I don't want to believe

I have a family member back in Kentucky who is very close to me. I'm not going to say which one, to protect her identity.

This family member is not stupid - in fact, professionally, she's my idol. The way she has approached her work is the way I try to approach my work. She has read newspapers and watched 60 Minutes all of her life, and encouraged me to do so as well. But she is easily swayed by urban legends. It affects her worldview, her social interactions and how she votes. I didn't worry about it too much - until November 2018. Now I know there are millions and millions like her.

When I was a kid, this family member told me that a woman had been bitten by a poisonous snake in her Aigner coat pocket, and that it had turned out snake eggs had been sewn into the lining of her jacket in the Asian country where the coat was made. Years later, in my Urban Folklore class at Western Kentucky University, I heard this story again - as the entirely false urban legend it was all along. She made comments implying that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a communist or, at least, a sympathizer, despite his staunch and frequently espoused Christian beliefs. She thought the Beatles were Soviet sympathizers and communist sympathizers, despite their songs like "Revolution." All of those stories and more were obviously bollocks to me, a pre-teen and then a teen. I would sit quietly as she espoused this stuff and think, "Wow. That's just SAD."

She was terrified I would become a communist or, worse, a cult member. She saw my explorations of other religions and frequent questions about the Bible's origins as a danger, not as a comforting sign that I was not swayed by the this-is-just-how-it-is-believe-it philosophy.

I remember how disturbed she was when I latched on to the horror of the McCarthy era. She would note that many of the people that were blacklisted were, indeed, communists or former communists, or had attended a meeting of such, and that many had complimented the Soviet Union. And while I knew that was true, I also knew, even as a teen, that I would have too, if I, too, hadn't known the horrific reality. She couldn't see the bigger picture: people were persecuted because they wanted social justice, not because of communism.

I didn't become a communist. I didn't join a cult. By the time I was 16, I had realized I was an Atheist, and, even worse: a skeptic. I question every philosophy, every diet - every commercial. If anything sounds too good to be true, I automatically think it is.

It's now decades later, and I'm sorry to say this family member is still oh-so-easily swayed by fake news. For instance, she doesn't believe that climate change is caused by humans - a difference in her long-held belief that climate change wasn't happening at all.

But it's a conversation I had with her when I was last in Kentucky a few months ago that really illustrates the danger of her, and those like her:

A friend was with us and talked about how she missed the Crazy Tomato, an Italian restaurant in Evansville, Indiana that was run by group of men from Egypt. It was a beloved restaurant - I heard about it many times from family and friends, but never had time to try it when I visited the area. But almost immediately after September 11, 2001, the Crazy Tomato's four Muslim restaurant workers and five of their Muslim friends were paraded in prison stripes, leg irons and manacles across the front page of the Evansville Courier Journal and newspapers across the country, in a photo opportunity arranged by law-enforcement officials. They were flown to Chicago for questioning in another show of SWAT-team force. They had been arrested as alleged terrorists plotting attacks against the United States.

The roundup, in fact, had been brought about by a lovers' quarrel: out of anger, the angry woman told the police that one of the nine had talked threateningly of suicide and terrorist acts. They never had done such a thing, and when the truth was revealed, the men were, eventually, released. No charges were ever filed. But the damage was done. The restaurant floundered. Two years later, at an October 2003 meeting with more than 100 people in the Muslim community in Evansville, the FBI offered a rare public apology. "The situation that happened to you was horrible," Thomas V. Fuentes, the FBI's agent in charge in Indiana, said during a meeting at the Islamic Center of Evansville. "On behalf of the FBI, I will apologize. . . ." Later, in an interview, Fuentes said, "They were wrongly accused... This is something that has affected them in every possible way. Anybody being accused falsely of something that serious is like a teacher being accused of molesting a child. It's hard to come back from that. You can see . . . months later, the tears are still ready to flow."

The restaurant limped along, but the customers didn't return. The owners and staff were ridiculed and shunned by people who assumed their guilt. Whispers about flying lessons and money trails from Evansville to Egypt continued to be repeated and believed. The restaurant closed.

My family member is one of the people who still believes these rumors even 17 years later. She started talking knowingly about money trails and flying lessons - her exact words - when my friend mentioned the Crazy Tomatoe. So I called up this Washington Post story on my phone and read it to her.

