TRIGGERnometry - My 3 Years Inside Jihadi Rehab - Meg Smaker

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

SPONSORED BY: easyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Meg Smaker is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her current film 'The UnRedacted' (formerly 'Jihad Rehab') follows ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees in a Saudi program for deradicalisation. The film has been subject to much controversy, with cancellation campaigns still raging. Watch the trailer for The UnRedacted: https://youtu.be/PrkSKCSXYh8 Visit the film's website: https://jihadrehab.com/ The film's GoFundMe Campaign: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-unredacted-jihad-rehab Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ | Channel ID: UCo_8zzSxKeL3arKWVuP8wdQ Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection, featuring three perfum intense scents, inspired by a unique orchid accord, paired with vanilla, each with its own distinct attitude, each with its own universe, bold elixir, sensual, woody, addictive, magnetic elixir, sweet and romantic like a lingering touch, solar elixir, a radiant expression of joy, ultra-concentrated for amplified impact and lasting power. Find your euphoria. Discover the Euphoria Elixir Collection by Calvin Klein. When I first heard about the rehab center, I was extremely skeptical. It always struck me as strange, why would the most conservative country in the world be running a progressive rehab program for extremists? Like, that doesn't make sense to me.

What I realized spending so much time there is, number one, the idea that all these men are hard and ideological, you know, soldiers is not true. Two, there is a kind of, you know, bandwidth of like, yeah, you have the leadership. who definitely are a lot harder to kind of get on board to this whole rehabilitation. But the foot soldiers, some of the people that you see in the film, who aren't in that leadership, aren't in that kind of upper-sfires, it's a little bit different. I knew that this film was going to get attacked. I didn't think it was going to be from the left, though. I was pretty sure it was going to be from the right.

So if you can't even watch a two-hour film before chiming in, if that's too much energy for you to do, then you are not a journalist. You are an activist that writes. You are not a documentarian. You're an activist with a camera. If there's something in the film that is factually inaccurate and then we fucked up, yes, I will. When you do something wrong, you should apologize.

But for me, apologizing or apologies are not performative. I'm not fucking apologizing for this shit because there's nothing wrong with this film. Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisham. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations. with fascinating people.

Our brilliant guest today is probably like no one we've had on the show before. She's a documentary filmmaker who's made a movie about the rehabilitation of some Guantanamoid prisoners in Saudi Arabia that no one for some reason wants to show. Meg Smacker, welcome to Trigonometry. Yeah, it's Smaker, by the way. Smaker. Yeah, no. It's okay. I fucked up already, there we go.

Don't say your terrorist buddies on me. Look, it's great to have you on the show, Meg Smaker. I apologize for that. I should have asked. Before we get into the conversation about your brilliant movie, Francis and I both watched it last night and really enjoyed it. And I can't, for the life of me, understand why people don't want to show it anyway. We'll get into all that. But before we do, who are you, how are you where you are?

What has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us? Oh, that's not a mouthful. Tell me your life story and your purpose. Two minutes flat. Okay, so I'll do my best. I am a documentary filmmaker, but I wasn't always a documentary filmmaker. For a long time ago, in a former life, I was a firefighter, and I loved it and thought I'd always be one. And then 9-11 happened.

And my whole kind of world shifted. And my dad always said that there's pretty much only three types of people in the world. Those when you hit them, they hit you right back. Those when you hit them, they run away. And those when you hit them, they ask, why'd you hit me? and I've always kind of been in that third camp. So after 9-11, that was the question. Why did you hit me?

And I started to kind of do research and read books about Islam and the history of the Middle East and just watched the news ferociously. And I began to see that what I was seeing in the news was directly contradicting what I was reading about. And I realized after a while that both those sources of information was through someone else's filter. So I figured the only way to remove that filter

Was to like go and get the information First hand so about six months after 9-11 I traveled to Afghanistan Try to find those answers for myself And was Immediately humbled by my own ignorance of the world I don't do you remember what you were like when you were in your early 20s? Yes Yes I draw the north

That mindset yeah yeah You have this very self-assured view of the world and that all kind of came crumbling down when I went to Afghanistan and that kind of sent me on a journey to try to educate myself. So I went back to the States, it was a firefighter for a little bit longer, and then shortly after moved to the Middle East, moved to Yemen, lived there for almost five years, studied Arabic and Islamic culture, and while I was there, I taught Yemeni how to fight fire. And then lived in Qatar for a year, traveled all around the Middle East, I think to every country except for Syria and Kuwait.

And through those experiences, decided that I wanted to change careers from firefighting to filmmaking. Because I was seeing, the stories that I was seeing and experiencing, I didn't see represented anywhere in Main Street media. So I went back to the U.S., went to Stanford, and got an MFA and documentary filmmaking, and made a film that won a Student Academy Award. and then this is my next project that just premiered at Sundance. And yeah, that is a cliff note version I could possibly, Cliffnotes, that's not a word, we're going to make it up, the version I can possibly give you about who I am and why I'm here. Well, it's a fascinating life story.

First of all, you mentioned coming to Afghanistan with a self-assured but ignorant worldview. Yeah. What did you learn there? Well, I think for me, the things that I had gotten from our media was, you know, they hate us because our freedom. You'll go and go over there, and these people are going to hate you and try to kill you or kidnap you.

And the opposite was true. So, for example, I basically hitched ice across Afghanistan. And this family in one of these villages took me in and clothed me, fed me. I didn't speak Pashtun. They didn't speak English. But I have amazing charades and dictionary skills. So we communicated through that line. And I was stayed with them for a little bit.

And one day we went out and to the local market. It was a very small village. And it was just the grandfather and the grandson of the house. And we're walking through. And there's another guy in the market who started just shouting at the top of his lungs at me, and waving his fist in the air. I didn't know what he was saying, but I could pretty much take his meeting from his gestures and his voice that he, you know, didn't want me there and was very angry because my country was bombing his country at that particular time.

The grandfather that I was staying with went up to the guy, picked him up by the scruff of the neck, yelled at them, put him down. And the guy walked over and said, sorry in Pashtun and welcome to Afghanistan and English. Now, these guys probably know each other for decades. It's a small village. And yet, this person welcomed me in his home, defended me against someone else in the village who was angry that I was there. And it just went against everything that I had been taught about these people from the media. And so I just realized that my understanding of the world was very limited.

Does that make sense? That makes complete sense. So what inspired you to make the film? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a plethora of things. Tell everybody what is called as well so they can. So the original title was Jihad Rehab, and it got changed to the unredacted. So it's now the unredacted.

And yeah, it's a kind of plethora of things. It's that question I told you before, why they hit us. try to understand the why of it. But also, after Afghanistan, I did a lot of traveling. I had a lot of to places that usually people don't travel to, like Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia. And I met a lot of people who I think a lot of us think we know about and have strong opinions of, but actually don't have a lot of one-on-one conversations with, meaning we talk about these people, but we rarely talk with them. So, for example, I interviewed Pirates in Somalia, warlords and Afghanistan, and the people's in Colombia.

And yeah, I just kind of set me on a trajectory to kind of, there's this quote from Dostoevsky where it's, I used to be in the film, but I took it out. And he says, the easiest thing in the world is to denounce the evil doer. The most difficult thing in the world is to try to understand him. And that's what the film is essentially trying to do, to try to understand these men on a human level, if that makes sense.

That makes complete sense. And what you do so beautifully in the film is because we all have these stereotypes of Islamic fundamentalist, jihadists, whatever you want to call them. But you actually get to understand them. You humanize them beautifully. And you end up sympathizing with them. And you get a level of understanding. The thing that struck me about the film is for many of these, particularly very young boys, one of them was 16. It's a search for belonging.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a, at least for me anyway, I interviewed over 150 of these guys. And after a while, I began to see a pattern. And as I was making this film, it reminded me of a story my dad told me about starfish, of all things. And he said that there was a fishing village in Northern California that had a problem with invasive starfish. One day, the fishermen decided to get together, just kill all the starfish once and for all. So they collect them up, cut them into three, four, five pieces.

thinking the starfish were dead, they threw the pieces back into the ocean, not knowing that starfish regenerate. So where there's one before, now there's five. The starfish population exploded and just devastated the local fishing economy. The moral of the story being, when you try to fix a problem you do not understand, you usually make it worse. Day after 9-11, most expert put the number of al-Qaeda members around 400. Just before the pandemic, those same experts put the number around 100,000,

including affiliate groups. So basically the US has been starfishing the shit of the Middle East for the last two decades. And partly because we don't understand. We don't understand these men. We don't understand their motivation. And I think when you're used simplistic rhetoric and you kind of go off that, your decisions are flawed. So for example, in the film, like I talked about, there's, it's a film about four guys or four guys. It's a group of men who spent 15 years in Guantanamo.

and then they're sent to Saudi Arabia to the world's first rehabilitation center for terrorists and they're there for about a year, year and a half. In the film, we followed them for three years, a year and a half in the rehab center, and then a year and a half when they get out and they try to find jobs, get married, have kids, start a family. And for me, the really interesting thing

about making this film is seeing a lot of kind of commonalities between these men and men that I know in my own life and seen that there is way more in common that we have different. It does make sense. I think you're about to ask. But what I really like,

I actually would disagree with Francis to some extent because while I sympathize with some of them, I also think you do a very good job of not doing this sort of like, oh, they're all just like us and they're all perfect little, precious little flowers. Because you talk to a guy who used to make bombs for a living, right?

