The bitter defamation battle of Hollywood starring Amber Heard & Johnny Depp has finally come to an end. The verdict is in: Johnny Depp has defeated his ex-wife in the defamation of a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
However, with the inescapable media coverage, the high-profile domestic violence case has gripped the world. While many have been following the news as a mere celebrity drama; the verdict has given rise to a full-blown discussion about ‘toxic feminism’ and gendered violence.
The case also raises many uncomfortable questions: How will the verdict impact domestic violence victims and survivors in the long run? Will the case sparka reversal of the feminist movement? And how true crime has desensitized us to a line between entertainment and actual legal proceedings?
Amber Heard and Johnny Depp Defamation Case: An Overview
Before hopping into the wild discussion of “he said, she said“, and how the Depp-Heard case highlights our deep-rooted toxic culture; here’s is a quick overview of the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp defamation Case:
However, according to Heard’s lawyers; the majority of the statement is about public policy on domestic abuse, and she has a First Amendment right to comment on it. Furthermore, Heard countersued Depp for $100 million, alleging that Depp’s lawyer defamed her by dismissing her assault accusations as a fake. Amber also claims that Depp physically abused Heard.
The Epidemic of Gendered Violence: The Outpouring Radical Public Reaction
There are no gray areas when it comes to social media; one is either a victim or an aggressor. However, the judicial system is unprepared to cope with such a situation. Its goal is to convict one person while proving the other innocent. Therefore, in most public forums, that binary radicalization is unavoidable.
However, in reality, both Johnny Depp and Amber Heardhave flawed slates. Mountain of evidence highlights that both allegedly abused each other verbally and physically.
Where Heard is accused of Photoshopping bruises onto images of her injuries from Depp’s purported beatings; A text conversation with friends has also disclosed Johnny Depp’s fantasy of murdering his then-wife Amber Heard. One of Depp’s texts read, “I’ll f*** her burnt corpse afterward to make sure she is dead.“
However, over the past televised six weeks trial, many of those who tuned in to watch the trial live-streamed online have attacked Heard with the same disrespect that Depp exhibited in his texts.
The facts of the case do not support these conspiracy ideas, but that hasn’t prevented them from spreading. The story has taken on a mythic quality online, and some continue to believe in Depp’s innocence despite the evidence.
Throughout the trial, and even more so after it was over; the case was used tointimidate and silence women who spoke out against domestic violence and sexual assault. However, when it comes to systematic male violence or abuse, Amber Heard has become the greatest trump card to play.
A Death of #MeToo: Amber Heard & the Reversal of the Feminist Movements
Do you recall the hashtag#MeToo? #TimeIsUp? #BelieveWomen #EnoughisEnough? The world was on the verge of a major change only five years ago. Finally turning the tide against culturally-rooted sexism.
The me-too movement broke new grounds for abuse against women and empowering women’s rights. But the Depp-Heard case raises the question: Are we witnessing the beginning of a violent backlash that will reverse all the gains in the area of women empowerment over the years?
Social media revering to the idea that Heard was lying fuels a dangerous myth that manipulation and lying are common actions of women facing domestic abuse. However, in reality, according to Jaffee et al., Family Court Review; a false allegation of spousal abuse is much less common than the problem of genuine failing to report it.
The “Beleive Women,” a famous me-too slogan, doesn’t glorify the idea of trusting every woman. But our default should be to believe women when they speak up instead of rushing to attack their character.
Society cares more about anomalies than the systemic nature of gendered violence and domestic abuse. And, it is horrifying to think how the symbolic fall out of the case may deject abused and dis-empower victims across the globe.
The Social Media and Stardom Factor: Dangerous Waters
For over three decades, Johnny Depp has been one of Hollywood’s most iconic, celebrated, and beloved actors. And this trial highlights how star powers like his can lead to para-social relationships and blur our judgment.
Laurel Anderson, the couple’s marriage counselor, has testified that both Johnny Depp and Amber Heard engaged in mutual abuse.
However, the years of watching the legendary actor as a compassionate on-screen presence have undoubtedly contributed to the instant judgment of placing victim credit on Amber. People aren’t viewing him as an actual human but as an extension of his movie roles.
Where previously the nuts and bolts of trial proceedings used to be known only to experts, today, there is a large audience who feels familiar with the processes and emboldens to comment on them.
And while true crime reports do educate people on some legal proceedings. The consequence of mainstreaming the genre is that it can tempt us to reduce complicated cases into something simple and digestible.
With the Depp-Heard case and its stream of mems and reactions, we consume real trials as bite-sized entertainment. Furthermore, the lightning-fast verdicts by the majority often leave us unable to weigh the complete facts in a measured and impartial manner.
