Sunday, November 29, 2015

Calling bullshit on the anti-refugee video taking the internet by storm...

With Open Gates: The Forced Collective Suicide of European Nations is a racist propaganda film that has gone viral. The video, which is designed to scare people about the supposed menace of refugees, has notched up approaching four million views in just a few weeks on YouTube – a figure that has raised significantly following the Paris attacks. As you can see at the top of the video above, the uploader, 'Death of Nations', has been using the Paris terrorists attacks as a way of promoting it.

Back in September, as the refugee crisis in Europe got dramatically worse, I wrote about the bullshit anti-refugee viral memes that were being spread across Facebook and Twitter to vilify people fleeing violence in Syria. I wanted to show that forming an opinion on one the most important issues of our time using something a fascist drew up on a meme generator is stupid. Unfortunately, With Open Gates has made things more stupid. At first, debunking it seemed about as good a use of time as talking politics with a toddler. But while the film has lowered the bar for racism and fidelity to the truth, it has raised the bar for the influence and virulence of online refugee-bashing. After seeing the number of views keep rising, I decided it was time to call bullshit.

The 20-minute video is a mishmash of comically fake and out-of-context footage, bad subtitling and Islamophobic propaganda. Let's take these elements in turn: More + photos + videos...

Related posts:
  1. The European refugee crisis and Syria explained...
  2. John Oliver on migrants and refugees...
  3. 'Europe’s Guantanamo': Refugees in Hungary fed 'like animals in pen' (VIDEO)
  4. Finland to raise taxes on the wealthy to cover refugee costs...
  5. Understanding the refugee crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the world...
  6. Pope Francis calls on every European parish to host a refugee family...
  7. Austrian far-right leader blames U.S., NATO for migrant crisis...
  8. Putin slams US over refugee crisis in Europe...

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