And you talk to a guy who's clearly, Clearly. What was the guy's name? The one that I said earlier was really scary. Oh, Abuganam. Right. I mean, that dude is fucking terrifying because he clearly is very committed to jihad, has absolutely no intention of reforming himself or anything like that. And you show that in the movie. So you're not sort of going over there going, oh, I've just realized everyone is sweet and perfect. You tried to give a round of picture that some of the people who ended up going through,

by the way, and you emphasize this, I think it's very important to say, You know, I'm someone who's just written a book called An Immigrants Love Letter to the West. I think, in my experience, the West is a force for good, generally speaking. It doesn't mean we don't make mistakes, of course. Yeah. But in my lifetime, the first time I looked at the United States and I went, you guys aren't living up to your own standards that you preach was Guantanamo Bay. Yeah.

Right? Because, okay, 9-11 was an awful atrocity. It was an awful atrocity, but it doesn't entitle you to suspend Habeus Corpus. It doesn't entitle you to just imprison people 15 years without charge, etc. And this is what these guys went through. And some of them probably were completely innocent or close to completely innocent. Others were hardened terrorists. And you showed both of those.

Yeah, I think that the thing about this particular film is there have been quite a lot of people who've gone to Afghanistan who had absolutely nothing to do with any terrorist group. and it was literally a wrong place, wrong time. And there's been quite a few films and stories and articles on that. But what I wanted to do with this film is men who, from their own mouth, talk about being involved in a plethora of different ways and a plethora of different levels. So for example, you have someone like Ali who went to an Al-Qaeda training camp and was there for two, three weeks. And then 9-11 happened.

They got picked up and sent to Guantanamo when he was 16 and didn't get to. it out until he was almost 32. And then you have someone like Khalid who, you know, was one of the lead bomb makers and bomb instructors for al-Qaeda. And so there's a huge, like, differences in level of culpability and level of involvement. And it, like, talks about or explore some of the nuance of that. For example, the word sex offender. You say that it's a very charged word. The sex offender can qualify someone as in the United States if you're 18 years old and you sleep with a 16-year-old. It could also describe someone like Harvey Weinstein. And those things are very far apart. And so when you're watching the movie, not only does it kind of dive into like

the different motivations, the different levels of involvement and how using a word like terrorist to describe all these men is actually really kind of dumbing down the conversation because it's way more complex and nuance than that. Yeah. And you said that we don't understand. And you've said it a couple of times. What don't we understand, Meg? What are the things that people need to learn and need to understand who are not aware of this? Well, I can't talk for the UK, but I think in the states, the narrative has been quite simplistic. For example, it's all because of the religion, or they hate us because of our freedoms. It's very, like, simplistic rhetoric. When you look at the film, like I said, I interviewed 150 of these guys. And the reason why there's four characters

in the film is because each, after I interviewed so many of them, I started to see a pattern. and they would fall into one of four motivations about why they got into these groups. There was exceptions, of course, as there always is, but it would be one of these four things, and that's why there's four characters, because each one of the subjects of the film represented a different motivation.

The one that I think most Americans, at least, are familiar with is the cause. So that's Abuganam, right? He thinks it's his religious duty to go and defend his fellow Muslims. He got into this because of Bosnia. He was living in Yemen, about to go to college. He saw the Bosnian War happening.

and thought that, you know, no one's there helping my fellow Muslims. It's my duty, my religious duty to go do that. But the other three have absolutely nothing to do with religion. I think this is where the dialogue kind of stops, at least in the United States. The second motivation is economic necessity. That's noter, right? So he's like, I needed a job, I need money. This is a career. It became a career for him.

Then you have the third motivation is pure pressure. That's Ali. His older brother was in this. He said, hey, come to the training camp. I'm a trainer here. And he came over and decided to do a two-week training, three-week training course, I want to say, before 9-11 happened. And then the last one is more age-dependent, more for the younger guys. And that sense of adventure. And that's Muhammad, right?

He says, you know, I was 19. I was bored. I didn't want to go to school. I didn't want to work. This guy offered me a free ticket to Afghanistan and shoot rockets. So why not? And they all were also searching for a sense. sense of belonging and sense of purpose.

And that was also a commonality as well. But what I found interesting after talking to a lot of these people is, have you ever heard of a book called Tribe by Sebastian Younger? No. He did a film called Restrepo where he was embedded with a bunch of Marines during the Afghan war. And it was one of the bloodiest outposts in the military out there, for the U.S. military. And doing a lot of research for the film,

I read a lot of books about vets and military and things like that. And I began to like both read and from friends of mine who were in the military see a lot of commonalities between the two. So for example, when you're talking about those four causes, I know a lot of men who join the military right after 9-11, the cause, right? People like me who don't have like come from loads of money and university in the United States is quite expensive. Go join the military to help pay for school, right? Economic necessity. A lot of friends of mine come from military. military families, dad, uncles, brothers, all in the military, peer pressure.

And a lot of people who, and they even advertise this in a lot of the advert for the military is it's an adventure, goes through the world, travel the world. And if you don't have disposable income, that's a good way to do it. And so what I realized, it wasn't about good and evil. It's about time and circumstance. And what time and circumstance did you live in that led you to a certain decision-making process? I hear you. I quibble with the idea of

that they're not being good and evil to that extent because I think there is a difference. The motivations may be similar, but there's a difference between hijacking a civilian plane and flying it into buildings. Yeah, I'm not saying that's similar. I'm just saying the motivations

to go into this are quite... Yeah, but I think the reason people would make the distinction between good and evil is if you go and join your country's military because with the same motivation, the military will do lots of bad things, but most of them will be by accident. They're not going to deliberately target civilians.

Whereas with the terrorism issue, I think that's where a lot of people's instinctive, like, this is just pure evil thing comes in, which is you've got people, you know, and it's interesting, it's quite shocking watching the movie where you hear these guys talking about watching 9-11 happen. And one of them at the beginning of the movie goes, oh, it's just a building, build a new one.

Yeah. Because these people don't even, at that point, really think about what it is. that's happened. And for some of them, it was only later when they saw it and they saw people jumping out when they were confronted with the true horror of it. I think that's where, you know, for me at least, personally, the line, I don't think I want to blow that line for me. You know, there's a difference between 9-11 and joining the U.S. military, you know. Yeah, there's between 9-11 and joining the U.S. military. But I would say that, like, when you're talking about body count,

you have over 3,000 people died on 9-11. The war on terror has gone on for two decades, and hundreds of thousands of people have died. So, I think the line that you're drawing

and the line that I would say that I'm drawing as well is the film is not saying that these men are right, they're not saying they're wrong. It's not trying to sympathize with us, and this is this one I want to be clear on. There's a difference between sympathy and empathy.

And empathy is just we're trying to understand them. And I think a lot of times in the U.S., people conflate that. For example, like, I think that just the act of trying to understand someone's point of view that you don't agree with, which I love doing, doesn't mean that you actually sympathize with that person, just trying to understand where they're coming from. And so I would say that the film walks this line between trying to understand them, but not quite sympathizing with them.

And to your point, I think that it's okay to draw lines of commonality. to help you understand something, but you're not necessarily drawing that line saying they're identical, they're similar to the same. Clearly, when you intentionally target civilians, right, that's very different than when you're, you know, bombing like military targets. So I had this long conversation with Khaled,

and for him, the reason why I became a bomb maker is because he had a degree in electrical engineering. And so the way he described it to me is that when they do an intake interview in Al-Qaeda, in Al-Faruk, based on your level of education, your level of intelligence, your background, you go into one of three categories in terms of you're a planner, you're an operator, or you're an executioner in terms of like you're the one they dropped the bomb to.

