Last September we screened an excellent feature length documentary,
Hijacking Catastrophe: Fear, 911 and the Selling of American Empire produced by the Media Education Foundation. When I wrote to them recently to see if we can show it again on November 2 at our local
Global Walkout for Peace they said yes and mentioned a new film they're working on, Hijacking Democracy: American Extremism & the Politics of Fear.
Today I received a 10 minute preview of Hijacking Democracy and it's great.
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While Hijacking Catastrophe deals with PNAC and their plans for world domination, and with the media manipulation this administration uses to sell its twisted policies, Hijacking Democracy deals with the really really scary fundamentalist-political-end times movement.
I think the subtitle for this film could well be, "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
The preview recalls extreme hate language from Rush and several tv preachers. And it drives home that this movement is not in any way within the realm of politics as we know it. It also discusses the Democrats' challenge to get over their false view that all they have to do is move a little more to the right.
The overhead shot of the massive congregation listening to a real lunatic yelling, "We are coming for your school boards! Senators, you'd better get out of the way because we are going to take over your seat! There are more of us than there are of you!" and the information that 1/3 of Senators now score 100% on far right legislative score cards was enough to scare me - and I keep pretty well informed.
I am writing this diary to let people know about both Hijacking films. If you haven't seen or shown Hijacking Catastrophe, do so right now. Last September it seemed to some (those who hadn't been paying attention) a little over the top with its conclusions that a "cabal had hijacked our foreign policy," as Lawrence Wilkerson so succinctly put it just a few days ago. Now, just a year later, it connects many dots, especially for people who are just waking up to what's happening.
And I hope you will also request the Hijacking Democracy preview (and handouts) and show it. People need to see this.
It probably didn't help that after viewing the HiDem preview I watched the academy award-winning documentary Into the Arms of Strangers about the 10,000 Jewish and other children who were saved from Nazis by the British (Kindertransport.)
While I'd known this before, seeing that film just after the Hijacking Democracy preview drove home the point that life had been good in Germany and then it wasn't. One day everything is beautiful and the next day your family is being arrested and hauled off to who knows where.
I know others have talked about the "It Can't Happen Here" theme, but I don't think it hurts to keep reminding ourselves about it. It won't happen just the way it's happened before. As Sinclair Lewis noted (and others have recently), "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."
I just want to recommend these films.