Counter-Currents
3,030 words
Zero Dark Thirty is not propaganda. Argo is. Zero Dark Thirty lost the Oscar for Best Picture. Argo won.
Argo is not one of the flag waving, guns and glory cinematic tributes to God and Country of yesteryear. As the American Imperium grows more distant from the real American nation that gave it shape, its justifications have become more sophisticated. Argo is propaganda for America 2.0, Obama’s America, the Empire that will fulfill the founding destiny of the United States by eradicating all authentic nations and traditions from around the world, even if this means destroying itself.
While Zero Dark Thirty began with the deliberate provocation of audio footage from 9/11, Argo gives us a comic book. As Howard Zinn and his People’s History of the United States (and probably the comic book version) is now required reading in government schools, it’s not surprising that the graphic novel style intro checks off the required boxes of apologies for imperialism, Orientalism, and racism. The ancient land of Persia is simultaneously hailed for its ancient culture but condemned for its history of oppression under brutal monarchies. The evil CIA, all white men in suits and ties, overthrow the heroic Mohammed Mosaddegh and install the Shah, who is evil because he wears opulent clothes and has a secret police. His wife even “bathes in milk”! Therefore, when the Shah tries to “Westernize” the country, the masses rise up in righteous rebellion.
The entire Iranian hostage crisis occurs because the United States allowed the dying Shah to receive treatment for cancer in America, and, in the world of Argo, many of the characters are sick about it. As officials run around in the midst of a crisis, actors quickly utter lines like “What did you expect? We helped a guy torture and deball an entire population.” While some government officials grouse that the “Russians wouldn’t put up with this. They’d fucking invade!” and news reports show outraged Americans, Argo marginalizes these reactions. A relatively lengthy news report shows Americans striking an Iranian in front of an embassy. The point is clear – we are just like them. The masses are dumb, xenophobic lunatics who need to be managed carefully.
However, this is all front-loaded in the film, a de rigueur nod to political correctness that allows the remainder of the movie to focus on the fanaticism of the Iranian revolutionaries. It dodges many of the questions raised by other film treatments of terrorism. Zero Dark Thirty admirably confronted the desire for violent revenge and the complicated issues that arise in pursuit of “justice.” Some would suggest that it even hinted at a kinship between Maya and the jihadists, both driven by some inner fanaticism rather than careerism or money.
Argo simplifies it for us. The Americans in the film are victims, passive unfortunates in a world gone mad, paying the price for the sins of their wicked ancestors. The Marines are ordered not to fire to avoid starting a war, an embassy employee who goes outside to “reason” with the crowd ends up with a gun to his head being forced to let the mob in. Later, Marines are subjected to fake executions; after the empty “click” one of them falls to his knees and sobs. This is what Americans want to pretend to be – innocents abroad, not prideful centurions coolly administering their Empire.
Six Americans manage to escape the fall of the embassy and are staying with the Canadian ambassador. The Iranians don’t know – if they find out, the Americans will most likely be executed. Ben Affleck plays Tony Mendez, an “exfil” expert. As expected, we can check off the boxes of “drinking problem,” “lost family,” and “brusque demeanor” as Mendez tells shocked officials that “Exfils are like abortions. You don’t wanna need one, but when you do, you don’t do it yourself.” Such bluntness seems appropriate seeing as how the State Department’s initial plan is to send them bicycles and road maps. Mendez’s mission is to figure out a better way to smuggle them out of the country.
As a good modern father, Mendez isn’t allowed to see his own son, but he can watch television with him (in separate locations, talking on the phone). While watching Planet of the Apes, Mendez creates his scheme of posing as a Canadian film crew looking to film a science fiction movie in a desert location. His “contact” in Hollywood is Academy Award winning prosthetic maker John Chambers (John Goodman), who recruits (fictional) producer Lester Siegel. Together, the three create a media campaign, production studio, and promotional materials for a science fiction movie called Argo that will never actually be produced.
