Home >> Europe >> Western Europe

     Email   Print 

Michael Moore: America-Bashing Reaches New Levels in Europe

James DeMeo, Ph.D. - 4/6/2005

When Michael Moore lampooned "Corporate America", it was at least an entertaining contribution to the social debate, but now he's moved on to more serious subject matter. Since making his millions by skewering capitalism, he's also plunged into the conspiracy swamp with a disinformation film "Fahrenheit 911"- financed with $3 million from Disney/Miramax. The movie blamed George W. Bush and the CIA (and Mossad?) for the 9-11 terror attacks. [1] Moore has shown himself to be expert in the use of "lies of omission" which most people won't know about unless they consult his critics.

His film "Bowling for Columbine" stimulated small "town meetings" across the US. Most participants had liberal sentiments and were so outraged by what he showed them, they felt they had to "do something to save America". However, many other Americans only became outraged at Moore, especially once the full extent of his lies and distortions were revealed. How many will have noticed, his splicing of the images of Charlton Heston, figurehead for the National Rifle Association, from at least two different speeches at two different times, misrepresenting them as happening only immediately after the Columbine tragedy? Originally, I didn't spot the deception, even though Heston wears two different suits and ties in the speeches from different dates.

Moore undertook a carefully crafted lie, designed to make Heston appear as a cruel, cold-hearted bastard who did not care one bit about children being shot dead in public schools. In fact, Michael Moore was the real Bastard, using the deaths of those kids to advance his own political agendas, and that is only one example of his methods. The devil is in the details, which in this case one can find most clearly gathered and discussed at MooreExposed.com, a web site run by David T. Hardy, a Tucson lawyer with genuine working-class roots and a respect for facts, who has devoted considerable time and energy to revealing the quite elaborated deceptions in Moore's books and films [2]:
On MooreExposed.com, Hardy gives a damning critique of the "Bowling for Columbine" movie:
"Moore altered history, misled his viewers, and edited the footage and audio in such a way as to reverse the meaning. In one case, he took a speech of a person he desired to target; the problem was that the speech was in fact conciliatory and mild. So he spliced in footage from another speech, cut out paragraphs, and spliced the beginning of one sentence to the ending of another. In another, when he wanted to criticize a political advertisement, but it wasn't as pointed as he wanted, he spliced together two different political ads, then added titling which was in neither."
The precise details of Moore's lying in "Bowling", "Stupid White Men", "Downsize This" and "Dude, Where's My Country?" are presented by Hardy as well. He has a marvelous satirical essay on the "shadowy connections between Moore and the Bin Ladens", using the same over-reaching illogic as employed by Moore and others against Bush. [3] And he is not alone in gathering together documentation on Moore's quite deliberate distortions. Again, with some digging, an internet search brought forth a list of websites exposing Michael Moore's deceptions.
If you like Moore's work, and think he really is a good guy who wants to expose hidden facts and truth to ignorant Americans, you owe it to yourself to review these on-line materials. I'll add my own observation, made at the Hugendubel bookstore in Berlin. The cover of Moore's book "Downsize This" in the American edition shows him respectfully tipping his hat to the reader. The German edition, published in 2003, shows him menacingly holding forth several sticks of dynamite, in the manner of a terrorist. Compare the books being sold on Amazon.com versus its German affiliate, Amazon.de.

The differences between the covers for his "Bowling for Columbine" DVDs are even more alarming: The American edition shows Moore respectfully "tipping his hat" once again, while the German edition shows a cartoon figure of a child playing with toys and waving an American flag, but with a bullet-wound in the forehead and blood dripping down. [4]

Most certainly he knows such contemptuous photos suggesting his emotional partnership with terrorism and the "hate America" (and Americans) crowd would be a shock to even his most admiring American fans. Much of his work is meant to turn Americans, in addition to Jews, into international scapegoats. His speeches, writings and films reflect and stimulate an awful emotional rage that is perhaps the mechanism by which they gain the attention of already-angry people over more accurate and reasoned voices. Bush, as the leader of the hated United States, becomes an emotional garbage-can or target against which all the emotional turmoil and bad feeling of the angry masses can be thrown, after which America-haters feel better. But, haven't we seen this before, and don't we know where it ultimately leads? It is a "feel-good" exercise, but one which so muddies the waters that legitimate criticisms of Bush administration policies are drowned out and lose affect. Likewise, Bush's achievements in liberating the people of Afghanistan and Iraq from genocidal tyrants and finally confronted global Islamo-fascism are ignored. This deceptive method of "international social critique" has already emboldened the enemies of freedom and cost many innocent lives, but we can take hope in the realization that most people, when exposed to the facts, quickly understand that a deception has occurred, and begin looking elsewhere for more honest answers.