Antisemitic film’s SA blocking a victory for Board

South Africa’s Film and Publications Board (FPB) has refused to classify the documentary Hebrews to Negroes – Wake Up Black America because it contains antisemitic and harmful content. 

The ruling this week follows a formal complaint from the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) that argued that the film propagates racist stereotypes and antisemitic tropes which amounted to unlawful hate speech based on religion and ethnicity. 

The SAJBD was alerted to the film in June 2023 when it was screened at the Soweto Theatre. The Board was alerted by its counterparts in the United States, where the film’s producers live. They have been involved in distributing anti-Jewish conspiracies, films, and social media for many years. 

“The film had a broad range of antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories which the producers shared on various social media platforms,” said SAJBD National Director Wendy Kahn. “The organisers made it clear they intended to screen this hateful movie in commercial theatres around South Africa, spreading this venom about Jews.” 

The 2018 film, directed, written, and produced by Ronald Dalton Jr, is based on a book of the same name also written by Dalton. It promotes the belief that some people of colour, including black Americans, are the true descendants of the biblical Israelites. One of its core ideas is that the Jews of today aren’t Jews, but they have culturally appropriated the religious heritage of black people and covered it up. 

The film includes claims of an international Jewish conspiracy that aims to oppress and defraud black people. It quotes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford’s The International Jew; Holocaust denialism; attacks on Zionism; and conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family. The film also includes quotes attributed to Adolf Hitler that appear to be fabricated. 

“The film uses demonic imagery, likening Jews past and present to the devil. It claims that Jews were responsible for the transatlantic slave trade and refers to the Holocaust as one of the “major falsehoods” that Jews have foisted on humanity. It also rehashes various classic Protocols of the Elders of Zion-inspired tropes about Jews controlling the banks, education system, and mass media,” Kahn said. 

“The film depicts Jews as a nation of liars who, as a matter of deliberate strategy, have falsified history and concealed their real identity to conceal their nature and protect their status and power,” she said. 

In November 2022, major American Jewish organisations including the Anti-Defamation League; American Jewish Committee; and Jewish Federations of North America petitioned Amazon to stop distributing the Hebrews to Negroes book and film on its platform. Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy refused to remove the film or book from its website. The book had become a number one best seller in Amazon’s “religion and spirituality” category. 

The SAJBD filed a complaint with the FPB in 2023, raising the hateful content in the film and requesting that it decline classification as the film amounted to unlawful incitement to hatred based on both religion and ethnicity. The Board, together with its legal team headed by then SAJBD Gauteng Council Chairperson Harold Jacobs, presented its case at the FPB on 26 June 2024. 

“The maker of the film, Ronald Dalton Jr, was there in person to respond to our complaint against his film,” said Kahn. “After our lawyers presented on our behalf, we had to endure more than three hours of him purporting to explain away and justify the various vile sentiments about Jews that his film contained, during which he simply doubled down on the kind of antisemitic tropes that it propagated. 

“It was deeply upsetting to sit face to face with someone with such warped and dehumanising views on Jews,” said Kahn. “Throughout the process, Dalton continually lashed out at the SAJBD with his invective, just as he had been doing prior to this on his social media.” 

Two years later, the FPB has finally affirmed the SAJBD’s complaint and issued a refused-classification ruling regarding the film, and distributors have been requested to remove the film from all platforms in South Africa. 

“The producers of the film inundated the Film and Publications Board with videos and documents of their venomous beliefs, and it needed to consider them carefully. Though it has been a lengthy process, we believe it was worth waiting for this important outcome,” Kahn said. 

“World Jewry knows only too well that words have meaning and over the past two years, we have seen hate speech result in hideous violent attacks on Jewish people from America to Australia and many in between,” said Kahn. 

“Justice Sisi Khampepe in the SAJBD’s Masuku case quoted from Proverbs, namely “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” We are fortunate in South Africa to have advanced hate crimes and hate-speech legislation protecting us from all forms of threatening or demeaning rhetoric.” 

The FPB was approached for comment, but was unable to send it before the SA Jewish Report’s publication deadline.