She stiffened and looked away. "Well," she said, "I never heard that." The conversation was over.

Did she hear me then? Did she really hear what I read to her? Or, in her mind, is it just "fake news", and the truth is, in fact, the rumors she's heard from people in the town where she lives? If I cannot get her to believe this truth, if one of the most respected newspapers in the world cannot, what hope do we have of fighting against Russian trolls that delight in swaying her beliefs?

I do not know how to fight this. She doesn't want to believe the truth. And I can't make her.

Postscript: 
In response to this blog, three people on my Facebook page have commented to the effect that I shouldn't try anymore: "People believe what they want to believe. It is a losing battle to argue or try to convince those people..." and "Make peace, you will never change her, not she you..", etc. And I just want to say, NO! The takeaway from this blog was not supposed to be, "It's no use, stop trying." I was trying only to show what we're up against and how frustrated I get. Please, please, KEEP TALKING. Keep debating. Keep showing those newspaper articles and facts. Because repeated exposure to a narrative does make a difference - it's why Russian trolls are so successful! The point of this blog was to say, "Our counter narrative MUST be stronger." The point of this blog was to say, "Keep trying!" The point of this blog was not, "Give up." If you think this is a losing battle and we should just "make peace", then we should just welcome Donald Trump as President for eight years. And I'm not doing that.

How to defeat Daesh - no, really, this will work

How to defeat Daesh (what others call ISIL and, unfortunately, the same name as the Egyptian goddess, ISIS)? Not by even MORE bombing of Syria. What a stupid idea. Didn't work in Vietnam, won't work in Syria.

Send in our troops? Anyone saying that has to sign up themselves to be a part of the invasion and occupation, OR, get at least one of their children to do such. Otherwise, you aren't saying "We should go", you are saying, "Someone that's not me should go."

The murderous problem with Daesh will not be solved militarily any more than problems with any terrorist group has been solved militarily.

Here's what I don't hear anyone saying - and, yet, these, all together, would work, because they've worked when fighting Christian extremists and any other large terrorist movement:

1. Cut off the money. “Grossing as much as $40 million or more over the past two years, ISIS has accepted funding from government or private sources in the oil-rich nations of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait—and a large network of private donors, including Persian Gulf royalty, businessmen and wealthy families.” These countries are allies of the USA. It’s overdue to tell them there will now be consequences for funding terrorism. Also, start saying loudly and clearly that those found with antiquities stolen from Syria and Iraq will be prosecuted even 100 years from now - no “I didn’t know!” defenses allowed for 100 years. If you are caught with stolen items, you go to JAIL. Period. More about how Daesh is funded.
   
   
2. All intelligence agency workers, law enforcement, and politicians, nationally and locally, world wide need to learn about Islam - and not from fundamentalist Christians - and develop meaningful, strong ties with the majority moderate Muslims in their countries. They need to build trust with these organizations, such that Muslims will feel comfortable coming forward and saying, “I’m worried about my nephew/my Uncle/my neighbor…” Remember: when mass shootings at schools and work places have been prevented in the USA, it’s been because students, family members or co-workers heard someone talking about their plans and, despite that person being a friend or family member, they contacted law enforcement.
   
   
3. Every country needs to encourage regular inter-faith events with Muslims in their midsts. That goes against everything Daesh stands for. Daesh hates hates hates any mixing of Muslims with non-Muslims - in stark contrast to Mohammed, who welcomed Jews and Christians into his mosque in Medina. Peace between warring religious groups is possible. There was a time when Catholics and Protestants killed each other - yet I don’t know anyone still calling for vengeance regarding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, when French Catholics murdered between 5,000 to 30,000 Protestants.  On Sept. 11, 1857, in a meadow in Utah, a militia of Mormons began attacking a wagon train of Arkansas families - all Christian but not Mormon - bound for California, and slaughtered 140 men, women and children. Several historians believe Mormon church leaders ordered the massacre. And the Catholic and Lutheran majorities of Germany actively participated in the expulsion and murder of Jews. There are still calls for accountability and atonement and remembrance regarding all of these tragedies, these murders, as there should be - but no one is blowing anyone up over these events anymore, because we actively work for understanding and reconciliation and humanitarianism.
   
