by Scott Creighton
Yesterday, Michael Lind wrote an article for AlterNet wondering aloud how it is that today’s “doltish” conservatives have adopted the ridiculous philosophies of Ayn Rand (Alissa Rosenbaum) while noted conservatives of yesteryear considered her “preposterous”
I immediately formulated at least a partial answer to that question and as I was writing it out this morning, I happened across a video review of Elysium by Di$info Jones (video below) which proves my point to an almost cartoonish degree.
In short, Di$info says the film is beautifully filmed and well written, but it’s a piece of elitist’s propaganda to promote their ultimate goal of a ‘socialist/communist collectivism” and that it’s “the most racist film since Birth of a Nation” with “the mark of the beast” tossed in for good measure.
He goes on to rant about all the heroes in the film being brown “Latinos” and all the villains being white (except for the protagonist… Matt Damon… who can’t possibly get any whiter. In fact, he looks like a skin-head in the movie)
Di$info’s evaluation of Elysium just happens to play right into Lind’s description of the rising Tea Party “libertarians” who have gleefully absorbed the Randian philosophy of “Objectivism” (a.k.a. “neo-liberalism” or also known as “The Washington Consensus”) once roundly dismissed by even the hardest of the right-wingers of the past.
“When she died in 1982, Alissa Rosenbaum — the original name of the Russian-born novelist — was the leader of a marginal cult, the Objectivists, who had long been cast out of the mainstream American right. But the rise of Tea Party conservatism, fueled by white racial panic and zero-sum distributional conflicts in the Great Recession, has turned this minor, once-forgotten figure into an icon for a new generation of nerds who imagine themselves Nietzschean Ubermenschen oppressed by the totalitarian tyranny of the post office and the Social Security administration” (and the department of education, and “Big Labor”, and any regulatory agency that threatens big business profits and the civil right act… pretty much anything that was ranted about in the Lewis Powell Memo of 1971 (Libertarian Party form Dec. 11th, 1971)). Michael Lind
Once seeing the film Di$info had to come out against it in order to discourage his ill-informed flock from doing the same. That’s because his most basic function is to serve the system as it is rather than actually help to deconstruct it. And much to the dismay of disinfo agents across the board, the system has become a dystopic Randian (“Rosenbaumian”?) “Objectivist’s” wet dream rather than the “collectivist” socialist communist statist state they pretend it is.
So, what he does is what “Libertarians” have done to garner a popular following since they began so long ago merely days after Lewis Powell gave them their marching orders… Di$info played to racism, what Lind called “white racial panic”. Ron Paul did it back when he was building his base. Of course, it was the fear of the black man back then.
Let me back up for a second and explain my thinking from yesterday when I was reading Lind’s article.
Let me try to explain how it is that the morally vapid philosophy of Ayn Rand has supplanted traditional socially responsible and ethical ideologies in America by citing two examples of recent films, one promoting this transition and the other condemning it. We can see from various reviews how we are being taught to see the world and the people around us through Ayn Rand’s terrified and deeply disturbed eyes.
The big question that Michael ponders is the question of how someone as widely ridiculed on the left AND the right went from that to a near God-like role in American politics today.
I think the answer is a lot simpler than he imagines. Though he gives a pretty good illustration of the lack of support for Rand through the decades, he never really addresses the question he starts off asking which is “how did this shift happen?”
He ends his article with a quote from Gore Vidal circa 1961which hints at the moral decay precipitating the shift, but not the “why?” of it:
“Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophy’ is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society. Moral values are in flux. The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep. Trolls walk the American night. Caesars are stirring in the Forum. There are storm warnings ahead.” Gore Vidal
There are a lot of “whys” to this answer but the most important one is this: it was planned a long time ago by the masters of the universe in service of their “vile maxim” (“all for ourselves and nothing for other people” Adam Smith)
Though so many libertarians quote Smith and act as if they understand his message, most really don’t. I bring this up only because ironically, the true message of Smith and his theory on the divisions of labor are found right there in that film that Di$info Jone$ ridiculed on behalf of his own vile maxim.
