Fahrenheit 9/11 and the ghost of George Orwell

Bob Briton

It is safe to predict that by now many Guardian readers 
will have seen Michael Moore's latest documentary film 
Fahrenheit 9/11. The weekend before last I caught one of 
the preview sessions at Adelaide's Palace cinema and made up part 
of the throng queuing in a dim hallway waiting for the 1.40pm 
session to vacate their seats. When we came out, another long 
line of people stretched along the wall patiently waiting for 
us.

I went as part of a group booking for the NOWAR coalition. Animal 
Liberation also had a group attending the session and I know 
other progressive organisations like the Australia East Timor 
Friendship Association had also been fundraising with the aid of 
this immensely popular film. In more ways than one, Fahrenheit 
9/11 has been good news for the progressive movement.

My personal experience bears out what the mainstream media has 
been saying. While feature length documentaries in general — 
offerings like Supersize Me, Fog of War for example 
— are doing very well at the box office, Fahrenheit 9/11 
is something else again. It is a phenomenon. Even before its 
public release, Michael Moore's latest big screen venture had 
rewritten the ticket sales record for a documentary film in 
Australia.

In the US, the film has not been out of the news and the opinion 
columns since the revelations of its problems with Disney's 
distribution subsidiary Miramax in early May. The documentary has 
been packing out cinemas in the US, too, but it is the shrill 
response of the pro-Bush forces that has been most the most 
notable aspect of the Fahrenheit 9/11 phenomenon there — 
at least, that is the impression you get from trawling the media 
for references.

In Australia, the usual mob of right-wing columnists such as 
Andrew Bolt and Gerard Henderson did their predictable job of 
attacking the film and anyone prepared to accept its presentation 
of the facts. In the US, however, the political Right has pulled 
out all the stops. Moore's previous best selling book Stupid 
White Men now has a right-wing counterpart called Michael 
Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man. Singer Linda Ronstadt was 
recently ejected from the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas after she 
dedicated a performance of the song Desperado to Michael 
Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11.

On both sides of the Pacific the widespread acceptance of the 
film seems to have spurred the political Right to news heights of 
intolerance and boorishness. The fact that commercial success has 
not led Moore to tone down his criticism of the corrupt and 
extreme Bush Administration is presenting the self-proclaimed 
defenders of democracy and free speech within it with a major 
media management challenge. I expect the Right to stay on Moore's 
case for a long time to come.

"Left-wing" opposition to Fahrenheit

However, while I was taking my seat at the Palace it was comments 
of a "left-leaning" commentator that kept creeping into my 
consciousness. Like many other people I had read US-based 
journalist Christopher Hitchens' lengthy attack on Michael Moore 
and his latest "filmic effort". Entitled Unfahrenheit 9/11 — 
the lies of Michael Moore, the Hitchens piece set out to show 
that the film is "a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely 
disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle 
of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration 
of 'dissenting' bravery."

In the article Hitchens likens Moore to Nazi filmmaker Leni 
Riefenstahl and adds Soviet film pioneer Sergei Eisenstein for 
good measure. By the way, very few Hitchens pieces end without a 
sneering reference to some modern day or historical "Stalinist" 
personality or "regime".

The articulate, though unrelievedly po-faced Hitchens has been on 
our TV screens a lot in recent times. He is a "former Trotskyist" 
(isn't that particular segment of humanity doing well for itself 
lately?) who has taken on an important role in the promotion of 
the official line on the so-called War on Terrorism. His 
comments, coming as they do from a "left-wing" authority, are 
being used to demonstrate that support for present US foreign 
policy ought not be restricted to the political right. They are 
part of an effort to show how the left has got it seriously wrong 
on issues like Afghanistan and Iraq — how the left's alleged 
tedious contrariousness has turned it into a poorly disguised 
apologist for totalitarian regimes.

