#144 — Conquering Hate

Welcome to the Make and Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Today I'm speaking with Dia Khan. Dia is a two-time Emmy award-winning and twice-baffed and nominated documentary film director.

She's the founder of Fuse as F-U-U-S-E, a media and arts company that puts women in minority communities at the heart of telling their own stories. In 2016, she became the first UNESCO Goodwill ambassador for artistic freedom and creativity. She's made at least three films to date, Banaz, a love story, Jihod and White Right meeting the enemy. And we talk about the last two, Jihod and White Right.

You really have to see her films. Dia is doing something truly extraordinary. She's doing something extraordinary as a person, even more than as a filmmaker. Now you'll hear in the second half of this podcast in the last hour or so that we don't agree about everything.

There's definitely some daylight between how she views the collision between Islam and the modern world and the way I view it. And she clearly doesn't fully align with my friends, Majid and Ayan Hersele. So there's a further conversation if you had on that front. But I hope you'll view the exchange we did have there.

As a model for the kind of conversation that millions of people could and should be having about these issues. Unfortunately, audio quality for this podcast is a little spotty. There were a few sound problems on her side. It's not too bad, but it goes in and out in a few points, I think it's worse in the beginning.

So apologies for that. In any case, I love this conversation. I think Dia is fantastic. If you watch White Right, you will understand why I think so.

Disagreements aside. I now bring you Dia Khan. I am here with Dia Khan. Dia, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for having me. I know I mispronounced your last name. How do you say Khan when you're not an American who can't pronounce Middle Eastern? You know, that's not bad, actually.

The only difference I would say is Khan. It's a her. But I'm a Khan. I mean, most people say that, so not bad.

OK. Well, it was great to meet you by phone, essentially. We're over the internet. And you've explained to me that there's some explosions in the background.

You're not in a war zone. What's going on? I'm not. It's Guy Fawkes night.

So there's a lot of fireworks happening. But it should calm down, I think, in another hour or so. OK. Well, as long as you're safe, that's what we care about.

Absolutely. So you and I actually have met over the phone. You might be aware of this. But these were less than auspicious circumstances.

I think you were in the room for my ill-fated conversation with Maryam Namazi. Do I have a word? That's correct, yes. Because I did a film, when was it?

A couple of years ago now, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I did a film about apostasy.

And basically, young people that are leaving Islam, both in England but also in other countries. And just what their experiences are like. And then also the kind of support or lack of support that they find within the Muslim community. And then organizations like Merriams, the Council of Ex-Muslims that provide that much needed support for these young people.

So I was following Maryam a lot around that time. And then obviously, you guys had your conversation. I also happened to be in the room. And eventually just turned off the camera.

Yeah, yes, that's good. Yeah, no, I haven't seen the footage of that. But I experienced my side of the conversation firsthand. And I can only say you were very briefly a friendly voice on the line.

And then I was delivered into Maryam's hands. And we had what many of you is perhaps my least successful podcast. Certainly was in the top three. But it was kind of bewildering because we agree about many things.

But we got bogged down on debating open borders and just couldn't get back to dry land. I do think that was a shame because I think you have a lot in common, actually. And what was a bit frustrating for me being a listener was it just felt as if you were both talking past each other. And that's always just sort of sad and a waste on that happens.

Well, I am virtually certain you and I won't have that problem. Having watched your two, I think, your two most recent films that are available on Netflix, Jihad and White Right, I'm just so amazed at what you're doing and such a huge fan. And I just hope everyone watches these films. Our conversation will be absolutely no substitute at all for actually seeing them.

So you just have an enormous fan in me. And I just want to talk about what you're doing as a filmmaker. That's very kind of you. Thank you.

I really appreciate that. When you do your work and you're so, I mean, film is such a sort of obsessive, really long, really hard process. And it's just hard for me to look up from the work that I do. It's just so well-consuming.

So when people finally see the work, and then the responses to the work is always it's touching and confusing and quite amazing. I mean, to realize that other people have a relationship to the work that I do, because for me, it's a matter of just sort of satisfying my own curiosity, really, is what the films are and exercise in. Yeah. I mean, it's got to be something more than curiosity here, though, because what you've done here is you're kind of responding to a moral emergency in both films.

And putting yourself on the line in a way that really seems unusual for filmmakers. But before we jump into each film, just tell us a little bit about your background. How do you come to be dealing with these topics? And I was surprised to learn you grew up in Norway, which you betray, you certainly know evidence of.

So who are you? And where did you come from? Well, you are right. I was born and raised in Oslo, Norway.

Come from a Muslim family. My father is my case, and my mother is Afghan. Very, very liberal, very, I would say, sort of an eccentric family in the sense that we had lots of artists and activists and in the house when I was growing up is some of my earliest memories of just sitting and playing on the carpet when my father and my mother would be entertaining and having conversations about politics and about human rights and about theater and about music and with feminists and with activists and human rights offenders from their part of the world. So I sort of grew up understanding that that's what life is like.

That's what Muslim women are like, even. But sort of my dad is a bit of a strange guy. He had a lot of experiences of racism in Norway. And one of the things that he had in his mind was that the only way you can get past that is, and he gave me this lecture when I was actually quite warm, he said, look, there are only two professions in the world where your race won't matter, your gender, your religion, your background won't matter.

If you work harder than everybody else and you remain patient and just stick to it, then eventually you'll be able to do well in life. And one is sports and the other is within the arts and particularly music is what his love was. And so at the age of seven, he basically decided that my profession was going to be music. So I started studying music and this was North Indian and Pakistani classical music.

I studied from the age of seven, very, very rigorous training. I mean, my dad was wonderful, but also a very strict, very harsh person when it came to commitment to music. And I always sort of joke about this, that my dad didn't arrange my marriage or anything like that, but he chose my profession for me. Anyway, in Norway, I very quickly started doing public performances, both on TV and at music festivals and various places and sort of became, I would say, this mascot for multicultural Norway, this little strange girl who was doing this strange sort of music and kind of a symbol of how well Norway was doing with all of its sort of quote unquote, new arrivals from all around the world.

