1
00:00:04,300 --> 00:00:06,510
This is Aby Osceola.

2
00:00:07,640 --> 00:00:09,850
She is from the Seminole Nation.

3
00:00:11,930 --> 00:00:15,180
Her story goes deep into
the history of this continent.

4
00:00:17,390 --> 00:00:19,510
She reminds me of my mother.

5
00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:24,430
But despite the resemblance,
they each come,

6
00:00:24,510 --> 00:00:27,430
although through
not totally unrelated events,

7
00:00:27,510 --> 00:00:30,050
from different strands
of history.

8
00:00:33,970 --> 00:00:36,260
Aby's role is played by Caisa,

9
00:00:36,350 --> 00:00:37,600
a Swedish actress

10
00:00:37,680 --> 00:00:40,720
of both Colombian
and Native American ancestry.

11
00:00:44,350 --> 00:00:45,470
It is said

12
00:00:45,550 --> 00:00:48,260
that the Seminole Nation
never signed any treaty

13
00:00:48,350 --> 00:00:51,140
with the United States
government.

14
00:00:51,220 --> 00:00:55,180
That's why they are called
"the invincible tribe."

15
00:00:57,350 --> 00:01:00,510
But for now,
it is about another story.

16
00:01:04,760 --> 00:01:08,100
In that larger story,
there are three words

17
00:01:08,180 --> 00:01:11,550
that summarize
the whole history of humanity:

18
00:01:11,640 --> 00:01:15,640
civilization, colonization,
extermination.

19
00:01:17,390 --> 00:01:21,220
These words run forcibly
through Western world history,

20
00:01:21,300 --> 00:01:25,430
the same way they drill
to the core of U.S. history.

21
00:01:27,890 --> 00:01:30,550
And it's not so much
about winners and losers,

22
00:01:30,640 --> 00:01:32,970
or between conqueror
or conquered,

23
00:01:33,050 --> 00:01:36,970
nor between colonist
and colonized.

24
00:01:37,050 --> 00:01:40,640
The forces involved here
are less visible than gunfire,

25
00:01:40,720 --> 00:01:44,100
class property,
or political crusades.

26
00:01:44,180 --> 00:01:45,970
But they are no less powerful.

27
00:01:56,720 --> 00:01:59,600
Entire civilizations
in the Western Hemisphere

28
00:01:59,680 --> 00:02:02,510
were wantonly destroyed,
setting the Western world

29
00:02:02,600 --> 00:02:04,930
on a path of greed
and destruction.

30
00:02:06,010 --> 00:02:08,140
For history
is the fruit of power,

31
00:02:08,220 --> 00:02:10,640
and power is crucial
to the story,

32
00:02:10,720 --> 00:02:12,890
which then always becomes,
at best,

33
00:02:12,970 --> 00:02:14,970
a story about those who won.

34
00:02:16,050 --> 00:02:19,350
And clearly,
this needs to be challenged...

35
00:02:35,800 --> 00:02:38,260
...for it is
about who we are today.

36
00:02:38,350 --> 00:02:40,720
About what we have become
as a people.

37
00:02:40,800 --> 00:02:43,220
And on what side
of history we are.

38
00:02:43,300 --> 00:02:44,800
What side of the truth.

39
00:02:47,850 --> 00:02:49,800
A certain view
of history contends

40
00:02:49,890 --> 00:02:52,640
that the historical narrative
is just one fiction

41
00:02:52,720 --> 00:02:54,010
among others.

42
00:02:55,760 --> 00:02:56,800
It is not.

43
00:02:56,890 --> 00:03:00,430
There is no such thing
as alternative facts.

44
00:04:31,010 --> 00:04:32,850
This is the day we fight.

45
00:04:58,600 --> 00:05:00,430
Chieftain Yah-Ho-Cuchee,

46
00:05:01,260 --> 00:05:02,760
we must leave.

47
00:05:02,850 --> 00:05:05,640
We are the ones
who arrived latest here.

48
00:05:05,720 --> 00:05:06,800
Kwame-Micco,

49
00:05:07,850 --> 00:05:09,350
we are family now.

50
00:05:09,430 --> 00:05:11,930
-You stay.
-Yes.

51
00:05:12,010 --> 00:05:14,600
But family is not meant
to bring harm.

52
00:05:14,680 --> 00:05:17,010
They bring harm to our nation.

53
00:05:17,100 --> 00:05:18,300
Not you.

54
00:05:19,010 --> 00:05:20,930
It's better we surrender.

55
00:05:21,010 --> 00:05:24,180
So you and your people
can have time to run and hide.

56
00:05:25,760 --> 00:05:27,300
This is our land.

57
00:05:28,300 --> 00:05:30,140
The white man wants our land.

58
00:05:31,140 --> 00:05:32,510
We will fight.

59
00:05:33,140 --> 00:05:34,220
Together.

60
00:05:34,300 --> 00:05:36,180
Or we will die together.

61
00:05:37,220 --> 00:05:39,430
And it will be a great honor.

62
00:05:39,510 --> 00:05:41,180
Hink-lah-mas-tchay.

63
00:05:41,970 --> 00:05:43,600
All is well, then.

64
00:06:26,180 --> 00:06:28,470
I do not want to spill
Seminole blood,

65
00:06:29,050 --> 00:06:30,510
kill Seminole children,

66
00:06:31,350 --> 00:06:32,680
Seminole women.

67
00:06:33,640 --> 00:06:35,930
Give us back
the American property you stole

68
00:06:36,010 --> 00:06:38,470
from our good fellowmen
planters and settlers,

69
00:06:38,550 --> 00:06:40,470
and I'll let you move
to the Indian Territory

70
00:06:40,550 --> 00:06:43,300
the U.S. government
has provided for your people.

71
00:06:43,390 --> 00:06:46,100
You call human beings
your property?

72
00:06:46,640 --> 00:06:47,890
They're slaves.

73
00:06:48,970 --> 00:06:50,550
You steal land.

74
00:06:51,220 --> 00:06:52,890
You steal life.

75
00:06:52,970 --> 00:06:55,050
You steal humans.

76
00:06:55,140 --> 00:06:57,680
What kind of species are you?

77
00:06:57,760 --> 00:06:59,890
-This kind.

78
00:07:56,930 --> 00:08:01,100
"All Jews and Negroes
ought really to be exterminated.

79
00:08:01,180 --> 00:08:03,010
We shall be victorious.

80
00:08:03,100 --> 00:08:06,180
The other races will disappear
and die out,"

81
00:08:06,260 --> 00:08:11,050
said the White Aryan Resistance
in 1991, in Sweden.

82
00:08:13,640 --> 00:08:17,050
2016, 25 years later,

83
00:08:17,140 --> 00:08:19,220
a well-known Swedish
department store

84
00:08:19,300 --> 00:08:22,600
wanted something new
for its Christmas catalog.

85
00:08:27,600 --> 00:08:29,220
The store wanted to pay tribute

86
00:08:29,300 --> 00:08:33,510
to what Sweden is today:
a largely multicultural society.

87
00:08:38,390 --> 00:08:40,760
To wear St. Lucia's white gown,

88
00:08:40,850 --> 00:08:44,140
a popular
18th century tradition,

89
00:08:44,220 --> 00:08:47,760
it chose a nine-year-old
dark-skinned boy.

90
00:08:47,850 --> 00:08:51,510
The innocent boy
had a shy smile on his lips.

91
00:08:51,600 --> 00:08:54,640
It was the smile,
more than anything else,

92
00:08:54,720 --> 00:08:56,890
that was not taken well.

93
00:08:56,970 --> 00:09:00,600
In Sweden, one of the most
tolerant countries in Europe,

94
00:09:00,680 --> 00:09:02,970
like everywhere else
in the world,

95
00:09:03,050 --> 00:09:05,350
hate is on the rise again.

96
00:09:20,600 --> 00:09:22,680
We have people
coming into the country,

97
00:09:22,760 --> 00:09:25,550
or trying to come in,
we're stopping a lot of them.

98
00:09:25,640 --> 00:09:27,180
These aren't people,

99
00:09:27,850 --> 00:09:28,970
these are animals.

100
00:09:34,720 --> 00:09:37,720
This is not immigration,
this is invasion.

101
00:09:41,350 --> 00:09:42,800
You need to be afraid,

102
00:09:42,890 --> 00:09:45,050
because they are coming
for you.

103
00:09:45,140 --> 00:09:47,850
We have to do something
to increase our birth rate,

104
00:09:47,930 --> 00:09:50,800
or the vacuum that's created
will be filled by people

105
00:09:50,890 --> 00:09:53,600
that don't believe in our values
here in Western civilization,

106
00:09:53,680 --> 00:09:55,510
and we're seeing it happen
in the Netherlands

107
00:09:55,600 --> 00:09:58,300
and all across Europe,
and that's a lot about...

108
00:09:58,390 --> 00:10:02,300
The white establishment
is now the minority.

109
00:10:13,260 --> 00:10:16,260
We wanted
to do a good impression.

110
00:10:16,350 --> 00:10:17,720
It's respectful.

111
00:10:32,850 --> 00:10:36,350
You will not replace us!

112
00:10:36,430 --> 00:10:39,470
You will not replace us!

113
00:10:39,550 --> 00:10:42,140
You will not replace us!

114
00:10:42,220 --> 00:10:45,260
You will not replace us!

115
00:10:58,300 --> 00:11:01,640
In reaffirming
the greatness of our nation,

116
00:11:01,720 --> 00:11:04,640
we understand
that greatness is never a given.

117
00:11:05,430 --> 00:11:07,050
It must be earned.

118
00:11:07,140 --> 00:11:11,430
It is time for us to realize
that we are too great a nation

119
00:11:11,510 --> 00:11:14,430
to limit ourselves
to small dreams.

120
00:11:16,430 --> 00:11:18,050
Much time has passed

121
00:11:18,140 --> 00:11:20,970
since Jefferson arrived
for his inauguration.

122
00:11:21,050 --> 00:11:23,800
The years
and changes accumulate.

123
00:11:23,890 --> 00:11:27,600
But the themes of this day
he would know:

124
00:11:27,680 --> 00:11:30,470
our nation's
grand story of courage

125
00:11:30,550 --> 00:11:33,300
and its simple dream of dignity.

126
00:11:33,390 --> 00:11:38,050
We are one nation,
and their pain is our pain.

127
00:11:38,140 --> 00:11:40,300
Theirs dreams are our dreams,

128
00:11:40,390 --> 00:11:45,100
and their success
will be our success.

129
00:11:45,180 --> 00:11:48,760
Though we march
to the music of our time,

130
00:11:48,850 --> 00:11:51,510
our mission is timeless.

131
00:11:52,430 --> 00:11:53,760
Together,

132
00:11:53,850 --> 00:11:56,850
we will make America
strong again.

133
00:11:56,930 --> 00:12:00,010
We will make America
wealthy again.

134
00:12:00,100 --> 00:12:03,180
We will make America
proud again.

135
00:12:03,260 --> 00:12:06,220
We will make America safe again.

136
00:12:06,300 --> 00:12:08,350
And, yes, together,

137
00:12:08,430 --> 00:12:11,930
we will make
America great again.

138
00:12:12,010 --> 00:12:16,600
-Thank you. God bless you.
And God bless America.

139
00:12:18,680 --> 00:12:19,850
Thank you.

140
00:12:20,640 --> 00:12:22,510
God bless America.

141
00:12:31,510 --> 00:12:33,260
We sometimes make mistakes.

142
00:12:33,350 --> 00:12:34,930
We have not been perfect.

143
00:12:35,010 --> 00:12:38,260
But if you look at, uh,
the track record, as you say,

144
00:12:38,350 --> 00:12:41,050
America was not born
as a colonial power.

145
00:12:44,180 --> 00:12:46,970
Well, actually, it was.

146
00:12:47,050 --> 00:12:50,600
America was born
as a colonial power.

147
00:12:50,680 --> 00:12:53,890
And this fact
is a difficult one to admit,

148
00:12:53,970 --> 00:12:58,350
for it bears the fatal capacity
to disrupt the core story

149
00:12:58,430 --> 00:13:00,260
we have been told
all these years

150
00:13:00,350 --> 00:13:02,720
and the very foundation
of this country.

151
00:13:04,050 --> 00:13:06,140
It's not an easy story to tell.

152
00:13:06,220 --> 00:13:09,010
Because the story
still continues today.

153
00:13:09,100 --> 00:13:13,350
A story of the search for purity
and for a godly kingdom.

154
00:13:13,430 --> 00:13:16,180
A story of survival
and violence.

155
00:13:16,260 --> 00:13:19,930
A search for origin,
400 years after the voyage

156
00:13:20,010 --> 00:13:22,850
that is said
to have made the nation.

157
00:13:26,720 --> 00:13:29,600
1962,
Brooklyn, New York.

158
00:13:31,300 --> 00:13:34,600
This is me in the middle.
The author.

159
00:13:34,680 --> 00:13:37,350
I'm not sure
how I ended up here,

160
00:13:37,430 --> 00:13:39,680
although I might have
my suspicions.

161
00:13:42,510 --> 00:13:45,430
This is British explorer
Henry Morton Stanley

162
00:13:45,510 --> 00:13:46,930
on the Congo river.

163
00:13:48,300 --> 00:13:50,430
This is me with Henry.

164
00:13:52,470 --> 00:13:53,720
My parents are working there

165
00:13:53,800 --> 00:13:56,550
for the newly independent
Republic of Congo,

166
00:13:56,640 --> 00:13:59,300
like a few hundred
other Haitian nationals

167
00:13:59,390 --> 00:14:01,800
hired by the UN
to replace the Belgians

168
00:14:01,890 --> 00:14:03,510
who had fled
their former colony.

169
00:14:27,850 --> 00:14:30,010
New York, 1964.

170
00:14:31,390 --> 00:14:33,140
My brother Hébert and me

171
00:14:33,220 --> 00:14:37,260
on our way to public school
P.S. 138 in Brooklyn,

172
00:14:37,350 --> 00:14:39,510
between Nostrand and Rogers.

173
00:14:41,050 --> 00:14:43,390
First time in the snow.

174
00:14:43,470 --> 00:14:46,720
My mother and my cousin
came down for the picture

175
00:14:46,800 --> 00:14:48,680
before going
to their factory jobs

176
00:14:48,760 --> 00:14:50,350
in the Garment District.

177
00:14:52,010 --> 00:14:53,510
On our way to Congo again,

178
00:14:53,600 --> 00:14:56,970
after General Mobutu's
1965 coup.

179
00:14:58,680 --> 00:15:00,100
Despite his crimes,

180
00:15:00,180 --> 00:15:03,640
Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku
Ngbendu Wa Za Banga

181
00:15:03,720 --> 00:15:06,350
would remain a welcome guest
everywhere

182
00:15:06,430 --> 00:15:07,930
for the next 30 years.

183
00:15:09,180 --> 00:15:12,350
It helps when you are one
of the richest men in the world

184
00:15:12,430 --> 00:15:16,930
and you control an extravagant
assortment of copper, uranium,

185
00:15:17,010 --> 00:15:19,220
cobalt, diamonds, and gold.

186
00:15:24,180 --> 00:15:27,680
We traveled a lot,
because of another dictator.

187
00:15:40,720 --> 00:15:43,260
But it doesn't feel
like an exile.

188
00:15:43,850 --> 00:15:45,680
I am with family.

189
00:15:45,760 --> 00:15:48,510
I am an immigrant
from a "shithole country,"

190
00:15:48,600 --> 00:15:49,510
like he said.

191
00:16:19,720 --> 00:16:22,510
There is this one short,
simple sentence

192
00:16:22,600 --> 00:16:25,260
that sums up the history
of the Western world

193
00:16:25,350 --> 00:16:27,640
and the European continent.

194
00:16:30,970 --> 00:16:33,470
At the turn of the 20th century,

195
00:16:33,550 --> 00:16:36,100
a Polish writer
named Joseph Conrad,

196
00:16:36,180 --> 00:16:39,390
who often thought in French
but wrote in English,

197
00:16:39,470 --> 00:16:41,640
succeeded in putting it
into words

198
00:16:41,720 --> 00:16:45,140
in his novel entitled
Heart of Darkness.

199
00:16:46,600 --> 00:16:48,760
This sentence, spoken by Kurtz,

200
00:16:48,850 --> 00:16:51,300
the main character
of Conrad's book,

201
00:16:51,390 --> 00:16:53,720
will be the last
on the civilizing task

202
00:16:53,800 --> 00:16:57,350
of the white man
among the savages of Africa.

203
00:16:57,430 --> 00:17:00,800
And this sentence
says nothing about Europe

204
00:17:00,890 --> 00:17:03,470
as the original home
of humanism,

205
00:17:03,550 --> 00:17:05,720
democracy, and welfare.

206
00:17:07,510 --> 00:17:12,050
It says nothing about anything
to be rightly proud of.

207
00:17:12,140 --> 00:17:15,470
It simply tells the truth
we prefer to forget.

208
00:17:36,010 --> 00:17:38,760
The English word, "exterminate,"

209
00:17:38,850 --> 00:17:40,550
from the Latin "extermino,"

210
00:17:40,640 --> 00:17:44,680
means "drive over the border
to death, banish for life."

211
00:17:49,220 --> 00:17:52,640
The object of the action
is seldom a single individual,

212
00:17:52,720 --> 00:17:56,180
but usually whole groups,
such as quitch grass,

213
00:17:56,720 --> 00:17:57,720
rats,

214
00:17:58,720 --> 00:17:59,850
or people.

215
00:18:01,350 --> 00:18:02,890
The term "brutes," of course,

216
00:18:02,970 --> 00:18:06,260
reduces the object
to its mere animal status.

217
00:18:12,550 --> 00:18:14,800
Africans have been called beasts

218
00:18:14,890 --> 00:18:18,010
ever since their very first
contact with Europeans,

219
00:18:18,100 --> 00:18:21,510
who described them
as "rude and beastly."

220
00:18:47,640 --> 00:18:49,850
It is in the 17th century

221
00:18:49,930 --> 00:18:52,430
that Thomas Hobbes
said to a friend,

222
00:18:54,010 --> 00:18:56,800
"Some men are
of so cruel a nature

223
00:18:56,890 --> 00:18:59,010
as to take a delight
in killing men

224
00:18:59,100 --> 00:19:01,260
more than you should
to kill a bird."

225
00:19:06,430 --> 00:19:08,850
This is Sven Lindqvist,

226
00:19:08,930 --> 00:19:11,350
a man I now call a friend.

227
00:19:11,430 --> 00:19:15,470
He wrote the book entitled
Exterminate All the Brutes.

228
00:19:16,260 --> 00:19:17,970
This is also his story.

229
00:19:22,970 --> 00:19:24,300
Sven told me...

230
00:19:25,640 --> 00:19:28,890
in an Algerian town
in the desert, named Salah,

231
00:19:28,970 --> 00:19:32,050
the Scottish explorer
Alexander Gordon Laing

232
00:19:32,140 --> 00:19:33,850
was attacked and robbed.

233
00:19:35,760 --> 00:19:38,890
He had five saber cuts
on the crown of his head

234
00:19:38,970 --> 00:19:41,800
and three on the left temple.

235
00:19:41,890 --> 00:19:45,720
The one on his left cheekbone
fractured his jawbone

236
00:19:45,800 --> 00:19:47,300
and slit his ear.

237
00:19:47,390 --> 00:19:51,220
A dreadful gash in his neck
scratched his windpipe,

238
00:19:51,300 --> 00:19:52,800
and so on.

239
00:19:52,890 --> 00:19:56,550
Laing was attacked
in January 1825.

240
00:19:56,640 --> 00:19:58,720
But fear is timeless.

241
00:19:59,850 --> 00:20:03,180
"A man may destroy everything
within himself,"

242
00:20:03,260 --> 00:20:05,220
wrote Conrad.

243
00:20:05,300 --> 00:20:08,890
"Love and hate and belief,
and even doubt.

244
00:20:08,970 --> 00:20:10,760
But as long
as he clings to life,

245
00:20:10,850 --> 00:20:12,850
-he cannot destroy fear."

246
00:20:15,890 --> 00:20:18,140
Fear always remains.

247
00:20:19,640 --> 00:20:23,970
Perhaps in fear we seek
an increased perception of life,

248
00:20:24,050 --> 00:20:27,300
a more compelling
form of existence.

249
00:20:27,390 --> 00:20:31,050
I am frightened,
therefore I exist.

250
00:20:31,140 --> 00:20:34,390
The more frightened I am,
the more I exist?

251
00:20:45,680 --> 00:20:48,890
There was a land named
Tsenacommacah,

252
00:20:48,970 --> 00:20:52,550
which means
"densely inhabited land."

253
00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:56,350
It was a powerful confederacy
of more than 30 nations

254
00:20:56,430 --> 00:20:58,100
led by Wahunsonacock,

255
00:20:58,180 --> 00:21:01,180
better known
as the father of Pocahontas.

256
00:21:03,220 --> 00:21:06,010
On May 14th, 1607,

257
00:21:06,100 --> 00:21:08,600
a hundred and four
English men and boys

258
00:21:08,680 --> 00:21:10,100
landed on Tsenacommacah,

259
00:21:10,180 --> 00:21:12,140
on the bank
of the Powhatan River,

260
00:21:12,220 --> 00:21:15,510
and decided to establish
a settlement.

261
00:21:15,600 --> 00:21:17,760
But soon enough,
it was very clear

262
00:21:17,850 --> 00:21:19,800
that they lacked a supply line

263
00:21:19,890 --> 00:21:23,260
and proved unable
or unwilling to grow crops

264
00:21:23,350 --> 00:21:25,930
or hunt
for their own sustenance.

265
00:21:27,050 --> 00:21:28,760
Military leader John Smith

266
00:21:28,850 --> 00:21:31,100
threatened to kill
all the women and children

267
00:21:31,180 --> 00:21:34,720
if the Powhatans would not feed
and clothe the settlers,

268
00:21:34,800 --> 00:21:37,800
as well as provide them
with land and labor.

269
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:41,050
The leader
of the Powhatan Confederacy,

270
00:21:41,140 --> 00:21:44,100
Wahunsonacock,
entreated the invaders.

271
00:21:45,350 --> 00:21:46,970
"Why should you take by force

272
00:21:47,050 --> 00:21:49,850
that from us
which you can have by love?

273
00:21:49,930 --> 00:21:53,890
Why should you destroy us
who have provided you with food?

274
00:21:54,550 --> 00:21:56,510
What can you get by war?

275
00:21:56,600 --> 00:21:59,220
What is the cause
of your jealousy?

276
00:21:59,300 --> 00:22:00,890
You see us unarmed

277
00:22:00,970 --> 00:22:03,050
and willing to supply
your wants,

278
00:22:03,140 --> 00:22:05,220
if you will come
in a friendly manner,

279
00:22:05,300 --> 00:22:09,260
and not with swords and guns,
as to invade an enemy."

280
00:22:10,970 --> 00:22:13,550
Smith's threat was carried out.

281
00:22:13,640 --> 00:22:17,390
After all, he worked for
the Virginia Company of London,

282
00:22:17,470 --> 00:22:19,140
a for-profit enterprise.

283
00:22:22,010 --> 00:22:26,430
War against the Powhatans
started in August 1609,

284
00:22:26,510 --> 00:22:29,390
and their elimination
was the order of the day.

285
00:24:18,260 --> 00:24:19,890
Sven tells me,

286
00:24:19,970 --> 00:24:21,720
"You already know enough.

287
00:24:22,350 --> 00:24:23,510
So do I.

288
00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:25,550
It is not knowledge we lack.

289
00:24:25,640 --> 00:24:26,680
What is missing

290
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:29,050
is the courage
to understand what we know

291
00:24:29,140 --> 00:24:30,550
and to draw conclusions."

292
00:24:34,140 --> 00:24:36,890
For we know now
when the story started.

293
00:24:36,970 --> 00:24:39,720
We know now
when race, color, and blood

294
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,850
became institutionalized
for the first time.

295
00:24:45,140 --> 00:24:47,550
We saw it taking form
with the Crusades

296
00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:50,720
when the Christian kingdoms
of Northern Spain,

297
00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:52,550
together with
the church leadership

298
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:54,470
and other European monarchies,

299
00:24:54,550 --> 00:24:57,720
decided to take over
Muslim-controlled trade routes

300
00:24:57,800 --> 00:24:59,140
to the Far East.

301
00:25:17,850 --> 00:25:20,100
The ultimate goal
of the church

302
00:25:20,180 --> 00:25:21,720
and the European rulers

303
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:25,760
was never just about
winning souls to Christianity.

304
00:25:25,850 --> 00:25:28,300
It was also about
gaining wealth and power

305
00:25:28,390 --> 00:25:30,140
through annihilation.

306
00:25:34,220 --> 00:25:36,760
In 1478, the pope approved

307
00:25:36,850 --> 00:25:39,510
the establishment
of the Spanish Inquisition,

308
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:42,850
which had to investigate
the cleanliness of blood

309
00:25:42,930 --> 00:25:44,890
of Moorish and Jewish converts.

310
00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:49,510
Clean blood
was Christian European.

311
00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:53,300
Unclean blood was savage,
non-Christian.

312
00:25:54,180 --> 00:25:55,430
This is the origin

313
00:25:55,510 --> 00:25:58,050
of the ideology
of white supremacy.

314
00:26:01,010 --> 00:26:02,760
For the first time in the world,

315
00:26:02,850 --> 00:26:05,760
the concept of race
based on blood

316
00:26:05,850 --> 00:26:07,510
was used as law.

317
00:26:12,350 --> 00:26:15,640
White supremacy made it possible
for Europeans

318
00:26:15,720 --> 00:26:17,300
to think it was acceptable

319
00:26:17,390 --> 00:26:20,720
to enslave or exterminate
other peoples.

320
00:26:22,050 --> 00:26:27,220
That led to the mass deportation
of Jews from Spain in 1492,

321
00:26:27,300 --> 00:26:30,720
and Muslims
in the following decades.

322
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:33,260
It happened with
the forced deportation

323
00:26:33,350 --> 00:26:35,390
of more than
ten million Africans

324
00:26:35,470 --> 00:26:37,430
from the human motherland.

325
00:26:38,220 --> 00:26:40,050
It happened to Native peoples

326
00:26:40,140 --> 00:26:44,100
in what came to be called
the United States of America.

327
00:26:44,180 --> 00:26:48,600
And again, in the 20th century,
without any contrition,

328
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:51,050
it happened
during the Holocaust.

329
00:27:03,350 --> 00:27:05,720
The road to Auschwitz was paved

330
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:08,430
in the earliest days
of Christendom.

331
00:27:09,100 --> 00:27:11,350
And this road also leads

332
00:27:11,430 --> 00:27:13,600
straight to the heart
of America.

333
00:28:23,430 --> 00:28:25,260
The Germans have been made

334
00:28:25,350 --> 00:28:28,260
the sole scapegoats
for ideas of extermination

335
00:28:28,350 --> 00:28:31,300
that are actually
a common European heritage.

336
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:36,350
There was a discussion
in Germany in the '70s

337
00:28:36,430 --> 00:28:37,640
over the question,

338
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:41,850
"Is the Nazi extermination
of the Jews unique or not?"

339
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:48,100
All historical events
are unique

340
00:28:48,180 --> 00:28:50,600
and not copies of each other.

341
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:52,930
But they can be compared.

342
00:28:53,010 --> 00:28:55,220
There are similarities
and differences

343
00:28:55,300 --> 00:28:57,390
between the extermination
of the Jews

344
00:28:57,470 --> 00:28:59,260
and other mass murders.

345
00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:11,050
I have seen these images before.

346
00:29:12,470 --> 00:29:14,930
They are always the same.

347
00:29:15,010 --> 00:29:19,260
Everywhere, in ancient
and modern times.

348
00:29:19,350 --> 00:29:22,140
The ridicule of their display.

349
00:29:22,220 --> 00:29:26,050
It is their banality
that gets me every time.

350
00:30:00,470 --> 00:30:02,010
No one points out

351
00:30:02,100 --> 00:30:03,800
that during Hitler's childhood,

352
00:30:03,890 --> 00:30:07,010
a major element
in the European view of mankind

353
00:30:07,100 --> 00:30:09,890
was the conviction
that inferior races

354
00:30:09,970 --> 00:30:13,180
were by nature
condemned to extinction.

355
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:20,050
The truly charitable attitude
of the superior races

356
00:30:20,140 --> 00:30:22,760
consisted in helping them
on their way.

357
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:29,140
All German historians
participating in this debate

358
00:30:29,220 --> 00:30:31,930
seemed to look
in the same direction.

359
00:30:32,970 --> 00:30:34,760
None looks to the West.

