When Jamali Maddix was twenty-four, he decided that he wanted to talk to
neo-Nazis. Maddix is a British comedian who is brown-skinned (half of
his family comes from Jamaica) and bearded and too tall to go anywhere
unnoticed, so, in some ways, this was an odd plan. But, in other ways,
it made a lot of sense. Maddix, like a number of curious and ambitious
performers before him, was following the lead of the British broadcaster
Louis Theroux, who made his name with a series of BBC documentaries in
which he tried to get to know different people from across the U.S.—the
more different, the better. One celebrated Theroux production, from
2003, was called, “Louis and the Nazis.”
Maddix sold his idea to Viceland, the cable-TV-network offshoot of Vice,
and his project acquired a name that made its premise plain: “Hate Thy
Neighbor.” The first season consisted of six episodes during which
Maddix got to know sectarians from around the world: neo-Nazis in
Pennsylvania, militants in Ukraine, black Israelites in Harlem. The show
was engrossing, largely because of Maddix’s nuanced approach to hosting
it. Where Theroux was earnest and sometimes disapproving, Maddix tended
toward cheerful incredulity; he was a friendly, hip-hop-loving traveller
trying hard to understand why the people he met thought and said the
things they did. In Pennsylvania, he visited people affiliated with a
group called the National Socialist Movement. At one point, a man
wearing a swastika tank top tried to find cultural common ground with
Maddix. “I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the rapper DMX,” the man
said. “He’s actually a reverend. Have you heard his sermons? Awesome. He
brings tears to my eyes. We love DMX.” The show intersperses the
documentary scenes with footage of Maddix onstage, in England, telling
an audience about his travels—the comedian as narrator. (In this way,
and perhaps no other, the show also pays tribute to another celebrated
precursor: “Seinfeld.”) He told that crowd something he hadn’t been
eager to tell the man in the swastika tank top: that he loves DMX, too.
Maddix came to New York recently to promote the new season of “Hate Thy
Neighbor,” a show that no longer quite matches its title. “When you do
six episodes of that genre, and you’re doing hate groups, you kind of do
find the same story six times,” Maddix said. So he set out to talk to a
wider range of subjects: pro-life activists, Confederate-flag
enthusiasts, feminist SlutWalk marchers, free-speech protesters, boys
being scared straight at a “prison camp.” In fact, the name was
sometimes a burden; it turned out that many political and religious
leaders were not eager to be featured on a show called “Hate Thy
Neighbor.” Maddix concedes that, for the show’s second season, a milder
name might have been more appropriate—maybe, “I Didn’t Agree with
Everything My Neighbor Said.”
When he first conceived “Hate Thy Neighbor,” Maddix was not thinking
about the future of American politics—or even, really, his own future.
He was an emerging comedian, respected but not yet famous, known for
sharp and irreverent riffs on race. Filming began before Donald Trump
was elected president, and the first time one of Maddix’s subjects
mentioned the “alt-right,” Maddix had no idea what that was. “At first,
you’re, like, ‘These are just some crazy bastards, and they’re just
saying some mad shit, and you can take it with a pinch of salt,’ ” he
said. And, indeed, the first episode that he filmed, set in Sweden among
a group called Nordic Youth, is the most high-spirited. At one point, a
young white man tells Maddix that he is “not attracted to people of
other ethnicities,” and Maddix, incredulous, administers a quiz.
(Beyoncé? “No.” Halle Berry? “I don’t actually know who that is.”
Jennifer Lopez? “I don’t know her face.”) In a stand-up segment, he
describes how the Nordic Youth members, patrolling the streets of
Stockholm, spoke in hushed tones about the danger of being ambushed by
“the left.” “They were saying ‘the left’ so much that even I got
scared—I was, like, ‘They’re coming!’ ” he tells the crowd. “I forgot I
was left-wing—that’s how scared I was. Like, I’m scared of the
anti-racists. I forgot I had a race card!”
Maddix found that his enthusiasm flagged as shooting continued. “By the
sixth one, man, it’s draining,” he said. The final episode of the first
season was also the testiest, and the most painful: it brought Maddix
home to England, to spend time with members of the English Defence
League, which is known for campaigning against immigration. In a parking
lot, after a demonstration, Maddix’s main subject protests that he isn’t
a racist. “Listen,” Maddix replies, “I’m a mixed-race dude, and I’ve
heard you say ‘nigger.’ ” The confrontation escalates: the man slaps at
the camera and seems to shove Maddix, and police officers converge upon
him as Maddix protests, “Don’t nick him—no!”
