All language subtitles for 2_Exterminate.All.the.Brutes

There is this
one, short simple sentence

that sums up the history
of the Western world.

"Exterminate all the brutes."

Free land was a magnet that
attracted European settlers.

But as a system, it requires
the elimination of the natives.

White supremacy made
it possible for Europeans

to think it was acceptable
to enslave or exterminate

other peoples.

The Congo adventure
was pure looting.

Where's my rubber?

Belgium's king,
Leopold II, instituted

a monopoly on rubber
and ivory.

And ordered all natives
to supply labor and products

without payment.

Why do I bring myself
into this story?

Neutrality is not an option.

There is no such thing
as alternative facts.

In kindergarten, in Haiti,

there was this allegorical image
of Saint Francis of Assisi

on the last page
of our reading book.

It didn't matter that
St. Francis was obviously white.

At the time, I was still unaware
of any civilizational

or racial differences.

I didn't even know

that such differences
were possible.

Besides the fact that
he was a saint, and I was not.

I knew as much about saints

as I knew about copulation
and bees.

My ideas of religion,
priests, or God

was at best naive,
if not reckless.

I truly believed that all human
beings were basically,

in some sort of natural way,
brothers and sisters.

It was in this euphoric state

that I was sent
to primary school,

a Jesuit institution.

On the very first day,

I got into a fight
with another boy.

We were both sent
to the head priest

to be disciplined.

While waiting for what I thought
would be an appeasing pep talk

and reconciliatory handshake,

I had no doubt that the outcome
would be peaceful.

I loved my world of serenity
and understanding.

To my surprise,
the head priest came in,

took a dry ox muscle
hanging from the wall,

and, without a word,
whipped us raw

with three lashes each.

I was so stunned
that I didn't cry.

Minutes later,
alone in the schoolyard,

I realized that the world was
not what I was told it would be.

The rituals, the dogma,
the theatrics,

were now transparent.

I decided that I was not going
to be an imbecile in that show.

Especially if it involved
saint, priest, and whip,

in that order.

Then, I stopped believing
in God altogether.

I knew a man.

I knew him well enough
to be able to call him a friend.

He was a scholar.
One of the brightest.

One day, I learned of his death

after ten years
of daily struggle.

A cardiologist inserted
a malfunctioning pacemaker

in his heart

that would destroy
its functions.

By the time they realized
the mistake, it was too late.

Michel-Rolph wrote
an extraordinary book,

Silencing the Past.
A masterpiece.

The work of a lifetime.

By deconstructing
the dominant narrative,

he changed everything.

Knowledge is power.

But "history is the fruit
of power," says Trouillot.

Whoever wins in the end
gets to frame the story.

On July 4th, 2012,

Trouillot passed away
in his sleep

at his home in Chicago.

This is his story as well.

"Remember the Alamo," they say.

"But remembering can be quite
selective," writes Trouillot.

Human beings participate
in history

both as actors and as narrators.

Among the actors,

we find General
Antonio López de Santa Anna,

a Mexican national hero,
who, in his lifetime,

is said to have participated
in more battles

than Napoleon
and George Washington combined.

In his eventful career,

the Alamo was just
a brief interlude

in a long streak of defeats
and victories.

By the middle of February 1836,

his army had reached
the crumbling walls

of the old mission
of San Antonio de Valero

in the Mexican province
of Tejas.

Some 200 American slave owners
and militiamen

now occupied
the Spanish mission,

nicknamed "the Alamo."

They refused to surrender
to Santa Anna's superior force.

-On March 6th,

General Santa Anna
blew the horns

that Mexicans traditionally used

to announce an attack
to the death.

According to
the celebrated story,

when it became clear
that the choice

for the 189 Alamo occupants

was between escape
and certain death

at the hands of the Mexicans,

Commander William Barret Travis
drew a line on the ground.

Those men who wish to stay...

will cross the line
and stand with me.

The others may go...

with my blessing.

Supposedly,
everyone crossed.

Except, of course,
the man who conveniently escaped

to tell the story.

I didn't survive Russia
and Waterloo

to die in this desert.

Obviously, a Frenchman.

Santa Anna's troops
broke through the fort,

killing most of the defenders.

A clear victory.

But a few weeks later,
on April 21st at San Jacinto,

Santa Anna fell prisoner
to Sam Houston,

the freshly certified leader

of the secessionist
Republic of Texas.

Houston's men had punctuated
their victorious attack

on the Mexican army
with repeated shouts

of "Remember the Alamo!
Remember the Alamo!"

With that reference
to the old mission,

they doubly made history.

