Totally and utterly gobsmacked - not to mention feeling a bit sad and naive. Today I saw Barbet Schroeder's The Venerable W., a documentary about Buddhist Hitler, Ashin Wirathu.

I'd always thought Buddhism to be a sweet, kind and loving religion, yet this story of an extremist Buddhist leader in Myanmar begins with him saying Muslims are like African catfish: they grow fast, reproduce quickly, destroy their environment and eat their own.

The film goes on to explore Wirathu's role in planning / staging / encouraging different riots and violent demonstrations, to wit we're shown home videos of people smoldering in the streets, too close to death to do anything but try and turn over while bystanders beat them with sticks. (There are some truly shocking images in this movie.)

Through interviews with the man himself (where he states, for example, Americans need Donald Trump to keep the country safe from Muslims), his colleagues, humanitarians in the field and Muslims in the Myanmar, we are subjected to a horrible yet honest picture of a truly awful man. I, for one, learned that there are wretched individuals in any group of people, Buddhists included. Yet one of the laws of Buddhism is repeated as voice over in the film: Hate cannot eradicate hate; only love can eradicate hate.