Citizen Vigilante: Complaint written to UK regulator over anti-migrant film
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Fri, 07/03/2026 - 11:07
Movie, which depicts killing of unarmed Muslim family, promoted on X by Elon Musk
Citizen Vigilante stars Armie Hammer, who plays a wealthy businessman who becomes a vigilante (Citizen Vigilante/Screengrab)
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An NGO that tackles Islamophobia has written to the UK media regulator Ofcom over the promotion by billionaire Elon Musk on his platform X of a film that has been widely criticised as anti-migrant and anti-Muslim.
The complaint sent by Mend (Muslim Engagement and Development) concerns Citizen Vigilante, a film directed by Uwe Boll and starring Armie Hammer.
It depicts a wealthy US landlord in a non-specified European country becoming a vigilante, targeting criminals, rapists and officials, and becoming an unlikely public hero as a result.
It has been panned by critics, who have said it creates an “imaginary woke pinata of Europe-stan”, playing into “tired tropes”.
Much of the movie sees a brooding Hammer, who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women, chastising immigrants and working-class people for various infractions including fare dodging and avoiding rent payments to him.
In one scene, he massacres a police anti-terror team sent to apprehend him after he is identified as the anonymous vigilante behind the spate of murders.
Variety’s Todd Gilchrist described the film as “a violent, incoherent, morally bankrupt slice of exploitation”.
“The film’s framing is specifically anti-Muslim rather than generically concerned with crime,” Mend’s chief executive, Abdullah Saif, wrote to Ofcom.
“It includes a sequence in which the protagonist enters the home of a Muslim family and kills the family, including unarmed members, and dialogue in which the abuse of women is attributed to the teachings of the Qur’an and to Islamic values.”
Valorising murder
The film was not given an age verification in Germany, meaning it cannot be distributed in theatres or sold in most stores. This was allegedly due to the film inciting violence against immigrants.
That has not stopped the movie from being picked up by American film producers Berry Meyerowitz and Jeff Sackman, who are distributing it through their company Quiver.
The film enjoyed a huge explosion in interest and views after Musk, the billionaire owner of X, posted the entire film for free on his X account for two days.
“It has since continued to circulate on the platform through reposts, including by UK-based accounts,” the letter to Ofcom stated.
“The effect was to deliver, to a mass UK audience and without any age or classification control, a dramatic work whose central narrative endorses, incites and valorises the killing of Muslim families.”
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Mend stated that under the UK’s 2023 Online Safety Act, the regulator is able to take action against the stirring up of racial and religious hatred.
“The concern is sharpened by the identity of the disseminator: the content was not posted by an anonymous user evading moderation, but boosted by the platform’s own owner,” the complaint stated, referring to Musk. “Which raises the question of whether the platform’s safety systems operate effectively, consistently and without preferential treatment.”
Mend added that the film was amplified during a time of heightened risk for Muslims and minority communities, after anti-migrant rioting took place in Belfast and parts of Scotland last month.
“The Centre for Countering Digital Hate has separately found that posts by the platform’s owner concerning the Belfast disorder reached very large audiences and amplified narratives that risked inciting violence,” Mend wrote.
“Against that backdrop, the mass distribution of a film that dramatises, incites and celebrates the murder of Muslims is not an abstract or merely distasteful matter; it carries a foreseeable risk of normalising and encouraging real-world hostility and violence towards identifiable communities.”
The advocacy group called on Ofcom to consider whether X had breached the Online Safety Act, and to urge X to explain whether it carried out risk assessments for content targeting Muslims and migrant communities.
It called on Ofcom to respond to the complaint within 28 days.
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