As actors,
the Texans captured Santa Anna

and neutralized his forces.

As narrators, they give
the Alamo story a new meaning.

What they didn't say
is that General Santa Anna

quickly recovered
from the upset

and went on to be the leader
of Mexico four more times.

But this is not what history
will remember.

General Santa Anna indeed
lost the battle of the day,

but he also lost the battle
he had won at the Alamo.

How much can we reduce
what happened

to what is said
to have happened?

Does it matter whether events
are fact or fiction?

Most Europeans
and North Americans learned more

about the history
of Colonial America

and the American West
from movies and television

than from books.

The Alamo?
That was a history lesson

delivered by John Wayne
on the screen.

What does it mean
for our collective experiences?

Do we even wish
for a common history?

Does it really not matter

whether or not the Holocaust
is true or false?

Does it really not make
a difference

whether or not the leaders
of Nazi Germany

planned and supervised
the killing of six million Jews?

If six million
do not really matter,

would two million be enough?

Or would some of us settle
for 300,000?

If there is nothing
to be proved, or disproved,

what then is the point
of the story?

The history of America
is being written in a world

where few little boys
want to be Indians.

In 1492,
neither Europe as we know it

nor whiteness
as we now experience it

existed as such.

Here is the story
we have been told.

Christopher Columbus was born
to a Genoese merchant family,

and as a trader at sea,
joined other European navigators

competing for gold
and other lucrative commodities,

a market long dominated
by Muslim traders.

It was no secret
that the Earth was spherical,

and Columbus believed
a shorter, more direct route

could be used to reach
valuable exotic spice islands.

Columbus sold the idea
to the Spanish monarchy,

and off he sailed
with three ships

headed directly west
across the Atlantic.

Instead of the bustling
ports of the East Indies,

Columbus came upon
a tropical paradise

populated by the Taíno people,

what is now Haiti.

-Then,
from the Iberian Peninsula,

came merchants, mercenaries,
criminals, and peasants.

They seized the land
and property

of Indigenous peoples

and declared the territories
to be extensions

of the Spanish
and Portuguese states.

These acts were confirmed
by the monarchies

and endorsed
by the papal authority

of the Roman Catholic Church.

That's more or less
the official story.

And through that official story,

a new vision of the world
was created...

The Doctrine of Discovery.

The extent of the demographic
catastrophe that followed

is without equivalent
in world history.

Within 100 years,
over 90 percent

of the original population
of this continent

would be wiped out.

Despite large-scale
massacres, torture,

and other
inconceivable atrocities,

the great majority
of these people

did not die in battle.

Most died of disease, hunger,
and inhuman labor conditions

because
their social organization

had been wrecked
by the white conquerors.

Bartolomé de las Casas,

the first ordained priest
to officiate in the New Indies,

was one of the witnesses
and a chronicler

of this catastrophe.

Killing and enslaving
other beings,

thought to be equally human,
created a dilemma for him.

Bartolomé de las Casas

believed both in colonization

and in the humanity
of the Indians.

He was torn between the symbolic
and the practical,

incapable of reconciling
the two.

Instead, he offered a poor
and ambiguous compromise

that he would later regret,

freedom for the savages,
the Indians,

slavery for the barbarians,
the Africans.

Colonization won the day.

The 17th century
saw the increased involvement

of England, France,
and the Netherlands

in the Americas
and in the slave trade.

The 18th century
followed the same path

with an added touch
of perversity.

The more European merchants
and mercenaries

bought and conquered
other men and women

in the Americas,

the more European philosophers
wrote and talked about Man.

Meanwhile, there was
no single view of Blacks

or of any non-white group,
for that matter.

All assumed that, ultimately,

some humans
were more so than others.

Viewed from outside the West,

the Age of Enlightenment
was a century of obscurity.

In the Western conception,

Man was primarily
European and male.

Everyone else was at
the lowest level

of this hierarchy.

I have no complaints.

I just want to understand.

Trading human beings,

what sick mind
thought of this first?

Brought by force
and pushed to death.

Slavery.

Or "the trade," as they refer
to it euphemistically.

A state-sponsored genocide.

What does this say
about a civilized world?

No. I have no complaints.
I just want to understand.

What if,
from the beginning,

the story was inaccurate?

What if it was not
just a question

of vocabulary or interpretation?

Perhaps a case of collective
borderline personality disorder?

Okay.

Let's go.

-What?

What about the boat?

Boat's probably stuck in Matadi
up the river.

I need to join my parish.

I'm already two months late.

So?

Wait!

Wait!

Come on! Let's go, let's go!

Faster!

