###Pride vs Prejudice Week
####When does pride become prejudice?
ABC2, in conjunction with triple j, present a week of programming exploring one of the most challenging issues facing us today: pride, prejudice and the territory in between.
As Donald Trump gains momentum on the presidential trail, the UK votes to leaves the EU, One Nation is re-elected into Australian parliament, debates are raging about patriotism, nationalism, as well as racism, Islamaphobia and even multiculturalism. Across a range of documentaries, from the political to the very personal, these stories reflect some of the shifts we’re witnessing today: from the resurgence of the right in America and Great Britain, to the growing movement #blacklivesmatter, to the stories of those struggling to settle in a new country.
At the heart of the week will be Hack Live: Aussie Patriots hosted by triple j Hack’s Tom Tilley, which looks at how the debates are playing out in Australia from the perspective of younger Australians. What does it mean to be patriotic in Australia today, what does an extreme view look like and what does a moderate view look like? Young Australians want to be heard.
Other films include the feature documentary Welcome to Leith which follows a small, American, rural community as it tries to fight back against an influx of neo-Nazi neighbours; BBC3’s We Want Our Country Back looking at Britain First, a far right party in the UK and its 29-year-old deputy leader; Angry, Right and Proud exploring the growing number of groups that have emerged since the fragmentation of the English Defence League; Louis Theroux’s Return to the Most Hated Family in America; Reggie Yates: Race Riots and Foreign Correspondent’s #BlackLivesMatter both exploring racism in the US. We’ll also look back at Joe Hildebrand’s 2012 ABC2 series Dumb, Drunk and Racist which puts Australian stereotypes under the microscope; The Last Whites of the East End meets a group of people overwhelmed with the pace of change in their Cockney community; Why Don’t You Speak English? a social experiment series that places recent immigrants to the UK in the homes of Brits one week and the following has the ‘locals’ live with the recent immigrants; Reggie Yates’ Extreme Russia – Far Right and Proud; and American journalist Hilary Andersson’s visit to Bakersfield to look at the phenomenon that is Trump’s Angry America.
For many people these are highly uncomfortable times, for others they feel as though they are finally being heard.
The question is what does the rise of these voices mean for the Australia we live in today, and the Australia of tomorrow? What does it mean ‘to fit in’? When does fear overtake tolerance?
When does pride become prejudice? It’s time to find out.
Tune in from 8.30pm each night from Sunday September 18 to Friday September 23 on ABC2 and ABC iview, plus triple j’s Hack Monday - Friday at 5.30pm.
Trump’s Angry America: Panorama (Aus premiere)
Sunday 18 Sept at 8.40pm
Filmed in the weeks leading up to Donald Trump becoming the official Republican candidate for America’s presidency, Panorama visits the racially divided town of Bakersfield in California. Reporter Hilary Andersson meets the Trump supporters who back his calls to oust 11 million illegal immigrants and ban Muslims from travelling to America. She talks to those who fear what a Trump White House would mean for them and asks why America is so angry.
Welcome to Leith (Aus premiere)
Sunday 18 Sept at 9.10pm
“A gripping you-are-there portrait of a community under siege… as engrossing as a fictional thriller.” Variety
Leith, North Dakota, could be the perfect setting for a horror film: the remote, almost ghost town (population: 24) was a picture of run-down rural isolation until neo-Nazi Craig Cobb – one of the most infamous white supremacists in America – arrived in 2012. Purchasing several plots of land, severely depreciated due to the area’s economic ebb, Cobb called on to his white separatist brethren to join him in making Leith an Aryan haven, and the villagers found themselves living with real-life terror. As tensions fray between the fearful locals, including Leith’s one African American citizen, and the interlopers, whose abhorrent activities are supported by America’s free-speech laws, filmmakers Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K Walker expertly catch the rising menace, making Welcome to Leith a keenly suspenseful exploration of racial hatred and of one town’s fight against it.
