Citizen Vigilante: Trolling or Bait?

The recent movie Citizen Vigilante, directed by Uwe Boll and starring Armie Hammer as Michael Sanders, the vigilante, is causing quite a stir. The film is in the same genre as the 1974 film Death Wish, starring Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey. Elon Musk asked Boll for permission to post it on X.com for free for 48 hours starting June 25th. Although Musk deleted his post on June 27th, many copies remain on the platform.

Having recently watched the film, I am concerned that this movie is trying to bait conservatives into violence (especially in Britain, given the recent revelations from their government). I am not sure why Elon promoted it. Apparently, Boll allowed the free posting to generate interest in a sequel. Is Musk just trolling, since leftists seem to hate him now, or is the film bait from the left to provoke the right into foolish violence?

The movie is set in a Baltic or Slavic country, simply identified as “Europe.” Sanders, an American, is there to settle his deceased father’s affairs and run the father’s landlord business. Sanders becomes a vigilante in response to violent crime committed by immigrants. Unlike Death Wish, where the violence was provoked by the murder of Paul Kersey’s wife and the attack on his daughter, the vigilante in this story has experienced no personal loss due to Islamic immigrants.

Citizen Vigilante is essentially revenge porn (with, by the way, a very unnecessary, explicit scene in a brothel; I fast-forwarded through this scene, and it did not seem to affect the plot in any way).

The movie is structured with intermittent cuts to Sanders being interviewed, him providing pixelated video explanations of his actions to news outlets, and Instagram videos from an approving public. Some of the interview segments suggest the police are interrogating Sanders. However, the movie ends without resolving these issues, one among many tactical errors in the film. In one scene, a SWAT team lines up in front of Sanders’ automatic weapons like 18th-century Red Coats facing muskets. Saunders leaves all kinds of forensic evidence at crime scenes. He handles weapons that are to be abandoned without gloves. He makes the same error on door knobs and steering wheels, and yet he just cannot be caught.

One irony of the film is that Sanders is punishing immigrants who misbehave in this unnamed European country, while he, himself, is an American immigrant in that country. So both the vigilante and those he is hunting are misbehaving immigrants.

My concern is that this film may tempt some to become vigilantes, an understandable reaction to much of the goings on across the pond. The British “Rape Gang Inquiry Report” (produced with the cooperation of several Members of Parliament) is worse than anything in the Epstein files. Some 250,000 young girls were violated and tortured. Rather than draw the sword to punish evil, the civil magistrate in Britain drew the sword to suppress the truth and protect the immigrant offenders.

Likely, some “woke” jurisdictions in the U.S.A. are likewise protecting “oppressed” offenders. Similar revelations to those in Britain may occur here. We must not take the bait.

The Biblical Response

In Sanders’ pixelated video explanations to the media concerning the immigrant violence, he states, “You are a democracy; these people did not vote for this.” This is a big problem with the film. There are no moral absolutes. The immigrant violence is wrong because nobody voted for it. Contrast that with (Romans 12:19 -13:4) “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord… For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil… for he bears not the sword in vain: for he is God’s minister, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil.” 

In fact, there are three wrongs here: The government is shirking its duty to protect the citizens by restraining evil. The criminal immigrants are wrong to commit violent crimes, and the vigilante is wrong to usurp the role of the government.

It has always been moral and proper for individuals to disobey orders that violate God’s moral law. The Hebrew midwives disobeying Pharaoh’s command to kill all newborn Hebrew boys (Exodus 1:15–21) is likely the first example. The recent pandemic has provided examples, with many churches (including John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church) remaining open despite government shutdown orders.

The Lesser Magistrate Doctrine

The lesser magistrate doctrine is a resistance to tyranny or corruption by those in lower levels of government. It was first articulated in the Magdeburg Confession.

Consider the following examples:

An early example is found in 2 Chronicles 22:10 – 23:18. Queen Athaliah usurps the throne by murdering all the heirs after she hears her grandson, the rightful king, was slain in battle. Only the infant Joash was spared. The high priest, Jehoiada, raised Joash in the temple until he was seven years old. Jehoiada organized the Levites and the military to coronate Joash. Athaliah runs out of the palace shouting “treason” and is put to death. 

Finally, “Then Jehoiada made a covenant between himself, the people, and the king, that they should be the Lord’s people. And all the people went to the temple of Baal, and tore it down.” God blessed this with forty years of good government.

The English Civil War (1642- 1646) was fought between Parliament and King Charles I to settle the issue of whether the divine right of kings made the king above the law. In 1644, Reverend Samuel Rutherford published Lex Rex arguing that the King was not above the law. The matter was settled when Parliament found Charles I guilty of high treason and executed him on January 30, 1649.

The Thirteen Colonies assembled a congress and declared independence on July 4, 1776. The colonists were governed by the various colonial charters. All the charters provided for self-government. If you remained in England, you would be under the authority of Parliament and the King. If you moved to one of the Colonies, you were under the local colonial legislature and the King. Nothing in the charters gave Parliament the authority to tax the colonies, yet that’s just what they did. The King was indifferent to the violation of the charters. After numerous appeals (many of which are listed in The Declaration), the colonists declared independence. The British finally surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781.

South Carolina passed an ordinance on secession effective December 20, 1860. Other states followed, and on April 12, 1861, Confederates fired on Fort Sumter to prevent a Federal resupply of the fort. Four more states joined the Confederacy after the attack on Fort Sumter.

What do all of these have in common? They were lesser magistrates resisting what they saw as tyranny from their upper levels of government. In each case, there was little to no risk of anarchy. Athaliah’s usurpation was dealt with quickly. The English people were never without a local government in their counties during the Civil War. The individual colonies were never without a government during the war for independence. Likewise, the Southern States were never without a government during their conflict.

Contrast these events with the July 14, 1789, storming of the Bastille by a crowd of Parisian insurgents and mutinous French Guards. No lesser magistrates were involved. There was a rapid descent into anarchy, followed by a reign of terror and finally a dictatorship. Citizen Vigilante more closely follows the 1789 path blazed by insurgents rather than any biblical response.

Conclusion

Ideally, Western Countries will not have corrupt magistrates at upper levels, but we need quality lower magistrates for our protection. For the British, it is encouraging that the “Rape Gang Inquiry Report” involved several Members of Parliament. The people need to elect more of the same, and those members may be called upon to take a heroic stand.

Here in the USA, we need to elect folks with integrity to lower offices. We need people in government who understand the government’s purpose as articulated in Romans 13 and who will not allow the sword to be used to suppress truth and further victimize the innocent.

The idea of Imago Dei was “self-evident” in the time of our founding. It is foundational to Western rights theory and judicial requirements for due process. However, the idea that male and female are created in God’s image is blasphemous in Islam. This is likely the reason Sharia Law frequently specifies mutilation, whereas God’s judicial law does not leave the malefactor maimed for life. Just like rejecting the postulate “two points determine a line” yields a very different system of Geometry, rejecting Imago Dei will yield a very different culture. 

Unfortunately, what our founders considered “self-evident” is no longer self-evident and needs to be explicitly stated in our founding documents. Adding Imago Dei to our Constitution would go a long way to protecting our rights and would give immigrants a better idea of what their assimilation and integration will involve.