Uncomfortable

Watched that Fitna film yesterday, the one by Dutch politician Geert Wilders that Wikipedia apparently freaked out about. Fifteen minutes of Quran verses cut against footage of violence. It’s blunt propaganda, the kind that doesn’t really hide what it’s doing.

There’s something uncomfortable about the whole thing. Terrorism is real. There are people out there who genuinely believe violent things and act on them, and you see it constantly in the news but nobody really wants to sit with it. You want it to not be true. But then someone makes a film that says it out loud—look at this, this is what’s happening—and suddenly everyone’s worried the film itself is the problem, not the violence.

The response felt backwards. Politicians warned there would be bloodshed, as if showing footage was the dangerous part, not what the footage showed. As if people couldn’t think about what they were seeing. That seemed more insulting than the film’s argument.

I don’t have a clean take on it. The film is reductive and inflammatory. Dismissing billions of people because some of them are violent is a dishonest move. But pretending the underlying problem doesn’t exist feels dishonest too. Everyone seems determined not to look at anything straight on, whatever side they’re on.