Today, Explained - Know your enemy (Part I)

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

Documentary filmmaker Deeyah Khan grew tired of receiving death threats from white supremacists so she traveled to a Detroit motel to meet up with one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this episode of Today Explained that's just seconds away comes from the state of Illinois. There's a feeling you get when you walk down Chicago's Magnificent Mile for the first time. It's much like the feeling you get when you discover there's a wine country in Illinois. That feeling is amazing, and you can find it at EnjoyIllinois.com. Illinois, are you up for amazing? Heads up, there's some strong language in this episode. Protect the children. There's this palpable sense that hateful views are gaining mainstream acceptance,

that the internet is fostering hatred, that our divisions are growing deeper. And it's within this context that a Norwegian-British documentary filmmaker and human rights activist of Punjabi and Pashtun descent went to hang out with some neo-Nazis. The film is white right meeting the enemy. The filmmaker is Dia Khan. Well, I've had experiences with racism pretty much most of my life on and off in various forms. Growing up in Oslo, Norway, as a brown girl, you know, I was exposed to racism very, very quickly. When I was younger, it was very overt.

You know, we used to have neo-Nazis that would be marching in the streets. We had neo-Nazis that would attack businesses and homes of people from minorities. And I remember at the time, my dad used to say that you know these things are really complicated right now and they're very heated right now but really what's required is time so just by the time that you know you're grown up all of these things will sort of disappear as a teenager and and you know as I was growing up I was very active in terms of anti-fascist anti-racist campaigning even at that point I used to go to protest I used to flip these people off, used to shout at them, used to throw stuff at them. And none of it really particularly helped, I have to say. It felt great at the time, but wasn't particularly productive.

It didn't nudge the needle in any direction on white supremacy. No. Or my understanding of it either. A few years ago, I ended up doing an interview with the BBC. The fact of the matter is, the UK is never going to be white again. It's just not going to happen. People can wish it, but it's not realistic. We're together going to have to find out what does it mean to be British moving forward? What does it mean to build a society that includes all of us, where it means looking like me and looking like you? And the context of that was I was saying that for people in England or in any of these countries to think that their societies can go back to what they used to be pre-large groups of people of color coming here, it's just, it's delusional to think that that time is coming back.

And similarly, our parents who've come from various parts around the world, for them to think that they can reestablish those countries and those ways of living within the West is also sort of delusional. I thought that that was a fairly bland, fairly reasonable statement to make. And I've heard from my own father who used to live in London and Wales that he misses how much it used to be more Anglo-centric and now it's far more immigrant. So if my father would say something like that, I can't even imagine how, there's far more immigrants. So if my father would say something like that, I can't even imagine how, let's say some white Britons might have felt about you saying that white Britain is kind of over. Right. And so this interview ended up going viral and

it ended up on several violent racist websites in this country who actively started campaigns against me. And I was flooded with death threats. Because they thought you were saying white earth is over? Yeah, yeah. They thought that I was articulating what they have always been fearing, which is that white people are being replaced by people like me and people like you. The term that they used for it was that I confirmed that there is a white genocide going on, that we are actively trying to replace white people. Like there's a plan. Right. They really do believe this. I mean, the shooter in New Zealand actually believed this as well. And he articulated that in his manifesto. These people believe that the white race is actively being replaced. And the design of this replacement is created by Jewish

people. And that's where these caravans, you know, are coming on the border of your country here in America. And, you know, similarly, all the refugees that are flooding into europe all of this is an active design right anyway so my interview ends up going viral i am flooded with death threats i kind of laughed it off at the beginning but the bbc got back in touch with me and said look what we're getting for you is really really dark we've not experienced anything like this before you really need to get in touch with the police. So I did. I remember sitting down thinking, well, I sort of have two choices here. I can be afraid, or I can try and see if I can understand this. And if I can find the people behind the rhetoric, the human beings behind it. So I picked up my camera and started contacting every group,

every white supremacist activist in this country to see if any of them would be willing to sit down and speak with me. And they were not. Yeah. What's your pitch to a white supremacist? Hi, I'm a Muslim woman who said this thing that white Britain's coming to an end. I'm also a filmmaker and an activist. I flip people off and throw stuff at people like you. Can I come film you? What did you say? Almost that. What I said is that I am a woman of color. I am a Muslim. You know, I come

