“Patriots Day” Is Another Anti-Muslim Propaganda Film

Classic cinematic fearmongering under the veil of tragedy and patriotism.

I’m just going to start by saying Patriots Day is like the 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will:

It was made to unify a country who must come together in the face of the enemy (in this case, Islamic instead of Jewish), it’s set in a historically white city, the whitest people on the A-list are in the foreground, it’s stem-to-stern riddled with ‘Merica pride, and it’s starring Mark Wahlberg, Donald Trump’s golf buddy and brother of Donnie Wahlberg, who was publicly rooting for Carly fucking Fiorina in the 2016 Republican Primaries.

Patriots Day is based on the true story of a tragedy. The Boston Marathon bombing killed three people and injured a jaw-dropping 264, and that’s not to mention the subsequent shootout and additional explosion that killed two police officers and injured sixteen.

I’m in no way, shape, or form arguing that this wasn’t a noteworthy tragedy (as all tragedies are). I’m not even saying it doesn’t merit a movie. This just is not the time.

This just so, so is not the time.

We really needed another reiteration that people who look Muslim are our enemies? Really? The recent increase of hateful rhetoric on top of blatant hate crimes isn’t enough, you have to go and compound people’s prejudices under the guise of a true story of white bloodshed? Irresponsible.

Here’s an idea. How about they do a movie about the Charleston church shooting? Nine civilians were killed, and it was a white terrorist who murdered black churchgoers.

How about the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting? White army veteran terrorist rushes into a place of worship and murders six people wearing turbans.

No? Would it skew what a terrorist is supposed to look like? Would it be saying that black lives do matter?! Yeah, no, you’re right. Make another about brown against white, not white against brown. God knows we need that right now. This is Jesus’s work.

You also can’t make a movie about a white terrorist without white people saying that it doesn’t reflect all white people, which would only validate the point Muslim Americans have been trying to make since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It would also defeat the point this movie and many movies like it are trying to make: brown people bad, white people good.

And we can even push aside the Middle Eastern terrorist cliché and ask the question: “What about minority victims?” The Orlando nightclub shooting was the deadliest mass shooting in US history (aside from white people slaughtering Native Americans, like the 250 men, women, and children slaughtered at Wounded Knee.) Muslim guy shoots up a gay nightclub filled primarily with Latinos. 50 people were murdered and 53 were injured. No movie is even in the works?

The gut-wrenching irony that this movie is getting more press than the fact that we’re standing idly by while the horrors in Aleppo are happening makes me really sick to my stomach. But I’m sure Hollywood will apologize with a “here it is even though it’s too late” documentary in a few years.

Patriots Day is such a perfect title too. It reminds me of the PATRIOT Act. You name it something that inherently makes it difficult to speak out against and shroud an ultimate goal and right-wing agenda with one distinct message: this is about antiterrorism in the wake of tragedy. If you disagree, you can geeeet out.

Yeah, it’s antiterrorism. It’s like, who’s proterrorism aside from terrorists? Proterrorism would just be synonymous with terrorism.

But by continuously creating films and TV shows with Muslims as the terrorists, you’re not implying they’re the face of terrorism, you’re straight up saying it, especially when you look at all the right-wing white terrorism perpetrated since 9/11. At the very least, balance it the fuck out.

I know, I know. I’m un-American. Unpatriotic. How can I say this? How can I have anything bad to say about a movie called Patriots Day or a movie about the Boston Marathon bombing? Yeah, I get it. And that’s the genius of it.

You get more shit these days for speaking out against America than you do for Sieg Heil-ing. I see a big problem with that. You don’t have to. It’s your right as an American. Just like it’s my right to say:

“Fuck the radicalized brothers who committed these acts of terrorism, but also fuck this movie.”

Here’s the Patriots Day trailer. Note how there’s at least one American flag in the first four B-roll shots right out of the Lionsgate, and then “America, the Beautiful” mournfully playing throughout. Propaganda at its very top notch finest: