TRIUMPH OF HIS WILL, or The Ideology of Slander

Moore is a liar. Moore is a deceiver. Moore is a cheat. Moore is a manipulator. Moore is a hypocrite. Moore is a propagandist. Moore is a propagandist. Moore is a propagandist.

Or is he ?

Why is it they never say : “Moore is impotent” ?

DENIAL LOSING GROUND : FROM LIES TO DECEITS

In spite of all the attempts of creeping censorship (Disney, R-Rating, ad banning), in spite of the acts of intimidation directed at theater owners, in spite of its summertime release when asinine blockbusters are kings, in spite of its originally reduced number of places screening it, Fahrenheit 9/11 will probably leave first-run theatres soon at about $125 million domestic, $145 million worldwide, pacing it to beat other big-named season contenders for an original cost of $6 million.

At first Mike’s enemies were completely mystified when confronted to the opening weekend’s mind-boggling figures. They first reacted by hurried, gross, crass, pitiable, and all in all grotesque denial. THE THEATERS WERE EMPTY (yes, some did say that), THE MOVIE WAS ALL LIES.

Now Mike knows very well facts are silent and that’s why he had thought them out so as to address brainwashed minds in the first place. But, a humanist as usual, he first decided to let his movie speak for itself. He had of course made sure BEFORE shooting anything all of his facts were true. He was well aware he would be jumped on first thing if the slightest bit was not.

When confronted once more to this sad reality that facts mean so much less than hype, he set up a "war room" to swiftly respond to criticism and offered $10, 000 per lie to anyone who could find a factual error in his movie. He’s still waiting. The facts are accurate. The sources are listed line by line on his website. He has made the resources available. And as time goes by everybody can see more and more clearly how truthful Fahrenheit 9/11 was as regards the sinister hoax that lead up to the war. We're seeing a 9/11 commission that staunchly refutes Bush administration’s claims that there is an Iraq/al Qaeda connection. Now we're seeing this latest statement from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee that shows reports on Iraq's WMD's were highly exaggerated. CNN speaking, not Mike’s war room. Even the most die-hard Bushites are no longer the prosecutors, and tacitly admit Bush is the defendant (O’Reilly : “It wasn’t a lie”, Mike : “He did not tell the truth, what do you call that ?”).

Time to face the truth then ? No, time to overlook and dismiss all this work and all these achievements and move on to a sneakier kind of slander : SUDDENLY THE LIES VANISH AND BECOME DECEITS.

Ha ! Forget about the overwhelming evidence of the corruption of the Bush regime. The cowardice and the complacency of the mainstream media you can forget as well. There is so much worse, so much more important things to crusade against : Mike showing Iraqis as human beings who were just trying to get on with their daily lives instead of bowing to Bush’s media by hammering with the war hawks how bad a guy Saddam was ; Mike accusing the White House of having approved planes to pick up the Bin Ladens, whereas the decision was only Richard Clarke’s – only the former counterterrorism czar for Bush ; Mike lampooning the inclusion of countries like Palau and Iceland in the Coalition of the Willing, but ignoring Britain and Australia and seriously misleading people by doing so, these two countries’ position being of course totally unknown ; or – most of all – the exact number of eggs thrown at Bush's presidential limousine during his inauguration. Nobody has questioned the flavour, the shape or the number of the cookies eaten by the Peace Fresno group as yet, but I trust some insightful right-winger will soon slam all of Mike’s works, past, present and future, on this ground.

If you buy this logic and ambition to counter such arguments, you obviously can’t win. Welcome to the realm of the infinitesimal, which knows no end. You’ll only provide the anally retentive variety of Moore bashers with the erotic pleasure of counter-debunking your debunking, and you’ll have to come up with counter-counter-debunkings, which will be eagerly counter-counter-counter-debunked. Nobody will read these rants anyway, and both sides will just alternately be shouting : “1-1 !”, “1-2 !”, “2-2 !”.

No, really, more attention should be paid to the revisionist variety of Moore bashers. Much more.