And everyone felt very good about themselves and pat it themselves on the back. But as my success continued, I started getting more and more negative reactions as well from two sides. One side was saying, what is this little, basically, Paki, which is a derogatory form of people from Pakistan and South Asia, doing on our TV all the time, and people like this, they need to piss off back home. And then the other side that I started also getting a views from was from my parents' community.

And the Muslim community in Norway is actually quite small, but harassment from that side also started getting very, very intense. To the point where by the age of 17, I had to pack my bags via one-way ticket to London and left. So it was sort of exiled from Norway, which is strange in a way because a lot of people leave difficult countries in search for safety in Norway. But for me, it was in the opposite.

Let me just see if I understand here. So you had a very liberal Muslim family, and it sounds like you didn't escape all of the Southeast Asian kinds of pressure one can get from one family, but it was directed toward music rather than religion or conservative social norms. And so you're being a female performer, put you on the radar of religiously conservative people who then made your life miserable? Yes, yes.

And their reasoning was that they consider music to be unacceptable. They consider music to be a very low profession, a profession that is engaged with by prostitutes and dishonorable people. And people would often say, you come from a good family, why are you engaging in such a immoral and dishonorable profession? And I remember, I think I was 11, 12 years old, and we used to have these sort of delegations of men would come to our house and try to talk sense into my father, saying, we don't even allow our boys to engage in this profession.

What are you doing, dragging your girl into this? And he would always show them the door. He would never care. And he would always say, look, this is my daughter, my decision.

And you people just, you have no jurisdiction over her. And my grandfather on my father's side also lived in Norway. He was one of the first immigrants from Pakistan to come to Norway to work. He's very, very, very religious, very conservative.

He helped build several of the mosques in Norway and very loved and respected in Norway. So when people had, when they struggled with my father, then they would go to my grandfather saying, look, she's bringing shame on the entire community. She is even more girls are strayed by showing them that they can do things like this. And this has to stop him.

And he wasn't able to do that. And then eventually, people start to come to me in the streets of Oslo. People put knives on me. I was attacked at my own concerts.

People tried to abduct me from my own schools. It became very, very difficult. And you're a teenager at this point. Yeah.

And my mother always gets really upset whenever she thinks about this. Because she's like, I remember when we made the decision, she was sitting at the kitchen table and she sat me down. And she said, look, do you understand that we can no longer protect you? Do you understand that we can no longer keep you safe and that you're going to have to go?

And I remember going, yes, I do understand that. And my heart breaks at the time was, obviously, I was afraid of what was going on. And also, I was afraid for my family because they stood by me and they paid a heavy price for that. They were completely isolated and pushed out by the rest of the community.

But they still chose me instead of the community. But I remember her just having to send her child away. And still to this day, she gets really, really sad when she thinks of that time. And my brother lost his sister.

We didn't have means of communicating like this back then. So it was really hard. I left my career, left my friends, left my life, left my family, left everything behind. So it was hard.

As you pointed out, it's amazing that you had to leave a Western society. This is not leaving Pakistan or Afghanistan. Which would be understandable. And I think the heartbreak for me was my exit was a very public exit.

It wasn't something that happened in secret. It was sort of plastered across the national newspapers in Norway saying that I'd been threatened out of Norway and all of this. And my kind of just sorrow at the time, sort of in the mind of a 17-year-old was that no one said anything. Nobody said hold on, this is wrong.

And I remember kind of my way of thinking that again, as a 17-year-old was, I couldn't help but feel if I would have been blond and blue-eyed would people have behaved differently? Well, they have treated me differently. Would there have been any kind of outrage then, instead of just quietly letting me go like that? And I always sort of say this.

But I really felt like at the airport where you have, there's always that one suitcase that keeps going round and round on the baggage carousel. Nobody comes to claim that suitcase felt like that. I felt like I didn't belong to the Pakistani community. And I felt like I didn't belong to my country.

And that was a very painful, very, very difficult feeling to carry as a 17-year-old. Because you don't feel like you've done anything wrong. I did everything right. I was obedient to my father's dream.

I worked really hard. And this is what you end up with, is just loneliness and just a sense of deep, deep loss, wandering the streets of London, having no idea what to do or who you are or how you rebuild your life. So I mean, this is a very long answer to your question. No, no, it's good to get your back story here.

But ironically, so you go to London, which is also a center of Islamist and jihadist extremism. I often think of it as being one of the worst in the West in terms of your exposure to a radicalized community. I guess nobody knew who you were when you arrived, but just based on your own films, you're kind of out of the frying pan into the fire, aren't you? Yeah, well, yes or no?

Because the reason I chose London is because I'd been here at the age of 12. And growing up in Norway, I always felt like the strange sort of dark child in the sea of the blonde and the blue-eyed. So always had this feeling of never quite fitting in, never quite being sort of enough for either side, not being Norwegian enough, not being Pakistani enough. And then the fact that you're a girl on top of it just adds all those that extra baggage.

But coming to the UK when I remember when I was 12, I loved it. Because I could suddenly see people who look like me. And I suddenly felt like I didn't stand out in that way. And that's one of the reasons I chose that instead of the US, for example, but also US was too far.

But anyway, I think to a huge extent, London is a symbol and an example of how diverse cultures can coexist beautifully through some of the art and the music and the foods and the friendships and the kind of life that you see a lot of people leading. But then of course, there is a flip side to that as well, that where you also see people on the margins of the society and these various communities also, obviously, you know, edging farther and farther towards violence and farther and farther towards separation division and fear of each other. So yes, it's a difficult place in some ways. But in other ways, it's also actually quite successful, which I think we don't really get to talk about or see very often.