DAVID BARSAMIAN: One of the heroes of the current right-wing revival… is Adam Smith. You’ve done some pretty impressive research on Smith that has excavated… a lot of information that’s not coming out. You’ve often quoted him describing the “vile maxim of the masters of mankind: all for ourselves and nothing for other people.”
NOAM CHOMSKY: I didn’t do any research at all on Smith. I just read him. There’s no research. Just read it. He’s pre-capitalist, a figure of the Enlightenment. What we would call capitalism he despised. People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits.” Excerpts from Class Warfare 1995
The point of the film Elysium is that the entire world has become a free-trade zone. People are treated like cattle, left on earth to slave away in horrendous conditions for just enough to live on.
Elysium is an orbiting station where the elites live. It is free of illness, poverty and war. No conflict.
Wealthy people make their money with various factories and schemes down on the planet while they live secluded floating above the fray in the ultimate gated community.
This is Ayn Rand’s philosophy in a nutshell. The “makers” living separately ruling over the “takers” who live like animals, but, thanks to the theories of divisions of labor, who provide the profits and therefore the ease of living that the “makers” enjoy.
Any realistic understanding of that dynamic would have the names of the classes reversed, but, that’s the “logic” of the elites for you.
Elysium as a film points to the brutal harshness and inhumanity of such a system and it effectively warns us of where we are headed.
Leave it to Di$info Jone$ to miss the point so dramatically as to suggest a scathing critique of such a system is actually a call to arms by the “collectivists”
But as you can see from the Chomsky evaluation of Smith’s writing, the film is consistent with his final conclusion: “that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be”
What you see happening with Di$info is the exact same thing that Chomsky was pointing out and it’s also the answer to Mr. Lind’s original, unanswered question: we are being lied to and propagandized across the political divide in order to remake our intellectual ideologies in line with …
… the vile maxim.
Take for instance another film out right this minute. I want to use these two films as examples because 1. they are current and 2. film is a terribly effective way to spread propaganda these days (“Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” for example)
The other film I wanted to talk about was World War Z
“Z” as I will call it, has the exact opposite message. It props up the notion that in order for civilized man to survive, the “makers” have to seclude themselves from the hordes of “takers” (zombies in this case) behind vast cities walled off from the badlands where the savages roam around causing unmitigated carnage.
In that film, the rest of the world criticizes Israel for walling themselves off from the mud people (zombies, Palestinians, apartheid wall… you get the picture) until in the end, everyone comes to understand the Israelis had the right idea and join the IDF standing on the tops of the walls mowing down the zombies with automatic weapons.
Point being, the Randian (Rosenbaumian?) philosophy holds true. Without a separation of the “makers” from the “takers”, society is doomed and with it, humanity. To feel empathy for the “takers” is the ultimate betrayal of our species.
Reviews of “Z” are glowing to say the least. From the New Yorker to the Huffington Post reviewers give it a “thumbs up” pretty much across the board.
Leave it to the Washington Post to gently hint at the not so subtle message behind the film in a positive and reaffirming way:
“Instead, the film follows the classic contours of a globe-trotting mystery, throwing in occasional set pieces of terror and mayhem. One of the most impressive, which projects the cheering image of Israeli Jews and Palestinians finding common cause against the teeming undead behind the separation wall in Jerusalem, results in Gerry’s acquiring a sister-in-arms, a tough Israeli soldier named Segen, played by Daniella Kertesz. (Make what you will of her unsettling resemblance to a Holocaust survivor.) Later, after a sequence that might fairly be described as the Ultimate Revenge of Economy Class, “World War Z” indulges in a rare instance of graphic ickiness, albeit one from which its victim recovers in near-record time.” Washington Post
Yeah, they put a few Palestinians on the wall shooting mud people, but of course, they also put a Holocaust survivor standing next to them for some reason.
The zombies as the “Economy Class”? Subtle it’s not, but the film enjoyed rave reviews when it first came out.
So did Argo and Zero Dark Thirty.
Reviews for Elysium are still being penned, but some of the early writings make it clear, it won’t enjoy the support of the critics like “Z” does:
“A politically charged flight of speculative fiction makes an exciting launch, only to tailspin into an ungainly crash landing in Elysium.” “… a sociologically pointed haves-and-have-nots storyline…” but an embrace by the masses will elude it.” Holly wood Reporter
That review is pretty typical and of course, you have Di$info Jone$’ cliched review which goes for broke with the pro-Randian propaganda and white racial panic fear-mongering :
“Despite the overt allusions to class warfare and a focus on a tarnished and out-moded socialist narrative of rich-vs-poor, Elysium is primarily about immigration “reform” and the stalled effort in Congress to pass legislation legalizing millions of illegal aliens. Idealized and romanticized pet liberal causes come in second.” Di$info Jone$
Notice the similarities between those two reviews. We live in a world that is increasingly divided between those that have wealth and everyone else struggling to merely survive. The middle class is being systematically decimated while pensions and savings accounts of everyday working people are being looted. Wages are on the decline, by design while the standard of living falls for most. All these things taking place, and reviews from BOTH the establishment and the ‘alternative” both focus on telling their audience, first and foremost, that any film presenting this aspect of modern day American life is “out-moded” (sic) or “sociologically pointed”
Just like the one reviewer from the Washington Post hinted at regarding “Z”, there is an unmistakable underlying message of economic justice in Elysium.
One positive review of the film that I just found echoes what I have been saying:
Neill Blomkamp’s latest sociopolitical sci-fi masterpiece, Elysium, is being called dystopian for portraying a world in the year 2154 where the ultra wealthy have abandoned an earth wracked by poverty, disease, crime, and pollution to live in the ultimate gated community aboard an orbiting space station. But if you read the news — which is full of stories about impending environmental catastrophe, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and a republican party obsessed with lionizing the wealthy and making those in need suffer — Elysium seems more predictive than pessimistic. After all, the 1 percent already live in a world so different from ours — where they can flout the law, enjoy the best in medical care, and be untouched by the planet’s problems, concerns, and priorities — that they might as well be on another planet.
However, making on observation like that appears to be too much for the small minds of many, like republicans who have been quick to denounce Elysium as socialist liberal Hollywood nonsense, or others whining that Elysium‘s social commentary is simply too heavy-handed for the movie to be enjoyed.” Huffington Post
When Chomsky pointed out in ’95 how the writing of Adam Smith is often misrepresented to mean exactly the opposite of what he was saying, he was attempting to expose an important trend in modern political American life which was actually exactly the same thing Smith foretold in his evaluation of the division of labor.
People are becoming increasingly ignorant of the world around them, by design of course, based mainly on class lines.
And it’s not just the establishment sources doing this. You have disinformation specialists like Di$info Jone$ working hand-in-glove with the establishment, whether you like to admit it or not.
The point is to demonize notions of social justice and altruism, fairness and equality, and to do so by any means necessary like playing to themes of racism and religious fervor for example:
“This time you have made a new “Birth of a Nation”, or Birth of a Clansman” but this time you are trying to form a Hispanic Ku Klux Klan that will then serve the globalist… it’s got mark of the beast… they put it on your right wrist, then after you get the mark of the beast, you get the keys to the city” Infowars
Is it any wonder that people are being taken in by this? It plays right to primal fears and old prejudice… just like Ayn Rand herself.
So to answer Mr. Lind, how this befuddled and sophomoric ideology has taken rise in modern America (on the right AND the left, Mr. Lind (never heard of the New Dems?)) I offer the one simple solution:
… it was sold to them via clever propaganda for many years by those who read and followed the tasks set to them by the Lewis Powell Memo of 1971. And it continues to this day as what John Williamson once called the Washington Consensus.
No comments:
Post a Comment