Empire examines the symbiotic relationship between the movie industry and the military-industrial complex.
War is hell, but for Hollywood it has been a Godsend, providing the perfect dramatic setting against which courageous heroes win the hearts and minds of the movie going public.
The Pentagon recognises the power of these celluloid dreams and encourages Hollywood to create heroic myths; to rewrite history to suit its own strategy and as a recruiting tool to provide a steady flow of willing young patriots for its wars.
What does Hollywood get out of this ‘deal with the devil’? Access to billions of dollars worth of military kit, from helicopters to aircraft carriers, enabling filmmakers to make bigger and more spectacular battle scenes, which in turn generate more box office revenue. Providing they accept the Pentagon’s advice, even toe the party line and show the US military in a positive light.
So is it a case of art imitating life, or a sinister force using art to influence life and death – and the public perception of both?
Empire will examine Hollywood, the Pentagon, and war.
Joining us as guests: Oliver Stone, the eight times Academy Award-winning filmmaker; Michael Moore, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker; and Christopher Hedges, an author and the former Middle East bureau chief of the New York Times.
Just so you know, this documentary doesn’t work at the current moment. Censoring is awesome isn’t it?
I’d like to throw in my tuppence worth so here goes……..
I think it’s strange how the “academics” who have posted below their own views regarding the finer points of WW2 are missing something in their arguments. They have spent so much time trying to prove their own “intellect”, by quoting the Morgenthau Plan and the disputed number of jewish deaths, that they seem to have missed the point. 6 million or 60 million? Gas chamber or shower? gas chamber next to the ss barracks or was it really a pool room? Sauna perhaps? Who cares?……………….
I CARE. Let’s put aside this churlish argument regarding numbers because in my opinion the loss of even ONE life in war is disgusting. Instead of disputing the numbers we should be asking why we went to war in the first place. Everything that comes after is just fogging the issue. Arguments and counterarguments, information and mis-information are all part of the plan to fog over the reality. For in reality, “they” are more than happy to sit back whilst we argue amongst ourselves over the finer issues of war. War is a disease and like all diseases prevention is cheaper than the cure.
A good interview with 3 very intelligent gentllemen. How this translated into a “Johnny come lately” blog fest regarding the holocaust is beyond me. Although “Johnny” may raise several accurate points, they don’t justify his long rants defending a position which is obviously distorted. Quoting Einstein (who fled Nazism) to support his line of thinking is just rude. What should be learned from Johnny’s previous blogs is precisely why people are not able to ‘see the forest for the trees’. 55 million people died in the 2nd world war (half were Russian), and questioning how many Jews died, or how it occured is irrelevant. What is relevant is how they could treat the Palestinians with identical callousness after what they had been subjected to by the Nazis. With a little insight, you will find that the Israelis for the most part are like everyone else on the globe. They want to earn a living to provide for their families, and basically get along. One only needs to add greed, power, religion, vengenace, etc to the equation, and history regarding all of humanity is soon corrupted, and replaced with a revisioned version because people have very short memories especially when their own desires are on the line. In reality, the vast majority of people are brainwashed and easily mislead because of a global economic pyramid scheme that has been running the world for several millennia. Those who refuse to acknowledge history are condemmed to repeat it, dragging those of us who have learned, kicking and screaming with them!
Note also the Morgenthau Plan which called for the complete dismantling of Germany’s industrial sector immediately following the war which was found to be difficult due to the German people still largely supporting Nazism and the industrial giants that were the backbone of the Nazi regime.
In order to dismantle German industry without public backlash to it they engaged in a propaganda campaign directed against any and every company that had any involvement with the German camps, portraying them as having knowingly and maliciously participated in the slaughter of millions of Jews and thus having brought shame to the German people.
They even went so far as to claim that Buchenwald itself had been purposefully involved in the Holocaust and had previously made baking ovens before converting to production of evil cremation furnaces specifically to assist the Nazi’s extermination campaign – though in reality Buchenwald was producing cremation furnaces from the very beginning of its existence and did not create those furnaces especially for disposing of Jews in an evil manner.
