Activist and filmmaker Deeyah Khan seeks to draw a sense of humanity from the dark core of white-right racism: Meeting the Enemy, a documentary that places her at the center of the violent extremist movement in America.
After similar exposure, Khan received a barrage of hateful and threatening messages. For this project, she set out to confront this hatred head-on by confronting numerous members of far-right and white nationalist groups. She wants to understand the source of her hatred.
As a Muslim feminist, her mere presence was enough to give her interviewees food for thought. After all, in their eyes, this means that their sense of superiority in American society is declining.
One such subject is Jeff Schoep, who at the time of filming was the leader of one of the most popular neo-Nazi groups in the country. They met in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the eve of the Unite the Right rally, which ended fatally in August 2017.
Schoep tours his ramshackle hometown and offers his thoughts on the adverse economic impact of more open immigration policies on whites. Later in the film, Khan interviews alt-right leader and prominent white supremacist Richard Spencer.
The interviews were not staged as a heated confrontation. Kahn allowed each of her subjects to share their opinions freely, but was always ready to point out contradictions and flaws in their belief systems. Some of these subjects withered in the face of legitimate disapproval, others doubled down on their sense of entitlement, even resigning themselves to life in the white nationalist movement after witnessing the threats made to her during filming.
The threat of aggression was always there — from the front lines of the Charlottesville protests to training members of the National Socialist Movement in the mountains of Tennessee.
White Right: Meeting the enemy breaks down the impersonal barriers that separate attackers from their imagined enemies. The film inspires hope that human interaction and candid communication may hold the key to undoing the scourge of racism.
Directed by: Deeyah Khan
