♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL PECK: Since its first appearance in East Africa,
the human species has been on a long migration,
first to Asia, and then to Central Europe.
This process, lasting for multiple thousands of years,
can be considered as the premise of globalization.
On these roads,
the circulation of the most vital and decisive commodities
would permit the survival of the human race
and its adaptation on the planet.
And along these roads, for better or worse,
silk, of course, would circulate,
but also religion, language, refugees, artists,
technology, and pandemics.
(INSECTS CHIRPING)
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: People create families, tribes, nations.
Sometimes, they need to protect the family,
defend the tribe, increase the nation's resources.
Sometimes, it's just about surviving.
Other times, it's for the wrong reasons.
But whether for protection or conquest,
for preservation or profit,
these acts might require being armed.
And over the centuries, we lost our purpose,
and then our bearings.
♪ ("MASTERS OF WAR" BY BOB DYLAN PLAYING) ♪
♪ Come you masters of war ♪
♪ You that build the big guns ♪
♪ You that build The death planes ♪
♪ You that build all the bombs ♪
♪ You that hide behind walls ♪
♪ You that hide behind desks ♪
♪ I just want you to know I can see... ♪
-Fire! -(CANONS BLAST)
♪ You that never done nothin' ♪
♪ But build to destroy ♪
♪ You play with my world ♪
♪ Like it's your little toy ♪
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: At the beginning, the very powerful Moguls,
whose empire was founded in 1526 in India,
were more developed than any European state.
But they had no ships able to withstand artillery fire
or carry heavy guns.
Instead of building up their own fleet,
the Moguls chose to purchase defense services
from these European states.
This extremely lucrative commerce
would lead to the creation
of the first multinational corporations ever,
the British East India Company
and The Dutch East India Company.
Meanwhile, the Chinese had already
discovered gunpowder
and had already cast the first cannon
in the mid-13th century.
But they felt so safe in their part of the world
that they refrained from participating
in the naval arms race.
So the backward and poorly resourced Europe
of the 16th century would acquire a monopoly
on ocean-traveling ships, with guns capable
of spreading death and destruction
across huge distances.
-(EXPLOSION) -(MEN CLAMORING)
RAOUL: Europeans became the masters of cannons
that killed long before the weapons
of their opponents could reach them.
(EXPLOSION)
(WATER SPLASHING)
♪ ("THE WAR REQUIEM, OP. 66" BY BENJAMIN BRITTEN PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: The art of killing at a distance
became a European specialty.
Meanwhile, in the so-called Third World,
small arms were still able to measure up
-to those in Europe. -(WEAPONS CLINKING)
RAOUL: The standard weapon was a muzzle-loaded,
smooth-bored flintlock musket...
-(GUNSHOTS) -...which was also manufactured
by village blacksmiths in Africa.
But these weapons were slow and difficult to handle.
They emitted puffs of smoke
that revealed where the marksman was.
To say nothing of the fact
that he also had to stand up while reloading.
-(EXPLOSION) -(GUNSHOTS)
RAOUL: The musket was a frightening weapon
for those who heard it for the first time.
But its range was only 100 yards.
-(HORSE NEIGHING) -(HOOVES GALLOPING)
RAOUL: So the colonial wars
of the first half of the 19th century
were lengthy and expensive.
-(GUNSHOTS) -(MEN CLAMORING)
RAOUL: Prussia replaced its muzzle loaders
with a breech-loaded Dreyse rifle.
(GUN RATTLES)
RAOUL: This was tested for the first time in 1866
in the Austro-Prussian war over hegemony in Germany.
(GUNSHOTS)
RAOUL: In 1884, Hiram Stevens Maxim
who also invented the mousetrap,
manufactured an automatic weapon that was light to carry
and fired nine rounds per second.
(GUNSHOTS)
It was used by the Germans in East Africa in 1888,
and by the British in 1893 during the First Matabele War.
At the same time, steel had become so cheap,
it could be used for the manufacture of arms
on a large scale.
In Africa and Asia,
local smiths could no longer make copies of the new weapons
as they did not have access to industrially manufactured steel.
