[Marxism] Angry Arab on Fahrenheit 9/11

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2004/07/angry-review-of-fahrenheit-911-triumph.html

Thursday, July 08, 2004
Angry review of Fahrenheit 9/11: Triumph of…Bill

In my recent trip, and whenever I was asked by people in the media or in 
public lectures about the American people, I would say what I have said 
in Middle East media for years: that the American public is not evil 
(and I hate the words “evil” or “good” especially in the age of “Bush” 
and “Bin Laden”) and that if it is afflicted with one unattractive and 
damaging quality, it is the affliction of ignorance of world geography 
and world affairs. After one lecture, a college friend I have not met in 
years, approached me and asked me whether by my statement I am absolving 
the American people of responsibility for the actions of their 
government. I thought that she had a good point. The perpetuation of 
public ignorance (there is still a plurality of Americans who think that 
Iraq was behind Sep. 11) is a recipe for unrestrained empire. I just saw 
Michael Moore’s movie, and was reminded yet again of my ideological 
isolation, if not alienation. I certainly am no movie expert, and will 
only write as a viewer; or a consumer—nay victim—of the American culture 
industry. (I had one tiny experience with the movie industry. When I 
first came to this country, a friend called me excited that a Goldie 
Hawn’s movie was shooting in Washington, DC and that they are looking 
for Arab men as extras in the movie. I had a moustache and an Afro (my 
hair grows down now for some reason) in those days. I went to see lines 
of Arabs waiting to be screened by the casting group. I got a call from 
a casting director the following day saying that I was selected, and 
that there would be several days worth of shooting (at $100.00 a day). I 
was pleased but said that I would not do it before reading the script. 
The casting director was simply astonished: “You are merely an extra,” 
she reminded me. But I insisted on reading the script to make sure that 
it does not contain anything that I would find politically or 
ideologically objectionable, and they would not budge. Not that they 
cared, of course. Fortunately, I did not play a role in that (later I 
discovered) anti-Arab movie (Protocol, it was called, I think).) 
Certainly, Moore is very talented: he is an entertaining and funny 
narrator and is very skilled in his editing and sound effects. He is a 
master of matching the picture to the sound and to the word. And he has 
the right tone when he reads it. So if you are looking for an effective 
piece of anti-Bush propaganda, there is your movie. But that is its 
strength (for you), and its weakness (for me). My friend with whom I 
watched the movie reminded me that he was making the movie for an 
American mass audience, and not for me. She is right, but I cannot but 
offer a critical evaluation of what I saw. He is way too focused on 
Bush, and with that he undermines the very conclusion that he reads at 
the end regarding the perpetuation of the social system in the US, and 
the role of the ruling group (I do not believe that he used the world 
“class”—a dirty word in American popular lexicon because the US—which 
has one of the worst cases of class inequality in the world—is not 
supposed to have classes). When you watch the movie, you would think 
that the US, and the world by extension, was on a great path of peace 
and prosperity under Clinton before Bush ruined Michael Moore’s world. 
But, like many on the left, Moore is way too narrowly limited by the 
Democratic-Republic divide that he is incapable of offering an analysis 
that transcends the narrow partisan lines of conflict. He had two mild 
criticisms of Democrats for not standing up against Bush. He also 
succumbed to that temptation—quite common in leftist ranks, but not only 
exclusively in leftist ranks—to subscribe to unproven conspiracy 
theories. Why this personalization of the problems of the US as if the 
US without Bush would be a true “beacon of freedom?” Don’t get me wrong. 
Bush really deserves to be mocked and ridiculed: to think that somebody 
with such obvious inadequacies and lack of qualifications is leading the 
world can drive you to frustration and despair. To watch him speak with 
such (im)moral certainty when he exhibits deep intellectual uncertainty, 
to put mildly, can make you furious. And when one focuses on Bush, one 
loses sight of the various institutional interests that drive the making 
of US foreign policy and the production of US wars, and that goes beyond 
the personalities, and—more importantly—beyond the Republican-Democratic 
“difference.” Moore would have none of that. Even in his first fine 
documentary (Roger and Me), he reduces the problems of vicious 
capitalism to the person of GM’s chairperson. But then again: that can 
reach the public because it does not sound threatening, and it provides 
him with constituents’ support, just like a regular politician. Notice 
how patriotic Moore is in this movie, for example. We watched 
admiringly—or we were supposed to--the woman caring for and respecting 
her American flag. He once repeated that favorite American cliché (“This 
is a great country”.) What does that mean? Is Finland or Iceland not a 
great country? Every country is great, in the eyes of its patriotic 
citizens. Even Lebanon: there is a patriotic kook there (poet Sa`id 
`Aql) who believes that Lebanon is the greatest country there is. I 
believe Revolutions—real revolution--(like the glorious French 
Revolution) or positive social and economic changes can be great, not 
countries in the abstract. And in the last segment in the movie he also 
repeats that most obnoxious patriotic cliché, to the effect that people 
in the US armed forces “protect our freedoms.” Why and how, I am dying 
for somebody to explain to me. Why and how, please? Was the invasion of 
Grenada, or Iraq, etc, a defense of “our freedoms.” How does that work? 
But Moore is increasingly a mainstream liberal, not a radical. I also 
did not like his silly portrayal of Iraq before the US war. Iraqis were 
not living in bliss, as he portrayed them. They were suffering from 
US-imposed sanctions, and from Saddam’s tyranny, it should be noted. 
Furthermore, Moore also adheres to the Bin Laden-Bush conspiracy theory, 
as if the House of Clinton or Kerry would have dealt differently with 
the House of Saud. And he is quite wrong in accepting Unger's thesis in 
that regard. Salim Bin Laden (who was a Texas-based businessperson), as 
far as we know, had nothing to do with his brother Usamah's cause, and 
died years before Bin Laden started his kooky movement. And there is no 
evidence (that I have seen) that Usamah bin Laden's brothers attended 
his son's wedding in Afghanistan prior to Sep. 11, as was alleged in the 
movie. Moore wants to implicate every person with the Bin Laden family 
name, which is not fair especially that there is evidence that most of 
his siblings have severed ties with him, and have not spoken to him in 
years. I, of course, was pleased with his very scathing portrayal of the 
Saudi government, the overthrow of which I have firmly believed in since 
my teens. And I was most displeased if not offended by his long and 
touching personalization of the life of a US soldier who was killed in 
Iraq, while he did not bother to personalize the life and family of ONE 
civilian victim of US bombing in Afghanistan or Iraq. The life of a 
conquering soldier (who belongs to the “civilized world”) is more 
valuable than the life of a civilian victim who belongs to the 
“uncivilized world” especially if he/she is Arab/Muslim. The natives (of 
Iraq and Afghanistan) were mere extras in this documentary. At least 
their words were translated, which is rare in Hollywood. Such are the 
standards of Moore, who does not deviate from the standards of colonial 
times, at least in that respect. In the “civilized world”, opponents of 
wars and colonial adventures worry about what those wars do to “our 
soldiers,” and not what those wars do to the people of target countries 
and cultures. But as an effective piece of propaganda—and we live in the 
age of contesting propaganda(s), Bush deserves Moore’s movie, and more 
of Moore.

posted by As'ad
--

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