White Right: Meeting the Enemy

When Deeyah Khan was six, her father took her to her first anti-racism rally. A Pakistani immigrant to Norway, he promised her that things would get better and that the skinhead gangs that terrorised their family and families like them would soon find themselves relics of past prejudices, that bigotry belonged in history, that tomorrow would be a more tolerant time. Three decades on, and we’re still waiting for tomorrow. In this Emmy-winning documentary, acclaimed Muslim filmmaker Deeyah Khan meets U.S. neo-Nazis and white nationalists including Richard Spencer face to face and attends the now-infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville as she seeks to understand the personal and political motivations behind the resurgence of far-right extremism in the U.S. Speaking with fascists, racists and proponents of alt-right ideologies, Deeyah, attempts to discover new possibilities for connection and solutions. As she tries to see beyond the headlines to the human beings, her own prejudices are challenged and her tolerance tested. When she finds herself in the middle of America’s biggest and most violent far right rally in recent years, Deeyah’s safety is jeopardized. Can she find it within herself to try and befriend the fascists she meets? With a U.S. president propagating anti-Muslim propaganda, the far-right gaining ground in German elections, hate crime rising in the UK, and divisive populist rhetoric infecting political and public discourse across western democracies, WHITE RIGHT: MEETING THE ENEMY asks why. The film is an urgent, resonant and personal look at race wars in America.