The apotheosis of the Left’s infatuation with Islamic jihad: a propaganda video for the Islamic State, courtesy of the British government.
“Pure poison… it’s like a Nazi recruiting film from the 1930s: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The State,” by Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail, August 20, 2017:
A really super-cool club. That’s how a young black British doctor describes Islamic State in tonight’s episode of The State, her eyes shining as she records a YouTube message urging other young women to follow her example and defect to Syria.
‘A really super-cool club.’ There’s no irony in her voice. Dr Shakira Boothe (played by Ony Uhiara) is a single mother from London who claims to be part of the first generation of Muslims building a religious paradise on earth.
This, then, is how Channel 4, a publicly owned British broadcaster, depicts Islamic State five days after a terrorist attack in Barcelona that killed more than a dozen people – during a year that has seen British children killed by a suicide bomber at a Manchester pop concert.
A four-part drama screening on consecutive nights, The State is supposedly based on real events in Syria and Iraq, seen from the viewpoint of several British recruits who fled their homes to join the jihad or Holy War. It showcases graphic footage of torture and dismemberment.
The second episode tonight includes an appallingly callous tableau of dead babies in an incubator ward, after a bomb strike on a hospital.
It is sickening. But it isn’t the gore and scattered limbs that leave a tight knot in the stomach: it is the moist-eyed adulation as The State pleads with us not just to sympathise with the British jihadis but to love them.
All the women are elegant but strong – independent heroines making a positive choice to sacrifice their freedom for the sake of their pious religious convictions. Joans of Arc, every one. All the men are sensitive and soft-spoken – driven to fight in God’s army for their love of their families. Everyone is deeply intelligent and multi-lingual, with extensive knowledge of the Koran.
And they are all ridiculously good-looking of course, with the occasional Poldark moment for the boys as they strip off their uniforms to reveal waxed chests with moulded six-packs. The soundtrack is all swelling orchestras and throbbing drums, with moments of sad Spanish guitar when a character dies.
No one will be surprised to discover that the writer and director of the State, Peter Kosminsky, is not a veteran of the civil war in Syria. He did not carry out research missions to Raqqa and Aleppo.
In fact, middle-class film-maker Kosminsky is 61 years old and Oxbridge-educated, the epitome of the London media luvvie who is desperate to demonstrate that he is less racist than anyone else at his Hampstead dinner party. He’s been the subject of a South Bank Show profile by Melvyn Bragg. You get the picture.
The dialogue of The State gives him away at every moment. It’s Dad-speak, a middle-aged man’s failed effort to sound ‘down with the kids’, which parrots comical slang last used in the 1970s by the Bay City Rollers – words such as ‘super-cool’.
In tonight’s opening scene, one fighter waves his AK47 and shouts: ‘This is better than flipping burgers!’ It’s meant to be a victory shout – but instead, the line is fake, patronising and, in its assumption that well-educated British Asians like him are destined to work at McDonald’s, dismissively racist.
Kosminsky’s dead ear for dialogue is matched by his inability to smell out lies. Because all the scenes are based on second-hand research, they mirror the propaganda videos that cascade on to the internet, showing life under Sharia law. Much of the series consists of the director’s attempts to capture the camera angles common in phone videos of battlefields and marketplaces.
It’s baffling that a man who knows how the television world works – he won Emmys and Baftas for his adaptation of Wolf Hall, after all – seems blind to the crass manipulation of Islamic State’s official videos. Kosminsky believes that the choreographed beheadings and the carefully curated aftermath of bombings are true and accurate depictions of ISIS life.
For fear of imposing his own opinions on viewers (good liberals never do that) he offers no comment on the medieval morality of Islamic State. Racism is endemic: the leading characters soon learn to sneer openly at the pathetic white fighters, who are mostly fat, tearful, closet homosexuals.
All of the characters have left their homes without saying goodbye to their parents, though Kosminsky is at pains to point out that this doesn’t mean they are ungrateful or unloving – it’s just that they didn’t dare risk alerting the forces of government oppression.
The men practise dismantling their assault rifles with their eyes shut, and learn the basics of misogyny: ‘A woman in this life is defective!’