-(GUNSHOTS) -At the end of the 1890s,
the revolution of the rifle was complete.
All European infantrymen could now fire
lying down without being spotted,
-in all weathers. -(GUNSHOTS)
Fifteen shots in as many seconds
at targets up to a distance of 1,000 yards,
confirming the myth
of the white man's invincibility.
-♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(EXCLAIMS)
-(GUNSHOT) -(MEN CLAMORING)
RAOUL: Unfortunately, their bullets
were not totally efficient against "the savages
and fanatical tribesmen," as they called them,
for they often continued their charges
even after being hit four or five times.
(GUNSHOTS)
RAOUL: The answer was the dumdum bullet,
or expanding bullet,
named after the factory in Dum Dum outside Calcutta.
The lead core of the dumdum bullet
explodes the casing,
causing large, painful wounds that do not heal well.
The use of dumdum bullets between civilized states
would soon be prohibited.
They were to be reserved for big game hunting
and non-white unarmed populations in colonial wars.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
At Omdurman, in 1898,
the whole new European arsenal was tested
against a numerically superior and very determined enemy.
(MEN CLAMORING)
RAOUL: One of the most cheerful depicters of war,
Winston Churchill,
later winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature,
was the war correspondent of the Morning Post.
♪ ("LAWRENCE OF ARABIA MAIN THEME" PLAYING) ♪
-(GUNSHOTS) -(MEN CLAMORING)
(HOOFBEATS)
RAOUL: "Nothing like the Battle of Omdurman
will ever be seen again," wrote Churchill in a book
published after the experience.
"It was the last link in the long chain
of those spectacular conflicts
whose vivid and majestic splendor
has done so much to invest war with glamour.
This kind of war was full of fascinating thrills,"
he wrote.
The morning of September 2nd, 1898, the following occurred.
♪ (MUSIC CRESCENDOS) ♪
RAOUL: "The White Flags were nearly over the crest.
In another minute,
they would become visible to the batteries."
(SOLDIERS CLAMORING)
RAOUL: "Did they realize what would come to meet them?
They were in a dense mass,
2,800 yards from the 32nd Field Battery
and the gunboats.
The ranges were known. It was a matter of machinery.
The mind was fascinated by the impending horror.
I could see it coming. In a few seconds,
swift destruction would rush on these brave men.
They topped the crest
and drew out into full view of the whole army.
Their white banners made them conspicuous above all.
As they saw the camp of their enemies,
they discharged their rifles with a great roar of musketry
and quickened their pace."
(METAL CLATTERING)
RAOUL: "It was a terrible sight,
for as yet they had not hurt us at all,
and it seemed an unfair advantage
to strike thus cruelly when they could not reply."
-(SOLDIERS CLAMORING) -(EXPLOSIONS)
RAOUL: Churchill found the enemy's plan of attack
wise and well-thought-out, except for one vital point.
It was based on a fatal underestimation
of the effectiveness of modern weapons.
-(GUN COCKS) -(GUNSHOT)
RAOUL: "Within the space of five hours,
the strongest and best-armed savage army
yet arrayed against a modern European power
had been destroyed and dispersed
with hardly any difficulty, comparatively small risk,
and insignificant loss to the victors.
Thus ended the Battle of Omdurman,
the most striking triumph ever gained
by the arms of science over barbarians,"
wrote Churchill.
At Omdurman,
no British soldier expected to be killed,
for this was only a sporting element
in a splendid game.
The industrial development of firearms
was playing an important role in U.S. colonization as well.
As a war president, George Washington
thought it unreasonable to rely on foreign weapons.
With generous start-up funds, lucrative long-term contracts,
and heavy tariffs on foreign imports,
he literally jumpstarted the U.S. arms industry
into becoming the world's first arms manufacturer.
-(HORSE NEIGHING) -(GUNSHOTS)
RAOUL: The very first corporation
established by the United States
was the Springfield Armory in Western Massachusetts,
founded in 1777.
It soon introduced standardized interchangeable parts
and assembly line production, key factors in the takeoff
of the Industrial Revolution in the U.S.
and its establishment
as a capitalist, imperialist state.