   
4. Christians have to condemn Christians that call for oppression and even murder of Muslims just as they call on Muslims to condemn acts of violence by people who say they are Muslims. Christians have to distance themselves from extremist Christians in the same way they demand Muslims distance themselves from extremist Muslims.
   
   
5. Mainstream Muslims and all governments have got to get way better at propaganda, including on social media. The narrative regarding Islam among non-Muslims and non-religious youth born in Muslim families MUST be changed. Anti-Daesh efforts on social media are *pathetic*. Give groups like Quranalyzeit and Sisters in Islam huge grants to hire more staff and be WAY more active on social media with their moderate, peaceful, loving, pro-women, Islamic-based messages. Those two tiny organizations are doing a *brilliant* job of countering extremist messages regarding Islam, and doing it as Muslims and from an Islamic perspective. But they are drowned out by Daesh. Governments also need to heavily promote the help they are providing Syrian refugees and people in primarily Islamic countries. But do it right - don't do this.
   
   
6. And last, but never, ever least: fund Islamic women's groups. Give them more money! LOTS MORE MONEY. There's no better way to counter the narrative of Daesh, Al-Queda, or any other extremist Islamic group, than giving Islamic women's groups REAL RESOURCES.

This would work! Of course, Haliburton and others that profit from wars wouldn't be able to make any money from it, so it won't happen...

Here's some terrific resources for more reading:

• This blog by J.M. Berger, a nonresident fellow in the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at Brookings and the author of "Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam".
  
  
• Here's the manual that Al Qaeda and now ISIS use to brainwash people online
  
  
• This article from The Atlantic explores this further: "ISIS is not succeeding because of the strength of its ideas. Instead, it exploits an increasingly networked world to sell its violent and apocalyptic ideology to a microscopic minority—people who are able to discover each other from a distance and organize collective action in ways that were virtually impossible before the rise of the Internet.

Finally watched Birth of a Nation. Yuck.

According to the dictionary on my computer, the term racism means "the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races." There are a lot of people that would read that definition, without the word racism, and happily, even unashamedly, identify with the phrase. I am not one of those people. But they are all around me. That belief about different races is not limited to only people descended from European tribes, I've learned as I've traveled the world. And when people tout any race - their own or someone else's - as smarter, kinder, more family-oriented, sneakier, more violent, more passionate, more creative, better with money, or WHATEVER - than other races, I get a really ugly pain in my stomach. Racism is real.

In our vernacular use, most people, when they say something is racist, mean something much stronger: they use the word for something that has a message that is demeaning at best, and hateful at worst, regarding all people of a particular race. When someone says some book or movie or play or whatever is racist, that's usually what they mean: that the piece is demeaning to an entire race.

When someone says, "Hey, that's racist" about a movie or book or play or whatever, if I haven't seen it or read it or whatever, I'll give it a look. And sometimes, I don't find it truly racist - I don't always think the author or screenwriter or whatever is trying to say something specfici about all members of a race, good or bad. Maybe I do think it's racist, but I think it's more a relic of a time - presentation of stereotypes and sweeping generalizations we all, surely, know now aren't true, right? Often, I think, yes, it's racist - but it's far, far more sexist, so why aren't we talking about that?!

In short, I'm not quick to jump on the oh-my-goodness-that's-racist! bandwagon. So knowing that's my MO, please take this for what it is worth:

I finally watched Birth of a Nation, all three plus hours of it, and it's the most hateful, racist-filled crap of a movie I've ever seen in my life. By far. It's absolutely reprehensible. It's so much worse than I ever imagined. To call it racist doesn't even begin to describe its horribleness. It is hideous.

Tons of old American movies are racist. Maybe all of them. Maybe all of the new ones as well. I love old movies, but loving old movies, like Gone With the Wind, is like loving my grandparents (one of whom I'm relatively certain was in the White Citizens League back in the 1950s): racist, painfully so at times, but there are so many, many other wonderful things about them that are worth loving, worth loving deeply, and I do so, even if, at times, they make me cringe - or even make me angry and ashamed. I look at the entire picture, and see what the heart of the message is, and what might be a product of the time, and see if I can reconcile, if the heart is good and greater than the unpleasantness around it. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't.