360
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:37,100
But Hitler did.

361
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:40,510
He had found his models.

362
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:28,800
Of course, one man alone
did not singlehandedly engineer

363
00:31:28,890 --> 00:31:32,430
the killing of more
than six million Jews.

364
00:31:32,510 --> 00:31:34,640
Hundreds of thousands
of enablers

365
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,550
were also there
to plan, execute,

366
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:39,970
or to simply profit from it.

367
00:31:45,390 --> 00:31:49,180
Renowned industrialist
Henry Ford gave the Nazi party

368
00:31:49,260 --> 00:31:53,140
all the profit from cars
sold in Germany.

369
00:31:53,220 --> 00:31:57,050
And every year,
an additional 350,000 dollars

370
00:31:57,140 --> 00:31:59,510
was allocated
for Hitler's birthday.

371
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:00,760
Heil!

372
00:32:00,850 --> 00:32:03,350
While millions of others
committed themselves

373
00:32:03,430 --> 00:32:05,260
to remaining silent.

374
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:36,140
Wait, wait.

375
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:53,510
The essence
of this story is fragile.

376
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:57,680
It requires renunciation
of all prejudices.

377
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:00,930
Modesty and humility
are needed here.

378
00:33:25,100 --> 00:33:28,050
Why do I bring myself
into this story?

379
00:33:28,140 --> 00:33:29,850
Where do I fit in it?

380
00:33:31,600 --> 00:33:32,890
As a filmmaker,

381
00:33:32,970 --> 00:33:36,220
I am compelled to stay hidden
in the background.

382
00:33:36,300 --> 00:33:39,600
Restrained, moderate, balanced,

383
00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:43,350
judicious, neutral even.

384
00:33:43,430 --> 00:33:47,180
You learn to avoid becoming
the subject of your film.

385
00:33:47,890 --> 00:33:49,510
It's not about you.

386
00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:52,600
Unless the story
is bigger than you.

387
00:33:56,180 --> 00:33:59,300
In that case, you go for broke.

388
00:33:59,390 --> 00:34:01,800
Neutrality is not an option.

389
00:34:01,890 --> 00:34:05,050
And those who seek history
with an upbeat ending,

390
00:34:05,140 --> 00:34:10,600
redemption, or reconciliation,
may search in vain.

391
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:13,680
Such a conclusion
cannot be expected.

392
00:34:20,930 --> 00:34:22,760
In the late 15th century,

393
00:34:22,850 --> 00:34:25,760
Europeans started
to colonize the New World.

394
00:34:27,430 --> 00:34:30,350
Crossing the Atlantic,
Columbus, an Italian,

395
00:34:30,430 --> 00:34:34,140
landed on an Island
that he claimed for Spain.

396
00:34:34,220 --> 00:34:38,010
In 1497, John Cabot,
also an Italian,

397
00:34:38,100 --> 00:34:41,470
claimed another territory
for the king of England.

398
00:34:41,550 --> 00:34:45,640
In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral,
a Portuguese,

399
00:34:45,720 --> 00:34:49,140
serving his own king,
reached Brazil.

400
00:34:49,220 --> 00:34:52,510
Vasco Núñez de Balboa
crossed through a piece of land

401
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:55,970
to find the Pacific.
He claimed it for Spain.

402
00:34:56,050 --> 00:34:58,470
Ferdinand Magellan,
a Portuguese,

403
00:34:58,550 --> 00:35:00,220
also did the same for Spain

404
00:35:00,300 --> 00:35:02,760
and died on his way
around the world.

405
00:35:04,180 --> 00:35:06,510
The Italian
Giovanni da Verrazzano

406
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:08,930
followed the coastline
of North America

407
00:35:09,010 --> 00:35:10,350
for the king of France,

408
00:35:10,430 --> 00:35:13,510
and got a bridge named
after him in New York.

409
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:17,970
In 1534, Jacques Cartier

410
00:35:18,050 --> 00:35:21,760
claimed another piece for France
and named it "Canada."

411
00:35:23,050 --> 00:35:25,850
A few years before,
Amerigo Vespucci,

412
00:35:25,930 --> 00:35:30,390
an Italian sailing for Portugal,
had proved Columbus wrong again,

413
00:35:30,470 --> 00:35:32,970
in that he had not reached
the West Indies,

414
00:35:33,050 --> 00:35:35,930
but what he would then call
"the New World."

415
00:35:36,930 --> 00:35:39,680
As a result,
a German cartographer,

416
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:41,720
Martin Waldseemüller,

417
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:45,470
gave the name America
to the whole continent.

418
00:35:50,390 --> 00:35:51,550
From the beginning,

419
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:53,600
the extension
of the United States

420
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:55,100
from sea to shining sea

421
00:35:55,180 --> 00:35:58,850
was the intention and design
of the country's founders.

422
00:35:59,850 --> 00:36:01,680
Free land was the magnet

423
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:04,300
that attracted
European settlers.

424
00:36:05,220 --> 00:36:07,800
This particular form
of colonialism

425
00:36:07,890 --> 00:36:11,140
is called settler colonialism.

426
00:36:11,220 --> 00:36:14,640
But as a system,
it requires violence.

427
00:36:14,720 --> 00:36:17,550
It requires
the elimination of the Natives

428
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:20,850
and their replacement
by European settlers.

429
00:37:34,850 --> 00:37:36,550
The charge of genocide,

430
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:38,510
when applied
to the United States,

431
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:42,470
has been unacceptable
for a very long time.

432
00:37:42,550 --> 00:37:45,550
But the evidence leaves
no other choice today.

433
00:37:48,890 --> 00:37:50,300
From the first settlements

434
00:37:50,390 --> 00:37:52,550
to the founding
of the United States,

435
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:56,140
and continuing
into the 21st century,

436
00:37:56,220 --> 00:37:59,180
the elimination of the Native
is consciously,

437
00:37:59,260 --> 00:38:03,300
or unconsciously,
wired into the process.

438
00:38:26,930 --> 00:38:28,510
This is a story,

439
00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:31,680
not a contribution
to historical research.

440
00:39:02,050 --> 00:39:04,550
The nature
of this historical process

441
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:06,220
is still blurred by the notion

442
00:39:06,300 --> 00:39:08,220
that violence
was committed equally

443
00:39:08,300 --> 00:39:10,390
by the colonized
and the colonizer.

444
00:39:45,010 --> 00:39:47,550
But people do not
hand over their land,

445
00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:49,760
their resources, their children,

446
00:39:49,850 --> 00:39:52,180
and their futures,
without a fight.

447
00:39:53,180 --> 00:39:57,220
And that fight
is always met with violence.

448
00:39:59,390 --> 00:40:02,850
In U.S. history,
everything is about the land.

449
00:40:02,930 --> 00:40:07,300
Who oversaw and cultivated it,
who fished its waters,

450
00:40:07,390 --> 00:40:09,220
maintained its wildlife,

451
00:40:09,890 --> 00:40:11,890
who invaded and stole it.

452
00:40:13,260 --> 00:40:16,140
It's about how the land
became a commodity,

453
00:40:16,220 --> 00:40:18,850
"real estate,"
broken into pieces

454
00:40:18,930 --> 00:40:21,390
to be bought
and sold on the market.

455
00:40:44,930 --> 00:40:46,850
It is about
how African bodies

456
00:40:46,930 --> 00:40:50,260
became properties
and source of labor,

457
00:40:50,350 --> 00:40:54,010
and how poor white settlers
embraced white supremacy

458
00:40:54,100 --> 00:40:56,550
as a substitute for land
and slaves.

459
00:40:58,720 --> 00:41:02,010
The poet William Carlos Williams
wrote,

460
00:41:02,100 --> 00:41:04,390
"The land! Don't you feel it?

461
00:41:04,470 --> 00:41:06,550
Doesn't it make you want
to go out

462
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:10,010
and lift dead Indians tenderly
from their graves

463
00:41:10,100 --> 00:41:12,430
to steal from them
some authenticity,

464
00:41:12,510 --> 00:41:15,720
as if it must be clinging
even to their corpses."

465
00:41:18,390 --> 00:41:22,220
Without the unpaid forced labor
of enslaved Africans,

466
00:41:22,300 --> 00:41:26,470
a farmer growing cash crops
could not compete on the market.

467
00:41:29,050 --> 00:41:30,850
Once in the hands of settlers,

468
00:41:30,930 --> 00:41:34,390
the land itself was no longer
sacred or collective,

469
00:41:34,470 --> 00:41:36,800
as it had been
for the Indigenous people.

470
00:41:37,550 --> 00:41:39,390
It became private property.

471
00:41:39,470 --> 00:41:42,050
A commodity
to be acquired and sold,

472
00:41:42,140 --> 00:41:45,680
every man a possible king,
or at least wealthy.

473
00:41:47,300 --> 00:41:51,100
Most of the founders
were also real estate men.

474
00:41:51,180 --> 00:41:52,930
George Washington
made his fortune

475
00:41:53,010 --> 00:41:54,890
off land speculation.

476
00:41:54,970 --> 00:41:56,300
Indian land.

477
00:41:57,640 --> 00:42:01,140
And then, "the land"
came to mean the country,

478
00:42:01,220 --> 00:42:03,760
the flag, the military,

479
00:42:03,850 --> 00:42:07,390
as in "the land of the free"
from the national anthem.

480
00:42:08,640 --> 00:42:11,180
Those who died fighting
in foreign wars

481
00:42:11,260 --> 00:42:13,470
were said to have sacrificed
their lives

482
00:42:13,550 --> 00:42:15,510
to protect "this land"

483
00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:19,220
that the old settlers
have spilled blood to acquire.

484
00:42:19,300 --> 00:42:22,350
But the blood spilled
was Indigenous blood.

485
00:42:34,050 --> 00:42:36,970
This is Sven again.

486
00:42:37,050 --> 00:42:40,180
He reminds me
of these old-time adventurers

487
00:42:40,260 --> 00:42:42,550
who explore the human species,

488
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:45,800
whatever difficulties
and danger it involves,

489
00:42:45,890 --> 00:42:48,760
whatever faraway travels
it requires.

490
00:42:49,720 --> 00:42:52,050
Definitely not a white savior.

491
00:42:53,720 --> 00:42:57,010
On the contrary,
he is one of these few Europeans

492
00:42:57,100 --> 00:42:59,680
who dare see the beast
for what it is.

493
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:02,550
Sven is a witness.

494
00:43:03,260 --> 00:43:05,100
Sven traveled the world.

495
00:43:06,850 --> 00:43:08,800
Sven told me stories,

496
00:43:08,890 --> 00:43:11,640
some of which I already knew.

497
00:43:11,720 --> 00:43:15,720
He told me about this world,
about his world,

498
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:17,300
without cynicism,

499
00:43:17,390 --> 00:43:21,100
which would not be inconceivable
at this stage of the story.

500
00:43:22,010 --> 00:43:23,800
For Sven saw my world,

501
00:43:23,890 --> 00:43:25,260
lived in it,

502
00:43:25,350 --> 00:43:27,220
as I lived in his.

503
00:43:27,300 --> 00:43:31,640
And he wrote about it,
making it palpable.

504
00:43:31,720 --> 00:43:34,510
And when he delved
into the horror,

505
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:37,760
I knew what he meant
and what he went through.

506
00:43:38,550 --> 00:43:40,140
I could trust him.

507
00:43:40,220 --> 00:43:44,010
Our distinctive skin colors
never were an obstacle.

508
00:43:44,100 --> 00:43:46,470
And that is the way
it should be.

509
00:44:30,050 --> 00:44:31,550
In 1887,

510
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:34,050
the Scottish surgeon
J.B. Dunlop

511
00:44:34,140 --> 00:44:37,600
hit upon the idea of equipping
his young son's bicycle

512
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:40,550
with an inflatable
rubber tube.

513
00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:44,220
The bicycle tire was patented
in 1888.

514
00:44:45,720 --> 00:44:47,970
Four years earlier,
the Europeans

515
00:44:48,050 --> 00:44:50,300
and the United States
had decided

516
00:44:50,390 --> 00:44:51,970
that it was necessary
to regulate

517
00:44:52,050 --> 00:44:54,970
the thriving exploitation
of the African continent

518
00:44:55,050 --> 00:44:57,300
other than by whoever
got there first,

519
00:44:57,390 --> 00:45:00,430
was the boldest,
or the most murderous.

520
00:45:00,510 --> 00:45:03,390
A situation that was
naturally detrimental

521
00:45:03,470 --> 00:45:06,010
to any respectable
business environment.

522
00:45:08,850 --> 00:45:10,890
They convened
the Congo Conference

523
00:45:10,970 --> 00:45:13,350
to arbitrate the looting.

524
00:45:13,430 --> 00:45:16,720
The main outcome,
of this "gentlemen's agreement"

525
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:18,760
was the definitive elimination

526
00:45:18,850 --> 00:45:22,260
of most existing forms
of African autonomy

527
00:45:22,350 --> 00:45:23,970
and self-governance.

528
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:32,930
At the conference,

529
00:45:33,010 --> 00:45:35,140
Belgium's king, Leopold II,

530
00:45:35,220 --> 00:45:37,430
managed to secure
the whole Congo

531
00:45:37,510 --> 00:45:39,300
as his private property.

532
00:45:39,390 --> 00:45:42,550
A territory 80 times bigger
than Belgium.

533
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:44,760
Basically,
twice the surface area

534
00:45:44,850 --> 00:45:46,890
of Texas
and California combined.

535
00:45:54,220 --> 00:45:55,970
During the years that followed,

536
00:45:56,050 --> 00:45:58,300
demand for rubber exploded.

537
00:45:58,390 --> 00:46:01,390
This would carry
incalculable consequences

538
00:46:01,470 --> 00:46:03,350
for the villages in Congo.

539
00:46:06,100 --> 00:46:09,800
The king instituted
a monopoly on rubber and ivory

540
00:46:09,890 --> 00:46:12,550
and ordered all natives
to supply labor

541
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:14,390
and products without payment.

542
00:46:15,970 --> 00:46:19,430
Those who refused
had their villages burned down,

543
00:46:19,510 --> 00:46:22,930
their children murdered,
and their hands cut off.

544
00:46:29,430 --> 00:46:34,050
Such methods led to a dramatic
increase in profitability,

545
00:46:34,140 --> 00:46:37,850
profits which helped
in building, among other things,

546
00:46:37,930 --> 00:46:39,350
impressive monuments

547
00:46:39,430 --> 00:46:41,930
that still decorate
Brussels today.

548
00:46:50,100 --> 00:46:53,600
Monuments paid for
with amputated hands.

549
00:47:35,970 --> 00:47:38,140
"I bring you clarity,"

550
00:47:39,550 --> 00:47:41,140
said the prophet,

551
00:47:41,220 --> 00:47:43,390
"that you may understand

552
00:47:44,010 --> 00:47:46,180
the world around you."

553
00:47:47,350 --> 00:47:48,640
God tells us

554
00:47:49,350 --> 00:47:52,640
that real life is after death.

555
00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:56,180
The more we suffer,
the more you are granted

556
00:47:57,010 --> 00:47:59,510
with joys in Heaven.

557
00:48:04,220 --> 00:48:06,510
Can't this wait
until the end of my service?

558
00:48:07,260 --> 00:48:08,850
Rubber doesn't wait!

559
00:48:20,300 --> 00:48:21,930
Where's my rubber?

560
00:48:22,010 --> 00:48:23,720
That's all I got today.

561
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:25,050
And why is that?

562
00:48:25,140 --> 00:48:27,850
The trees have dried out.

563
00:48:34,260 --> 00:48:35,260
You.

564
00:48:40,050 --> 00:48:41,600
Get the basket.

565
00:48:53,390 --> 00:48:55,640
No, stay, stay.

566
00:48:55,720 --> 00:48:59,050
Please, please don't do that.
Please, please don't do that.

567
00:50:21,470 --> 00:50:24,180
The Congo adventure
was pure looting,

568
00:50:24,260 --> 00:50:26,890
Leopold II running the numbers.

569
00:50:26,970 --> 00:50:30,390
Plundering bodies,
plundering resources.

570
00:50:31,350 --> 00:50:33,760
The draining
of a whole continent.

571
00:50:33,850 --> 00:50:36,010
A multi-billion-dollar heist.

572
00:50:42,970 --> 00:50:45,850
Ten years after
the creation of the Congo state,

573
00:50:45,930 --> 00:50:49,800
the writer Joseph Conrad
sent his first short story,

574
00:50:49,890 --> 00:50:53,350
"An Outpost of Progress,"
to Cosmopolis magazine.

575
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:57,260
He, too, had gone up
the Congo River

576
00:50:57,350 --> 00:50:59,600
on one
of the company's steamers.

577
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:02,220
He, too,
had seen the trading post

578
00:51:02,300 --> 00:51:04,890
and listened
to the passengers' stories.

579
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:09,760
The story is simple.

580
00:51:09,850 --> 00:51:12,510
Two Europeans,
Kayerts and Carlier,

581
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:13,850
are sent to a trading post

582
00:51:13,930 --> 00:51:16,100
on the banks
of the great Congo River.

583
00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:22,640
Apart from collecting ivory
from the locals,

584
00:51:22,720 --> 00:51:24,050
they don't have much to do

585
00:51:24,140 --> 00:51:26,970
and have plenty of time
to get bored.

586
00:51:27,050 --> 00:51:30,550
Their only reading material
is a yellowed newspaper

587
00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:34,600
that praises colonial expansion
as sacred work

588
00:51:34,680 --> 00:51:36,720
in the service of civilization.

589
00:51:37,970 --> 00:51:41,890
At first, the two companions
believe these fine words.

590
00:51:41,970 --> 00:51:45,140
But gradually, they discover
that such words

591
00:51:45,220 --> 00:51:46,930
are nothing but "sounds,"

592
00:51:47,010 --> 00:51:49,970
sounds that lack content
outside the society

593
00:51:50,050 --> 00:51:51,430
that created them.

594
00:51:52,600 --> 00:51:56,510
Concepts such as "virtue,"
"crime," or "morality"

595
00:51:56,600 --> 00:51:58,890
are nothing but sounds.

596
00:51:58,970 --> 00:52:03,220
Soon, Kayerts and Carlier feel
that no one is watching them.

597
00:52:04,220 --> 00:52:05,760
One day, they argue.

598
00:52:13,100 --> 00:52:15,800
Kayerts shoots Carlier
in self-defense

599
00:52:15,890 --> 00:52:17,850
and does not realize until later

600
00:52:17,930 --> 00:52:21,800
that in his panic,
he has killed an unarmed man.

601
00:52:22,890 --> 00:52:25,640
As he sits by the body
of his companion,

602
00:52:25,720 --> 00:52:28,600
Kayerts, for the first time,
really thinks.

603
00:52:30,220 --> 00:52:31,970
Like the rest of mankind,

604
00:52:32,050 --> 00:52:34,800
he has gone around
believing a lot of nonsense.

605
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:39,180
Left alone
with their own weaknesses,

606
00:52:39,260 --> 00:52:43,930
far from any public opinion,
from any exterior gaze,

607
00:52:44,010 --> 00:52:47,850
any human being is likely
to indulge in the worst.

608
00:52:55,050 --> 00:52:57,350
Conrad and Wells
knew about each other

609
00:52:57,430 --> 00:53:00,600
when the latter wrote
The Time Machine in 1895.

610
00:53:03,180 --> 00:53:06,550
Hatred and fear
seize the time traveler.

611
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:09,140
He longs to kill Morlocks.

612
00:53:09,220 --> 00:53:12,010
He wants to go straight
into the darkness,

613
00:53:12,100 --> 00:53:13,640
"to kill the brutes."

614
00:53:14,510 --> 00:53:16,760
The time traveler falls asleep

615
00:53:16,850 --> 00:53:19,350
as he sits there
in the darkness,

616
00:53:19,430 --> 00:53:23,050
and when he wakes,
the Morlocks are onto him,

617
00:53:23,140 --> 00:53:24,850
soft and repugnant.

618
00:53:26,100 --> 00:53:28,300
He shakes the "human rats "
off him...

619
00:53:28,390 --> 00:53:31,220
-...and starts striking out.

620
00:53:31,300 --> 00:53:34,140
He enjoys the feeling
of a swishing iron pipe

621
00:53:34,220 --> 00:53:37,850
smashing into juicy flesh
and crushing bones.

622
00:53:39,850 --> 00:53:44,640
This killing in Wells
is both horrific and voluptuous.

623
00:53:47,010 --> 00:53:50,760
Wells's next book,
which we know Conrad also read,

624
00:53:50,850 --> 00:53:53,100
was called
The Island of Dr. Moreau.

625
00:53:54,970 --> 00:53:57,640
Dr. Moreau
uses his surgical skill

626
00:53:57,720 --> 00:54:01,300
to create a kind of human being
out of animals.

627
00:54:01,390 --> 00:54:03,260
The first of them all
to shed tears.

628
00:54:06,390 --> 00:54:07,550
She is human!

629
00:54:08,050 --> 00:54:09,050
I'm not beaten!

630
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:16,600
-Get everything ready.
-For what?

631
00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:19,140
This time, I'll burn out
all the animal in her!

632
00:54:19,220 --> 00:54:21,100
No!

633
00:54:21,180 --> 00:54:23,470
I'll make her completely human!

634
00:54:23,550 --> 00:54:25,300
No, no! No!

635
00:54:25,390 --> 00:54:27,220
Dr. Moreau has created

636
00:54:27,300 --> 00:54:29,300
one hundred and twenty
creatures,

637
00:54:29,390 --> 00:54:32,510
but he has not succeeded
in creating a real human being.

638
00:54:34,350 --> 00:54:38,390
The Island of Dr. Moreau
is the story of colonialism.

639
00:54:38,470 --> 00:54:41,510
Just as the colonizer
civilizes the lower,

640
00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:44,100
more animal races with the whip,

641
00:54:44,180 --> 00:54:48,010
Dr. Moreau civilizes the animals
with torture,

642
00:54:48,100 --> 00:54:51,760
maximizing the pain
in order to hasten evolution.

643
00:54:54,430 --> 00:54:56,800
Just as the colonizer
tries to create

644
00:54:56,890 --> 00:55:00,180
a new kind of creature,
the civilized savage,

645
00:55:00,260 --> 00:55:03,930
Dr. Moreau tries to create
the humanized animal.

646
00:55:08,010 --> 00:55:11,890
Do you know what it means
to feel like God?

647
00:55:12,970 --> 00:55:16,180
In both cases,
the means is terror.

648
00:55:21,260 --> 00:55:24,010
Francis Ford Coppola's
Apocalypse Now

649
00:55:24,100 --> 00:55:26,140
is based on Heart of Darkness.

650
00:55:27,970 --> 00:55:30,550
In it and in all the real wars,

651
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:32,800
the men representing
civilization

652
00:55:32,890 --> 00:55:35,640
out in the colonies
were "invisible,"

653
00:55:36,260 --> 00:55:37,550
not only in the sense

654
00:55:37,640 --> 00:55:39,890
that their guns killed
at a distance,

655
00:55:39,970 --> 00:55:42,890
but also in that no one
at home really knew

656
00:55:42,970 --> 00:55:44,300
what they were doing.

657
00:56:36,180 --> 00:56:37,550
White by birth.

658
00:56:39,010 --> 00:56:40,510
A default setting.

659
00:56:43,220 --> 00:56:45,800
I know this story is painful,

660
00:56:45,890 --> 00:56:47,720
but we need to know it.

661
00:56:53,050 --> 00:56:55,100
The happiness of one

662
00:56:55,180 --> 00:56:57,890
cannot be built on the pain
of all others.

663
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:07,640
There is almost
always a price to be paid

664
00:57:07,720 --> 00:57:09,220
further down the line.

665
00:57:17,180 --> 00:57:19,100
White by birth,

666
00:57:19,180 --> 00:57:21,970
a simple pigmentation variation

667
00:57:22,050 --> 00:57:24,760
transformed into
a source of power.

668
00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:36,640
A mark of superiority,

669
00:57:37,550 --> 00:57:39,640
an authorization for abuse,

670
00:57:40,930 --> 00:57:43,890
a justification
for eternal immunity.

671
00:57:45,140 --> 00:57:47,760
No modesty is necessary.

672
00:57:47,850 --> 00:57:50,430
Nor is doubt a requirement.

673
00:57:55,550 --> 00:57:57,550
The ultimate privilege.

674
01:02:10,090 --> 01:02:12,010
In kindergarten, in Haiti,

675
01:02:12,090 --> 01:02:16,010
there was this allegorical image
of Saint Francis of Assisi

676
01:02:16,090 --> 01:02:19,050
on the last page
of our reading book.

677
01:02:19,130 --> 01:02:22,720
It didn't matter that
St. Francis was obviously white.

678
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:26,130
At the time, I was still unaware
of any civilizational

679
01:02:26,220 --> 01:02:28,010
or racial differences.

680
01:02:28,090 --> 01:02:29,300
I didn't even know

681
01:02:29,380 --> 01:02:31,720
that such differences
were possible.

682
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:36,010
Besides the fact that
he was a saint, and I was not.

683
01:02:36,090 --> 01:02:38,010
I knew as much about saints

684
01:02:38,090 --> 01:02:40,590
as I knew about copulation
and bees.

685
01:02:40,680 --> 01:02:43,970
My ideas of religion,
priests, or God

686
01:02:44,050 --> 01:02:47,130
was at best naive,
if not reckless.

687
01:02:47,220 --> 01:02:50,630
I truly believed that all human
beings were basically,

688
01:02:50,720 --> 01:02:54,300
in some sort of natural way,
brothers and sisters.

689
01:02:55,880 --> 01:02:57,880
It was in this euphoric state

690
01:02:57,970 --> 01:03:00,220
that I was sent
to primary school,

691
01:03:00,300 --> 01:03:01,930
a Jesuit institution.

692
01:03:03,130 --> 01:03:04,470
On the very first day,

693
01:03:04,550 --> 01:03:07,050
I got into a fight
with another boy.

694
01:03:07,130 --> 01:03:09,050
We were both sent
to the head priest

695
01:03:09,130 --> 01:03:10,880
to be disciplined.

696
01:03:10,970 --> 01:03:14,720
While waiting for what I thought
would be an appeasing pep talk

697
01:03:14,800 --> 01:03:17,130
and reconciliatory handshake,

698
01:03:17,220 --> 01:03:20,380
I had no doubt that the outcome
would be peaceful.

699
01:03:20,470 --> 01:03:23,800
I loved my world of serenity
and understanding.

700
01:03:24,880 --> 01:03:27,550
To my surprise,
the head priest came in,

701
01:03:27,630 --> 01:03:30,550
took a dry ox muscle
hanging from the wall,

702
01:03:30,630 --> 01:03:33,180
and, without a word,
whipped us raw

703
01:03:33,260 --> 01:03:35,590
with three lashes each.

704
01:03:35,680 --> 01:03:39,430
I was so stunned
that I didn't cry.

705
01:03:39,510 --> 01:03:42,340
Minutes later,
alone in the schoolyard,

706
01:03:42,430 --> 01:03:46,470
I realized that the world was
not what I was told it would be.

707
01:03:46,550 --> 01:03:49,590
The rituals, the dogma,
the theatrics,

708
01:03:49,680 --> 01:03:51,970
were now transparent.

709
01:03:52,050 --> 01:03:55,970
I decided that I was not going
to be an imbecile in that show.

710
01:03:56,050 --> 01:04:00,180
Especially if it involved
saint, priest, and whip,

711
01:04:00,260 --> 01:04:01,510
in that order.

712
01:04:01,590 --> 01:04:05,260
Then, I stopped believing
in God altogether.

713
01:04:56,380 --> 01:04:57,630
I knew a man.

714
01:04:57,720 --> 01:05:00,930
I knew him well enough
to be able to call him a friend.

715
01:05:02,090 --> 01:05:05,800
He was a scholar.
One of the brightest.

716
01:05:05,880 --> 01:05:08,220
One day, I learned of his death

717
01:05:08,300 --> 01:05:11,340
after ten years
of daily struggle.

718
01:05:11,430 --> 01:05:15,260
A cardiologist inserted
a malfunctioning pacemaker

719
01:05:15,340 --> 01:05:16,340
in his heart

720
01:05:16,430 --> 01:05:18,970
that would destroy
its functions.

721
01:05:19,050 --> 01:05:23,050
By the time they realized
the mistake, it was too late.

722
01:05:25,220 --> 01:05:28,430
Michel-Rolph wrote
an extraordinary book,

723
01:05:28,510 --> 01:05:32,180
Silencing the Past.
A masterpiece.

724
01:05:32,260 --> 01:05:34,680
The work of a lifetime.

