![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
Why We Fight
Propaganda For Aimed At Liberals
Over the weekend, JK and I went to see the documentary Why We Fight. The plot outline from IMDB is listed as:
Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki’s shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions.
Keywords: “would seem.”
On first blush, this movie comes off as an insightful anti-war piece with some nice human angles and worthwhile points to consider. But there was something about all of it that made me suspicious and uneasy. I’m going to try and convey what that was exactly by way of quoting other people online who saw it.
An online author explains:
Why We Fight is an expertly made documentary that manages to ask all the right questions and avoid becoming an editorialized war rant. Unlike Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, this is not a narrated documentary with an objective to show one particular viewpoint. This documentary manages to stay impartial while taking the audience on an enlightening journey through the history of the “military industrial complex.”
A LiveJournal user called “moonshine_baby” writes:
Go see Why We Fight. It’s really good, and none of this Michael Moore ‘everyone is stupid but me’ crap. It has a bias, but it lets everyone talk, (most subjects are from the US military or former Pentagon). Definately worth seeing.
Am I the only one that actually liked Michael Moore’s movie? I’m not exactly sure how or why it happened, but somewhere along the way, it quickly became unfashionable to like him anymore. People seem like they’re embarrassed about it or something. Not sure why but I suspect it was when Conservatives started painting him as a “loud-mouthed fat guy.”
But anyway, that’s really besides my point. What interests me in the above commentary is that this movie-goer points out that most of the people interviewed for this movie are either current or former defense department people. Lew Rockwell (after trashing Moore in turn) also points out that “it’s great fun to be in a crowd of people booing and hissing whenever Richard Perle appears on screen.”
Nobody in my trendy uber-Liberal Seattle neighborhood theatre booed or hissed. But I imagine that most of them came away with a similar sentiment to those above: that the movie is an impartial “commentary on the contemporary obsession of the American elite with military power.”
To me though, it honestly just felt like propaganda for liberals.
As the BBC’s Nick Fraser writes:
Why We Fight is the title of a series of propaganda films that Frank Capra began making in 1942, with the aim of encouraging the American war effort against Nazism.
And Jarecki’s version makes ironic use of archival footage from that film and other propaganda pieces of the time period. Maybe I just had those images on my brain, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that this movie wasn’t an ironic commentary on an old-fashioned bit of propaganda, but a thoroughly intelligent, completely sly and media savvy update or sequel.
As one of the commentators above points out, the majority of airtime in this movie is occupied by current or former defense industry wonks. I know I’m supposed to take that as the director’s attempt to make the movie even-handed and a full depiction of the situation. But really it just felt like the “bad guys” were being given a chance to explain themselves. And whether or not audiences booed and hissed, or thought that any of it was awful - the fact of the matter is that you sit there and you take it, and you realize that some of the points they’re making are either good points or at least things that are by now totally irrevocable.
Do I think the director was intentionally indoctrinating liberals without their noticing? Beats me. Chances are that I’m just extraordinarily jaded and that I have a skewed perspective on the world. But I do think this movie highlights a major flaw in the so-called Liberal mindset. The typical Liberal prides themselves on being (1) open-minded and fair, and (2) being able to rationally pick apart an argument. A movie like this waltzes into and exploits that glitch in the Liberal mental defenses. It asks us to give equal air-time to everyone and then tells us to make our own decisions based on the information provided. While I’m a very big supporting of this technique, if the information and arguments provided weigh overwhelmingly towards one side, the “naive” Liberal comes away thinking that they’ve heard everybody out, and made the best decision based on the evidence presented.
So what are the feelings that Liberals are coming away from this movie with? That militarization is evil and dangerous? Wait, didn’t Liberals already know that? Fact is, that’s just the baited hook that was used to draw you in and bludgeon you, bit by bit, with the notion that there are good solid economic reasons for it, and that we’re in way too deep to change it, and that we’re an Empire now (the New Rome, as it were), and we have to live up to that - or else.
