Author: Josephine Wender (Page 2 of 2)

The film Nuremberg depicts the establishment and process of the Nuremberg trials following the Allied victory during World War II. It was fascinating to see how these legal officials created a system of international accountability for mass atrocities, or “crimes against humanity,” essentially from scratch, grounding the entire trial in a shared sense of global justice and responsibility. It was also interesting to see the ways in which the four powers represented in the judgement for the trial – the U.S., U.K., France, and Russia – interacted with each other and external players. As Secretary Elsie Douglas says at one point to chill political tensions within a Christmas party, “Frankly, I can’t keep track of all the politics in this room!”

One of the most poignant parts of the film was the use of visual evidence during the trial. Captured by Allied soldiers liberating Nazi concentration camps, the footage depicts the horrific realities of those subjected to Nazi camps: emaciated bodies, human remains in ovens, and mass graves piled high with corpses. Yet, it wasn’t the footage itself that struck me most, but rather the difference between my reaction to it as opposed to those in the courtroom. Viewers heard gasps, cries, and people running out of the room as they saw these images. However, I, as a viewer in 2025, was not moved to the same emotional depths as those watching live. Admittedly, I had seen that footage before, as well as heard many stories of the indescribable and horrific violence and torture that occurred within the camps. But these reactions made me start to think about the way we interact with violent or graphic footage presently. In today’s digital world, we are exposed to graphic and horrifying footage in an almost constant stream. Videos of murder and mass terrorist attacks from around the world find their way to the internet and into the pockets of billions of people globally. I wonder if it is more difficult to garner international support for mass atrocity accountability mechanisms because we are all so desensitized to the sight of violence on such a massive scale?

These questions felt even more topical in light of last week’s readings and short films on Open Source Investigations. With the rising capability and influence of artificial intelligence, video footage is easily altered or faked – even further contributing to our general desensitization to wartime or other violent footage. After all, why trust any video or photograph that could be faked? Therefore, in addition to the apathy the internet garners towards this footage, mistrust also lessens its power. It’s an extremely chilling thought, especially in a world where international laws are increasingly violated with seemingly very few consequences, and where public fatigue often risks sliding into indifference.

Potential Topic 1: Syrian Refugees in Germany

When writing my news piece last week, I had the privilege of talking to a variety of sources about the experience of Syrian nationals residing in the United States under Temporary Protected Status (TPS). During all of these interviews, in light of the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, some of the questions Syrian migrants have to grapple with daily became abundantly clear: When does one choose to stay in assured safety, or when should one return to their homeland? What happens when supposedly assured safety is compromised by rising anti-migrant sentiment? How does trauma within one’s homeland play a role in this decision? These questions are complicated by reports of existing danger within Syria and attempts of the German government to deport Syrian nationals in Germany for the first time in twelve years. As of early August, about 1,300 Syrians had left Germany to return to Syria following the fall of the Assad government. This piece would dive into the personal and political factors that drive refugees to return home as opposed to staying in Germany. I would hope to speak with refugees themselves, refugee non-profit organizations in Germany and the U.S., and Middle East policy experts to create this piece. 

Potential Topic 2: Parallel Rise of AfD and Trumpism’s Anti-Migrant Politics

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is a populist right-wing political party that rose to prominence throughout the late 2010s and became the second largest party in the Bundestag following the February 2025 elections. The party gained support due to their anti-migrant positions, including halting government spending on refugees, deporting refugees to their home countries, and removing constitutional access to asylum in Germany. The rise of AfD occurred simultaneously with President Trump’s election in the fall of 2016, campaigning on promises of building a physical wall on the U.S’s southern border to limit migrants, as well as various other anti-migrant positions. In addition to this simultaneous ascent to power, AfD and the Trump administration have a friendly relationship, with Vice-President Vance expressing support for AfD in January of 2025 and meeting with various AfD leaders since. This piece would examine the simultaneous rise of these two right-wing, populist movements with clear anti-migrant positions and what this may mean in signifying a global increase in hostility against migrants. To craft this article, I would hope to speak with supporters of both AfD and President Trump and experts on right-wing political movements. 

