The global discussions around the controversial movie Citizen Vigilante are both boring and alarming. Because if people don’t get the bigger picture here, there’s absolutely no path to preventing more misery or to skipping the cycle of action and reaction in the short term. In the unrest of our modern cities, the film Citizen Vigilante doesn’t merely provoke and promote violence, as opposing parties like to repeat over and over again. The movie unsettles a deeper current that can no longer be kept beneath the surface.
Far from the clichés of vigilante justice, Citizen Vigilante is a mirror of a Europe on the brink. Hell, to a civilised ensemble on this planet on the edge. One where the line between order and collapse is dangerously thin from all angles. Therefore, I don’t linger on the obvious. Namely, the actor’s sexual misconduct accusations and the fact that he, as an individual, may not be trustworthy.
This world is full of individuals who do evil as human beings, but who keep excelling as whatever sort of ‘performer’ in society. There’s a major discrepancy between someone’s public work and the private modality.
Nor do I want to state the obvious of how risky the actions of the main character, Michael Sanders, are, because if everyone were to do as they pleased, the collective order as we have known for a while in our ‘civilized cooperation’ on this globe could vanish. In this particular case, the simplistic divide between right and wrong is thus a distraction, and as stated before, tremendously boring.
What the film demands of us is that we face something far more elusive at the core of this era, beyond right- or left-wing politics. Namely, the erosion of proportionality in justice itself.
Moreover, the fact is that even in cases in which sentences are proportional, which is rare these days, there’s no justice in an absolute sense. Law doesn’t provide justice. Only Karma, the principles of this universe beyond time and space, and a higher ‘ GPS’ that works throughout many lives do.
Even in the case of contemporary proportionality, justice is merely a plaster. For instance, someone who murders another will never bring back the life (s) destroyed by being sentenced to life imprisonment. Or someone who victimizes someone else can never repay the damages, whether with trauma category ‘small t’ or ‘large T’.
As a migrant who just exchanged the Netherlands for Cyprus a bit over a month ago, I can reassure the world that the discussions around the movie Citizen Vigilante aren’t or shouldn’t be about migrants in themselves. Migrants as a category aren’t the issue here. I can now share the other side, thus my experiences as a migrant (obviously, not a sponsored and pampered refugee, or misleading fortune seeker), and how insanely hard and unjust those sometimes are.
For example, when people treat me as a cash cow, or screw me over, or when they evade responsibility, or keep their distance when connecting, when I don’t understand why – culturally speaking.
Or when they hate me so badly without ever knowing or meeting me (I have a by-weekly column at Cyprus Mail about my transition, and the hate I receive in the comments on Facebook next to all the amazing reactions is unbearably unjust), because of their projections on me.
Or when they treat me as if I’m taking away from their existence (I’m not, as I’m not one of those rich and privileged people in Cyprus; I barely own a thing, and I’ll have to start working again for a very long time to survive).
When I have only been giving and giving and giving for weeks on end now, and obviously, I wouldn’t even commit a 0.000001 percentage of those heinous crimes that the problematic migrants commit – ever.
Despite my best efforts—I’ve started to learn the language, network, give back, and integrate fully—I’ve felt how fragile and oftentimes unjust these structures are from the other side. So once again, migrants as a plain theme aren’t the issue. Some well-intended migrants contribute.
The issue is how the collective has been gaslighted for so long, when the problems with certain migrants got worse and worse, how they have been left on the side and haven’t been offered proper solutions to protect them and their future offspring. In other words, to protect basic existence.
Another example of how alarming the situation in the civilized world actually is at this point can be seen in the case I wrote about, where I argued that the concept of ICE in the United States wasn’t a ‘not in my backyard’ situation. I wrote about ICE for this platform and for others, including for the Dutch Telegraph (print and online). The reactions I got to that opinion piece showed the same alarming conclusion as now, with the movie Citizen Vigilante.
The tidal wave of responses wasn’t fringe, but collective exhaustion. People wrote things such as: “I would do it for free; sign me up.” Or: “ICE, bring it now. Better yesterday than today.”
These masses of reactions I got on TikTok (I don’t even have a following there, as I started a couple of months ago and had other matters on my plate to deal with) and other platforms weren’t a call from the far right alone, but from all sorts of ‘regular’ people on the political spectrum. It was a pervasive frustration and a raw cry from ordinary people who no longer see justice being upheld.
Because there is no proportionality when people, including problematic migrants, commit the most heinous crimes, if a basic and average sentence should be two years, the Netherlands, for example, now provides two months. Fun fact is how the countries of origin of those migrants would act if those heinous acts were conducted on their territories… Thát is the core problem!
The current collective state of what I call inversion is a disease. It makes victims not want to seek justice because they get retraumatized again and again. It diminishes collective trust, and it leads to masses of people who see a hero in the main character, Michael Sanders, of Citizen Vigilante.
Even when deep down, many of them know that it’s shortsighted. Even if people’s core indicates that there should be something better to strive for beyond the current turmoil of this era, their pain and rage are so all-encompassing that this is the consequence.
Instead of reaching out, even politicized to the far right, which obviously isn’t where I personally belong, and validating those points that are true, such as that pain and rage – not to be confused with hate for the sake of hate –, the divide is worsened and worsened as a collective.
What retort instead of condemnation is there left when people with immense pain and rage state: “If people acted like Michael Sanders, we would see a major decline in their heinous crimes in no time. They are mocking us because we don’t respect civilization enough to keep sentences harsh”.
Thus, this film doesn’t just indict a single person; it’s a reminder of how close we stand to a collapse, when we have been collapsing for years already. The character’s behavior is a symbol of a broader failure in how we mete out justice up to inversion.
As I watch from my new, fragile position of being a migrant myself, I see how this film acts as a warning when proportionality has left the planet. It doesn’t call for simplistic answers, but forces us to reckon with a justice system so hollowed out that it no longer preserves civilization as sacred.
It forces us to reckon with the fact that standards have declined so badly that we tolerate the intolerable. Once again, it makes the case for zero compromise on ethics, morals, and integrity, without even having to rely on laws and legislation that only disappoint and fail again and again. It means starting to admit how sick it is, how we fail so much, that the crippling pain and rage are the only healthy symptoms left.
I recall the philosopher Kołakowski, who saw injustice as the slow decay of balance, and Bauman, who saw us drifting in a liquid modernity that dissolves our moral anchors. If we want to understand what this film stirs, we must see it as a warning that we stand dangerously close to relinquishing the future. It’s a call for a justice that is no longer passive and demands radical care.
A justice that protects humanity in the broadest sense, by confronting not just individual crimes with the severest possible punishments, but the fatal ideologies that give rise to them. For example, by creating laws for people who take fatal scriptures literally and want to act on them. In this radical shift, we protect the future of humanity as a whole, and we dare to believe that justice, though elusive, is still worth fighting for.
Yes, even when justice as a concept is an illusion. At least, justice wouldn’t be a total joke the way it is now. Because, once more: it means starting to admit how sick it is, how we fail so much, that the crippling pain and rage are the only healthy symptoms left…