725
01:05:34,760 --> 01:05:37,510
By deconstructing
the dominant narrative,

726
01:05:37,590 --> 01:05:39,470
he changed everything.

727
01:05:40,840 --> 01:05:42,550
Knowledge is power.

728
01:05:42,630 --> 01:05:46,180
But "history is the fruit
of power," says Trouillot.

729
01:05:47,470 --> 01:05:51,300
Whoever wins in the end
gets to frame the story.

730
01:05:54,380 --> 01:05:56,720
On July 4th, 2012,

731
01:05:56,800 --> 01:05:59,010
Trouillot passed away
in his sleep

732
01:05:59,090 --> 01:06:00,800
at his home in Chicago.

733
01:06:06,130 --> 01:06:08,340
This is his story as well.

734
01:06:12,090 --> 01:06:14,430
"Remember the Alamo," they say.

735
01:06:14,510 --> 01:06:19,090
"But remembering can be quite
selective," writes Trouillot.

736
01:06:19,180 --> 01:06:21,590
Human beings participate
in history

737
01:06:21,680 --> 01:06:24,300
both as actors and as narrators.

738
01:06:25,470 --> 01:06:26,680
Among the actors,

739
01:06:26,760 --> 01:06:29,760
we find General
Antonio López de Santa Anna,

740
01:06:29,840 --> 01:06:33,260
a Mexican national hero,
who, in his lifetime,

741
01:06:33,340 --> 01:06:36,010
is said to have participated
in more battles

742
01:06:36,090 --> 01:06:39,340
than Napoleon
and George Washington combined.

743
01:06:40,800 --> 01:06:42,430
In his eventful career,

744
01:06:42,510 --> 01:06:44,680
the Alamo was just
a brief interlude

745
01:06:44,760 --> 01:06:48,010
in a long streak of defeats
and victories.

746
01:06:48,970 --> 01:06:51,550
By the middle of February 1836,

747
01:06:51,630 --> 01:06:54,010
his army had reached
the crumbling walls

748
01:06:54,090 --> 01:06:56,970
of the old mission
of San Antonio de Valero

749
01:06:57,050 --> 01:06:59,090
in the Mexican province
of Tejas.

750
01:07:00,930 --> 01:07:04,130
Some 200 American slave owners
and militiamen

751
01:07:04,220 --> 01:07:06,840
now occupied
the Spanish mission,

752
01:07:06,930 --> 01:07:09,970
nicknamed "the Alamo."

753
01:07:10,050 --> 01:07:13,430
They refused to surrender
to Santa Anna's superior force.

754
01:07:13,510 --> 01:07:15,380
-On March 6th,

755
01:07:15,470 --> 01:07:17,550
General Santa Anna
blew the horns

756
01:07:17,630 --> 01:07:19,630
that Mexicans traditionally used

757
01:07:19,720 --> 01:07:22,260
to announce an attack
to the death.

758
01:07:22,340 --> 01:07:24,720
According to
the celebrated story,

759
01:07:24,800 --> 01:07:26,720
when it became clear
that the choice

760
01:07:26,800 --> 01:07:29,630
for the 189 Alamo occupants

761
01:07:29,720 --> 01:07:31,590
was between escape
and certain death

762
01:07:31,680 --> 01:07:33,590
at the hands of the Mexicans,

763
01:07:33,680 --> 01:07:37,630
Commander William Barret Travis
drew a line on the ground.

764
01:07:37,720 --> 01:07:39,470
Those men who wish to stay...

765
01:07:40,970 --> 01:07:43,090
will cross the line
and stand with me.

766
01:07:44,090 --> 01:07:45,260
The others may go...

767
01:07:46,300 --> 01:07:47,430
with my blessing.

768
01:07:49,130 --> 01:07:51,340
Supposedly,
everyone crossed.

769
01:07:51,430 --> 01:07:54,630
Except, of course,
the man who conveniently escaped

770
01:07:54,720 --> 01:07:56,090
to tell the story.

771
01:07:56,180 --> 01:07:58,180
I didn't survive Russia
and Waterloo

772
01:07:58,260 --> 01:07:59,840
to die in this desert.

773
01:07:59,930 --> 01:08:02,470
Obviously, a Frenchman.

774
01:08:04,930 --> 01:08:07,680
Santa Anna's troops
broke through the fort,

775
01:08:07,760 --> 01:08:09,720
killing most of the defenders.

776
01:08:10,470 --> 01:08:11,680
A clear victory.

777
01:08:13,840 --> 01:08:17,930
But a few weeks later,
on April 21st at San Jacinto,

778
01:08:18,010 --> 01:08:21,010
Santa Anna fell prisoner
to Sam Houston,

779
01:08:21,090 --> 01:08:22,680
the freshly certified leader

780
01:08:22,760 --> 01:08:25,300
of the secessionist
Republic of Texas.

781
01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:29,970
Houston's men had punctuated
their victorious attack

782
01:08:30,050 --> 01:08:32,680
on the Mexican army
with repeated shouts

783
01:08:32,760 --> 01:08:36,630
of "Remember the Alamo!
Remember the Alamo!"

784
01:08:36,720 --> 01:08:39,180
With that reference
to the old mission,

785
01:08:39,260 --> 01:08:41,130
they doubly made history.

786
01:08:42,380 --> 01:08:45,630
As actors,
the Texans captured Santa Anna

787
01:08:45,720 --> 01:08:48,340
and neutralized his forces.

788
01:08:48,430 --> 01:08:52,340
As narrators, they give
the Alamo story a new meaning.

789
01:08:52,430 --> 01:08:55,380
What they didn't say
is that General Santa Anna

790
01:08:55,470 --> 01:08:57,300
quickly recovered
from the upset

791
01:08:57,380 --> 01:09:00,840
and went on to be the leader
of Mexico four more times.

792
01:09:00,930 --> 01:09:03,930
But this is not what history
will remember.

793
01:09:04,010 --> 01:09:07,590
General Santa Anna indeed
lost the battle of the day,

794
01:09:07,680 --> 01:09:11,180
but he also lost the battle
he had won at the Alamo.

795
01:09:25,800 --> 01:09:28,050
How much can we reduce
what happened

796
01:09:28,130 --> 01:09:30,840
to what is said
to have happened?

797
01:09:30,930 --> 01:09:34,880
Does it matter whether events
are fact or fiction?

798
01:09:34,970 --> 01:09:38,180
Most Europeans
and North Americans learned more

799
01:09:38,260 --> 01:09:40,090
about the history
of Colonial America

800
01:09:40,180 --> 01:09:43,630
and the American West
from movies and television

801
01:09:43,720 --> 01:09:45,300
than from books.

802
01:09:45,380 --> 01:09:48,050
The Alamo?
That was a history lesson

803
01:09:48,130 --> 01:09:51,180
delivered by John Wayne
on the screen.

804
01:09:53,680 --> 01:09:57,300
What does it mean
for our collective experiences?

805
01:09:57,380 --> 01:10:00,010
Do we even wish
for a common history?

806
01:10:00,970 --> 01:10:02,590
Does it really not matter

807
01:10:02,680 --> 01:10:06,180
whether or not the Holocaust
is true or false?

808
01:10:07,720 --> 01:10:09,630
Does it really not make
a difference

809
01:10:09,720 --> 01:10:12,300
whether or not the leaders
of Nazi Germany

810
01:10:12,380 --> 01:10:16,430
planned and supervised
the killing of six million Jews?

811
01:10:35,130 --> 01:10:37,380
If six million
do not really matter,

812
01:10:37,470 --> 01:10:39,840
would two million be enough?

813
01:10:39,930 --> 01:10:42,800
Or would some of us settle
for 300,000?

814
01:10:44,090 --> 01:10:47,260
If there is nothing
to be proved, or disproved,

815
01:10:47,340 --> 01:10:49,630
what then is the point
of the story?

816
01:11:41,090 --> 01:11:44,550
The history of America
is being written in a world

817
01:11:44,630 --> 01:11:47,300
where few little boys
want to be Indians.

818
01:11:52,510 --> 01:11:56,010
In 1492,
neither Europe as we know it

819
01:11:56,090 --> 01:11:58,930
nor whiteness
as we now experience it

820
01:11:59,010 --> 01:12:00,840
existed as such.

821
01:12:04,970 --> 01:12:06,970
Here is the story
we have been told.

822
01:12:10,340 --> 01:12:14,220
Christopher Columbus was born
to a Genoese merchant family,

823
01:12:14,300 --> 01:12:18,260
and as a trader at sea,
joined other European navigators

824
01:12:18,340 --> 01:12:21,760
competing for gold
and other lucrative commodities,

825
01:12:21,840 --> 01:12:25,590
a market long dominated
by Muslim traders.

826
01:12:34,300 --> 01:12:37,220
It was no secret
that the Earth was spherical,

827
01:12:37,300 --> 01:12:40,380
and Columbus believed
a shorter, more direct route

828
01:12:40,470 --> 01:12:44,380
could be used to reach
valuable exotic spice islands.

829
01:12:46,340 --> 01:12:49,680
Columbus sold the idea
to the Spanish monarchy,

830
01:12:49,760 --> 01:12:52,380
and off he sailed
with three ships

831
01:12:52,470 --> 01:12:55,840
headed directly west
across the Atlantic.

832
01:13:10,550 --> 01:13:13,880
Instead of the bustling
ports of the East Indies,

833
01:13:13,970 --> 01:13:16,680
Columbus came upon
a tropical paradise

834
01:13:16,760 --> 01:13:19,300
populated by the Taíno people,

835
01:13:19,380 --> 01:13:21,300
what is now Haiti.

836
01:13:21,380 --> 01:13:24,470
-Then,
from the Iberian Peninsula,

837
01:13:24,550 --> 01:13:29,260
came merchants, mercenaries,
criminals, and peasants.

838
01:13:29,340 --> 01:13:31,340
They seized the land
and property

839
01:13:31,430 --> 01:13:32,930
of Indigenous peoples

840
01:13:33,010 --> 01:13:35,840
and declared the territories
to be extensions

841
01:13:35,930 --> 01:13:38,430
of the Spanish
and Portuguese states.

842
01:13:41,510 --> 01:13:44,510
These acts were confirmed
by the monarchies

843
01:13:44,590 --> 01:13:46,970
and endorsed
by the papal authority

844
01:13:47,050 --> 01:13:48,880
of the Roman Catholic Church.

845
01:13:52,010 --> 01:13:54,880
That's more or less
the official story.

846
01:13:54,970 --> 01:13:56,880
And through that official story,

847
01:13:56,970 --> 01:13:59,510
a new vision of the world
was created...

848
01:14:00,260 --> 01:14:02,340
The Doctrine of Discovery.

849
01:14:11,760 --> 01:14:15,300
The extent of the demographic
catastrophe that followed

850
01:14:15,380 --> 01:14:17,970
is without equivalent
in world history.

851
01:14:19,430 --> 01:14:22,220
Within 100 years,
over 90 percent

852
01:14:22,300 --> 01:14:25,340
of the original population
of this continent

853
01:14:25,430 --> 01:14:26,970
would be wiped out.

854
01:14:32,800 --> 01:14:36,050
Despite large-scale
massacres, torture,

855
01:14:36,130 --> 01:14:38,800
and other
inconceivable atrocities,

856
01:14:38,880 --> 01:14:40,880
the great majority
of these people

857
01:14:40,970 --> 01:14:42,720
did not die in battle.

858
01:14:42,800 --> 01:14:48,090
Most died of disease, hunger,
and inhuman labor conditions

859
01:14:48,180 --> 01:14:50,010
because
their social organization

860
01:14:50,090 --> 01:14:52,840
had been wrecked
by the white conquerors.

861
01:14:54,590 --> 01:14:56,090
Bartolomé de las Casas,

862
01:14:56,180 --> 01:14:59,930
the first ordained priest
to officiate in the New Indies,

863
01:15:00,010 --> 01:15:02,380
was one of the witnesses
and a chronicler

864
01:15:02,470 --> 01:15:04,220
of this catastrophe.

865
01:15:04,300 --> 01:15:06,760
Killing and enslaving
other beings,

866
01:15:06,840 --> 01:15:10,840
thought to be equally human,
created a dilemma for him.

867
01:16:02,260 --> 01:16:04,260
Bartolomé de las Casas

868
01:16:04,340 --> 01:16:06,430
believed both in colonization

869
01:16:06,510 --> 01:16:09,010
and in the humanity
of the Indians.

870
01:16:09,090 --> 01:16:12,590
He was torn between the symbolic
and the practical,

871
01:16:12,680 --> 01:16:15,590
incapable of reconciling
the two.

872
01:16:15,680 --> 01:16:19,720
Instead, he offered a poor
and ambiguous compromise

873
01:16:19,800 --> 01:16:21,590
that he would later regret,

874
01:16:21,680 --> 01:16:24,590
freedom for the savages,
the Indians,

875
01:16:24,680 --> 01:16:27,930
slavery for the barbarians,
the Africans.

876
01:16:46,970 --> 01:16:49,550
Colonization won the day.

877
01:17:19,630 --> 01:17:22,880
The 17th century
saw the increased involvement

878
01:17:22,970 --> 01:17:25,550
of England, France,
and the Netherlands

879
01:17:25,630 --> 01:17:28,630
in the Americas
and in the slave trade.

880
01:17:40,510 --> 01:17:43,680
The 18th century
followed the same path

881
01:17:43,760 --> 01:17:46,680
with an added touch
of perversity.

882
01:17:46,760 --> 01:17:49,800
The more European merchants
and mercenaries

883
01:17:49,880 --> 01:17:52,630
bought and conquered
other men and women

884
01:17:52,720 --> 01:17:54,010
in the Americas,

885
01:17:54,090 --> 01:17:58,510
the more European philosophers
wrote and talked about Man.

886
01:18:15,550 --> 01:18:18,800
Meanwhile, there was
no single view of Blacks

887
01:18:18,880 --> 01:18:21,880
or of any non-white group,
for that matter.

888
01:18:22,680 --> 01:18:24,840
All assumed that, ultimately,

889
01:18:24,930 --> 01:18:27,930
some humans
were more so than others.

890
01:18:29,300 --> 01:18:31,590
Viewed from outside the West,

891
01:18:31,680 --> 01:18:36,180
the Age of Enlightenment
was a century of obscurity.

892
01:18:37,550 --> 01:18:39,220
In the Western conception,

893
01:18:39,300 --> 01:18:42,470
Man was primarily
European and male.

894
01:18:42,550 --> 01:18:45,130
Everyone else was at
the lowest level

895
01:18:45,220 --> 01:18:46,930
of this hierarchy.

896
01:21:19,680 --> 01:21:21,340
I have no complaints.

897
01:21:22,630 --> 01:21:24,510
I just want to understand.

898
01:21:26,050 --> 01:21:27,800
Trading human beings,

899
01:21:27,880 --> 01:21:30,380
what sick mind
thought of this first?

900
01:21:32,380 --> 01:21:35,720
Brought by force
and pushed to death.

901
01:21:36,720 --> 01:21:37,840
Slavery.

902
01:21:37,930 --> 01:21:41,760
Or "the trade," as they refer
to it euphemistically.

903
01:21:43,590 --> 01:21:45,970
A state-sponsored genocide.

904
01:21:47,590 --> 01:21:50,380
What does this say
about a civilized world?

905
01:22:03,300 --> 01:22:08,260
No. I have no complaints.
I just want to understand.

906
01:22:16,130 --> 01:22:18,050
What if,
from the beginning,

907
01:22:18,130 --> 01:22:20,300
the story was inaccurate?

908
01:22:21,800 --> 01:22:24,050
What if it was not
just a question

909
01:22:24,130 --> 01:22:27,130
of vocabulary or interpretation?

910
01:22:28,430 --> 01:22:33,380
Perhaps a case of collective
borderline personality disorder?

911
01:22:51,220 --> 01:22:52,260
Okay.

912
01:22:53,130 --> 01:22:55,680
Let's go.

913
01:22:56,880 --> 01:22:58,720
-What?

914
01:23:00,760 --> 01:23:02,590
What about the boat?

915
01:23:02,680 --> 01:23:05,220
Boat's probably stuck in Matadi
up the river.

916
01:23:06,680 --> 01:23:09,300
I need to join my parish.

917
01:23:10,380 --> 01:23:12,340
I'm already two months late.

918
01:23:15,220 --> 01:23:16,220
So?

919
01:23:23,180 --> 01:23:24,180
Wait!

920
01:23:27,260 --> 01:23:28,300
Wait!

921
01:24:25,680 --> 01:24:28,090
Come on! Let's go, let's go!

922
01:24:33,720 --> 01:24:34,840
Faster!

923
01:24:34,930 --> 01:24:37,260
Keep them tight!
Keep them tight!

924
01:24:38,760 --> 01:24:40,930
-Go, go! Go!

925
01:24:41,800 --> 01:24:43,050
Faster!

926
01:25:05,510 --> 01:25:07,470
What is this?

927
01:25:09,300 --> 01:25:10,720
Dammit, faster!

928
01:25:12,630 --> 01:25:13,970
Go! Go! Faster!

929
01:25:14,050 --> 01:25:15,590
-You there!
-Faster!

930
01:25:15,680 --> 01:25:16,970
You!

931
01:25:17,630 --> 01:25:20,050
Stop that at once!

932
01:25:20,130 --> 01:25:23,300
What do you think you are doing
with those children?

933
01:25:24,550 --> 01:25:25,680
What children?

934
01:25:26,630 --> 01:25:28,130
These are shipments.

935
01:25:30,380 --> 01:25:31,430
Shipments?

936
01:25:32,630 --> 01:25:36,340
They are to be trained
as soldiers by the state.

937
01:25:36,430 --> 01:25:39,430
Or sold as slaves.

938
01:25:51,340 --> 01:25:55,220
-Hey!

939
01:26:04,010 --> 01:26:04,930
Faster!

940
01:26:07,550 --> 01:26:09,050
Keep them tight!

941
01:26:13,510 --> 01:26:15,630
In Columbus's travel journal,

942
01:26:15,720 --> 01:26:18,590
there is a description
of the first sighting of land

943
01:26:18,680 --> 01:26:22,180
on Thursday,
October 11th, 1492.

944
01:26:23,510 --> 01:26:27,130
"At two hours after midnight,
land appeared,

945
01:26:27,220 --> 01:26:30,220
from which they were about
two leagues distant.

946
01:26:31,260 --> 01:26:33,090
They hauled down the sails,

947
01:26:33,180 --> 01:26:35,550
passing time
until daylight Friday,

948
01:26:35,630 --> 01:26:39,130
when they reached
an islet and descended."

949
01:26:39,220 --> 01:26:40,760
A normal day, after all.

950
01:26:49,180 --> 01:26:52,430
The isolation
of a single fetishized moment

951
01:26:52,510 --> 01:26:54,970
creates a historical fact.

952
01:26:57,220 --> 01:27:00,300
Once discovered,
the Other is allowed

953
01:27:00,380 --> 01:27:02,970
to finally enter
the human world.

954
01:27:05,050 --> 01:27:07,260
Whatever else may have happened

955
01:27:07,340 --> 01:27:10,550
to other peoples
in that process is reduced,

956
01:27:10,630 --> 01:27:13,760
as if by magic,
to a natural fact...

957
01:27:14,430 --> 01:27:16,380
they were discovered.

958
01:27:20,260 --> 01:27:22,300
Show me the way, my Lord.

959
01:27:22,380 --> 01:27:24,550
Let me walk along your path.

960
01:27:24,630 --> 01:27:28,470
Touch my heart to fear
your name, my Lord,

961
01:27:28,550 --> 01:27:32,090
as to surrender myself
to your glory.

962
01:27:32,180 --> 01:27:36,470
Show me the way, my Lord.
Let me walk along your path.

963
01:27:36,550 --> 01:27:38,260
-Touch my heart--

964
01:27:58,720 --> 01:28:01,630
What's the problem now?
What did he do?

965
01:28:05,130 --> 01:28:07,630
Nothing. Why?

966
01:29:34,550 --> 01:29:37,130
My dear Rose...

967
01:29:37,220 --> 01:29:41,590
may these words convey to you
the fullness of my sentiments.

968
01:29:41,680 --> 01:29:43,880
I hope
they will find you well.

969
01:29:47,050 --> 01:29:50,800
It seems so strange to walk
under this unbearable heat,

970
01:29:50,880 --> 01:29:53,050
when only four months ago,

971
01:29:53,130 --> 01:29:56,090
I could still comfort myself
in your arms.

972
01:29:57,090 --> 01:30:00,800
The madness
in these distant lands

973
01:30:00,880 --> 01:30:02,590
is hard to describe.

974
01:30:05,550 --> 01:30:08,260
I am making new experiences.

975
01:30:09,630 --> 01:30:11,050
Two days ago,

976
01:30:11,130 --> 01:30:16,050
I saw my first corpses.
A good dozen of them,

977
01:30:16,130 --> 01:30:21,340
white little bodies,
floating into the darkness.

978
01:30:21,430 --> 01:30:26,550
Floating as if they were
just resting for a long journey.

979
01:30:28,760 --> 01:30:30,090
These...

980
01:30:31,010 --> 01:30:34,550
are not our choices to make.

981
01:30:38,050 --> 01:30:43,090
The ways of the Lord
are infinite.

982
01:30:52,970 --> 01:30:56,050
I miss so much

983
01:30:56,130 --> 01:30:59,220
this delicate temple

984
01:30:59,300 --> 01:31:03,130
hidden in the depth
of your thighs.

985
01:31:28,090 --> 01:31:30,010
Any historical narrative

986
01:31:30,090 --> 01:31:32,550
is a particular bundle
of silences.

987
01:31:34,840 --> 01:31:39,430
It is an exercise of power that
makes some narratives possible

988
01:31:39,510 --> 01:31:41,680
and silences others.

989
01:31:43,130 --> 01:31:48,550
In this fabricated narrative,
not all silences are equal.

990
01:31:48,630 --> 01:31:54,260
Our job as filmmakers, writers,
historians, image-makers

991
01:31:54,340 --> 01:31:57,300
is to deconstruct
these silences.

992
01:32:02,180 --> 01:32:04,130
From its first appearances,

993
01:32:04,220 --> 01:32:06,380
the word nègre, "negro,"

994
01:32:06,470 --> 01:32:08,090
entered French dictionaries

995
01:32:08,180 --> 01:32:11,590
with increasingly precise
negative undertones.

996
01:32:13,180 --> 01:32:15,510
By the middle
of the 18th century,

997
01:32:15,590 --> 01:32:18,970
"black" was almost
universally bad.

998
01:32:19,050 --> 01:32:21,010
What had happened
in the meantime,

999
01:32:21,090 --> 01:32:25,050
was the expansion
of African American slavery.

1000
01:32:25,130 --> 01:32:27,590
That was the most potent impetus

1001
01:32:27,680 --> 01:32:30,680
for the transformation
of European ethnocentrism

1002
01:32:30,760 --> 01:32:32,380
into scientific racism.

1003
01:32:33,880 --> 01:32:37,340
Blacks were inferior
and therefore enslaved.

1004
01:32:37,430 --> 01:32:42,090
Black slaves behaved badly
and were therefore inferior.

1005
01:32:42,180 --> 01:32:45,220
The practice of slavery
in the Americas

1006
01:32:45,300 --> 01:32:47,180
secured the Blacks' position

1007
01:32:47,260 --> 01:32:49,430
at the bottom
of the human world.

1008
01:32:50,970 --> 01:32:53,340
By the time
of the American Revolution,

1009
01:32:53,430 --> 01:32:57,880
European ethnocentrism had
merged into scientific racism

1010
01:32:57,970 --> 01:33:00,590
and framed
the ideological landscape

1011
01:33:00,680 --> 01:33:02,930
on both sides of the Atlantic.

1012
01:33:06,800 --> 01:33:09,680
The final years
of the 18th century

1013
01:33:09,760 --> 01:33:12,720
were called
the Age of Revolutions.

1014
01:33:12,800 --> 01:33:16,090
But one usually thinks
of the American Revolution

1015
01:33:16,180 --> 01:33:18,130
starting in 1763,

1016
01:33:18,220 --> 01:33:21,590
and the French Revolution
of 1789.

1017
01:33:21,680 --> 01:33:25,550
Not the Haitian Revolution
of 1790.

1018
01:33:25,630 --> 01:33:27,880
Indeed, in those changing years,

1019
01:33:27,970 --> 01:33:30,220
a particular group
of Black slaves,

1020
01:33:30,300 --> 01:33:33,630
men, women, and children,
would rise.

1021
01:33:33,720 --> 01:33:36,510
In just ten short years,
they would fight

1022
01:33:36,590 --> 01:33:38,430
and create the nation of Haiti,

1023
01:33:38,510 --> 01:33:41,930
the truly first free republic
in America.

1024
01:33:42,010 --> 01:33:44,760
The only revolution
that materialized

1025
01:33:44,840 --> 01:33:46,840
the ideal of enlightenment,

1026
01:33:46,930 --> 01:33:50,470
freedom, fraternity,
and equality for all.

1027
01:33:52,130 --> 01:33:55,380
In 1790,
French colonist La Barre

1028
01:33:55,470 --> 01:33:58,340
wrote to his wife in France
to reassure her

1029
01:33:58,430 --> 01:34:01,760
of the peaceful state of life
in the tropics.

1030
01:34:03,050 --> 01:34:05,590
"There is no movement
among our Negroes.

1031
01:34:05,680 --> 01:34:07,590
They don't even think of it.

1032
01:34:07,680 --> 01:34:10,090
A revolt among them
is impossible.

1033
01:34:10,180 --> 01:34:13,180
Freedom for Negroes
is a chimera."

1034
01:34:14,510 --> 01:34:16,090
Just a few months later,

1035
01:34:16,180 --> 01:34:20,010
the events would ridicule
these racist assumptions.

1036
01:34:21,510 --> 01:34:27,010
A nation is not an act
of creation...

1037
01:34:28,840 --> 01:34:32,260
but a process of growth.

1038
01:34:32,340 --> 01:34:36,800
You will take the city
of Cap Haitien...

1039
01:34:38,380 --> 01:34:43,260
but only when it is reduced
to ashes.

1040
01:34:43,340 --> 01:34:48,720
And even on those ashes,
I will fight you.

1041
01:34:51,550 --> 01:34:52,880
What happened in Haiti

1042
01:34:52,970 --> 01:34:54,930
contradicts most
of what the West

1043
01:34:55,010 --> 01:34:57,510
has claimed about itself.

1044
01:34:57,590 --> 01:35:00,050
The silencing
of the Haitian Revolution

1045
01:35:00,130 --> 01:35:03,970
is part of a narrative
of global domination.

1046
01:35:04,050 --> 01:35:07,510
Nevertheless, the revolution
played a central role

1047
01:35:07,590 --> 01:35:10,430
in the collapse
of the entire system of slavery

1048
01:35:10,510 --> 01:35:13,180
and in the liberation
of Latin America.

1049
01:35:14,180 --> 01:35:16,720
Haiti created the possible.

1050
01:35:31,930 --> 01:35:34,550
The Haitian Revolution
was unthinkable

1051
01:35:34,630 --> 01:35:36,180
even as it happened,

1052
01:35:36,260 --> 01:35:38,470
but unthinkable
only in the framework

1053
01:35:38,550 --> 01:35:41,470
of a self-centered
Western thought.

1054
01:35:41,550 --> 01:35:43,180
Unthinkable in the West,

1055
01:35:43,260 --> 01:35:46,840
not only because it challenged
slavery and racism,

1056
01:35:46,930 --> 01:35:49,090
but because of the way
it did so.

1057
01:35:49,180 --> 01:35:52,840
It was the ultimate test
of the universalist pretensions

1058
01:35:52,930 --> 01:35:56,010
of both the French
and the American Revolutions.

1059
01:35:57,090 --> 01:35:59,260
And they both failed that test.

1060
01:36:00,630 --> 01:36:02,840
Confronted
with this unthinkable,

1061
01:36:02,930 --> 01:36:08,180
Napoleon sent 65,000 troops
to reestablish slavery in Haiti.

1062
01:36:08,260 --> 01:36:11,760
His whole army was defeated
within two years,

1063
01:36:11,840 --> 01:36:14,590
forcing him to renounce
his American dreams

1064
01:36:14,680 --> 01:36:17,550
and sell all
his American properties.

1065
01:36:17,630 --> 01:36:20,380
The so-called Louisiana Purchase

1066
01:36:20,470 --> 01:36:22,800
doubled the size
of the United States

1067
01:36:22,880 --> 01:36:26,840
and, through this added power,
would accelerate the conquest

1068
01:36:26,930 --> 01:36:29,550
of the rest
of Indian territories.