You know, when it comes to feminist from the Muslim context, where it comes to robustly addressing some of the challenges that we face within various minority communities, I've seen that engagement in a much more impressive, robust form than I've seen anywhere else. So I think a lot of the solutions also reside in England as much as the problems. You must know my friend, Majid Nawaz. Have you crossed paths with him?

I have met him, yes. Yeah. Do you align with his reform efforts at all? Or is there daylight between how you come at this and how he does?

I don't know enough about the reform effort, but the little that I do know, I don't think that we align. I mean, I understand and respect some of the work that he's doing, but I think on the reform side of things, I don't particularly see how that's effective. To be quite honest, I think people practice and manifest their religiosity in a multitude of ways everywhere. And I think that's where the key is.

I don't think a kind of top-down, a choreographed reform is really needed. I think, well, actually, can you explain to me what you understand that he is doing? And maybe I'm misunderstanding it. Yeah, yeah.

Well, basically, he's not cast himself as a theologian at all. In fact, the theologian that he relies on most of the time is in your film, Jihad, Usama San. I don't know if that film predates his association with Quilliam, but I think I'm not mistaken about that as the same person. Yeah, the same man, yeah.

But my just argument is simply that, actually following the line, you just suggested that, given that there's so much diversity in how people practice Islam, the only answer is a respect for secularism. You have to keep your version of the faith out of public policy and out of law, and everyone should be free to practice as they want. In so far as their practice doesn't infringe on the well-being of anybody else, but there is no solution that gives you the one right version of Islam. It's just there has to be a truly robust commitment to secularism in the Muslim world.

And so what is the purpose then? So when we say that the Reform Initiative, what does that mean then? Well, he actually does, he attempts to do many of the things that seem to have happened to some of the subjects in your film, Jihad. I mean, you have people who used to be Jihadas or used to be Islamists, and through some collision with modern values, they have relinquished their commitment to that theocratic project, and now they're far more liberal.

And that's what happened to mind it, and that's what happened to some of the people in your film. And so the Quilliam Foundation just attempts to formalize how one goes about reaching out to such people and changing their views on things. So I mean, he's just mind to just find himself in conversation with people like many of the subjects in your film. Maybe we should just jump into talking about Jihad, because I actually want to spend most of the time talking about your second film, White Right, or not your second film, but the second film I want to talk about, which is about white supremacy in the US, because it's just an amazing document you have produced there.

But let's start with Jihad, because we're already talking about this. So you focus on this problem of religious extremism under the banner of Islam, and the main figure in the film is somebody who I don't know all that much about, but Abu Montesar maybe introduced him. And how did you come to make this particular film? Well, so I wanted to try and understand.

Well, there was a couple of things I was trying to do. One thing was that I wanted to understand why we were starting to see our young people leaving the UK and other European countries, and wanting to go to foreign battlefields. The young Muslim kids who we would imagine have every reason to want to live and want to just lead their lives as young people here, instead of going on these foreign battlefields. I was wanting to try and understand why is that?

Why would somebody do that? And then the second reason, which was much more personal, was after having all the experiences that I've had in my life, I sort of got to a point in life where I was sort of done being afraid and done hiding and done leaving country after country. I wanted to do something that I've never done, which is to sit down with the kinds of men that were the reason that I had to leave Norway, for example, and see possible for us to sit across from each other and have a conversation just about life and about each other. And so I set out on that sort of search, and then came across a momentous it, who basically is one of the sort of founding figures of recruiting young people from the UK, actually from America in the past as well, Denmark, Germany, across Europe, recruiting young Muslims to go and fight on foreign battlefields.

In his time, it was Afghanistan, it was Bosnia, it was Chechnya, Kashmir, and then he subsequently also then inspired this kind of trend of foreign fighters that we now have seen in recent years. And what was really interesting and speaking to him is that he was saying that one of the biggest differences between his era and what we're witnessing now is that when he was going over there, because they were fighting against the Soviets, he said that they were considered, I mean, as we already know, they were considered to be performing a holy war that was of benefit to the West. So the West was encouraging it and supplying weapons to these guys and providing other logistical support to the Mujahideen and the Jihadi's basically. And he said, obviously now the enemy has changed.

So now this force is viewed as a very negative one. But anyway, the point about him is that he managed to sow these seeds of this movement and of this trend that we now have seen blossom through the recent years. And he, by the time I got to speak to him, he's completely renounced in his actions. He utterly regrets everything that he's done.

And he has now completely dedicated every single moment of his life in trying to undo what he's done, trying to, I mean, we spoke about forgiveness a lot in both in the film and also off camera. And I think he is trying to get to a place where he can forgive himself for what he's the damage that he's caused. And I think that's why he's doing everything in his power now to try and work with young people, both in prison, in the community. And he's still very much a believer, but has understood that his understanding or his way of expressing his faith at that point was very misguided and something that he really, really feels a lot of pain about now.

Yeah. And that pain comes through. He breaks down, I think at least twice in interviews with you. And it's really quite mesmerizing to watch because he's right out of central casting as somebody.

He's exactly who you would think would be the bad jihadist in your movie of the War on Terror. And yet he has had a total change of heart. And it's extraordinary. I mean, to me, I have to be honest, I started the film very, very pessimistic.

I mean, and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to find. I had a feeling that I would just sit with these guys and that it would just be an uphill struggle and that we would never agree on anything. And I've been afraid of men like this most of my life. And to sit down with them and to be able to connect with them in the way that we did and for them to share as much with me as they did was really special.

And I left the project far more hopeful that change is possible. It's no one is beyond redemption. No one is beyond the recognition that I did something wrong. I think it takes a lot of courage for people to admit that they did something wrong and wanting to try and do better.

