on his way around the world.

The Italian Giovanni da Verrazano,

followed the coastline of North America

for the King of France

and got a bridge named

after him in New York.

In 1534, Jacques Cartier claimed

another piece for France

and named it Canada.

A few years before, Amerigo Vespucci,

an Italian sailing for Portugal,

had proved Columbus wrong again,

in that he had not reached

the West Indies,

but what he would

then call the New World.

As a result, a German cartographer,

Martin Waldseemuller,

gave the name America

to the whole continent.

From the beginning, the extension

of the United States

from sea to shining sea was

the intention and design

of the country's founders.

"Free" land was the magnet that

attracted European settlers.

This particular form of colonialism is

called settler-colonialism.

But as a system,

it requires violence.

It requires: the elimination

of the Natives

and their replacement

by European settlers.

GET A HOME OF YOUR OWN

EASY PAYMENTS

POSSESSION WITHIN 30 DAYS

Inherited Indian Land For Sale

Come to Nothern Kansas

Bring your family

The charge of genocide,

when applied to the United States,

has been unacceptable

for a very long time.

But the evidence leaves

no other choice today.

From the first settlements

to the founding of the United States

and continuing into the 21th Century,

the elimination of the Native,

is consciously or unconsciously,

wired into the process.

This is a story, not a contribution

to historical research.

Carlisle Indian Industrial

School, Pennsylvania

The nature of this historical process

is still blurred by the notion

that violence was committed equally

by the colonized and the colonizer.

But people do not hand over their land,

their resources,

their children and their futures,

without a fight.

And that fight is always

met with violence.

In US history, everything is about the

land: who oversaw and cultivated it,

who fished its waters,

maintained its wildlife;

who invaded and stole it.

It's about how the land

became a commodity,

"Real Estate," broken into pieces

to be bought and sold on the market.

It is about how African bodies

became properties and source of labor,

and how poor white settlers embraced

white supremacy

as a substitute

for land and sl*ves.

The poet

William Carlos Williams wrote:

"The land! Don't you feel it?

Doesn't it make you want to go out

and lift dead Indians tenderly

from their graves,

to steal from them

some authenticity"

As if it must be clinging

even to their corpses.

Without the unpaid forced labor

of enslaved Africans,

a farmer growing cash crops could

not compete on the market.

Once in the hands of settlers,

the land itself was

no longer sacred or collective,

as it had been

for the Indigenous people.

It became private property.

A commodity to be acquired and sold,

every man a possible king,

or at least wealthy.

Most of the founders were

also real estate men.

George Washington made his fortune off

land speculation Indian land.

And then, "the land" came to mean

the country, the flag,

the military, as in "the land

of the free" from the national anthem.

Those who died fighting

in foreign wars

were said to have sacrificed their

lives to protect "this land"

that the old settlers had

spilled blood to acquire.

But the blood spilled

was Indigenous blood.

This is Sven again.

He reminds me of these

old-time adventurers,

who explore the human species.

Whatever difficulties

and danger it involves,

whatever faraway travels it requires.

Definitely not a white savior.

On the contrary, he is one

of these few Europeans

who dare see the beast

for what it is.

Sven is a witness.

Sven traveled the world.

Sven told me stories.

Some of which I already knew.

He told me about this world,

about his world. Without cynicism.

Which would not be inconceivable

at this stage of the story.

For Sven saw my world.

Lived in it.

As I lived in his.

And he wrote about it.

Making it palpable.

And when he delved

into the horror,

I knew what he meant

and what he went through.

I could trust him.

Our distinctive skin colors

never were an obstacle.

And that is the way it

should be.

THE MURKY SECRET OF RUBBER

In 1887, the Scottish surgeon

J. B. Dunlop hit upon the idea

of equipping his young son's bicycle

with an inflatable rubber tube.

The bicycle tire was patented

in 1888.

Four years earlier, the Europeans

and the United States

had decided that it was

necessary to regulate

the thriving exploitation

of the African continent

other than by whoever got

there first,

was the boldest

or the most murderous.

A situation that was,

naturally, detrimental

to any respectable

business environment.

They convened the Congo Conference

to arbitrate the looting.

The main outcome,

of this "gentlemen's agreement"

was definitive elimination

of most existing forms

of African autonomy

and self-governance.

At the Conference,

Belgium's king, Leopold the Second,

managed to secure the whole Congo

as his private property,

a territory 80 times bigger

than Belgium.

Basically twice the surface area

of Texas and California combined.

During the years that followed,

demand for rubber exploded.