from this in this background. I make films. These are some of the topics that I've handled in the past. These are my personal experiences. And obviously, I don't agree with you. And we're not going to see eye to eye on your worldview. But nonetheless, I'm interested in trying to understand why you think some of the things that you think, and I'm willing to sit down and have an open and honest dialogue if you are. And the vast majority of them were not. So it took me months and months and months and months to try and find anyone on that side that would be willing to sit down with somebody like me. Finally, finally, after months and months of just harassing people pretty

much, one of the leaders of the largest neo-Nazi organization in America, one of the oldest ones as well, finally said, he said, okay, fine, you can come. You get one hour, you come to this and this motel in Detroit, one hour, and after that, basically you piss off, you disappear. And I said, okay, that's fine. That's one hour. That's great. When a white supremacist says, fine, you get an hour, meet me in this motel in Detroit. Yeah. Are you afraid in that moment? Do you text your family or friends and say, this is where I'm going to be just in case

this doesn't work out? No, no, no. Which is looking back on it now, that's incredibly foolish of me to not have done all of those things. My mindset at the time was finally somebody said, yes, I finally get to sit down with somebody like this and see if we can have a conversation face to face, if it's possible for them to hate me in person. And is there any point of connection in terms of our humanity? You're just excited to have booked the interview. But all these thoughts started happening once I'm in the motel room. It's just me and my

producers. It's just the two of us. So no security, no nothing like that. And so we're sitting there, the cameras are set up and we're waiting. And suddenly I start thinking, oh my goodness, what if he doesn't come alone? My goodness, what if he's armed? What if they come and they just beat us up and take our stuff? And what if, what if, what if just starts running through my head? Right. But of course, at that point, it's too late. And then, you know, he does knock on the door. I was nervous at that moment because I was thinking, you know, wow, this is it.

This is, I've never done this before. Hello. Hi, I'm Tia. Nice to meet you. Good to meet you. And he came alone. There was no weapons, no nothing like that. Well, I'm Jeff Scoop, commander of the National Socialist Movement.

We're a white civil rights organization here in America. We're white nationalists. And instead of speaking for one hour, we spoke for five hours. We feel that the white race in general, in fact, Western civilization in general, is under a full assault. But what I also did is I shared with him my experiences of what it was like to be on the receiving end of somebody like that. I would read him some of the threats that I'd received. Hey, swamp nigger, you're going back. Get out of Whitey World, you leeching, slag, shit-skinned cunt.

What does shit-skinned mean? Just what it says, I guess. Your fellow travelers, would they call me a mud person? And he started squirming. I mean, he visibly looks uncomfortable. No? And I remember asking him, going, you know, this is not the first time you're hearing this type of language. You know, you probably use this language yourself, or your fellow travelers most certainly do,

so why are you so uncomfortable? And he couldn't really answer, and then I kept saying it. I kept referring to myself in some of the terms that they use about people like me. Was that a plan you had going in or did that come out of the moment? No, it just came out of the moment. The reason I wanted to sit down with people like him is I wanted to connect on a human level. I don't want to understand what Nazis and racists believe. I already know that. What I want to understand is why people do the things that they do. So I wanted to see if I can find the human being behind

the rhetoric. And I wanted to see if he's able to see that with me as well. If he's able to see that I am just a human being and that there are real life consequences to the type of rhetoric and the type of actions that these people take. The minute it's connecting to this is affecting another human being, you know, you start seeing it crumble a little bit. I didn't expect that. Another amazing moment in that interview is when you ask him why, as a 13-year-old, he read Mein Kampf. What would attract a teenager to the ideology of Mein Kampf? And then there's just this epic silence.

Huh. And then ultimately he says... My mind is wandering right now. I think I'm kind of getting burnt out on the questions or something. But he had no idea why he read Mein Kampf when he was 13 years old. That he wasn't able to articulate it to my face. These moments were not a possibility in my mind when I started making the film. So to start seeing these moments happen in front of me, drew me in, of course, even further and find

more of them and speak more about all of this. An amazing thing happens over the course of the documentary. You watch Jeff and you see him be empathetic towards you. Yeah. And then you move to Peter, and then we start feeling empathy for white supremacists. Tell me a bit about Peter Taft and what you got out of him. I get goosebumps you mentioning his name for some reason. But Peter Taft is a young man from North Dakota. He's a member of the same neo-Nazi organization. It's called the National Socialist Movement. He's very young.