1069
01:36:29,630 --> 01:36:33,760
The debt owed to Haiti
still remains to be paid.

1070
01:36:45,590 --> 01:36:47,550
I fell in love in Rome.

1071
01:36:47,630 --> 01:36:50,010
I made my first film in Berlin.

1072
01:36:50,090 --> 01:36:53,260
My parents spent 25 years
in Africa.

1073
01:36:53,340 --> 01:36:55,380
My daughter was born in Uganda

1074
01:36:55,470 --> 01:36:57,470
and went to school
in New Jersey.

1075
01:36:57,550 --> 01:37:00,430
One brother works
for the Seminoles,

1076
01:37:00,510 --> 01:37:02,930
the other won an Emmy.

1077
01:37:03,010 --> 01:37:05,470
My older brother spent two years
in Vietnam

1078
01:37:05,550 --> 01:37:07,720
and even more with PTSD.

1079
01:37:08,430 --> 01:37:10,180
Who are we?

1080
01:37:10,260 --> 01:37:13,050
I have taught filmmaking
from Norway to Lebanon,

1081
01:37:13,130 --> 01:37:15,010
and from New York to Lomé.

1082
01:37:15,680 --> 01:37:17,340
Who am I?

1083
01:37:17,430 --> 01:37:20,180
Who am I in this official,
pre-approved,

1084
01:37:20,260 --> 01:37:22,130
Eurocentric classification?

1085
01:37:22,220 --> 01:37:24,180
-Non!

1086
01:37:24,840 --> 01:37:25,880
Oui!

1087
01:37:26,800 --> 01:37:27,840
Oui!

1088
01:37:28,680 --> 01:37:29,680
Oui!

1089
01:37:30,130 --> 01:37:31,180
Oui!

1090
01:37:31,630 --> 01:37:32,720
Oui!

1091
01:37:37,510 --> 01:37:40,050
I once
followed a charismatic man

1092
01:37:40,130 --> 01:37:43,880
whom I revered, and who
one day betrayed his people.

1093
01:37:44,970 --> 01:37:46,880
I made a film about him, too.

1094
01:37:47,720 --> 01:37:48,840
Who am I?

1095
01:37:51,880 --> 01:37:54,130
I have traveled to many places,

1096
01:37:54,220 --> 01:37:56,630
and have never called them
my own.

1097
01:37:56,720 --> 01:37:59,840
And no violence
was ever involved.

1098
01:37:59,930 --> 01:38:03,010
Places where I lived.
Places where I worked.

1099
01:38:03,090 --> 01:38:07,470
Places where I loved
and sometimes was loved.

1100
01:38:07,550 --> 01:38:10,970
I played war in the streets
of Léopoldville.

1101
01:38:11,050 --> 01:38:13,090
I rode a bicycle in Katanga.

1102
01:38:14,090 --> 01:38:16,050
I built houses in Cuba.

1103
01:38:17,760 --> 01:38:18,840
Who am I?

1104
01:38:23,430 --> 01:38:25,380
During the 16th century,

1105
01:38:25,470 --> 01:38:28,340
England began
its brutal conquest of Ireland

1106
01:38:28,430 --> 01:38:31,840
and declared half a million
acres of land in the north

1107
01:38:31,930 --> 01:38:33,470
open to settlement.

1108
01:38:35,130 --> 01:38:38,840
Under British colonial rule,
the Irish were regarded

1109
01:38:38,930 --> 01:38:43,050
as a lower species
and naturally inferior.

1110
01:38:43,130 --> 01:38:46,090
They were descendants of apes,
while, of course,

1111
01:38:46,180 --> 01:38:48,510
the English
were descendants of Man,

1112
01:38:48,590 --> 01:38:52,090
who had been created by God
in His own image.

1113
01:38:52,800 --> 01:38:54,380
The English were angels.

1114
01:38:55,550 --> 01:38:58,970
But Britain's Irish policies
brought economic ruin

1115
01:38:59,050 --> 01:39:02,050
to Ireland's wool
and linen industries.

1116
01:39:02,130 --> 01:39:04,550
The invaders became losers.

1117
01:39:04,630 --> 01:39:07,380
This pushed
nearly a quarter of a million

1118
01:39:07,470 --> 01:39:09,970
Calvinist Scots-Irish colonizers

1119
01:39:10,050 --> 01:39:13,220
to leave Ireland
for British North America.

1120
01:39:13,300 --> 01:39:16,050
One of history's
greatest migrations.

1121
01:39:17,300 --> 01:39:20,380
But as foot soldiers
of British empire-building,

1122
01:39:20,470 --> 01:39:22,510
and even before
ever encountering

1123
01:39:22,590 --> 01:39:23,880
Indigenous Americans,

1124
01:39:23,970 --> 01:39:28,050
the Scots-Irish had already
practiced scalping for bounty,

1125
01:39:28,130 --> 01:39:29,300
on the Irish.

1126
01:39:46,010 --> 01:39:50,180
Theodore Roosevelt said
of his Scots-Irish ancestors,

1127
01:39:50,260 --> 01:39:52,260
"They were a grim, stern people,

1128
01:39:52,340 --> 01:39:55,630
strong and simple,
powerful in good and evil,

1129
01:39:55,720 --> 01:39:58,760
relentless, revengeful,
suspicious,

1130
01:39:58,840 --> 01:40:01,340
knowing neither ruth nor pity.

1131
01:40:01,430 --> 01:40:03,970
They were of all men
the best fitted

1132
01:40:04,050 --> 01:40:05,260
to conquer the wilderness

1133
01:40:05,340 --> 01:40:07,680
and to hold it
against all comers."

1134
01:40:08,430 --> 01:40:10,380
They made up the officer corps

1135
01:40:10,470 --> 01:40:12,720
and were soldiers
of the regular army

1136
01:40:12,800 --> 01:40:15,260
as well as
the frontier ranging militias

1137
01:40:15,340 --> 01:40:17,590
that cleared areas
for settlement

1138
01:40:17,680 --> 01:40:20,050
by exterminating
Indigenous farmers

1139
01:40:20,130 --> 01:40:21,880
and destroying their towns.

1140
01:40:22,800 --> 01:40:25,090
They served in slave patrols

1141
01:40:25,180 --> 01:40:27,630
as well as
in the Confederate Army.

1142
01:40:27,720 --> 01:40:28,880
They regarded themselves

1143
01:40:28,970 --> 01:40:31,180
as chosen people
of the covenant,

1144
01:40:31,260 --> 01:40:34,430
commanded by God
to go into the wilderness

1145
01:40:34,510 --> 01:40:36,470
to build the new Israel.

1146
01:40:36,550 --> 01:40:40,430
I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
do solemnly swear

1147
01:40:41,380 --> 01:40:43,680
that I will faithfully execute

1148
01:40:43,760 --> 01:40:47,130
the office of president
of the United States...

1149
01:40:47,220 --> 01:40:49,090
All modern nation states

1150
01:40:49,180 --> 01:40:52,340
claim a kind of
rationalized origin story

1151
01:40:52,430 --> 01:40:54,970
upon which they fashion
patriotism

1152
01:40:55,050 --> 01:40:56,630
or loyalty to the state.

1153
01:40:56,720 --> 01:40:59,130
-So help me God.
-So help me God.

1154
01:40:59,220 --> 01:41:01,550
-So help me God.
-So help me God.

1155
01:41:01,630 --> 01:41:03,720
-So help me God.
-So help me God.

1156
01:41:03,800 --> 01:41:04,840
So help me God.

1157
01:41:04,930 --> 01:41:07,720
According to
God's unfathomable will,

1158
01:41:07,800 --> 01:41:10,630
one is born as part
of the elect or not.

1159
01:41:10,720 --> 01:41:12,800
And being elected
gives you the right

1160
01:41:12,880 --> 01:41:16,010
to implement God's will
and eliminate the native people.

1161
01:41:17,720 --> 01:41:20,380
Because individuals
could not know for certain

1162
01:41:20,470 --> 01:41:22,720
if they were among
the elected or not,

1163
01:41:22,800 --> 01:41:27,050
material wealth became
the manifestation of election.

1164
01:41:27,130 --> 01:41:29,590
Conversely,
bad fortune and poverty,

1165
01:41:29,680 --> 01:41:33,720
not to speak of dark skin,
became evidence of damnation.

1166
01:41:35,050 --> 01:41:38,590
"The attractiveness of such
a doctrine is quite obvious,"

1167
01:41:38,680 --> 01:41:41,840
commented historian
Donald Akenson.

1168
01:41:41,930 --> 01:41:45,880
"The Natives are immutably
profane and damned,

1169
01:41:45,970 --> 01:41:50,180
while oneself is predestined
to virtue."

1170
01:41:50,260 --> 01:41:53,550
The Puritans who founded
the Massachusetts Colony

1171
01:41:53,630 --> 01:41:55,340
endorsed this virtue.

1172
01:41:56,930 --> 01:41:59,720
Forty-one of the Pilgrims,
all men,

1173
01:41:59,800 --> 01:42:01,680
wrote and signed the compact,

1174
01:42:01,760 --> 01:42:04,430
invoking God's name while
planting "the First Colony."

1175
01:42:09,550 --> 01:42:11,680
The United States is supposedly

1176
01:42:11,760 --> 01:42:13,550
a nation of immigrants.

1177
01:42:13,630 --> 01:42:16,090
But this assumption
masks a reality

1178
01:42:16,180 --> 01:42:18,130
of over three centuries
of violence.

1179
01:42:21,590 --> 01:42:24,720
According to the myth,
the faithful citizens

1180
01:42:24,800 --> 01:42:27,180
come together
of their own free will

1181
01:42:27,260 --> 01:42:30,260
and pledge to each other
and to their God

1182
01:42:30,340 --> 01:42:33,380
to form and support
a godly society,

1183
01:42:33,470 --> 01:42:34,880
and their God in turn

1184
01:42:34,970 --> 01:42:38,760
vouchsafes them prosperity
in a promised land.

1185
01:42:41,010 --> 01:42:43,010
But for non-European immigrants,

1186
01:42:43,090 --> 01:42:46,090
no matter how much might
they strive to prove themselves

1187
01:42:46,180 --> 01:42:48,760
to be as hardworking
and patriotic

1188
01:42:48,840 --> 01:42:51,760
as descendants
of the original settlers,

1189
01:42:51,840 --> 01:42:53,430
they are suspect.

1190
01:42:53,510 --> 01:42:57,590
To be accepted, they must prove
their fidelity to the covenant

1191
01:42:57,680 --> 01:43:00,470
-and what it stands for.

1192
01:43:03,050 --> 01:43:05,430
They must endeavor
to embrace whiteness

1193
01:43:05,510 --> 01:43:09,130
and look down on descendants
of enslaved Africans,

1194
01:43:09,220 --> 01:43:11,510
the Indigenous, and Mexicans,

1195
01:43:11,590 --> 01:43:14,550
none of whom, of course,
are immigrants.

1196
01:43:21,340 --> 01:43:22,930
It was a messy night,

1197
01:43:23,010 --> 01:43:26,800
not Thursday anymore,
but not yet Friday.

1198
01:43:35,510 --> 01:43:37,300
This is Howard Zinn,

1199
01:43:37,380 --> 01:43:42,220
probably the most decisive
historian of this country.

1200
01:43:42,300 --> 01:43:47,510
This is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,
a respected historian as well.

1201
01:43:47,590 --> 01:43:49,510
Her father was Scots-Irish,

1202
01:43:49,590 --> 01:43:52,300
and she once married
a famous poet.

1203
01:43:54,010 --> 01:43:57,340
Howard and Roxanne are friends.

1204
01:43:57,430 --> 01:44:01,800
When Howard published
A People's History
of the United States,

1205
01:44:01,880 --> 01:44:04,050
it immediately
became a milestone

1206
01:44:04,130 --> 01:44:05,510
in the deconstruction

1207
01:44:05,590 --> 01:44:07,800
of the official
American narrative.

1208
01:44:08,930 --> 01:44:11,010
A distinguished white scholar

1209
01:44:11,090 --> 01:44:13,510
was for once
questioning the dream

1210
01:44:13,590 --> 01:44:15,630
and telling
the story differently.

1211
01:44:19,430 --> 01:44:21,720
One day, Roxanne asked Howard

1212
01:44:21,800 --> 01:44:25,260
why he left out parts
of the Native peoples' story.

1213
01:44:26,430 --> 01:44:30,220
Howard listened quietly,
then confessed,

1214
01:44:30,300 --> 01:44:34,090
"I don't know how to write it.
Why don't you write it?"

1215
01:44:35,720 --> 01:44:37,300
So Roxanne did,

1216
01:44:37,380 --> 01:44:39,880
putting Native Americans
at the center

1217
01:44:39,970 --> 01:44:42,380
and knowing that
it was going to be painful.

1218
01:44:44,800 --> 01:44:47,720
I met Howard
long before I met Roxanne.

1219
01:44:47,800 --> 01:44:49,220
And when I met Roxanne,

1220
01:44:49,300 --> 01:44:51,840
Howard had died
a few years earlier.

1221
01:44:51,930 --> 01:44:56,180
And Howard never read
Roxanne's finished book.

1222
01:44:56,260 --> 01:45:00,010
I learned from Howard,
Roxanne, and Michel-Rolph

1223
01:45:00,090 --> 01:45:03,090
as we learn from our elders.

1224
01:45:03,180 --> 01:45:06,380
From them, I learned to favor
the collective

1225
01:45:06,470 --> 01:45:08,300
over the individual.

1226
01:45:08,380 --> 01:45:12,090
To look for the "we"
before indulging in the "I."

1227
01:45:12,180 --> 01:45:17,180
And to always place oneself
within the world, not above.

1228
01:45:18,800 --> 01:45:20,340
Learning years.

1229
01:45:29,010 --> 01:45:30,930
Contrary to
what has been asserted

1230
01:45:31,010 --> 01:45:33,180
about the birth
of the United States

1231
01:45:33,260 --> 01:45:35,760
and its domination
of the continent,

1232
01:45:35,840 --> 01:45:38,930
it was neither superior weapons,
nor technology,

1233
01:45:39,010 --> 01:45:42,430
nor a superior number
of settlers, nor disease,

1234
01:45:42,510 --> 01:45:46,260
that is to say,
not "guns, steel, and germs,"

1235
01:45:46,340 --> 01:45:48,720
that can account for it.

1236
01:45:48,800 --> 01:45:51,340
The determining factor
of this domination

1237
01:45:51,430 --> 01:45:55,470
was the willingness to eliminate
whole civilizations of people

1238
01:45:55,550 --> 01:45:57,720
in order to possess their land.

1239
01:45:58,970 --> 01:46:00,630
The case of Andrew Jackson,

1240
01:46:00,720 --> 01:46:03,430
the seventh president
of the United States,

1241
01:46:03,510 --> 01:46:04,800
is a telling story.

1242
01:46:06,590 --> 01:46:10,510
Andrew Jackson is enshrined
in most U.S. history texts

1243
01:46:10,590 --> 01:46:13,590
in a chapter titled
"The Age of Jackson,"

1244
01:46:13,680 --> 01:46:17,010
"The Age of Democracy,"
"The Birth of Democracy,"

1245
01:46:17,630 --> 01:46:19,550
or some variation thereon.

1246
01:46:20,470 --> 01:46:22,720
Jackson's family personified

1247
01:46:22,800 --> 01:46:26,630
the Protestant
Scots-Irish migration.

1248
01:46:26,720 --> 01:46:30,130
He was an influential
Tennessee land speculator,

1249
01:46:30,220 --> 01:46:32,220
politician, and wealthy owner

1250
01:46:32,300 --> 01:46:34,760
of a slave plantation
near Nashville,

1251
01:46:34,840 --> 01:46:38,880
worked by 150 slaves,
the Hermitage.

1252
01:46:40,090 --> 01:46:45,220
Jackson bought his first slave,
a young woman, in 1788.

1253
01:46:45,300 --> 01:46:47,260
He was 21 years old.

1254
01:46:48,930 --> 01:46:51,090
When Tennessee became a state,

1255
01:46:51,180 --> 01:46:56,010
he was elected at the age of 29
as its first US senator,

1256
01:46:56,090 --> 01:46:58,050
an office he quit after a year

1257
01:46:58,130 --> 01:47:01,220
to become a judge
in the Tennessee Supreme Court.

1258
01:47:02,800 --> 01:47:05,050
As a judge,
he was in a better position

1259
01:47:05,130 --> 01:47:07,050
to seize Native lands.

1260
01:47:08,800 --> 01:47:12,340
It was in 1801
that Jackson first took command

1261
01:47:12,430 --> 01:47:15,180
of the Tennessee militia
as a colonel

1262
01:47:15,260 --> 01:47:19,380
and began his Indian-killing
military career.

1263
01:47:19,470 --> 01:47:22,970
In 1821,
by then a national hero,

1264
01:47:23,050 --> 01:47:27,130
Jackson became military governor
of the Florida territory.

1265
01:47:28,130 --> 01:47:32,220
In 1829,
Jackson became president.

1266
01:47:32,300 --> 01:47:35,130
By that time,
it was already clear

1267
01:47:35,220 --> 01:47:39,220
that this new nation called
the United States of America

1268
01:47:39,300 --> 01:47:42,010
needed a clear
and decisive policy

1269
01:47:42,090 --> 01:47:44,130
toward the first Americans.

1270
01:47:45,630 --> 01:47:47,840
It was their land, after all.

1271
01:47:51,970 --> 01:47:57,050
1830, Congress passed
the Indian Removal Act.

1272
01:47:57,130 --> 01:47:59,550
Andrew Jackson immediately
pushed through

1273
01:47:59,630 --> 01:48:02,430
to forcibly deport
all Indigenous peoples

1274
01:48:02,510 --> 01:48:04,130
from east of the Mississippi

1275
01:48:04,220 --> 01:48:07,340
to what they would then call
"Indian Territory."

1276
01:48:09,180 --> 01:48:12,090
The Seminoles in Florida
were one of the nations

1277
01:48:12,180 --> 01:48:14,050
which firmly resisted.

1278
01:48:14,800 --> 01:48:16,510
Jackson sent in the army.

1279
01:48:19,840 --> 01:48:21,010
And as usual,

1280
01:48:21,090 --> 01:48:24,380
when a power decides
to "solve" a problem,

1281
01:48:24,470 --> 01:48:28,510
especially if it includes
the removal of whole peoples,

1282
01:48:28,930 --> 01:48:30,680
it turns ugly.

1283
01:48:59,550 --> 01:49:02,800
Quartermaster General
Thomas Sidney Jesup

1284
01:49:02,880 --> 01:49:05,130
was made commander
of that force.

1285
01:49:05,220 --> 01:49:06,970
He would become the embodiment

1286
01:49:07,050 --> 01:49:10,130
of every other henchman
in history.

1287
01:50:39,300 --> 01:50:41,340
You will not replace us!

1288
01:50:41,430 --> 01:50:43,220
You will not replace us!

1289
01:50:43,300 --> 01:50:45,510
You will not replace us!

1290
01:50:47,550 --> 01:50:49,090
You will not replace us!

1291
01:51:20,970 --> 01:51:24,430
A treaty is an agreement
signed by two nations

1292
01:51:24,510 --> 01:51:26,260
in order to establish borders

1293
01:51:26,340 --> 01:51:29,050
and conditions
for their mutual survival.

1294
01:51:31,380 --> 01:51:35,550
But nevertheless,
from 1832 to 1871,

1295
01:51:35,630 --> 01:51:38,800
American Indians
were arbitrarily considered

1296
01:51:38,880 --> 01:51:41,380
to be
"domestic dependent tribes,"

1297
01:51:41,470 --> 01:51:42,630
and as such,

1298
01:51:42,720 --> 01:51:45,880
any treaty had to be approved
by the U.S. Congress.

1299
01:51:48,550 --> 01:51:53,510
Andrew Jackson said
to Secretary of War
John Caldwell Calhoun,

1300
01:51:53,590 --> 01:51:55,260
of Scots-Irish descent,

1301
01:51:55,340 --> 01:51:58,970
who considered slavery
as a necessary evil,

1302
01:51:59,050 --> 01:52:01,760
"I think making treaties
with Indians

1303
01:52:01,840 --> 01:52:04,380
is not only useless but absurd."

1304
01:52:05,590 --> 01:52:08,340
Indeed,
to accept the term "treaty"

1305
01:52:08,470 --> 01:52:11,930
was to tacitly accept
the notion of "nation."

1306
01:52:13,930 --> 01:52:15,800
During the Jacksonian period,

1307
01:52:15,880 --> 01:52:18,930
also called "the birth
of the white republic,"

1308
01:52:19,010 --> 01:52:21,800
the United States made
86 treaties

1309
01:52:21,880 --> 01:52:24,050
with 26 Indigenous nations

1310
01:52:24,130 --> 01:52:26,510
between New York
and the Mississippi,

1311
01:52:26,590 --> 01:52:29,050
all of them
forcing land handovers

1312
01:52:29,130 --> 01:52:30,880
and including removals.

1313
01:52:32,180 --> 01:52:35,970
And then,
they signed treaty after treaty

1314
01:52:36,050 --> 01:52:39,010
which were violated
one after the other.

1315
01:53:33,300 --> 01:53:35,590
Famous
French aristocrat and writer

1316
01:53:35,680 --> 01:53:37,180
Alexis de Tocqueville

1317
01:53:37,260 --> 01:53:39,630
witnessed part of
what would become known

1318
01:53:39,720 --> 01:53:42,130
as the Trail of Tears.

1319
01:53:42,220 --> 01:53:44,260
He was present
at the deportation

1320
01:53:44,340 --> 01:53:45,840
of the Choctaw people.

1321
01:53:47,090 --> 01:53:51,260
"I saw with my own eyes
several of the cases of misery

1322
01:53:51,340 --> 01:53:53,510
which I have been describing.

1323
01:53:54,680 --> 01:53:56,930
I was the witness of sufferings

1324
01:53:57,010 --> 01:53:59,130
which I have not the power
to portray."

1325
01:54:00,760 --> 01:54:03,430
"No cry, no sob.

1326
01:54:03,510 --> 01:54:05,220
All were silent."

1327
01:56:15,090 --> 01:56:18,630
Life, race, patriotism.

1328
01:56:18,720 --> 01:56:20,720
-What is a flag?

1329
01:56:20,800 --> 01:56:23,510
A piece of cloth to die for?

1330
01:56:24,300 --> 01:56:25,840
Or to kill for?

1331
01:56:27,130 --> 01:56:29,180
Explained in two words.

1332
01:58:51,380 --> 01:58:54,340
Since its first
appearance in East Africa,

1333
01:58:54,420 --> 01:58:57,550
the human species has been
on a long migration,

1334
01:58:57,630 --> 01:59:00,920
first to Asia,
and then to Central Europe.

1335
01:59:03,170 --> 01:59:06,920
This process, lasting
for multiple thousands of years,

1336
01:59:07,010 --> 01:59:10,260
can be considered
as the premise of globalization.

1337
01:59:12,380 --> 01:59:13,670
On these roads,

1338
01:59:13,760 --> 01:59:17,550
the circulation of the most
vital and decisive commodities

1339
01:59:17,630 --> 01:59:20,170
would permit the survival
of the human race

1340
01:59:20,260 --> 01:59:22,300
and its adaptation
on the planet.

1341
01:59:24,300 --> 01:59:27,260
And along these roads,
for better or worse,

1342
01:59:27,340 --> 01:59:29,470
silk, of course,
would circulate,

1343
01:59:29,550 --> 01:59:33,470
but also religion, language,
refugees, artists,

1344
01:59:33,550 --> 01:59:36,420
technology, and pandemics.

1345
01:59:42,340 --> 01:59:46,470
People create
families, tribes, nations.

1346
01:59:46,550 --> 01:59:49,300
Sometimes,
they need to protect the family,

1347
01:59:49,380 --> 01:59:53,380
defend the tribe,
increase the nation's resources.

1348
01:59:53,470 --> 01:59:56,470
Sometimes,
it's just about surviving.

1349
01:59:56,550 --> 01:59:59,880
Other times,
it's for the wrong reasons.

1350
01:59:59,970 --> 02:00:02,720
But whether for protection
or conquest,

1351
02:00:02,800 --> 02:00:04,800
for preservation or profit,

1352
02:00:04,880 --> 02:00:08,300
these acts
might require being armed.

1353
02:00:08,380 --> 02:00:11,510
And over the centuries,
we lost our purpose,

1354
02:00:11,590 --> 02:00:13,010
and then our bearings.

1355
02:00:44,510 --> 02:00:48,010
-Fire!

1356
02:01:04,760 --> 02:01:07,510
At the beginning,
the very powerful Moguls,

1357
02:01:07,590 --> 02:01:11,510
whose empire was founded
in 1526 in India,

1358
02:01:11,590 --> 02:01:14,420
were more developed
than any European state.

1359
02:01:15,840 --> 02:01:19,670
But they had no ships
able to withstand artillery fire

1360
02:01:19,760 --> 02:01:21,590
or carry heavy guns.

1361
02:01:21,670 --> 02:01:24,130
Instead of building up
their own fleet,

1362
02:01:24,220 --> 02:01:27,170
the Moguls chose to purchase
defense services

1363
02:01:27,260 --> 02:01:29,090
from these European states.

1364
02:01:31,090 --> 02:01:33,630
This extremely
lucrative commerce

1365
02:01:33,720 --> 02:01:34,920
would lead to the creation

1366
02:01:35,010 --> 02:01:38,010
of the first
multinational corporations ever,

1367
02:01:38,970 --> 02:01:41,300
the British East India Company

1368
02:01:41,380 --> 02:01:43,510
and The Dutch
East India Company.

1369
02:01:44,920 --> 02:01:47,170
Meanwhile,
the Chinese had already

1370
02:01:47,260 --> 02:01:48,550
discovered gunpowder

1371
02:01:48,630 --> 02:01:50,880
and had already cast
the first cannon

1372
02:01:50,970 --> 02:01:52,800
in the mid-13th century.

1373
02:01:55,090 --> 02:01:57,760
But they felt so safe
in their part of the world

1374
02:01:57,840 --> 02:02:00,130
that they refrained
from participating

1375
02:02:00,220 --> 02:02:02,010
in the naval arms race.

1376
02:02:04,510 --> 02:02:07,260
So the backward
and poorly resourced Europe

1377
02:02:07,340 --> 02:02:10,420
of the 16th century
would acquire a monopoly

1378
02:02:10,510 --> 02:02:13,630
on ocean-traveling ships,
with guns capable

1379
02:02:13,720 --> 02:02:15,760
of spreading death
and destruction

1380
02:02:15,840 --> 02:02:17,720
across huge distances.

1381
02:02:19,090 --> 02:02:21,420
Europeans
became the masters of cannons

1382
02:02:21,510 --> 02:02:23,590
that killed
long before the weapons

1383
02:02:23,670 --> 02:02:25,760
of their opponents
could reach them.

1384
02:02:31,800 --> 02:02:34,090
The art of killing at a distance

1385
02:02:34,170 --> 02:02:36,170
became a European specialty.

1386
02:02:37,300 --> 02:02:40,170
Meanwhile,
in the so-called Third World,

1387
02:02:40,260 --> 02:02:42,840
small arms were still able
to measure up

1388
02:02:42,970 --> 02:02:44,970
-to those in Europe.

1389
02:02:45,050 --> 02:02:47,720
The standard weapon
was a muzzle-loaded,

1390
02:02:47,800 --> 02:02:49,970
smooth-bored flintlock musket...

1391
02:02:50,050 --> 02:02:51,800
-...which was also manufactured

1392
02:02:51,880 --> 02:02:54,300
by village blacksmiths
in Africa.

1393
02:02:54,380 --> 02:02:58,010
But these weapons were slow
and difficult to handle.

1394
02:02:58,090 --> 02:03:00,010
They emitted puffs of smoke

1395
02:03:00,090 --> 02:03:02,670
that revealed
where the marksman was.

1396
02:03:02,760 --> 02:03:04,220
To say nothing of the fact

1397
02:03:04,300 --> 02:03:07,340
that he also had to stand up
while reloading.

1398
02:03:08,880 --> 02:03:10,550
The musket
was a frightening weapon

1399
02:03:10,630 --> 02:03:13,380
for those who heard it
for the first time.

1400
02:03:13,470 --> 02:03:15,920
But its range
was only 100 yards.

1401
02:03:17,380 --> 02:03:19,010
So the colonial wars

1402
02:03:19,090 --> 02:03:21,470
of the first half
of the 19th century

1403
02:03:21,550 --> 02:03:23,380
were lengthy and expensive.