Keep them tight!
Keep them tight!

-Go, go! Go!

Faster!

What is this?

Dammit, faster!

Go! Go! Faster!

-You there!
-Faster!

You!

Stop that at once!

What do you think you are doing
with those children?

What children?

These are shipments.

Shipments?

They are to be trained
as soldiers by the state.

Or sold as slaves.

-Hey!

Faster!

Keep them tight!

In Columbus's travel journal,

there is a description
of the first sighting of land

on Thursday,
October 11th, 1492.

"At two hours after midnight,
land appeared,

from which they were about
two leagues distant.

They hauled down the sails,

passing time
until daylight Friday,

when they reached
an islet and descended."

A normal day, after all.

The isolation
of a single fetishized moment

creates a historical fact.

Once discovered,
the Other is allowed

to finally enter
the human world.

Whatever else may have happened

to other peoples
in that process is reduced,

as if by magic,
to a natural fact...

they were discovered.

Show me the way, my Lord.

Let me walk along your path.

Touch my heart to fear
your name, my Lord,

as to surrender myself
to your glory.

Show me the way, my Lord.
Let me walk along your path.

-Touch my heart--

What's the problem now?
What did he do?

Nothing. Why?

My dear Rose...

may these words convey to you
the fullness of my sentiments.

I hope
they will find you well.

It seems so strange to walk
under this unbearable heat,

when only four months ago,

I could still comfort myself
in your arms.

The madness
in these distant lands

is hard to describe.

I am making new experiences.

Two days ago,

I saw my first corpses.
A good dozen of them,

white little bodies,
floating into the darkness.

Floating as if they were
just resting for a long journey.

These...

are not our choices to make.

The ways of the Lord
are infinite.

I miss so much

this delicate temple

hidden in the depth
of your thighs.

Any historical narrative

is a particular bundle
of silences.

It is an exercise of power that
makes some narratives possible

and silences others.

In this fabricated narrative,
not all silences are equal.

Our job as filmmakers, writers,
historians, image-makers

is to deconstruct
these silences.

From its first appearances,

the word nègre, "negro,"

entered French dictionaries

with increasingly precise
negative undertones.

By the middle
of the 18th century,

"black" was almost
universally bad.

What had happened
in the meantime,

was the expansion
of African American slavery.

That was the most potent impetus

for the transformation
of European ethnocentrism

into scientific racism.

Blacks were inferior
and therefore enslaved.

Black slaves behaved badly
and were therefore inferior.

The practice of slavery
in the Americas

secured the Blacks' position

at the bottom
of the human world.

By the time
of the American Revolution,

European ethnocentrism had
merged into scientific racism

and framed
the ideological landscape

on both sides of the Atlantic.

The final years
of the 18th century

were called
the Age of Revolutions.

But one usually thinks
of the American Revolution

starting in 1763,

and the French Revolution
of 1789.

Not the Haitian Revolution
of 1790.

Indeed, in those changing years,

a particular group
of Black slaves,

men, women, and children,
would rise.

In just ten short years,
they would fight

and create the nation of Haiti,

the truly first free republic
in America.

The only revolution
that materialized

the ideal of enlightenment,

freedom, fraternity,
and equality for all.

In 1790,
French colonist La Barre

wrote to his wife in France
to reassure her

of the peaceful state of life
in the tropics.

"There is no movement
among our Negroes.

They don't even think of it.

A revolt among them
is impossible.

Freedom for Negroes
is a chimera."

Just a few months later,

the events would ridicule
these racist assumptions.

A nation is not an act
of creation...

but a process of growth.

You will take the city
of Cap Haitien...

but only when it is reduced
to ashes.

And even on those ashes,
I will fight you.

What happened in Haiti

contradicts most
of what the West

has claimed about itself.

The silencing
of the Haitian Revolution

is part of a narrative
of global domination.

Nevertheless, the revolution
played a central role

in the collapse
of the entire system of slavery

and in the liberation
of Latin America.

Haiti created the possible.

The Haitian Revolution
was unthinkable

even as it happened,

but unthinkable
only in the framework

of a self-centered
Western thought.

Unthinkable in the West,

not only because it challenged
slavery and racism,

but because of the way
it did so.

It was the ultimate test
of the universalist pretensions

of both the French
and the American Revolutions.

And they both failed that test.

Confronted
with this unthinkable,

Napoleon sent 65,000 troops
to reestablish slavery in Haiti.

His whole army was defeated
within two years,

forcing him to renounce
his American dreams

and sell all
his American properties.

The so-called Louisiana Purchase

doubled the size
of the United States

and, through this added power,
would accelerate the conquest

of the rest
of Indian territories.

