The phenomenon of Fahrenheit 9/11
After countless imperialist wars, is a sea-change
coming?
By Deirdre Griswold
Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" has made it
out of the art theaters and become a huge box office hit, even
though the Disney Corp. did everything it could to torpedo the
documentary. This alone makes it important to evaluate the film
and try to understand why it has penetrated what is commonly
called "popular culture"--which 99 percent of the time is in a
politically conservative mold shaped by giant corporate
institutions.
Across the country--and, indeed, in much of the world--this
film seems to have fallen like rain on a cultural landscape
thirsting for the unvarnished truth. People are clamoring to
see it--from Joplin, Mo., to Crawford, Texas, to cities in
Australia and U.S. Army bases in South Korea.
Go to Google News and type in "Fah ren heit 9/11" and you
will read reviews from hundreds of small-town newspapers across
the U.S. Most report a standing ovation and cheers when the
film ends. Audiences laugh and cry, and few are unmoved.
In Joplin, Mo., 60 people signed a petition to their local
theater demanding it be shown. In Crawford, Texas--where Bush
has his "ranch"--nearby movie houses are afraid to offend the
don, but local peace activists intend to show it outdoors, on
the side of a barn. They don't have a building large enough for
the expected crowd.
Audiences go far beyond those already opposed to Bush and
the war. Dale Earn hardt Jr., the NASCAR racing-car icon, took
his crew to see the movie. It is especially popular in towns
near military bases. Republicans are being offered free
admission in some areas to test their faith in Bush.
The last time a cultural work evoked this much interest and
passion from the "silent majority" in the U.S. was the 1850s,
when Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published
and soon began outselling the Bible. In 1856, 2 million copies
of this anti-slavery novel were sold. Families gathered at the
end of the day on farms and in cities in the U.S. North,
reading it aloud and weeping. The book was banned in the
South--just to have a copy was illegal. It was soon translated
into 13 languages. Its impact on the people of Britain is said
to have helped deter London from entering the Civil War on the
side of the Confederacy.
As with Moore's film, one can be highly critical of "Uncle
Tom's Cabin"--especially today, when its stereotypes of African
Americans and women, as well as its religiosity and
sentimentality, are so jarring. But africaonline.com makes this
very thoughtful and objective summary of the book: "The cry
that Stowe had hoped to sound about African Americans was
indeed heard, and while Uncle Tom's Cabin did perpetuate
cultural stereotypes of African Americans, it also turned the
tide of public opinion against slavery in the United
States."
When he finally met her in 1862, Pre sident Abraham Lincoln
is reported to have called Stowe "the little woman who wrote
the book that started this great war." Of course, the freedom
struggle of Black people over generations is completely ignored
in Lincoln's patronizing phrase.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" is also stamped with many of the
prejudices and misconceptions of the present day. Like Stowe's
book, it too seems to address itself primarily to whites and be
most interested in their consciousness. We can safely assume
that Michael Moore, also author of the highly successful book
"Stupid White Men," knowingly panders to prejudices to get his
message across to this audience. He recently wrote an opinion
piece urging the anti-war movement to wrap itself in the U.S.
flag: "For too long now we have abandoned our flag to those who
see it as a symbol of war and dominance, as a way to crush
dissent at home." ("The Patriot's Act," Los Angeles Times, July
4)
But the flag IS the symbol of the U.S. state. And the U.S.
IS an imperialist country that has run roughshod over much of
the world. That's why burning the U.S. flag has become
commonplace. Nothing short of a revolution to overturn
capitalist exploitation and oppression will change this--and
the revolution will have its own flag.
Perhaps the film's biggest flaw is in how it treats the
relationship between the Bushes and the Saudi rulers. It
presents a real "wag the dog" interpretation of history. The
implication is that the Saudis, with their oil wealth, run U.S.
foreign policy--especially through the Bush family. Of course,
this is very popular among millions of people who are hearing
of the Bush-Saudi connection for the first time. They have been
manipulated to see Iraqis as the "evil ones" responsible for
9/11, the Iraq war and lots more. Now, absolutely shocked to
hear that Iraqis weren't responsible for all the deaths and
suffering, they can angrily blame other Arabs, the Saudis--as
manipulators of the Bush political dynasty.
This explanation may help John Kerry get elected in
November, but it doesn't enlighten people about the wiles of
the imperialists. The U.S. population has much to learn about
how the super-rich right here--not in Saudi Arabia--are adept
at creat ing governments and then pretending not to control
them. Which, of course, is going on in Iraq right now. It's the
immen sely powerful and wealthy U.S. ruling class, with some
help from its British allies, that runs Saudi Arabia, and not
vice versa.
But, these and other flaws aside, Moore's film has touched a
nerve that had seemed to be dead. For, underneath all the
details, isn't the real issue the fact that ordinary working
people here and in other imperialist countries, who have for
the most part gone along with imperialism's conquests, are
growing ever more sick and horrified at its effects?
Back in Stowe's time, Northern whites were finding they
couldn't escape the horrors of chattel slavery. Under the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, African Americans who had managed
to escape from the South, some helped by the Underground Rail
way, were pursued and dragged back to a ghastly fate. Battles
erupted in Northern cities as the Abolitionists, some former
slaves themselves, fought the bounty hunters in the
streets.
At the same time, slavery was a potent threat to free
workers trying to earn a living wage. In his famous trilogy
"Capital," Karl Marx addressed these workers with the warning:
"Labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself where labor
with a black skin is branded." The workers' organizations in
Europe that he helped found strongly supported the anti-slavery
struggle in the United States, and some of his followers even
came here to fight for the Union in the Civil War.
Today, workers in the developed imperialist countries find
that, in this now thoroughly global economy, they have to
compete with the starvation wages prevalent in countries caught
in the coils of modern-day slavery: capitalist imperialism, the
global rule of the huge banks and corporations.
At the same time, those here fighting hardest against
sweatshops and poverty wages often come from countries where
intol erable conditions created by these same corporations are
forcing millions to emigrate. They are today's fugitive slaves,
and they are now living all over this country.
All this is going on while imperialist wars are raging in
Iraq and Afghanistan and young workers here have to choose bet
ween dead-end jobs, prison or the military.
At some point, there must be a sea-change in the attitude of
the more conservatized workers here, a realization that their
enemies are not abroad but are in the boardrooms and mansions
at home. Moore's film may not draw out all the right lessons,
but its immense popularity shows that anger and distrust of the
rich and powerful, personified by the Bush-Cheney gang, are
reaching the boiling point.
The millionaires are starting to realize this, too, and are
now throwing their money at Kerry. But since he'd be the
richest president ever, and one pledged to continuing and even
escalating the occupation of Iraq, his election would be
unlikely to do more than delay the inevitable: an all-out
revolt against the modern-day slavemasters.
Reprinted from the July 29, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
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