So clearly, Khaled was quite intelligent and smart, so that wasn't his job. But yeah, he did train people how to make bombs for sure. So there's a very clear structure, and the most malleable, the most vulnerable, would be the ones who do the deed, as it were. Yeah, yeah. I would say that, like, when I was talking to Collett

and some of the other guys, during that intake interview, if you were seen as having, like, a lower intelligence level or not as much education, then they would put you on those lower levels to be the ones that you would either have the bomb or a lot of these guys volunteered for it as well. So according to Collet, there was, like, a list of 200 people.

I think he mentions it in the film. Yeah. Yeah. So, and is that because they, it's easier to manipulate that type of person and get them to do what you want? Or is it just because they see these people as load skilled and therefore expendable? Well, I don't want to put words in people's mouth because I've actually not interviewed any of those people. But I would say that it seemed to from the description that I've gotten from a lot of these guys, that it was actually very organized in that aspect.

So if you came in, for example, and you had a level of English, right? We could then use you in the PR department. So, for example, ISIS had some pretty good videos in terms of the production quality in terms of, like compared to earlier versions of it. There's actually a book that is, I forget the name of it, but one of the chapter is cinematography for terrorists. And basically it talks about some of the tropes they use in order to give certain emotional residents with young men.

So this is actually quite well-organized and quite thorough organization. And the thing that was interesting about the film is the first part of it where you were looking at the rehab facility, let's just call it that, and everything that was happening there, it felt very positive.

But then when they reintegrated into society, you saw that for the vast majority of these men, it was impossible to reintegrate. I think that had more to do with the timing of when they graduated, right? So before, when the center was run by Mohamed Bin-knife, and this was his pet project, right? He literally invented these centers. Mohammed bin-knife, just to clarify for the audience and the listeners was. Sorry, he was the previous crown prince.

He was going to be king of Saudi Arabia when the current king died, and then he got replaced by... No, no, no. So the current king was alive and it's still alive, but Mohammed bin Nife was the crown prince, which means second, it's like their vice president, the second command. And so when the current king died, he was supposed to take over. That's what I mean, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But instead of that, he got replaced by Muhammad bin Salman.

Exactly. And so typically, like when you have a change of leadership, you also have a change of priorities. So for example, in the U.S., you had Obama signing the Paris Accord. And he was like, we're all about the environment. Trump comes in, we're like, we're not doing that anymore. Similar in Saudi Arabia, where you had Mohamed Nife, this was his pet project. He literally met almost every graduate who, like, left the center, went to some of their weddings. He was very involved in this process.

Where the new crown prince, it just wasn't on the top priority for him. So these guys typically would have gotten jobs and things like this, but because of the transition in power, they kind of fell through the cracks and were left to their own devices, unfortunately. Yeah. And one of the fascinating things about seeing, because you spent three years with these guys, right? Yeah. Inside this facility. And this facility is called the Care Rehabilitation Center. Yeah. It's called, well, it was the change the name recently, but it was called the Bahamado and I. Care, Counseling and Care Center. Yeah. Or the rehab center for.

And what was incredible is you're watching these guys who spent some of them 15 years in Guantanamo. They've clearly been tortured. They've been through horrific ordeals in there. And here they are, these are, according to our Western world view, these are evil terrorists. And they've got like a swimming pool, sauna, daily classes on how to think. They're teaching them critical thinking. They're teaching them social skills. They're teaching them. I found it quite funny, the scene where he's teaching them how to deal with women.

He's like, you must compliment the smell of the meal. Well, what you have to understand is... You're not integrating them into Western society. their own standards. Yeah, I did take a few notes. It was like, good point, good point, good point. Yes, I'm going to incorporate that. But they're great scenes because you see the world these guys are coming from and the world that they're going back into, hopefully, right? And that was eye-opening as well because you're seeing people who are the evilest of the evil, the vilest of the while, the vile being treated humanely. And some of them, at least,

are actually benefiting from the process. And a lot of them, you know, they claim to have an 85 percent success rate. So it is possible because we had a guy called Eam and Dean on the show, who's a former Al-Qaeda double agent. And he said, like, you can't really rehabilitate terrorists. Like, it's very, very difficult. But clearly this program was having good success. It wasn't universally successful, but it was having good success. And it was fascinating to see these people being treated well. Did you, did you find that quite like a shock or was that natural? Like, how did you find that? So when I first heard about the rehab center, I was extremely skeptical. Right. For three reasons. Number one, it always struck me as strange. Why would the most conservative

country in the world be running a progressive rehab program for extremists? Like, that doesn't make sense to me. Two, again, Saudi Arabia is not known for its human rights record. Three, she's diplomatic. I mean, that is putting it mildly. Well, you know. Three, I think that like for me, a lot of the things that I've seen from the Saudi government, especially in the press, I kind of take with a grain of salt. And so I, before I went to the rehab center, I reached out to all the journalists that I could that had been there before and asked about their experience. And they kind of all said the same thing. They're going to take you, give you like an hour PowerPoint, do a dog and pony show. They'll give you two hours there are tops.

But they're pretty much not going to really learn anything new that we haven't covered. And when I told him I wanted to do a documentary there, they all laughed at me over the phone. But what you have to understand is like the origin story of the center is quite interesting. And once you know that, then it makes sense why the Saudis are doing this. But when I first got there, I was extremely skeptical about this place. Because again, the idea that I had is these were like really hardened criminals, right? and they were super into the ideology. And there's no way doing art therapy and teaching them how to balance a checkbook.

It's going to somehow reverse that. But what I realized spending so much time there is, number one, the idea that all these men are hard and ideological soldiers is not true. Two, there is a kind of, you know, bandwidth of like, yeah, you have the leadership who definitely, what the guy was talking about before, are a lot harder to kind of get on board to this whole rehabilitation. But the foot soldiers, some of the people that you see in the film who aren't in that leadership aren't in that kind of upper space. It's a little bit different. So, for example, you were talking about classes like finding a wife, right? So for guys that the center calls the normal terrorists, the ones that they catch going back and forth between Syria and Iraq and Saudi Arabia to join ISIS or al-Qaeda, their program is only three to four months long. The guys that are going from Guantanamo, though, their program is a year long.

The reason is twofold. Number one, they're way more radicalized because if we've just taken you for 15 years and tortured you and separated you from your family without any like, you know, court case, not going to be the happiest camper in the world. And so a lot of the instructors at the center say when these guys arrive from Guantanamo, the first thing they want is revenge. They want to kill the first American they see. So that's one. The second reason is why it's so long compared to the other one is because, again, you have someone like Ali who went in when he was 16, got out when he was. he was almost 32. These are some of the most formative years

in a young man's life, right? So the life skills that one picks up during that time they did not get. For example, how to balance a budget. Like how to find a life. I mean, oh, God, let's not have to take that. But no, if your motivation is economic necessity and you don't have funding,

actually learning how to do a budget is going to help that. And that's what I mean in terms of, you need to understand the motivations in order to understand how to deter those things. And the world, by the way, has changed a lot in the last 60 years. So you've kind of been deprived of, like, the internet didn't really exist in the same way. Yeah, and these guys literally didn't know what Google was.

Had no idea what Google was. That's an impressive scene in a weird way in the moment. But it's just like you, well, a lot of people think of Guantanua think of prison. It's not prison. Because in prison, you can have, your family can visit you. You can watch the TV and you can learn about what's going on in the world. When these, during the Bush administration, according to, you know, most of you, people I've talked to, they weren't really allowed to have any contact with the outside world,

including TV. And it wasn't until Obama came in that they were allowed to have TV and things like this. And what was really interesting is most of the main characters in the film, with exception of college, didn't speak English before they went to Guantanamo. They learned English in Guantanamo. One of my favorite scenes that we had to take out was when Ali tells the story of how he learned English. So he was quite young when he went to Guantanamo, 16.

And when Obama came in, they allowed him to have English. TVs and he told me that one of the guards kind of took pity on him because he was so young and he said, you know, you're a young kid, you should be playing video games. So well, I really don't know what video games to ask for. What video games should I ask for? And the guard said, oh, you should ask for Grand Theft Auto. So Ali asked for Grand Theft Auto and he got it. And I guess there's missions that come up on the screen and he would pause it. He would translate that with the dictionary and that's how he learned English. And so when I first started talking with Ali, there was some language skills that we had to remedy before we had on camera.

So, yeah, Grand Theft Auto will give you a very, very specific vocabulary that maybe not be always great to use. So, yeah. And so I think for me, it was interesting to see the juxtaposition between one administration and the other and how it affected these men. But also, again, they're shut off from the world, so there's no Facebook, no internet, no nothing, no social media, no smartphones. At least they've been protected from that.

