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| Us or Them? Mad thugs bent on the destruction of civilisation wreak havoc on populations |
Gotham City is taken hostage by a gang of vicious terrorists. They have crawled out of a dark hole in the Middle East, and one has even managed to pass herself off as a Gothamite. They have made common cause with 1000 Gotham prisoners in orange jumpsuits. They have managed to get hold of a device for creating nuclear power – but the wily swine have found a way to turn it into a nuclear bomb. Their crazed fanaticism means that their only use for technology is as a means of genocide. They are led by a man called Bane. His face is covered. He is a psychopath.
It doesn’t
take much decoding to work out what all this represents. It is a powerful piece
of propaganda in the war against Iran. But it also taps into a much
older story that white people have been telling themselves for years – the fear
of being swamped by the black masses. If they are ever allowed to crawl out of
their dark hole, the story goes, this is what happens. They will get into our societies. They will
mix with us. Then they will destroy us.
Of course,
these fears disguise the fact that it is precisely us, the white nations, which already
do these things the world over. The film’s scenes of violent criminals
being let out of prison and armed, of summary justice in mock courts, of public
lynchings: this is what has just been imposed by NATO on Libya. The
killing of scientists, the constant threat of all out war, the blockade of the
city to intimidate the population: this is what the Europe and America are doing to Iran today. The random bomb attacks, the war against the police, the
co-option of sections of the army under threat of total destruction: this is precisely
the reality of the West’s proxy war against Syria.
It is a
psychological truism that what we hate most in others is what we refuse to see
about ourselves. We kid ourselves that our own hatred and brutality is actually
an attribute of our victims: and thus justify their destruction. We imagine
they are as bad as us.
What makes
us so convinced – without even five minutes serious study or thought on the
issue – that Gaddafi, or Assad, or Ahmadinejad is a bloodthirsty murderous
tyrant? We don’t feel the need to look
into specifics – because we know their type.
We have grown up with these archetypal evil figures – we know them from the movies and
stories we’ve been telling each other our whole lives. We know exactly what these people are like. What we don’t
necessarily want to accept is that these archetypes are actually based on ourselves. However successful we may be
at keeping the fact out of our conscious minds, we know, in our hearts, what
genocidal depravities underpin, and have always underpinned, Western/ white supremacy
in the world. Our most honoured national figures are open supporters of genocide.
We know we are bloodthirsty murderous
tyrants. But the stories we tell our children – stories such as the Dark Knight
Rises – allow us to project these qualities onto our enemies. When we wage war,
it is not against ‘Gaddafi’, but the imagined
Gaddafi, the one we know very well – because the imagined Gaddafi is us.
The battle
ends with scenes of euphoria as the jubilant Gothamites cheer on a mushroom
cloud from a nuclear bomb dropped over the sea (overseas?). Of course, in the
film, no one actually dies in this explosion - but isn’t that exactly what we
tell ourselves about our wars anyway? No one really dies at our hands – no one
of any consequence anyway – only demons, Gaddafi-ites, insurgents; sub-humans. Won’t
the war against Iran
just involve a ‘surgical strike’ against ‘facilities’? We will be able to find
a way to applaud the overseas mushroom cloud, one way or another; after all, we
will say – it’s no worse than what they would do to us. Don’t you know what
these people are like? Haven’t you seen Batman?
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