There's a racist joke and a couple of racist scenes in my beloved Duck Soup.  There's oh-so-much racism in Red Dust, yet another film I adore. There's a couple of cringe-worthy comments in His Girl Friday, a comedy we all claim to love. Often, in a quest to not address racism, movies simply ignore that black Americans or Asians exist at all - not exactly racism, but most definitely not anything to applaud. I am fully conscious of the racism every time I watch these films, but it doesn't keep me from enjoying them, because there is so much more there, so many wonderful portrayals of the human spirit and of human values. If I avoided movies that could be considered racist, I wouldn't watch any movies.

And I'm always amazed at how the people so quick to tell me what is and isn't racist will roll their eyes when I start to talk about sexism in movies - especially when I go off on The Philadelphia Story, a movie I LOATHE for its horrible sexist message: men cheat on their wives, but as long as they go back to their wives eventually, or don't entirely leave them, they are just being normal and women should accept it. BITE ME.

But the obvious, hateful agenda of Birth of a Nation... its entire story, its characters, its presentation - EVEN THE TITLE... it is all beyond anything I can get my head around. It has no other purpose than to say that African Americans are sex-crazed buffoons naturally prone to violence, that their subjugation was (and is) for the good of everyone in the USA, and that the only way to have world peace is for white people to be united in their subjugation of Africans everywhere. It also promotes a twisted view of history, saying explicitly that, before the Civil War, there was no one nation, there was no union - just happy independent states doing entirely as they pleased (which makes it perfectly in-line with the modern-day GOP, but I digress...). Birth of a Nation has NO OTHER PURPOSE than inspiring hate and feelings of superiority by white Americans, and to say that the USA should give states the right to subjugate black Americans. It wasn't made primarily to tell a love story, or a survival story, or a horror story, or any kind of story: it was made solely to say horrific things about one race of people, and to claim it was best for the people of that race to be enslaved by another race of people, who the movie says are superior intellectually, emotionally, culturally and spiritually. It promotes a passionate, irrational hatred of black Americans - and it makes the Ku Klux Klan the heroes. That's its message, first and foremost.

Geesh, the movie is so freakin' racist that many of the black characters are played by white actors with make-up, when those characters were required to come in contact with a white actress. This film is widely credited for reviving the long-dead Ku Klux Klan - and I completely see why.

I have always hoped, having not seen it, that maybe it was just really outdated, that it would turn out, once I saw it, to be just to be just archaic and misguided. At worst, insidious. Nope, there's no stealth here - it's infused with angry, intense, unashamed arrogance regarding the film-maker's supremacist beliefs. No subtlety at all.

I can't admire the film-making techniques of Birth of a Nation any more than I can in Triumph of the Will. I don't give a rat's ass that this movie pioneered panoramic long shots, iris effects, still shots, night photography, panning shots, the staging of battle scenes, color tinting and having its own musical score. I DON'T CARE. It's like saying, "Sad about the stabbing of that family, but look how well the knives worked! What technique!"

D.W. Griffith didn't make Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages as a follow-up in order to apologize for Birth of a Nation - isn't it OBVIOUS that he made that follow-up because he was so upset at people disgust at B of a N, that he felt the criticism was, itself, intolerance and that such was unfair? Well, DW, yes, the criticism, the disgust, were - and are - intolerance. And humans have a right to express such, to reject your pathetic world view. No, I don't think this movie should be banned. But I also think it needs to be presented honestly and openly for what it is - no sugar-coating, no oh-but-the-film-techniques! justifications. Let's present it as the love letter to white supremicists that it is. That is what it is. Period.

I'm really glad Turner Classic Movies (TCM) showed it. I'm glad I've seen it. But I'm disappointed to learn it's even more horrible than I ever expected. Wow.

On a side note: I was on the light rail coming home from Portland in 2013, and was eavesdropping on a group of African women, I think from Tanzania, and a group of Indian women talking about movies they love. And they all love Gone With the Wind, and went on and on about why. They loved it like I do. No mention of its racism was ever made - I kept listening for it, but it never happened. Sometimes I wonder if people in other countries, even Africans, understand the horrors of slavery in the Americas... but I kind of loved that they loved the film without experiencing any racist subtext. The way women are expected to enjoy so many films without getting upset about the sexism.