Well, they did pick it up quite quickly once they got out. It was a pretty fast intake. But I think it's things that we just don't think about, right? And so part of that year-long course is, yes, it's de-radicalizing these men, but it's also treating them for PTSD from Guantanamo. It's also trying to give them life skills. So when they leave the center, they can get a job, find a wife, have a family, have a family. Because statistically, according to the instructions of the center,

is they're way less likely to get involved with these groups again if they're married and have a kid and, you know, family to take care of, I think. Hey, Francis, if you were a member of the public, would you like the opportunity to ask incredible guests like Bill Burr, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Adam Carolla, Brett Weinstein, John Barnes, Douglas Murray, Nigel Farage, and Lionel Shriver, your own questions. You bet I would. And what do you think the best way to do that would be? Probably stalking, mate. You'd have to corner them in the supermarket, probably run near like

the sort of frozen food aisles, and then just bark questions at them before they can escape. Not the American ones, as they have guns. And you'd have to be extra careful with the females, as that's how I got in trouble last time. Do you really imagine you're going to get Douglas Murray near the frozen food aisle? If you want to ask, I remember, incredible guest questions and have access to phenomenal behind the scenes content, then you have to be on our locals. That's right, for only $7 a month, you get incredible extra content, behind the scenes footage, giveaways, and also the chance to be part of an incredible

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They prefer locals to Trigonometry. If I have to get them executed, I'm the one that goes to jail. Right, go to trigonometry.com. Only $7 a month for all that incredible content. Trigonometry.locals.com. See you there, guys. And you made this film.

It took three years. It's wonderful. It's beautiful. I really enjoyed it. I actually watched it on a phone because I was going... Oh, blasphemy. I know.

I know. I didn't have told me that. I know I shouldn't have told you that because I was going from gig to gig and doing whatever else. But the moment I watched it, it hooked me in. I thought it was brilliant. And normally, when you watch something

on a phone, you know, it's not the way it's meant to be consumed. But it was incredible and it's a very powerful piece of work. So you made this film and it's genuinely brilliant. Then what happens? Because the story takes another turn now. Yeah, so it took actually longer than three years to make. It was a full year just to get access, three years of filming, two years of editing. And I guess if you want to count the last years of being blacklisted.

So that's a good chunk of time. But yeah, you were saying what happened where are we at now? Yes, so the story of the film, because there's a story of making the film, but then there's the story of the film itself. Yeah, so the film, I don't know how familiar you guys are with Sundance, but it's like the, it's the Holy Grail for independent film festival. Set up by Robert Wright. Yeah, exactly. And so for documentaries in particular, it's the premiere festival. So, for example, if you get a film into Sundance, most likely that film is going to be part of it.

of the IT film of that year. And so there's a handful of films that just are everywhere. And usually those are the ones that premiered at Sundance. For example, when we got into Sundance, the PR guy that we were working with, he's like, I've watched every single film

at Sundance this year because everyone wanted him to rep his film. And he said, this film, this film is the only one that stuck with me. I'm like still thinking about it. He's like, this is going to be the front rudder for the Oscars. This is going to be the film of the year.

And so it's that kind of platform that Sundance allows you to have. And so typically, normally, it will launch a film and the issues brought up in the film, the stories are brought up to it, is something that we're going to be talking about for that entire year. And in doing so, it also launches the career of people who made the film, be it the director, the producer, the animators on this film,

and it kind of just levels up your playing field in terms of your career. But the opposite happened. Unfortunately. And why? That is a good question. I know it is. I want to know the exact answer.

I would say that in the beginning I didn't quite understand it, but like I said, there's three types of people in the world. And I'm the third. When someone hits you, I asked why. So I did a huge deep dive into this and read a lot of books, did a lot of investigative journalism, tried to figure out what was the cause, what was the epicenter, how this all come about. about because what you have to understand is while you're making a film, at least while I'm making a film, while I'm editing it, I don't just edit it by myself. I do test screenings. So we'll have audiences come in, various audiences. So for example, we screen this for Muslims, Yemenis,

guards at Guantanamo, conservatives, liberals, progressive, all across the board, old, young, everything. And you do that to make sure, one, the film that you're making is making sense. But two, especially for this film, am I missing something? Because I knew that this film was going to get attacked. I didn't think it was going to be from the left, though. I was pretty sure it was going to be from the right. And so in all those feedback sessions, we kind of, over time, made this film quite nuanced, quite complex, and for lack of a better term, like tried to make it as bomb-proof,

i.e., like, do our due diligence, fact-checking all this stuff as possible. And so when we got in the Sundance, we were just elated. And then they announced the lineup. And so they announced the lineup almost about two months, a little bit less than two months before you actually start the festival. So they announced on the 9th of December and the film premiered on the 22nd of January. And the day after they announced the film before anyone had seen it, the film just started to get attacked online.

By? Initially, we didn't know who the people were. And initially, this is what I thought, to be completely honest. I think most people would have said that, oh, this person is attacking my film, they haven't seen it, screw them. That was not my initial response. Having lived in the Middle East for a very long time, having had a lot of really close friends and people that I consider family who are Muslims in the US, I was well aware of the last 20

years in the United States, being a Muslim in the U.S. has been a lot harder after 9-11 on a plethora of levels. For example, someone that I consider my sister, when she moved from here from the Middle East, she wears the hijab, and she was like three steps out of the airport and someone spit her face and told her to go back to where she came from. And this is one incident, but over 20 years, those things add up. And so it can be quite traumatizing for someone over a long period of time. And so what I initially thought was, okay, here's a population of people

who have seen all these negative tropes be portrayed in the media of Muslims that reinforces negative stereotypes. That is sensationalistic. And they probably think that this film is like every other film that's been made about terrorism. But if it were, to be fair,

there's no way Sundance would have programmed it. So I thought this was just a big misunderstanding. And I thought once they see the film, like they'll realize that this is very, very different from what people are perceiving it to be. And so I reached out via Sundance because they were contacting Sundance directly, like requiring that they like, you know, pull the film and do all the other stuff. And so Sundance was getting really worried and they were starting to waver or they seemed like they were starting to waver. And so I offered through Sundance and through a different organization because at that time I didn't know who these people were to come and screen the film. before Sundance. And according to someone at the festival,

they said in the history of this Sundance, no one's ever offered to show their film to the group of people attacking it before it actually premieres. But that's how certain I was that this was a misunderstanding. And then they got back to us. And they said, we don't want to,

because I offered to fly down to L.A. with me and my executive producer, Muhammad, who's Yemeni. And I said, me and Mahambo fly down, we'll answer any questions you have. We'll show you the film because we're still editing at that point. So if you actually have some really good notes, we'll probably take them.

And then we can have a discussion afterwards. And they got back to us and said, we don't want to talk with Meg. We don't want to talk with Mohammed. We don't want to watch the film. We only want to go through Sundance and we're insulted that you even asked us to sign an NDA, which we ask everyone to do, who watches the film before the premiere. It's a pretty industry standard. And at that point, I was like, I don't really know what else I can do

because I can't have a discussion with someone about a film that they haven't seen. And so, the attacks continued. Right. Until, yeah, so for those six weeks, two months, whatever it was. And what I didn't realize was how strong confirmation bias was. And what I mean by that is for almost two months, you had people going in chat rooms and going on messaging boards and on Twitter and writing letters. saying things about this film, having not seen it like the film is propaganda for the Saudis.

It's funded by the Saudis. It's an all-white film crew, and they don't know anything about the Middle East, and they just lucked into this, or they've been hoodwinked by the Saudi government to do this thing. Again, they had not seen it. And so once you see the film, and that's something that's been so frustrating, is I've realized that the best offense against all these accusations, against all these attacks is the film itself.

