300 is Propaganda for War Against Iran
Necromocracy (Part One)
Jeff Wells, Rigorous Intuition
“Across history, other nations had gone insane. Other movements had been evil or tried awful wizardries. But none perpetrated murder with such dedicated efficiency. The horror must have been directed not so much at death itself, but at some hideous goal beyond death.”
When I was taught history in high school, Athens was a favourite historical analogue for the United States. Both were considered accidental empires and, for the most part, benign necessities of their dangerous times. (For America, this was the period of its so-called soft power, even though its application often felt hard as hell away from home. But Mossadegh and Allende could tell you better.) The self-celebrating mythology of America’s global reach was always democratic, and its extended aspects - its colonies, though they would never be called such - were assumed to be dependencies by choice. America’s Athenians were regarded as individuals, and its military the champion of an individual’s liberty. Unlike the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union, whose subjects and armed forces were thought more comparable to the severe and undifferentiated Spartans.
But in wartime, and in a time of re-mythologizing war, America’s mythmaking undergoes a radical makeover to favour Sparta and the 300 of King Leonidas. It’s too tempting a story to resist, because no matter its overwhelming might, it seems that for the good of its soul America must also, at least in its fiction, regard itself as the underdog. (You could perhaps sense something of this in the relish with which supporters of the Iraq war recounted America’s “abandonment” by its traditional allies and the United Nations. “Going it alone” never felt so good.)
A new film treatment of the Battle of Thermopylae, 300, will be released early next year, and it looks like just the ticket to introduce the legend of Sparta to America’s popular culture of perpetual war. Particularly appropriate, since Persian arms are once again the perceived enemy, and the few who stand against them now are Rumsfeld’s 150,000. (And that reminds me: do you remember reading how, “in the summer of 2001, when security agencies were regularly warning of a catastrophic attack by Al Qaeda, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s office ’sponsored a study of ancient empires—Macedonia, Rome, the Mongols—to figure out how they maintained dominance,’ according to the New York Times“?) This latest, and most extreme version is based upon the work of graphic novelist Frank Miller, of the admirable Sin City, but who is also an unabashed propagandist for the White House shooting script. His next project is Holy Terror, Batman!, in which bin laden targets Gotham City and the Dark Knight “kicks al Qaeda’s ass.”
An inspiring defeat is sometimes worth more to a military and its masters than a sure victory, just as allowing an attack to happen can be of greater long-term benefit than its prevention, and through the centuries the blood of 300 soldiers has probably nourished a thousand campaigns. Perhaps, recalling this post, some of the same soldiers, over and over again. General George Patton was persuaded he was one, as dramatized here (”I fought in many guises, many names. But always me.”)
Reincarnation aside, there’s a certain necromancy here, in romanticizing the deaths of those long dead in order to stir the living to want to join them. A similar working was accomplished with the 3,000 dead of 9/11 who, though representing many nations, after death all somehow became alchemical Americans. Not only by the Let’s Roll! stage-management of their unoffered sacrifice were many thousands more inspired to enlist, die and suffer grievous injury, but their blood is deemed sufficient to cover that of 655,000, and the murderers of Iraq and their enablers still enjoy untroubled sleep.
Call it what you want, but that’s some strong magic.
By the way, this may be old news to some, but if you haven’t viewed BBC’s nearly three-hour documentary from 1992 on Gladio and NATO’s secret fascist armies, please do. You can find it in three parts on Google Video. The first segment establishes the context of history and the prominent role played by future CIA wizard James Angleton, and features interviews with William Colby and Licio Gelli; the second examines the Bologna railway station bombing, and the third the Brabant Massacres and the assassination of Aldo Moro. Perhaps because it’s another British production from the early 90s, or because it’s a history that’s largely unknown to North America, or because William Colby appears in both shortly before his likely murder, it has a strong Conspiracy of Silence vibe about it. And I mean that in the best possible way, about the worst possible truth.
March 18th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
i saw 300 on its opening night, somewhat prepared for politcal overtones, but I was really surprised at just how grotesque the Persians where made out to be. On the battle front the Persians wheeled out hidious monster after hideous monster, each depicting another page from Freud’s book of subconscious shadow symbology; meanwhile back in the persian camp, overt homosexuality and mysoginy abounded. My concern is that while I’m aware at this deliberate shaping of my perceptions, couldthe film still be having just as great an effect on me, as on the next, non-political minded viewer?