(METAL CLANGING)
And having more arms allows more expansion.
More expansion means more wars,
for which you then need more arms.
A profitable chicken-and-egg bonanza
in a totally incestuous relationship
between military industry and governments.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(EXPLOSIONS)
RAOUL: The so-called Monroe Doctrine
became the order of the day.
At its core, in 1850, it was a mere commitment
to keep the Americas, North and South,
safe from European colonizing ambitions.
Over the years, from President Theodore Roosevelt
to John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan,
the doctrine came to cover any perceived threat
to U.S. interests around the world.
Overseas domination became the goal.
As Reverend Josiah Strong argued in 1885
in his best-selling book Our Country,
"As a superior race,
the U.S. had a divine responsibility
to control the world."
♪ ("THE SKY IS CRYING" BY ELMORE JAMES PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: There is something we need to talk about.
Something that keeps bothering me,
and that we cannot leave out of the present story...
especially because it represents,
in a troublesome way, the symbol of all evil.
♪ The sky is crying... ♪
RAOUL: It is something odd, hidden deep behind two words.
Hiroshima. Nagasaki.
It was said that it was a war against fascism.
It was said that it was to prevent further American death.
But hundreds of thousands died.
The accounting is irrefutable.
In a chess game, the objective is to checkmate
the opponent's king.
All other pieces then become collateral.
Their respective value depends on the strategic value
you assign to them.
In the present case, the king is an emperor,
and Japanese deaths will provide the collateral.
Shock and awe. A massacre determined by an algorithm.
It came at eight o'clock on August 6th, 1945.
Nobody was expecting it.
They were pawns in a sordid game.
"Killing at a distance" had just taken on a new meaning.
No explanation required.
No cries tolerated, nor pity.
Surrender or death at best.
(EXPLOSION)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: An endless wasteland of dead people.
For it is a massacre, not a heroic act.
Why wasn't it ever called a war crime?
Is it because those who dropped the bombs
are those who got to name the deed?
"Naming is power," said Trouillot.
Two days after the bombing of Nagasaki,
President Truman said...
"The only language they seem to understand
is the one we used to bomb them.
When dealing with an animal...
treat it like an animal.
It's totally unfortunate, but it's still the truth."
Indeed, there is no more to say.
We know now what the task truly is...
for Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness,
as well as at the Battle of Omdurman.
Exterminate all the brutes.
-PHOTOGRAPHER: Take the cup. -(CUP SCRAPING)
PHOTOGRAPHER: Okay, great.
Why don't you take off your shirt?
No, not you, Henry. The young man.
Can you translate for him?
Good. Make him look more natural.
Yeah, native, blending in. You know what I mean?
-(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS) -PHOTOGRAPHER: Yeah, okay.
Change position.
Really? You want to just lay down like this?
Well, at least take the cigar.
Take the cigar!
Okay, boy? Hey, you, boy!
Look at him. (TALKING IN SPANISH)
(IN ENGLISH) Of course, I know he doesn't speak Spanish.
Put a hand on your hip like this.
-Yeah, you see? Perfect! -(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)
PHOTOGRAPHER: Change position. Both of you stand up.
Okay. Pick up the rifles.
-Him, too. Yeah. One each. -(GUN CLACKS)
Okay. And put the gun on your shoulder.
Well, help him with it.
Henry-- Okay. Don't tell him, show him.
No. You know what?
-Put it on the other side. -(GUN CLACKS)
Yeah. Now, Henry, look at the distance.
You are looking at the Nile River over there.
Be inspired. Show some passion.
The whole world has been waiting for you.
-That's it! -(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)
PHOTOGRAPHER: Awesome!
RAOUL: Yup. Classic Stanley.
He tends to overdramatize every so often. Can't help it.
The man changed my name from Ndugu M'hali
to Kalulu because it sounded better.
I have never told him
how I enjoy his company sometimes.
But occasionally, he can be quite a bully too.
He brought me with him to Europe and America,
as his butler, officially.
But when alone, we were just friends.
Go figure.
The fearless explorer and the noble savage.