Right, I agree. Yeah. Well, this is one of the things that we didn't actually talk about just very briefly. The ending of the film was fascinating to me because up until that point, you're basically looking at the story

of a bunch of people who went to Guantanamo Bay. Some of them were hardened terrorists, some of them were there, some were there, some were by accident, some of their got drawn in, blah, blah, blah. And you're watching them be rehabilitated, and, as I said, you cover the fact that not all of them

are successfully rehabilitated, but most of them are, and you're watching that process, you're going, well, this is interesting. And then, towards the end of the movie, there's a little switcheroo, because as we talked about already, the guy who founded the center gets replaced. In fact, he gets arrested. Mohammed bin Salman takes over, and suddenly, this center isn't doing what he was doing at all anymore. And one of the most charismatic teachers of the center, who was there with a big smile on his face

teaching these men how to live life and whatever, when you try to speak to him, post the transfer of power, he's like a robot, and he's refusing to answer your questions, and I'm very familiar with this being from Russia, where you have a strong dictator at the top, and if he doesn't want something to happen,

everyone else is terrified, and they'll just pretend that the thing that they used to do for 10 years up until right now was the exact opposite of what actually happened. And so that authoritative, authoritarianism really shows through. So the idea that this was a film funded by the Saudis, I mean, that is just ridiculous and anyone who's seen it would get it. But you mentioned left and right, and I can see, I suppose, why some on the right would at least instinctively

not want to engage with this, right? Well, yeah, I mean, again, when we were doing the test screenings, most of the criticisms that we got in the test screenings were from people who were on the right and said, listen, You need to tell me exactly what these men have done and you need to make them confess exactly what they've done. And my response to that was always like, listen, the US government had these men for a decade and a half and they have, with all the resources in the world, could not produce enough evidence to be on a shadow of it out to be able to charge and convict these men and specifically say what

they didn't do and the New York Times also did a podcast called Caliphate. I don't know if you're familiar with it. With all the resources in the New York Times, they did this amazing podcast, it won all these awards and later they found out that all of this was false and based on a lie. Huge controversy in the journalism world. Now if the New York Times, the US government, with a bazillion more resources than I have can't do this, then there's no way that I can. So I chose to, when you introduce the men or when you see them in one shot, we have the

dossier and what the American government says. They said, these are the things that we are accusing these men of doing. But then for the next 90 minutes of the film, the men tell their side. And if it's important to you, you can make up your own mind. But for me, the film wasn't about the what they did specifically, but the why. Because the what is done. Can't do anything about it now. But I think for me, what was really interesting for me is trying to figure out the why, because

the why is something that we can actually work with and move forward. No, I totally get it. I was mainly focusing on who are the sort of people that may be critical of it. And as I say, I can see why people on the right may have some reservations about it. Even though haven't seen the film, I think those reservations are unfounded. I think people on the right can watch that movie and enjoy it and think it's valuable and a great movie personally. But the left, why is the left upset about or people on the left? So I wouldn't say people.

It's a small group of, so the people who found out later that were attacking the film, two groups. One was a group of six documentary filmmakers who were Muslim and according to people at Sundance, they had applied to Sundance and not gotten in. And I think that for me, if you are attacking a film that you haven't seen and you're attacking person that you've never met, then the problem is not with me, with me or the film. What I mean by that is we talked before about having 20 years of kind of really, really, really being discriminated against the United States if you're Muslim. And so I can understand the knee-jerk reaction to this film. However, I also feel like in general, I think the people attacking the film hadn't seen it, and there was preconceived notions of what it was.

And I think we live in a world today where once you plant a flag, right? It's very few people have the courage to pick that up and say, I was wrong. But also, even they watch the film. But what is that criticism of the film? So it's kind of changed over time. It doesn't surprise me. So initially, the criticism was it was Saudi propaganda by the Saudis. And people saw the film and realized that's not true.

And then it was like, okay, the problem with this film, It was done by an all-white film team, and they just lucked into this, and they didn't know what they were doing. And then clearly no one did a background check on me or the team, because our executive producer is Muslim, a co-producer is Muslim, assistant editor is Muslim, and we consult with two Islamic scholars and an imam for this film, which is one of the reasons why it's such a nuanced, like really deep dive into this world. I don't think that could have been done without that input. What I'm trying to get at is why are people refusing to stop? show your film?

For the reason is show the film as fear. So, for example, when the attack started on the film and on me, again, it reminded me of a, so when I was a firefighter, I went on this call, and

this guy's kid had been seriously hurt. We show up and the mother's crying, the kid's bleeding out, but the father is irately pissed and he's yelling at us. What the fuck have you been? What fucking took you so long?

You're so fucking incompetent. Rage. Rage directed the people that were trying to help him. And I remember after we got the kid packed up and in the ambulance and they were out of earshot, one of the other firefighters said to me,

that guy's lucky I didn't fucking deck him. And our captain turned around and said something that I will never forget. It's like, listen, what you have to understand about the job that you do is you're meeting people at the most traumatic moment of their lives. And everyone responds differently to trauma.

Some people cry, some people laugh, and some people lash out in anger. And this is how this guy was processing his trauma. And so that always stuck with me. And so when the initial attacks on the film happened, I thought that's what it was. Right. So again, these people haven't seen the film. They have never met me. but the attacks in the film were so ferocious.

I was like, okay, I remember my captain saying, even though this man is angry at you, it's not about you. Because he's never met you. And that was what I was feeling at the time. But later, what I found out or what I came to kind of discover is that there's a group of people in the documentary world that believe that if you are not from a community, you should not be allowed to help.

This is not a new story to us. You basically, if you're not black, you can't make jokes about black people. If you're not this, you can't make movies about that. It's the identity, the infiltration of identity into everything we do now, right? And that's what you found yourself on. Yeah, that was quite a bit part of it. I think a lot of it also is with Sundance, the stakes are so high. They take few films.

And so when one of the few films that they programmed was directed by a white non-Muslim, and that was something that was a bitter pill for some people to swallow and called Sundance out on that quite ferociously on on on Twitter and after a while the pressure mounted to such a pex that Sundance eventually apologized for programming the film not once but twice and in doing so they sent a signal to the rest of the film industry that there was something innately wrong with this film because to my knowledge, I don't think Sundance has ever apologized for any film that they've programmed. And they've done a lot of really fucking edgy films that were very challenging and pissed off a lot of people. But by apologizing with this film, it's set a signal. And when that happened, South by Southwest pulled the film.

San Francisco documentary film festival pulled the film and also took back an award that they had given us, the Vanguard Award. And it just kind of had a knock on effect from there. And it basically, the film was blacklisted. And it wasn't until almost a year later when a very intrepid and well-respected journalist, investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, did a, I think, a four-month deep dive into this

for the New York Times. And it wound up on the front page of the Sunday Times. And that was the first time that people actually said, hey, maybe we should take a second look at that. What's really interesting though is actually he wasn't the first person to write about it, but he was the first time people took it seriously before right after Sundance. The lead film critic and the TV critic at the LA Times is Muslim, Lorraine L.E., brilliant woman. And she watched the film and she wrote this whole piece about like, listen, I'm a Muslim, I love

this film and here's all the reasons why we should not be canceling this film. This is a film that's going to do more good than harm. She was then attacked online by this group. And then another Muslim, who's a very well-respected investigative journalist, Zaid Jalani, I think is his last name. I think I'm pronouncing that right, probably not. He did a piece. I think the actual title of it was,

jihad rehab is about compassion, not bigotry. So he had two very well-respected Muslim journalists and film critics defending the film. But even with that, that one... Yeah, you're a white woman, though, so... That's how it works. It is how it works. Meg, what was the official line

that you were given as to why Sundance dropped your film as to why South by Southwest, San Francisco, all incredibly prestigious film festivals were people not aware, South by Southwest, Sundance, I mean, they're the very apex of documentary filmmaking. What was the official line that you were given as to why your film was no longer being screened?

Well, so Sundance did screen it, but then they apologized for it, which was basically like, once you do that, they apologize for programming, and showing to people and the quote was because showing the film hurt the Muslim community is what the reason they gave for apologizing. But the problem is that it just wasn't true. And they knew it wasn't true because while all the attacks were happening, Sundance before

the film premiere was starting to waver. And I asked someone that I really trusted. I don't know what to do. I think Sundance is actually going to pull this film before it ever premieres. And he said, like, well, there's a lot of people who are organized who haven't seen the film from the Muslim community, the filmmakers who are trying to pull it. You know loads of Muslims who've seen the film who've worked on the film, who love this film, have them write letters to Sundance, ask them to like tell Sundance why this is important

to them. And they did. And so Sundance knew that there was a large portion of the Muslim community who really supported this film, but because of these six filmmakers were so well organized and because Twitter is, you can go on Twitter and tweet 100 times a day and it seems like the whole world hates you, but it's actually only half a dozen people. And so the magic of social media is you can amplify a voice to a disproportionate level where it feels like a cacophony, but it's actually just a whisper. And what effect do you think that's going to have on documentary films

as a genre? Because to me, the best documentary films are films like yours. Well, you go and tackle a subject that is taboo, that all these types of narratives are spread about this particular issue and then you debunk them. Yeah. So what message does that send to the entire industry? Honestly, this is something that I've thought about for a while now, because I think initially you're always like, what about my film? What about my team?

