Preserving Truth: The Vital Role of Brutal Historical Footage
I was watching the show the Leftover’s and there is a scene where a cult member is stoned to death. It was brutal and I’m someone who is normally unaffected by these things. With how good special effects are now I find it hard to believe that a real stoning could be more gruesome.
It reminded me of the medieval style executions ISIS used to inflict on their victims: beheadings, drownings, and immolation being the most famous. So as a maladjusted 29 year old male I set out to find some of these old videos. The best website for gore stuff always used to be liveleaks.com but I soon discovered it had been shutdown. The founder never explicitly said why but in his final blogpost he stated it is: “too difficult to keep on fighting.” Sites like this find it very hard to generate advertising revenue as Coca Cola doesn’t want their product being associated with ISIS beheadings. So they must survive off of donations alone which is rarely sufficient. They also likely had large legal bills due to the controversial nature of their content.
I tried bestgore.com and some other similar websites and all had recently been shutdown. Then I tried some of the more niche subreddits like r/watchpeopledie and the like and they too were shut down.
If you weren’t already you may be questioning my sanity at this point. Why am I trying so hard to find a video that is only going to upset me. I would ask why you slow down to look at car wrecks as you drive by them.
The answer is that you are bored while driving and want to be entertained. This is also partially the answer for myself but I also like to think there is great historical significance to these videos. If we the people are not allowed to see the first hand evidence of the event itself how do we even know it happened. These are historical events and should be seen by all who wish to see them.
The ISIS killings are pure evil but what about a killing that is widely considered justified. What about the execution of Saddam Hussein? I remember watching the video of his hanging for the first time when I was in 6th or 7th grade. It was shocking but even to my adolescent brain it made sense that this awful man had to be killed. If you scour the internet for this hanging video today, it cannot be found. It has been erased from history.
It’s not a grand conspiracy or anything, a few mundane factors have caused this. The large internet content providers have been told by the government to keep their content PG or they will face legal and legislative wrath. This has resulted in all kinds of hilarious outcomes like facebook’s team of 100 engineers working on an algorithm to identify male vs. female nipples in order to know which images to censor.
The large platforms have chosen to always take the safe route when it comes to content. Allowing them avoid bad media headlines and government intervention so they can remain open to the largest possible audience and make more money. They take a hard line on content that anyone may find offensive. Much of history is offensive. Therefore much of history online gets erased.
When Marie Antoinette and Louis the 16th were executed it was done on display for all to see so the people could know it really happened. Do you think the Jacobins would not have filmed the thousands of guillotine beheadings in the 1790s and distributed it to the entire populace if they had possessed the technology?
How about when we killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011. Obama’s comment in a 60 minutes interview as to why he would not release any photo evidence of the killing: “It’s important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool.” I understand this reasoning and I’m sure that we did indeed kill Bin Laden but something about all of this seems a little dystopian. We can’t release proof of the most wanted man in the world for the last decade because we might anger some people and potentially cause more attacks.
The last man to design and implement an attack on America soil which resulted in the deaths of around 2,500 people was Admiral Yamamoto in the form of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. We took our revenge on him two years later by shooting down his plane. The Japanese still controlled the island so they recovered his body but if we had got there first do you think we would have not published picture evidence.
In 2012 Hollywood made a movie called Zero Dark Thirty which is all about the hunt for and killing of Bin Laden. This movie had a 50 million dollar budget and shows exactly how Bin Laden was killed. He was shot in his large compound in Pakistan where he had been hiding. Isn’t it odd that we are allowed to recreate the event and graphically show the killing but showing pictures of the real dead body is off limits.
The ancient Assyrians used to hang the heads of their enemies from the city walls to show their dominance, something ISIS actually saw fit to bring back in 2014. In the U.S we won’t even release footage proving public enemy number 1 is dead. Perhaps the U.S. is practicing Teddy Roosevelt’s dictum of “speak softly, and carry a big stick.” Perhaps just stating the facts and not feeling the need to provide proof is the best way to flaunt our power.
Maybe it was decided to just sit back and let Hollywood glorify the killing for us. I’m sure the way it is shown in Zero Dark 30 is far cooler than it really went down. The death scene in the movie is the only reference of the killing I have. So my mind simply substitutes it as historical fact. A lie takes the place of the truth due to mere convenience.
You may be asking why does any of this matter? These are historical events that occurred and affected millions of people. Footage of the Vietnam war streaming into every American living room helped put an end to that conflict. Saddam’s capture and killing freed a nation, for a while at least. ISIS’s well known brutality allowed a coalition to form against them and eventually destroy them. Bin Laden’s killing finally gave Americans some sense of justice about what happened on 9/11.
How wild is it to be able to say: no matter who you are, how wealthy you are, how well you hide, or how fast you run, if you kill enough Americans we will expend billions of dollars of resources over decades to find you and kill you.
One of my favorite scenes from the West Wing is about a similar situation. This is president Bartlett’s response to the joint chief’s telling him we need a “proportional response” to the shooting down of an American plane killing dozens of American citizens.
“2000 years ago a roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free from the fear of molestation. he could walk across the world unharmed cloaked only in the protection of the words “civis romanus,” I am a roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome universally understood as certain should harm befall even one of its citizens.”
Bartlett wanted to make the punishment an actual deterrent. Later President Bartlett is asked by an admiral: “what else is there besides a proportional response?” He replies:
“The disproportional response. Let word ring forth from this time and this place gentleman. If you kill and American, any American, we don’t come back with a proportional response. We come back with total disaster”
9/11 killed thousands of Americans and I think finding and killing Bin Laden was worth every penny.
History is simply what happened. Sometimes it was brutal. These events deserve just as much coverage as the parts that weren’t. In fact they deserve more coverage so we can avoid a recurrence of violence. If you are worried about exposing children then tell parents to use the parental control features available on every device. If you treat all of society as children we will forever remain children.
If you are worried about graphic content potentially upsetting people put a label on it. No one should be forced to watch anything just as people should not be forced to not watch anything, as has occurred by effectively banning these videos.
The emotions you feel when you watch a person be executed are not inherently bad feelings. Humans used to go to weekly executions as a form of entertainment in medieval times. They can be stressful feelings but they are feelings which need to be felt. They are strong feelings which can compel one to action. If you witness an unjust execution you can lobby your political leaders for change. If that change doesn’t come you can start a revolution.
The much lampooned line “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” is more true than ever. Go read your history, go witness the brutality, then do everything in you power to make sure it never happens again.
If I told you I was going to watch an action movie. You wouldn’t see anything wrong with it. But if I said “I’m going to look up murders and executions of famous people” most people would think I am insane. Why is there such a distinction. Visually both appear the same.
Conversely, if I tell people I am going to read a history book which describes the deaths of millions of people they will think it a great thing to do with my time. If I tell them I am going to read a fiction book describing similar content they will be less impressed. For example reading a WW2 book vs. Lord of the Rings. This seems a great paradox to me.
PS:
I finally found what I was looking for: Seegore.com is still operational and has a few ISIS videos. They were really brutal, watch at your own peril. Documentingreality.com which has a historical focus has great footage of the Kennedy assassination along with stuff relating to the Manson murders/Waco/Jonestown. This site seems to be serving a real need as these are all historically significant videos. This is stuff you will never find on youtube.
