by JOHN WESTMORELAND
“You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.”
Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate All The Brutes, published by GRANTA, 1996
The title of Lindqvist’s book and Raoul Peck’s film is taken from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. ‘Exterminate all the brutes’ was the final advice of the isolated white colonialist Kurtz, about how to civilise Africa.
Peck was a friend and collaborator of Lindqvist. His film should be seen as a continuation of his work, not a different media version. Exterminate draws on other works, notably Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
Peck’s earlier film, I Am Not Your Negro, about the life and work of James Baldwin, was nominated for an Oscar, and hailed as “an advanced seminar in racial politics” by the New York Times. Exterminate may well receive a more hostile review in the mainstream media. Conservative and liberals alike will recoil from Peck’s exposure of glib rhetoric about the USA being founded on liberty and democracy as a blatant lie.
Historical facts and the obligation to engage
History is a subject that benefits from collaboration, discussion and debate. But for historians to be able to argue over their rival interpretations there has to be a common agreement on some essential historical facts.
The facts that Peck concentrates on are already widely known. And, like the truth about the Emperor’s clothes, we all benefit from hearing them said, and said loudly.
Eurocentric history and political discourse is rich in Enlightenment values–all the things that Europeans gave to the world – reason and learning, democracy and law-based government.
Peck’s goal is to destroy Eurocentric self-love. He does not offer a theoretical alternative. His job is to restate the facts. The undeniable facts. The facts that are so fundamental to history, they have been studiously, deliberately and systematically ignored by historians of the status quo.
Exterminate is about engagement with facts. The audience has a job too. They have to interpret the facts. The interpretation is a duty, to oneself and to society.
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