The debt owed to Haiti
still remains to be paid.

I fell in love in Rome.

I made my first film in Berlin.

My parents spent 25 years
in Africa.

My daughter was born in Uganda

and went to school
in New Jersey.

One brother works
for the Seminoles,

the other won an Emmy.

My older brother spent two years
in Vietnam

and even more with PTSD.

Who are we?

I have taught filmmaking
from Norway to Lebanon,

and from New York to Lomé.

Who am I?

Who am I in this official,
pre-approved,

Eurocentric classification?

-Non!

Oui!

Oui!

Oui!

Oui!

Oui!

I once
followed a charismatic man

whom I revered, and who
one day betrayed his people.

I made a film about him, too.

Who am I?

I have traveled to many places,

and have never called them
my own.

And no violence
was ever involved.

Places where I lived.
Places where I worked.

Places where I loved
and sometimes was loved.

I played war in the streets
of Léopoldville.

I rode a bicycle in Katanga.

I built houses in Cuba.

Who am I?

During the 16th century,

England began
its brutal conquest of Ireland

and declared half a million
acres of land in the north

open to settlement.

Under British colonial rule,
the Irish were regarded

as a lower species
and naturally inferior.

They were descendants of apes,
while, of course,

the English
were descendants of Man,

who had been created by God
in His own image.

The English were angels.

But Britain's Irish policies
brought economic ruin

to Ireland's wool
and linen industries.

The invaders became losers.

This pushed
nearly a quarter of a million

Calvinist Scots-Irish colonizers

to leave Ireland
for British North America.

One of history's
greatest migrations.

But as foot soldiers
of British empire-building,

and even before
ever encountering

Indigenous Americans,

the Scots-Irish had already
practiced scalping for bounty,

on the Irish.

Theodore Roosevelt said
of his Scots-Irish ancestors,

"They were a grim, stern people,

strong and simple,
powerful in good and evil,

relentless, revengeful,
suspicious,

knowing neither ruth nor pity.

They were of all men
the best fitted

to conquer the wilderness

and to hold it
against all comers."

They made up the officer corps

and were soldiers
of the regular army

as well as
the frontier ranging militias

that cleared areas
for settlement

by exterminating
Indigenous farmers

and destroying their towns.

They served in slave patrols

as well as
in the Confederate Army.

They regarded themselves

as chosen people
of the covenant,

commanded by God
to go into the wilderness

to build the new Israel.

I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
do solemnly swear

that I will faithfully execute

the office of president
of the United States...

All modern nation states

claim a kind of
rationalized origin story

upon which they fashion
patriotism

or loyalty to the state.

-So help me God.
-So help me God.

-So help me God.
-So help me God.

-So help me God.
-So help me God.

So help me God.

According to
God's unfathomable will,

one is born as part
of the elect or not.

And being elected
gives you the right

to implement God's will
and eliminate the native people.

Because individuals
could not know for certain

if they were among
the elected or not,

material wealth became
the manifestation of election.

Conversely,
bad fortune and poverty,

not to speak of dark skin,
became evidence of damnation.

"The attractiveness of such
a doctrine is quite obvious,"

commented historian
Donald Akenson.

"The Natives are immutably
profane and damned,

while oneself is predestined
to virtue."

The Puritans who founded
the Massachusetts Colony

endorsed this virtue.

Forty-one of the Pilgrims,
all men,

wrote and signed the compact,

invoking God's name while
planting "the First Colony."

The United States is supposedly

a nation of immigrants.

But this assumption
masks a reality

of over three centuries
of violence.

According to the myth,
the faithful citizens

come together
of their own free will

and pledge to each other
and to their God

to form and support
a godly society,

and their God in turn

vouchsafes them prosperity
in a promised land.

But for non-European immigrants,

no matter how much might
they strive to prove themselves

to be as hardworking
and patriotic

as descendants
of the original settlers,

they are suspect.

To be accepted, they must prove
their fidelity to the covenant

-and what it stands for.

They must endeavor
to embrace whiteness

and look down on descendants
of enslaved Africans,

the Indigenous, and Mexicans,

none of whom, of course,
are immigrants.

It was a messy night,

not Thursday anymore,
but not yet Friday.

This is Howard Zinn,

probably the most decisive
historian of this country.

This is Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,
a respected historian as well.

Her father was Scots-Irish,

and she once married
a famous poet.

Howard and Roxanne are friends.

When Howard published
A People's History
of the United States,

it immediately
became a milestone

in the deconstruction

of the official
American narrative.