The Horrifying Aftermath
For very long, domestic violence victims who have picked up the courage to speak up against patriarchy have been tortured, cursed, and abused for voicing their struggles.
One in every four women experiencing intimate partner abuse is unlikely to speak up. And given the outpouring of hostility directed towards Heard, more women are already petrified to disclose the abuse, let alone file a lawsuit.
After seeing Heard’s online abuse, noted psychologist Dr. Taylor told The Independent that women awaiting similar case hearings are considering retracting or withdrawing.’
The repercussion of Amber Heard’s accusation is already being weaponized by misogynists to fuel the narrative that domestic abuse accusations by women can not be trusted. However, the Depp-Heard case has also highlighted how many don’t actually care about male victims of domestic violence but just to prove that feminism is “toxic” and discredit abused women rather than standing up for the victims, be it male or female.
Amber Heard & Johnny Depp Defamation Case: In Conclusion
There are no heroes in Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against Amber Heard. Instead, the case appears to be about two highly dysfunctional persons whose emotional dysregulation was made tenfold worse by their marital engagement, at least to the casual observer.
However, to most of the social media, it appears to be a simple morality tale: a protagonist brought down by a conniving wench; a good man duped by a terrible woman.
What was a complicated relationship has been reduced to black and white by millions of Depp aficionados who appear to find some greater meaning in defending Captain Jack Sparrow’s dignity — and trashing the lady who dared to accuse him of wrongdoing.
I don’t think that most Muslims hate ordinary Americans who believe in the general principle of “live and let live.” Moreover I don’t think that most Americans would unhesitatingly embrace Israeli Nazism if they had the chance to know the truth about Israel e.g. that it is a criminal state par excellence based on ethnic cleansing land theft and racist and religious discrimination.
Unfortunately most Americans are spoon-fed Jewish propaganda from early childhood. This creates a virtual reality in America’s collective mind about Israel a virtual reality that is nearly completely disconnected from the real reality in Israel-Palestine.
For example many Americans are made to think that Israel and America have much in common in terms of democracy. However the truth is that democracy in Israel is more or less confined to Jews while non-Jews are systematically discriminated against. Their land is confiscated their homes are demolished and their rights and dignity are trampled upon.
And when they seek redress at Jewish courts they discover that non-Jews can’t possibly hope for true justice and equality under Jewish rule. Ask non-Jewish Americans who have been living in Israel and you will hear a lot of hair-raising stories about the Israeli “democracy.”
Some Americans are so brainwashed that they are willing to claim that Muslims hate America for its freedoms. This is what Georg W. Bush probably the most ignorant President America has ever had once claimed.
The truth of the matter however is that most Muslims hate the US government for embracing tyrannical Arab and Muslim regimes that torment their own people by denying them natural freedoms and civil liberties as well as the right to freely elect their own governments. This is in addition of course to backing and supporting Israel’s Nazi-like policies including ethnic cleansing and settlement expansion at the expense of the native Palestinians.
It is really scandalous that while Americans boasts bout their First Amendment freedoms successive American governments have consistently embraced despotic regimes abroad. In many instances the US intervened either brazenly or behind the scenes to destabilize or overthrow democratically elected governments such as in Iran Chile and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Of courser America’s days of infamy are too numerous to be counted. For example we all tend to view Adolph Hitler as the ultimate embodiment of evil. However it is historically true that the US its allies Stalin Mao murdered more people than the Third Reich ever did.
America wanted to be looked upon as a moral example to be followed. But the beacon of light eventually turned into a ruthless beastly power where military might took priority over moral power.
Take for example America’s stand over Israel. For decades the United States enabled Israel to violate every international law and norm and commit every conceivable crime under the sun including murdering children by raining on them White phosphorus.
This is the same America that allows herself to judge the world for human rights violations while enabling Israel diplomatically politically and mainly militarily to pursue decidedly Nazi-like policies against the Peoples of the Middle East.
Watch the ongoing genocidal onslaught which against our helpless and unprotected people in the Gaza Strip. Some of you might be prompted to think that I am indulging in excessive exaggeration when I speak of a genocidal onslaught.
But I am not. Otherwise, how else can we describe a condition where hundreds of ultra-advanced war planes rain missiles and laser-guided bombs from high altitudes on apartment buildings, homes, and civilian neighborhoods packed with men, women and children? Yet, this is exactly what Israel has done¸ murdering , maiming and incinerating thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians and utterly destroying tens of thousands of buildings.
Israel effectively destroyed Gaza, murdering and maiming untold numbers of civilians. Gaza, more or less, became the Dresden of Palestine. And the whole world looked on rather passively as if the killing-field and the shockingly pornographic destruction of life and property were occurring on a distant galaxy. we are not really talking about war, even an asymmetrical war. We are actually talking about a real massacre, a massacre that is reminiscent of the time when the Nazis ganged up on European Jewry 70 years ago.