The plan allows Affleck to make some loving jokes at the industry’s expense. Chambers cracks about Mendez acting like a big shot in Hollywood without doing anything – “you’ll fit right in.” In response to Aflleck’s disquiet with teaching a diplomat to act like a director after a day, Chambers shrugs, “You can teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day.” Mendez explains his plan to the incredulous CIA director by saying, “We think everyone knows Hollywood people. And everybody thinks they would shoot during Stalingrad with Pol Pot directing if it would sell tickets.”
Besides the admission that the CIA works with Hollywood, we also see the now casual acknowledgment by Hollywood that Jews own everything. One telling scene about how they operate involves Siegel negotiating with one “Max Klein” to buy the rights to Argo. With many obscenities and insults, one Jew tells the other that his career is over and that more powerful figures are offering him huge amounts of money for the script. Jew #2 calls him a liar, recounts a (fictional) conversation with Warren Beatty, and offers less money than his initial offer. Once he has the script, he can pretend to make a film. The Empire of their Own is an empire of lies, posturing, and corruption.
Fortunately, it all serves Mendez’s purpose. Armed with a script, production, and backing from Washington, Mendez leaves for Iran. Before entering the country, he stops in Istanbul to meet with a contact and make final preparations. The meeting takes place at the Hagia Sophia, as the two spies gaze at a picture of Christ in the converted cathedral and commiserate about their job saving the remnants of “our friend’s fallen dictatorship.” Like some Byzantine captain centuries before, they are officers doing the best they can to prop up a crumbling empire.
Mendez is able to fly into Iran with a fake passport and discuss his film with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The Iranian official sneers at the Westerner’s Orientalism, accusing him of looking for “snake charmers and flying carpets.” Revolutionary Iran is a combination of the worst global junk culture and Islamic fanaticism, as bodies hang from cranes on the streets while peddlers sell trinkets and women covered in robes munch on Kentucky Fried Chicken. Troops with rifles patrol the crowded streets. Mendez is able to negotiate all this and get to the Canadian embassy, where he meets the “houseguests” and presents them with the outlandish plan.
Unfortunately for them, the Iranian government calls Mendez’s bluff and invites the entire team to tour the “bazaar” the next day, accompanied by a government official. The terrified Americans have to pretend to be a film crew while surrounded by people who want to kill them. Even driving a van to the meeting site is fraught with danger, as mobs screaming revolutionary slogans block the path of their vehicle and angrily beat the van as Mendez delicately weaves it through. When they arrive, government spies take pictures of the foreigners and a confrontation erupts between one of the Americans and a shopkeeper. The shopkeeper accuses the “Canadian filmmakers” of being Americans involved with the CIA and an angry crowd gathers. Of course, the irony is he’s absolutely right. The Americans are able to make it back to the embassy, deception intact, but are terrified.
At the same time, the Iranian housekeeper at the Canadian embassy has guessed who the ambassador’s “guests” really are. She is approached by members of the Revolutionary Guard who quote both the Koran . . . and Mossadegh. She lies to them, telling everyone in the embassy is a “friend of Iran.” (What happens to her later is left unanswered.) The soldiers leave, but the Iranian government is watching, and now they have pictures. Meanwhile, the government has children reassembling the shredded documents captured from the embassy, including pictures of the six “missing” employees. As a final blow, Washington DC suddenly decides to cancel the operation, pinning everything on a military rescue operation to take place later. This means that the Hollywood “production” office is called and told to shut down, meaning that there will be no one there if Iranians call to verify the film is real.
Thus (with very little of all this based on the true story), Affleck is able to create a genuinely terrifying final day for the houseguests. Mendez unilaterally decides he is going through with the rescue, presenting his boss Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad fame) with a fait accompli. O’Donnell comes through to get Mendez’s tickets approved, intimidating underlings, threatening colleagues, and even faking an emergency phone call from the school attended by the children of the White House Chief of Staff. The Revolutionary Guard puts it all together, but are just one step behind Mendez and the houseguests. At the critical moment at the airport when security pulls them aside for future questioning, one of the more hesitant houseguests enthusiastically describes the film in Farsi to skeptical (but enthralled) soldiers. A phone call to the LA office is answered (just in the nick of time) by Chambers, convincing the Iranians the film is real. The plane takes off with gun-toting Revolutionary Guard soldiers just behind them, and there is rejoicing and celebration when alcohol is served in the air, signifying that the Americans have finally escaped Iran.
