Oliver Stone Tears Apart Official US History [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/WA/2014/09/10/oliver-stone-tears-apart-official-us-history/

Oliver Stone Tears Apart Official US History
Published in Público (Spain) on 2 September 2014 by Luis Matías López [link to original]
Translated from Spanish by Jenny Westwell.
Edited by Gillian Palmer.
Posted on September 10, 2014.

~snip~

“Mindless regurgitation of Stalin’s propaganda” is not the worst criticism the filmmaker has received in response to a work whose ambitious goal is to dismantle the web of lies used to create the image of the United States in the eyes of a large part of the world, as well as those of the vast majority of Americans. That received image implies that America, as God’s chosen nation, has a manifest and inescapable destiny, a moral duty to spread democracy and provide soft power in the service of just causes, an unshakeable vocation for humanitarian intervention, and an army that guarantees world peace and stability. It further purports that, not only did America’s altruistic anti-communist crusade do away with the evil Soviet empire, but that the U.S. aspires, disinterestedly and with missionary fervor, to share part of its wealth with developing countries.

So great is the power of the propaganda apparatus of the great superpower that this irresistibly prevalent “official truth” — created by means of manipulation, money and even talent — almost always gets the better of that other truth, which, though it contradicts the official version, is almost always grounded in irrefutable fact. That other United States, much more accurately depicted, is the one that has waged unjust wars, propped up dictators, supported fascist military coups, made brutal decisions like the one to use the atomic bomb, contributed to the further impoverishment of the most disadvantaged and based its foreign policy on imperialist objectives which serve its own unilateral economic and ideological interests. In short, it is a power that has no qualms about acting as global policeman in its own self-interest.

"The Untold History of the United States," with Stone as director, narrator and co-writer with Peter Kuznick, is a riveting documentary that exudes good filmmaking. With barely a talking head in sight, the film is a skillful montage of impactful archive footage and an appropriate selection of Hollywood movie clips. It is not a political tract, though it makes no effort to conceal the ideological payload that runs counter to the current climate in the United States. The most conservative factions have understandably been angered by Stone’s placing of the blame for the Cold War and the catastrophic arms race squarely on the shoulders of successive U.S. presidents who, determined to weaken the Soviet Union at any price, failed to take advantage of opportunities for peace and merely served the interests of the all-powerful military-industrial complex.

Stone is perhaps being ingenuous when he suggests that things might have been different if the left-wing ex-Vice President Henry Wallace, and not Harry Truman, had been the one to succeed to the presidency after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Wallace, who was accused of being a communist and a KGB agent for his recognition of the vital role played by the USSR in the defeat of Nazism, was a champion of the setting up of a public health care system. His radical opposition to racial segregation led him to refuse to speak at campaign rally venues where segregation was practiced. Three years after Roosevelt’s death, Wallace suffered a crushing defeat when he ran for president as the Progressive Party candidate. Maybe if he had won, muses Stone, the postwar period would have been different, with no nuclear arms race, no Cuban Missile Crisis, no Vietnam, Korea, Chile, Guatemala, Berlin Wall, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq ...