Alex-372

The problem with Beasts Of No Nation is a problem familiar with all depictions of Africa - the absence of any kind of context.

Things happen for no reason, allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks with previous propaganda, making the viewer believe that their previous misconceptions have now been confirmed.

Beasts Of No Nation was made by Cary Joji Fukunaga, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. The Rockefellers own among the world's largest extractive industry corporations owners/founders - ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhilips, United Fruit/Chiquita, and many more. A similar family started Royal Dutch Shell, which exploits the people of Nigeria for their oil.

Which brings me to the decontextualization - this story is set 'in a fictional African country', however the writer of the book is a Nigerian national. If the Idris Alba character would have been working for someone, it would have been Shell, maybe Anglo-Ashanti Gold, or his direct superiors would have been working on their behalf.

This is lost in the war porn, as it always is. Because Beasts Of No Nation is just one in a long line of 'mood setting' rather than informative movies about Africa, all of which are funded by the same extractive industry corporations and the families that own them.

Blood Diamonds was made on behalf of the Kimberley Process, which tried to restrict diamond exports from Zimbabwe and the Congo DRC. It was driven by Nicky Oppenheimer of Anglo-American De Beers, the world's diamond monopolist in the 20th century, and even today the world's biggest diamond miner with 40% of global diamonds mined and traded.

The Interpreter, with Nicole Kidman, another movie 'set in a fictional African country', however clearly based on Zimbabwe, where De Beers covets the huge Chiadzwa and Marange diamond fields, which could supply 20% of the world's diamond supply and crash the world's diamond price. Mugabe And The White African is in a similar vein, trying to demonize the government of Zimbabwe, while extolling the virtues of Rhodesia.

Then of course there was the propaganda of Eve Ensler, trying to hyper-focus the destruction of Eastern DRC by the Rwandan government's M-23, into 'the Vagina Monologues'. Again, leaving the actual culprits out of the picture, and focusing on mercenaries/soldiers and war porn instead.

De Beers lost 117,000 hectares of land in the land redistribution of 2000, and they want it back. And if that means portraying Africans as psychotic 'Beasts Of No Nation', well that's what they've been doing for over 100 years.

The Big Lie of this documentary, is that Whites are a minority in Zimbabwe; that they own a minority of the land (2%), and that they are therefore 'singled out by Mugabe' because of their race. That 'Mugabe' wants to create a country free of all Whites. This is the Big Lie at the center of this propaganda piece.

The Truth: Ben Freeth and Mike Campbell are die hard Rhodesians. That is what they mean with 'White African' - Rhodesians. And these two Rhodesians are trying to resist the redistribution of their 12,000 hectare estate called Mount Carmel.

This estate, with it's 500 'workers' is repeatedly referred to as a 'farm'. The average EU farm is 90 hectares. The average white commercial farm was 2,500 hectares. Before land reform, which saw the 1% of the population who were classified white under colonialism and UDI, own 47% of the country. That is what land redistribution addressed.

The Campbell and Freeth estate is much bigger than that - 12,000 hectares. Under the Fast Track land reform program, land is redistributed in 50 hectare (A1) and 250 hectare (A2) farms. Many whites have acted like Zimbabweans, not Rhodesians, and have taken a 250 or so (more in low rainfall areas) farm.

This documentary is about the preservation of privilege, not 'human rights'.

Compared to the usual repetitive dreck you see nowadays, this is actually pretty original, because it was based on a very deep, gritty, 1985 BBC TV miniseries, which starred Bob Peck, Joanne Whalley (now Whalley-Kilmer), and Joe Don Baker.

Having seen the original, which I would like to remember as one of the most televisional experiences in my life, everything about the movie remake is rushed and inauthentic. "Edge Of Darkness" was not just a revenge movie, but a TV series that wove together very different themes - detective procedural, ghost story, environmentalism, spiritualism, nuclear energy, Northern Ireland, Thatcherism). It was just a very rich experience, played by very accomplished actors.

The original boyfriend was played by Tim McInnerney (who was also in the Kate Bush music video for "This Woman's World", and Blackadder).

I had exactly the same feeling when watching Red Dragon after having seen Manhunter in the 1980s/1990s.

But if you want to see this and enjoy it, don't ever see the original first.