It’s one cinematic cliché piled upon another, it’s wildly historically inaccurate, and it doesn’t make any sense. (Why wouldn’t the Iranians send fighters to force back the plane? Why wouldn’t the pilot notice that there’s a column of soldiers right next to him pointing guns?) Despite it all – it works. Even though I know how the story ended, I couldn’t help but be on the edge of my seat and admit that whatever one says about Ben Affleck, he knows his craft. This is a simple but suspenseful story, competently done, entertaining to watch. The hostages return home to wild celebration. Mendez gets the Intelligence Medal (as does Chambers) and he even gets his wife and son back.
Nonetheless, as the credits make clear – there is a political motive. Stills from the film are put side by side with news photos from the time, and the actors are portrayed next to pictures of their real life doppelgangers. Despite the fantasy, the film has pretensions to realism. Also, former President Jimmy Carter pays tribute to the mission, explaining how in the end, the hostages were all brought home without violence, and the “integrity of our country” was protected. The efforts of the Canadians to help the American houseguests is still a “model for international cooperation among governments.” There’s a happy ending for peace, cooperation, and global unity.
Unfortunately, Argo gets a lot of the big picture wrong here. Argo has already received criticism for changing many of the crucial details of the movie for dramatic purposes. However, what is truly shocking is the way Argo changes the core realities of what the United States and Canada were doing in response to the hostage crisis. The claim that all the hostages were brought home “without violence” is absurd when one remembers that President Carter authorized the disastrous Operation Eagle Claw, a humiliating failure that killed eight Americans. If it had succeeded, surely many Iranians would have died. Ambassador Ken Taylor is a courageous man and a friend to the United States, but he was not shielding Americans out of humanitarianism. He was in fact spying for U.S. Intelligence the entire hostage crisis, including scouting out military locations for Operation Eagle Claw. It should be noted that it was precisely the charge of serving as “spies” that the Iranians used to justifying holding the embassy team. If anything, they were too restrained – the Canadians were spying too.
What Argo gives us is a friendly face of American Imperium. Americans may have done some things we are not proud of in the Bad Old Days, but relax, that was decades ago! Our military is a humanitarian force and our government means well – it’s just that sometimes we make mistakes. Those mistakes either occur beyond our vision or through a video screen, the death and suffering far removed. Americans are still the forces of enlightenment surrounded by foreign mobs tied down by ancient prejudices like religion, national pride, or the need to avenge the deaths of loved ones. The outraged sense of Iranian honor isn’t something we should take too seriously, any more than we take our own honor too seriously. It’s simply a problem to be managed.
The problem is that exercising power abroad requires bloodshed, death, and suffering. Contra kosher conservatives, America is (and has always been) a center-Left country that would prefer to live with illusions than face hard truths. One of those treasured myths is the idea that Realpolitik is simply something that other peoples do. Even before the end of “isolationism,” the United States has always been an incredibly warlike country that built its North American empire on military victory and territorial expansion. However, rather than offer a defense or even an acknowledgment of America’s “victory culture,” we cling to the old idea that Americans are simply misunderstood. In the minds of our political class, though we make mistakes and are plagued by our own racism, sexism, and all the rest, America was founded on egalitarianism and we continue to strive forward. In the end, that will redeem us. It’s this kind of thinking that allows “community organizer” Barack Obama to administer the most far flung military empire the world has ever seen without progressives being too upset about it.