I want to try and do something different. And he gets a lot of, I mean, he after the film came out as well, he got a lot of negative reactions. And the film did too, because a lot of people, some people who used to love him were saying, you're a sellout and what a coward you are. And he says that in the film too.

But the backlash from sort of the rest of society was also very, very intense for him because people want to see him hung. People want to see him dead for what he did. And don't see the value in where he stands today and what his sort of wisdom that he's arrived at can contribute towards the younger people that now are going through some of the same issues that he did. And he was very different as a leader, as a recruiter.

He was very different than his followers, is what I found, which I thought was quite interesting. He was absolutely committed to the cause. He was very, very dedicated, both to his faith, but also to kind of the geopolitical realities at the time that he wanted to participate or contribute in some way. Whereas his followers were much more driven by a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, and kind of revearing him as the father figure that they didn't have in their life.

And I just find that really interesting, that the recruiters like him and leaders like him are able to sort of take those feelings and redirect them into a political cause and ultimately towards violence. Yeah, well, the Jihadi worldview is incredibly compelling. You know, I often think of it as you get to be a spiritual James Bond, right? I mean, not only do you get to organize all of your craving for meaning and profundity and other worldliness and whatever religious superstition you have on board.

It has all of the satisfactions of supercharged religion, but in addition to that, you as a testosterone-poisoned young man get to join a gang, right? And you get to channel all of your sexual repression and awkwardness and dissatisfaction into this project of becoming a warrior for God. And it really just checks all of the boxes in the male imagination and search for self-aggrandizement. And then if you believe the doctrine, you're expecting an eternal reward, which is explicitly sexualized, right?

You get to hang with virgins with God forever. And it really is like the, in my view, the scariest possible set of memes to be spreading, but there's no mystery as to why it's so compelling with a few basic assumptions, just assuming the paradise exists and then martyrdom is the way to get there. But also I think what's really interesting is, is the fact that it's sort of emotional and psychological vulnerabilities is underlying a lot of this. And the needs that these movements are satisfying for young men.

I think what's interesting about that is a lot of that we can actually do something about. And one of the things that I did find is that as much as, as these guys go on about religiosity and that that's their primary driver and that's kind of the, I always call it sort of window dressing that they put on top of everything else, I did find that other than some of the very, very committed guys, like recruiters, like the leaders, most of the followers were actually not particularly religious, actually, and that they were far more driven by a sense of alienation and sense of, and this is something that I found quite similar actually between these guys and the white supremacists that I met is just this inability to deal with shame and humiliation in their life, whatever the force of that might be, whether it's an experience of racism or abuse or trauma or whatever the specifics might be, but just an inability to deal with that in both and all sort of extremist movements seem to equalize whatever loss of manhood and masculinity these men, whatever emasculation they feel, this sort of equalizes and like you say, sort of supercharges it for you. And then also look at the rewards, I mean, never mind the rewards and the hereafter, but look at the rewards that you get while you're here. Look it for someone who feels invisible and powerless and insignificant.

Suddenly everybody cares about you, suddenly you are on the front covers of every single newspaper, you're on every single newscast, the most important men on the planet, men at the time like Obama has to now think about you and talk about you and worry about you. I mean, that's extraordinarily intoxicating. And I mean, so I agree with you that the religiosity or religious aspects of it, that these guys believe that their loyal to is of course a part of the picture. And so is also foreign policy, because when I started making the film, people were saying, oh, my friends were going, find out, is it foreign policy grievances or is it religion?

And what I found is that obviously both are absolutely a part of the cocktail, but what makes somebody get up and act on that? I was against Iraq where I have a lot of issues with American and British foreign policy as well, but there's a reason I pick up a camera and these guys pick up a gun. And I wanted, why do they? Why are some Muslim men joined to this?

There are, you know, one point, what, six or seven billion Muslims walking around the world right now. And if they only qualify to be a terrorist or to be a jihadi is to be a Muslim, then everyone would be dead by now, right? So that's not enough of a qualifier either. So what underpins it?

And so that was interesting to me, is that it was the psychological and emotional vulnerabilities that were very much the reason why some of these guys are drawn to it and other people are not. And how cynically these movements and these recruiters are targeting these vulnerabilities that young men have. I mean, they're actively looking for these guys. I remember somebody saying to me during the course of making that film is, you know, when ISIS was very, very active online, do you remember?

Was there a little online recruitment going on? And you know, what I found is that their recruiters would spend hundreds of hours with young kids online, hundreds of hours. And you can only imagine, you know, some kid who is disengaged from the rest of his life, you know, maybe he doesn't have the kind of friendship circles or is struggling at home or is, you know, having some sort of expectations in his life from his family or from his country that he's unable to sort of live up to. And then you've got this person spending hundreds of hours on you, building loyalty, building friendship.

I mean, that's extraordinary. And same with the men, the followers that I spoke to, they would have died for him any day. They would have died for him in some ways before they would have died for their faith. Does that make sense?

So that intensity of their relationships within these groups, it cannot be underestimated, I think. Yeah, well, it has a cult-like structure. You know, it's just you have a charismatic leader. You have various beliefs which convey meaning intrinsically.

I mean, you're talking about that person's place in the universe and what happens after death and what, you know, what answer makes sense of every apparent injustice and struggle and failure in this life, you know, it will all be rectified at a certain point. It's interesting because to compare the two phenomenon, the phenomenon of jihadism and the phenomenon of white supremacy, they have so much in common. And as you say, it's, you know, the recruiting tactics are the same, the vulnerabilities of the young men, in many cases are the same. I think there are a few differences, but religion is one part of it.

I mean, religion does show up in the white supremacist side as well because they have their own Christian beliefs that they kind of graft onto their racism and xenophobia, but it's not, it's clearly not as integral to white supremacy as religious belief is to jihadism. I think some of them, it really is quite intensely. And that's why my head was sort of wanting to explode when I was listening to some of the white supremacists and using some of the same terminology saying, you know, and suddenly I'm a warrior for God. Yeah, yeah.