Hitchens is part of the school of journalism that thinks very 
highly of its own intellectual honesty and claims to be a 
disciple of George Orwell. This last-mentioned detail should come 
as no surprise. Orwell was another self-described lefty whose 
writings about the Spanish Civil War gave the world the version 
of events in which the bad guys were not so much the fascists, 
but those loathsome communists fighting on the Republican side. 
His take on the presumed inevitable decay of the Russian 
Revolution, Animal Farm, was (quite literally) compulsory 
reading in schools throughout much of the capitalist world. 
Trotskyists, lapsed and current, are as one with the capitalist 
ruling class in all these attitudes about the dangers of actually 
changing society.

At some point, Orwell became an informer for Britain's internal 
spook agency MI5. In 1949 he provided a list of individuals in 
the arts field — including Charlie Chaplin, J B Priestley, and 
the actor Michael Redgrave — to the agency. They were, according 
to Orwell "crypto-communists, fellow-travellers or inclined that 
way and should not be trusted as propagandists". Hitchens takes 
the same attitude to Michael Moore.

Moore's use of quotes from Ninteen Eighty-Four towards the 
end of the film must have infuriated the oh-so-honest Hitchens. 
Near the close of Hitchens' "debunking" of Fahrenheit 
9/11, he seeks to restore Orwell to his proper role of 
chastising critics of capitalist society and imperialism. He 
cites comments written by Orwell in 1945 to sum up his feelings 
about Moore:

"But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real 
though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western 
democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda 
usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the 
other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger 
intellectual pacifists, one finds they do not by any means 
express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely 
against Britain and the United States."

Hitchens shares his icon's faith in the supreme civilising 
influence of the UK and the US, though thankfully without the 
novelist's offensive homophobia, racism and anti-Semitism. Orwell 
sought to defend the institutions of these "great democracies" 
from the threat of communism. Hitchens has taken up this cause 
and added to it the crusade against the new "threat" posed by 
"militant Islam".

George W Bush as victim

Every now and then Hitchens feels the need to touch up his lefty 
image. He wrote a piece recently about the late Ronald Regan who 
he describes as being reptilian in his stupidity. However, when 
it comes to the current US head of state, who is also 
monumentally stupid, he becomes very protective. This is the 
starting point for his attack on Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore 
has allegedly misled people into thinking George W Bush became 
president courtesy of shady electoral practices in the decisive 
state of Florida during the 2000 Presidential Elections.

Hitchens would have it that only an incurable conspiracy theorist 
would think that the combination of a card-carrying Republican 
head of the Florida electoral commission, a brother ensconced as 
state governor and an adverse decision from a Supreme Court 
largely appointed by Daddy would have anything to do with George 
Dubbya's unexpected success. And to suggest that Bush overdoes 
the "relaxed and comfortable" approach to his office with 
extended holidays at a time of national crisis is craven and 
dishonest, according to Hitchens.

The connection between the bin Laden family and the Bushes 
through joint interests in the Carlyle Group is "convoluted" to 
Hitchens, even if it looks pretty direct to the rest of us. It 
now turns out that permission for the bin Laden family to fly out 
of the US immediately after the September 11 outrages, while 
every other civilian aircraft was grounded, was given by Bush's 
counterterrorism chief Richard Clark. He made this confession on 
May 25 of this year. According to Hitchens, Moore should have 
pulled Fahrenheit 9/11, which was due for release in the 
following few weeks, and gone back to the drawing board.

Clark's admission explains everything! Bush is in the clear! 
Clark is an impeccable source — he has even criticised aspects 
of the Administration's "War on Terror". That he should wait 
until now to make the improbable admission needs no comment, 
according to Hitchens. What is important is that Michael Moore's 
analysis is derided.