It’s worth noting that a more instinctual sense of patriotism, built upon a visceral sense of identity and honor, is spat upon in the film, seen as a mirror image of Iranian fanaticism. Instead, decline is seen as a natural thing. Siegel remarks in disgust while watching the news, “John Wayne’s in the ground six months and this is what’s left of America.” Ultimately, this sense of malaise and yearning for national renewal led to the election of Ronald Reagan, who gave the United States an Indian Summer of American patriotism (but whose most lasting historical achievement will probably be the 1986 immigration amnesty). Reagan goes unmentioned in the film, and the Carter Administration is, if not glorified, presented as unjustly suffering for the imperialist sins of America’s past. Argo is one small step towards trying to rehabilitate the foreign policy reputation of a President The Simpsons famously lampooned as “history’s greatest monster.”
The main criticism of the film in the media is that it is not progressive enough. Tony Mendez is part Latino, meaning that Ben Affleck exploited his white privilege rather than casting a Hispanic. For what it’s worth, Tony Mendez himself doesn’t speak Spanish, doesn’t consider himself Hispanic, and saw no problem with the casting, but who cares what he thinks? Color blind casting (remember black Heimdall in Thor?) only goes one way. Kevin Lee over at Slate has accused the film of racism because the Iranians should be the heroes. And walking cliché Max Read over at the tiresome site Gawker took a break from sobbing over the St. Skittles of Civil Rights Trayvon Martin to slam Michelle Obama for awarding the Best Picture award to “CIA Propaganda.” Presumably it would have been better for Michelle Obama to give it to Django Unchained.
Of course, the movie is CIA propaganda, but of a very specific type. The anti-imperialist Left (what remains of it in the age of Obama) never quite understands that the ruling powers of the United States generally support their values. It is a dispute over means and not ends, and ultimately the existence of “antifa” are dependent on a System designed to support Goldman Sachs. The Establishment vision of American foreign policy is defined by aggressively using the hard fist of American power to support post-American ends of global democracy, international finance, and state enforced liberalism. Both old fashioned American nationalists and reflexive anti-Americans miss the point.
Argo is important because whatever its inaccuracies, it is telling us what the System wants us to think about American foreign policy. Even as a superpower, America remains exceptionally innocent. The reality that Empire means killing is safely hidden away, as Last Men don’t like to think about anything to kill or die for. There are still enough conservative useful idiots who will die for the honor of a long dead Republic, but we don’t want to show those people as heroes or their values as positive.
Instead, Argo is about guilt-plagued Americans using roguish (but nonviolent) derring-do to save other regular Americans for humanitarian reasons. The enemies are Muslims who have unfortunately responded to their oppression through the false consciousness of traditional religion. This is the kind of patriotism Hollywood can get beyond, and it’s no wonder – in this film, Hollywood itself is the hero. This is the kind of cultural propaganda that can support an interventionist foreign policy of drones, bombs, and universally applicable values. Best of all, this is the kind of foreign policy that can avoid having to call upon shared sacrifices in the name of national identity, history, or (worst of all) kinship.
Argo is entertaining, it’s exciting, it’s worth renting from the Redbox, and it won Best Picture. But like all products of the Establishment, no one will remember it in a year. It’s hard for something to stand out when you see it every day.
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18 comments
Besides the admission that the CIA works with Hollywood, we also see the now casual acknowledgment by Hollywood that Jews own everything. One telling scene about how they operate involves Siegel negotiating with one “Max Klein” to buy the rights to Argo. With many obscenities and insults, one Jew tells the other that his career is over and that more powerful figures are offering him huge amounts of money for the script. Jew #2 calls him a liar, recounts a (fictional) conversation with Warren Beatty, and offers less money than his initial offer. Once he has the script, he can pretend to make a film. The Empire of their Own is an empire of lies, posturing, and corruption.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp92q38OKEQ
Revelation of the Method?
Besides the admission that the CIA works with Hollywood, we also see the now casual acknowledgment by Hollywood that Jews own everything
In case anyone does not know, “The Revelation of The Method” is a concept from occult conspiracy theory. It comes from Michael Hoffman (a holocaust revisionist among other things).