A distinguished white scholar

was for once
questioning the dream

and telling
the story differently.

One day, Roxanne asked Howard

why he left out parts
of the Native peoples' story.

Howard listened quietly,
then confessed,

"I don't know how to write it.
Why don't you write it?"

So Roxanne did,

putting Native Americans
at the center

and knowing that
it was going to be painful.

I met Howard
long before I met Roxanne.

And when I met Roxanne,

Howard had died
a few years earlier.

And Howard never read
Roxanne's finished book.

I learned from Howard,
Roxanne, and Michel-Rolph

as we learn from our elders.

From them, I learned to favor
the collective

over the individual.

To look for the "we"
before indulging in the "I."

And to always place oneself
within the world, not above.

Learning years.

Contrary to
what has been asserted

about the birth
of the United States

and its domination
of the continent,

it was neither superior weapons,
nor technology,

nor a superior number
of settlers, nor disease,

that is to say,
not "guns, steel, and germs,"

that can account for it.

The determining factor
of this domination

was the willingness to eliminate
whole civilizations of people

in order to possess their land.

The case of Andrew Jackson,

the seventh president
of the United States,

is a telling story.

Andrew Jackson is enshrined
in most U.S. history texts

in a chapter titled
"The Age of Jackson,"

"The Age of Democracy,"
"The Birth of Democracy,"

or some variation thereon.

Jackson's family personified

the Protestant
Scots-Irish migration.

He was an influential
Tennessee land speculator,

politician, and wealthy owner

of a slave plantation
near Nashville,

worked by 150 slaves,
the Hermitage.

Jackson bought his first slave,
a young woman, in 1788.

He was 21 years old.

When Tennessee became a state,

he was elected at the age of 29
as its first US senator,

an office he quit after a year

to become a judge
in the Tennessee Supreme Court.

As a judge,
he was in a better position

to seize Native lands.

It was in 1801
that Jackson first took command

of the Tennessee militia
as a colonel

and began his Indian-killing
military career.

In 1821,
by then a national hero,

Jackson became military governor
of the Florida territory.

In 1829,
Jackson became president.

By that time,
it was already clear

that this new nation called
the United States of America

needed a clear
and decisive policy

toward the first Americans.

It was their land, after all.

1830, Congress passed
the Indian Removal Act.

Andrew Jackson immediately
pushed through

to forcibly deport
all Indigenous peoples

from east of the Mississippi

to what they would then call
"Indian Territory."

The Seminoles in Florida
were one of the nations

which firmly resisted.

Jackson sent in the army.

And as usual,

when a power decides
to "solve" a problem,

especially if it includes
the removal of whole peoples,

it turns ugly.

Quartermaster General
Thomas Sidney Jesup

was made commander
of that force.

He would become the embodiment

of every other henchman
in history.

You will not replace us!

You will not replace us!

You will not replace us!

You will not replace us!

A treaty is an agreement
signed by two nations

in order to establish borders

and conditions
for their mutual survival.

But nevertheless,
from 1832 to 1871,

American Indians
were arbitrarily considered

to be
"domestic dependent tribes,"

and as such,

any treaty had to be approved
by the U.S. Congress.

Andrew Jackson said
to Secretary of War
John Caldwell Calhoun,

of Scots-Irish descent,

who considered slavery
as a necessary evil,

"I think making treaties
with Indians

is not only useless but absurd."

Indeed,
to accept the term "treaty"

was to tacitly accept
the notion of "nation."

During the Jacksonian period,

also called "the birth
of the white republic,"

the United States made
86 treaties

with 26 Indigenous nations

between New York
and the Mississippi,

all of them
forcing land handovers

and including removals.

And then,
they signed treaty after treaty

which were violated
one after the other.

Famous
French aristocrat and writer

Alexis de Tocqueville

witnessed part of
what would become known

as the Trail of Tears.

He was present
at the deportation

of the Choctaw people.

"I saw with my own eyes
several of the cases of misery

which I have been describing.

I was the witness of sufferings

which I have not the power
to portray."

"No cry, no sob.

All were silent."

Life, race, patriotism.

-What is a flag?

A piece of cloth to die for?

Or to kill for?

Explained in two words.

Hiroshima. Nagasaki.

Why wasn't it ever called
a war crime?

Naming is power.

Is it because those who dropped
the bombs got to name the deed?

We do not want to remember.

People create families,
tribes, nations.

Sometimes, they need
to protect the family,

defend the tribe,
increase the nation's resources.

These acts might require
being armed.

And over the centuries,
we lost our purpose

and then our bearings.

That's when things turned nasty.