As a well-known, biracial TV presenter in Germany, Mo Asumang has dealt with the realities of racism throughout her career. But, rather than get angry, Asumang got curious, and decided to explore modern racism by going straight to the source.
In her startling documentary The Aryans, the fledgling filmmaker uses a combination of steely nerves and innate compassion to confront a variety of racists in an attempt to unearth the motivation behind their hate.
Asomung goes face-to-face with German neo-Nazis, the notorious white supremacist Tom Metzger, and members of the Ku Klux Klan, who are interviewed in full regalia. You can see them become gradually disarmed when she — someone they've been taught to hate — talks to them thoughtfully, without anger.
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“These people don’t actually talk to Jews. They don’t talk to black people. They don’t know their enemy, so-called enemy,” Asumang told BBC News. “So what they do, when they talk to me, they talk to reality, and that’s the first thing they have to survive.”
At one point, Asumang, a daughter of a black Ghanaian father and a white German mother, shows a young neo-nazi a picture of her grandmother, who was an officer in Hitler's secret service. The young man looks befuddled, like everything he once knew to be true was just eviscerated. It's compelling stuff.
Watch some segments of Asumang's haunting film below.