KALEE BROWN  Courtesy collective-evolution.com

When I first watched the trailer for the Oscar-winning documentary The White Helmets, I cried. It paints a beautiful picture of saintlike, peaceful soldiers saving innocent civilians from the terror in Syria, with the song When The Saints Go Marching In” playing in the background. It ignited a fire of compassion and empathy within me for the Syrians plagued by war.

I knew that I needed to watch the documentary and, more specifically, learn more about this heroic group. Yet to my surprise, I learned that this group isn’t quite as heroic” as the documentary and North American mainstream media paints them to be. Perhaps the only reason this group deserved to win an Oscar was for their acting skills — not their humanitarian efforts.

Why the Documentary White Helmets Is Pure Propaganda

If you’ve seen the documentary, all I ask is that you please keep an open mind when reading this article. I myself admit that it was extremely moving, which is why this form of propaganda is so effective. Human beings are naturally empathetic; if we see someone hurting on the other side of the world, it pulls on our heart strings.

No one wants to see other people brutally tortured or murdered. It’s terrifying, and when these acts of violence are committed, we sometimes allow our emotions to get the best of us, which is completely understandable. Feeling empathy and compassion for people facing war and terror is natural, because we care so much about one another. However, in this case, it’s crucial that we put our emotions aside so we can understand what exactly we’re looking at.

In the documentary, the White Helmets are portrayed as a heroic group saving the lives of innocent Syrian civilians. Their video footage captures the chaos and tragedy that’s taking place in Syria, and features the group peacefully helping injured civilians as they fight, without using violence, against the war and terror that ensue.

Check out the following Netflix trailer for the documentary (full disclosure: it is genuinely heart-breaking, and debatably even more devastating knowing that much of it is propaganda and potentially fake):

As Netflix puts it, the documentary focuses on the perilous work of volunteers who brave falling bombs to rescue civilians from the carnage of Syria’s civil war.”

And the Oscars’ film synopsis reads as follows: In the chaos of war-torn Syria, unarmed and neutral civilian volunteers known as ‘the white helmets’ comb through the rubble after bombings to rescue survivors. Although they have already saved more than 60,000 lives since 2013, these brave first responders continue to place themselves in danger every day.”

As with so much in our society today, the truth of the matter here is that this information was manipulated in order to paint a false picture of what’s actually going on in Syria. Let’s start by debunking the documentary itself.

The film itself is not a real documentary,” explains Patrick Henningsen, a geopolitical analyst at 21st Century Wire. All of the footage used in the film was provided to the producers by the White Helmets themselves. This film production crew – Netflix productions – did not film any of the so-called rescue scenes.”

He continues:

What this film is essentially a PR cushion for a $100-$150 million covert op, which is basically an NGO front funded by USAID, the British Foreign Office, various EU member states, Qatar, and other various and sundry nations, and members of the public, who quite frankly in my opinion and many others, have been duped into donating their money for this rescue group, that is anything but. It essentially functions as a support group alongside Al-Nusra and al-Din al-Zenki and other known terrorist groups operating in Syria. That is a fact that has been proven by a number of eyewitness testimonies.

Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist and human rights activist, divulged that their video footage actually contains children that have been ‘recycled’ in different reports; so you can find a girl named Aya who turns up in a report in say, August, and she turns up in the next month in two different locations.”

Bartlett was a speaker at a United Nations panel on the current events in Syria. She delivers an incredibly insightful speech on what’s actually going on in Syria and how the White Helmets aren’t the heroes everyone thinks they are, but rather a strategic terrorist group that’s funded by the U.S. and other interested countries and parties. In regards to the recycled” children footage, you can read more about that in this 21st Century Wire article. They show numerous examples of the White Helmets posting the exact same photos of children, claiming they were taken on different dates.

You can watch the full video footage of Bartlett’s speech below:

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If the White Helmets Aren’t Heroes, Then Who Are They?

Founded in 2013, the White Helmets are largely funded by the U.S., the UK, and Europe. They claim that they receive no funding from outside parties with a vested interest in Syria, but a quick glance at the finances tells a different story.

Vanessa Beeley, an independent researcher and journalist, explains that they are in fact multi-million funded, conservatively speaking, a hundred million dollars, from the US – $23 million via USAID; UK around $65 million; France is supplying equipment.”

The U.S. has been funding the Syrian war for quite some time, so it’s clear that they have a vested interest. U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard actually just returned from Syria, and publicly discussed the U.S.’s interests in the Syrian war (as the U.S. sells arms to ISIS and other terrorist groups), offering a compelling call to action in the process:

I return to Washington, DC with even greater resolve to end our illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government. I call upon Congress and the new Administration to answer the pleas of the Syrian people immediately and support the Stop Arming Terrorists Act. We must stop directly and indirectly supporting terrorists—directly by providing weapons, training and logistical support to rebel groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and ISIS; and indirectly through Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Turkey, who, in turn, support these terrorist groups. We must end our war to overthrow the Syrian government and focus our attention on defeating al-Qaeda and ISIS.