And I'm sitting there going, oh my goodness, I can't believe I'm, this is like a repeat. This is the slogans and the flags are different. And you know, but it's the same guy. And also having been on the receiving end of death threats from both.

Yeah, you get it from both, yeah. I mean, I have to say, reading some of those threats, it might as well be the same guy. And what they say that they're going to do to somebody like me, it's the same kind of stuff, you know, really interesting and telling, I think. But of course, there are differences as well, but I just find that the type of personalities that are drawn to this seem to be very, very similar across extremist groups.

And also the tactics are very, very similar to. Yeah, and also there's there's honor culture at the back of both. I would think that the honor culture is a little more intense in the jihadist context, but still, the white supremacy trolling a lot of energy from southern honor culture is easier to see some of the same dynamics there. Yeah, and I mean, gender is a huge part of this.

You know, and I think, you know, the term toxic masculinity, I think is absolutely appropriate for both as well. And both are sort of harping on to a past, to a golden past, you know, when everything used to be so much better, when it used to be great. And, you know, and they can be a part of ushering in that past, which includes, you know, bizarrely, you know, putting women back into the home and into very, very severe and rigid gender roles. And, you know, only to continue having either Muslim babies or white babies, you know, it's really interesting, all the similarities there.

It seems like in your encounters with your subjects in jihad, these were, I think, almost to a man, people who had thought better of the whole project and had come out the other side, at least at some significant degree. Was there, I remind you, was there anyone in the film who was just fundamentally hostile to you and with a current jihadist or Islamist whose views were just antithetical to everything you were trying to talk about? There were a couple of guys who are active now, but, you know, being a Muslim woman myself, it's even the most hardcore of men, hardcore, you know, fanatic jihadi types, you know, many, many of them, depending on how you approach them, we'll find it difficult to be hostile, just to be hostile. So there's this kind of strange cut to see thing.

And since I wasn't there to have a kind of an antagonistic, conversation or to have, I wasn't really there to have a fight. It actually went, for the most part, it went okay. But I was very clear, you know, I mean, I am Muslim, but you know, I don't cover my hair, you know, I come from the background that I come from. And my sort of condition was that I come as me, you come as you and we both leave our baggage at the door and we meet each other as just who we are.

And that was fine. Well, I must say you do bring out the best in your subjects. I mean, I've been describing you with reference to your, to the film on white supremacists as kryptonite for white supremacists, it's just amazing the effect you have on these guys. So let's just pivot to white right, which again, people just have to go see.

It's on Netflix in the US. Do you know whether it's globally available on Netflix? No, it's not. It's available in, where is it, in the US and in the UK, I think?

And then in Australia and Canada, other places, that there are their own broadcasters are streaming it online. Okay. Well, people have to get their eyeballs pointed in the right direction and watch this hour long film. So let's just talk about how you got into position to even shoot this, because you find yourself in Charlottesville, just at the right time when all of this famously goes off, well, how did you come to be in Charlottesville?

And you must have just heard that there was going to be a big demonstration and just assumed that would be a good thing to film. Well, so I, so that there's been several events at Charlottesville or rallies at Charlottesville, Reynolds Summer. Excuse me, I went to the first one, which was, which was the KKK, was going to basically protest that some of the statues being removed. So I went to that and it was maybe about 40, 50 clan people and what felt like at least a thousand counter protesters.

And then there, some people were saying that actually, there's going to be another rally coming up in a couple of months. You know, are you coming to that and I kept going up? I don't know. I mean, I don't, I barely even knew what Charlottesville was until that point.

And then in the meantime, so I went to that. And then the entire process of trying to get people to speak to me was very, as you can imagine, very, very difficult and very time consuming, because most people that I contacted were not interested in speaking to me because I explained again, I was very clear, who I am, what kind of background I have, what kind of politics I have, because I didn't want anyone to feel like I was, you know, springing anything on them in person. I wanted them to know clearly this is who I am. And this is what I would like to do, which is to try and not necessarily speak about the ideology, but try and find ways to discuss why people are drawn to these movements.

So most of them said no, not interested. And one guy, which is, his name is Jeff Scoop, and he was the head of the, he is the head of the National Socialist Movement, which is the largest neo-Nazi group in America, and one of the oldest ones, he wrote back and was not particularly interested. But I thought, okay, well, at least he's, you know, not saying a complete no, so let me just push that push in for such a long time. And he finally said, okay, you get one hour, you come to where I live, there's a specific motel, you come to that one hour, and then you just leave.

And I said, okay, thank you, fine, no problem at all. And five hours later, he says, we're going to a rally, which will be in Charlottesville, and you are welcome to join us. And I said, wow, okay, great. And then I actually flew to Detroit, which is where he is.

And he drove, and I sat in the car with him filming from nine hours, he drove from Detroit to Charlottesville. And you had one person in another cameraman or? It was just me and my colleague, a producer who also films, and that's it. So it was the two of us in the car with Nazis, basically, from nine hours.

Talking about all kinds of very inappropriate stuff, because nine hours is a very long time. I get my dad who someone is, for nine hours in a car. Oh my goodness, absolutely. And he basically said, look, I guarantee your safety.

And you come, it'll be fine. And so the whole deal was that I'm going to march with them. I'm going to basically do whatever they do so that I can get a chance to walk in their shoes and just see what happens. So as you can imagine, we pull up to these different parking lots beforehand, all these various white nationalists and all these various white supremacist groups are gathering from all around America.

And I'm the only brown person. And one of the very, very few women, I mean, never mind even brown, but just even one of the few women, there. And everybody just looks at me like, I just, they want to like slip my throat or something. It was absolutely horrendous.

Even though Jeff had said, it's fine, we'll look out for you, it's okay. It was horrible. And I kept pulled off by different groups. You know, who the FRU, what are you doing here?