That in the press, he called me his "infant cannibal"
should have tipped me off.
♪ ("COLD BLOODED" BY GARY CLARK JR. PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: I have been a good soldier all my life.
The perfectly well-educated pupil
of a Western humanistic civilization.
I thought that to be mature was to be knowledgeable,
smart, sophisticated, and gracious.
I was educated to believe that some types of behavior
were acceptable, and others were not.
And that when I had done wrong,
I had to learn from that experience.
My parents taught me that, as a Black person,
I should never find myself on the wrong side of the tracks.
I learned to behave.
I learned to be sociable, presentable, congenial.
I had to negotiate daily with an intimate, unnamed,
and vulgar enemy, infatuated with a superiority complex.
Let's say, like Frank T.J. Mackey.
(CROWD CLAMORING)
I will not apologize for what I need.
RAOUL: Or Jordan Belfort.
-♪ (CROWD HUMMING) ♪ -♪ (HUMMING, EXCLAIMS) ♪
RAOUL: I have been a good soldier
and a good learner,
but I could never really fathom what it actually means
to be superior,
logically degrading everybody else as inferior.
A singular assumption, to say the least.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
Visiting Europe, I discovered people who genuinely thought,
and were naively convinced, that they embodied the world.
The whole world. And in that world,
I was assigned the role of a footnote.
Or at best, like in most Hollywood movies,
a supporting role with guarantied death
and careless disposal by some wild beast,
sometimes before the third act.
-(WHIMPERS) -(GROWLS)
-Go back! -♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Back across the log! Get Jimmy outta here!
(SCREAMS)
-No! -Gotta run, Jimmy.
-(GROWLS) -Run! (SCREAMS)
(JIMMY SCREAMS)
♪ ("MONEY" BY MICHAEL KIWANUKA AND TOM MISCH PLAYING) ♪
♪ Money Is it really love? ♪
♪ Money... ♪
RAOUL: Joseph Conrad's book, Heart of Darkness,
was influenced by the Battle of Omdurman.
♪ Money... ♪
RAOUL: Conrad starts the novel
with what has been called "the toolbox of imperialism,"
which involves the ship's guns that fire on a continent,
the railway that facilitates the plundering of the continent,
the river steamer that carries Europeans and their weapons
into the heart of the continent.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
♪ Can't you see My diamond ring? ♪
♪ Twenty-thousand carat gold Girl, I wanna talk to you ♪
♪ I can be your money tree ♪
♪ One hundred million Maybe two... ♪
(SHIP HORN BLOWS)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: This new era in the history of imperialism
also became a new era in the history of racism.
Europeans started mistaking military superiority
for intellectual and even biological superiority.
That's when things turned nasty.
No one had to pretend anymore.
-(INSECTS CHIRPING) -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Okay. Please look over here. Mm.
Please, you there!
Could you move a bit to the right?
And you! That's not you! Don't move.
You, a little to the left. Yep.
Now, you give him a hand.
No! You give him a hand, I said.
Well, then, you take another hand.
And you, it's this one. It's a hand and hand.
Excellent. Okay. So, the big guy,
with the towel head, if you can just move back a bit.
Perfect.
Excellent. I think that's it.
I like that.
Can you just uncross your arms, please?
-JESUP: Why? -You wanna know why?
It makes you look defiant, that's why.
I'm just saying.
Okay. Keep it that way, for all I care.
(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ ("GOT TO GIVE UP" BY MARVIN GAYE PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
RAOUL: "Does the West have the will to survive?"
asked a U.S. president.
♪ I used to go out To parties... ♪
RAOUL: The question itself is perplexing.
Clearly, I am not included in his concept of the West.
♪ 'Cause I was too nervous... ♪
RAOUL: Unquestionably, to belong to the right civilization
does bear some entitlements.
♪ But my body... ♪
RAOUL: I might be wary of white institutions in general
and of the religious ones in particular,
but for some reason,
I was attracted to the idea of joining the Boy Scouts.
My best friend and neighbor in Leopoldville,
the son of a French doctor, was a Boy Scout.