What about all the people who worked on this? But then after a while, when you sit with it, you start thinking a little bit bigger. And for me, one of the reasons why I got into independent doctor, filmmaking is because there's no fucking way this film would ever have been made by a broadcaster or a studio. And what I love about the independent space, it allows you to dive into these subjects in a way that does challenge people's perspective, that does push the boundaries, that will ruffle feathers.

And, you know, the ultimate platform for that independent space, for that independent voice, is, where it used to be, Sundance. And so in terms of the whole freedom of expression movement, freedom of the arts movement, I naively thought, like, yes, there's all these other places that are clamping down, but we're independent filmmakers. We're independent. The whole reason we do this is because we're not bound by advertisers

or, you know, shareholders. And what I realized was that freedom of expression and freedom in the arts is not a hill to die on. It is the hill. It is the hill. And for me, early on, when a lot of people who I was working with and who was advising me said, just apologize, just apologize. And I asked, you know, what am I apologizing for? like what did I do wrong

if there's something in the film that is factually inaccurate and then we fucked up yes I will when you do something wrong you should apologize but for me apologizing or apologies are not performative like if I fuck you over I'm gonna pull you aside face to face and genuinely say like

I thought you deserved it I think that like for me you know I make mistakes all the time of course when you do something wrong you should apologize yes I get it but you didn't do anything wrong But when you don't, and the thing is I think what you don't realize is it wasn't just me right away saying I didn't do anything wrong. I literally took a step back. When we got all these attacks right after Sundance, I did some test screenings because I thought, shit.

When someone comes at you that hard, my instinct was, did I miss something? So we had three test screens right after Sundance. The first one was a group of people that were mixed in terms of like you had. So I asked them, I said, raise your hand if you've never heard about this film before. Half the people raise their hand. Okay, raise your hand. If you've gone on Twitter, you know, with a controversy, you've read some of these op-eds, the other half raised their hand.

They watched the film, I swear to God, down the line, everyone that came in the film cold love the film. Everything that went on Twitter first, how these issues with it. I was like, okay, this is really interesting. What's the, you know, they filled all these feedback forms. I said, what's the biggest issue of the film? This woman raised her hand and she said, clearly these men didn't want to be filmed and they were uncomfortable with you and they were scared for the life.

And again, we screened the film 30 times before San Anzac. That's not how they come across at all. And we never had that feedback. Yeah. That's not how they come across. It's not true. Yes, but they saw this somehow. So make, let me...

I just want to finish this. So I asked her, I was like, what in the film specifically gave you that impression? She said, well, it was clear as day in that scene where Nader goes on furlough, where his cousin says, you know, we took two buildings from you, but you took two countries from us. The whole entire time you're talking to his cousin, Nodder, He's not even looking at you. He's not even talking to. He's just looking straight ahead. So clearly he doesn't want to be filmed.

And clearly he doesn't want you to be filming him because he won't even look at you. I said, okay, would it change your mind at all to know that when you're making a documentary film, if there's a TV or radio on the background, you have to mute it. Otherwise you can't cut the footage together. And that particular time, Nodder,

who's a huge soccer fan, his favorite team was playing on the TV. And I'm filming this way, and the TV is behind me. So the reason he's staring straight ahead and not engaged because it's a tight game, that he can give two shits about my conversation about politics. He wants to know if he had's going to win. And what I mean by that is,

that experience of that test screening made me realize how strong confirmation bias can be. I, if I saw someone, you know, how do you say your first name again? My brain's for it. I know, I want you to fuck it up so I can get it back at you. It's Constantine.

Constantine, right? Constantin or Constantine? Constantin. Constantin. If I said Constantine was a secret not. You're like, no, I've known him from yours. He's fine. He's like a good guy. I mean, you wouldn't be the first person to say that, even though I'm Jewish.

But like a lot of people, like, said this enough times about you. I'd be like, hmm, and then I go to your house, and I see you have a guidebook for Germany. I was like, shit, that confirms it. I've heard all these things. And why would he have a guide from Germany? And it's just that that confirmation bias is so strong. So the next screening we did, I was like, okay, I want to do a screening where you want to find a group of people, they were going to be pissed off about this film.

It would be them. So young, place. politically active. So I went to the Yemeni Student Union and we screened the film. Cold. I didn't tell him the title. I didn't tell them anything about it. They loved it. One guy didn't. One guy said we were too soft on the Saudis and he wanted us to do in the whole entire history of the Middle East and how all the bad things Saudi Arabia did. I said maybe, but that's a different film. And then we did another test screening and we found the same thing. So once I did three test screenings and we had the same kind of positive reaction we did before Sundance, I then sent it to

to experts like Lawrence Wright, who also watch the film, people who are really experts in this field, and they all got back, said this film's brilliant. And so once I knew that, once I knew, for beyond a shout of a doubt, that I didn't miss something, that's when I was like, I'm not fucking apologizing for this shit,

because there's nothing wrong with this film. Well, I love what you said in the entire monologue there, and I love... Sorry, that was... No, it was great idea. I didn't use the word monologue sarcastically. I thought what you said was brilliant, and I agree with it completely.

particularly about freedom of expression and freedom in the arts, which is, as we talked before we started, why we started our show. You know, we were two comedians. And so the question, it's a leading question, but I'm curious to ask you anyway, have you considered the possibility

that attacks and criticism of your film are not well-intentioned? I know this is unlikely for you because you always want to understand the other people. But understanding other people doesn't necessarily mean giving them an undue benefit of the doubt. Uh, here's the thing. When I told you this, I thought that in the beginning, but since then I've done quite a lot of research. I was holding that belief until March, mid-March, when someone sent me a video. Um, so like I said, we'd reached out to this group and we didn't know who they were at first, but after Sundance, we did. And so my producer actually knew one of the leaders of this group. And he emailed her several times asking to meet her face to face and to have a human like conversation about,

their concerns with this film. Because all this stuff that they've been accused of could be answered if they either watch the film or talk to me about how the film was made. I think he reached out to her over a half dozen times. Every time she said, I don't want to talk to you. Like, I'm not going to help rehab this film. Now it's even bigger than your film.

It's not about your film anymore. It's about the movement. And so we were trying to reach out to him, and I thought this was all in good faith. Then mid-March comes around the same person goes on a panel discussion about my film. So a bunch of people got together and decided they needed to have a panel discussion

about how horrible my film was. And during the panel discussion, she says, we have all these questions and the filmmakers aren't talking to us. They won't answer any of our questions. They won't speak to us. So clearly, they're guilty of everything that we're accusing them of.

Now, once I saw that, my response was, you're trying to tell me that my ethics are in question. where you're supposed to be a truth teller, a journalist, a documentary filmmaker, and you're fucking straight up lying and misrepresenting both my film, my team, and me. And so that's when I stopped, what you were saying, being gracious and being trying to give someone the benefit of it out. Because I want everyone to do that for me.

And so I will give you the benefit of that out because I would want someone to do the same. Sure. But when I see you lying, flat out lying, misrepresenting. misrepresenting. When you attack the people, my team. So for example, they took screenshots of our credits and reached out to all the people in the industry in our credits and basically harassed them and threaten them and encouraged them to take their name off the film. And I had, you know, team members who received calls and who literally were crying for like an hour and a half afterwards. And so for me, there's a difference between criticizing a film, which is normal, or a book. Like, you just

you came out with a book. There's going to be people to read your book and not like it. They're going to go on Twitter and be like, in Chapter 4, he says this, and I disagree with that. That's fine. How did you know Chapter 4? It is literally Chapter 4? Is it another 4? And read Chapter 4.

And they were my tweets. But I think, like, but that's the deal that you make, right? Right. You write a book. You make a movie. You put it out in the public space. Part of that is you're going to get criticism. However, there's a difference between someone criticizing your work, which a lot of times actually

makes you a better writer. Right. makes you a better storyteller. And then trying to actually blacklist your book, trying to get it banned, or trying to basically cancel you and your whole entire career. I agree. And I think there's a difference between, you know, inquiry and inquisition.

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Where do you think the motivation comes from them? I think there's two different places. The two different groups that attacked the film are, one was a group of independent filmmakers, and I think there was people wanting their work to have that acknowledgement, wanting their work to be platformed by Sundance. And there was another group that I don't know if you're familiar with them, actually based in the UK called Cage.

And I talked to a lot of experts who know way more about that group than me, and they were described to me as they're an activist group in the UK, that one of the narratives they push is that everyone in Guantanua was completely innocent and never done anything wrong. And that's true for a lot of the people that went to Guantanamo, but that's not true for everyone, and that's not true for the people in my film. And I specifically cast these people because from their own mouth,

they let you know their level of involvement. And so basically this expert told me that this group will attack any book or movie that challenges that narrative ferociously with anything from legal threats to misinformation campaigns. They have a reputation according to all the experts that I took as being a very nefarious group. And the really scary thing was, is you had a group like that that was basically teaming up with a group of progressive independent filmmakers to attack a film. So it made for really strange bedfellows. And there's also the identity angle too. Yeah. Right?