DENIAL GAINING CREDIT : THE TWISTING OF THE WORDS

No scholarly spins to impress the suckers there. The message is obnoxious in its simplicity : FAHRENHEIT 9/11 WASN’T A DOCUMENTARY. FAHRENHEIT 9/11 WAS PROPAGANDA. MOORE IS GOEBBELS AND RIEFENSTAHL’S GRANDSON. So simple, so apparently obvious that even Fahrenheit 9/11 supporters sometimes fall into this trap : “No, it’s not a documentary, but…” “Yes, it’s propaganda, but…” I have read, for instance, something like : “Where is it written that the President is allowed to propagandize (and at public expense, by the way) whereas a private citizen is not ?”

Now if we’re going to accept the revisionists’ malicious standards, we’ll never make ourselves heard. IT’S A DOCUMENTARY. IT’S NOT PROPAGANDA. MIKE IS AN EYE OPENER, NOT A MIND RAPIST.

Mike had settled both issues in his clear, outspoken, straightforward way right from the start during a conference call with a group of journalists : "Of course it's a documentary, it's a non-fiction film, it's a documentary. Documentaries by their very nature are supposed to have a point of view. The word has also been used over the years -- from 'NBC White Paper' to any of a number of forms of documentary. My form of doc is an op-ed piece. It presents my opinion that's based on fact. I am trying to present a view of the last three-and-a-half years that I don't feel has been presented to the American public."

Now let’s check the dictionary, although to deal with notions the encyclopaedia is better, for persuading people to respect three lines in their dictionary is hard enough like that. I chose Webster’s, because the Net gives two definitions (1913 and nowadays), thus giving broader perspective :

DOCUMENTARY :

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

1 – Pertaining to written evidence ; contained or certified in writing. (adjective)

WordNet Dictionary

1 – A film or TV program presenting the facts about a person or event.

2 – Relating to or consisting of or derived from documents.

From the beginning, “evidence” and “certified” referred to authenticity, and as we just saw Mike’s facts are faultless. Then the film industry developed rapidly and, going back to Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North each and every director has had, and will always have a specific and personal editorial bent, or leaning. There is no such thing as an “objective” non-fiction film. Even in an extreme genre such as the cinema verite, there are choices made by the filmmaker on what to include or exclude, subjective choices. You cannot make a documentary or even write a news story that is 100% completely free from reflecting your own biases in your choice of what to include, and what to omit. The only way you could possibly do that is to film everything that has ever happened since the beginning of time, from all possible points of view. An obvious fact, which the modern dictionary acknowledges by the words “presenting” and “derived”.

In Fahrenheit 9/11, Mike had to keep the running time to an acceptable length and make enough coherent points within that time so we didn't have to listen through hours of political speeches just to get the proper context each and every single time for every single little issue. Whatever you think of his choices, he had to make some if he wanted to get his work across to more people than a few movie or politics buffs. He had to, and he was entitled to : although some academics took exception to some of the techniques used in Fahrenheit 9/11, none of them - no film critic, no industry expert - has ever stated that it was not a documentary.

So, Mike says he’s made a documentary and the world agrees with him. The world… but not the Moore haters. Well wait then, I’ve got a special delicacy in store for those ignorant and arrogant revisionists who know better than all the specialists (Hollywood Librals all of ‘em !), better than what their own reason tells them : it was Bush’s first cousin, Kevin Rafferty, a documentary filmmaker, who taught Mike how to make movies. Say no more !

Now for Mike as an alleged propagandist.

PROPAGANDA

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

1 – A congregation of cardinals, established in 1622, charged with the management of missions.

2 – Hence, any organization or plan for spreading a particular doctrine or a system of principles.

WordNet Dictionary

Information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause.

1) The word’s original definition implies clearly using a dominant position to impose a belief, and one of a particularly hard to prove kind since it’s a religious belief. From the beginning, propaganda is not meant to free the mind but to oppress it. With his arsenal of media, Bush does propaganda. Mike does anti-poisoning. He’s restricted himself to acting as a counterpoint, showing what the mainstream media didn't show, and raising the questions they wouldn't raise. He’s gone against his hot-blooded nature and has disciplined himself into merely offering the other side of the coin, the basic alternative viewpoint to the overwhelming slurry of rhetoric from the Bush administration. A few critics have noticed Fahrenheit 9/11 is a moderate movie. It is.

