Joanna
Doug Henwood wrote:
> <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/cohe-j09.shtml>
>
> Liberal philistinism and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11
>
> By David Walsh
> 9 July 2004
>
> Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
>
> Through July 7 nearly ten million people in the US had viewed Michael
> Moore's documentary film, Fahrenheit 9/11. That is to say, millions
> understand better now than they did prior to June 25 that the American
> government is run by a gang of crooks with ambitions to plunder and
> dominate the globe.
>
> Moore's film has its weaknesses, but it argues persuasively that Bush,
> Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz and the rest are liars and war
> criminals, with intimate connections to big business in general and
> the oil industry in particular. About these facts there simply is no
> longer any debate within an increasingly wide layer of the population.
>
> The success of Fahrenheit 9/11 is deeply disturbing to the leading
> figures in the US media, all of whom, in one way or another, helped
> conceal certain truths about the Hussein regime in Iraq-that it
> possessed no weapons of mass destruction, that it had no connection to
> Al-Qaeda, that it bore no responsibility whatsoever for the September
> 11 attacks-from the American people.
>
> [...]
>
> There is an even deeper reason for the violence of the attacks on
> Moore's film. To the complacent liberal journalist there is something
> frightening about both Fahrenheit 9/11 and the powerful response of
> the population to its charges. To acknowledge that the Iraq war was a
> criminal enterprise, that the US government lies unrelentingly, that
> millions despise the Bush administration and the entire establishment
> with a visceral hatred, all this is devastating to the Cohens and
> Kristofs and Goodmans.
>
> It cannot be true that crimes of this dimension were taking place,
> because that would indicate something horribly wrong about America.
> And the popular outpouring must be dismissed because its implication,
> that the US is a powder keg, is also terrifying. Each column these
> people write is a soporific, delivering the message, 'everything is
> well and good,' 'everything is under control.'
>
> The war may be terrible, but it will pass. The Bush administration may
> be vile, but it too will pass. Dangers exist, but they are always
> somewhere else, they always emerge from some external source, some
> "bad guy" far away.
>
> If, on the other hand, what Moore asserts about the US ruling elite in
> Fahrenheit 9/11 is true and if the reaction to his film is an accurate
> reflection of the volatile state of mass consciousness, then this is a
> very different and disturbing picture. Then things have been done that
> cannot be undone; the course of American history has been irrevocably
> altered. Such a thought cannot be allowed! What follows from it is far
> too shattering for the liberal philistine. He or she responds with
> bewilderment and venom.
>
> [...]
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