You blah, blah. And then they also start saying, then Jeff also starts saying, you know, the anti-fascists will also be counter protesting at the rally and we usually get into physical fights with each other. Sometimes there's been hammers that have come out and I'm just standing there going, oh my goodness me, what have I just agreed to do? Was this the point where you felt at least safe, physically in making either of the two films?

Yes, yes, but there were several instances in this film where I felt very, very, very unsafe. I mean, this was just one of them. I mean, often, well, during the actual Charlottesville, so I'm marching with them and they're chanting, you know, Jews will not replace us and they're chanting about deportations that they need to become. What is their chant?

Anyway, now we start the deportations, and I'm marching in with these people and then the local community of people from Charlottesville and the counter protesters are shouting and screaming at us as well. And I'm trying to film in the middle of all of this and I'm wearing a helmet and suddenly I get pepper sprayed because they were trying to pepper spray somebody else and it was just a mess and it was terrifying when all the violence broke out. Because the entire time, even before it turned into violence, the intensity of all of these people, everybody was on edge and you could tell both sides were just raring to go at each other. So when it happened, it was just, it was really, really terrifying and managed to anyway, get back safely to the, barely to the parking lot again.

And then one of the guys said, oh, there's going to be this gathering afterwards. And it's fine for you to bring cameras, you can talk to some of the people there and instead of getting us flying, the mountains of Virginia are somewhere off some dirt road in this compound. It was about 60, 70 guys there. And I remember talking to my colleagues saying, okay, let's just get our cameras and go down.

And he goes, no, let's just wait, keep the camera in the car. And if everything is okay, we'll come back and get the camera. And I said, look, he said it's fine. Let's just get it.

Let's wait. And you start walking down this dirt road and the guys start gathering and start shouting and screaming and cursing. I mean, I probably can't say this. I know you can say whatever you want.

Okay, but you know, the fuck are you? You know, are you fucking media? Are you fucking Jew? Are you, I mean, just start shouting?

And they can't even really see me at, you know, put your fucking hands up. And then they start bringing out weapons and some of them are topless and they've got bruises on their body from earlier in the day and they're drinking. I see lots of, you know, ear in one hand and weapons in the other hand. And this isn't like, I mean, I'm not really used to seeing that many weapons anyway, you know, coming from Europe, but this was stuff that I've seen like in battlefields.

Like this wasn't handguns. These were massive machines. And finally get down there and they start getting in my face and start shouting and what kind of a fucking Muslim are you? Are you a Shia or you're Sunni?

And I start chuckling a little bit going, what does that have to do with anything? You know, and why is your fucking head not covered? What kind of a fucking Muslim are you? And I'm going, oh, why goodness me?

And I remember looking, glancing at my phone and because they've got my colleagues circled as well and shouting at him. Where are your Nazi friends at this point? Because at this point you've got Nazi friends. Yeah, Nazi's gone.

So he's something I can't see him. And he's frantically looking for whatever person and said it was okay for us to come. Because he kept going to be cool. It's, you know, so-and-so said it's fine.

And so he kind of disappears and these guys are blowing cigarette in my face and you know, and just, it was so frantic and more and more of them were coming and like getting in my face, like no space between us at all. And I remember glancing at my phone and it says no signal. Right, right. And at that point I'm thinking, okay, they can put a bullet in my head and they can put me in the ground right here in the middle of nowhere and no one's going to find out.

No one's going to know because then everything starts running through my head going, I haven't told my colleagues that I'm here. I haven't told my family, I haven't told a TV channel, I haven't told anybody that I'm actually here. So if something happens to me, they'll know I'm gone, but they're not going to ever, ever find me again. And finally, the guy Brian Culpepper is his name.

He came and he managed to negotiate our way out. So we were allowed to finally leave. Oh, so he didn't actually negotiate your stay in there and film in and- No, he was able to- Breaking bread with those guys, yeah. No, it was so hysterical.

And they were cursing. I mean, it was, the people were very, very riled up. And so finally left. And my colleague is white.

So it was just me who's not like them. And I remember just, you know, immediately getting back to the motel and writing my colleague Joanne and just saying to her, look, you know, this is where I am. This is what I'm doing. Here's my mother's phone number.

Here's my brother's phone number. You know, if you don't hear from me every couple of days, you just need to let them know. But this was just one of many, many, very unpleasant experiences. At another place I went to a training camp where I was allowed to film part of it and then not another part.

And I remember a guy sitting there with again, everybody's drinking, everybody has guns out and he's got his gun on his lap and he's holding it. And he's just staring at me, not talking, just staring at me as I'm talking to other people. And then finally, he says, you know, the best thing about serving in Iraq and serving in Afghanistan, he's a former soldier, he's getting paid to shoot ragons like you. I'm sitting there going, okay, that's great, that's great.

Thank you, okay. And just, you know, my way away from there. And it was just horrifying. It's some other guy following me around, you know, clearly on medication, also for a former soldier, kind of twitching and kind of glassy eyed.

You know, I'm gonna put a fucking bullet through your head and I'm gonna put a fucking bullet through your camera. Don't fucking film me. I'm going, oh my goodness, I'm not filming you. Stop following me.

Well, this is amazing to hear because this is virtually none of this comes through in your film. Your film is a far more hopeful document. And now I'm beginning to worry that it's a document for another world because the main import of your film is you put a white supremacist in a room with D'Acon and there's no way to maintain the white supremacy for very long under the empathic insistence of you as an interviewer. No, but you saw that with, I mean, never mind these guys, but you also see it in the film with Richard Spencer and the Jared King as well.