What then is the real sentiment that Liberals came away with? You’d have to ask them or see it for yourself I guess, but the best response that I’ve found so far was by another LJ user named Levitz:
[…] saw “Why we Fight” which makes me wanna overthrow the government..but i’m in my pajamas at the moment…so i guess the revolution will just have to wait..
Perfect. That’s exactly what movies like this are intended to do - they let us vent our frustrations together in a darkened room full of like-minded strangers. We feel bad-ass because we bought a $9 fuck-you ticket to Uncle Sam, and then once our angry impulses have been ritually slated, we go back home and put on our jammies. Free speech so rules!
February 27th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
i`m sure you didn`t want to begin another riff on michael moore, but i think the reason why he is out of the loop now is that he was just, well, wrong.
stridency is paletable for the just.
for the duplicitous it is a mortal sin.
we are, without doubt, at war for economic reasons. if the hot tap doesn`t provide hot water, someone is going to die. we pay the hell hounds in taxes and we intellectualise our horror at thier actions. but we wanted them to do it in t he first place. the proof is in the thought that if they didn`t do what we payed them to do then we`d be livid. in global economic reality it`s either euro oil or dollar oil. not both. iraq threatened to sell thier oil in euros and saddam was found down a rat hole. iran is suggesting the same thing.
how would kerry have faired? moot point really. a weaker military action would have got more americans killed. it`s never been about oil it`s self. we were glad to pay for all the oil and saddam was glad to sell it. it was, and still is, about dollars. fiat currency. if we don`t protect our inflated currency with guns then our whole economy goes in the shitter. everyone`s day will be a bummer. unless we can get something useful for all the paper we keep printing then we`ll have to start burning it for heat.
fiat currency is money created by decree. it`s not backed up by gold. it`s backed up by our future efforts. yours and mine. if we can`t spend this stuff on a product that we need to run our economy, then our economy stops. well, firstly it becomes absolutely expensive. that is it costs all of your income to provide basics. then comes rationing, then scarcety, then unavailability.
so what`s easier, scarcety at home or not watching bbc news or cnn?
it`s not a political answer any more, mr. moore, it`s economic.
even liberals can add.
February 27th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
You’re right - I wasn’t looking to start a discussion on Michael Moore.
February 27th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Great post– s’one of the reasons I stopped referring to myself as a “leftist” or “progressive” or “liberal.” The whole movement thinks it’s totally immune to propaganda, but they *keep falling for it*, both externally and internally. Reminds me of good old Jacques Ellul’s contention that:
Take, for instance, the whole Mohammed cartoon thing. Secular Liberals everywhere are up in arms about how those silly religious Muslims are opposed to Free Speech because of their dumb religion. But that’s just propaganda covering up a far more complex issue that forces the Liberals to take the conservative viewpoint that Muslims are no good and we’re involved in a ‘clash of civilization.’
Or, this stupid crap about our ports being sold to Dubai: Liberals are all up in arms because it proves that BushCo doesn’t *really* care about the security of our ports. So they’re churning out creepy xenophobic and bigoted editorial cartoons that portray arabs as giant unwashed heathens. Liberals and Conservatives alike are standing shoulder to shoulder in opposition to them dirty Ay-Rabs ’cause lord knows they’re all terrorists. Once again, they’re falling hook, line and sinker for conservative propaganda when the REAL issues have nothing to do with the nationality of the companies taking over our ports!
February 27th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Tim, you write:
“That’s exactly what movies like this are intended to do - they let us vent our frustrations together in a darkened room full of like-minded strangers. We feel bad-ass because we bought a $9 fuck-you ticket to Uncle Sam, and then once our angry impulses have been ritually slated, we go back home and put on our jammies.”
I think this is what a very unfashionable 1960s-type guy named Herbert Marcuse called “repressive tolerance.”
February 27th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
Oh, and BTW, I liked Farenheit 911 too, and love Michael Moore.
February 27th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Never heard of Marcuse before, but there seem to be lots of essays about him online. I’ll read up some more later on when I have time:
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/personal/reading/wolff-tolerance.html
February 27th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
One Dimensional Man by Marcuse is one of the best indictments of positivist thinking I’ve ever read.