Questions for AfD:

1. Why do you think German citizens have increasingly resonated with your party’s platform over the past few years and which issues do you think most strongly mobilized supporters in the 2025 elections?
2. To what extent has AfD been influenced by other international political movements for policy and messaging strategies? Which ones?
3. Within the EU and the broader international community, what role does AfD believe Germany should have in refugee support and resettlement?

What I found most interesting in this week’s prep materials was the revolutionary nature of open source investigations due to their widespread accessibility. Anyone can become an “accidental journalist,” as described in the Bellingcat documentary, if they happen to digitally capture instances of interest. Further, interested volunteers can use those sources as the basis of their investigation – an investigation that can be conducted in that volunteer’s home anywhere in the world. In venturing away from the typical newsroom, open source journalism not only permits an ease of entry that has been historically absent but also allows volunteers from all around the world to collaborate on stories. However, this accessibility also holds innate challenges that are not as abundant in traditional modes of journalism. Accurate evidence, in this context, becomes more necessary as independent, volunteer journalists do not have the credibility of a known, verified outlet behind them. Additionally, as the documentary makes abundantly clear, footage is easy to forge and propagate as factual. Truth and evidence, therefore, become even more crucial commodities. 

Open source journalism not only serves as a typical fourth estate ‘watchdog’ entity but also as a mechanism for human rights accountability. This dual usage is evident through Human Rights Watch’s use of the method for their cases. Serving essentially as discovery would for a legal case, this type of investigative reporting can be used to source evidence of human rights violations from foreign actors in a way that was never possible prior to widespread and instantaneous access to footage of practically anything at any time. A Bellingcat reporter emphasizes this point, commenting that there are more hours of the Syrian Civil War online than hours in the conflict itself. The Defense Blog describes this accountability utility as “reveal[ing] the fog of war.” However, the documentary also makes clear that, while the overwhelming documentation of any event anywhere in the world is lauded as an “information revolution,” it can easily descend into “information warfare.” The film stresses that humans don’t want to fact-check any information that contradicts their worldview. Therefore, with an abundance of truthful and false/misleading information so quickly accessible, it becomes easier to live in an echo chamber – trusting sources that confirm existing beliefs or biases without bothering to verify any of this information. In reading these sources and witnessing the power of open-source investigative journalism, I was in awe of the talent and dedication of these citizen journalists. However, when watching the documentary, I was struck by how this tool for accountability, brought about by the accessible and ubiquitous nature of the internet, can also be so quickly used for sowing distrust in truth and creating misleading content for clicks. How do we, as an audience and as aspiring journalists, reckon with the dual power of the internet? Further, how do we ensure that we continue to find truth within an online landscape increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence and other technological advances?

This week’s readings shed light upon the process of escape and the current status of Syrian and Yazidi refugees. I found Patrick Kingsley’s The New Odyssey and Dunya Mikhail’s The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq to be stunning works of interview-based narrative non-fiction. These works use first-person accounts of refugee voyages to safety in order to outline the struggles and terror refugees face in their escape from mortal danger. Together, these pieces not only describe the resilience of refugees navigating the impossible choices that come with leaving one’s home country, but also discuss an often forgotten aspect of the refugee experience – how displacement continues to affect the daily lives of the refugees even after they reach safety. 

Additionally, in reading news stories about the current status of Syrian refugees in Germany, I drew numerous parallels between the circumstances of relocated Syrian nationals in Germany and the U.S. This week I reported on the Trump Administration’s announcement that it would be terminating the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of Syrian nationals residing in the U.S thirteen years after the status was first granted. As a part of this announcement, Syrian migrants in the U.S. have been given sixty days to either voluntarily leave the country, essentially self-deport, or be subject to arrest and deportation. In this announcement, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, stated that individuals who choose to self-deport will be provided with, “a complimentary plane ticket, a $1,000 exit bonus, and potential future opportunities for legal immigration.” This is similar to the idea propagated by German conservative lawmaker Jens Spahn, who suggested that the German government should charter planes to return resettled Syrians in Germany to Syria, as well as provide them with a “starting fund of 1,000 euros ($1,055),” as reported by The New Arab. These material rewards for leaving the country underscore the growing hostility towards migrants and refugees that have grown more present in both nations throughout recent years, as is emphasized by the rise of right-wing nationalist parties. It was surprising to me that these government entities think that cash rewards for leaving the country will be enough to spur people to return home to a potentially unsafe environment. As I noted in my news article, the U.S. Department of State and the United Nations have both recently released safety warnings for terrorist attacks in Syria. In the U.S., I think it is the fear of inhumane and dangerous detention practices, rather, that will be more influential in spurring voluntary deportations. In the coming months, I am interested in seeing whether these rewards for choosing to leave the country will influence migrants to self-deport and, further, if these rewards ever actually reach these migrants. 