This would carry incalculable

consequences for the villages in Congo.

The king instituted a monopoly

on rubber and ivory

and ordered all natives to supply labor

and products without payment.

Those who refused had their villages

burned down, their children m*rder*d,

and their hands cut off.

Such methods led to a dramatic

increase in profitability.

Profits which helped in building, among

other things, impressive monuments,

that still decorate Brussels today.

Monuments paid

for with amputated hands.

Rubber Plantation

Congo, 1895

"I bring you clarity,"

said the prophet,

"that you may understand

the world around you."

God tells us that real

life is after death.

The more we suffer, the more you

are granted with joys in Heaven.

Can't this wait until

the end of my service?

Rubber doesn't wait!

- Where is my rubber?

- That's all I got today.

- And why is that?

- The trees have dried out.

You!

Get the basket!

No, stay, stay

Please, please don't do that!

The Congo adventure

was pure looting.

Leopold the Second running

the numbers.

Plundering bodies.

Plundering resources.

The draining of a whole continent.

A multi-billion dollar heist.

10 years after the creation

of the Congo state,

the writer Joseph Conrad

sent his first short story,

"An Outpost of Progress",

to Cosmopolis Magazine.

He, too, had gone up the Congo River

on one of the Company's steamers.

He, too, had seen the trading post and

listened to the passengers' stories.

The story is simple:

Two Europeans,

Kayerts and Carlier,

are sent to a trading post on the banks

of the Great Congo River.

Apart from collecting ivory

from the locals,

they don't have much to do and

have plenty of time to get bored.

Their only reading material

is a yellowed newspaper

that praises colonial expansion

as sacred work

in the service of Civilization.

At first the two companions

believe these fine words.

But gradually they discover that such

words are nothing but "sounds."

Sounds that lack content outside

the society that created them.

Concepts such as "virtue", "crime"

or "morality" are nothing but sounds.

Soon Kayerts and Carlier feel

that no one is watching them.

One day, they agrue.

Kayerts shoots Carlier

in self-defense

and does not realize until later

that in his panic he has k*lled

an unarmed man.

As he sits by the body

of his companion,

Kayerts for the first time

really thinks.

Like the rest of mankind, he has gone

around believing a lot of nonsense.

Left alone with their own weaknesses,

far from any public opinion,

from any exterior gaze, any human being

is likely to indulge in the worst.

Conrad and Wells knew

about each other,

when the latter wrote

"The Time Machine" in 1895.

Hatred and fear seize

the time traveler.

He longs to k*ll Morlocks.

He wants to go straight

into the darkness,

"to k*ll the brutes."

The time traveler falls asleep

as he sits there in the darkness,

and when he wakes the Morlocks

are onto him, soft and repugnant.

He shakes "the human rats"

off him and starts striking out.

He enjoys the feeling

of a swishing iron pipe

smashing into juicy flesh

and crushing bones

This k*lling in Wells is both

horrific and voluptuous.

Wells' next book, which

we know Conrad also read,

was called

"The Island of Dr. Moreau".

Dr. Moreau uses his surgical skill

to create a kind of human being

out of animals.

The first of them all to shed tears.

She is human!

I'm not beaten!

- Get everything ready.

- For what?

This time, I'll bum out

all the animal in her!

No!

- I'll make her completely human.

- No!

Dr. Moreau has created one

hundred and twenty creatures,

but he has not succeeded in creating

a real human being.

The Island of Dr Moreau is

the story of colonialism.

Just as the colonizer civilizes the

lower, more animal races with the whip,

Dr. Moreau civilizes

the animals with t*rture.

Maximizing the pain in order

to hasten evolution.

Just as the colonizer tries

to create a new kind of creature,

the civilized savage,

Dr. Moreau tries to create

the humanized animal.

You know what it means

to feel like God?

In both cases, the means is terror.

Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now

is based on "Heart of Darkness".

In it and in all the real wars,

the men representing civilization out

in the colonies were "invisible"

not only in the sense that their g*ns

k*lled at a distance,

but also in that no one at home really

knew what they were doing.

AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GODS

Werner Herzog, 1972

White by birth.

A default setting.

I know this story is painful,

but we need to know it.

The happiness of one cannot be built

on the pain of all others.

There is almost always

a price to be paid.

Further down the line.

White by birth:

a simple pigmentation variation

transformed into a source of power,

a mark of superiority,

an authorization for abuses,

a justification for eternal immunity.

No modesty is necessary.

Nor is doubt a requirement.

The ultimate privilege.

To be continued