Propaganda Corner: End of the Wicked

For the second installment of Propaganda Corner I shall be reviewing a little known Nigerian movie called End Of the Wicked.

Background
Produced by Liberty Ministries in Nigeria, this movie seeks to warn people about the evils of witches and witchcraft. I was made aware of this movie via a clip when looking up the Satanic Panic on Youtube. I saw the clip, and had little to think about. I then saw the Channel 4 Dispatches ep on how children in Nigeria are being abused because they are accused of being witches. This movie and the literature produced by Liberty is very anti-child. Claiming if children of 2 scream in the night or are ill often they are the devil's minions.

The film itself.
The movie starts with people in black robes flying in a forest using the special effects seen maybe in a low budget version of Superman. They are then greeted by their master, a man in heavy white make up with red mouth and chin. Here we are introduced to the "covern" (I appologise to friends who are witches and are in coverns for using the term, but it is what they use and this is a propaganda review.)

We are then introduced to the family of a successful business man. Most of the movie is about the covern tormenting the family and the father in prticular. Oddly enough by his own mother, who is a member of this "covern", the reason she gave for tormenting her, because he looks after her. (No sence to me either) Anyway, the youtube clip of where kids join happens, a dickgirl rape scene and other weird shit, including what looks like the real killing of a live goat on screen. Eventually, the surviving members of the family are saved by a pastor I beleive was played by the church's leader. The evil mother is exposed and subjected to "christian justice"

This is a hard movie to watch. It's a move with a very disjointed story. Normally villians have motivations against their chosen victims because of a sence of wrongdoing. Venom for example, the alien part feels rejected by Spider-Man for being torn off, and Eddie Brock pissed against spider man for his falling career. But the mother in this story respondes to her son's taking care of her with a misplaced desire to make him suffer. This movie would be laughable is it wasn't harmful. This movie was made to demonise witches and witchcraft. To show that they have no good intentions, only to make others suffer while gaining favor with the christian Satan. I've spoken to witches and none of them worship the christian satan nor do they go out of the way to harm others. Yet films like this has been a factor in the witchhunts that still go on in Nigerian, the country of origin today.

The Argument of Freewill, or can imperfection come from perfection?

While here on the internet and out and about hearing preachers, I've come into a very interesting argument as to why humans "deserve eternal torment". The argument that God loves so so much that he didn't want us to be mindless robots so he gave us freewill, the ability to do and think as we see fit. But because of our (preexisting) sinful nature, we rebeled and so deserve to burn for eternity. And that the perfect world became imperfect. Now there is a flaw in this as those who make this argument often claim that God is all knowing, all powerful and omnibenevolent. The flaws in this argument suggest that God did not predict how humans would behaive. So how could he be all knowing if he didn't know that Adam and Eve would take a bite out of something they shouldn't. And if God is so damn perfect, how could flawed creations be made by him. Another issue I have is a moral issue. God is said not to want humans to be like robots, yet if I understand what many of his followers say about having faith and forsaking evidence for things like Evolution or Abiogenesis or the age of the universe, then it seems to me God wants unthinking automatons. Could he given us freewill so he would have an excuse to send people to hell?

On Evil

When the word ‘evil’ is heard, many images are conjured up in our minds. They range from the rather ridiculous super-villains from the 60’s batman series to the menacing characters from video games like Doom. But what does it mean to be truly evil? Buy a cape? Hire henchmen? Put the nearest man wearing tights in a death-trap? I have found the answer to be much simpler and less expensive. Evil means different things to different people. I have found that the most common elements of evil include; insatiable greed, theft, a need to inflict pain to get something from a subject or just inflicting it for the pleasure of inflicting it. A common, maybe the least disputed element of evil is killing others. Then why are people who do none of these considered evil by others? Take the common stereotype of witches. Witches are depicted as green skinned old women who have a taste for children’s flesh. They fly on broomsticks while cursing people and turning them into newts, toads and other small animals. It’s ok right? Witches don’t exist do they? Witches do exist, but they are no way near as how they are depicted in movies and story books. In fact it is considered unwitch like to cause people misery. Yes there is magic, but like any human operated tool there is as much ability to cause evil as there is to cause good.

One of the problems with evil is sometimes it claims to be good. All it takes is an organisation to form and people will flock to it thinking they have everyone’s best interests at heart. For example, in the 1930s such an organisation became known. It gained a following, it had popularity, and it claimed to be working for the good of its people. I speak of the Nazi party of Germany. All they needed was an “evil” enemy. This role was given to the Jewish people. The use of propaganda cemented these ideas the party wanted the people to believe. Making themselves look good so they can be excused with genocide on an “evil” race.

The Nazis were not the first to attempt genocide. When Christianity was introduced to England, many were subjected to the witch trials. These were to determine weaver or not people were witches. The Christians told people that witches were the enemies of their good, made deals with demons or the devil himself and must be exterminated. The trials were often in a fashion that would kill the subject despite innocence. In fact one of the tests was to throw the subject into a lake, if they float they must have demonic help, if they sank and drowned, they were innocent.

Evil indeed comes in many forms, but the worst are the forms that pretend to be a force of good.