This week’s readings included the incredible investigative reporting conducted by Azmat Khan uncovering the U.S. military’s systemic failure to avoid and detect harm to civilian populations during the “forever wars” in Iraq and Syria. Discovery of these institutional failures, as well as a disturbing culture among soldiers, was based on on-the-ground interviews, site visits, and military documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. One part of Khan’s article that felt extremely resonant this week was the description of the video game-esque language used by soldiers that gamifies the murder of civilians. Similarly, the alleged killer of right-wing podcaster and media personality Charlie Kirk inscribed bullet casings with slang from video games and internet forum culture. These phrases, similar to the messages Khan discovered sent between soldiers like “this area is poppin” and “play time?,” point to a larger normalization of inhumanity and legitimization of violent tendencies by games in which the murder of civilians gives a player points in order to win. Evidence of violence translating from the screen into the real world is undeniable, as exemplified in these two cases among others. I found this idea to be well encapsulated in Nathan Taylor Pemberton’s September 14th opinion piece in the New York Times, in which he writes, “While the internet’s rot once felt safely bottled, or fire-walled, within a digital realm, this act of political violence may have punctured whatever barrier once existed. We can no longer ignore that we live in an era where the online and the lived are indistinguishable.”

Other readings from this week detailed the struggles Afghan refugees face gaining asylum in Germany amidst the rising tide of anti-migrant sentiment and the growing influence of the far right-wing party, Alternative für Deutschland. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has vowed to increase deportations and limit asylum applications. These accounts reminded me of my work this summer as an immigration case worker, where many cases involved Afghan families who had supported the U.S. military against the Taliban and were waiting in Pakistan for resettlement in the United States. Yet, unlike in Germany, Afghan refugee cases in the U.S. face an additional challenge: over this summer, President Trump issued an executive order that limited the entry of foreign nationals from certain countries under the guise of protecting national security, effectively a continuation of the ‘travel ban’ or ‘Muslim ban’ from his first term. Afghanistan is one of the countries on the list. Meanwhile, refugees in Pakistan too face uncertainty. In April of this year, the Pakistani government deported more than 19,500 Afghans. Many Afghans risked their lives to aid U.S. forces against the Taliban, with the promise of eventual safety in America. Now abandoned by U.S. forces, they face a seemingly impossible question: where can they find safety? They cannot return to Afghanistan without risking retaliation from the Taliban, cannot enter the U.S. under current legislation, cannot remain in Pakistan amid daily deportations, and now, as is evident in these articles, cannot rely on Germany, where immigration policies have grown increasingly hostile.

Some of this week’s readings and multimedia sources detail on-the-ground civilian resistance efforts in Ukraine in the midst of their ongoing, protracted war with Russia. These endeavors come from within the country, as described in Professor Amos’s July article about state-compensated civilian groups tasked with shooting down Russian drones, as well as international religious missionary volunteers. The film, A Faith Under Siege, depicts the journeys of Christian volunteers from the U.S. traveling to Ukraine to support defense against Russia’s “Holy War” on Ukrainian evangelical Christians. I was surprised to hear the film describe the primary motivation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as religious, rather than territorial dominance or threats to Putin’s authoritarian regime. Explaining this religious persecution, Ukrainian evangelicals say that it is their congregation’s devotion to faith that scares the Russian government, as they see it as a threat to the efficacy of their authoritarian propaganda efforts. While, yes, religion has historically been utilized as a hotbed of resistance against hostile government forces, I found it difficult to believe this could be the leading rationale for Russia’s continued military attack. As is outlined in other readings from this week, it seems as though assaults on Ukrainian evangelical Christians are rather only one part of Russia’s goal to destroy all Ukrainian institutions of power in an attempt to take control of the territory. 