And when the bomb strikes that baby ward, there is no hint that any blame lies with the ISIS cowards using the hospital as their shield. If anything, the fault is with the unseen hand, presumably American, that fired the missile. The only explanation for the characters’ betrayal of Britain is summed up in one line: ‘I ain’t never going back to that kuffar dump, bruv.’ Kuffar, as the constant scroll of Arabic dictionary definitions tells us, means dirty, foreign and unholy….
Kosminsky cannot be incapable of understanding how most viewers will regard his perverted vision of ISIS. But he only cares about the opinions of his peers in a deluded bubble. Any decent human being, anyone who has felt despair and heartbreak at the terrorist attacks sponsored by Islamic State, will feel nothing but revulsion for his characters. They are traitors to their families and friends. Society has provided so much entertainment and education to enrich their lives, and they are turning all of it to the most evil uses.
The State is no sort of truthful drama, as it claims to be. This is a recruitment video to rival Nazi propaganda of the Thirties calling young men to join the Brownshirts….
mortimer says
This series made by Channel 4 is obviously ‘ENTERTAINMENT’, rather than documentary, so it should be viewed and INTERPRETED as such.
Kosminsky took on a project that has no good outcome for him. He would be accused of making propaganda by both sides.
The fact is that the JIHADIS who do the DECAPITATIONS were considered to be ‘nice’ or ‘soft-spoken’ by their neighbours and school mates.
It is IDEOLOGY that causes supposedly ‘NICE’ people to do evil. May I repeat once again…
IT’S THE IDEOLOGY, STUPID! If intelligence agencies defeat the JIHAD IDEOLOGY, they will defeat JIHADISTS by preventing them from BELIEVING IN ISLAM.
Geoffrey Britain says
Intelligence agencies? Really. How exactly are they to do that?
overman says
“it is the moist-eyed adulation as The State pleads with us not just to sympathise with the British jihadis but to love them”
Yes, that’s how it struck me, too. Such sweet, beautiful people lol
l’ve got the 4 episodes, but haven’t watched them all yet. One of these idiots [she’s a doctor] actually took her 5yr son/brother with her.
JFKAR says
How anyone could see this series as pro-ISIS propaganda is beyond me. If anything, it put the “prophet” of Islam in a bad light with some very revealing quotes from the Sunna (and the Qur’an).
The characters went on a journey that disillusioned them with ISIS and jihad, and it showed a lot of the ugly truth about the Islamic State and shariah law in the process.
I hope the writer, producers and actors have tight security: ISIS is not going to like what they’ve done.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
But he only cares about the opinions of his peers in a deluded bubble.
But… I thought the English were against being run over, stabbed and blown up. Now UK taxpayer dollars are being spent to extol the New Caliphate? Hmm, add that to ex-Prez Barack Hussein’s importation of a hundred thousand “Syrian” “regugee” Moslems and putting them on welfare in undisclosed locations and I think there’s a logic here that must be right. Love them into peaceable behavior, that’s the plan.
Johan Elzinga says
Shocking, thanks for the update. A well written view on how this came about: a 60 years old man trying to set an example of how he perceives enlightened non rascists should be and should think: undoubtedly just like he views the muslim world. Not hindered by any fact, not having spoken to the victims of those attacks, not having absorbed any of the real facts written on jihadwatch.org on a daily basis.
This poison – yes it is poison – will be the drug pushing people to “accept” their “fellow citizens” from islamic culture for a long time from now. It is nothing more than a very slanted reality, aimed to polish off any inconvenient truth from what is in fact a war that we are in. Here and now, in a place that should be enlightened by the facts that we can daily get from the internet.
Frederick Middleton says
It’s as if the British establishment is sure that we will eventually be taken over by a Muslim dictatorship and are trying to get in their good books before hand. You have to ask yourself, what kind of person thinks beheading and burning people in cages in ‘cool’? You have to be warped to pursue that.
John A. Marre says
The UK government is forcing British subjects to pay for their own death. And to add insult to it, will throw them in jail for saying that it’s Muslims who are killing them.
Michael says
I live in the UK and I watched the series. I thought it was very good. Only one of the jihadists (the single mother) comes back to Britain. It ends badly for the others.
Nothing about the series tended to persuade me against the merits of destroying the Islamic State with nuclear weapons.
moeped says
It’s propaganda meant to normalize treachery. See through it and don’t accept it.
JFKAR says
I live in the UK, too, Michael, and I thought the series showed the ugly side of Islam’s prophet, Shariah law and the Islamic State. I think it was a courageous expose in politically correct Britain!
Caesar says
I have to disagree with the Mail and Robert here and agree with Michael above me. It was a look into the everyday people who join ISIS, sure some of them might be monsters, but most are still just people who have been twisted by an ideology, aka Islam.
Now, the series wasn’t perfect, I think they showed the true Islam for what it really is, but it was by accident. By accurately showing how ISIS operates, they showed us the real Islam without intending to, and this is obvious by the little, but far and few in between thankfully, reminders to the audience that hint ‘hey this isn’t the real Islam!’.
Despite that big flaw, I think they accurately portrayed what life under ISIS was probably like and the kind of people who would go to Syria. Anyone who thinks this is ‘apologist ISIS propoganda’ clearly didn’t watch beyond the first episode, and the example the mail gives (one of the main characters saying its a cool club) is beyond retarded. They were depicting what real ISIS recruiters say and that character ended up disavowing ISIS anyway. The show didn’t even praise her for this btw, rightly pointing out that she was a bad mother in taking her son to Syria.
Another flaw this show had though was the characters didnt really have back stories, this would have been the place where we really would have seen properly their religious/hating the west reasons. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t included, but there was hints of that in the show, just not the full meat.
So yeah, to end my rambling, it WAS A GOOD show, solid 4/5, not perfect and definitely NOT APOLOGIST PROPAGANDA, but at the same time not as hard hitting as us anti-Islam people would like, but still great despite that.
Lydia says
So the UK has gone full guns sharia now, making their own terror recruitment videos? Just when you think they can’t get any worse…
Lydia says
Yup, the hitler youth and brown shirts are coming up.
Georg says
How low can they go? lower
How low will they go? lower
moeped says
Proof that Western Government is in collusion with our enemies. Just disgusting. The most Righteous Empire the world has ever seen is over. War is coming.
moeped says
I seriously want to move to Hungary.
davej says
Ah, the noble savages. What a privilege to be exterminated by them.
gravenimage says
+1
Matthieu Baudin says
You look over your shoulder and there they are again; those ‘progressives’ fostering alliances with Militant Islam and Terrorist Organisations. But apparently it’s all risk free, beating the new revolutionary drum and bankrolled out of the public purse.
Kay says
“It showcases graphic footage of torture and dismemberment.”
Is this public television? I’m confused. How can this be?
gravenimage says
My understanding is that Channel 4 is rather more like HBO than PBS in the US. They can show quite graphic things.
Baucent says
Well as a television review, that was an absolute trashing by Mr Stevens. Hopefully Kosminsky has found a suitable hole to crawl into.
gravenimage says
UK: Government-funded Channel 4 creates “recruitment video” glorifying the Islamic State
………………..
Not just sympathy for the Devil, but admiration for his “coolness”. **Ugh**.
rosemary hopkin says
Closet Muslims . EVERYWHERE..
Anne Smith says
I didn’t watch it as it sounded ghastly, but if it encourages a load of Muslims to leave the UK I am not worried.
overman says
“Joans of Arc, every one”
A Joan of Arc is exactly what WE need again in Europe – marine Le Pen comes close.
secretpilgrim says
FFS… If anyone replying here actually WATCHED this show they would know that it in no way “glamourises” or makes the IS appear “cool”. It’s a DRAMA, and in a DRAMA characters express points of view and opinions not necessarily meant to be agreed with – or, as here, to be shown up as misguided or false. To be juxtaposed – as here – with a reality that contradicts them. It wasn’t a documentary and used different techniques than a documentary would – THAT’S THE POINT.
There’s NO point raising irrelevant points about a raving fascist like Marine Le f*cking Pen in discussing this, and in fact I’m disappointed in Jihadwatch in covering this DRAMA in this way, without at least watching all four episodes and being able to assess its intent and effect properly. No, it did NOT “glorify” IS and it was NOT a f*cking “recruitment video” for Isis and kneejerk “lefty liberal crypto-Muslim propaganda” responses like this do NOTHING to help defeat pernicious Islamic ideology. We really need to be a lot smarter than this, surely??