Robert knew all the regulatory moves.
He even had a code name, Red Raven,
because he had red hair.
He taught me the signs, the knots,
and even tightly kept secrets.
The idea of a brotherhood of the like-minded captivated me,
but not as much as the idea of owning a multi-task pocketknife
and being allowed to dare make unsafe fires in the woods.
Baden-Powell is the founder of the Boy Scouts.
During the second Ashanti War in 1896,
two days' march away from the capital, Kumasi,
as the commander of the advance troop,
he received an envoy offering unconditional surrender.
To his disappointment, he did not have to fire
a single shot at the natives.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: To get hostilities going,
the British then planned extreme provocations.
So they arrested the king of Ashanti,
King Prempeh, together with his whole family.
The king and his mother were forced to crawl on all fours
up to the British officers
sitting on crates of biscuit tins,
to demonstrate their subjugation.
But still, this time as well, the British unfortunately
found no use for their weapons.
Baden-Powell writes to his mother...
"I thoroughly enjoyed the outing,
except for the want of a fight
which I fear will preclude our getting any medals
or decoration."
♪ ("THE MAN I LOVE" BY BILLIE HOLIDAY PLAYING) ♪
♪ Someday he'll come along ♪
♪ The man I love ♪
♪ And he'll be big and strong ♪
♪ The man I love... ♪
(PANTING)
♪ I'll do my best To make him stay ♪
(SIGHS)
♪ He'll look at me and smile ♪
♪ I'll understand ♪
♪ And in a little while He'll take my hand ♪
♪ And though it seems absurd ♪
(BREATHES HEAVILY)
♪ I know we both Won't say a word... ♪
(EXHALES DEEPLY)
♪ Maybe I shall meet him Sunday ♪
♪ Maybe Monday, maybe not ♪
♪ Still I'm sure to meet him One day ♪
♪ Maybe Tuesday will be ♪
♪ My good news day ♪
♪ He'll build a little home That's meant for two ♪
♪ From which I'll never roam ♪
♪ (SONG FADES) ♪
(SIGHS)
(GROANS SOFTLY)
(WOMAN 1 SCREAMING, SOBBING)
(WOMAN 1 SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE, SOBBING)
-(WATER SPLASHING) -(SIGHS)
(WOMAN 1 SOBBING)
♪ (WOMAN 2 SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) ♪
♪ (SINGING CONTINUES) ♪
(SOBBING CONTINUES)
(WATER SPLASHES)
(WOMAN 1 CONTINUES SOBBING)
♪ (WOMAN 2 SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) ♪
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
RAOUL: This is young and ambitious Georges Cuvier.
On January 27th, 1796,
Georges has just arrived in Paris
to hold his first lecture at the newly opened
Institut National de France. He is 26.
Cuvier was sensational.
He spoke of the mammoth and the mastodon.
Remnants of these huge elephantine animals
had recently been found in Siberia and North America.
Cuvier demonstrated that they did not belong
to the same species
as either the Indian or the African elephant,
but constituted species of their own, now extinct.
"Now extinct."
Those were the two words that horrified the listeners.
Because in the 18th century,
people still believed in a ready-made universe
to which nothing could be added.
And perhaps, even more important to mankind's peace of mind,
nothing could be subtracted from it.
(BIRD SQUAWKING)
RAUL: All of God's creatures, once created,
could not disappear from His universe.
"What then was the explanation for these gigantic bones
and strange animal-like stones that had puzzled man
since antiquity?" asked Cuvier.
Cuvier's idea, that there could be species
that had died out, gave rise to such resistance
that it took over 100 years to become accepted.
But how they had died out and why, he did not explain.
♪ (WHIMSICAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: In 1850,
the great liberal philosopher Herbert Spencer--
yes, that Spencer--
wrote, "Imperialism has served civilization
by clearing the inferior races off the Earth."
(PIGEON COOS)
RAOUL: "The forces which are working out
the great scheme of perfect happiness,
taking no account of incidental suffering,
exterminate such sections of mankind
as stand in their way.
Be he human or be he brute,
the hindrance must be got rid of."