By the time those episodes were broadcast, in early 2017, the news,
especially in America, was full of stories about alt-right groups and
other previously marginal political forces, stories that sparked a
debate, which is ongoing, about the propriety and wisdom of paying
attention to political figures with bizarre or offensive beliefs. And
Maddix has heard the argument that shows like his can exacerbate the
“hate” that they seek to chronicle. “One part of me thinks, Yeah, why am I giving these people a light? What’s the point?” he said. “Another
part of me thinks, But these people do exist. Yeah, we can ignore them,
but it doesn’t stop them existing.” Maddix still thinks of himself
primarily as a comedian, which means he doesn’t expect to find answers
to thorny questions such as these. One of his worries, after the first
season, was that comedy audiences would expect him to be fully
politically engaged. “It’s not like now I’m wearing a turtleneck and
sunglasses, talking about ‘the system,’ ” he says. “But, for a little
while, it did change me as a person, and it changed my comedy a bit. It
was hard to be funny when I came back.”
These days, Maddix seems happy to be promoting a less hate-oriented
season of “Hate Thy Neighbor”—though he knows, too, that Americans still
know him, if they know him at all, as the racism guy. (Viceland’s
Nielsen ratings have been low,
but “Hate Thy Neighbor” is worth seeking out online.) When he came to
New York, Maddix stopped by Vice headquarters, in Williamsburg, for some
cross-promotion: an appearance on “Desus & Mero,” the channel’s hip-hop-inspired talk show, which is hosted by a couple of prankish
Bronx guys. Desus asked him, “How do you stay so chill? Do you not want
to punch these people in the face?”
“I mean, you do,” Maddix said. “But if I still got upset about racism, I
shouldn’t make a show about racism.”
Maddix told them about some of the people he had met, and Desus beamed
with a twisted patriotic pride when Maddix held forth on the insanity of
America. Maddix asked them about one particularly exotic location he had
visited during his travels: a McDonald’s in the Bronx, not far from
Yankee Stadium. “That’s the roughest McDonald’s I’ve seen—whoever works
there is a soldier,” he said. When it was time to film a promotional
spot, Desus looked into the camera and offered a mischievous salutation:
“Shout out to all my racists!”
In the second season of “Hate Thy Neighbor,” which began earlier this
year, the tribal enmities are not quite so implacable. “I’ve had Native
American blessings, I’ve had Southern Baptist blessings,” Maddix said.
“I think four people prayed on me this season.” Because of his beard,
Maddix is often mistaken for a Muslim, but he has never been religious.
“You go, ‘Yeah, I know you’re being nice, but it’s just weird.’ ” (The
episode about the prison camp is Maddix’s favorite, and quite possibly
the best episode in the series: a thoughtful, downbeat chronicle of
struggling kids and struggling parents, and of the choices they make
when they feel they have no choices at all.) The season’s final episode,
about “sovereign citizens” who refuse to recognize the U.S. government,
will be broadcast tomorrow night, and Maddix plans to come back, later this
year, for his first American comedy tour. “I’m looking forward to being
multifaceted again,” he said. “I’m looking forward to not everything
being about the color of my skin and the fact that I kind of look like a
Muslim talking to a nutter.”
Two seasons of filming have left Maddix with no firm political
prescriptions; he is more inclined to raise an eyebrow at his subjects
than to confront them or try to reform them. His sense of the absurd,
and his disinclination to make up his mind, served him particularly well
during an episode from this season about the free-speech controversies
at the University of California, Berkeley. He followed the farcical
protests and counter-protests that surrounded an appearance by the
political provocateur Milo Yiannopolous. The episode was noisy, chaotic,
and at times very funny, and at the end, we saw Maddix onstage, trying
to make sense of it all. “This is basically the part of the show where I
give my opinion—which is everyone’s favorite part,” he says. He gulps
down some beer, looks up at the ceiling, and thinks for a moment. “Don’t
watch this episode,” he says, finally. He points into the camera. “If
you’ve watched it now, it’s too late! Tell a friend: don’t watch this.
It’s genuinely probably one of the most dumbest things I’ve ever been
involved in. Genuinely. Genuinely fuckin’ ridiculous. What the fuck did
we film? Basically all we filmed was two people arguing about the right
to fuckin’ argue. There was not one point made. It’s just, ‘I want to
argue.’ ‘We’re arguing!’ ‘All right!’ That’s it! It’s a fuckin’
nonargument.”
This is about as close as Maddix ever comes to righteousness, and it is
not very close. “Everyone’s just trying to push their fuckin’ opinion
onto you, and I’m not going to do that to you guys,” he tells the
audience. “I’m sorry. I’m not going to do that. We’re leaving on a bit
of a downer, innit?” He sighs and pauses—and then he has an idea. “Do
you want to hear a story about some Nazis?”
Sourse: newyorker.com