Dumb, Drunk and Racist
Sunday 18 Sept to Friday 23 Sept from 10.20pm
“Show of the week, clever, sober and compelling” Melinda Houston, 14 June, 2012 Australians have a bad reputation overseas, especially in India. But doesn’t every country have its negative stereotypes? In this 2012 series Dumb, Drunk & Racist takes four Indians on a road-trip around Australia to examine the country’s worst stereotypes - are Australians really beer drinking racists, or simply misunderstood? Shot on location in India and Australia, this experimental series puts its Indian participants smack bang in the middle of passionate debates and immersive experiences that will change their opinion of Australia forever. After three weeks of seeing the good, the bad and the ugly up close, will our intrepid Indian travellers still think that Australians are dumb, drunk and racist? And what will we think of ourselves, after seeing Australia through their eyes?
Louis Theroux: Return to the Most Hated Family in America
Monday 19 Sept at 8.30pm
In 2007 Louis Theroux spent a summer living with the community of the Westboro Baptist Church, famed for their hateful and offensive ministry. Louis accompanied the Phelps family as they travelled the country holding signs such as ‘God Hates Fags’ and ‘Soldiers Die God Laughs.’ America hated them and they revelled in their notoriety. Now Louis returns to find a very different community. More like a cult than ever before, they are convinced the world is about to end. But as their behaviour becomes even more extreme, some of the younger members of the Church have fallen away, and Louis finds a family heading towards uncertain times.
We Want Our Country Back (Aus premiere)
Monday 19 Sept at 9.30pm
In 2015, Britain First - which says it wants to ban all trace of Islam from the UK - emerged as a new name in far right politics. With a 29 year old woman, Jayda Fransen, as the face of the party, and with an online following bigger than any other UK party, Britain First says that it is ready to become a household name and credible force in British politics. Film director Miles Blayden-Ryall joins deputy leader Jayda and leader Paul Golding (ex- British National Party (BNP) press officer) as they embark on their first public national campaign to garner support. With seemingly huge numbers viewing the provocative videos they produce and backing them online, they say that the British public is ready to turn out in huge numbers for them and that, as a result, the authorities view them as dangerous and want to shut them down. Blayden-Ryall is with them on the streets of the UK as they attempt to rally big numbers around their cause, in the face of growing opposition. But do they have any hope of succeeding? Have the British public really become so intolerant that they will get behind a party with such extreme views?
Why Don’t You Speak English? Ep1
Tuesday 20 Sept at 8.30pm
In this compelling series, four British families open the doors of their homes to four immigrants who can’t speak English. What ensues is a fascinating clash of language and culture. Can the native speakers teach their guests to speak English by inviting them into their lives? And what happens when the tables are turned and the English-speakers spend time in the homes of immigrants?
The Last Whites of the East End
Tuesday 20 Sept at 9.20pm
Newham in London’s East End is home to a tight-knit white working-class community who have lived there for centuries. But over the past 15 years something extraordinary has happened to this cockney tribe – more than half of them have disappeared. Now the few who remain are struggling to hold on to their identity in the place they have always called home.
Newham has been shaped by immigration for generations, but the past 15 years have been defined by it, as Newham welcomed the highest numbers of new residents anywhere in the country. At the same time more than half the white British population have vanished - breaking apart the tight-knit families their community was built on. A decade of mass immigration and ‘white flight’ has brought Newham to its tipping point, and now Newham has the lowest white British population of anywhere in the UK. Filmed over several months, this documentary records the thoughts, feelings and experiences of the white residents of Newham, as they leave the place where they’ve grown up.
From young mum Leanne, who has made the difficult decision to leave her tight-knit extended family in search of ‘a better life’ in Essex, to mixed-race Tony who wants to find somewhere to bring up his baby daughter that feels more like what he knows, these are the stories of people who are struggling with rapid change. Many cling on to the past, fighting to keep the last places going where the white community meet, like Peter Bell, manager of the East Ham Working Men’s Club. This is now a hidden world of tea dances, boxing and drinking in the last club left - an oasis for those left behind. This thoughtful, reflective film hears these voices for the first time. It uncovers what it really feels like to have society change around you.