Moore also gets a bucketing for previously insisting that Osama 
bin Laden is innocent until proven guilty (outrageous!), while 
now making much of the Bushes' connections with the al-Qaida 
leader. In a sneaky slide, Hitchens attacks the offending 
filmmaker for criticising the invasion of Afghanistan, where the 
Taliban had harboured bin Laden, and then for suggesting that the 
US had not committed enough troops in the relevant areas of the 
country to track him down. The poor old Bush Administration is 
being put in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation 
by those vile members of the smug trendy left. This is given as 
an example of the bad faith of Michael Moore.

However, the connection made in the film between the invasion of 
Afghanistan and the subsequent deal for a gas pipeline for US 
transnational Unocal, the links between Afghan PM Hamid Karzai 
and Unocal are fleetingly alluded to but not answered in 
Hitchens' hatchet job. He refers to them at a later date but only 
to say blandly that Afghanistan could use some infrastructure — 
as if it were being built for the benefit of Afghanistan! Moore's 
point that a pipeline — and not Osama bin Laden — might be the 
actual objective of the invasion is left alone. It is interesting 
to note that Hitchens projects onto Moore the failing of quoting 
sources out of context and using tight, manipulative editing.

The Hitchens article grinds on like this. Moore is an apologist 
for Saddam's regime by showing groups of people smiling at a 
camera before the shock and awe bombing of Baghdad in March last 
year. The links between previous US Administrations and Saddam's 
regime and even with currently serving figures in George Dubbya's 
team are not evidence of cynical exploitation of events then and 
now but a of a belated and welcome recognition that essentially 
wholesome powers like the US should move militarily against 
dictators and not support them. Oh brother! Hitchens has taken up 
the common stance of totalitarians for the capitalist status quo 
that maintains that, while imperialism may have sinned in the 
past, it is acting with selfless detachment in the present.

Exploiting human suffering?

However, recalling the Hitchens article before the Adelaide 
preview I was concerned that the film would exploit the suffering 
and grief of the families of US soldiers killed in Iraq. I share 
Hitchens' professed distaste for the manipulation of personal 
tragedy for the purpose of political debate, though I suspect 
Hitchens' hostility might be selective. I was relieved to 
discover that the film's recording of Lila Lipscombe's grieving 
over her son was not in this category. It was distressing viewing 
but it was sympathetic to her and her shattered faith in the role 
of the US in world affairs. It did not draw any conclusions for 
the audience that Lila did not make herself.

Hitchens, on the other hand, would like to stand matters on their 
head. Moore's documentation of the mother's grief is mocking and 
dismissive of the sacrifice being made by the service men and 
women in Iraq. It is treacherous and callous and unpatriotic to 
suggest that, if these people had gone to bring freedom to Iraq 
and neutralise a (nonexistent) threat to regional and world 
security, they died in vain. Shame on you Michael Moore!

This is where the self-righteous Hitchens relies on the short-
term memory loss induced by the coverage of current events. In 
order to keep his credentials as a "left-wing commentator", 
Hitchens still maintains that the Vietnam War was a bad war. It 
is safely in the past and, of course, bears no resemblance to the 
current batch of good wars being waged by the US and its allies. 
But if it is callous and exploitative to suggest that the lives 
of the 900 US military personnel might have been wasted in Iraq, 
what are we to make of the sacrifice of the 57,939 American 
soldiers who died in Vietnam or the 313,616 who were wounded?

I will have to join the longish list of viewers who think that 
Fahrenheit 9/11 has faults. To suggest that the US-led 
Coalition of the Willing is made up only of tiny Pacific island 
states or cash-strapped eastern European countries is simply not 
right and has the effect of letting other predator countries like 
Britain and Australia off the hook. But at the end of the 
documentary I clapped long and loud along with just about 
everyone else in the cinema. I think the spontaneous outburst was 
saying:

"Thank you Michael Moore. Thank you for breaking into the media 
mainstream with a point of view that more faithfully represents 
the awful truth of largely unchecked US power. Thank you for 
getting one back for us in the face of the batteries of out-and-
out apologists like Christopher Hitchens."