Here is how a Hoffman critic defined “The Revelation of The Method”:
It’s actually a very recent fabrication from a Catholic “Revisionist Historian” named Michael Hoffman.
In his original formulation, the Revelation of the Method is an occult ritual, specifically a “Masonic psychodrama.”
Used casually, the implication is always the same: when the Cryptocracy commits major crimes, they will broadcast their intentions in advance, through popular movies and television.
Hoffman himself was iffy on the actual order of the process: “it’s my contention that these are occult rituals and that like the Rosicrucian Manifestos of the early 17th century they are accompanied by anonymous statements of intent, as well as scripts that precede the ritual.”
Later in the same interview, though, he deviates from his own script: “Look at the movie “The Matrix” in the wake of Columbine. Look at “The Wicker Man” movie in the same time frame as Son of Sam. The themes of the killings are in the movies.”
Whatever its actual merits, the end result of this theory is pattern recognition in the service of a pre-established conclusion. The Revelation of the Method is how the Illuminati, or the Vatican, or the CIA rub it in our faces.
Along that line of thought, I felt that the TV show ’24’ was preparing the masses to accept torture as a means to get the truth and thus when torture happened, everyone accepted it and there was no moral outrage. The fact that Kiefer Sutherland the grand son of the Greatest Canadian Tommy Douglas portrayed the torturer just infuriated me. How could he shame him like that? Doesn’t he know there is a thin line between fiction and non-fiction? How is that for method?
Yes, this idea of preparing the masses is a major theme at Vigilant Citizen.
VC claims the NWO global elite, which he calls the Illuminati, use mass media to “prepare” the masses to accept a coming police state as normal, as well as (of course) to indoctrinate, propagandize, ridicule and taunt the masses. It sounds like this film Argo uses a few of those techniques.
Taking VCs ideas on their own terms (for the sake of discussion), the basic idea is that through the mass media the elites are showing us how they operate (revealing the method).
One reason I read VC besides for entertainment value is that he is not afraid to quote holocaust “denier” Michael Hoffman and recommend his books. Assuming he knows about Hoffman’s heretical works, he must not care about a tacit linkage with a serious “thought criminal.” I doubt Alex Jones would recommend even the mildest Jew critic if his life depended on it, much less a revisionist. VC also allows anti-Jewish comments. I leave them occasionally.
The problem is once you get into this general subject area, it’s damn near impossible to verify anything because there are so many lunatics, madmen and idiots involved in these topics. Julius Evola is the only exception I can find.
Eyes Wide Shut is another excellent example of the Revelation of the Method. Stanley Kubrick who William Cooper (The Pale Horse) says was an insider himself is said to have revealed the method before putting us all back to sleep at the end of the movie. I believe our very own Yggdrasil reviewed the film in his White Nationalist Library.
PS. If you are still with us Yggdrasil I hope you get round to publishing your review of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
There is also the Denzel Washington late 90s movie Siege. A very obvious praparation to 9/11.
This is interesting. I have had this suspicion too. Take for example all the exortations in the neocon journals in the years leading up to 9/11 that we “need an event on the scale of Pearl Harbor”. And then it happens, almost like they were preparing us to see it that way. I don’t understand how the Matrix relates to Columbine, however. My own conspiracy theory is that Hoffman may be trying to make revisionists look like unhinged conspiracy theorists, thus making himself part of the conspiracy.
I think that the Revelation of the Method notion can, of course, lend itself to an essentially paranoid way of seeing everything that happens as manufactured and intentional. This is how I see the world:
1. There are intentional, manufactured events, which go exactly according to the plans of our rulers. Given the fact that there are billions of causal agents, conscious and unconscious, impacting human society all the time, it strikes me that such events must be vanishingly few in number. One would have to be ominpotent to control all factors to make sure that everything that happens is according to plan.
