DineshD'Souza's2016: Obama's America: Could one
liken the
documentary to the propaganda of China's Cultural Revolution?
America's
Unsettling Political 'Hate Speech' (China Daily, People's Republic of China)
Could the recent
anti-Obama documentary by conservative pundit DineshD'Souza be compared to communist propaganda generated
during the Cultural Revolution - or Nazi Germany? For China's state-run China Daily, U.S. correspondent Chen Weihua writes that even more unsettling than seeing The Dark Knight Rises after the Colorado
massacre was viewing D'Souza's2016: Obama's America - a film that paints president Obama as being
the world's leading anti-American American.
Going to a movie could be a scary experience if it reminds
you of the July 20 theater shooting in Colorado that ended with 12 people dead
and 58 injured. Last weekend, as my daughter and I were waiting to see The Dark
Knight Rises - the same film the Aurora victims had come to see - a guy
wearing a bulletproof vest came into the theater.
Much creepier, however, was my screening at another
Manhattan cinema of 2016: Obama's
America a few days earlier. I suspected that the documentary wouldn't
be my cup of tea, but as a curious journalist I went anyway.
I walked in ten minutes before the scheduled start,
expecting plenty of seats to be available - this was a documentary, after all.
To my surprise, the theater, which probably could seat up to 1,000 people, was
packed.
After managing to find a seat, I noticed the audience was for
the most part White senior citizens - an age group that historically turns out to
vote in huge numbers during U.S. presidential election.
On screen, DineshD'Souza, the conservative pundit who wrote, co-directed and
stars in the film, began his celluloid screed by interpreting the Barack Obama
he claims to know.
Obama wants a smaller America, a poorer America, railed D'Souza. Obama's goal is to downsize America in the name of
global justice. This is deeply rooted in the anti-colonialism thinking he
inherited from his father, whom Obama didn't spend much time with. Obama also
wants to redistribute wealth away from the rich and toward the poor. He wants
to weaken NASA. He refuses to take any meaningful steps to diminish Iran's
nuclear ambitions. Obama is pro-Islam and unfriendly to Israel. He is willing
to betray Britain, America's key ally, and to allow Argentina to reclaim the
Falkland Islands. Obama is heavily influenced by Frank Marshall Davis,
a noted American communist.
Posted by Worldmeets.US
The documentary took people to Kenya, where Obama's father
was born, then to Indonesia, where Obama spent several of his early years with
his mother and stepfather, and to other foreign lands - all in an effort to
convince viewers that Obama's non-American roots and experiences make him truly
un-American.
It's true that not everyone has to love or vote for Obama,
but portraying him in this light is just wrong. It is pure character
assassination, reminding me of the political persecution during China's "Cultural Revolution"
(1966-76), when overnight, the nation's leaders and heroes were labeled traitors
and villains.
In the audience that evening, my views were clearly in the
minority. Many of my fellow moviegoers applauded loudly at the end - or when
they saw the image of Ronald Reagan flicker on the screen.
While I was trying hard to figure out whether such a
documentary was equivalent to hate speech, The Campaign,
a new comedy I saw this week, seemed to provide answer.
Starring Will Farrell and Zach Galifianakis,
the movie is a tale of two Southerners fighting for a seat in Congress. Behind
the scenes, money is pumped into the campaign by the "Motch
brothers" (a clear reference to the real-life Republican Koch brothers) in
a bid to manipulate the outcome for personal gain. All of the dirty tricks
employed, though hilarious, reminded me of the ongoing presidential campaign as
well as D'Souza's documentary on Obama.
As I feel some sympathy toward Obama, I cannot forget that
another character-assassination movie just premiered in Los Angeles.
Death By China,
based on a book of the same title by University of California-Irvine professor
Peter Navarro, amounts to hate speech about China. Its key points: China is bad
in every respect. China is stealing American jobs, killing its babies with
unsafe toys and its army is preparing to kill Americans.
In a country known for producing great movies, garbage like Death By China, akin to World War II Nazi
propaganda, should never make it to the screen.
*New York based Chen Weihua
is deputy editor of China Daily USA.
