Fahrenheit 911

Submitted by on 12 August, 2004 - 12:00

The target of this film is unmistakable and the film, thankfully, is remorseless. This is a demolition job on the credibility of the Bush presidency. The stupidity, the callousness, the cynicism, the dishonesty and corruption of the Bush presidential empire are all fantastically exposed.

Not surprisingly, supporters of the president have subjected the film to an equally remorseless campaign of abuse. In the US, while the film has played to capacity audiences for some weeks now, both the film and director Michael Moore have become major targets of the Bush campaign. The Bush entourage have used all their business and media power to obstruct its circulation and rubbish its content.

Despite winning the Cannes festival's best film award and being applauded by film purists like Quentin Tarantino, it has been attacked by many UK film critics, such as Mark Kermode of the Observer. The reasons for this are a little difficult to unravel. A lot is plain artistic snobbery, which finds the methods of satirical, political polemic beneath it. But probably a larger part of the explanation is because the film implicitly challenges the naivety of those in the UK who believed that a war led by Bush and Blair could ever be defendable.

The film starts with the 2000 election. This sits uneasily with the rest of the film, but it can be understood as Moore's attempt to explain his actions and the actions of other radicals and socialists in that year, when supporters of Ralph Nader, the Green/Labor presidential candidate, were subjected to fierce attacks from the failed Democrat Gore's supporters for splitting the anti-Republican vote.

Moore was probably the most visibly active and prominent supporter of Ralph Nader's campaign. As such he was the target of much of the Democrats' criticism. He defended himself essentially with two arguments:

  1. that Gore and the Democrats were incapable of mobilising working class votes because of their refusal to campaign on issues of concern to working class people; and
  2. that Gore in particular failed to do everything legally and constitutionally possible to stop Bush assuming office in the wake of the considerable corruption in the state of Florida, run by his Bush's brother Governor Jeb Bush.

The rest of Moore's film attempts to illustrate the second of these, the timidity of the Democrats, by showing Gore, in his role as Vice-President and chair of the Senate, repeatedly over-ruling black working class representations challenging the election decision. But little is said about the first argument, that the Democrats are constitutionally incapable of adequately speaking for American workers. More on this later.

'Fahrenheit 911' is a considerable improvement on Moore's last film, 'Bowling for Columbine', which is almost light in comparison. He doesn't shy away from the horror of 9/11. Thankfully he avoids the crude use of familiar footage and reveals the extent of deep horror among ordinary Americans to this atrocity.

He illustrates the close links between powerful Saudi families and the Bush regime, highlighted in his book Dude, where's my country?. And the protection given to them, but not to others, in the immediate wake of 9/11.

It is probable that some of the UK left would accuse Moore of Islamophobia, here, if they were consistent. But Moore makes clear, I think, that it is the alliance of the rich Americans with the rich Saudis that is his target.

He is sympathetic to the patriotism of American workers and tracks the development of that patriotism of one worker in his home town of Michigan, as she responds to the death of her son, killed in action during the course of filming. Moore has been particularly attacked for this thread and accused of exploiting her grief.

At one point an onlooker accuses her of taking part in a staged event. Her response to this is one of the most gut-wrenching and emotional bits of the film. True, Moore kept on filming but I did not feel that was in any way exploitation. Rather, it showed how ordinary people are so often accused of the very crimes they are protesting about: dishonesty, deceit. And how distressing that can be. The conflicting feelings of pride, because you are taking a stand, and distress, because it took a traumatic event to impel you to action when that action can often do nothing to take away your personal grief.

The film is less successful in illustrating what is going on in Iraq.

Moore has been attacked for showing Iraq as a happy land before the bombardment. That is an extrapolation of what he presented. You will see happy kids playing in the street and many of the normalities of working class life, even in a society persecuted by a semi-fascist. To recognise that this is true is a powerful part of our argument against war. The methods of the US and UK governments in opposing Saddam and the Taliban, mass bombings and other attacks that result in wide suffering for working class people, are not our methods. This is true even if we, and Iraqi workers, welcome the fall of those regimes, for our own reasons.

The mirrored tragedy to that of the dead GI's mother is that of an Iraqi woman whose family are wiped out in a US military attack. This, again, is moving. But all that is shown is her anguish and bitterness, and the bitterness of others traumatised by US barbarity.

But this film doesn't indulge in simplistic endorsement of the 'resistance'. The actions shown of Iraqi 'resistance' are crudely brutal. It is not likely that a US audience could have sympathy with them. They might blame Bush for sending their troops out there, and creating the environment for the growth of a military resistance of any form. But the film does not give any ideas for how to make active solidarity with Iraqi people.

Moore doesn't analyse the regimes of the Taliban or of Saddam, that is true. He doesn't show the relief that many Afghan or Iraqi workers felt at the collapse of those regimes. He shows the brutality of those wars and the cynical imperialist motivations of the US, or, more precisely, the Bush regime, but the film stops there politically.

Moore gives no direction as to how the people of Iraq should liberate themselves from the US occupation without falling prey to a new despotism, nor does he point to what US workers should do if and when they get rid of Bush.

It is an American film made for American audiences and it demonstrates the exploitation of poverty and unemployment by US militarism and the war machine very well. It has a purpose to stop Bush being elected again and that it may have a significant role in doing. But it fails to do more than that.

Moore's argument, mentioned above, that certain working class votes are beyond the reach of the Democrats is only partially true. There were many American workers in 2000 torn between the short-term desire to keep the Republicans out and the longer-term one of building a movement against both the two clear parties of the US bourgeoisie.

Where Moore stands now is unclear. He, rather amazingly, backed former Nato general Wesley Clark to be the presidential candidate for the Democrats, and pledged his support for him as a social liberal and opponent of the Iraq War. Now the Democrats have gone for the far-less liberal and far-less anti-militarist duo of Kerry and Edwards, it is unclear where Moore stands.

But Moore's failure here only reflects the confusion in the US labour movement around him.

And even with those failures, this is a film that understands American workers well and it is a film with the working class at its centre and not outraged liberalism. It shouldn't be missed.

Score: 8/10
Reviewer: Pete Radcliffe

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