...meant to confirm the beliefs of true believers and convert the uniniatated with fear and disinformation. And, its marketing campaign mirrors efforts by conservative Christians to convert and save young people with Christian themed movies...
Follow the bouncing ball... (more)
(cross posted at The S.N.A.F.U. Priciple
Digby
notes that right-wing bloggers and Rush Limbaugh were
given advance copies of the movie last week. But, no leftie bloggers were given copies. Why?
Becuase "Path to 9/11" is a well developed and well financed propaganda piece to push the Bush was a hero and Clinton is to blame for 9/11 argument:
Let me start by saying that "The Path to 9/11" is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I've ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible.
This is the first Hollywood production I've seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of Osama Bin Laden.
It's an argument that the former head of counterterrorism for George HW Bush, Bill Clinton and Bush W Bush Ricahard Clark
debunked rather easily, inlcuding the talking points offered by Limbaugh.
But, of course, it gets even better.
Via Think Progress, Variety reports:
ABC is allowing consumers to download the complete miniseries -- for free -- via Apple's iTunes Music Store. Mini also will be streamed for free via ABC.com, and XM Radio has pacted with the network to make an audiocast of the film available to its subscribers. [...]
To spread the word about "Path to 9/11," ABC is sending 100,000 high school educators a letter from 9/11 Commission co-chair Tom Keane informing them of the various platforms on which the mini is available. ABC and Scholastic have pacted to produce an online study guide.
In certain quarters, such activities are referred to as youth outreach, and it's a tactic also used by Christian Evangelical groups, such as the John Hagee Ministry, to indocrinate and convert young people to Christianity. (Yes, the same John Hagee who has been
lobbying the White House to bomb Iran before, he says,
Iran bombs the US and Israel. That John Hagee.)
To give you an idea of just how well financed and developed such propaganda techniques have become, the Hagee Ministry produced a full length motion picture entitled "Escape from Hell". The movie tells the tale of a man who wants to know if there is an afterlife, so he prompts his own death. (Yeah, it's a rip off of Flatliners.) Of course, by causing his own death and surviving, the demons come after this guy. So how does he defeat the demons? He accepts Jesus into his life, is "saved" and all is well with the world. The end.
"Escape from Hell" is a traditional horror film with big budget effects that is used as a propaganda tool by the Hagee Ministry to convert teenagers to Christianity with fear and fiction. The sales informercial that is run like clock work every Sunday morning on cable outlets thorughout the USA has testimony after testimony from people who were "saved" by viewing the movie. Of particular note is a Christian yyouth leader by the name of Ryan, who continuously directly extolls the virutes of using "Escape from Hell" as a tool to induce conversions. "We have gotten 70 people a night to accept the Lord Jesus as their savior after the showing of this film!" "One guy was in tears and came to us asking "How can I be saved?"
Using movies to convey propaganda is not new of course. But, the use of any type of device on young people is questionable to say the least. The fact that such tactics are used to influence the spiritual direction of teenagers should be alarming to the spiritual, the religious and the agnostic.
The practice of utilizing propaganda in the manner of "Path to 9/11" and "Escape from Hell" signals that something is inherently wrong. When people lack the ability to critically discern fiction from reality, and accept elements of a fiction work as wholesale truth,there is a problem.
There is also something wrong with a conservative movement in the USA which has an overwhelming propensity to relate amd compare actions and themes from a fictional movie and compare and associate those points with the real world, as if the points and themes really fucntion and are as valid as a real life example and reality rather than fallible metaphors and artistic representations of a very narrow perspective. MOvies are only reflections. They are not Gospel. Confusing movies and reality is a dangerous portent of a society with a tenable grasp upon truth and concensus reality.
Add to this a lack of real crticial faculties with regard to their own role in this matter, and it is truly shiver inducing. There is no recognition that what they are doing is taking impressionable kids and showing them something that provokes real emotions - fear being the most important- and then presenting them with an out for that fear: Convert and be Saved. It's cult tactics at their most refined. "Path to 9/11" is also, if the reports are correct, taking an emotional event that provokes fear and anger and using it to position one political partisan view over another. The two situations are not unrelated in many ways.
There have been discussions on the leftie blogs for the past few years about how the right has issues with mixing fantasy such as that found in the movies, with reality. And, we are witnessing it in real time right now.
What is also very troubling is the sheer lack of any recognition on the right that "Path to 9/11" is propaganda and historical revisionism. As a matter of fact, some of the first posts on the right make a very real effort to head any cries of partisanship off at the pass. It was instinctual, even if it wasn't recognized as such intellecutally.
Case in point: Writing on August 31, 2006, Justin Levine over at Patterico writes the following, believing every word of it apparently:
"The Path To 9/11″ is astonishing. [...] The Clinton administration will likely go ballistic over this film. (Perhaps why ABC isn't pushing it at as much as they should be??)
And, then, without an ounce of irony, and with total seriousness, Justin writes in the very next sentace:
It does not have a "partisan" feel to it by any means.
If Justin is that disconnected with the meaning of the words that he has just written, he can write two sentances one after the other which contradict each other yet not see the contradiction at all, then how can he even begin to understand that the movie he has seen is propaganda? He can not.
And, these are exactly the people who are ripe for propaganda.
Like "Escape from Hell", the ABC mini series "Path to 9/11" is meant to confirm the beliefs of the converted and convert the non-believers.
The question is: Who is behind such blatant manipulation of the American people and why is it on a major network?
If the situation were reversed and the film proposed that Bush was to blame and Clinton was not, the right-wing would be in a shit spitting uproar. I'd venture that a movie with such a blatant liberal agenda would be hard pressed to be made and aired by a major network or studio in the current atmosphere. Even Oliver Stone saw the writing on the wall.
When I see "Path to 9/11", I'll do a full analysis...