I don’t suppose anyone noticed or remembers few months back when I went off on several rants against Bill Maher and his friend-by-default Sam Harris? Here they are, if you like:
https://neighsayersotherstuff.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/open-letter-to-bill-maher-and-sam-harris/
https://neighsayersotherstuff.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/maher-harris-and-american-liberalism/
https://neighsayersotherstuff.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/ive-never-met-sam-harris-but/
and
https://neighsayersotherstuff.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/a-question-for-bill-maher/
(the third one makes a different point, but it was one of a sort of a series, and I hate to miss a chance to display Harris’ dangerously flawed philosophizing.)
Well, there are more high-profile examples lately, of course. When there is a war on – and there is a war on, even if it’s a largely phony one, a la 1984, between the Christian West and the Islamic East (OK, the oil-consuming West and the oil producing East, that too) – polite criticisms become rallying cries and expressions of neutrality are painted as varying degrees of treason.
Of course I’m not the first to say it about these two things, not by a country mile, the Je Suis Charlie twitterstorm and rally and now the new Clint Eastwood movie. I’m not going to spell it out, if you’re online reading this, you’ve seen it all. Suffice to say, as regards the Je Suis Charlie rally, a million people marching and some forty world leaders jumping in for the photo op, a giant-sized show of strength and determination directed at either three guys who were already dead or at an ideology (take your pick), I must ask you. Is this designed to pacify the ideological enemy? Is this peacemaking? I know you know what I think. This would be hostile propaganda if the bombs and unmanned weapons weren’t already flying.
(Note: Obama may have actually earned his Peace Prize by not attending.)
You know, I think I had better see the Eastwood film before I comment on my own behalf, but I have already read much that suggests that while it isn’t propaganda as such, it absolutely avoids any comment specific to the particular war that’s depicted. Cooper has said the ideas are universal: wars and what they do to the men who fight them, maybe that’s fair enough. Having said that . . .
Nothing is fair enough during war.
The idea that the Islam side of the current war could possibly be helped as much as the Christian side by a lot of movie-going Westerners seeing this film and its universal themes is silly. I’ve read something of the true story that the film is based on, and without spoiling it for anyone, I will suggest to you that the hero of the film is not an Islamist.
Enough said, as we used to say in the olden days, when the world was all in black and white. I don’t want to belabour the point. Just know that the war machine is waiting to use anything we say for its own ends, and it can co-opt pretty much anything.
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