What akwasia worthwhile is the realization of the magnitude of the consequences of an online witch hunt.
“Luckily no noose, old man, positive.” A family friend tries to give it an optimistic twist when rapper and activist Akwasi receives an unknown package for the umpteenth time. Akwasi thinks he recognizes a noose from the structure. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s received that kind of mail at home. It turns out to be ‘just’ a cable in the end, but the fact that Akwasi’s first hunch is so extreme shows how normal the abnormal has become for him.
How we got to that point, we see in the Videoland documentary akwasia, although most people will not have missed where all the threats began. In June 2020, Akwasi took part in a Black Lives Matter demonstration, gripping the microphone with great emotion. From that emotion came a statement that will haunt him for the rest of his life: ‘The moment I see a Zwarte Piet in November, I will personally kick him on the face.’
It sparked massive (online) popular anger, which still hasn’t subsided two years later. Read the reactions on social media under the announcement of this documentary, and your view of humanity does not get any rosier. Akwasi also realizes that the film will no longer encourage people to nuance: ‘This documentary will not be for everyone.’
Director Remco Garcia is mainly interested in the massive popular anger that arose after the verdict, although the film also reflects on Akwasi’s mission, for example with the establishment of Omroep Zwart. Unfortunately, the whole thing remains a bit too fleeting and unbalanced to really say anything new. This is more of a portrait with Akwasi than about Akwasi, and at times it pays off, for example when it comes to the curious Radio 1 interview in which he angrily walked away and took the interviewer’s laptop. There are some nuanced quotes from Adriaan van Dis and Typhoon, but the whole thing is dismissed a bit too easily.
What akwasia What makes it worthwhile is the realization of how big the consequences of an online witch hunt can be. What starts with keyboard knights driving each other crazy on social media ends in death threats, bullet letters and unwanted house calls. When Akwasi reads a hate mail from someone who ‘invites’ him for December 5, it hits hard. You can dismiss it as empty words of a confused person, but the hatred that Akwasi (and many other public figures with him) has inflicted does show that something is fundamentally wrong.
After so much trouble, it helped to hold on to people who can continue to act normally, such as the neighbor across the street who intervenes when two Zwarte Pieten stand in front of Akwasi’s door to intimidate him. As long as those people also make themselves heard, all hope is not lost.