He seems very, very bright. Why would somebody like him want to be a part of this? And so I went and sat down and talked to him. He was a little bit reluctant as well to sit with me initially. And we sat down and he started sharing with me experiences that he'd had in his life growing up. You know, I felt like a ghost at the school, you know, like a nerd or a freak or something. And he starts speaking about feeling invisible and feeling like he doesn't matter. I might have had, you know, body dysmorphia. I felt like I was either too big or too fat. You know, he talks about trying to make people like him in his school and in his life and him trying to make all the kind of changes to himself

in order to accomplish that. I remember asking him, you know. And did they? No, no. No. And he kept talking about, you know, there's just so much wrong in the world. There's so much this and there's so much that.

And then I was like, well, like specifically, you know, what do you think it is? And then he just sits there and again, it's that long pause again. I guess looking back, what bothered me the most was... I don't know, I guess myself. You know. It's so heartbreaking for me to sit there and look at this young guy who has his entire life in front of him, who is so bright, so brilliant, and so, so, so very sad, and doesn't really know how to deal with it and he says when

he finds white supremacy and meets white supremacists he feels like a superhero he feels like the green lantern it does kind of feel like i'm in like a league with like superheroes these guys i mean they're so smart you know i feel like I'm the green lantern and they're my watchers. You know, there's guys at church that, you know, pat me on the back and say, way to be a warrior for Christ. That says more to me about us as a society than it does about this movement or him in a way. It says something to me about the fact that there is something we're not able to provide for a lot of our young people. Extremist movements, or any kind of violent groups, in fact, are very actively providing

a lot of these types of feelings. The kind of vulnerabilities that some people have, you know, people who are seeking a sense of identity, a sense of belonging, the fact that, you know, we as a society aren't really providing that, and we're all sort of retreating into our bubbles and our own little corners and our own kind of identity groups. And that's what extremist movements thrive on.

After the break, what empathy can and cannot accomplish. As I've stated before on the show, I haven't spent a ton of time outside of Chicago when I've been in Illinois, but I have seen a lot of movies I've loved set in Illinois, including The Breakfast Club, Wayne's World 2 comes to mind. What else do we got? Oh, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, of course, a classic. Ordinary People, heartbreaking. I think all of like the Halloween movies pretty much. There's a lot going on in Illinois. The people from the Illinois Office of Tourism would love you to check out five-star restaurants in the West Loop, barbecue in Murfreesboro, canoeing in the Cache River, kayaking in the Chicago River,

Lincoln's Home in Springfield, the German U-Boat at the Museum of Science and Industry. Illinois turns out a pretty amazing place. You can find out more when you visit enjoyillinois.com. Illinois, are you up for amazing? Dia, there's so much empathy in this movie, and you get drawn in deeper and deeper into the lives of these white supremacists. And then there's one last remarkable moment I want to talk about in the film

where you're in Ken Parker's living room. So that's the Klan? Yeah, this is a Klan tattoo. You're asking him, like, why am I here right now? Why are you talking to me? You've been completely respectful to me. I actually consider you to be a friend.

You know, my opinion about Muslims since I've been interacting with you has gone up significantly. And his girlfriend's in the room? His mom would be happy. He's realizing that not everybody's bad. I mean, there is some good people out there that aren't white. And then you're just like, look, these white supremacists, like it's all falling away.

And then he says, I will never break bread with a Jew, though. Had to go and say something, didn't you? Oh, I don't want this to turn into something like, oh, well, this big badass Nazi is this little teddy bear. But he is. Yeah, but I would never break bread with a Jew. Ever. So maybe that should be part two of this film. What, send a Jew over here?

Yeah. No. But he has since broken bread with a Jewish person. Oh, really? Yeah, several months after the film. So he watched it. But he has since broken bread with a Jewish person. Oh, really? Yeah. Several months after the film. So he watched it.

I didn't send it to him. He watched it on his own. And apparently watched it many, many, many times. Wow. And then he called me and I was like, ah, so what do you think? You know, it's like, oh, you know, I think you were fair. He was really disturbed by how he came across. So he didn't think you were manipulative in your editing. No, no, no.

He was just saying like, the things I said are problematic. And the things that I do, yeah, were uncomfortable for him. But not like problematic, the white supremacists are going to be mad at me. Problematic, my views don't make sense. Yeah. Hmm. With all of these guys, none of them have had any real firsthand experience with the other. Whoever their target of hate is,

whether it's Muslims or Jewish people or black people or whoever, they haven't actually had any kind of meaningful interactions with them. So yes, for Ken, this was the first time because I asked him, have you ever spoken to a Muslim before? He's like, no.

Several months after the film, he called me to tell me that he's left the movement, which is why he also broke bread with a Jewish woman eventually. And I asked him, look, what happened? And he said, listen, he said, even though I was really obnoxious, and even though I behaved in the way that I did, and I said the things that I said, he said, you didn't give up on me. And he said, you were still nice to me, and you still treated me like a human being. And he said, people don't do that. And he said, so that was hard for him to reconcile.

I'm supposed to be a monster. I'm supposed to have a suicide vest underneath my clothes and blow him up any moment. So none of his kind of views of people like me were correct. Because when I left him, I said, look, what does this mean? The fact that, you know, you think of me as a friend now. He said, well, maybe it kind of opens me up to speaking to other people who are also different from me.

And he actually honored that. There's an African-American pastor in his apartment complex that he then started speaking to after I'd left. And then that man said, why don't you come to my congregation, which is an all-black church in Florida? And Ken said, okay. And Ken went, and Ken stood up there apparently, said that he used to be in the KKK

and that now he was an active member of a neo-Nazi group. And all the views that he holds, he openly said it in this all-black church. And at the end, apparently, people came up to him and people hugged him and people shook his hand and said, you know, obviously we completely disagree and dislike and, you know, have a problem with what you're saying. But it takes a lot of courage for you to come in here and say some of those things.

Basically showed him compassion, even though he didn't deserve it. And so that was the last straw for him that made this entire picture that he had built in his mind for all these years fall apart because it doesn't make any sense to him. Here are these groups of people that I despise so much, that I am dehumanizing, but who are refusing to dehumanize me in return. What does that make me then? Once a crack has appeared, that can only get deeper and wider. Having said that, though, I mean, I do not want to underestimate or underplay the danger that this movement poses. So I don't want to say that all Nazis and racists can be reformed. I chose to engage with these people because it is what I wanted to do. I'm not at all suggesting that that is what other people of color should do or have to do or obligated to do at all.

It's just something I wanted to do because I've tried everything else. And none of that's been satisfying for me personally, for my curiosity, whereas this was. There are a lot of people who would rather take the approach that you used to take. They'd rather flip off a white supremacist, punch a Nazi, throw something at a Nazi. And they'd probably be upset to hear that you came in wanting to listen and discover. Have you heard from those people who object to your approach? Yeah, a lot of people say, well, are you just normalizing it? Are you just justifying it? Giving them a platform.

Well, first of all, I think it's completely understandable that people feel that. However, I am not justifying what these guys are doing. I'm not interested in winning an argument against a racist. I want there to be less racist to begin with. So I don't need to feel pat myself on the back and feel really self-righteous for holding all the correct opinions, having all the correct politics and all the correct friends and all of that. That's not enough. This is a problem that has been here for a really long time. Hate was not invented with Donald Trump or with Steve Bannon. Hate has been there for a really long time. You know, systemic racism is there.

To me, empathy is actually part of a very strategic, very practical approach in trying to, first of all, understand what makes these guys tick, why they believe the things that they do, so that we can interrupt some of it, so that we can prevent more young people being exploited by extremist movements of whatever stripe. I'm not saying this is the only way. I'm saying that engagement and human interaction and connection should be one of the tools in our larger toolbox of how we confront racism. I understand. It feels great. It's very satisfying to flip them off and to shout at them. I really wanted to sometimes when I sat there and some of these people would say the things that they said. I wanted to react aggressively in return. But the problem with that kind of a response is that's exactly what they want. They are saying the things that they're saying and behaving the way that they are because

they are inviting out in me the worst in me. And I refuse to give them what they want. They're looking for me to become afraid. They're looking for me to become aggressive or pushy in return because then that justifies in their mind their behavior. Now, some people will say, look, we need to make sure that these opinions become unacceptable. And I agree with that. There's a place for that. But just by making them publicly unacceptable, don't make the feelings and opinions go away. I want them to go away. She recently made that confronts hatred. The other one is called Jihad, and we'll discuss it on our next episode. Our next episode, by the way, comes out on Friday.

We're taking the 4th of July off. I'm Sean R to go ahead and venture a guess that Shawnee National Forest in the great state of Illinois is a contender. It's where you can do some serious rock climbing in a place called the Garden of the Gods, which sounds pretty impressive. Illinois, impressive. Maybe even some would say amazing. You can find out more at enjoyillinois.com. Illinois, are you up for amazing?