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: Here, the human being was expressly placed
on an equal footing with the animal
as an object for extermination.
One could take Spencer's fantasies of annihilation
as personal eccentricities,
explained perhaps by the fact that all Spencer's siblings
had died when he was a child.
A calm and comforting conclusion.
Enter Robert Knox.
Knox had studied comparative anatomy
with Cuvier in Paris.
He was a Scot, had served as an army doctor
in South Africa, and had founded
a school of anatomy in Edinburgh.
"Can the dark races become civilized?
I should say not," says Knox.
All we know
is that since the beginning of history,
the dark races have been the slaves
of those lighter-skinned.
Of course, what he meant exactly by "dark race"
is not easy to answer.
Are the Jews a dark race? The Gypsies? The Chinese?
One could ask.
♪ (SINGER VOCALIZING) ♪
RAOUL: "I feel disposed to think that there must be a physical
and, consequently, a psychological
inferiority in the dark races,"
asserted Knox.
"The texture of the brain is, I think, generally darker,
and the white part more strongly fibrous.
But I speak from extremely limited experience."
Indeed, Knox says that he had done an autopsy
on only one colored person,
which somehow does demonstrate
the limitations of his experiments.
-♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(METAL CLANGING)
RAOUL: Thomas Jefferson found it inconceivable
that one single species could disappear from nature.
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
RAOUL: But nevertheless, more than 99 percent
of all species have already died out...
(MONKEY HOWLING)
...most of them in a few catastrophes
that came close to wiping out all life.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(ANIMALS CHATTERING, HOOTING)
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: This is the scope of our story.
-♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(EXCLAIMS)
-(LIONS ROAR) -(HYENAS CACKLING)
(GROWLS)
(BIRDS SCREECHING)
RAOUL: As a young student, Charles Darwin,
regarded as the father of evolutionary biology,
heard Knox's controversial lectures.
In his book On the Origins of the Species,
published in 1859, he would demonstrate
that all species adapt to their environment
through natural selection.
Darwin argued in favor of a common origin
of all human races.
Although his thesis as such neither confirmed nor denied
Knox's and others' ideas regarding any hierarchy
within mankind, his theory of evolution
was clearly useful to the racists.
After Darwin, race became the decisive explanation
in far wider circles.
Racism was accepted and became a central element
in British imperial ideology.
After Darwin, it also became accepted
to shrug your shoulders at genocide.
If you were upset,
you were just showing your lack of education.
Genocide began to be regarded
as the inevitable byproduct of progress.
And prejudice against alien peoples,
which had always existed, was now given organized form
and apparent scientific validation.
"Meanwhile," added Darwin, "Regarding future life,
each person will have to judge for himself."
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
In just a few years,
the surface of the earth will be quite changed.
A new era is dawning
that will multiply the undertakings of man.
Light is consuming the darkness.
(CROWD APPLAUDS)
Let me introduce to you now, my dear colleague
Dr. Frederic Farrar, who has been recently elected
a fellow at the Royal Society.
(APPLAUSE)
In his major book, Systema Naturae,
the great Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus discriminates,
with his usual acuteness,
the intellectual and moral characteristics
of four great human families.
The Homo americanus, the Homo europeus,
the Homo asiaticus, the Homo afer.
Yet we believe
that these and all other races
may be reduced to three great classes or divisions.
Savage... semicivilized...
and civilized.
Only two races, the Aryan and the Semitic,
were civilized.
The Chinese belonged to the semicivilized,
as they had once been brilliant,
but suffered from arrested development.
The savage races have always lived in the same ignorance
and wretchedness.
They are without a past and without a future...
doomed,
as races infinitely nobler have been before them,
to a rapid and inevitable extinction.
Out of all their teeming myriads,
never have they produced one single man
whose name is of the slightest importance
to the history of our race.
History starts when man starts to write.
Take a specimen from the 100 million of Africans,
not one of the most degenerates, such as the Hottentot,
but a real, pure-blooded Negro.
(CROWD GASPS)
What hope was there that he could be civilized?
