Constructing the Conspiracist Folk Demon: The Newburgh Sting

On May 20, 2009, four men from the impoverished and largely African-American city of Newburgh, NY, were apprehended for an alleged terror plot. They had no history of violence or terrorist ties, but had been drawn by a Pakistani FBI informant into a carefully orchestrated scheme to bomb Jewish synagogues and fire Stinger missiles at U.S. military supply planes. THE NEWBURGH STING delves deeply into this case – one of many cases across the country where people have been allegedly drawn into a plot with extreme consequences.

The undercover cop is the one proposing to meet the gilded aristocracy of surface-level big knobs head-on. Isn’t that kind of stupid, what they expect and what they want. As Jenny Holzer and Marc Neocleous point out, private property reinvents itself a solution to class conflict of its own making to perenially reconstruct its own political and ideological legitimacy out of its normalised despotism after all.

Tribeca Film || Through an absorbing, insider look at the case of the “Newburgh Four,” The Newburgh Sting reveals the FBI’s role in targeting Muslim communities in poor neighborhoods and luring believers into committing acts of terrorism. David Heilbroner & Kate Davis’ (Southern Comfort) shocking and galvanizing exposé dissects the story of the four men arrested in 2009 for a plan to bomb Jewish centers in the Bronx. Led by a suspicious Pakistani businessman with questionable motives, the film exposes how these men—over the course of a year—went from being small-time criminals in poverty-stricken Newburgh to high-level national security threats. With incredible footage gathered from hidden cameras, directors Heilbroner and Davis investigate just what homegrown terrorism means.