1404
02:03:25,800 --> 02:03:28,340
Prussia replaced
its muzzle loaders

1405
02:03:28,420 --> 02:03:30,510
with a breech-loaded
Dreyse rifle.

1406
02:03:31,760 --> 02:03:35,010
This was tested
for the first time in 1866

1407
02:03:35,090 --> 02:03:39,090
in the Austro-Prussian war
over hegemony in Germany.

1408
02:03:40,510 --> 02:03:44,010
In 1884,
Hiram Stevens Maxim

1409
02:03:44,090 --> 02:03:46,300
who also invented
the mousetrap,

1410
02:03:46,380 --> 02:03:50,170
manufactured an automatic weapon
that was light to carry

1411
02:03:50,260 --> 02:03:52,670
and fired nine rounds
per second.

1412
02:03:54,380 --> 02:03:58,590
It was used by the Germans
in East Africa in 1888,

1413
02:03:58,670 --> 02:04:04,010
and by the British in 1893
during the First Matabele War.

1414
02:04:04,090 --> 02:04:07,050
At the same time,
steel had become so cheap,

1415
02:04:07,130 --> 02:04:09,720
it could be used
for the manufacture of arms

1416
02:04:09,800 --> 02:04:11,170
on a large scale.

1417
02:04:12,300 --> 02:04:13,840
In Africa and Asia,

1418
02:04:13,920 --> 02:04:17,260
local smiths could no longer
make copies of the new weapons

1419
02:04:17,340 --> 02:04:21,670
as they did not have access to
industrially manufactured steel.

1420
02:04:21,760 --> 02:04:24,510
-At the end of the 1890s,

1421
02:04:24,590 --> 02:04:27,380
the revolution of the rifle
was complete.

1422
02:04:27,470 --> 02:04:30,300
All European infantrymen
could now fire

1423
02:04:30,380 --> 02:04:32,260
lying down
without being spotted,

1424
02:04:32,340 --> 02:04:33,630
-in all weathers.

1425
02:04:33,720 --> 02:04:35,840
Fifteen shots in as many seconds

1426
02:04:35,920 --> 02:04:39,380
at targets up to a distance
of 1,000 yards,

1427
02:04:39,470 --> 02:04:40,760
confirming the myth

1428
02:04:40,840 --> 02:04:42,880
of the white man's
invincibility.

1429
02:04:50,090 --> 02:04:51,920
Unfortunately, their bullets

1430
02:04:52,010 --> 02:04:54,470
were not totally efficient
against "the savages

1431
02:04:54,550 --> 02:04:57,920
and fanatical tribesmen,"
as they called them,

1432
02:04:58,010 --> 02:05:00,550
for they often
continued their charges

1433
02:05:00,630 --> 02:05:03,590
even after being hit
four or five times.

1434
02:05:05,090 --> 02:05:07,420
The answer
was the dumdum bullet,

1435
02:05:07,510 --> 02:05:08,800
or expanding bullet,

1436
02:05:08,880 --> 02:05:13,090
named after the factory
in Dum Dum outside Calcutta.

1437
02:05:13,170 --> 02:05:15,420
The lead core
of the dumdum bullet

1438
02:05:15,510 --> 02:05:16,970
explodes the casing,

1439
02:05:17,050 --> 02:05:21,220
causing large, painful wounds
that do not heal well.

1440
02:05:21,300 --> 02:05:25,130
The use of dumdum bullets
between civilized states

1441
02:05:25,220 --> 02:05:27,550
would soon be prohibited.

1442
02:05:27,630 --> 02:05:30,380
They were to be reserved
for big game hunting

1443
02:05:30,470 --> 02:05:34,800
and non-white unarmed
populations in colonial wars.

1444
02:05:38,760 --> 02:05:41,090
At Omdurman, in 1898,

1445
02:05:41,170 --> 02:05:43,880
the whole new European arsenal
was tested

1446
02:05:43,970 --> 02:05:48,050
against a numerically superior
and very determined enemy.

1447
02:05:49,880 --> 02:05:52,630
One of the most cheerful
depicters of war,

1448
02:05:52,720 --> 02:05:53,840
Winston Churchill,

1449
02:05:53,920 --> 02:05:57,300
later winner of
the Nobel Prize for Literature,

1450
02:05:57,380 --> 02:06:00,340
was the war correspondent
of the Morning Post.

1451
02:06:06,260 --> 02:06:08,590
"Nothing like
the Battle of Omdurman

1452
02:06:08,670 --> 02:06:12,510
will ever be seen again,"
wrote Churchill in a book

1453
02:06:12,590 --> 02:06:14,420
published after the experience.

1454
02:06:15,970 --> 02:06:18,590
"It was the last link
in the long chain

1455
02:06:18,670 --> 02:06:20,840
of those spectacular conflicts

1456
02:06:20,920 --> 02:06:23,130
whose vivid
and majestic splendor

1457
02:06:23,220 --> 02:06:27,670
has done so much
to invest war with glamour.

1458
02:06:27,760 --> 02:06:31,800
This kind of war was full
of fascinating thrills,"

1459
02:06:31,880 --> 02:06:32,970
he wrote.

1460
02:06:34,300 --> 02:06:39,380
The morning of September 2nd,
1898, the following occurred.

1461
02:06:44,090 --> 02:06:47,470
"The White Flags
were nearly over the crest.

1462
02:06:47,550 --> 02:06:48,670
In another minute,

1463
02:06:48,760 --> 02:06:50,920
they would become visible
to the batteries."

1464
02:06:52,260 --> 02:06:55,340
"Did they realize
what would come to meet them?

1465
02:06:57,340 --> 02:06:59,090
They were in a dense mass,

1466
02:06:59,170 --> 02:07:02,800
2,800 yards
from the 32nd Field Battery

1467
02:07:02,880 --> 02:07:04,170
and the gunboats.

1468
02:07:05,340 --> 02:07:09,260
The ranges were known.
It was a matter of machinery.

1469
02:07:10,420 --> 02:07:14,170
The mind was fascinated
by the impending horror.

1470
02:07:14,260 --> 02:07:16,920
I could see it coming.
In a few seconds,

1471
02:07:17,010 --> 02:07:20,130
swift destruction
would rush on these brave men.

1472
02:07:24,260 --> 02:07:25,550
They topped the crest

1473
02:07:25,630 --> 02:07:28,670
and drew out into full view
of the whole army.

1474
02:07:28,760 --> 02:07:31,920
Their white banners made them
conspicuous above all.

1475
02:07:33,670 --> 02:07:35,880
As they saw the camp
of their enemies,

1476
02:07:35,970 --> 02:07:39,760
they discharged their rifles
with a great roar of musketry

1477
02:07:39,840 --> 02:07:41,590
and quickened their pace."

1478
02:07:43,220 --> 02:07:44,760
"It was a terrible sight,

1479
02:07:44,840 --> 02:07:47,380
for as yet
they had not hurt us at all,

1480
02:07:47,470 --> 02:07:49,630
and it seemed
an unfair advantage

1481
02:07:49,720 --> 02:07:53,010
to strike thus cruelly
when they could not reply."

1482
02:07:58,920 --> 02:08:01,720
Churchill found
the enemy's plan of attack

1483
02:08:01,800 --> 02:08:06,800
wise and well-thought-out,
except for one vital point.

1484
02:08:06,880 --> 02:08:09,550
It was based
on a fatal underestimation

1485
02:08:09,630 --> 02:08:12,550
of the effectiveness
of modern weapons.

1486
02:08:14,260 --> 02:08:15,920
"Within the space of five hours,

1487
02:08:16,010 --> 02:08:18,720
the strongest
and best-armed savage army

1488
02:08:18,800 --> 02:08:21,970
yet arrayed
against a modern European power

1489
02:08:22,050 --> 02:08:23,970
had been destroyed
and dispersed

1490
02:08:24,050 --> 02:08:27,970
with hardly any difficulty,
comparatively small risk,

1491
02:08:28,050 --> 02:08:30,880
and insignificant loss
to the victors.

1492
02:08:32,050 --> 02:08:34,720
Thus ended
the Battle of Omdurman,

1493
02:08:34,800 --> 02:08:36,970
the most striking triumph
ever gained

1494
02:08:37,050 --> 02:08:40,170
by the arms of science
over barbarians,"

1495
02:08:40,260 --> 02:08:41,760
wrote Churchill.

1496
02:08:42,220 --> 02:08:43,340
At Omdurman,

1497
02:08:43,420 --> 02:08:45,880
no British soldier
expected to be killed,

1498
02:08:45,970 --> 02:08:48,590
for this was only
a sporting element

1499
02:08:48,670 --> 02:08:50,220
in a splendid game.

1500
02:08:52,300 --> 02:08:54,880
The industrial development
of firearms

1501
02:08:54,970 --> 02:08:59,220
was playing an important role
in U.S. colonization as well.

1502
02:08:59,300 --> 02:09:01,630
As a war president,
George Washington

1503
02:09:01,720 --> 02:09:05,670
thought it unreasonable
to rely on foreign weapons.

1504
02:09:05,760 --> 02:09:09,720
With generous start-up funds,
lucrative long-term contracts,

1505
02:09:09,800 --> 02:09:12,170
and heavy tariffs
on foreign imports,

1506
02:09:12,260 --> 02:09:15,470
he literally jumpstarted
the U.S. arms industry

1507
02:09:15,550 --> 02:09:19,220
into becoming the world's
first arms manufacturer.

1508
02:09:23,170 --> 02:09:24,670
The very first corporation

1509
02:09:24,760 --> 02:09:26,760
established
by the United States

1510
02:09:26,840 --> 02:09:29,920
was the Springfield Armory
in Western Massachusetts,

1511
02:09:30,010 --> 02:09:33,340
founded in 1777.

1512
02:09:33,420 --> 02:09:37,260
It soon introduced standardized
interchangeable parts

1513
02:09:37,340 --> 02:09:40,920
and assembly line production,
key factors in the takeoff

1514
02:09:41,010 --> 02:09:43,720
of the Industrial Revolution
in the U.S.

1515
02:09:43,800 --> 02:09:45,050
and its establishment

1516
02:09:45,130 --> 02:09:47,920
as a capitalist,
imperialist state.

1517
02:09:50,130 --> 02:09:53,720
And having more arms
allows more expansion.

1518
02:09:53,800 --> 02:09:56,720
More expansion means more wars,

1519
02:09:56,800 --> 02:09:59,300
for which you then need
more arms.

1520
02:09:59,380 --> 02:10:02,050
A profitable
chicken-and-egg bonanza

1521
02:10:02,130 --> 02:10:04,130
in a totally
incestuous relationship

1522
02:10:04,220 --> 02:10:07,300
between military industry
and governments.

1523
02:10:50,670 --> 02:10:52,720
The so-called Monroe Doctrine

1524
02:10:52,800 --> 02:10:54,720
became the order of the day.

1525
02:10:54,800 --> 02:10:58,510
At its core, in 1850,
it was a mere commitment

1526
02:10:58,590 --> 02:11:01,090
to keep the Americas,
North and South,

1527
02:11:01,170 --> 02:11:03,840
safe from European
colonizing ambitions.

1528
02:11:05,550 --> 02:11:08,840
Over the years, from
President Theodore Roosevelt

1529
02:11:08,920 --> 02:11:11,170
to John F. Kennedy
and Ronald Reagan,

1530
02:11:11,260 --> 02:11:14,130
the doctrine came to cover
any perceived threat

1531
02:11:14,220 --> 02:11:16,720
to U.S. interests
around the world.

1532
02:11:18,420 --> 02:11:21,260
Overseas domination
became the goal.

1533
02:11:26,380 --> 02:11:30,630
As Reverend Josiah Strong
argued in 1885

1534
02:11:30,720 --> 02:11:33,550
in his best-selling book
Our Country,

1535
02:11:34,220 --> 02:11:35,800
"As a superior race,

1536
02:11:35,880 --> 02:11:38,630
the U.S.
had a divine responsibility

1537
02:11:38,720 --> 02:11:40,550
to control the world."

1538
02:11:53,380 --> 02:11:56,130
There is something
we need to talk about.

1539
02:11:56,220 --> 02:11:58,340
Something that keeps
bothering me,

1540
02:11:58,420 --> 02:12:01,470
and that we cannot leave out
of the present story...

1541
02:12:02,340 --> 02:12:04,340
especially
because it represents,

1542
02:12:04,420 --> 02:12:08,130
in a troublesome way,
the symbol of all evil.

1543
02:12:09,590 --> 02:12:13,840
It is something odd,
hidden deep behind two words.

1544
02:12:13,920 --> 02:12:17,010
Hiroshima. Nagasaki.

1545
02:12:17,090 --> 02:12:20,260
It was said that it was a war
against fascism.

1546
02:12:20,340 --> 02:12:24,590
It was said that it was to
prevent further American death.

1547
02:12:24,670 --> 02:12:27,470
But hundreds of thousands died.

1548
02:12:27,550 --> 02:12:29,800
The accounting is irrefutable.

1549
02:12:31,260 --> 02:12:34,380
In a chess game,
the objective is to checkmate

1550
02:12:34,470 --> 02:12:35,880
the opponent's king.

1551
02:12:35,970 --> 02:12:39,260
All other pieces
then become collateral.

1552
02:12:39,340 --> 02:12:43,170
Their respective value
depends on the strategic value

1553
02:12:43,260 --> 02:12:45,550
you assign to them.

1554
02:12:45,630 --> 02:12:48,590
In the present case,
the king is an emperor,

1555
02:12:48,670 --> 02:12:52,670
and Japanese deaths
will provide the collateral.

1556
02:12:52,760 --> 02:12:57,630
Shock and awe. A massacre
determined by an algorithm.

1557
02:12:59,010 --> 02:13:03,970
It came at eight o'clock
on August 6th, 1945.

1558
02:13:04,050 --> 02:13:06,050
Nobody was expecting it.

1559
02:13:06,130 --> 02:13:09,510
They were pawns
in a sordid game.

1560
02:13:09,590 --> 02:13:14,010
"Killing at a distance"
had just taken on a new meaning.

1561
02:13:14,090 --> 02:13:16,050
No explanation required.

1562
02:13:16,130 --> 02:13:19,170
No cries tolerated, nor pity.

1563
02:13:19,260 --> 02:13:21,920
Surrender or death at best.

1564
02:13:40,010 --> 02:13:43,010
An endless wasteland
of dead people.

1565
02:13:44,550 --> 02:13:49,340
For it is a massacre,
not a heroic act.

1566
02:13:49,420 --> 02:13:53,300
Why wasn't it ever called
a war crime?

1567
02:13:53,380 --> 02:13:56,170
Is it because
those who dropped the bombs

1568
02:13:56,260 --> 02:13:58,720
are those who got to name
the deed?

1569
02:14:01,220 --> 02:14:03,760
"Naming is power,"
said Trouillot.

1570
02:14:13,630 --> 02:14:16,300
Two days
after the bombing of Nagasaki,

1571
02:14:16,380 --> 02:14:18,800
President Truman said...

1572
02:14:18,880 --> 02:14:22,130
"The only language
they seem to understand

1573
02:14:22,220 --> 02:14:24,420
is the one we used to bomb them.

1574
02:14:25,550 --> 02:14:27,220
When dealing with an animal...

1575
02:14:28,010 --> 02:14:30,550
treat it like an animal.

1576
02:14:30,630 --> 02:14:34,760
It's totally unfortunate,
but it's still the truth."

1577
02:14:36,920 --> 02:14:39,590
Indeed, there is no more to say.

1578
02:14:40,510 --> 02:14:43,670
We know now
what the task truly is...

1579
02:14:43,760 --> 02:14:47,170
for Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's
Heart of Darkness,

1580
02:14:47,260 --> 02:14:49,970
as well
as at the Battle of Omdurman.

1581
02:14:50,760 --> 02:14:52,970
Exterminate all the brutes.

1582
02:14:54,300 --> 02:14:56,220
-Take the cup.

1583
02:14:56,300 --> 02:14:57,970
Okay, great.

1584
02:14:58,050 --> 02:15:00,840
Why don't you
take off your shirt?

1585
02:15:00,920 --> 02:15:04,470
No, not you, Henry.
The young man.

1586
02:15:04,550 --> 02:15:07,010
Can you translate for him?

1587
02:15:07,090 --> 02:15:09,300
Good.
Make him look more natural.

1588
02:15:09,380 --> 02:15:13,670
Yeah, native, blending in.
You know what I mean?

1589
02:15:13,760 --> 02:15:15,840
-Yeah, okay.

1590
02:15:15,920 --> 02:15:18,050
Change position.

1591
02:15:18,130 --> 02:15:21,510
Really? You want
to just lay down like this?

1592
02:15:21,590 --> 02:15:24,470
Well, at least take the cigar.

1593
02:15:25,260 --> 02:15:27,010
Take the cigar!

1594
02:15:27,090 --> 02:15:31,010
Okay, boy? Hey, you, boy!

1595
02:15:31,090 --> 02:15:34,380
Look at him.

1596
02:15:34,470 --> 02:15:37,470
Of course, I know
he doesn't speak Spanish.

1597
02:15:37,550 --> 02:15:41,090
Put a hand on your hip
like this.

1598
02:15:41,170 --> 02:15:44,880
-Yeah, you see? Perfect!

1599
02:15:44,970 --> 02:15:48,760
Change position.
Both of you stand up.

1600
02:15:48,840 --> 02:15:50,550
Okay. Pick up the rifles.

1601
02:15:50,630 --> 02:15:52,590
-Him, too. Yeah. One each.

1602
02:15:52,670 --> 02:15:56,590
Okay. And put the gun
on your shoulder.

1603
02:15:56,670 --> 02:15:57,840
Well, help him with it.

1604
02:15:57,920 --> 02:16:01,170
Henry-- Okay.
Don't tell him, show him.

1605
02:16:01,840 --> 02:16:03,090
No. You know what?

1606
02:16:03,170 --> 02:16:04,880
-Put it on the other side.

1607
02:16:04,970 --> 02:16:08,880
Yeah. Now, Henry,
look at the distance.

1608
02:16:08,970 --> 02:16:13,380
You are looking
at the Nile River over there.

1609
02:16:13,470 --> 02:16:16,420
Be inspired. Show some passion.

1610
02:16:16,510 --> 02:16:20,090
The whole world
has been waiting for you.

1611
02:16:20,170 --> 02:16:21,920
-That's it!

1612
02:16:22,010 --> 02:16:23,220
Awesome!

1613
02:16:25,300 --> 02:16:27,340
Yup. Classic Stanley.

1614
02:16:27,420 --> 02:16:31,420
He tends to overdramatize
every so often. Can't help it.

1615
02:16:31,510 --> 02:16:35,090
The man changed my name
from Ndugu M'hali

1616
02:16:35,170 --> 02:16:37,920
to Kalulu
because it sounded better.

1617
02:16:39,050 --> 02:16:40,300
I have never told him

1618
02:16:40,380 --> 02:16:42,970
how I enjoy
his company sometimes.

1619
02:16:43,050 --> 02:16:46,050
But occasionally,
he can be quite a bully too.

1620
02:16:47,260 --> 02:16:50,090
He brought me with him
to Europe and America,

1621
02:16:50,170 --> 02:16:52,170
as his butler, officially.

1622
02:16:52,260 --> 02:16:54,840
But when alone,
we were just friends.

1623
02:16:54,920 --> 02:16:56,590
Go figure.

1624
02:16:56,670 --> 02:17:00,590
The fearless explorer
and the noble savage.

1625
02:17:00,670 --> 02:17:04,170
That in the press, he called me
his "infant cannibal"

1626
02:17:04,260 --> 02:17:05,760
should have tipped me off.

1627
02:17:14,510 --> 02:17:17,380
I have been
a good soldier all my life.

1628
02:17:17,470 --> 02:17:20,010
The perfectly
well-educated pupil

1629
02:17:20,090 --> 02:17:23,630
of a Western
humanistic civilization.

1630
02:17:23,720 --> 02:17:27,300
I thought that to be mature
was to be knowledgeable,

1631
02:17:27,380 --> 02:17:30,590
smart, sophisticated,
and gracious.

1632
02:17:30,670 --> 02:17:34,340
I was educated to believe
that some types of behavior

1633
02:17:34,420 --> 02:17:37,920
were acceptable,
and others were not.

1634
02:17:38,010 --> 02:17:39,800
And that when I had done wrong,

1635
02:17:39,880 --> 02:17:42,090
I had to learn
from that experience.

1636
02:17:43,760 --> 02:17:46,630
My parents taught me that,
as a Black person,

1637
02:17:46,720 --> 02:17:50,380
I should never find myself
on the wrong side of the tracks.

1638
02:17:51,470 --> 02:17:53,260
I learned to behave.

1639
02:17:53,340 --> 02:17:57,050
I learned to be sociable,
presentable, congenial.

1640
02:17:57,130 --> 02:18:01,380
I had to negotiate daily
with an intimate, unnamed,

1641
02:18:01,470 --> 02:18:06,050
and vulgar enemy, infatuated
with a superiority complex.

1642
02:18:06,130 --> 02:18:08,720
Let's say,
like Frank T.J. Mackey.

1643
02:18:10,010 --> 02:18:12,340
I will not apologize
for what I need.

1644
02:18:12,420 --> 02:18:15,050
Or Jordan Belfort.

1645
02:18:19,510 --> 02:18:20,920
I have been a good soldier

1646
02:18:21,010 --> 02:18:22,170
and a good learner,

1647
02:18:22,260 --> 02:18:25,720
but I could never really fathom
what it actually means

1648
02:18:25,800 --> 02:18:26,970
to be superior,

1649
02:18:27,050 --> 02:18:31,220
logically degrading
everybody else as inferior.

1650
02:18:31,300 --> 02:18:34,420
A singular assumption,
to say the least.

1651
02:18:35,920 --> 02:18:39,670
Visiting Europe, I discovered
people who genuinely thought,

1652
02:18:39,760 --> 02:18:43,760
and were naively convinced,
that they embodied the world.

1653
02:18:43,840 --> 02:18:46,590
The whole world.
And in that world,

1654
02:18:46,670 --> 02:18:49,050
I was assigned
the role of a footnote.

1655
02:18:49,130 --> 02:18:52,090
Or at best,
like in most Hollywood movies,

1656
02:18:52,170 --> 02:18:54,920
a supporting role
with guarantied death

1657
02:18:55,010 --> 02:18:58,170
and careless disposal
by some wild beast,

1658
02:18:58,260 --> 02:19:00,050
sometimes before the third act.

1659
02:19:01,970 --> 02:19:04,090
-Go back!

1660
02:19:04,170 --> 02:19:07,050
Back across the log!
Get Jimmy outta here!

1661
02:19:08,840 --> 02:19:10,510
-No!
-Gotta run, Jimmy.

1662
02:19:10,590 --> 02:19:13,880
-Run!

1663
02:19:28,670 --> 02:19:31,510
Joseph Conrad's book,
Heart of Darkness,

1664
02:19:31,590 --> 02:19:34,220
was influenced
by the Battle of Omdurman.

1665
02:19:36,380 --> 02:19:37,920
Conrad starts the novel

1666
02:19:38,010 --> 02:19:41,470
with what has been called
"the toolbox of imperialism,"

1667
02:19:41,550 --> 02:19:45,840
which involves the ship's guns
that fire on a continent,

1668
02:19:45,920 --> 02:19:50,130
the railway that facilitates
the plundering of the continent,

1669
02:19:50,220 --> 02:19:53,970
the river steamer that carries
Europeans and their weapons

1670
02:19:54,050 --> 02:19:55,880
into the heart of the continent.

1671
02:20:21,630 --> 02:20:24,840
This new era
in the history of imperialism

1672
02:20:24,920 --> 02:20:29,550
also became a new era
in the history of racism.

1673
02:20:29,630 --> 02:20:33,340
Europeans started mistaking
military superiority

1674
02:20:33,420 --> 02:20:37,260
for intellectual
and even biological superiority.

1675
02:20:39,670 --> 02:20:42,260
That's when things turned nasty.

1676
02:20:43,090 --> 02:20:45,340
No one had to pretend anymore.

1677
02:20:49,800 --> 02:20:52,970
Okay. Please look over here. Mm.

1678
02:20:53,670 --> 02:20:55,090
Please, you there!

1679
02:20:55,170 --> 02:20:57,840
Could you move
a bit to the right?

1680
02:20:58,920 --> 02:21:01,050
And you! That's not you!
Don't move.

1681
02:21:01,130 --> 02:21:03,840
You, a little to the left. Yep.

1682
02:21:04,550 --> 02:21:06,800
Now, you give him a hand.

1683
02:21:08,090 --> 02:21:10,800
No! You give him a hand, I said.

1684
02:21:11,630 --> 02:21:13,010
Well, then,
you take another hand.

1685
02:21:13,090 --> 02:21:16,970
And you, it's this one.
It's a hand and hand.

1686
02:21:19,130 --> 02:21:23,090
Excellent. Okay.
So, the big guy,

1687
02:21:23,170 --> 02:21:27,260
with the towel head,
if you can just move back a bit.

1688
02:21:28,380 --> 02:21:29,470
Perfect.

1689
02:21:30,340 --> 02:21:32,840
Excellent. I think that's it.

1690
02:21:34,670 --> 02:21:35,720
I like that.

1691
02:21:39,670 --> 02:21:42,470
Can you just uncross your arms,
please?

1692
02:21:42,550 --> 02:21:45,050
-Why?
-You wanna know why?

1693
02:21:45,130 --> 02:21:48,220
It makes you look defiant,
that's why.

1694
02:21:49,590 --> 02:21:51,260
I'm just saying.

1695
02:21:51,340 --> 02:21:54,090
Okay. Keep it that way,
for all I care.

1696
02:22:26,590 --> 02:22:29,220
"Does the West
have the will to survive?"

1697
02:22:29,300 --> 02:22:31,300
asked a U.S. president.

1698
02:22:32,970 --> 02:22:35,340
The question itself
is perplexing.

1699
02:22:35,420 --> 02:22:39,800
Clearly, I am not included
in his concept of the West.

1700
02:22:42,090 --> 02:22:45,720
Unquestionably, to belong
to the right civilization

1701
02:22:45,800 --> 02:22:48,300
does bear some entitlements.

1702
02:22:50,010 --> 02:22:53,340
I might be wary
of white institutions in general

1703
02:22:53,420 --> 02:22:56,050
and of the religious ones
in particular,

1704
02:22:56,130 --> 02:22:57,340
but for some reason,

1705
02:22:57,420 --> 02:23:01,050
I was attracted to the idea
of joining the Boy Scouts.

1706
02:23:03,340 --> 02:23:06,170
My best friend and neighbor
in Leopoldville,

1707
02:23:06,260 --> 02:23:09,720
the son of a French doctor,
was a Boy Scout.

1708
02:23:11,260 --> 02:23:14,170
Robert knew
all the regulatory moves.

1709
02:23:14,260 --> 02:23:17,420
He even had a code name,
Red Raven,

1710
02:23:17,510 --> 02:23:19,220
because he had red hair.

1711
02:23:19,300 --> 02:23:21,630
He taught me the signs,
the knots,

1712
02:23:21,720 --> 02:23:23,550
and even tightly kept secrets.

1713
02:23:23,630 --> 02:23:27,840
The idea of a brotherhood of
the like-minded captivated me,

1714
02:23:27,920 --> 02:23:32,170
but not as much as the idea of
owning a multi-task pocketknife

1715
02:23:32,260 --> 02:23:36,260
and being allowed to dare make
unsafe fires in the woods.

1716
02:23:37,970 --> 02:23:41,380
Baden-Powell is the founder
of the Boy Scouts.

1717
02:23:41,470 --> 02:23:44,920
During the second Ashanti War
in 1896,

1718
02:23:45,010 --> 02:23:48,420
two days' march away
from the capital, Kumasi,

1719
02:23:48,510 --> 02:23:50,880
as the commander
of the advance troop,

1720
02:23:50,970 --> 02:23:55,220
he received an envoy offering
unconditional surrender.

1721
02:23:55,300 --> 02:23:58,550
To his disappointment,
he did not have to fire

1722
02:23:58,630 --> 02:24:00,840
a single shot at the natives.

1723
02:24:02,470 --> 02:24:04,260
To get hostilities going,

1724
02:24:04,340 --> 02:24:08,380
the British then planned
extreme provocations.

1725
02:24:08,470 --> 02:24:10,840
So they arrested
the king of Ashanti,

1726
02:24:10,920 --> 02:24:13,970
King Prempeh,
together with his whole family.

1727
02:24:16,340 --> 02:24:20,300
The king and his mother were
forced to crawl on all fours

1728
02:24:20,380 --> 02:24:22,420
up to the British officers

1729
02:24:22,510 --> 02:24:24,720
sitting on crates
of biscuit tins,

1730
02:24:24,800 --> 02:24:27,340
to demonstrate
their subjugation.

1731
02:24:29,170 --> 02:24:33,220
But still, this time as well,
the British unfortunately

1732
02:24:33,300 --> 02:24:35,420
found no use for their weapons.

1733
02:24:35,510 --> 02:24:38,340
Baden-Powell
writes to his mother...

1734
02:24:38,420 --> 02:24:40,920
"I thoroughly enjoyed
the outing,

1735
02:24:41,010 --> 02:24:43,130
except for the want of a fight

1736
02:24:43,220 --> 02:24:46,630
which I fear will preclude
our getting any medals

1737
02:24:46,720 --> 02:24:48,340
or decoration."

1738
02:28:41,590 --> 02:28:44,420
This is young
and ambitious Georges Cuvier.

1739
02:28:45,920 --> 02:28:49,170
On January 27th, 1796,

1740
02:28:49,260 --> 02:28:51,470
Georges has just arrived
in Paris

1741
02:28:51,550 --> 02:28:54,170
to hold his first lecture
at the newly opened

1742
02:28:54,260 --> 02:28:57,590
Institut National de France.
He is 26.

1743
02:29:01,470 --> 02:29:03,420
Cuvier was sensational.

1744
02:29:03,510 --> 02:29:06,760
He spoke of the mammoth
and the mastodon.

1745
02:29:06,840 --> 02:29:10,050
Remnants of these huge
elephantine animals

1746
02:29:10,130 --> 02:29:14,130
had recently been found
in Siberia and North America.

1747
02:29:15,670 --> 02:29:18,220
Cuvier demonstrated
that they did not belong

1748
02:29:18,300 --> 02:29:19,550
to the same species

1749
02:29:19,630 --> 02:29:22,470
as either the Indian
or the African elephant,

1750
02:29:22,550 --> 02:29:26,970
but constituted species
of their own, now extinct.

1751
02:29:29,010 --> 02:29:31,220
"Now extinct."

1752
02:29:31,300 --> 02:29:35,380
Those were the two words
that horrified the listeners.

1753
02:29:35,470 --> 02:29:37,380
Because in the 18th century,

1754
02:29:37,470 --> 02:29:40,380
people still believed
in a ready-made universe

1755
02:29:40,470 --> 02:29:42,420
to which nothing could be added.

1756
02:29:42,510 --> 02:29:46,920
And perhaps, even more important
to mankind's peace of mind,

1757
02:29:47,010 --> 02:29:48,920
nothing could be
subtracted from it.

1758
02:29:51,130 --> 02:29:54,130
All of God's creatures,
once created,

1759
02:29:54,220 --> 02:29:56,510
could not disappear
from His universe.

1760
02:29:58,470 --> 02:30:01,800
"What then was the explanation
for these gigantic bones

1761
02:30:01,880 --> 02:30:05,840
and strange animal-like stones
that had puzzled man

1762
02:30:05,920 --> 02:30:08,470
since antiquity?" asked Cuvier.

1763
02:30:10,170 --> 02:30:12,720
Cuvier's idea,
that there could be species

1764
02:30:12,800 --> 02:30:16,170
that had died out,
gave rise to such resistance

1765
02:30:16,260 --> 02:30:20,340
that it took over 100 years
to become accepted.

1766
02:30:20,420 --> 02:30:25,300
But how they had died out
and why, he did not explain.

1767
02:30:31,840 --> 02:30:33,050
In 1850,

1768
02:30:33,130 --> 02:30:36,800
the great liberal philosopher
Herbert Spencer--

1769
02:30:36,880 --> 02:30:38,970
yes, that Spencer--

1770
02:30:39,050 --> 02:30:42,970
wrote, "Imperialism
has served civilization

1771
02:30:43,050 --> 02:30:46,170
by clearing the inferior races
off the Earth."

1772
02:30:48,340 --> 02:30:50,340
"The forces
which are working out

1773
02:30:50,420 --> 02:30:52,920
the great scheme
of perfect happiness,

1774
02:30:53,010 --> 02:30:56,130
taking no account
of incidental suffering,

1775
02:30:56,220 --> 02:30:58,970
exterminate such sections
of mankind

1776
02:30:59,050 --> 02:31:00,920
as stand in their way.

1777
02:31:01,010 --> 02:31:03,130
Be he human or be he brute,

1778
02:31:03,220 --> 02:31:05,300
the hindrance
must be got rid of."

1779
02:31:06,720 --> 02:31:09,720
Here, the human being
was expressly placed

1780
02:31:09,800 --> 02:31:12,050
on an equal footing
with the animal

1781
02:31:12,130 --> 02:31:14,050
as an object for extermination.

1782
02:31:16,260 --> 02:31:20,010
One could take Spencer's
fantasies of annihilation

1783
02:31:20,090 --> 02:31:21,840
as personal eccentricities,

1784
02:31:21,920 --> 02:31:26,090
explained perhaps by the fact
that all Spencer's siblings

1785
02:31:26,170 --> 02:31:28,260
had died when he was a child.

1786
02:31:37,300 --> 02:31:40,260
A calm
and comforting conclusion.

1787
02:31:43,050 --> 02:31:45,380
Enter Robert Knox.

1788
02:31:45,470 --> 02:31:48,010
Knox had studied
comparative anatomy

1789
02:31:48,090 --> 02:31:49,800
with Cuvier in Paris.

1790
02:31:49,880 --> 02:31:53,010
He was a Scot, had served
as an army doctor

1791
02:31:53,090 --> 02:31:55,470
in South Africa, and had founded

1792
02:31:55,550 --> 02:31:57,510
a school of anatomy
in Edinburgh.

1793
02:31:58,800 --> 02:32:01,670
"Can the dark races
become civilized?

1794
02:32:01,760 --> 02:32:04,090
I should say not," says Knox.

1795
02:32:05,170 --> 02:32:06,130
All we know

1796
02:32:06,220 --> 02:32:08,380
is that since the beginning
of history,

1797
02:32:08,470 --> 02:32:10,550
the dark races
have been the slaves

1798
02:32:10,630 --> 02:32:12,420
of those lighter-skinned.

1799
02:32:14,420 --> 02:32:18,010
Of course, what he meant exactly
by "dark race"

1800
02:32:18,090 --> 02:32:20,090
is not easy to answer.

1801
02:32:20,170 --> 02:32:24,630
Are the Jews a dark race?
The Gypsies? The Chinese?

1802
02:32:24,720 --> 02:32:26,220
One could ask.

1803
02:32:55,720 --> 02:32:59,420
"I feel disposed to think
that there must be a physical

1804
02:32:59,510 --> 02:33:01,720
and, consequently,
a psychological

1805
02:33:01,800 --> 02:33:04,170
inferiority in the dark races,"

1806
02:33:04,260 --> 02:33:05,510
asserted Knox.

1807
02:33:05,590 --> 02:33:09,670
"The texture of the brain is,
I think, generally darker,

1808
02:33:09,760 --> 02:33:12,550
and the white part
more strongly fibrous.

1809
02:33:12,630 --> 02:33:15,550
But I speak from extremely
limited experience."

1810
02:33:16,970 --> 02:33:20,630
Indeed, Knox says
that he had done an autopsy

1811
02:33:20,720 --> 02:33:22,760
on only one colored person,

1812
02:33:22,840 --> 02:33:24,800
which somehow does demonstrate

1813
02:33:24,880 --> 02:33:27,170
the limitations
of his experiments.

1814
02:33:29,920 --> 02:33:32,760
Thomas Jefferson
found it inconceivable

1815
02:33:32,840 --> 02:33:36,720
that one single species
could disappear from nature.

1816
02:33:41,720 --> 02:33:44,300
But nevertheless,
more than 99 percent

1817
02:33:44,380 --> 02:33:47,470
of all species
have already died out...

1818
02:33:50,880 --> 02:33:53,380
...most of them
in a few catastrophes

1819
02:33:53,470 --> 02:33:56,720
that came close
to wiping out all life.

1820
02:34:44,090 --> 02:34:46,470
This is the scope of our story.

1821
02:35:09,260 --> 02:35:11,720
As a young student,
Charles Darwin,

1822
02:35:11,800 --> 02:35:15,220
regarded as the father
of evolutionary biology,

1823
02:35:15,300 --> 02:35:18,630
heard Knox's
controversial lectures.

1824
02:35:18,720 --> 02:35:21,510
In his book
On the Origins of the Species,

1825
02:35:21,590 --> 02:35:24,880
published in 1859,
he would demonstrate

1826
02:35:24,970 --> 02:35:27,920
that all species
adapt to their environment

1827
02:35:28,010 --> 02:35:29,470
through natural selection.

1828
02:35:30,840 --> 02:35:33,880
Darwin argued in favor
of a common origin

1829
02:35:33,970 --> 02:35:36,260
of all human races.

1830
02:35:36,340 --> 02:35:40,340
Although his thesis as such
neither confirmed nor denied

1831
02:35:40,420 --> 02:35:44,170
Knox's and others' ideas
regarding any hierarchy

1832
02:35:44,260 --> 02:35:47,590
within mankind,
his theory of evolution

1833
02:35:47,670 --> 02:35:50,670
was clearly useful
to the racists.

1834
02:35:50,760 --> 02:35:54,800
After Darwin, race became
the decisive explanation

1835
02:35:54,880 --> 02:35:56,380
in far wider circles.

1836
02:35:57,670 --> 02:36:01,050
Racism was accepted
and became a central element

1837
02:36:01,130 --> 02:36:03,970
in British imperial ideology.

1838
02:36:04,050 --> 02:36:07,300
After Darwin,
it also became accepted

1839
02:36:07,380 --> 02:36:09,880
to shrug your shoulders
at genocide.

1840
02:36:10,970 --> 02:36:12,420
If you were upset,

1841
02:36:12,510 --> 02:36:14,880
you were just showing
your lack of education.

1842
02:36:16,670 --> 02:36:18,840
Genocide began to be regarded

1843
02:36:18,920 --> 02:36:21,800
as the inevitable byproduct
of progress.

1844
02:36:21,880 --> 02:36:24,170
And prejudice
against alien peoples,

1845
02:36:24,260 --> 02:36:28,300
which had always existed,
was now given organized form

1846
02:36:28,380 --> 02:36:30,760
and apparent
scientific validation.

1847
02:36:32,880 --> 02:36:37,470
"Meanwhile," added Darwin,
"Regarding future life,

1848
02:36:37,550 --> 02:36:40,550
each person will have to
judge for himself."

1849
02:36:53,670 --> 02:36:55,590
In just a few years,

1850
02:36:55,670 --> 02:36:58,380
the surface of the earth
will be quite changed.

1851
02:36:58,920 --> 02:37:01,340
A new era is dawning

1852
02:37:01,420 --> 02:37:04,090
that will multiply
the undertakings of man.

1853
02:37:05,050 --> 02:37:07,840
Light is consuming the darkness.

1854
02:37:13,090 --> 02:37:15,010
Let me introduce to you now,
my dear colleague

1855
02:37:15,090 --> 02:37:18,300
Dr. Frederic Farrar,
who has been recently elected

1856
02:37:18,380 --> 02:37:20,840
a fellow at the Royal Society.

1857
02:37:32,090 --> 02:37:35,340
In his major book,
Systema Naturae,

1858
02:37:35,420 --> 02:37:38,920
the great Swedish botanist
Carl Linnaeus discriminates,

1859
02:37:40,010 --> 02:37:42,220
with his usual acuteness,

1860
02:37:42,300 --> 02:37:45,380
the intellectual
and moral characteristics

1861
02:37:45,470 --> 02:37:47,420
of four great human families.

1862
02:37:49,300 --> 02:37:52,880
The Homo americanus,
the Homo europeus,

1863
02:37:52,970 --> 02:37:56,590
the Homo asiaticus,
the Homo afer.

1864
02:37:57,340 --> 02:37:59,670
Yet we believe

1865
02:37:59,760 --> 02:38:03,550
that these and all other races

1866
02:38:03,630 --> 02:38:07,920
may be reduced to three
great classes or divisions.

1867
02:38:10,130 --> 02:38:13,010
Savage... semicivilized...

1868
02:38:14,510 --> 02:38:15,670
and civilized.

1869
02:38:16,920 --> 02:38:21,010
Only two races,
the Aryan and the Semitic,

1870
02:38:21,090 --> 02:38:22,300
were civilized.

1871
02:38:23,720 --> 02:38:26,510
The Chinese
belonged to the semicivilized,

1872
02:38:26,590 --> 02:38:28,550
as they had once been brilliant,

1873
02:38:28,630 --> 02:38:32,340
but suffered
from arrested development.

1874
02:38:33,840 --> 02:38:37,010
The savage races have always
lived in the same ignorance

1875
02:38:37,090 --> 02:38:38,720
and wretchedness.

1876
02:38:38,800 --> 02:38:42,300
They are without a past
and without a future...

1877
02:38:43,420 --> 02:38:44,420
doomed,

1878
02:38:44,510 --> 02:38:47,090
as races infinitely nobler
have been before them,

1879
02:38:47,170 --> 02:38:50,720
to a rapid
and inevitable extinction.

1880
02:38:51,550 --> 02:38:53,420
Out of all
their teeming myriads,

1881
02:38:53,510 --> 02:38:56,800
never have they produced
one single man

1882
02:38:56,880 --> 02:38:58,920
whose name
is of the slightest importance

1883
02:38:59,010 --> 02:39:01,340
to the history of our race.

1884
02:39:01,420 --> 02:39:06,130
History starts
when man starts to write.

1885
02:39:06,220 --> 02:39:09,720
Take a specimen from
the 100 million of Africans,

1886
02:39:09,800 --> 02:39:13,130
not one of the most degenerates,
such as the Hottentot,

1887
02:39:13,220 --> 02:39:16,380
but a real, pure-blooded Negro.

1888
02:39:18,420 --> 02:39:21,760
What hope was there
that he could be civilized?

1889
02:39:28,380 --> 02:39:31,720
The great majority of Negroes
will go under in a decline

1890
02:39:31,800 --> 02:39:33,590
from which only a few
can be saved.

1891
02:39:33,670 --> 02:39:35,170
Many races
have already disappeared.

1892
02:39:36,760 --> 02:39:40,170
Please, gentlemen.
Ladies, let's be civil.

1893
02:39:40,260 --> 02:39:44,010
Show some respect.
After all, it's just science.

1894
02:39:44,090 --> 02:39:48,170
Fuck you! Fuck you. Two times.

1895
02:39:57,260 --> 02:40:00,340
These races,
the lowest types of humanity

1896
02:40:00,420 --> 02:40:02,470
and presenting
its most hideous features

1897
02:40:02,550 --> 02:40:04,880
of moral
and intellectual degradation,

1898
02:40:04,970 --> 02:40:06,840
were doomed to go under.

1899
02:40:06,920 --> 02:40:09,800
And I call them
irreclaimable savages.

1900
02:40:10,840 --> 02:40:14,090
-Irreclaimable savages!

1901
02:40:15,010 --> 02:40:17,840
Irreclaimable savages!

1902
02:40:20,880 --> 02:40:22,550
What did actually happen

1903
02:40:22,630 --> 02:40:25,380
when knowledge,
industry, and enlightenment

1904
02:40:25,470 --> 02:40:28,420
exterminated the inferior races?

1905
02:40:28,510 --> 02:40:31,130
Darwin, who had traveled
to South America

1906
02:40:31,220 --> 02:40:33,260
in his younger years, knew.

1907
02:40:35,220 --> 02:40:38,220
He had seen General Rosas' men
in Argentina,

1908
02:40:38,300 --> 02:40:42,050
butchering Indians,
smothered in blood and vomit.

1909
02:40:43,130 --> 02:40:45,720
He knew how eyes
were gouged out

1910
02:40:45,800 --> 02:40:49,050
when an Indian
had sunk his teeth into a thumb

1911
02:40:49,130 --> 02:40:50,800
and refused to let go.

1912
02:40:52,300 --> 02:40:55,800
How women were killed,
and prisoners made to talk.

1913
02:40:57,670 --> 02:40:59,260
He had a name for it.

1914
02:40:59,340 --> 02:41:02,170
He called it
"the struggle for life."

1915
02:41:09,720 --> 02:41:12,010
-Last name?
-Trouillot.

1916
02:41:16,590 --> 02:41:19,380
-First name?
-Rolph-Michel.

1917
02:41:47,840 --> 02:41:50,220
-Ready?
-Sure.

1918
02:42:12,380 --> 02:42:16,090
Like Roxanne,
Michel-Rolph, and Sven,

1919
02:42:16,170 --> 02:42:18,380
I do have my nightmares
as well.

1920
02:42:31,380 --> 02:42:33,590
Churchill said after the war,

1921
02:42:33,670 --> 02:42:37,880
"We are in the presence
of a crime without a name."

1922
02:42:37,970 --> 02:42:42,220
But Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer
of Polish-Jewish descent,

1923
02:42:42,300 --> 02:42:46,300
had already created that name
in 1943.

1924
02:42:46,380 --> 02:42:49,170
Combining the ancient Greek
"genos,"

1925
02:42:49,260 --> 02:42:52,010
which means "race, tribe, clan,"

1926
02:42:52,090 --> 02:42:53,670
and the Latin "cide,"

1927
02:42:53,760 --> 02:42:56,220
which expresses
the notion of killing,

1928
02:42:56,300 --> 02:42:59,380
Lemkin invented the word
"genocide."

1929
02:43:05,630 --> 02:43:07,590
At the New York Public Library,

1930
02:43:07,670 --> 02:43:09,760
in the
Raphael Lemkin Collection,

1931
02:43:09,840 --> 02:43:14,050
in Reel 3, Box 2, Folder 1,

1932
02:43:14,130 --> 02:43:18,880
there is a list of the world's
genocides throughout history.

1933
02:46:51,010 --> 02:46:53,050
"Some things are so evil

1934
02:46:53,130 --> 02:46:55,760
that it's enough
that they simply happened,"

1935
02:46:55,840 --> 02:46:57,170
said the man.

1936
02:47:00,880 --> 02:47:03,510
"They don't need to be given
a second existence

1937
02:47:03,590 --> 02:47:05,170
by being retold."

1938
02:47:05,970 --> 02:47:08,470
He took a drag on his cigarette.

1939
02:47:08,550 --> 02:47:11,970
"That's what I think
on some days, anyway,"

1940
02:47:12,010 --> 02:47:13,380
he went on.

1941
02:47:13,470 --> 02:47:16,380
"Other days,
I think the opposite."

1942
02:47:18,800 --> 02:47:21,670
The past has a future
we never expect.

1943
02:47:46,840 --> 02:47:48,670
One of the fundamental ideas

1944
02:47:48,760 --> 02:47:50,170
of the 19th century

1945
02:47:50,260 --> 02:47:54,720
was that there are races,
peoples, nations, and tribes

1946
02:47:54,800 --> 02:47:57,920
that are in the process
of dying out.

1947
02:47:58,010 --> 02:48:01,260
Or, as the Prime Minister
of England, Lord Salisbury,

1948
02:48:01,340 --> 02:48:03,510
expressed it
in his famous speech

1949
02:48:03,590 --> 02:48:07,800
in Albert Hall
on May 4th, 1898...

1950
02:48:07,880 --> 02:48:11,510
"One can roughly divide
the nations of the world

1951
02:48:11,590 --> 02:48:13,670
into the living and the dying.

1952
02:48:13,760 --> 02:48:17,010
The weak nations
become increasingly weaker

1953
02:48:17,090 --> 02:48:19,300
and the strong, stronger."

1954
02:48:19,380 --> 02:48:22,470
It was in the nature of things
that the living nations

1955
02:48:22,550 --> 02:48:26,760
would fraudulently "encroach on
the territory of the dying."

1956
02:48:29,130 --> 02:48:30,670
He spoke the truth.

1957
02:48:30,760 --> 02:48:34,260
During the 19th century,
Europeans had encroached

1958
02:48:34,340 --> 02:48:36,970
on vast territories
around the world.

1959
02:48:38,010 --> 02:48:41,300
The word "genocide"
had not yet been invented,

1960
02:48:41,380 --> 02:48:43,550
but the matter existed.

1961
02:48:43,630 --> 02:48:47,970
Joseph Conrad may not have heard
Lord Salisbury's speech.

1962
02:48:48,630 --> 02:48:50,510
He had no need to.

1963
02:48:50,590 --> 02:48:52,590
Conrad could no more
avoid hearing

1964
02:48:52,670 --> 02:48:56,380
of the ceaseless genocide
that marked his century

1965
02:48:56,470 --> 02:48:59,510
than any
of his contemporaries could.

1966
02:48:59,590 --> 02:49:01,970
It is we who have suppressed it.

1967
02:49:02,720 --> 02:49:04,470
We do not want to remember.

1968
02:49:05,420 --> 02:49:07,050
We would prefer for genocide

1969
02:49:07,130 --> 02:49:10,260
to have begun
and ended with Nazism.

1970
02:49:10,340 --> 02:49:14,090
This would indeed
be most comforting.

1971
02:49:14,170 --> 02:49:17,170
For sure,
the nine-year-old Adolf Hitler

1972
02:49:17,260 --> 02:49:19,010
was not in Albert Hall either

1973
02:49:19,090 --> 02:49:21,300
when Lord Salisbury
was speaking.

1974
02:49:22,010 --> 02:49:23,340
He had no need to.

1975
02:49:24,300 --> 02:49:25,550
He knew it already.

1976
02:49:46,260 --> 02:49:49,630
The air Hitler
and all other Western people

1977
02:49:49,720 --> 02:49:51,420
in his childhood breathed

1978
02:49:51,510 --> 02:49:52,970
was soaked in the conviction

1979
02:49:53,050 --> 02:49:57,090
that imperialism is
a biologically necessary process

1980
02:49:57,170 --> 02:49:59,630
which,
according to the laws of nature,

1981
02:49:59,720 --> 02:50:03,720
leads to the inevitable
destruction of the lower races.

1982
02:50:06,010 --> 02:50:08,220
It was a conviction
that had already cost

1983
02:50:08,300 --> 02:50:09,970
millions of human lives

1984
02:50:10,050 --> 02:50:13,760
before Hitler provided
his highly personal application.

1985
02:50:15,260 --> 02:50:17,380
But in the mid-19th century,

1986
02:50:17,470 --> 02:50:21,130
the Germans had still
not exterminated any people.

1987
02:50:21,220 --> 02:50:22,260
So they were able

1988
02:50:22,340 --> 02:50:24,470
to look more critically
on the phenomenon

1989
02:50:24,550 --> 02:50:26,970
than other Europeans did.

1990
02:50:27,050 --> 02:50:30,130
In South West Africa, in 1904,

1991
02:50:30,220 --> 02:50:34,630
the Germans demonstrated that
they, too, could master an art

1992
02:50:34,720 --> 02:50:37,970
that Americans, British,
and other Europeans

1993
02:50:38,050 --> 02:50:41,630
had exercised all through
the 19th century.

1994
02:50:42,630 --> 02:50:45,130
The art of hastening
the extermination

1995
02:50:45,220 --> 02:50:47,590
of a people of inferior culture.

1996
02:50:50,970 --> 02:50:53,340
Following the North American
example,

1997
02:50:53,420 --> 02:50:57,130
the Herero people
were banished to reservations

1998
02:50:57,220 --> 02:50:59,510
and their grazing lands
were handed over

1999
02:50:59,590 --> 02:51:02,760
to German immigrants
and colonial companies.

2000
02:51:15,420 --> 02:51:19,380
For over two decades,
their leader, Samuel Maharero,

2001
02:51:19,470 --> 02:51:22,840
had signed one treaty
after another with the Germans,

2002
02:51:22,970 --> 02:51:27,550
and ceded large areas
of land to avoid war.

2003
02:51:27,630 --> 02:51:30,550
But just as the Americans
did not feel bound

2004
02:51:30,630 --> 02:51:33,050
by their treaties
with the Indians,

2005
02:51:33,130 --> 02:51:36,220
the Germans did not think that,
as a higher race,

2006
02:51:36,300 --> 02:51:38,840
they had any need to abide
by treaties

2007
02:51:38,920 --> 02:51:41,670
they made with the natives.

2008
02:51:41,760 --> 02:51:45,720
As in North America,
the German plans for immigration

2009
02:51:45,800 --> 02:51:49,050
presupposed that the natives
were to be relieved

2010
02:51:49,130 --> 02:51:51,170
of all land of any value.

2011
02:51:53,670 --> 02:51:55,800
When the Hereros resisted,

2012
02:51:55,880 --> 02:51:58,380
General
Adolf Lebrecht von Trotha

2013
02:51:58,470 --> 02:52:00,380
ordered their extermination.

2014
02:52:00,470 --> 02:52:03,670
Every Herero
found within the German borders,

2015
02:52:03,760 --> 02:52:06,840
with or without weapons,
was to be shot.

2016
02:52:08,220 --> 02:52:11,920
But most of them died
without direct violence.

2017
02:52:12,010 --> 02:52:15,050
The Germans simply drove them
into the desert

2018
02:52:15,130 --> 02:52:16,720
and sealed off the border.

2019
02:52:18,170 --> 02:52:21,510
One didn't yet talk
about the final solution,

2020
02:52:21,590 --> 02:52:25,130
but that was what one
had in mind.

2021
02:52:25,220 --> 02:52:27,510
In the official account
of the war,

2022
02:52:27,590 --> 02:52:29,760
the German officers wrote,

2023
02:52:29,840 --> 02:52:33,920
"The army earned the gratitude
of the whole fatherland.

2024
02:52:34,010 --> 02:52:36,090
The sentence
had been carried out,

2025
02:52:36,170 --> 02:52:40,470
and the Hereros had ceased
to be an independent people."

2026
02:52:42,670 --> 02:52:46,720
Eighty thousand human beings
died in the desert.

2027
02:52:46,800 --> 02:52:50,260
The few thousand left
were sentenced to hard labor

2028
02:52:50,340 --> 02:52:52,050
in concentration camps.

2029
02:52:52,720 --> 02:52:54,630
A new concept of incarceration,

2030
02:52:54,720 --> 02:52:58,720
invented in 1896
by the Spaniards in Cuba,

2031
02:52:58,800 --> 02:53:01,130
anglicized by the Americans,

2032
02:53:01,220 --> 02:53:03,880
entered German language
and politics.

2033
02:53:10,920 --> 02:53:13,800
Paul Rohrbach
wrote in his best seller,

2034
02:53:13,880 --> 02:53:17,970
German Thought in the World,
published in 1912,

2035
02:53:18,050 --> 02:53:21,170
that "existences,
be they of peoples

2036
02:53:21,260 --> 02:53:24,760
or individuals who do not
produce anything of value,

2037
02:53:24,840 --> 02:53:27,630
cannot make any claim
to the right to exist."

2038
02:53:32,090 --> 02:53:34,090
We believe that married people

2039
02:53:34,170 --> 02:53:40,970
who have transmissible diseases
should not have children.

2040
02:53:41,050 --> 02:53:45,720
No couple who has the disease
of feeble-mindedness,

2041
02:53:45,800 --> 02:53:47,260
or insanity,

2042
02:53:47,340 --> 02:53:49,550
or epilepsy
should have children.

2043
02:54:36,470 --> 02:54:40,550
The over-infatuation
with genetic purity.

2044
02:54:40,630 --> 02:54:42,630
An impressive amount of energy

2045
02:54:42,720 --> 02:54:45,260
put into the classification
of people.

2046
02:54:46,630 --> 02:54:50,720
A pathological obsession
for the concept of race

2047
02:54:50,800 --> 02:54:53,800
that scientifically
does not exist.

2048
02:55:20,170 --> 02:55:22,550
Despite the careful staging,

2049
02:55:22,630 --> 02:55:26,800
one gesture, an unexpected
gesture of irritation,

2050
02:55:26,880 --> 02:55:30,590
not foreseen by the director
of this strange display,

2051
02:55:30,670 --> 02:55:34,510
will betray the masquerade
and restore dignity.

2052
02:55:53,380 --> 02:55:54,760
What is sure

2053
02:55:54,840 --> 02:55:57,670
is that their way
of life is threatened.

2054
02:56:03,380 --> 02:56:05,880
Has he, indeed,
any right to exist?

2055
02:56:08,010 --> 02:56:09,090
Does she?

2056
02:56:11,170 --> 02:56:14,970
-Do they?

2057
02:56:15,050 --> 02:56:17,260
But after all we know now,

2058
02:56:17,340 --> 02:56:20,090
indeed, who is to judge?

2059
02:58:05,370 --> 02:58:07,290
A guy walks into a bar.