The Morgenthau Plan was scrapped in favor of the Marshall Plan instead in 1947 though with the rise of the USSR and the need to make use of German industry to oppose the USSR rather than dismantling the German industry, which despite their propaganda had proven very difficult up till then and some tag it as the primary cause of the insurgency following the collapse of the 3rd Reich.
But I bet you do not even know about the insurgency as it’s not typically part of the standard “education” of WWII.
I am surprised(ok, maybe not) by the lack of reference to the greatest Hollywood masterpiece of all – The Holocaust Industry.
Never before has (alleged) mass murder been so entertaining and profitable for so many – both financially and politically.
The entire mass-gassing story of the Holocaust is based on a couple dozen survivor stories out of the hundreds of thousands of survivors of the camps(99.99% of which did not recall the mass-gassing in any way) and a few admittedly coerced confessions from a few Nazis – some of the interrogators themselves bragged about how badly they threatened them to get the confessions since they were just evil Nazis who deserved it anyways after all and it felt good to terrify them.
Having no actual physical evidence of mass-gassing operations has not stopped the public masses from coming to believe they know the facts because Hollywood has drilled the stories into their heads throughout their entire lives to the point where the story itself is considered fact despite not containing many facts, or in some cases any at all.
Note that I do not deny the Holocaust as the Shoah is in my view simply a great suffering of a people and certainly a very large number of completely innocent Jews suffered under the Nazis simply for being Jews(and many other peoples suffered as well) so the Holocaust is undeniable, the mass-gassing exterminations however are purely fiction based on everything I have read and seen.
Of course I used to hate people like me too and call them racists without thinking about what they actually said so I know it will happen here too, it was not any particular story that changed my views but the simple discovery of how little evidence actually supports the official mass-gassing myths.
Anyways the only reason I mention it is because the Holocaust Industry is a model that has been used repeatedly by Hollywood and the Military for propaganda purposes – it is known by many names but it is best described as Emotional Shock Propaganda as it is simply designed to force an emotional reaction to the information that overrides any instinct to use critical thought in addressing that issue.
The so-called Holocaustomania is a perfect example of how well it works, I have never had a single debate or discussion on the issue without someone checking their intelligence at the door or internet gateway and blatantly attacking me as a Nazi, racist, Jew-hater, apologist, scumbag, denier, etc. while ignoring the actual points I make – the fact I make the points is proof I am racist so there is no need to address them I guess.
I suppose it is all about the Nazis though so maybe the evidence itself is racist and afraid of being persecuted for its war-crimes so it is in hiding, and only other racists can find it. Yeah, that must be it…
It is kind of funny though that it is all based out of what is originally attributed to being a Nazi idea – if you tell a big enough lie often enough eventually everyone will come to believe it.
I can sum up 90% of the responses to Holocaust revisionism I have seen as – screw your stupid evidence, we do not need any damn evidence you pig, take your evidence and shove it up your racist Jew hating ass while you burn in hell Nazi!
But hey if you think I am a conspiracy nut you should check out some of the actual documented evidence at the Nuremberg Trials, for one thing I think the Soviets claimed a few times that the Nazis actually exterminated over 200 million people! Of course those outrageous numbers were ignored, while other information in the very same documents was accepted as undeniable fact if you can believe it.
FYI – All of the mass-gassing claims came from Soviet liberated camps thus all evidence of the mass-gassing operations came from the Soviets, plus a very few eyewitnesses and a couple coerced confessions. The fact the Soviets had been making outrageous Holocaust claims before 1941 that were dismissed by the Allies as pure bunk was apparently ignored once the Soviets fabricated enough evidence after the war to support their claims.
The fact the Allies rounded up millions of German soldiers and confined them to similar camps where up to a million of them died from being starved is irrelevant, as are the 10s of millions that the Soviets starved and worked to death and just generally mass-murdered during the time they were part of the supposed good guy team of the Allies.