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
FREDERIC FARRAR: (IN ENGLISH) The great majority of Negroes will go under in a decline
from which only a few can be saved.
Many races have already disappeared.
(IN SPANISH)
(IN ENGLISH) Please, gentlemen. Ladies, let's be civil.
Show some respect. After all, it's just science.
Fuck you! Fuck you. Two times.
-(DOOR SLAMMING) -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
These races, the lowest types of humanity
and presenting its most hideous features
of moral and intellectual degradation,
were doomed to go under.
And I call them irreclaimable savages.
-Irreclaimable savages! -(DOOR SLAMMING)
FARRAR: Irreclaimable savages!
RAOUL: What did actually happen
when knowledge, industry, and enlightenment
exterminated the inferior races?
Darwin, who had traveled to South America
in his younger years, knew.
He had seen General Rosas' men in Argentina,
butchering Indians, smothered in blood and vomit.
(JESUP COUGHS)
RAOUL: He knew how eyes were gouged out
when an Indian had sunk his teeth into a thumb
and refused to let go.
How women were killed, and prisoners made to talk.
He had a name for it.
He called it "the struggle for life."
(TOOLS CLATTERING)
-Last name? -Trouillot.
-First name? -Rolph-Michel.
-Ready? -Sure.
(DEVICE FIRES)
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: Like Roxanne, Michel-Rolph, and Sven,
I do have my nightmares as well.
Churchill said after the war,
"We are in the presence of a crime without a name."
But Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent,
had already created that name in 1943.
Combining the ancient Greek "genos,"
which means "race, tribe, clan,"
and the Latin "cide,"
which expresses the notion of killing,
Lemkin invented the word "genocide."
At the New York Public Library,
in the Raphael Lemkin Collection,
in Reel 3, Box 2, Folder 1,
there is a list of the world's genocides throughout history.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING)
(WIND WHISTLING)
(WOLF HOWLING)
-(HOOFBEATS) -(CROWS CAWING)
(HORSE SNORTS)
(DISTANT HOOFBEATS)
(HORSE NEIGHS)
-(GUNSHOTS) -(BODIES FALL)
(WOLVES HOWLING)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: "Some things are so evil
that it's enough that they simply happened,"
said the man.
"They don't need to be given a second existence
by being retold."
He took a drag on his cigarette.
"That's what I think on some days, anyway,"
he went on.
"Other days, I think the opposite."
The past has a future we never expect.
RAOUL: One of the fundamental ideas
of the 19th century
was that there are races, peoples, nations, and tribes
that are in the process of dying out.
Or, as the Prime Minister of England, Lord Salisbury,
expressed it in his famous speech
in Albert Hall on May 4th, 1898...
"One can roughly divide the nations of the world
into the living and the dying.
The weak nations become increasingly weaker
and the strong, stronger."
It was in the nature of things that the living nations
would fraudulently "encroach on the territory of the dying."
He spoke the truth.
During the 19th century, Europeans had encroached
on vast territories around the world.
The word "genocide" had not yet been invented,
but the matter existed.
Joseph Conrad may not have heard Lord Salisbury's speech.
He had no need to.
Conrad could no more avoid hearing
of the ceaseless genocide that marked his century
than any of his contemporaries could.
It is we who have suppressed it.
We do not want to remember.
We would prefer for genocide
to have begun and ended with Nazism.
This would indeed be most comforting.
For sure, the nine-year-old Adolf Hitler
was not in Albert Hall either
when Lord Salisbury was speaking.
He had no need to.
He knew it already.
♪ ("LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY" BY EDWARD ELGAR PLAYING) ♪
♪ Land of hope and glory ♪
♪ Mother of the free ♪
♪ How shall we extol thee... ♪
RAOUL: The air Hitler and all other Western people
in his childhood breathed
was soaked in the conviction
that imperialism is a biologically necessary process
which, according to the laws of nature,
leads to the inevitable destruction of the lower races.
It was a conviction that had already cost
millions of human lives
before Hitler provided his highly personal application.
But in the mid-19th century,
the Germans had still not exterminated any people.
So they were able
to look more critically on the phenomenon
than other Europeans did.
