• 2 Posts
  • 155 Comments
Joined 6 months ago
Cake day: January 17th, 2024
  • miz@lemmygrad.mltoLate Stage Capitalism@lemmygrad.ml•That's militainment! Big Hollywood succumbs to the Pentagon Borg
    0·
    2 days ago

    for real. “succumbs” is hilariously lib to the point of amnesia. The Green Berets came out in 1968!

    Let’s begin with the classic case of US military film propaganda. In The Green Berets, Western star John Wayne convinces sceptical news reporters that the Vietnam War is necessary and leads a team of Green Berets (US Special Forces) and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) soldiers on a successful mission to capture a top North Vietnamese field commander.

    During production of Green Berets, the DOD requested that the scriptwriter delete any mention of the soldiers entering Laos because it ‘raises sensitive questions.’ Presumably, these questions revolved around the fact that in the real world the US had been secretly bombing a neutral country for the past three years.
    In a scene that explains the purpose of the war at the start of the film, Francis Tully, Speech Review Staff for the Department of State, also suggested that the scriptwriters insert the following language:

    We do not see this as a civil war, and it is not. South Vietnam is an independent country, seeking to maintain its independence in the face of aggression by a neighbouring country. Our goal is to help the South Vietnamese retain their freedom, and to develop in the way they want to, without interference from outside the country.

    These lines do not appear in the final film, but Tully’s suggestion indicates that he hoped to simplify the war in Vietnam in a way that Americans could support, and this simplification occurs though in the final version of the scene, as military leaders explain to reporters that the war boils down to stopping ‘Communist domination of the world.’

    from National Security Cinema by Alford & Secker

  • miz@lemmygrad.mltoThe Deprogram Podcast@lemmygrad.ml•Is JT anti-Russia?
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    2 days ago

    A Marxist understanding of capitalism leads to anti-imperialism. Anti-imperialism is understood by detractors as a simple rhetorical dressing over simplistic heuristics like “reflexive anti-americanism,” “history repeats itself,” and “the military-industrial complex needs contracts,” but all of these are reductive. Marxists understand that human political leadership in the imperial periphery, whether enlightened or tyrannical, will only be antagonized by empire for one single possible reason: it is getting in the way of market penetration. This is phrased succinctly by Kevin Dooley when criticizing Noam Chomsky’s support for a military alliance between the Kurds and the USA in Syria: “The difference between [Chomsky’s] position and a hard-line anti-imperialist position isn’t tactical. What he’s arguing is simply a violation of anti-imperialist principles based on a fundamentally different understanding of what can drive the empire to act in the world.” [16]

    The accusation that anti-imperialists are unconcerned with human rights deserves a sharp rebuke. The USA was born of slavery and genocide, dropped atomic bombs as a matter of political brinkmanship, imported Nazi scientists and installed war criminals like Klaus Barbie and Nobusuke Kishi around the world to defend and advance anti-communist positions [17], and enthusiastically supports gruesome butcherers today. Simply put, Capital has destroyed innumerable countries and murdered hundreds of millions directly and indirectly. It is precisely a concern for the rights of humans that should make one immediately skeptical of any humanitarian posturing by Capital. Anti-imperialism not only means support for the important pro-social projects of states like Cuba, Vietnam, and China; it also means critical support for non-socialist states such as Iran and Russia. Critical support acknowledges that, though instituting various indefensible policies, enemies of empire are not being antagonized because of said policies. The only thing that can drive empire to act in the world is capital accumulation.

    from https://redsails.org/why-marxism/