Another one of those racist propaganda films...

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=866903879987546&set=vb.100000038277260&type=2&theater

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-kMpqQBdNs

I do not normally comment on such silly things, but a friend shared this on their Facebook timeline asking for thoughts and I care for what my friends think so decided to give a few notes to help thinking about it.

Title pre-supposes a division as its constituting principle: "whites vs muslims" implying an inherent difference between two incompatible modes of categories of human beings: a racial category and a religious idea. It is basically designed for a white viewer to identify as a possible victim of what will be assumed to be an inherently different category of human beings (white cannot be muslim, muslim cannot be white) with a massive focus on 'distance' or 'othering'. Muslims are identified here only as "immigrants". The implied hypothetical audience, I suppose, should be clear: local people who identify as white, are afraid of everything else, and depend on an upper-white representative to protect them.

Footage is stolen from British "riots" and other irrelevant things timed by montage to give the propagandist's particular message (e.g. Arab-Gulf-styled man and woman walking out of what I suppose is an airport at the moment the narrator stresses "caliphate", etc.). Many shots were extremely short and close-up footage. For me, this implies they have either been cut from other videos to make them pass quickly without being noticed, or that they have been staged. In contrast, the montage does not shy away from using longer cuts about Lebanon, where, by the way, there is NO civil war, despite having a complex political situation. Muslims in Lebanon, for the video maker, are only the militant Hezbollah with a plan to conquer (Hezbollah is a militant group with a plan to conquer, but they do not represent or reflect Muslims in Lebanon). The choice of cuts is very careful, selective, and timed with the narrator's message for a very specific purpose. In plain English, this is called constructing a lie to stir emotions by giving a knowledge-effect.

The video continually and consistently refers to muslims as immigrants, completely ignoring the local (both British and French) Muslim make up which is plenty. It also links the "muslim areas" to the disgraceful idea that the French government is incapable of doing anything about a situation in any given area, supposedly called a no-go-zone, where it claims even police cannot go in. This is basically inciting the idea that a kind of firm government is needed to replace the current weak one. Only an ignorant person buys this stuff. I wish to hear evidence that the French government stands helpless in front of such a thing, especially by immigrants! It is the simplest thing for any government to deport any immigrant who causes the slightest problems. In fact, 'immigrants' can only enter, let alone settle in, a country after going through a filtration process in which they are scrutinised. Immigrates go through a whole lot. If what a government would call a riot happens anywhere, it will be carried out by a local community and will be caused by a failure in the governing body's treatment of said local community. But then again, the target audience of this clip will not verify any of this as the point of it in the end is to stir anxieties, not to prove points or give any real knowledge. Long as the feeling is stirred, you can now skip to the next video or do whatever you were doing. Other terms that refer to right-wing politics appear here and there as the French failure is referred to as a failure of 'multiculturalism', and also when it refers to the Islamic make up of the left and their votes in France. The implied suggested alternative is a form of 'purism'. I wish you the best of luck working an economy with that, but you don't care once you're in power, do you?

The kind of 'evidence' produced by this video consists of interview-like individuals and "anti-islamisation activists". Last time I heard people discuss journalism, professionalism was a recurring word, and it is part of any piece of professional journalism to state facts and sources from at least two sides in any conflict. Here, as with other similar productions, because this is indeed a production, there is only one preachy side propagating its ideology. Any bunch of hatemongers could group a few friends or pay them to make a "documentary" about whatever suits their agenda.

This is a racial work in the most negative meaning of the word. It is not racial because it is anti-Muslim. It is racial because it targets white audiences and stirs emotions of hatred and fear in them AS white people. Indeed it will only affect people who already believe and identify as white in a way that opposes whiteness to other categories. I truly feel sorry for my white fellow human beings having to go through these sick works.

The best part is that it is published by YouTube username Israel-Best, which alone says many things.. like... The importance of whiteness in Israeli politics and propaganda???!

The Instagrammatic Memory

I think it's a bad thing.

:|

When the present is gone, another present arrives. If you spend the present 'designing' how you're going to remember a moment which was supposed to be a present but was in fact a design for your new present to remember your old present, you spend the new present looking back at what you think was a present but is in fact a design....

You're not really living if you spend your time designing what you're going to remember, and living later moments remembering something you designed telling yourself this was your life.

You are simply stuck upon the idea of cherishing and loss. Your problem is the fact that the present quickly becomes the past, but this is why it is a present. So precious. But that makes you wanna cherish it so much you no longer know how to appreciate living it.

Your solution is to materialise the present, but the paradox is that the moment you spend materialising what is supposed to be the present moment is a moment gone already. You cannot live the moment twice. The living self and the remembering self are not two different selves. They are and have always been one, and both really live in a single moment.

You are then the only one missing out, because time cannot be frozen, reversed, nor is it infinite.

What is fascinating about human memory is that it works without materialising images. Your subjective map is made up of the moments you have actually lived. You show those fine clips in your montage as if they have all been spontaneous perfect captures with no effort or acting involved. We all become artists? Wake up as to what image-construction is. Your very choice of images should tell you that the instagram generation's capture, the real one not the one in the background of your video clip, is not the realisation of the perfect spontaneous capture that a human memory is capable of.

The one sad thing here is that you suppose documentation is the only, or main, form of human memory. "You are given a pen," like you can now remember what you previously couldn't. Unfortunately, you are suggesting that this digital tool is what creates the mental map which is subjective and makes us know who we are. While in fact, it is nothing but a redundancy of a function that is inherent to our human being, materialised for profit, and presented as indispensable.

There is a small seed of a similar thought in my blog about using a film camera as opposed to using a digital camera. Find it somewhere at the bottom of this entry:
http://photographeronbudget.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/third-film-olympus-xa2.html