The macabre scenes of decapitated and badly-mutilated children were too shocking to be described in words. Reporters at the site of the carnage lost their composure and collapsed as they couldn’t cope with the gruesomeness of the pornographic bloodbath.
In 2006, the Nazi government of Israel dropped 2-3 million cluster bomblets over Lebanon enough to kill or maim 2-3 million Lebanese children. And instead of denouncing the manifestly nefarious act the US government declared that “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
Today there is an anti-Islamic hysteria in the United States. The main reason for this hysteria is the fact that the United States can’t live normally with itself without an external enemy. In short there has to be an enemy in order to keep the American psyche intact. There has to be an enemy in order to keep the military industrial complex functioning. In short capitalism can’t function without war.
In fact Muslims don’t view themselves as enemies of the United States as the vast bulk of Muslims are peaceable people who are mainly interested in the pursuance of their daily life enhancing their daily living improving their standard of living and making ends meet.
Yes there are violent groups here and there but these are tiny groups which in no way represent the Muslims of the world.
I think many Americans are ignorant of these facts. I also think that many other Americans would condemn Muslims right or wrong. I am talking about people who would burn the Muslim Holy scripture the Quran in order to highlight their hatred of Islam a religion with more than 1.6 billion people.
Well to those I say one thing: the dogs will keep barking and the caravan will keep going.
Besides if you have one reason to hate us we have a thousand reasons to hate you.
None the less unlike you we are not willing to allow our primitive impulses to decide our behaviors. Our religion the source of our morality and behavior doesn’t allow us to behave the way they do.
This is why we will not burn copies of the New Testament we will not attack churches and we will not call Christianity bad names.
It is often claimed that the religion Jesus founded is based on Love. But any fleeting view of your “religion” caricatures a hate-based cult that has very little to do with Jesus and the authentic messages he preached.
Did Jesus ever call children “murderers” as you did recently in Texas? In fact I dare say that you and people who subscribe to your cultist hatefulness are a cancer upon the conscience of Christ.
So you hate us because of the 9/11 events. Well 99% of Muslims condemned in the strongest terms these terrorist acts. And we are sorry for the umpteenth time for the death of dozens of hundreds of innocent Americans including Muslims in these terrorist attacks.
None the less your democratic elected government has been responsible for the death of millions of Muslims. In Iraq alone the United States has killed or caused the death of at least two million Muslims in the past two decades. Hundreds of thousands of other Muslims have been killed in Afghanistan. These are just two examples of America’s genocidal wars against the Muslim world.
Hence if you have the right to cite one 9/11 we can cite hundreds and thousands of 9/11s. And don’t you ever think that your lives are worth more than our lives. All human beings were created by the same God and are equal if only because there is no such a thing as a lesser God.
One day the oppressed will have their day and there will be no spin no hasbara and no propaganda. And the New York Times and Fox News and AIPAC and all other organs of lie will have been evaporated into nonexistence.
God is just.
Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine
I realize that the title of this article might offend and provoke many people, especially those adhering to the Judaic faith. I do know that Jews, like everyone else, are not carbon copies of each other. There are many conscientious Jews who believe in fairness and basic human equality regardless of color, race and faith, and strongly reject racism and chauvinism in any form. Also, I will no longer be using euphemistic language in reference to Jewish Nazism especially in light of the latest Dresden-like bombing of Gaza by the Judeo-Nazi state also known as Israel.
These people I salute for their rectitude, humanity and morality. They are our natural partners for peace and a better tomorrow for our children and their children.
But there are numerous other Jews who don’t believe in human equality and justice for all. Indeed, there are many Jews, e.g. followers of the hateful Chabad sect, who don’t even ascribe full humanity to people who are not members of the Jewish faith.
Needless to say, the venomous ideology adopted by these racist fanatics has much in common with Aryan Nazism.
What else can be said to describe an ideology that teaches adherents that the life of a non-Jew has no sanctity and that goyem can be murdered without the slightest compunction or feeling of guilt?
The shocking reactions by the Israeli government, rabbis, and community leaders to the latest abduction, murder and subsequent burning of a Palestinian kids in Gaza are very telling.
In a certain sense, these reactions and attitudes can be compared to the reactions and attitudes of many Germans to the pogroms carried out against Jews by the Nazis prior to and during the Second World War.
The gleefully despicable embrace of the brashly hideous crime by the bulk of the Israeli Jewish society underscores the fact that millions of Jews in Israel and abroad do harbor certain Nazi tendencies, especially against the Palestinian people. These tendencies are too real and too tangible to be overstated.
