In Barbarity There Are No Comparisons

“I will say nothing about Nuremberg. In barbarity there are no comparisons. Whether it is here or there, it is all “here”.”

Gandhi, Letter To Prema Kantak, October 16, 1946

In a ghoulish manner, but with an intellectual excuse to paste over my amorality I went on to YouTube last week found the full version of the Saddam execution and downloaded it (using firefox/greasemonkey) [I wont post a link to that, I’m sure you can find it yourself if you “need” to].

In the presentations I do on ITN and Reuters news material as part of my job I often like to find archival material that reflects or interacts with contemporary news events. The film of Saddam's execution and the resulting controversy seemed an excellent topic to pursue as it includes moving image technology and "news value" as an inherent part of the story.

An obvious historical event to use as a point of comparison seemed to me to be the Nuremberg trials and subsequent executions of leading Nazi's - so I went back and took a look at the newsreel record of that.

Gaumont British News devoted a whole issue to the verdict and sentencing of the Nazi's - however it states that they were not allowed to film the sentencing. Using images of the court doors being closed in front of them they overlay audio of Goering being sentenced to death by hanging. Gaumont did not cover the executions themselves at all (in the first issue after the executions took place Gaumont leads with racing from Newmarket).

British Pathe News issued a story over the dilemma of whether or not to show the executions, preceding the hangings they ran a screen and press publicity campaign asking their audience their opinion. They received 980 replies. 950 of which stated they did not think the hangings should be shown. The Pathe story also mentions questions being asked in the House of Commons regarding the showing of the executions.

The American edition of Universal News, illustrated the execution part of their coverage with footage of American soldiers hanging a weighted dummy from the gallows, thus getting their money shot without showing the real deal.

British Movietone News featured the American reporter Kingsbury Smith, the only journalist to witness the executions, speaking about what he saw of the Nazis being hanged, including the detail that following the hangings the dead body of Goering (who committed suicide a few hours before the executions) was brought in to demonstrate to the witnesses that he too was dead. Kingsbury Smith didn’t reveal in this piece, as he would in print, that a miscalculation of the weight of Julius Streicher meant that he did not die instantly:

“He went down kicking. When the rope snapped taut with the body swinging wildly, groans could be heard from within the concealed interior of the scaffold. Finally, the hangman, who had descended from the gallows platform, lifted the black canvas curtain and went inside. Something happened that put a stop to the groans and brought the rope to a standstill. After it was over I was not in the mood to ask what he did, but I assume that he grabbed the swinging body of and pulled down on it. We were all of the opinion that Streicher had strangled.”

Kingsbury Smith, The Execution of Nazi War Criminals, 16 October 1946 for the International News Service

Saddam Hussein's execution, in addition to everything else it is, seems emblematic of a new era of the audio-visual medium – one that circumvents the mainstream media, News or otherwise. This event was filmed on a mobile phone, spread around the world using P2P technology and then further distributed, manipulated and repurposed on web 2.0 sites like YouTube.

It shows what the mainstream news media will not show (and perhaps for very good reasons). [The Guardian faced harsh criticism, including from a large percentage of its own journalists for showing a still from the film on its front page]. It fits into a genre that includes the militia beheadings from Iraq - and has a relationship with the "last messages" of suicide bombers, Jihadi propaganda from around the world (check Internet Archive for the Chechen and Ossetian end of this), but also the footage taken in Falluja by US Marines helmet mounted cameras (available on YouTube in both "raw" formats and in versions edited to heavy metal soundtracks - glorifying the destruction taking place). Since Vietnam, battlefield coverage has largely been absent from the news, these new technologies are re-revealing what it's actually like in a war – fucking horrible.

Of course there is also that argument that it is pornography that leads new developments in audio-visual technology - and perhaps all this stuff is pornography too? Hearing about some piece of film featuring this internationally known figure in a compromising position that the media wont show, knowing that you can probably find it on the internet, searching for it, downloading it, sharing it with others - are we talking about the execution of Saddam Hussein or 'One Night in Paris'? What are our motivations?