2060
02:58:07,370 --> 02:58:09,120
"My name
is Christopher Columbus,"

2061
02:58:09,200 --> 02:58:12,450
he yells,
"and I now own this bar.

2062
02:58:12,540 --> 02:58:16,620
From now on, I call it
Hispaniola Lounge."

2063
02:58:16,700 --> 02:58:19,870
Among the Black patrons,
nobody says a word.

2064
02:58:19,950 --> 02:58:22,160
Only the Black barman
shakes his head.

2065
02:58:22,740 --> 02:58:24,580
"White people."

2066
03:00:19,950 --> 03:00:22,830
Land with no people
does not exist.

2067
03:00:24,240 --> 03:00:27,200
The idea that America
was virgin land,

2068
03:00:27,290 --> 03:00:31,200
a wilderness inhabited by
non-people called savages,

2069
03:00:31,290 --> 03:00:33,160
is a myth.

2070
03:00:33,240 --> 03:00:35,740
Only through killing
and displacement

2071
03:00:35,830 --> 03:00:37,700
does it become uninhabited.

2072
03:00:42,120 --> 03:00:44,080
Before the arrival
of the British,

2073
03:00:44,160 --> 03:00:48,240
North America was a continent
of villages, of nations,

2074
03:00:48,330 --> 03:00:50,700
of federations of nations.

2075
03:00:50,790 --> 03:00:55,120
Between 1814 and 1824,
a big chunk of land

2076
03:00:55,200 --> 03:00:57,620
between today's Florida
and Kentucky

2077
03:00:57,700 --> 03:01:01,410
became the private property
of white settlers.

2078
03:01:01,490 --> 03:01:04,080
The first permanent
US colonial institution

2079
03:01:04,160 --> 03:01:08,370
was established, first named
the Office of Indian Affairs

2080
03:01:08,450 --> 03:01:11,290
and placed within
the Department of War.

2081
03:01:11,370 --> 03:01:13,870
We are less than
two centuries old,

2082
03:01:13,950 --> 03:01:16,950
but no nation has ever been
more strongly stirred

2083
03:01:17,040 --> 03:01:19,200
by the knowledge
of its own story.

2084
03:01:20,240 --> 03:01:22,700
We are the product
of many strains

2085
03:01:22,790 --> 03:01:24,040
and many visions,

2086
03:01:24,120 --> 03:01:25,910
and yet we see that story

2087
03:01:25,990 --> 03:01:28,790
as essentially
one heroic adventure.

2088
03:02:04,160 --> 03:02:05,620
The bid for independence

2089
03:02:05,700 --> 03:02:08,490
by what became
the United States of America

2090
03:02:08,580 --> 03:02:11,160
was nourished
by the ideas of freedom,

2091
03:02:11,240 --> 03:02:14,160
democracy, and equality for all.

2092
03:02:14,240 --> 03:02:17,120
But these ideas
were difficult to reconcile

2093
03:02:17,200 --> 03:02:20,700
with the reality of dominance
of one race over another,

2094
03:02:20,790 --> 03:02:24,910
much less with genocide,
settler colonialism, and empire.

2095
03:02:26,080 --> 03:02:28,790
To reconcile rhetoric
with reality,

2096
03:02:28,870 --> 03:02:30,660
a new model had to emerge.

2097
03:02:30,740 --> 03:02:32,700
The birth of something new,

2098
03:02:32,790 --> 03:02:35,240
the birth
of the US American race.

2099
03:02:35,330 --> 03:02:39,950
A new people, born of the merger
of the best of both worlds,

2100
03:02:40,040 --> 03:02:42,370
the Native and the European.

2101
03:02:42,450 --> 03:02:45,200
Not a biological merger,
God forbid,

2102
03:02:45,290 --> 03:02:47,040
but something more ephemeral,

2103
03:02:47,120 --> 03:02:49,540
implying the dissolving
of the Indian.

2104
03:02:49,620 --> 03:02:52,290
A process that would exclude
Native Americans

2105
03:02:52,370 --> 03:02:55,040
and Afro-Americans
from participating,

2106
03:02:55,120 --> 03:02:56,330
unless as foils.

2107
03:03:19,490 --> 03:03:22,830
"You have there the myth
of the essential white America,"

2108
03:03:22,910 --> 03:03:26,120
wrote D.H. Lawrence
about James Fenimore Cooper's

2109
03:03:26,200 --> 03:03:29,410
frontiersman character,
Deerslayer.

2110
03:03:29,490 --> 03:03:32,790
"All the other stuff,
the love, the democracy,

2111
03:03:32,870 --> 03:03:34,660
the floundering into lust,

2112
03:03:34,740 --> 03:03:37,790
is a sort of by-play,"
he writes.

2113
03:03:37,870 --> 03:03:41,950
"The essential American soul
is hard, isolate,

2114
03:03:42,040 --> 03:03:44,080
stoic, and a killer.

2115
03:03:44,160 --> 03:03:46,290
It has never yet melted."

2116
03:03:58,240 --> 03:04:00,830
The Navy SEAL
team members who carried out

2117
03:04:00,910 --> 03:04:03,080
the assassination
of Osama bin Laden

2118
03:04:03,160 --> 03:04:05,290
on May the 2nd, 2011,

2119
03:04:05,370 --> 03:04:08,450
were reporting in real time
to President Obama,

2120
03:04:08,540 --> 03:04:10,490
Secretary of State
Hilary Clinton,

2121
03:04:10,580 --> 03:04:14,080
and other officials in their
sealed Situation Room.

2122
03:04:16,200 --> 03:04:17,620
Following the operation,

2123
03:04:17,700 --> 03:04:20,450
the New York Daily News
commented,

2124
03:04:20,540 --> 03:04:24,490
"Along with the unseen pictures
of Osama Bin Laden's corpse,

2125
03:04:24,580 --> 03:04:26,580
intelligence officials' reasons

2126
03:04:26,660 --> 03:04:29,700
for dubbing the Al Qaeda boss
'Geronimo'

2127
03:04:29,790 --> 03:04:31,950
remain one of the biggest
mysteries

2128
03:04:32,040 --> 03:04:34,620
of the Black Ops mission."

2129
03:04:34,700 --> 03:04:37,580
But it was not a mystery
to the US Navy SEALs,

2130
03:04:37,660 --> 03:04:39,410
or to Obama or Clinton,

2131
03:04:39,490 --> 03:04:42,620
and especially to any
Native American who heard it.

2132
03:04:43,660 --> 03:04:46,540
Geronimo,
or by his real name, Goyathlay,

2133
03:04:46,620 --> 03:04:48,830
was one of the greatest
adversaries

2134
03:04:48,910 --> 03:04:51,080
the colonizing army
had confronted

2135
03:04:51,160 --> 03:04:54,160
in their "kill anything
that moves" march

2136
03:04:54,240 --> 03:04:56,330
across the continent.

2137
03:04:56,410 --> 03:04:59,450
Geronimo is revered
as a great freedom fighter

2138
03:04:59,540 --> 03:05:03,740
by the Apache people
and by most Native Americans.

2139
03:05:03,830 --> 03:05:07,580
The choice of the code word
"Geronimo" for a US enemy

2140
03:05:07,660 --> 03:05:09,700
was not a mystery
to the military,

2141
03:05:09,790 --> 03:05:12,200
who also use the term
"Indian country"

2142
03:05:12,290 --> 03:05:14,790
to designate enemy territory.

2143
03:05:14,870 --> 03:05:17,370
"Indian country"
and "in-country"

2144
03:05:17,450 --> 03:05:20,410
are military terms,
like other euphemisms,

2145
03:05:20,490 --> 03:05:23,910
such as "collateral damage"
for killing civilians

2146
03:05:23,990 --> 03:05:25,740
or "ordnance" for bombs,

2147
03:05:25,830 --> 03:05:28,200
that appear
in military training manuals

2148
03:05:28,290 --> 03:05:29,950
and are used regularly.

2149
03:05:35,290 --> 03:05:38,450
"Indian country"
and "in-country"

2150
03:05:38,540 --> 03:05:40,450
mean "behind enemy lines."

2151
03:05:50,080 --> 03:05:54,370
All US wars re-enact
fundamentally the Indian Wars.

2152
03:06:26,700 --> 03:06:30,700
Counterinsurgent warfare
was the way of war.

2153
03:06:30,790 --> 03:06:34,830
Military historian
John Grenier states,

2154
03:06:34,910 --> 03:06:37,330
"Successive generations
of Americans,

2155
03:06:37,410 --> 03:06:39,450
both soldiers and civilians,

2156
03:06:39,540 --> 03:06:42,830
made the killing of Indian men,
women, and children

2157
03:06:42,910 --> 03:06:45,990
a defining element of their
first military tradition

2158
03:06:46,080 --> 03:06:50,040
and thereby part
of a shared American identity."

2159
03:06:51,870 --> 03:06:54,620
The chief characteristic
of irregular warfare

2160
03:06:54,700 --> 03:06:58,910
is that of the extreme violence
against civilians.

2161
03:06:58,990 --> 03:07:02,700
In this case, the tendency
to seek the utter annihilation

2162
03:07:02,790 --> 03:07:04,660
of the Indigenous population.

2163
03:07:05,950 --> 03:07:10,330
Kill anything that moves,
take no prisoners.

2164
03:07:10,410 --> 03:07:15,540
In California, hunting Indians
was both legal and profitable.

2165
03:07:15,620 --> 03:07:18,740
Five dollars a head,
fifty cents a scalp.

2166
03:07:19,240 --> 03:07:20,950
In 1854 alone,

2167
03:07:21,040 --> 03:07:24,160
the federal government
paid more than a million dollars

2168
03:07:24,240 --> 03:07:25,540
to Indian hunters.

2169
03:07:33,580 --> 03:07:35,910
Many of the descendants
of those settlers

2170
03:07:35,990 --> 03:07:39,240
are at the forefront of
the Second Amendment activists.

2171
03:07:40,540 --> 03:07:43,450
They say that they represent
"the people"

2172
03:07:43,540 --> 03:07:45,490
and have the right to bear arms

2173
03:07:45,580 --> 03:07:47,830
in order to overthrow
any government

2174
03:07:47,910 --> 03:07:49,910
that does not, in their view,

2175
03:07:49,990 --> 03:07:53,740
adhere to
the God-given covenant.

2176
03:07:53,830 --> 03:07:57,950
But it is a fact
that the original mandate
of the Second Amendment

2177
03:07:58,040 --> 03:08:00,540
was to empower
and authorize settlers

2178
03:08:00,620 --> 03:08:02,740
to arm themselves
to kill Indians

2179
03:08:02,830 --> 03:08:05,120
and to control
enslaved Africans.

2180
03:08:07,200 --> 03:08:09,040
Roughly three-fourths

2181
03:08:09,120 --> 03:08:10,700
of gun owners are men,

2182
03:08:10,790 --> 03:08:13,120
and 82 percent are white.

2183
03:08:13,200 --> 03:08:16,540
Taken together,
that's 61 percent

2184
03:08:16,620 --> 03:08:19,370
of adults who own guns
are white men.

2185
03:08:19,450 --> 03:08:22,160
We cannot make sense
of gun hoarding

2186
03:08:22,240 --> 03:08:24,870
and the cult of the gun
if we don't deal

2187
03:08:24,950 --> 03:08:26,540
with white nationalism.

2188
03:08:26,620 --> 03:08:28,700
And we can't deal
with white nationalism

2189
03:08:28,790 --> 03:08:31,660
without dealing
with United States history.

2190
03:08:32,660 --> 03:08:34,700
My friend Roxanne told me,

2191
03:08:34,790 --> 03:08:37,660
as men of their times,
the founders created

2192
03:08:37,740 --> 03:08:40,160
the most perfect document
ever written

2193
03:08:40,240 --> 03:08:42,830
for the most perfect country
on Earth.

2194
03:08:42,910 --> 03:08:46,580
But today we can see the warts.
And they ruin the picture.

2195
03:09:24,160 --> 03:09:27,450
"Make America
great again," he said.

2196
03:09:30,450 --> 03:09:32,410
When exactly was it great?

2197
03:09:33,240 --> 03:09:34,740
I mean, really great?

2198
03:09:36,450 --> 03:09:37,580
And for whom?

2199
03:09:41,410 --> 03:09:44,580
Roxanne tells me,
thanks to slavery,

2200
03:09:44,660 --> 03:09:47,080
cotton became the fuel
of the 19th century.

2201
03:09:50,540 --> 03:09:54,580
Around 1831,
US cotton made up almost half

2202
03:09:54,660 --> 03:09:56,120
of the world's production.

2203
03:09:57,740 --> 03:10:01,080
The elite in the South
became extremely wealthy.

2204
03:10:01,160 --> 03:10:05,080
The elite in the North became
extremely wealthy as well,

2205
03:10:05,160 --> 03:10:07,330
sparking
the Industrial Revolution.

2206
03:10:11,040 --> 03:10:13,450
At the beginning,
the slaves had to clean

2207
03:10:13,540 --> 03:10:15,200
the cotton
with their bare hands.

2208
03:10:17,620 --> 03:10:20,540
The invention of
the cotton gin by Eli Whitney

2209
03:10:20,620 --> 03:10:22,290
would change everything.

2210
03:10:23,410 --> 03:10:25,790
But cotton also destroyed
the soil.

2211
03:10:25,870 --> 03:10:30,330
So Southerners and Northerners
plundered more Indian land,

2212
03:10:30,410 --> 03:10:33,160
while using slaves' bodies
as a commodity

2213
03:10:33,240 --> 03:10:36,040
became the most lucrative
enterprise around.

2214
03:10:36,120 --> 03:10:39,950
More profitable than all land,
banks, railroads,

2215
03:10:40,040 --> 03:10:42,580
factories, and gold products
put together.

2216
03:10:43,950 --> 03:10:47,200
Slaves were used
as collateral for mortgage.

2217
03:10:47,290 --> 03:10:49,790
A newly developed tool
of commerce.

2218
03:10:52,240 --> 03:10:54,120
Thomas Jefferson mortgaged

2219
03:10:54,200 --> 03:10:56,700
150 of his enslaved workers

2220
03:10:56,790 --> 03:10:58,490
to build Monticello,

2221
03:10:58,580 --> 03:11:00,950
with a Dutch company
putting up the money.

2222
03:11:03,950 --> 03:11:07,490
Mortgaging people
to buy more people.

2223
03:11:07,580 --> 03:11:12,910
A large part of Europe
had abolished slavery by 1848,

2224
03:11:12,990 --> 03:11:16,040
but Europeans
were still silently bankrolling

2225
03:11:16,120 --> 03:11:18,830
the slave industry
in the United States.

2226
03:11:22,200 --> 03:11:24,580
Raphael Lemkin wrote,

2227
03:11:24,660 --> 03:11:29,580
"Slavery may be called
'cultural genocide
par excellence.'

2228
03:11:29,660 --> 03:11:32,410
It is the most effective
and thorough method

2229
03:11:32,490 --> 03:11:33,740
of destroying a culture

2230
03:11:33,830 --> 03:11:36,410
and of de-socializing
human beings."

2231
03:11:42,160 --> 03:11:46,410
By 1890, disarmed,
held in concentration camps,

2232
03:11:46,490 --> 03:11:49,330
their children taken away,
half-starved,

2233
03:11:50,240 --> 03:11:52,370
the Lakota and Dakota survivors

2234
03:11:52,450 --> 03:11:54,540
found a new form of resistance:

2235
03:11:55,240 --> 03:11:56,330
Ghost Dancing.

2236
03:12:00,200 --> 03:12:03,910
It was a simple dance performed
by everyone in the open,

2237
03:12:03,990 --> 03:12:07,870
requiring only a specific kind
of handmade ribbon shirt

2238
03:12:07,950 --> 03:12:10,700
that might protect
the dancers from gunfire.

2239
03:12:12,700 --> 03:12:16,330
It spread like wildfire
in all directions.

2240
03:12:16,410 --> 03:12:18,990
Among the presumed sources
of this dance

2241
03:12:19,080 --> 03:12:22,870
is a Nevada Paiute holy man
named Wovoka.

2242
03:12:24,080 --> 03:12:26,990
Native pilgrims
journeyed long distances

2243
03:12:27,080 --> 03:12:30,620
to hear Wovoka's message
and to receive directions

2244
03:12:30,700 --> 03:12:32,830
on how to perform
the Ghost Dance,

2245
03:12:32,910 --> 03:12:35,620
which promised to restore
the Indigenous world

2246
03:12:35,700 --> 03:12:40,410
as it was before colonialism,
make the invaders disappear,

2247
03:12:40,540 --> 03:12:43,240
and the dead warriors
and buffalo return.

2248
03:12:46,740 --> 03:12:48,950
They danced without rest.

2249
03:12:49,040 --> 03:12:52,330
Occasionally,
they collapsed unconscious.

2250
03:12:52,410 --> 03:12:55,410
Quickly,
those on each side of the fallen

2251
03:12:55,490 --> 03:12:58,450
closed the gap
and continued dancing.

2252
03:13:00,080 --> 03:13:03,490
When the dancing began
among the Sioux in 1890,

2253
03:13:03,580 --> 03:13:06,330
reservation officials
falsely reported

2254
03:13:06,410 --> 03:13:10,160
that Sioux leader
Tatanka Yotanka, Sitting Bull,

2255
03:13:10,240 --> 03:13:13,240
had ordered the people
at Pine Ridge Reservation

2256
03:13:13,330 --> 03:13:16,990
to perform the Ghost Dance
day and night.

2257
03:13:17,080 --> 03:13:19,990
Although Sitting Bull
had learned the Ghost Dance,

2258
03:13:20,080 --> 03:13:23,040
he lived in the Standing Rock
Sioux reservation,

2259
03:13:23,120 --> 03:13:26,740
miles away from the dancing,
and was not giving orders.

2260
03:13:27,660 --> 03:13:29,740
The dancing was spontaneous.

2261
03:13:30,790 --> 03:13:33,740
General Sherman!
General Sherman!

2262
03:13:39,330 --> 03:13:42,370
General Sherman,
question for you, sir.

2263
03:13:42,450 --> 03:13:43,950
General, here, sir.

2264
03:13:44,040 --> 03:13:45,370
General Sherman,

2265
03:13:45,450 --> 03:13:47,290
how do you see the end
to this revolt?

2266
03:13:47,370 --> 03:13:48,580
Are there civilian casualties?

2267
03:13:48,660 --> 03:13:50,490
How many savages
have you killed?

2268
03:13:55,160 --> 03:13:57,240
Lots of familiar faces.

2269
03:13:59,120 --> 03:14:00,370
General.

2270
03:14:00,450 --> 03:14:04,910
How do you keep such vigor
after such an exhausting battle?

2271
03:14:04,990 --> 03:14:06,990
Well, riding horses
and killing Indians

2272
03:14:07,080 --> 03:14:09,080
does keep one crisp and fresh.

2273
03:14:15,370 --> 03:14:18,700
What lesson do you draw
from this campaign?

2274
03:14:18,790 --> 03:14:20,990
Is there an end
to these permanent revolts?

2275
03:14:22,830 --> 03:14:25,160
Indians must either
work or starve.

2276
03:14:25,240 --> 03:14:27,950
They never have worked,
they won't work now,

2277
03:14:29,200 --> 03:14:30,790
and they never will work.

2278
03:14:30,870 --> 03:14:32,700
But should not
the government supply them

2279
03:14:32,790 --> 03:14:34,950
with enough
to keep them from starvation?

2280
03:14:35,040 --> 03:14:36,490
Are you gonna pay for it?

2281
03:14:39,950 --> 03:14:41,450
Who shot Sitting Bull?

2282
03:14:42,450 --> 03:14:44,120
How is that important?

2283
03:14:44,200 --> 03:14:46,540
He resisted arrest,
and he was shot.

2284
03:14:50,620 --> 03:14:51,870
What about Big Foot?

2285
03:14:52,620 --> 03:14:53,790
What about him?

2286
03:14:53,870 --> 03:14:56,040
It's said that
they had him surrounded.

2287
03:14:57,790 --> 03:15:00,240
-Huh. Huh.

2288
03:15:03,620 --> 03:15:06,410
Now, that's what the fake press
wants us to believe.

2289
03:15:10,450 --> 03:15:12,950
What about Custer's regiment?

2290
03:15:13,040 --> 03:15:15,620
It's said
that they wanted revenge.

2291
03:15:15,700 --> 03:15:17,450
And what about the 25 soldiers

2292
03:15:17,540 --> 03:15:19,490
killed in "friendly fire"?

2293
03:15:19,580 --> 03:15:21,040
Shit happens.

2294
03:15:23,790 --> 03:15:25,290
And why is it you journalists

2295
03:15:25,370 --> 03:15:28,910
are always trying to make things
more complicated than they are?

2296
03:15:30,370 --> 03:15:31,790
It was a search action.

2297
03:15:31,870 --> 03:15:34,740
We told them to surrender
and hand over their weapons.

2298
03:15:35,740 --> 03:15:36,870
Which they did.

2299
03:15:41,870 --> 03:15:43,620
Well, that's your version.

2300
03:16:51,740 --> 03:16:54,040
Five days
after the sickening events

2301
03:16:54,120 --> 03:16:56,740
at Wounded Knee,
Lyman Frank Baum,

2302
03:16:56,830 --> 03:16:58,540
a Dakota Territory settler

2303
03:16:58,620 --> 03:17:01,040
who would become
very famous years later

2304
03:17:01,120 --> 03:17:03,740
for writing
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,

2305
03:17:03,830 --> 03:17:07,410
wrote in the Aberdeen
Saturday Pioneer newspaper,

2306
03:17:07,490 --> 03:17:11,620
"The Pioneer has before declared
that our only safety

2307
03:17:11,700 --> 03:17:15,290
depends upon the total
extermination of the Indians.

2308
03:17:15,370 --> 03:17:18,450
Having wronged them
for centuries, we had better,

2309
03:17:18,540 --> 03:17:20,910
in order to protect
our civilization,

2310
03:17:20,990 --> 03:17:25,080
follow it up by one more wrong
and wipe these untamed

2311
03:17:25,160 --> 03:17:28,040
and untamable creatures
from the face of the earth."

2312
03:17:33,370 --> 03:17:34,540
The fact is

2313
03:17:34,620 --> 03:17:37,290
the Native Americans
are still here,

2314
03:17:37,370 --> 03:17:39,160
and this is still their home.

2315
03:17:39,240 --> 03:17:42,580
And despite some real
individual accomplishments,

2316
03:17:42,660 --> 03:17:44,540
the real fight remains the fight

2317
03:17:44,620 --> 03:17:48,290
for self-determination
and restitution.

2318
03:17:48,370 --> 03:17:51,160
Anything less
will not be acceptable.

2319
03:17:53,410 --> 03:17:55,080
"The American Indian individual

2320
03:17:55,160 --> 03:17:58,700
shall have the right to choose
his or her citizenship,

2321
03:17:58,790 --> 03:18:02,290
and the American Indian nations
have the right to choose

2322
03:18:02,370 --> 03:18:05,450
their level of citizenship
and autonomy

2323
03:18:05,540 --> 03:18:07,540
up to absolute independence."

2324
03:18:12,120 --> 03:18:15,490
The same observation
could be made about slavery.

2325
03:18:15,580 --> 03:18:17,830
For slavery here is a ghost,

2326
03:18:17,910 --> 03:18:20,950
both the past
and a living presence.

2327
03:18:21,040 --> 03:18:25,580
And after 400 years, the problem
of historical representation

2328
03:18:25,660 --> 03:18:28,490
is how to represent that ghost.

2329
03:18:28,580 --> 03:18:31,450
Something that is,
and yet is not.

2330
03:18:32,990 --> 03:18:36,700
The fact that US slavery
has both officially ended

2331
03:18:36,790 --> 03:18:39,370
and yet continues
in many complex forms

2332
03:18:39,450 --> 03:18:41,620
of institutionalized racism

2333
03:18:41,700 --> 03:18:45,040
makes its representation
particularly burdensome.

2334
03:18:46,240 --> 03:18:48,490
As long as genocide, slavery,

2335
03:18:48,580 --> 03:18:50,830
and the exploitation
of human bodies

2336
03:18:50,910 --> 03:18:53,200
do not convert into reparation,

2337
03:18:53,290 --> 03:18:56,620
whatever the form,
there will never be any peace.

2338
03:18:58,580 --> 03:19:00,700
As writer James Baldwin says,

2339
03:19:00,790 --> 03:19:03,910
"There is scarcely any hope
for the American dream

2340
03:19:03,990 --> 03:19:07,080
because people who are denied
participation in it,

2341
03:19:07,160 --> 03:19:09,740
by their very presence
will wreck it."

2342
03:19:17,040 --> 03:19:19,990
The facts
are staring us in the face.

2343
03:19:23,080 --> 03:19:26,580
"Time is not
a chronological continuity,"

2344
03:19:26,660 --> 03:19:30,330
wrote Trouillot in his book,
Silencing The Past.

2345
03:19:31,450 --> 03:19:34,080
"It is the range
of disjointed moments,

2346
03:19:34,160 --> 03:19:36,080
practices and symbols,

2347
03:19:36,160 --> 03:19:38,410
that thread
the historical relations

2348
03:19:38,490 --> 03:19:40,540
between events and narratives."

2349
03:19:45,830 --> 03:19:47,870
No amount of historical debate

2350
03:19:47,950 --> 03:19:50,240
about any of these events

2351
03:19:50,330 --> 03:19:53,580
and no amount of guilt
can serve as a substitute

2352
03:19:53,660 --> 03:19:55,660
for marching
in the streets today.

2353
03:19:57,910 --> 03:19:59,870
What must be denounced here

2354
03:19:59,950 --> 03:20:03,870
is not so much the reality
of the Native American genocide,

2355
03:20:03,950 --> 03:20:07,870
or the reality of slavery,
or the reality of the Holocaust.

2356
03:20:09,080 --> 03:20:11,450
What needs to be denounced here

2357
03:20:11,540 --> 03:20:14,080
are the consequences
of these realities

2358
03:20:14,160 --> 03:20:16,490
in our lives and in life today.

2359
03:20:40,870 --> 03:20:43,410
I witnessed death in Haiti.

2360
03:20:43,490 --> 03:20:45,950
Of unknown people
and of friends,

2361
03:20:46,040 --> 03:20:49,240
like Antoine Izméry
or Guy Malary,

2362
03:20:49,330 --> 03:20:52,370
both slain
by CIA-linked military.

2363
03:20:53,540 --> 03:20:55,990
But not all deaths are violent.

2364
03:20:58,830 --> 03:21:01,120
I accompanied
my mother's passing

2365
03:21:01,200 --> 03:21:04,410
in a hospital room
in Voorhees, New Jersey.

2366
03:21:04,490 --> 03:21:06,580
She, who was
the first to tell me

2367
03:21:06,660 --> 03:21:10,790
about Congo's assassinated
Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba.

2368
03:21:11,790 --> 03:21:13,580
I made a film about him too.

2369
03:21:14,330 --> 03:21:16,240
And my mother is in it.

2370
03:21:19,240 --> 03:21:21,290
I spent 15 years of my life

2371
03:21:21,370 --> 03:21:23,950
in a city
called Berlin in Germany.

2372
03:21:26,200 --> 03:21:27,910
I went to film school there.

2373
03:21:29,450 --> 03:21:33,410
My entry project was about
the prison of Plötzensee,

2374
03:21:33,490 --> 03:21:35,540
a Nazi torture compound.

2375
03:21:41,290 --> 03:21:44,040
Not one single day
when I lived there,

2376
03:21:44,120 --> 03:21:45,950
did I forget that this country,

2377
03:21:46,040 --> 03:21:49,540
which produced some
of humanity's best philosophers,

2378
03:21:49,620 --> 03:21:51,700
scientists, and artists,

2379
03:21:51,790 --> 03:21:56,370
also operated one of the most
devastating scientifically-run

2380
03:21:56,450 --> 03:21:58,620
and engineered killing machines.

2381
03:22:03,290 --> 03:22:04,700
Berlin.

2382
03:22:04,790 --> 03:22:07,620
I know these streets by heart.

2383
03:22:07,700 --> 03:22:10,200
Every day,
I walked under these arches

2384
03:22:10,290 --> 03:22:13,120
to my classes
at the Technical University.

2385
03:22:14,620 --> 03:22:17,450
The superimposition
of time and images.

2386
03:22:21,540 --> 03:22:23,950
Auschwitz. I went there too.

2387
03:22:25,490 --> 03:22:27,410
I wanted to see for myself.

2388
03:23:29,200 --> 03:23:32,330
More than anything else,
it was these details

2389
03:23:32,410 --> 03:23:35,370
which gave me the clearest
sense of the horror.