Yeah, I was gonna mark on that difference because so you have a few guys whose names escape me but there's probably three guys who you seem to spend a lot of time with and each falls under your sway to a degree that is frankly pretty adorable and they're effectively deprogrammed of their white supremacy in your presence based on questions you ask. And I gotta say the fact that you also happen to be a beautiful woman can't have been irrelevant. The effect on the viewers, I basically felt like I was watching three guys fall in love with you and encounter a level of cognitive dissonance with their worldview that was just completely unsustainable. I don't know if you felt that for yourself, but it was just like, I mean, when you get around asking them, so you mean to tell me you would want to deport me and you would think I should be stripped of my rights and each one of them is saying, no, no, no.

I mean, it's amazing. I mean, these are amazing encounters you've captured on film. They are. But you did not have that effect on Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor, it seems.

And was that based on them or the less access to them or how do you perceive the difference between those encounters? Well, the men that I just spoke about, these very kind of vicious encounters, the some of the men, well, one of the men who in the film leaves Brian Culpepper, he saw me being treated like this and part of his reason for leaving was that he couldn't see me treated like this because he started to consider me to be a friend. And this was very, so I think he started seeing his movement in a different light when he's seeing it relate to his friends, something like me, whereas beforehand, this hadn't really occurred to him. It wasn't personal.

It doesn't become personal. But when it comes to the Richard Spencer and the Jared Taylor's of the world, I did not get to spend as much time with them. But also I actually find them to be more sort of sinister in many ways, and also more dangerous. I mean, what surprised me most about making this film actually was the very deep difference between sort of the working class guys, or would you say, blue collar down here, guys, and these kind of this sort of suit and tie brigade of Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor and others like them.

And I mean, I found the kind of camaraderie and the kind of love between these various groups really telling as well, because you see Richard Spencer treating his own followers with a lot of contempt and a lot of disrespect, which I think is interesting, whereas Jeff and some of the Nazis that I spent time with, they, for example at Charlottesville, when the worst violence started happening, there were several cars that were brought up to one of the areas to pick up all the leaders of the different groups. And Richard Spencer was escorted off into a car and a lot of the other leaders. And Jeff was actually one of the only guys who said, no, I'm going, because their followers weren't able to fit into the cars. So Jeff said, I'm gonna walk back.

So he walked back through all the counter protests with the rest of his group, because he didn't want to be separate in that way. So I think that was really telling. But, excuse me, but your question is, why was my encounters with those guys different? I think because their aim is something different, and their reason for being in the movement is something different.

I think for the neo-Nazis that I spoke to, a lot of it is about emotions. And whereas for the Jarrod Taylor's and the Richard Spencer's, it's much more about ideology, and it's much more about power. And I think it's also about wanting access to more power. Whereas for the other guys, it's just trying to regain some sense of dignity and some sense of purpose and meaning and belonging and all the other words that we said earlier about the previous film.

So I think it's harder to get through, a lot of people who are deeply committed to an ideology, they have a barrage of argumentative tactics and their worldview is something that's been built over a long period of time. And they've spent ages cherry picking arguments and reading biased materials to constantly reinforce their worldview and reaffirming and refining their arguments against the other side. And I think Richard Spencer and Jarrod Taylor fit into that. Whereas the other guys were able to connect to my humanity and therefore also their own.

Yeah, the difference is really striking. Just as a viewer, it's when you're Nazi friends are warming up to you, it really, I mean adorable is not too strong a word. It was really, it was very cute to see you just kind of cut through their worldview. And the result is just super humanizing and you feel compassion for these guys.

And then to see you walk into a room with Richard Spencer and he's got this kind of reptilian glare and he really is a sinister guy who, I mean, there's just no warmth and his own ego centricity and cruelty are so obvious. I mean, the guy is just a colossal asshole. You know, as a viewer, you're sort of just, I just want you to get out of the room with him. You know, I just, I was uncomfortable having you in his company.

But when you went into these situations, your technique as an interviewer is, it's really pretty interesting. Again, I'm aware that there's so much happening on off camera that I'm not seeing, but you're just really directly seeking to build an empathic connection with someone. You're not arguing with them. You're not trying to give a litany of reasons why they're wrong about anything.

You're trying to understand them and then just juxtapose the rapport that's being built by that just basic human communication with the fact that they have a set of beliefs wherein you are branded as the other. So irretrievably as to really suggest that they should want to murder you or have someone else murder you. And at a certain point, you just juxtapose those two facts. And in the cases of at least three of the guys, it proves totally untenable.

How did you think about your approach to this? Because really, you really are just putting yourself on the line in a very interesting way. I think you have to. Or at least I feel like I had to.

Because I've had experiences of racism most of my life. And as a result, I've been an anti-racist, anti-fascist campaigner of my life as well. And I've done sort of everything that you would imagine. I've gone to anti-fascist protests.

I've shouted at these guys, I have flipped them off. I have thrown stuff at them. I have done all of that. And none of that really did anything.

It's the other thing that I was always told growing up is that just give a time and these movements will just disappear. And it's true. They sort of reduce in size and in noise. But then they come back.

They never quite ever go away. And here we are today with sort of this resurgence again. And so I just got to a point where I realized, again, that I'm done being afraid of people like this. And I need to try something that I've never done before, which is to sit down and to listen.

And to see if it's possible for us seemingly enemies, I mean, they're my enemy as much as I am. There is in many ways. And to see if it's possible for us to build a human connection and to work with that and use that as a starting point, not using the ideology as a starting point. And that's very much the same with the jihadi side as well, is if it's possible for us to build human connections first, the ideology eventually falls apart for most people.

Because it's always about something else. It's always about other human needs that are not being met. And if you can acknowledge that and if you can sort of sit through that together. And I think a sincerity and a real wish to listen and not condemning people, not, it's very easy to condemn them, I have to say both sides.

It's very, very easy to condemn them. The jihadi's and condemn the other white supremacists as well. And it's very, very satisfying, I have to say, it feels great to condemn them and to judge them. But it doesn't provide any answers.