I have serious issues with Marxism in general but Marcuse gets three thumbs up from me! Great stuff.
(I thought F911 was great, FWIW.)
And, while i’m thinking about books, John Perkins’ “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” is an incredible book. Highly recommended.
February 27th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Anything from the Frankfurt School, including Marcuse, might be interesting reading for you.
“Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now appears as good because it serves the cohesion of the whole on the road to affluence or more affluence. The toleration of the systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the impotent and benevolent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandizing, waste, and planned obsolescence are not distortions and aberrations, they are the essence of a system which fosters tolerance as a means for perpetuating the struggle for existence and suppressing the alternatives. The authorities in education, morals, and psychology are vociferous against the increase in juvenile delinquency; they are less vociferous against the proud presentation, in word and deed and pictures, of ever more powerful missiles, rockets, bombs–the mature delinquency of a whole civilization.” ‘Repressive Tolerance’ Hebert Marcuse 1965.
It just sounds disturbingly familiar.
I don’t like Moore, but I recognise he does some good in a country where the political terms of reference are so narrow.
February 27th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
is it marx`s ideas that are problematic, or is it what people like lenin did with them? it seems to me that the workers owning the means of production, as an ideal, is a humanitarian idea.
February 27th, 2006 at 8:41 pm
It’s very clear that we’re at war in Iraq for precisely the reasons alistair described above. And that is the weakness of late-20th century liberalism: it absolutely depends on the affluence that is made possible only by empire.
I tried to talk about this when I raised the whole homosexuality/empire thing. It isn’t homosexuality per se that’s the issue; it’s that people are tolerant of all kinds of alternatives when they’re fat and happy. When they’re not, deviations from some norm (arbitrary or not) become an excuse to eliminate competition.
I’m as laissez-faire as the next liberal when it comes to judging others’ personal lives. But I’m not naive about the economic underpinnings of it all.
February 27th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
I consider myself liberal but I don’t think everyone defines it the same. I thought the Mohammed cartoon controversy was interesting because just prior to that news, there was a lot of talk about Tom Toles’ “offensive” political cartoon that was condemned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As a cartoonist and caricaturist, I don’t look at the Mohammed riots nor the Toles incident through political eyes. I look at them as someone who has incited smaller but similar reactions from individuals in response to my creations.
Because he is convinced of his own superiority, the intellectual is much more vulnerable than anybody else… I would like to add: ANYONE convinced of their own superiority– whether intellectual or not –is the MAIN TARGET of ALL propaganda. Cartoonists and caricaturists know this, and that’s why they are the most effective propagandists… otherwise, no one would be offended by portrayals of prophets or soldiers in the press.
RE: the Ports deal, as a liberal I have been claiming for years that Bush is in bed with royal Arab families. This is not a racist statement– it’s a matter of fact. And it’s not just liberals who are against the ports being controlled by a company from UAE, and their opposition has more to do with politics than racism. From where I am standing, I’m hearing more people debate it on practical grounds than racist grounds.
February 27th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Hey Tim or JK, here’s my question: What was the editing in Why We Fight like? If you’ve watched the Ramtha-cultist circlejerk What the Bleep Do We Know, there’s at least two or three blatant “edits”–and by that, I mean cuts, i.e., switching cameras or going to animation–that totally decontextualize what the talking heads are saying. One goes something like this: “Now, this presents with at least two possiblities. First blah blah blah explaining first point” CUT. And we never get the second possiblity. If you’ve seen one of the best examples of NLP-inspired cinema brainwashing, PBS’s “From Jesus to Christ,” you’ll realize after a little dissociated observation that most of the talking heads are contradicting each other, but doing so in such a way that you’re presented with incongruent theories in incomplete forms that don’t initally overlap, but the end result would be like taking pieces from maps of the world in different projections, then cutting them up and rearranging them into a new, distorted shape and suggesting that it’s a good map even though Portland is only three miles from Moscow…. But that wasn’t the spooky part. Over the course of the three episodes, various images would be presented before or after people had said various things, and various scores would be played, while the narrator spoke–initally, these images were all fairly singular and dull, and the motifs were quiet, as the series progressed, the directors would sublty overlay images and pieces of music and alter the intesity of the pictures and music to present the thesis in a sigillistic, unconscious manner… That, or they had a natural talent for “communication” and hypnosis. Either way…
Sorry to be long-winded, but the more talking-head driven things I watch, the more I notice these techniques–which you can learn all about in Film 303.