There were other parts of the documentary that also made me slightly uneasy. One of these aspects was the link between Christian missionaries and citizen aid. Viewers of the film watch as Christians in the U.S., galvanized to fight for their faith in Ukraine against Russian forces, visit Ukraine to provide ministry to citizens, specifying that they are not there on behalf of the U.S. government. However, it is not merely prayers and religious reassurance that they provide to ‘believers.’ One Christian volunteer is a former U.S. Marine and teaches Ukrainian civilian fighters how to tie an effective tourniquet. This scene led to my main concern: is the expertise and aid provided by volunteers being solely provided to Ukrainian Christians? It is extremely moving and makes a lot of sense that, in the midst of immense hardship and loss, Ukrainians are turning to religion as a way to process these emotions. However, conversely, are citizens of Ukraine being taken advantage of by missionaries in their time of need, and being force-fed religious teachings in order to receive the aid and combat training potentially provided by these volunteers? Missionary groups have historically used international military conflict as a way to gain religious converts, exploiting civilian trauma. It is crucial to ensure that religious volunteers in Ukraine, who have independently travelled with the intent of protecting Christianity, do not similarly take advantage of Ukrainian citizens traumatized by this ceaseless military conflict.

This week’s readings focus on government attempts to discredit media outlets that print information the Trump Administration disagrees with or does not want propagated. These efforts are taking the form of legal action against media conglomerates, attempts to limit citizen access to government information, and even intimidation of reporters. Several of this week’s sources emphasize press freedom as a litmus test for democracy, as a free and independent press often reflects the health and functionality of a democratic system. Attempts to limit and undermine press freedom, therefore, trigger concerns regarding the state of democracy in the U.S.

One aspect of media censorship that I had not given as much thought to previously was internal censorship of media outlets fearing political retaliation from the Trump Administration. Examples of this type of censorship include the Washington Post removing cartoons that depict President Trump unflatteringly prior to publication and the L.A. Times altering a reporter’s view on a Trump appointee. These outlets have begun to censor their own staff out of fear that contrasting or criticizing government positions will negatively impact the financial capabilities and reporting potential of their papers or sites. 

This fear is founded. The Trump Administration has advanced lawsuits with questionable legal bases against Meta, ABC, CBS, and the Des Moines Register. Meta, ABC, and CBS have all settled their suits, while the Des Moines Register continues their legal battle. Additionally, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has reinstated previously dismissed complaints against CBS, NBC, and ABC regarding Trump’s claims of unfair pre-election coverage, as well as launching investigations into the National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). These punitive measures form a hostile and fearful media environment that can lead to the self-censorship witnessed in media outlets. 

Conversely, platforms that align themselves with the Trump administration have received favorable treatment, including increased time in the Oval Office and superior reporting opportunities. The Department of Defense removed the NBC News, Politico, New York Times, and NPR offices from the Pentagon, replacing them with pro-Trump outlets outside the mainstream. These fringe media sites are more likely to propagate false or misleading information, including the claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. In doing so, they contribute to a widespread fragmentation of shared facts and erode the idea of a common truth that supersedes partisan politics. Individuals who receive news from different platforms may be exposed to opposing sets of information, effectively enabling people to live in separate realities. What does ‘truth’ mean in a world in which media outlets promoted by the White House can write anything and declare it factual? As media outlets settle cases they know lack legal standing in order to appease the President’s false narrative, have we moved past an objective truth that is provided to citizens through the news? Furthermore, when we lose the media as a watchdog for accuracy and accountability, have we entered a world in which the truth itself loses all meaning? Where do consumers of media, as well as media platforms themselves, go from here with three years remaining in the Trump Administration and attacks against media seeming to continue relentlessly, if not intensify?