2390
03:23:37,200 --> 03:23:39,740
I have seen these images before.

2391
03:23:39,830 --> 03:23:43,700
In Ntarama, Rwanda, in 2003,

2392
03:23:43,790 --> 03:23:46,620
I took these exact same photos.

2393
03:23:46,700 --> 03:23:48,790
A few hundred people
had been slaughtered

2394
03:23:48,870 --> 03:23:52,910
by Hutu militias
and government soldiers
in a church.

2395
03:23:52,990 --> 03:23:56,540
A young man told me
about what happened.

2396
03:23:56,620 --> 03:23:59,740
He had been there
and had escaped through a hole.

2397
03:24:01,790 --> 03:24:03,240
He showed me the hole.

2398
03:24:03,330 --> 03:24:05,580
Still there after ten years.

2399
03:24:08,200 --> 03:24:10,700
I knew I had seen
this picture before.

2400
03:24:27,950 --> 03:24:29,120
We're staying together.

2401
03:24:47,700 --> 03:24:50,040
Why didn't the world react?

2402
03:24:50,120 --> 03:24:52,370
The argument
that people didn't know,

2403
03:24:52,450 --> 03:24:54,200
that's not true. They knew.

2404
03:24:54,290 --> 03:24:56,870
We know now
from intelligence records

2405
03:24:56,950 --> 03:24:58,660
just how much they knew.

2406
03:24:58,740 --> 03:25:01,370
That within hours,
they were aware

2407
03:25:01,450 --> 03:25:04,200
that the killing was being done
on an ethnic basis,

2408
03:25:04,290 --> 03:25:05,370
systematically,

2409
03:25:05,450 --> 03:25:06,700
that there were lists,

2410
03:25:06,790 --> 03:25:10,240
that the killers were going
through the capital city

2411
03:25:10,330 --> 03:25:12,700
choosing out people
from certain households

2412
03:25:12,790 --> 03:25:14,790
and executing them.
They knew this.

2413
03:25:15,830 --> 03:25:17,990
This is Alison Des Forges.

2414
03:25:18,080 --> 03:25:21,240
She spent her life
documenting the horror.

2415
03:25:21,330 --> 03:25:24,910
She met world leaders,
confronted assassins,

2416
03:25:24,990 --> 03:25:28,790
engaged doubters,
and denounced world institutions

2417
03:25:28,870 --> 03:25:30,660
hiding behind their silence.

2418
03:25:31,990 --> 03:25:33,160
She guided me

2419
03:25:33,240 --> 03:25:35,870
and taught me how to decipher
the language of death

2420
03:25:35,950 --> 03:25:39,830
and see through the monster
hiding behind a human mask.

2421
03:25:41,040 --> 03:25:43,540
Alison died
in an airplane accident

2422
03:25:43,620 --> 03:25:46,080
on February 12th, 2009,

2423
03:25:46,160 --> 03:25:48,830
on her way to visit
her family in Buffalo.

2424
03:25:50,240 --> 03:25:51,330
I miss her.

2425
03:25:55,490 --> 03:25:57,450
I'm not putting
anybody on a moral plane,

2426
03:25:57,540 --> 03:26:00,120
what I'm saying is this,
you had a group on one side

2427
03:26:00,200 --> 03:26:01,790
and you had a group
on the other,

2428
03:26:01,870 --> 03:26:03,620
and they came
at each other with clubs,

2429
03:26:03,700 --> 03:26:05,450
and it was vicious,
and it was horrible,

2430
03:26:05,540 --> 03:26:07,290
and it was a horrible thing
to watch.

2431
03:26:07,370 --> 03:26:09,330
I think there's blame
on both sides,

2432
03:26:09,410 --> 03:26:11,540
you look at--
you look at both sides--

2433
03:26:11,620 --> 03:26:13,620
I think there's blame
on both sides.

2434
03:26:13,700 --> 03:26:15,540
George Washington
was a slave owner.

2435
03:26:15,620 --> 03:26:16,950
Are we gonna take down--

2436
03:26:17,040 --> 03:26:18,540
are we gonna take down
the statues?

2437
03:26:18,620 --> 03:26:20,120
How about Thomas Jefferson?

2438
03:26:20,200 --> 03:26:23,040
What do you think of
Thomas Jefferson? You like him?

2439
03:26:26,580 --> 03:26:30,450
These images
project a profound idea of self.

2440
03:26:30,540 --> 03:26:32,370
Or of desperation.

2441
03:26:33,830 --> 03:26:37,040
Lost souls on a pile
of human confusion.

2442
03:26:38,910 --> 03:26:41,240
The absence
of any trace of empathy

2443
03:26:41,330 --> 03:26:44,080
and genuine humanity
is unbearable.

2444
03:26:45,910 --> 03:26:49,240
The nightmare is buried deep
in our consciousness.

2445
03:26:49,330 --> 03:26:52,240
So deep that we do not
recognize it at first.

2446
03:26:54,200 --> 03:26:58,330
It says who you are,
it says what you have become.

2447
03:26:58,410 --> 03:27:03,290
The stubborn privilege
of superiority and comedy.

2448
03:27:03,370 --> 03:27:06,830
In times of despair,
fear, and insecurity,

2449
03:27:06,910 --> 03:27:08,910
people are looking for saviors.

2450
03:27:08,990 --> 03:27:10,490
Any kind will do.

2451
03:27:10,580 --> 03:27:13,870
But possibly, one with
easy-sounding solutions

2452
03:27:13,950 --> 03:27:15,740
that others will pay for.

2453
03:27:19,620 --> 03:27:22,950
But a complex world
calls for complex responses

2454
03:27:23,040 --> 03:27:25,490
with at least
some minimal agreement

2455
03:27:25,580 --> 03:27:26,950
over the diagnosis.

2456
03:27:27,790 --> 03:27:29,620
We never listen to the poor.

2457
03:27:29,700 --> 03:27:32,830
Those who are less poor
fear the loss of what they have.

2458
03:27:32,910 --> 03:27:34,870
And they are rebelling.

2459
03:27:34,950 --> 03:27:36,490
MARION MARÉCHAL-LE PEN:

2460
03:27:39,540 --> 03:27:41,200
We have been there before,

2461
03:27:41,290 --> 03:27:42,700
without learning much.

2462
03:27:42,790 --> 03:27:45,910
For some reason,
we thought that in modern days,

2463
03:27:45,990 --> 03:27:49,080
fascism would be disguised
in bright friendly colors,

2464
03:27:49,160 --> 03:27:51,580
so that it would be difficult
to recognize.

2465
03:27:53,240 --> 03:27:55,370
-But it is recognizable.

2466
03:27:55,450 --> 03:27:58,490
The same roar
when the leader speaks.

2467
03:27:58,580 --> 03:28:01,080
The same hatred of aliens.

2468
03:28:01,160 --> 03:28:02,490
The same violence.

2469
03:28:02,580 --> 03:28:05,620
The same projection
of wounded manhood.

2470
03:28:06,870 --> 03:28:08,330
The frailty of power.

2471
03:28:18,490 --> 03:28:20,330
The Western world is panicking.

2472
03:28:21,290 --> 03:28:24,370
A delirious, spiraling panic.

2473
03:28:24,450 --> 03:28:27,290
Complaining about
a clash of civilization,

2474
03:28:28,410 --> 03:28:31,540
thus displaying
the limits of superiority.

2475
03:28:33,910 --> 03:28:36,240
Privilege makes you vulnerable.

2476
03:28:36,330 --> 03:28:40,160
And panic, when blended
with ignorance and bigotry,

2477
03:28:40,240 --> 03:28:41,740
creates anger.

2478
03:28:41,830 --> 03:28:43,700
Limitless and blinding anger.

2479
03:28:45,200 --> 03:28:47,540
Everyone else becomes the enemy.

2480
03:28:48,450 --> 03:28:50,200
The fortress becomes a prison.

2481
03:28:50,950 --> 03:28:53,910
Everyone else looking in at you.

2482
03:29:27,450 --> 03:29:29,580
People die
because they are hungry

2483
03:29:29,660 --> 03:29:32,330
and can't protect
their own existence.

2484
03:29:32,410 --> 03:29:34,950
Others,
because they are persecuted

2485
03:29:35,040 --> 03:29:37,740
or because they can't feed,
protect, or care

2486
03:29:37,830 --> 03:29:39,370
for their own children.

2487
03:29:40,870 --> 03:29:45,160
Meanwhile, the pornographic rich
are the new moralists.

2488
03:29:47,830 --> 03:29:50,830
Most disturbing
are not the images,

2489
03:29:50,910 --> 03:29:53,660
or even the terrifying words.

2490
03:29:53,740 --> 03:29:57,740
Most disturbing here
is the absence of ridicule

2491
03:29:57,830 --> 03:29:59,910
and the silence of complacency.

2492
03:30:01,290 --> 03:30:02,580
Any hint of decency

2493
03:30:02,660 --> 03:30:05,660
has definitely
been lost in the picture.

2494
03:30:11,120 --> 03:30:12,540
We search for truth

2495
03:30:12,620 --> 03:30:14,450
when we should search
for meaning.

2496
03:30:15,620 --> 03:30:18,660
The very existence of this film
is a miracle.

2497
03:30:22,950 --> 03:30:25,830
One day,
an 18-year-old Palestinian girl

2498
03:30:25,910 --> 03:30:28,580
strapped with explosives
detonates herself

2499
03:30:28,660 --> 03:30:31,120
in a crowded discotheque
in Tel Aviv.

2500
03:30:33,290 --> 03:30:37,160
When others think about revenge,
I think of my daughter.

2501
03:30:38,540 --> 03:30:42,080
What would have pushed her
to commit such a horrific act?

2502
03:30:43,290 --> 03:30:45,830
Would I call my child a monster?

2503
03:30:49,410 --> 03:30:51,490
Yes, it is complicated.

2504
03:31:02,240 --> 03:31:05,120
Today,
I learned of Sven's death.

2505
03:31:07,330 --> 03:31:08,540
It wasn't sudden.

2506
03:31:09,370 --> 03:31:10,830
I knew it would happen soon.

2507
03:31:11,830 --> 03:31:13,040
I had learned to cope.

2508
03:31:14,580 --> 03:31:16,370
It's not pain that I feel,

2509
03:31:17,040 --> 03:31:19,490
but rage and sorrow.

2510
03:31:19,580 --> 03:31:22,830
Sven gave me the original
impulse for this story.

2511
03:31:23,580 --> 03:31:25,240
And he washed away my doubts

2512
03:31:25,330 --> 03:31:28,580
that such a film
was even conceivable.

2513
03:31:28,660 --> 03:31:31,870
Up until his last day,
he wanted it to happen.

2514
03:31:33,950 --> 03:31:36,660
Finishing this story
is now vital.

2515
03:31:47,370 --> 03:31:49,950
Nobody starts
with a clean slate.

2516
03:31:50,040 --> 03:31:52,540
But the human condition
also requires

2517
03:31:52,620 --> 03:31:56,200
that practices of power
and domination be renewed.

2518
03:31:59,040 --> 03:32:02,160
It is that renewal
that should concern us most.

2519
03:32:06,540 --> 03:32:08,910
Calling to account
the so-called legacies

2520
03:32:08,990 --> 03:32:13,990
of past horrors, slavery,
colonialism, or the Holocaust,

2521
03:32:14,080 --> 03:32:16,990
is only possible
because of that renewal.

2522
03:32:17,080 --> 03:32:20,450
And that renewal
occurs only in the present.

2523
03:32:21,620 --> 03:32:24,490
"Only in that present
can we be true or false

2524
03:32:24,580 --> 03:32:26,790
to the past
we choose to acknowledge,"

2525
03:32:26,870 --> 03:32:28,120
said Trouillot.

2526
03:32:29,160 --> 03:32:31,830
You know,
I'm not an expert in religion.

2527
03:32:33,910 --> 03:32:36,700
This is a hardline issue
for people who live
in border states...

2528
03:32:36,790 --> 03:32:39,830
The president
is trying to protect
our borders from an invasion...

2529
03:32:43,620 --> 03:32:44,990
Forty-five thousand
people a year

2530
03:32:45,080 --> 03:32:46,450
die from automobile accidents...

2531
03:32:46,540 --> 03:32:48,950
American scholars
have largely abandoned

2532
03:32:49,040 --> 03:32:53,120
the role of public intellectuals
to pundits and entertainers.

2533
03:32:54,040 --> 03:32:57,330
No proof,
no arguments are necessary.

2534
03:32:57,410 --> 03:32:59,410
It is opinions against opinions.

2535
03:32:59,490 --> 03:33:02,580
Shamelessly passing off
impudence as reason.

2536
03:33:03,950 --> 03:33:08,240
We now know that narratives
are made of silences.

2537
03:33:08,330 --> 03:33:12,370
While some of us debate
what history is or was,

2538
03:33:12,450 --> 03:33:14,910
others take it
into their own hands.

2539
03:33:17,290 --> 03:33:20,830
In 1920,
biologist Charles Davenport,

2540
03:33:20,910 --> 03:33:24,040
leader of
the American eugenics movement,

2541
03:33:24,120 --> 03:33:26,200
asked his friend Madison Grant,

2542
03:33:26,290 --> 03:33:29,540
author of
The Passing of the Great Race,

2543
03:33:29,620 --> 03:33:32,830
"Can we build a wall
high enough around this country

2544
03:33:32,910 --> 03:33:35,540
so as to keep out
those cheaper races?"

2545
03:33:38,240 --> 03:33:42,870
On May 26, 1924,
President Calvin Coolidge

2546
03:33:42,950 --> 03:33:45,740
signed the Restriction Act
into law

2547
03:33:45,830 --> 03:33:48,990
and shut down immigration
by 97 percent.

2548
03:33:50,080 --> 03:33:52,490
The door was shut for 40 years.

2549
03:33:53,490 --> 03:33:54,830
People tend to forget.

2550
03:33:55,910 --> 03:33:58,330
A political victory
for eugenics.

2551
03:34:03,330 --> 03:34:05,160
As one congressman said,

2552
03:34:05,240 --> 03:34:08,990
"The nation would remain
the home of a great people.

2553
03:34:09,080 --> 03:34:12,120
Christian,
English-speaking white people."

2554
03:34:19,580 --> 03:34:24,620
The open arms of Ellis Island
are now closed again.

2555
03:34:24,700 --> 03:34:28,740
That law closed the door on Jews
who were fleeing the Nazis.

2556
03:34:30,370 --> 03:34:33,200
For lack of a visa,
Anne Frank died

2557
03:34:33,290 --> 03:34:35,870
in Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp.

2558
03:34:48,740 --> 03:34:51,040
When Adolf Hitler
entered politics,

2559
03:34:51,120 --> 03:34:55,290
the opportunities for Germany
to expand had been closed.

2560
03:34:55,370 --> 03:34:58,410
He had to find
an alternative closer to home.

2561
03:34:59,410 --> 03:35:01,160
Hitler's campaign to the east

2562
03:35:01,240 --> 03:35:04,330
became his very own
colonial war.

2563
03:35:04,410 --> 03:35:07,490
In the long term,
he intended to incorporate

2564
03:35:07,580 --> 03:35:09,080
these agricultural areas

2565
03:35:09,160 --> 03:35:12,410
into the expanding
German Lebensraum.

2566
03:35:12,490 --> 03:35:15,990
The Lebensraum,
meaning "living space."

2567
03:35:16,080 --> 03:35:18,490
According
to Hitler's imperial vision,

2568
03:35:18,580 --> 03:35:21,240
the elimination
of America's redskins,

2569
03:35:21,830 --> 03:35:22,990
as he called them,

2570
03:35:23,080 --> 03:35:26,450
was the perfect example
of a successful colonization.

2571
03:35:27,410 --> 03:35:28,830
Like the Americans had done,

2572
03:35:28,910 --> 03:35:31,660
he would proceed
to send German settlers

2573
03:35:31,740 --> 03:35:36,330
to replace all Jewish and Slavic
populations in the East.

2574
03:35:36,410 --> 03:35:40,490
The law of blood justified
the needs and the deeds.

2575
03:35:43,450 --> 03:35:46,490
Hitler was driven
throughout his political career

2576
03:35:46,580 --> 03:35:49,620
by a fanatical anti-Semitism
that was rooted

2577
03:35:49,700 --> 03:35:52,330
in a thousand-year-old
tradition.

2578
03:35:52,410 --> 03:35:55,410
But the step
from mass murder to genocide

2579
03:35:55,490 --> 03:35:58,490
was not taken
until the anti-Semitic tradition

2580
03:35:58,580 --> 03:36:00,700
met the tradition of genocide

2581
03:36:00,790 --> 03:36:03,330
that arose
during Europe's expansion

2582
03:36:03,410 --> 03:36:06,990
in America, Australia,
Africa, and Asia.

2583
03:36:10,450 --> 03:36:12,950
According
to the Lebensraum theory,

2584
03:36:13,040 --> 03:36:15,700
the Jews belonged
to an even lower race

2585
03:36:15,790 --> 03:36:17,870
than the Russians and Poles,

2586
03:36:17,950 --> 03:36:21,160
a race which could not
lay claim to the right to live.

2587
03:36:24,620 --> 03:36:27,410
It was only natural
that such lower races

2588
03:36:27,490 --> 03:36:31,120
should be exterminated
if they were in the way.

2589
03:36:31,200 --> 03:36:34,700
The other Western master races
had done just that.

2590
03:36:37,370 --> 03:36:38,830
Same procedures apply.

2591
03:36:39,490 --> 03:36:40,660
Different player.

2592
03:36:43,830 --> 03:36:45,370
They died on their own

2593
03:36:45,450 --> 03:36:47,290
when the food supply
was cut off.

2594
03:36:48,540 --> 03:36:51,620
The sad rule
that so-called inferior people

2595
03:36:51,700 --> 03:36:55,410
died out upon contact
with highly cultivated people

2596
03:36:55,490 --> 03:36:56,830
was at work again.

2597
03:36:58,410 --> 03:37:00,240
If they did not die fast enough,

2598
03:37:00,330 --> 03:37:03,330
then it was merciful
to shorten their suffering.

2599
03:37:58,990 --> 03:38:01,950
A Nazi officer
took these pictures.

2600
03:38:02,040 --> 03:38:04,660
Like the previous ones,
they were found

2601
03:38:04,740 --> 03:38:07,740
in what has been called
the Auschwitz Album.

2602
03:38:14,830 --> 03:38:16,410
The accounting of death.

2603
03:38:21,080 --> 03:38:24,410
Beneath the numbers,
there are faces,

2604
03:38:24,490 --> 03:38:26,040
there are souls,

2605
03:38:26,120 --> 03:38:30,290
caught for one small moment
by the lens of their tormentors.

2606
03:38:32,620 --> 03:38:35,620
And they know.
They must have known.

2607
03:38:43,200 --> 03:38:45,080
"Unfit to work."

2608
03:38:45,160 --> 03:38:48,450
This is how they call
those who are put aside...

2609
03:38:49,290 --> 03:38:50,330
to die.

2610
03:38:52,620 --> 03:38:54,240
This group is saved.

2611
03:38:54,870 --> 03:38:55,990
Momentarily.

2612
03:38:57,700 --> 03:39:00,240
The photographer and his prey.

2613
03:39:00,330 --> 03:39:03,660
A last glimpse of humanity,
in this woman's gaze.

2614
03:39:05,240 --> 03:39:06,660
And there is no illusion.

2615
03:39:09,160 --> 03:39:10,660
The children are thirsty.

2616
03:39:11,660 --> 03:39:14,740
"Where can we have water?"
they ask.

2617
03:39:14,830 --> 03:39:18,870
"Walk all the way to the back.
There is water, I promise,"

2618
03:39:19,540 --> 03:39:20,950
says the SS officer.

2619
03:39:22,160 --> 03:39:23,490
And so they walk.

2620
03:39:23,580 --> 03:39:28,370
The children, their mother,
their aunt, their cousins...

2621
03:39:28,450 --> 03:39:30,330
walking towards death.

2622
03:39:31,660 --> 03:39:34,830
In less than 20 minutes,
they will be dead.

2623
03:39:35,660 --> 03:39:36,700
All of them.

2624
03:39:38,990 --> 03:39:40,120
Twenty minutes.

2625
03:39:40,200 --> 03:39:43,040
That's the time it takes
to get from the dock,

2626
03:39:43,120 --> 03:39:46,410
across the tracks,
along the stony path

2627
03:39:46,540 --> 03:39:48,410
all the way
to the back of the camp,

2628
03:39:48,490 --> 03:39:51,540
where crematoriums four
and five are located.

2629
03:39:54,040 --> 03:39:57,830
The SS blew them all up
the day they fled.

2630
03:39:57,910 --> 03:40:00,040
But enough remains
to bear witness.

2631
03:40:16,240 --> 03:40:19,990
It's time to own up
to a basic truth.

2632
03:40:20,080 --> 03:40:23,450
The great planners and executors
of the Final Solution

2633
03:40:23,540 --> 03:40:25,580
were extremely well-educated.

2634
03:40:26,870 --> 03:40:31,370
They had college degrees,
and quite a few even PhDs.

2635
03:40:32,620 --> 03:40:34,870
All German
production capabilities

2636
03:40:34,950 --> 03:40:37,950
were mobilized
to create this racial paradise.

2637
03:40:43,120 --> 03:40:47,580
From architects, manufacturers,
plumbers, bankers,

2638
03:40:47,660 --> 03:40:51,700
to landscapers, agronomists,
and SS henchmen,

2639
03:40:51,790 --> 03:40:55,950
their organizational
creativeness was unparalleled.

2640
03:43:48,240 --> 03:43:49,910
It's not knowledge we lack.

2641
03:44:00,450 --> 03:44:05,240
Just as educated Frenchmen
in the 1950s and 1960s

2642
03:44:05,330 --> 03:44:07,620
knew what their troops
were up to

2643
03:44:07,700 --> 03:44:10,370
in Vietnam and Algeria.

2644
03:44:10,450 --> 03:44:13,790
Just as educated Russians
in the 1980s

2645
03:44:13,870 --> 03:44:16,950
knew what their troops did
in Afghanistan.

2646
03:44:17,990 --> 03:44:21,200
Just as educated
South Africans and Americans,

2647
03:44:21,290 --> 03:44:24,700
during the same period,
knew what their "auxiliaries"

2648
03:44:24,790 --> 03:44:27,870
were doing in Mozambique
and Central America,

2649
03:44:27,950 --> 03:44:29,290
respectively.

2650
03:44:29,370 --> 03:44:33,870
So educated Europeans today
know how children die

2651
03:44:33,950 --> 03:44:36,910
when the whip of debt
and bombs whistle

2652
03:44:36,990 --> 03:44:38,290
over poor countries.

2653
03:44:41,490 --> 03:44:44,160
It is not knowledge
that is lacking.

2654
03:44:44,240 --> 03:44:47,740
Auschwitz is just the modern
industrial application

2655
03:44:47,830 --> 03:44:51,330
of established
extermination methods.

2656
03:44:51,410 --> 03:44:55,410
The educated general public
has always largely known

2657
03:44:55,490 --> 03:44:57,580
what atrocities
have been committed

2658
03:44:57,660 --> 03:45:00,290
and are being committed
in the name of progress,

2659
03:45:00,370 --> 03:45:04,450
civilization, socialism,
democracy, and the market.

2660
03:45:05,330 --> 03:45:08,080
And this
for the last thousand years,

2661
03:45:08,160 --> 03:45:10,700
since the original
Christian Crusades.

2662
03:45:12,200 --> 03:45:15,370
No, it's not knowledge
that is lacking.

2663
03:45:16,490 --> 03:45:19,450
This knowledge
could be expressed in general

2664
03:45:19,540 --> 03:45:21,200
and in scholarly language.

2665
03:45:22,370 --> 03:45:26,330
"Imperialism is a biologically
necessary process

2666
03:45:26,410 --> 03:45:28,950
that, according
to the laws of nature,

2667
03:45:29,040 --> 03:45:33,200
leads to the inevitable
destruction of the lower races."

2668
03:45:36,200 --> 03:45:38,160
Things of that kind
could be said.

2669
03:45:40,490 --> 03:45:43,620
At all times,
it has also been profitable

2670
03:45:43,700 --> 03:45:46,410
to deny or suppress
such knowledge.

2671
03:45:49,830 --> 03:45:52,910
Conrad would have been able
to set his story

2672
03:45:52,990 --> 03:45:55,910
using any of the peoples
of European culture.

2673
03:45:58,040 --> 03:45:59,160
In practice,

2674
03:45:59,240 --> 03:46:02,290
the whole of Europe acted
according to the maxim,

2675
03:46:02,370 --> 03:46:05,200
"exterminate all the brutes."

2676
03:46:05,290 --> 03:46:08,330
Officially,
it was, of course, denied.

2677
03:46:08,410 --> 03:46:11,120
But man to man, everyone knew.

2678
03:47:06,870 --> 03:47:07,910
No.

2679
03:47:35,330 --> 03:47:39,040
This knowledge
is a fundamental prerequisite.

2680
03:47:39,120 --> 03:47:42,080
That is why the narrator
can tell his story

2681
03:47:42,160 --> 03:47:46,120
as he does in Conrad's novel,
Heart of Darkness.

2682
03:47:46,200 --> 03:47:50,040
He has no need to count
the crimes Kurtz committed.

2683
03:47:50,120 --> 03:47:52,540
He has no need to describe them.

2684
03:47:52,620 --> 03:47:55,200
He has no need
to produce evidence.

2685
03:47:55,290 --> 03:47:56,990
For no one doubted it.

2686
03:47:59,790 --> 03:48:01,580
But the way
it actually happened,

2687
03:48:01,660 --> 03:48:06,080
what it really did
to the exterminators
and the exterminated,

2688
03:48:06,160 --> 03:48:09,120
that was, at most, only implied.

2689
03:48:14,410 --> 03:48:17,290
And when what had been done
in the heart of darkness

2690
03:48:17,370 --> 03:48:19,910
was repeated
in the heart of Europe,

2691
03:48:19,990 --> 03:48:22,080
no one recognized it.

2692
03:48:22,160 --> 03:48:25,660
No one wished to admit
what everyone knew.

2693
03:50:28,490 --> 03:50:30,330
Everywhere in the world

2694
03:50:30,410 --> 03:50:32,580
where knowledge
is being suppressed,

2695
03:50:32,660 --> 03:50:35,700
knowledge that,
if it were made known,

2696
03:50:35,790 --> 03:50:38,240
would shatter
our image of the world

2697
03:50:38,330 --> 03:50:40,540
and force us
to question ourselves,

2698
03:50:41,240 --> 03:50:42,740
everywhere there,

2699
03:50:42,830 --> 03:50:45,620
Heart of Darkness
is being enacted.

2700
03:51:01,200 --> 03:51:05,580
Black Elk, holy man
of the Oglala Lakota people,

2701
03:51:05,660 --> 03:51:08,370
said after
the Wounded Knee Massacre,

2702
03:51:08,450 --> 03:51:11,450
"I didn't know then
how much was ended.

2703
03:51:11,540 --> 03:51:16,080
When I look back now from
this high hill of my old age,

2704
03:51:16,160 --> 03:51:19,120
I can still see
the butchered women and children

2705
03:51:19,200 --> 03:51:22,910
lying heaped and scattered
all along the crooked gulch,

2706
03:51:22,990 --> 03:51:26,660
as plain as when I saw them
with eyes still young."

2707
03:51:30,160 --> 03:51:33,040
"And I can see
that something else died there

2708
03:51:33,120 --> 03:51:36,450
in the bloody mud,
and was buried in the blizzard.

2709
03:51:38,950 --> 03:51:41,240
A people's dream died there.

2710
03:51:42,370 --> 03:51:43,870
It was a beautiful dream.

2711
03:51:44,950 --> 03:51:49,660
The nation's circle
is broken and scattered.

2712
03:51:49,740 --> 03:51:55,580
There is no center any longer,
and the sacred tree is dead."

2713
03:52:00,200 --> 03:52:02,580
A people's dream died there.

2714
03:54:40,990 --> 03:54:42,950
No justice, no peace!

2715
03:54:44,410 --> 03:54:46,540
Do not let our planet die!

2716
03:54:48,120 --> 03:54:49,490
Do not let our planet die!

2717
03:54:49,580 --> 03:54:52,160
We still
haven't seen anything yet.

2718
03:54:52,240 --> 03:54:55,160
This is only
the beginning of the beginning.

2719
03:55:00,410 --> 03:55:03,290
We are all together!
We are all here!

2720
03:55:19,080 --> 03:55:21,620
No, it's not knowledge we lack.