By shocking people with heart tugging images(99% paintings or drawings, not photos) and horrifying tales from alleged eyewitnesses they can make people become so emotionally attached to the issue that logic and critical thinking do not even factor into the picture.
And the best part is that human nature means 99% of people only seek out information that agrees with their prior held views on any issue so unless someone comes up and smacks them in the face with it many do not even know that an alternative view exists, or can exist.
Objecting to the lack of evidence for mass-gassing claims is not denying the Holocaust as a whole which entailed far more than just the alleged gas-chambers. Just mentioning that again to see how long it takes someone to ignore everything I have said and say I am a denier.
It may seem off-topic but it is that kind of reaction that is a key indicator of such emotional shock propaganda techniques that are widely used by many facets of the government and MIC and private industry today.
I highly recommend browsing the CODOH website even if you oppose everything they stand for(freedom of thought and speech mainly) because at the very least it will help you to understand the mind set of the actual so-called deniers(revisionists).
If you are a fool who thinks that it is just a simple matter of them all being redneck racists then I recommend NOT viewing it as you may have a heart-attack from the shock of being kicked in the face by reality.
For some reasons it is those of us who do not think in black and white that are considered racists, that really is kind of ironic.
I apologize again for the long rant, but the Holocaust Industry is a key pillar of support for the military propaganda machine of today and needs to be addressed whether some people like it or not.
The commercialization of mass-murder(proven or alleged) should disgust everyone equally, instead most are quite entertained by the Holocaust Channel, or was that the History Channel…I can not recall. Amazing that it can not be openly discussed or debated without those asking for the discussion being called racists but it can be turned into hundreds of graphic movies and TV series and hundreds of novels sold for profit and entertainment and it is no big deal.
Intelligent discussion of the Holocaust – fuck no! I want entertainment value for my mass-murder damn it, not intelligence!
Bah this is probably a waste of time but maybe I will be surprised and get some intelligent responses that address the evidence for a change instead of the petty name calling and debating of authors and sources rather than actual information that is so typical.
Fingers crossed, it seems like a decently intelligent community here for the most part. 🙂
ps – I apologize for grammatical errors or any other issues, it has been a long day and my tiredness is the reason for the long ass rant so I may have missed some things, lol.
Visit Auschwitz concentration camp and you’ll see that you’re wrong. Also, there’s good museums on that issue (at least in Germany and Poland).
http://www.zeit.de/2011/04/Topf-und-Soehne?page=1
This is an article about a museum which was just set up inside the former buildings of an engineering company. This company delivered ovens to Buchenwald for burning the dead bodies in the concentration camp. The engineers who installed those ovens not only witnessed the gassings since those took place in the same buidling as the one the ovens were located in, but they also developed a new ventilation system for the gas chambers.
There’s a phone number at the end of the article, so if you don’t believe me you can fucking call the museum to tell you what happened. Go get some education.
Actually, a better question for you:
Why is it that when the official death toll of Auschwitz was finally reduced from 4 million to approx 1 million the official over-all death toll of approx 6 million Jews didn’t change at all?
If Auschwitz contributed 4 million of those 6 million dead Jews of the Holocaust alone that were originally claimed, but then 3 million of them turned out not to exist and were removed from the official records why was not those 3 million people also removed from the official total Holocaust death toll?
6,000,000 – 3,000,000 = 6,000,000 ????
I think someone fudged their math up a bit.
Wow, thank you for proving my point and not bothering to look beyond what the museum says and the fact there is no actual evidence.
As for your joke about education, well as Einstein once stated so bluntly the only thing that stands in the way of learning is education, which is why I put my holocaust education behind me a long time ago and began reviewing all of the information available rather than just the stuff that agreed with the official story which the schools, museums and societies kept trying to shove down my throat.
Every camp Germany ran had gas chambers(delousing chambers) and this is not denied, but there is zero evidence these chambers were ever used for homicidal gassings of human beings, nor do any of the official holocaust supporters claim so either.