Which is, I don't know where you are of this, but there's a big war going on in the sort of cultural space. Yeah. And you found yourself in the middle of that, it seems like, to me as well. Well, I think, I think, yes, but I think for me I was, I come from maybe a different kind of era where it doesn't matter if you're Russian or you're British or you're a Filipino, it's the work. Right, so you're racist like us, good.

No, but that's how it works. The work should, because there's, there's much... Of course, because the point is that we're all different people, right, but it's about the thing that you created, not your skin color. That's the idea, right? The idea for me is, is that you... Listen, when I first started interviewing these guys, if you go on look on paper, we have fucking nothing in common. So, for example, the guy that I kind of bonded with the quickest was Nodder. The reason for that is

when you're a firefighter, you see a lot of horrific shit. And you also get to be exposed to some of the worst things humans can do to one other on a pretty regular basis. And in order to make it through that job, you have to find a way to process

that stuff and to decompress and how firefighters, at least the ones I worked with, shows to do that was through humor. And not like the knock-knock joke. This is like politically, dark, politically incorrect humor that in any other environment would get you fired. But it was just a necessity sometimes to get through the day. And so that kind of humor I've only seen in one other profession. Military folks who've seen combat outside of that group, if you if you heard those

jokes, it would just never land right, right? You'd come off to some kind of like psychopath about joking about trauma and tragedy. And I never had that kind of interaction with someone else outside I had those two kind of group of friends of mine until I met Nauter. When I first met Nauter and we sat down one-on-one, he told me about his time in Guantanamo and things that were done to him. But he did this all with a smile on his face through bouts of uncontrolled laughter and through really, really dark jokes. And everyone in that room thought that Nodder was some kind of psychopath or there was just

a flat-out line, but I knew better. Not because I had a crystal ball, not because I was some kind of mind reader, but he told the same kind of jokes that my fighter, fighter buddies told me. So that meant to me that he was still processing this trauma. He was still like working through it. And so for me, he would tell a joke and I would tell one back. We found this like immediate rapport and connection over shared love of inappropriate humor, right? And the reason why I tell that story is because there were people in that room that on paper had way more in common with him. same sex, same religion, same ethnicity. But no one got that level except for me. And that was because we had a shared life experience of going through a really shitty situation

and having to use humor to deal with it. And what I mean by that is, humans are more than the boxes that you would check on some census. We're made up of so many plethora of other interesting things that they don't even have boxes for. And I think because of that, I'm able to have friends who aren't my same race or sexual identity or whatever. And that's what makes us beautiful as human beings.

As we're so, we have so many interests and so many experiences that make us who we are. And I think that sometimes we forget that. And there's a lot of people that I probably have more in common with on paper, but would not get the kind of jokes that Nodder did. He told me once, he was like, make, you should go on Guantanamo diet. You lose 40 pounds of one month. You look really good. He's talking about, you know, hunger strikes.

He's joking about hunger strikes. And I think that what you have to realize is that when you're talking about connecting with another human being, what you see on a paper is just, it literally is that deep in terms of what makes us who we are. And so when you're talking about identity, yes, I think there's something to be said about a story being told from an inside perspective, because that's a definitely different perspective that I couldn't give. But there's also a lot of validity to an outside perspective.

For example, I was a firefighter on 9-11. I had really strong feelings about this whole thing from the get-go and from a very different perspective. And when 9-11 happened, I saw my country as the victim. But then when I moved to the Middle East, I moved to Yemen, and I saw what my own government it was doing in the region. I looked at my country as a perpetrator. So I had like one foot in each camp.

So as I was making this film that was constantly on my mind and I was thinking about my firefighter buddies and what we went through. But I was also thinking about all the Yemeni friends that I made and family in Yemen and all the people that got disappeared or thrown in Guantanamo or like the random drone bombings. And I think that those two life experiences gave me a very unique. perspective, not just to make this film, but into this world. Yep. I don't know if that.

Did I ramble on to one? No, no, no. You said that beautifully. That's a brilliant summation of why you made this film, which was so powerful, and had such an impact on the audience who watched it, and particularly on me. So what does the future now hold for you, Meg, and your film? Yeah, so basically, we've pretty much been blacklisted for entire year and untouchable. Very fortunate that the film was talked about and vindicated on the cover of the New York Times

The National Review, the Atlantic, Sam Harris' podcast. And the whole reason why we're here is because right after it appeared on the cover of the New York Times, a bunch of people reached out and said, how can we help? This seems like a huge injustice. Do you have a GoFundMe? I'm like, I don't, but maybe I should make one. So I made a GoFundMe and I think we got like $3,000. I think in a thousand of that was probably from my family.

Like all scrumping together. And then I went on the Sam Harris podcast and had a long conversation with him about the film and what was happening to it. And he was very generous and put it up without a paywall. So anyone could kind of listen to it. And so people forward it on. It kind of went viral. And the GoFundMe went from 3,000. and three quarters of a million.

And so we were able to bring the film to theaters. And so right now what we're trying to do is bring the film to people, to be able for them to see it and make up their own mind. And one of the reasons why we're in Britain is we had loads of people reach out from the UK who were Sam Harris listeners or listen to the podcast and just were like, please, we'd love to see this film. So that was one reason. Another reason is we had someone from BAFTA reach out and they were curious.

And so I sent them a link. And they're like, this film was like BAFTA worthy. Like you should bring it over here. and like qualify it for BAFTA. Maybe the British public will give you a fair shake where the Americans didn't. And so we came over here and the reason why we're playing

at the Art House Crouch End in London is to basically for the BAFTA qualification. And so all this month until I think December 30th, BAFTA members are voting for best documentary, best foreign language film, best director, these kinds of things. I know it's a long shot, but one of the reasons we're doing this

is Sundance is such a well-respected entity by them apologizing for the film, made it radioactive. And even though we have all these other institutions like The New York Times and the Atlantic vindicating the film, unfortunately within the small fishbowl that is the film industry, film industry, we're still pretty radioactive. And so the only way to kind of undo that

is to have another entity within the film industry, validate the film. And so that's probably only going to be either the academy or BAFTA. And I'm not holding my breath for the academy. But I'm hoping I went into the BBC today to give an interview. And on the cover or on the cover of the side of the building, there was this quote. I think it said something like, it was something like.

Is it George Orwell? Yeah, it was a, if liberty is anything, it's telling people what they don't want to, telling people things they don't want to. here. And I saw that as kind of like an omen before I went into the interview. I was like, maybe this, maybe this country is different. Maybe they care about freedom of expression, freedom of the arts. We won't disabuse you of that. But the BBC has long since abandoned that. Anyway, Meg, it's a brilliant film. And I think the way you talk about these issues is really

important, actually. And I'm really, you know, I'm so grateful because on trigonometry, we often talk to people who've had things canceled or have been denied an opportunity because they said the wrong thing or they've got the wrong skin color, whatever. But actually, I'm just really grateful that we've encountered your film that otherwise we probably wouldn't have seen as a result of everything that's happening. So wish you all the best. Maybe at some point the film can be available online for people to pay and watch. Yeah. So my hope is we bring the film to the kind of game plan right now is try to get a bath to Fort. some kind of validation within the film industry and if from that hopefully that emboldens

some distributors or buyers or streamers or broadcasters to pick it up uh hint hint HBO Netflix but uh it's worthy of it yeah yeah i think that but also i've talked to a lot of people who've done self-distribution and my goal for the film is to have as many people watch it as possible because i do think that so many people who've seen the film in london have had such a huge positive impact from watching the film. And I think that it's a disservice that more people can't see it. And so when I was talking to my friend who does self-distribution, he said, listen, you're never going to get the audience size, putting on like some random website

with a paywall behind it that you will if it goes on Netflix or HBO or something like that. So the goal now is to try to get some kind of validation within the film world to be able to give those buyers maybe a little bit of bravery to be able to pick the film up. If that does not happen, plan B is to self-distribute online. So take the film out, show it to all these different kind of people in different places around the world, build an audience of people who've really seen the film. So that way when the film does go up online eventually, what happened at Sundance won't happen again. You won't have a bunch of people just telling you what the film is about and no one's seen it. You'd have people that have seen the film and can defend it when these lies kind of come up again, which they will.