Reggie Yates: Race Riots
Wednesday 21 Sept at 9.20pm
Shocking images of American police brutalizing and killing black people has left the world in disbelief. The shooting on August 9th 2014 of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri lit a fire that is still raging in the hearts of African Americans. One year on Reggie Yates has come to Ferguson, a small town in America’s Bible Belt to find out if anything has changed. Some of the worst civil disorder seen in decades has galvanized a new movement marching under the hashtag
BlackLivesMatter and politicized a new generation of young activists like Clifton Kinnie who were in the streets protesting and demanding an end to police brutality. He wants to know from both black and white citizens of Ferguson if a community so polarized by the shooting of Michael Brown can come together and heal. Reggie witnesses first hand just how the next generation of police officers are being trained at the Police Academy. But more shockingly, he discovers just how the system still discriminates against African Americans. Reggie wants to know how in a country with an African American President young black men are still 21 times as likely to be killed by police as white men of the same age. With the events that started in Ferguson the country is forced to confront an uncomfortable reality.
BlackLivesMatter: Foreign Correspondent
Wednesday 21 Sept at 10.50pm
Foreign Correspondent reporter Sally Sara takes to the streets of Baltimore and Chicago to investigate a reawakened civil rights movement that’s fighting to stop the killing of black Americans.
“We’re still fighting to be free. Every once in a while it looks like we’re gonna get there – and then it all gets killed”– J.C. Faulk, community organiser in Baltimore.
For African Americans like J.C. Faulk, the great civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s was unfinished business. Battles were bravely fought and won, but somewhere along the way the ball got dropped. Now, black America is rising up again over the mounting death toll of unarmed civilians killed in encounters with police, and the incomprehensibly routine atrocities that torment gang-infested neighbourhoods.
“What we’re seeing is the birth of a mass movement” – Melina Abdullah,
This time there’s no Martin Luther King. #BlackLivesMatter is a leaderless movement that wants to shake up America by harnessing direct protest and the mobilising power of social media. #BlackLivesMatter is not just about changing policing. It is also pursuing real reform in places like Chicago’s South Side, where 40 per cent of kids grow up in poverty, gangs run rampant and violence is nearly all black on black. Here it’s easier to get a gun than a job.
Hack Live: Aussie Patriots
Thursday 22 Sept at 9.30pm
Hack Live: Aussie Patriots hosts a no-holds-barred live debate on the recent resurgence in Aussie patriotism. Is it a good thing that some young Australians have become more patriotic and assertive about their national identity, or is pride in our country being hijacked by aggressive nationalism? Recent events such as One Nation’s election success and the Sonia Kruger media storm raise questions around what it means today to be a proud Australian, and where the line is for acceptable public debate.
From flag waving to flag wrapping, triple j Hack’s Tom Tilley fires up a range of opinions of young Australians from all sides of the issue for a brutally honest conversation on the latest incarnations of Aussie pride.
Reggie Yates’ Extreme Russia, Far Right and Proud
Thursday 22 Sept at 8.30pm
Reggie Yates travels to Moscow to meet some of the country’s most dangerous people - ‘the nationalists’. With Putin flexing his muscles and squaring up to the west, Reggie arrives in the Russian capital only days before a march in which thousands of ultra- nationalists take to the streets in a show of strength and unity. Reggie immerses himself into a world where patriotism and loving your country is becoming the norm, one with very dangerous consequences. He trains with knife-wielding far right nationalists, talks to the young artists who idolise Putin, and confronts teenage neo-Nazis who believe that if you’re not white then you have no place in Russia. Reggie also meets the non- Russians who live in fear of persecution and hears horrific stories of those who have survived vicious racist attacks. And with the rise of the far right not just in Russia but across many other western countries, including the UK, Reggie asks if this is what can happen when you love your country too much.
Angry, White and Proud
Friday 23 Sept at 8.30pm
A powerful and shocking documentary which delves into the world of the far-right in the UK. With the weakening of the English Defence League, splinter far-right groups are on the rise and this is a remarkably candid and disturbing look at the growing number of far right splinter groups that have emerged. In his first full length film, director Jamie Roberts spends a year getting to know members of the far-right: men who call themselves ‘patriots’ but include some who openly admit to being racist and hating Muslims.