2. There are intentional, manufactured events, which do not go exactly according to plans of our rulers, because of the interference of other causal factors. When such events to wrong, however, it is possible for our rulers to turn them back to their own advantage or to fail to do so. A somewhat larger category than the first.
3. There are intentional, manufactured events successfully or unsuccessfully carried out by agents working contrary to the plans of our rulers, but which our rulers seek to turn to their advantage either successfully or unsuccessfully. I think 9/11 is an example of such a successful event by external forces which was successfully turned to the advantage of our rulers. A much larger category than the first.
4. There are things that happen that were not intentional and manufactured by any one agent, but come about throught the interactions of different agents pursuing different goals, and non-teleological factors as well. Different agents then try to wrest advantages from them, successfully or not. This, I think, is the nature of most events.
As for “revelations of the method” they might have the following nature:
1. The intentional revelation of the designs of the rulers for essentially magical, irrational reasons (Hoffmann)
2. The wishful thinking and fantasies of media people (black presidents on TV) preparing the way for real black presidents by making them more concretely conceivable
3. Inept and overzealous people giving away the method
4. Intentional actions of opponents of the system trying to expose its plans
5. Overconfidence.
“It’s hard for something to stand out when you see it everyday.”
Bingo! It fits todays collectivist Washington mindset. There can be no heros but those that are appointed as such by the elite.
Excellent review. Linked and commented on here:
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-meaning-of-argo.html
Sandy,
I too have seen that claim made about Eyes Wide Shut.
As everyone knows, the Rothschildes are always at the center of these conspiracy theories. It turns out, interestingly enough, the on-screen mansion for the famous Satanic-Illuminati ritualized sex orgy was a Rothschild mega-mansion in England. It was also used as Wayne manor in Nolan’s batman movies.
The conspiracy minded claim that as Tom Cruise walks around during the orgy, you see huge portraits of various aristocrats on the wall in the background hovering over it all. Supposedly, they show (reveal) now deceased members of the illuminati.
I recall the Sydney Pollack character (implied member of the global elite) telling Tom Cruise if you knew who was that party you wouldn’t sleep at night…
From what I recall (and this might not be exactly right), Ygg interpreted Eyes Wide Shut as basically Jews taunting the goyim.
There are at least three (implied) sex-crazed Jews in the film: the Sydney Pollack character (Jew in real life), the lecherous “Hungarian” dancer who tries to seduce Nicole Kidman, and a “Russian” costume shop owner.
The “Russian” sells his underage daughter for sex. Also, his shop is located next door to a Masonic temple (lol, I’m sure that was a coincidence).
The film starts at a Christmas party thrown by a member of the elite (the Pollack character). In his review, Ygg pointed out what appeared to be Stars of David all over the background. Outwardly, it’s a Christmas party, yet dominating the background are these huge, conspicuous Stars of David. A weird juxtaposition. Later, we learn the Sydney Pollack figure was at the Satanic orgy.
I don’t remember Ygg digging in to the illuminati angle; various conspiracy reviewers have made that connection; however, none of the conspiracy reviewers to my knowledge have ever mentioned the Jewish angle. Ygg the WNist picked up on that angle.
This is true in general for conspiracy theorists. They vaguely talk about elites, masons, jesuits, etc. but never mention Jews, anything but Jews, Hoffman being an exception.
Now, in mainstream reviews of Eyes Wide Shut (not by conspiracy writers), I’ve read interpretations that claim that by design Stanley Kubrick set up deliberate parallels between the NY “Christmas” party, the first party shown, and the sex party at the Rothschilde mansion, the second one. The sex party is overseen by a man in a gold mask, waving incense, while dressed like a catholic cardinal. This reading establishes a point of connection between the two parties.
So if the Stars of David in the background at the first party are meaningful (Ygg’s observation), the wall portraits at the Rothschild sex party might be too. Supposedly, Kubrick never did anything by accident, he was obsessed with every detail.
This classic illustration of this is in 2001. It’s just about the only movie to ever accurately depict space. When Dave Bowman says “open the pod bay doors HAL,” he gets blasted into the ship, but there is no sound. Because space is a vacuum. There can’t be any sound.
