{"id":8824,"date":"2017-12-06T15:41:57","date_gmt":"2017-12-06T13:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=8824"},"modified":"2018-02-15T20:51:23","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T18:51:23","slug":"the-muslim-director-who-filmed-neo-nazis-i-thought-im-not-going-to-make-it-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2017\/12\/the-muslim-director-who-filmed-neo-nazis-i-thought-im-not-going-to-make-it-out\/","title":{"rendered":"The Muslim director who filmed neo-Nazis: \u2018I thought \u2013 I\u2019m not going to make it out\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0Deeyah Khan had a simple question for her new documentary: \u2018Is it possible for me to sit with my enemy and for them to sit with theirs\u2019? She got an answer \u2013 but not without a few tricky moments \u2026
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Last summer, the documentary film-maker Deeyah Khan started to receive the sort of threats\u00a0\u2013 of being raped, tortured, gassed and killed\u00a0\u2013 that vocal women from minority groups often get with hateful frequency. In a BBC interview, Khan had made the apparently contentious point that Britain was never going to be all-white and that we should build a\u00a0future where we all belong. She was used to racial abuse\u00a0\u2013 as a\u00a0child growing up in Norway (her mother is from Afghanistan; her father from Pakistan), she knew of neo-Nazi marches, and her brother was once chased by racists and had to hide under a\u00a0car. But the abuse she received last year was particularly vile and relentless, and Khan decided she didn\u2019t want to be afraid of this generation of newly emboldened white supremacists any longer. Instead, she thought, she would try to find out what made them think and say the things they\u00a0did.<\/p>\n

The result is her film White Right: Meeting the Enemy. It focuses on the rise of nationalism in Donald Trump\u2019s America, from the \u201calt-right\u201d to all-out neo-Nazis. She spent time with various leaders in the movement, going to their meetings, including\u00a0the August rally in Charlottesville<\/a>\u00a0where\u00a0Heather Heyer<\/a>, an anti-racist campaigner, was killed. She hung out with the followers of the movement, going out at night in the car with one as he leafleted a Jewish area with hate-filled flyers. She also met former neo-Nazis. \u201cI\u2019m a\u00a0woman of colour,\u201d she says at the beginning of the film as she sits down to interview Jared Taylor, a\u00a0well-known white supremacist. \u201cI\u00a0am the daughter of immigrants. I\u00a0am a Muslim. I\u00a0am a\u00a0feminist. I\u00a0am a\u00a0lefty liberal. And what I\u00a0want to ask you is: am I\u00a0your\u00a0enemy?\u201d<\/p>\n

She says she felt frightened \u201cmany times\u201d during the making of this film. \u201cEven when I\u00a0started getting comfortable with some of the people [she spent time with and got to know], the people on the periphery could be very unpleasant.\u201d It didn\u2019t make it into the film, but after the rally in Charlottesville, Khan and a\u00a0colleague joined a\u00a0neo-Nazi \u201cafterparty\u201d at a\u00a0compound in the hills, which started to get out of hand. \u201cThey were starting to pull their guns. And not just guns, but, like, war-zone weapons. They had just come from Charlottesville and they were amped up from the fighting. I was looking around, going: \u2018I\u2019m not going to make it\u00a0out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n