In South West Africa, in 1904,
the Germans demonstrated that they, too, could master an art
that Americans, British, and other Europeans
had exercised all through the 19th century.
The art of hastening the extermination
of a people of inferior culture.
Following the North American example,
the Herero people were banished to reservations
and their grazing lands were handed over
to German immigrants and colonial companies.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: For over two decades, their leader, Samuel Maharero,
had signed one treaty after another with the Germans,
and ceded large areas of land to avoid war.
But just as the Americans did not feel bound
by their treaties with the Indians,
the Germans did not think that, as a higher race,
they had any need to abide by treaties
they made with the natives.
As in North America, the German plans for immigration
presupposed that the natives were to be relieved
of all land of any value.
When the Hereros resisted,
General Adolf Lebrecht von Trotha
ordered their extermination.
Every Herero found within the German borders,
with or without weapons, was to be shot.
But most of them died without direct violence.
The Germans simply drove them into the desert
and sealed off the border.
One didn't yet talk about the final solution,
but that was what one had in mind.
In the official account of the war,
the German officers wrote,
"The army earned the gratitude of the whole fatherland.
The sentence had been carried out,
and the Hereros had ceased to be an independent people."
Eighty thousand human beings died in the desert.
The few thousand left were sentenced to hard labor
in concentration camps.
A new concept of incarceration,
invented in 1896 by the Spaniards in Cuba,
anglicized by the Americans,
entered German language and politics.
♪ ("SONGS OF THE JU'HOANSI BUSHMEN, TCOQ'UNGO TZISI" PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: Paul Rohrbach wrote in his best seller,
German Thought in the World, published in 1912,
that "existences, be they of peoples
or individuals who do not produce anything of value,
cannot make any claim to the right to exist."
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
MARGARET SANGER: We believe that married people
who have transmissible diseases should not have children.
No couple who has the disease of feeble-mindedness,
or insanity,
or epilepsy should have children.
♪ ("TREAT ME RIGHT" BY B.B. KING PLAYING) ♪
♪ Oh, baby ♪
♪ Why can't you Treat me right? ♪
♪ Oh, baby ♪
♪ Why can't you Treat me right? ♪
♪ Hey, you took all my money And you done me wrong ♪
♪ Staying out all night, baby And you won't come home ♪
♪ Oh, baby ♪
♪ Why can't you Treat me right? ♪
♪ Oh, baby You know my love is true... ♪
RAOUL: The over-infatuation with genetic purity.
An impressive amount of energy
put into the classification of people.
A pathological obsession for the concept of race
that scientifically does not exist.
♪ Oh baby ♪
♪ Babe, you know You ought to treat me right... ♪
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RAOUL: Despite the careful staging,
one gesture, an unexpected gesture of irritation,
not foreseen by the director of this strange display,
will betray the masquerade and restore dignity.
(WAVES CRASHING)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
RAOUL: What is sure
is that their way of life is threatened.
♪ ("FEELING GOOD" BY NINA SIMONE PLAYING) ♪
♪ Birds flying high You know how I feel... ♪
RAOUL: Has he, indeed, any right to exist?
Does she?
-Do they? -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
RAOUL: But after all we know now,
indeed, who is to judge?
♪ It's a new dawn It's a new day ♪
♪ It's a new life for me, yeah ♪
♪ It's a new dawn It's a new day ♪
♪ It's a new life for me... ♪
♪ Ooh ♪
♪ And I'm feeling good ♪
♪ Fish in the sea You know how I feel ♪
♪ River running free You know how I feel ♪
♪ Blossom on a tree You know how I feel ♪
♪ It's a new dawn It's a new day ♪
♪ It's a new life for me ♪
♪ And I'm feeling good ♪
♪ Dragonfly out in the sun ♪
♪ You know what I mean Don't you know? ♪
♪ Butterflies all havin' fun You know what I mean ♪
♪ Sleep in peace When day is done ♪
♪ That's what I mean ♪
♪ And this old world Is a new world ♪
♪ And a bold world for me Yeah, yeah ♪
♪ (SONG CONCLUDES) ♪