Note: the fact that delousing chambers meant to preserve the lives of inmates existed at all of the alleged “death camps”(except the one for which there is no evidence the camp existed at all) is a kink in the official story, seems like a strange waste of resources to preserve their lives if they were at those camps simply to be exterminated.
Without the delousing chambers and other precautions nature probably would have exterminated 90% of them itself through typhus without the Nazi’s wasting time and resources on ‘death factories’.
Whenever inmates arrived at a camp they were shaved and showered(mainly to stop head lice, the main carrier of typhus) and sometimes as an extra precaution they were sprayed down with a non-harmful level of Zyklon B liquid to make sure all germs and bugs were killed before they entered the main camp. All of the buildings in the camp were also fumigated with Zyklon B gas occasionally.
Congratulations, an engineering company worked on a delousing gas chamber and ventilation system and installed cremation ovens(needed to dispose of diseased bodies) there, that is all the proof I need that millions of people were slaughtered.
So once again the holocaust homicidal gassing stories come down to a couple of eye-witnesses with no actual physical evidence.
Millions of people are mass-murdered all the time without leaving any physical evidence though, eh?
Oh, and I do not understand the ‘visit Auschwitz’ comment as the forensic evidence at Auschwitz contradicts the official story, not to mention the only alleged ‘gas chamber’ they display there is an admitted reconstruction built by the soviets which is actually a gas-raid shelter(air-raid shelter).
Apparently it started as an air-raid shelter then was converted to a death factory, then back to an air-raid shelter before the Soviets “reconstructed” it back to the death factory based on Nazi plans that there is no evidence exist…or maybe it was eyewitness accounts?
And the Nazis in all their genius located the death factory without any proper exhaust system right across the street from the SS barracks and camp hospital, so that when they exhausted the lethal gas they could poison themselves too just for shits and giggles.
I mean really it does not make any sense for an air/gas-raid shelter to be located right next to the SS barracks and camp hospital, but of course it makes perfect sense to have a gas chamber death factory right there.
The funniest claim I find is the one about the “fake showers” that were allegedly really gas chambers being right in the same buildings as the cremation ovens so they could toss the dead bodies into them.
Apparently having a raging fire in a cremation oven next to a room filled with highly explosive gas is no big safety concern, if they blew up their camp they could just build a new one, right?
I mean nobody would ever imagine that showers were built next to the ovens because in order to have running water for showers in the dead of winter in Poland in non-insulated concrete buildings the ice…err, water needs to be heated in order to be in liquid form and thus flow like water… that would be just retarded thinking.
But hey if you say that some dudes who visited a few camps briefly thought they saw something that seemed to match up with the evil stories being told then there is no reason to doubt 6 million Jews died, right?
And the Jewish census data that shows the world Jewish population growing slightly during the war times just means that the Jews fornicated like hell to produce over 6 million new Jews to replace those 6 million slaughtered by the Nazis during that same time.
If you had any sense you would not be seeking an education on the holocaust which is not based in fact, you would simply be seeking the truth.
Your ‘education’ automatically precludes you from being able to accept any alternative to that which they told you to have because education supposedly means “smart” and thus anything that goes against that education is automatically “stupid” and easily ignored and dismissed in a half-ass manner.
I realize I am wasting my time with you as you will not consider reviewing any evidence that contradicts your already well ingrained emotional attachment to the false history that you have been “educated” with and will dismiss anything that disagrees with you as a lie even though it is the story you uphold that is full of lies.
I know I am getting redundant here but objectivity is a wonderful thing, ignoring anything that disagrees with you or your existing “education” is not objective and just plain not smart.
Johnny.. You’re a nut. If you’re denying the holocaust.. just wow..
An interesting look at the way Hollywood film makers compromise their work in return for access to US military equipment and how the US film industry acts as an example of how the US wishes to see itself and its actions around the world.
Hedges goes off on a few self-indulgent rambles; overall an interesting conversation with references to the modern history of war films.
just a couple or two chitchatting lookin like they aint nothin but good ol boys ,millionaires,that mmoore he wants to be a working class hero