Speaking of faux-Marxist professors,
My problem “with” Marx is that nobody in this goddamn country has read him. The Neoconservatives take a great deal of inspiration from the application of post-Marxist cultural theory–which focuses on the establishment of “culture” as a means of economic control (see how it works? you take everything in the marxist critique and then apply all of it) in order to justify Plato’s militaristic vision.
The problem with Marx is that he went through a romantic period (Communist Manifesto) of Grand Historical Narrative, then his anthropological period, which is overlooked because he didn’t produce anything all that insightful or influential, and lastly his scientific period (Capital). Capital is the obverse of the the Manifesto–careful, based on scientific economics, and thick as a brick–so most people read the Manifesto, which is fiery and radical but insubstantial compared to Capital. Marxist economics actually presented one of the leading theories of early macroeconomics, the other leading theory being Ricardo’s; both are outdated if still servicible–they relied mostly on algebra, never getting complicated enough to have heavy use of calculus, and have been supplanted by Keynes and Friedman.
February 27th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
the best anti war movie i’ve seen in a real long time is the fog of war, and it’s not even an anti war movie.
February 28th, 2006 at 6:35 am
The French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez once wrote that when people applaud at a classical music concert, they’re not applauding the music or the performance; they’re applauding their own good taste in being there. There’s an element of implicit self-congratulation in most of our activities if you look hard enough, or perhaps self-reassurance is a better term. If we give a few dollars to Amnesty International a month, we can make ourselves feel a bit better about doing something, however miniscule, to ease the manifold injustices of the world. If we go and see Why We Fight, we can feel we’re Sticking It To The Man in a similarly miniscule way. Even if we read the writings of a columnist who frankly makes us sick, we can still pat ourselves on the back for having a sufficiently open mind to read something of that sort. (And I suppose if we do realise this, we can further congratulate ourselves for our self-awareness and for being smart enough to see through the bullshit that surrounds us.)
As the other James said above, real propaganda is targeted at anyone who believes in their own superiority. It exists to reassure them of their own rightness, of their own eminent sense and good taste, and all of that. In short, it preaches to the converted. And, more to the point, it seems to be more about instilling a particular mindset and narrative than about action. The mindset in question may become a basis of later action, to be sure, but the mindset is what matters. So of COURSE you feel bad-ass while you’re watching and then just go home after it’s over. Of COURSE it ultimately doesn’t change a damn thing. That’s not really the point of something like this. The proportion of viewers whose lives will actually be sufficiently changed by it to pursue activism or something similar as a result is minimal at best. The majority will watch it, shudder, thank $deity that they have more sense and can see through the militaristic haze, and carry on as per usual.
I’m not sure this is necessarily a bad thing. Why *shouldn’t* there be liberal propaganda? There’s any amount of conservative propaganda out there to make the right-leaning feel better about themselves, from Fox News to Town Hall to any of a thousand and one weblogs, even films (don’t forget the Liberty Film Festival). Much as I feel liberal commentators should be above the viciousness that their conservative counterparts often descend to, I tend to feel it’s about time they started to descending to it as well, and that if they don’t start turning the conservatives’ methods back on them they’re frankly not going to make much progress.
February 28th, 2006 at 6:40 am
And, it needs to be said, the vaster majority of people who don’t care one way or the other will also carry on like they normally do, being bemused and probably sickened by the ugliness of it all if they bother to notice it going on at all.