And I think for me, because there's just me and staff, just the two of us, we don't have a huge team that takes time. So right now we're working to try to find a way to get it up online, which takes like a couple months, unfortunately, but it's a long process. It's around three months to get something up online like this. Well, if you do end up going in that self-distribution direction, we'd love to help in any way.

Yeah, that would be awesome. Of course, of course. I really think more people should see it. And I also think people who are as nuanced and as sensible about these things, you are. You know, this is the problem with the world that we live in at the moment. It is the sensible people. It is the people who are balanced. It is the people who are in the center that are the most vulnerable. If you made a film talking about how Muslims are all terrorists, there would be a large audience for that, and the fact that people on the left tried to cancel

you would only help you promote the film. And if you'd made a film about how all terrorists are actually innocent, there'd be a large audience on the other side of the political spectrum, and the fact that the right was attacking it would help you. But because you actually have taken a sensible and reasonable and balanced position, that's why you're left without a big tribe on your team, and that's why it's become as hard. And to me, that's the real tragedy of the cultural moment that we're in, is people like you who are prevented from making things that actually matter

and are actually good. And the knock-on effect, unfortunately, it has been even worse than that. So what I mean by that is, so when Sundance apologized for the film, there was another film at Sundance, the same year as me, called the exiles. And a different group then started to go after that group. And on Twitter, they cited their reason for them going after the exiles was that they cited the success that the group had come after me and garnished its anthropology. And so that inspired other people to try

to take out other films. The knock on effect being, at the end of the day, if you take it to this natural ending, then film festivals and programmers are only in their program safe films, which then does a disservice to the populace that don't get exposed to these other stories. stories. And one thing that's been extremely alarming for me is I spent over a half decade interviewing men who a lot of them ascribe to a certain ideology. You're either this type of specific Salafi Muslim, either believe these specific things and act this specific way. And if you deviate just a little bit, then you're not a real Muslim, then you're an infidel and you can be targeted. I then come back to my home country and I see something.

that's quite alarming. And it's a very similar kind of feel of an ideology, but in a different iteration. For example, you're either this type of progressive liberal. You have to believe these specific things of the day. But if you deviate just a little bit, then you're not a real liberal. You're not a real progressive. You're sexist, you're homophobic, you're racist, and you can be targeted. And for me, I've been in a world where that goes to its natural. fruition and it's scary and so seeing that kind of ideology and I do mean the word ideology because there are people who I know personally who I considered friends who didn't watch the film but then decided to go online and just badmouth it in me because they believed that that

was the right thing to do be it virtue signaling or be it they thought it was a righteous And what I mean by that is the reason why I don't think these people are evil or these people are mean or these people or bad people. It's just what you have to understand about the documentary community. It's made up of a lot of people who really want to do good in the world who really want to change the world to be a better place. The only downside of that is in that environment, it's also extremely easy to weaponize empathy. And so if you're trying to be supportive of a minority group and someone tells you that this, is hurtful, you believe that minority group and you want to help champion their cause. But the problem is, when you're a journalist and you're a truth teller, and you're a documentary filmmaker, before you jump on any bagwagon, your whole job is to do your due diligence. So if you can't even watch a two-hour film before chiming in, if that's too much energy for you to do, then you are not a journalist. You are an activist that writes.

You're not a documentarian. You're an activist with a camera. And so for me, I do draw the line between being a journalist, being a documentarian, and being an activist. And I think that those lines have been gotten blurred lately. And unfortunately, it's had a very negative knock on effect, both in journalism and in filmmaking. And so for me, what I hope is as if I'm able to turn this around.

If I'm able to get the film out there in a big way, in a successful way, then hopefully that will send a message to the industry, say, hey, before we bend the knee next time, maybe we don't want to have egg on our face, and maybe if we program a film, we stick by it. Maybe we would decide to be an EP on a film, we champion it. Because at the end of the day, I think that what's really scary to me

is that if you go back 30 years, you have Salman Rushdie, his book. I think the translators for his book were murdered, but bookstores still chose to put it on the bookshelf at a principal and sell it. Fast forward 30 years. You have a huge institution like Sundance or a multi-millionaire many times over like Abigail Disney.

And a few tweets and well-written letters and a campaign causes them to capitulate. And these are supposed to be the institutions and the industry leaders that are supposed to safeguard against that. And if those are no longer working, because at the end of the day, you're always going to have people attack your work. That's not new. But what is new is these institutions and the leaderships in these industries aren't leading. And what I mean by that is, in the fire service, when you're the captain, you have more responsibility than a firefighter.

You take the hit. You protect your crew. I was a filmmaker that was accepted into Sundance. And instead of sunnancing protecting the filmmaker that they programmed, they threw that filmmaker under the bus and that film and everyone involved in it. And to me, that's not leadership. And if you're not leading in the industry, then you're basically devaluing the value that you say you add.

And at the end of the day, someone once told me the saying, like, I said the only thing more dangerous than a person, with limitless resources and more money than God is someone who has nothing else to lose. At this point, I've got nothing to lose. That's fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Meg. It's been an absolute pleasure.

If people want to find you online, if they want to find out more about you, where is the best place to do that? Yeah. So we have a GoFundMe page that we put updates all the time. So if you go to GoFundMe, just search Jihad Rehab or or make, Makeer GoFund me. We have a website GheadRehab.com where we put a bunch of screenings and all those dates as well and they can follow me on Twitter at M-E-I-G-H-O-N or makesmaker on Twitter. I think that I think you can search for that.

I'm kind of like not really a Twitter expert. I fucked it up a couple times. I'm still trying to learn up not a social media expert at all. Yeah. And then I think if people have any leads in terms of like if there's a theater near you or a film festival that you think would be brave enough or if you are. in the industry or you are a BAFTA member oh that's one thing I should say for people in the in the UK who are BAFTA members you can watch it so it's on online right now but only for BAFTA members and only

for academy voters they have this very like huge security protected streaming things that are available to those members and they can watch the film and then make up your own their own mind and that would be really helpful for more people as many people to see this film as possible well we wish you all the best and like I said if there's anything we can do for you in the future we'd be very happy to do that with that we've got one final question for you which is the same as always what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be i think one thing that i've been kind of talking about lately um and really appreciating is the power of i don't know but i mean by that is i've had a lot of discussions with people lately about a plethora of

things and there seems to be a certitude about things that i've I know that they don't know a lot about. And what I mean by that is, the other day I was with some friends, and I gave him a hypothetical scenario. I said, what would you say if I told you someone at a major newspaper tweeted a sexist joke? What should happen to that person? That's a very limited amount of information.

And so I went around the table and I asked my friends. None of my friends asked for more information. They all had their, you know, judged during sentence. was he should be fired, another one was he should be suspended without pay, another one he should be demoted. I said, okay, what about if I told you that this journalist was in the business for 30 years, multiple Pulitzer Prizes, multiple awards, and like Woodward and Bernstein level? And what if I told you that the whole Twitter thing that he was doing was literally just mandated

a month ago where his paper said, you must tweet at least twice a week, something at order in order to like meet your minimum requirement. And what if I also told you told you that that tweet was sent it two in the morning on a Friday night for someone who was, you know, in his late 60s, probably out at the bar drinking? What if I told you he thought he was sending a private message to a friend on Twitter and not posting it publicly? Does that change how you would punish this person? And of course they all went around and changed their answer. And then what I realized is when you give people people,

facts, without context, it's not truth, it's propaganda. And so what I really want people to really kind of drill down on is context, because context is everything. And a lot of times we see videos online that are 10, 20 seconds long, and we come in and we judge right away. But what we're missing is the context, because context will tell you more what you need to know. And without that, I would employ people to just take a beat. Because having been gotten a lot of hate because there was no context, I think that it's imperative that people approach situations with inquiry rather than inquisition and with curiosity rather than judgment.

And I would also implore people to be not just kind to one another, but give people the benefit of the doubt. We're all trying to do the best that we can. and none of us are inherently evil people. We all think we're doing the right thing. So I think the one thing that I would say is, I think people need to seek out context a lot more than we are. I like you, Meg.

I think it fit very well in like the late 1990s, early 90s. That's your era. Because that world, I'm afraid, I wish it were here, but it ain't. But you're right. Of course you're right. And that's a great note to finish on. We'll ask you a couple of questions for our locals. Meg Schmaker, that's us. Thank you very much.

Brilliant. Absolute pleasure. So I went to go interviewed ahead of the FBI thinking he was going to say this is some kind of dog-a-pony show. This is like, just a PR stunt. But he said, and I was really surprised he said that he said, we fucking love this program. And we wish we could do something like this in the States. And I was like, well, why can't we? Two reasons he said.

One.