And it doesn't provide any results. And I did not make the film with the hopes of changing anyone, or changing anyone's mind or anything like that. I purely made the film to try and understand why people do the things that they do, why people believe the things that they believe, and to see if it's possible for us to sit across from each other just as human beings and use that as a starting point towards something, something else, just a greater understanding perhaps. So the fact that some of them started using words like friend for me, the fact that we were able to build a real relationship with each other, of friendship was absolutely shocking to me.

And confusing and something I never would have expected. If you would have said to me a year ago that I'm going to become a feminist. Some of your best friend are not. My goodness, I would have laughed at you at first.

And then secondly, I think I would have been offended that you would think that I would do that. And here we are, and it's very, very strange, but it does give me a lot of hope. And going back to the Richard Spencer and that kind of dynamic also, with the biggest difference between him and some of these guys is I spoke to these guys alone. I spent a lot of time with them alone.

Richard Spencer never was around me alone. Yeah, that could be a big difference. He always had his hands. He always had his hands.

So that kind of dynamic of always wanting to sort of show yourself as this, this, you know, whatever, tough guy is very different. And the same thing with the Nazis as well, although the difficult experiences that I had only happened when they're all big groups and the testosterone and the anger and the name calling and all of that is really intense and whipped up. Maybe your super powers only come out when you're one-on-one. You're a superhero that has to get alone with her target.

Exactly, that's my superpower. But it's nonetheless super. I mean, the effect is really, it really is pretty mesmerizing to watch. I'm so touched by them.

I have to say, and Ken, one of the guys, that's the guy who was throwing the anti-Semitic flyers out of his window, he called me, because in the film he doesn't leave. He uses the word friend for me, but he doesn't actually leave. But in the film I also asked him, I said, okay, so what does this mean? Now going forward, what is this going to mean?

He said, well, I think this opens me up to maybe seeking to other people who are different to me. And he actually stayed true to that. He actually did do that, and he ended up speaking to, after I'd gone, we kept in touch. And he was expelled from his university, and I tried to help him with some of that.

I think they were worried that he was going to shoot there. He had that photo that he posted on Facebook. Exactly, and I tried, actually, I haven't really said this out loud before, but I tried reasoning with some of the people at his university, some of the professors to try and say that, look, I don't believe that he has it in him to do that. And somebody like him, at the crucial point where he stands in his life right now, the best place for him to be right now is in the space where he can continue his education.

I think if you take that away from him, then we do run a risk of him going over the edge, but he really needs to continue learning and needs to be in an environment of knowledge and people and thinking and reading. Nevertheless, they kicked him out, and I understand that as well. But anyway, there's a Black pastor in his African-American pastor in his apartment complex who he started talking to. And then this pastor invited him to his congregation, which is an old Black congregation.

And then Ken goes there, talks about his past as a Ku Klux Klan member, and currently as a Nyonazi, and his venet and all of this. And the response to him was kindness and was compassion. And people apparently came up and hugged him after and said, you know, obviously we disagree with you and dislike what you stand for. But it takes a lot of courage for you to come in here and say, and sort of speak in this way, and to put yourself out there like that.

And that completely just unpicked everything for him. So he called me a month ago and said, look, I've completely left. I've left the ideology, I've left the groups, I've left everything. And I'm so sorry.

And he said, the hate was eating me from the inside. And he said, I want to try and do better. And it tells me that we can't really afford to give up on people. You know, people who seem like him.

I mean, he has a massive swastika as you've seen in the film. He has a massive swastika tattooed on his chest and a clan tattoo utterly committed to his cause. And today he's left. And in the film, he says, oh, you know, but I'm never going to break bread with it with a Jew.

And you're sure to go ahead that's exactly what he's done. Oh, well, right. He's tattoo removed. So there is hope.

I'm not saying that, you know, let's hug a Nazi and everything's going to be fine. But what I've learned is that I think, you know, platforming these people and completely just rejecting them, I think feeds into their kind of story of victimhood. And as if, you know, they are speaking some sort of forbidden truth. And I think if anything, we need to expose racism.

We need to challenge it. And we need to confront it, rather than allowing it to just marinate in its own kind of madness. You know, and going back to when you were talking about, you know, interviewing technique, I mean, I don't think I really have an interviewing technique other than just, I think empathy is very important to me. Yeah, no, it doesn't seem like a technique.

It just seems like a willingness to hold all of your judgment in a band and make connection with these people. Yeah, yeah, because I think the judgment and the kind of feelings of self-righteousness for holding all the right opinions and having all the correct politics and all of that kind of stuff, I think it's just counter-productive. I think it actually adds to the problem and adds to people's radicalization, rather than not. And, you know, in speaking with the jihadi who left and then also with former violent neo-Nazis in this movement, in this film, you know, what struck me after the fact is that what interrupted people's kind of hatred and people's ideology is for someone who represents the other in their eyes to treat them with dignity and with respect and with some level of kindness.

And that doesn't immediately change somebody, but that began the process of unraveling some of this in their minds. And that was just as true for some of the jihadi's as well, you know, for example, being treated by an American nurse, for example. You know, so somebody doesn't suddenly become no longer a jihadi, but again, human connection and I think empathy. And I asked Jeff at the end of our five hours that was supposed to just have been one hour.

I asked him, I said, look, why are you sort of tolerating me? Why are you wanting to continue this conversation? And he said, he said, I completely dislike what you say. I completely disagree with what you stand for and the world that you want to live in.

And he said, and I'll actively fight against it. And he said, but I respect that you believe in something. And he said, I respect that you are sincerely an activist. And he said, so that I can actually relate to.

He said, everything that you stand for, you know, is just kind of horrible to me. But I respect your society. If you'd like to continue listening to this podcast, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org. You'll get access to all full-length episodes of Making Sense Podcast and other subscriber-only content, including bonus episodes and AMAs, and the conversations I've been having on the waking up app.

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