Supposedly, Kubrick had these details thoroughly researched so he could show it accurately instead of how, for example, Star Wars shows it (you can hear the ships flying). So there is some evidence Kubrick was very attuned to details.
Maybe it’s all bullshit; but if there is any literal truth to this “revelation of the method” idea, then this world is a lot more fucked up than most people realize. A lot more.
There is more than just revelation of the method, another thing that jews do is the the Talmudic inversion of the narrative, jews accuse their opponents of doing what jews always do, it’s well represented in the media.
Jewish power is actually interesting in terms of making us understand the true nature of power.
When US was led by white gentiles, it was less easy to tell in what components of society the key levers of power was located. Was it the white elites, white middle class, white working class, white farming class, etc? Did white elites rule society because of support of white middle classes? Did Democrats gain power as the result of white working class? Since it was white at top, white in middle, and white on bottom, it wasn’t easy to pinpoint the true locus of power.
But it’s become clear with Jews. Jews don’t have the numbers. There has never been a Jewish president or even vice-president. Most middle class are not Jewish. Even most upper middle class are not Jewish. Most working class are not Jewish.
Instead, Jews dominate in elite circles and have control over finance, media, and academia–and through them, the government. With control over those things, Jews have control over most of society. So, we better understand the true nature of power and the things one needs to control society.
It’s like a machine may be very elaborate and complex, but what really controls it is the person who has access to the button. That’s all you need. Jews got the buttons. If a hundred people work on the machine, but one person has access to the button, that one person controls the machine, not the 100 who work on it.
Duke uses the idea of the Power triangle to describe Jewish power, mass media, politics and finance.
The money power is the foundation, however. It has to be. Nothing else makes sense. With money, you can buy media and political influence. The reverse is not true. We can talk about warriors, priests, artists and intellectuals until we’re blue in the face. Those people drive the society’s intellectual, cultural and ethical climate, but is there a single time in history where the faction(s) with the most material wealth didn’t ultimately call the shots?
In Alex Ks most recent “equality is evil” article, Kerry Bolton pointed out that the plutocrats and the merchant class have run the table since 1789 (not his phrasing).
They beat the French aristocracy, the Church, Napoleon, Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, the segment of the American establishment that was against the Federal Reserve Act, the Russian aristocracy, and the National Socialists and other fascists. Along the way, they quashed a wide variety of groups and people like the southern agrarians, traditional Catholics, Father Coughlin, Eugene Debs.
Some on the right might throw in the American revolution, too, as fundamentally a victory for the merchant class. The outcome of the US Civil War was favorable to American plutocrats, and plutocratic interests were protected on both sides of the largely phony Capitalist versus Marxist conflict.
This is a record of total domination of all different kinds of opposition for 225 years.
Our “liberal” president just appointed the ex-Citigroup exec Jacob Lew as Secretary of the Treasury, and only one Democrat voted against him (Bernie Sanders). Also, today’s plutocrats combine parasitical and rapacious, exploitative behavior in a way that might be unique. At least Rockefeller and the robber barons of his era pumped oil and built railroads. Today’s global elites don’t produce anything.
How do you beat people that control trillions of dollars? Ain’t exactly an easy thing.
Somebody commenting at the UK Times in response to some US gov abuse observed the regime’s police state toys look like they came Geidi Prime. Reminded me of the notion “he who controls the spice controls the universe…
Jewish power is actually interesting in terms of making us understand the true nature of power.
Argo is empty, not boring but not far from it, fabricated, it runs like a cartoon aimed at a brainless audience. The characters are shallow, there is no story, just an association of scenes barely fitting a chronology. Eveyrthing is reduced to the level of cheap caricature, hasta the long haired pilot of the Swiss aircraft. Freedom man !
The Artist was crap, Argo is crap, so goes the palmares of the Oscar ceremony.
One can read many things in crap, crap is convenient for this.
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