February 28th, 2006 at 9:12 am
The more things change…if the movie leads to the conclusions you say they do, Tim, then it’s more of the same stuff we’ve had for a long, long time: the “loyal opposition,” who do more harm than the so-called establishment planners and empire-mongers could do on their own. The “loyal opposition” is on the same team, in the end, but as part of the ritual of opposition they’ve gotta pretend otherwise–it’s the illusion of options and choice that we have and so long as we’re unaware of it or satisfied with it, the folks at the top needn’t worry about any real bumps in their schemes (until the issue of environmental destruction and wars of scarcity screws them as well as everyone else–unless, of course, they’ve planned for such an eventuality and have their escape rockets ready to go, like that one episode of the Simpsons or the dark forebodings of Guy Debord in Comments on the Society of the Spectacle).
Bill Clinton, masquerading as a so-called liberal achieved more to advance the current neo-con agenda than most are willing to admit. He paved the road for W; yet the rank and file conservatives still are encouraged to froth at the mouth and hate him (b/c painting that guy as “left wing” veers the “neutral point” closer and closer towards an acceptance of fascism), while m’eye parents generation of “liberals” (and others, too), still cream their pants over him or, at the very least, respectfully nod and admire him for his charisma (and you better believe this guy’s got an NLP coach).
Allistair’s point seems darned plausible to kmee on the reasons for war. As for the port thing, let us not fail to consider how this eases the passage of the next big (which was the same one from three seasons ago) nefarious drug epidemic–profits all around: profit from allowing and selling the drugs, profit on arresting the lower-level dealers and users, profit on cutting costs through the increased use of prison labor in this country and the decreased risk of opposition to the regimented nature of things.
Editing makes a huge contribution to the effectiveness of propoganda–eye remember when eye got to do an independent study in high school at the local college T.V. station–eye’ve never looked at the “reality” of media reportage since. But, of course, eye’m just as vulnerable to propoganda as the next person–it takes vigilance to be honest about that and do your best to keep the filters working. But that ain’t enough. We got learn the skills they use, at the very least, so we can recognize them, it seems to kmee. And maybe more so, to use it for good–NLP, magick, hypnosis, whatever. The underlying assumption which turns this stuff to the ill of the world (and not just the human part) appears to be the belief that it is imperative that we must control others and our environment with no concern for the connections between every living thing here.
No more rant. Thought provoking post, Tim.
Skidoo.
February 28th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
James Russell:
No, thats absolutely NOT what I meant. When I said this is propaganda for liberals, I was not saying that this was propaganda promoting a liberal viewpoint. What I meant was that this is propaganda covertly promoting a CONSERVATIVE viewpoint, but aimed to fooling liberals into thinking these viewpoints are their own.
February 28th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
“Liberal propaganda promoting a CONSERVATIVE viewpoint” is simply conservative propaganda. If this movie seems tailored for liberals, you need to examine it closer: what you’ll find is that it is most likely targeting moderates who are on the fence and don’t know what to believe.
I know we wanted to avoid talking about Moore, but in his defense he isn’t trying to make objective movies, and he would be the first to admit this. I laugh when I think of Matt Stone from “South Park” distancing himself from his cameo in “Bowling For Columbine” by claiming Moore tried to make something else out of his statements. Hadn’t he seen “Roger & Me”? I have a feeling that Trey Parker (the true conservative out of the cartoonist duo) took Stone apart for his involvement and maybe threatened to cut him out of the SP loop unless he distanced himself from Moore.
btw: shortly after 9/11, Bush held a secret closed-door meeting with Hollywood producers and high-rollers, discussing the movie industry’s role in fighting terrorism. This is a fact, not a CT… my question is, who was there at the meeting and what was discussed?
February 28th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
Great point. I remember very disctinctly reading the news article about that on mainstream sites like Yahoo. Does anybody have any references?
February 28th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Nice article on alternet about propaganda in the post 9/11 world:
http://www.alternet.org/story/16735/
March 20th, 2006 at 3:17 am
[…]
Catharsis A few weeks ago, I dropped the hammer on a documentary called Why We Fight, suggesting that it was very cleverly targeted propaganda to herd liberal […]