AN EXAMPLE OF COUNTER-PROPAGANDA : A 1941 poster by Boris Efimov countering Nazi propaganda about the Aryan race

This poster restores the truth in a critical and satirical way.

2) The broader 1913 sense (spreading a particular doctrine) doesn’t fit better : Mike is not supporting any kind of political doctrine. He’s an independent, always was and always will be. Remember how blamed he was/is for changing his mind from Nader to Anyone But Bush ? Remember how he promised he’d keep his eye on Kerry as soon as he’d be elected ? And how he has already criticized many of the democrats who voted for the war ? Mike always championed freedom of speech and free thinking.

3) And when it comes to the purpose of promoting a cause (modern sense), I’m afraid “purpose” implies bamboozling people. Those who like so much to question Mike’s honesty won’t disagree with that. But how dumb must one be not to see self-confessed propaganda is no longer propaganda ? When you warn people it's your own opinion, the way Mike did at length, it’s called a viewpoint. He has never said that this film was unbiased. Fox News, on the other hand, denies its own bias every single day. So while they may be equally biased, the people over at Fox News are the ones who lie to cover up their bias.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is what is often referred to as an "essay-style" documentary, meant to expose political corruption, not to promote it. So what Mike really defends is a superior truth, the constitutional right to speak up one’s mind and to ask questions. You can call him a muckraker, you can call him a counter-propagandist if you can’t breathe without using the word “propaganda”. NOT a propagandist. Never. Using the same word to describe a huge dishonest state/corporations/warmongers verbal machine intent on spreading ignorance and lies and an angry but honest isolated movie, whatever successful, from a sole little filmmaker bowling for truth and free-thinking has to do with a twisted belief in a mythical "free market of ideas", where everyone is supposed to weigh the same weight, to be equally influential and to have an equal claim to legitimacy.

NEWSPEAK VS TRUTH

The ideology of slander relies on the twisting of the very definition of words to fit the purposes of smear. One right-wing paper even cynically confessed right away a new definition for “documentary” was now needed. Strong shades of Orwell here : Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak. There’s a tight connection between the growth of authoritarianism and the decline of language. Unless words have specific, precise identifiable and common meanings how is it possible to conceive of ideas such as freedom, oppression, resistance and the like ?

Against Newspeak, even a mighty but independent and honest will can’t apparently work miracles. A recent L.A. Times poll showed that few undecided voters and almost no avowed Bush supporters have seen Mike's film. Was Fahrenheit 9/11 just another set of “Random Threats from an Unarmed American” (Downsize This !’ s subtitle) ? Why is it that the Bushites still seek to smear Mike in any way they can then, attempting to discredit his movie, discount its message and disparage his techniques ?

Perhaps because other questioning voices are becoming legion ?

In the wake of Fahrenheit 9/11, political documentaries and “grown-up movies” have become fashionable and gained surprising interest and unprecedented potential audience. The World According to Bush, Outfoxed, The Control Room, Orwell Rolls In His Grave, Bush’s Brain, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the IraqWar, got mentioned and even talked about in places where they would have been silenced or gone unnoticed. Now great names like Sydney Pollack are joining in, with The Interpreter which deals with an international assassination plot exposed in the United Nations and stars recent Oscar winners Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. All in all, a half-dozen films harshly critical of Bush will have opened by November 2.

And then there is the little guy, the man in the street for whom Mike has fought since the beginning. Most of the Limbaugh-fed faction spat on Fahrenheit 9/11 without seeing it, which is extremely sad but unavoidable. But to a lot of people who were resigned, disheartened, apathetic or only had a vague clue of what was going on, this was a big wake up call. Fahrenheit 9/11 might have preached to the choir but the choir listened, responded and cheered with incredible passion throughout the land in the steps of the 20 minute standing ovation at Cannes. And whatever the polls say, moving (and moved) accounts flood into Mike’s website to testify that “A Movie Can Move the Voting Public -- 6,000 letters a day and counting”. One of the most beautiful reviews I read, back in June, began with the words : “I stand corrected”.

Such is the power of Mike, the power of truth over slander : AWARENESS. Just like lies and lack of awareness are the defeat of real propaganda. The will has limits. Mike’s ends where yours begins. And Hitler lost, and Lance Armstrong was doped up.