However, we must call the spade a spade, even at the expense of upsetting the huge Zionist propaganda machine which habitually alters the black into white and the blatant big lie into a “truth” glorified by sheepish westerners who have long been brainwashed into believing that Israel is a modern, civilized and democratic state.
In the final analysis, when Jews (or anyone else) think, behave and act like the Nazis thought, behaved and acted, they simply become Nazis. Pure and simple.
Today, there are numerous Jews who openly call for the physical annihilation of Palestinians as retaliation for the abduction and killing of three Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
Saber-rattling rabbis speak menacingly of the need to adopt “the Biblical way” to combat the Palestinians.
For those not versed in Jewish phraseology, “Biblical way” is euphemism for genocide.
Today, the Israeli media reported that some army personnel openly appealed to the government to “give us the green light to annihilate them.”!!!
Just read what thousands of Jewish youths have been writing on their Facebook pages! It is outrageous, disgusting and sheer evil.
To put it in a nutshell, Nazism is being regurgitated and exuded all over Israel. This is happening in broad daylight while professional liars like Binyamin Netanyahu are filling the ether with all sorts of shameless lies about Israel being victimized by the Palestinians.
Seventy-six years have passed since Kristalnacht. Today Jewish settlers in the west Bank, in close cooperation and coordination, with the Israeli army could very well carry out a huge pogrom against an innocent and helpless community which really finds itself very much in the same precarious and vulnerable position that European Jewry experienced prior to WWII.
I am not a prophet of doom and gloom, but the signs are unmistakably bleak.
A final point, the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are surviving thanks to the good-will of the international public opinion. Should the international community go into a brief slumber, God forbid, Israel and its own Wehrmacht, SS, Gestapo and Hitler Youth might embark on the unthinkable. Don’t you ever say Jews can’t carry out a holocaust against their victims, the Palestinians?
Words can kill; words do kill.
Unfortunately, the chilling words we are hearing from many Israeli Jews these days leave no room for optimism.
Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine
In-your-face brutality, unending genocide, unending atrocities, mass slaughter directed against one’s people, one’s brethren, causes the most strong and unimaginable reaction, in response to the oppressor’s horrendous and barbaric deeds. The autocratic, despotic, tyrannical Israeli-hand systematically and with pre-planned engineered precision, massacres, annihilates, eliminates the young and the old Palestinian alike – in the most inhumane and most despicable of ways. Slaughters men, women and children in broad daylight. Bares its blood-thirsty intentions, its monstrous objectives in the most unashamed of ways. Mercy to none – not to the living, not to the severely wounded and dying; no mercy even on the dead or their lifeless remains.
The constant fear of being bombed anytime, rained down with missiles and all manner of munitions from within the vast arsenal of the Israeli side; definitely stockpiled high, with enough buffer inventory of munitions, deadly and lethal stockpile, to blow the receiving side multiple times over; so as not to leave a “shred” of evidence of your original physical-self on the surface of the land, which your people, generations and generations of your ancestors, since time immemorial have dwelt on.
The inexplicable terror of seeing Israeli drones constantly “floating about” unopposed, in the skies above your unsheltered head. Drones with eyes like that of a greedy dog. Electronic pixels wanting to cast an evil eye, an evil-spell upon your very being. Eyeing upon your existence, wanting to blow-up, tear-up your physical being, seemingly wanting to devour your flesh and body; all by way of a few computer clicks / even the manual computer-clicks now, seemingly, are being replaced by more automated ways of executing these most evil deeds. Software, coded software, written programs to execute on the most Evil-intentions. Evil-intentions of the most evil amongst the human race.
Everybody knows, the Israelis have exterminated with their weaponry, uncountable numbers of Palestinians across a 40, 50km stretch of land, in front of the whole world, over the past so many weeks and months. And retain the capacity, the ability, the power, the means to slaughter, devour many, many more innocent ones, day in, day out.
The Israelis possess American technology, American weapons – the bedrock of their faith, the foundation stone of their belief in their never-ending invincibility. The Palestinians have their faith in Allah; that Allah will redeem his faithful people, from the clutches of these war-mongers, who rain down terror, day and night on the most innocent, the most vulnerable.
Most definitely, the Moslem spirit in me, the Palestinian spirit in me is not defeated; quite to the contrary, it’s rekindled, stronger than ever.
I’m definitely Palestinian, in every sense of the word, and Allah will save us, Allah will have mercy on us, Allah will guide us.
(Note: Azhaar Amayreh is a marketer stuck in war-ravaged Rafah with her child.)The following article is part of a campaign to raise money to help MZEMO contributor Azhaar Amayreh and her family leave Gaza. Please give what you can.