August 6th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
*How I Went To See A War And A Fox News Editorial Broke Out*
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Is the new movie “300″ a thinly-veiled proxy for justifying aggressive
policies towards the Muslim world? Or is it more complex than that?
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*By A. Arain, March 12, 2007*
I want my money back!
Tonight we went to see the movie ” 300
“, and what we found instead was a
polemic in support of Bush’s policies, both domestic (the Patriot Act)
and foreign (war campaigns on any country in the Middle East not named
Israel).
In the movie, the Persian king Xerxes sends an emissary to the Spartan
king, Leonides, instructing him to submit to the rule of Xerxes.
Leonides responds by violating the age-old rule and having the messenger
killed.
What ensues is the historically based tale of Leonides and 300 Spartan
warriors momentarily holding off thousands of hordes of Persian soldiers
in the narrow mountain pass leading to Sparta before finally succombing
to the exotic, demonic, decadent, freakish and effeminate Persian hordes.
The cheerleading for the Patriot Act and war powers of the president
starts early, with the king facing the prospect of war during the holy
festival of Carneius; by Spartan law, it is forbidden to wage war in
this month. In Frank Miller’s take on Shakespearean dialogue, the king
wonders “how the very laws I have sworn to protect now keep me from
protecting them”. The point is driven home when the queen is asked what
she would tell the council while her husband wages war in violation of
the law. “I’d tell them that the very freedom that they live by must
come at the cost of blood.”
When the queen voices her intentions to the treacherous and conniving
councilmember Theron, he reminds her that the king’s war is illegal, and
tells her that the council will never approve the troop mobilization,
declaring, “I own that council!” His duplicitous argument that the war
is illegal proves to be a mere cover for the fact that he’d been paid
off by Xerxes. How quaint and coincidental that a high-ranking Pentagon
member recently questioned where various high profile law firms are
obtaining their funding to defend the accused who sit in Guantanamo Bay.
Nancy Pelosi would do well to check for the imprint of Xerxes on her
gold coins.
But the movie addresses more than just the Patriot Act or war powers. It
also goes out of its way to depict a battle that would allow Samuel
Huntington to die a happy man. The Greeks all appear as western
Europeans, whereas the Persians are represented by Africans, Arabs,
Indians and even Chinese.
Like Braveheart, the movie presents a number of ancient and unschooled
soldiers delivering stirring speeches about “our freedom”, “our
democracy” and even, centuries before the birth of the nation-state,
references to “our country”. These characterizations are juxtaposed to
the despotic slavery of the Persian Empire. The Spartans may have simply
forgotten that the Greek empire used extensive slave labor, and that
voting was limited to males of the patrician class. And since they were
after all austere soldiers, they may well not have known that some
historians identify the very Persian Persepolis as the world’s first
democracy.
But throughout this pro-democracy blood orgy, there can be little doubt
that the makers of 300 saved their most scathing words for the broadside
against the modern middle east. One of the last lines in the movie
features an exhortation to save our lands from “the tyranny and
mysticism” of the attackers.
But like the bigots who killed Sikhs after 9/11 and the politicians who
pandered to them by advocating and passing the Patriot Act before anyone
had read it, the movie doesn’t do subtlety, or at least, does not do it
well.
The movie’s initial sequence describes the Spartan process of inspecting
newborns for physical imperfections, which if found, resulted in the
heaving of the newborn off of a cliff. Since these same Spartans are the
white and conservative good guys, it’s anyone’s best guess as to who
protests for the rights of these killed newborns.
Nor does the irony end there. The movie’s goal seems simple enough:
dehumanize and denigrate the peoples, civilizations and political
systems of the Middle East. How ironic that the chosen literary vehicle
for this was a suicide mission of a few stout believers. Perhaps the
Spartans, much like Fox News, bring more credibility to the people they
cast as enemies.
/A. Arain is a Chicago professional and freelance writer./
September 19th, 2007 at 1:15 am
Movies have always been used as propaganda devices most notably “Birth of a Nation” by Griffith who by all accounts was to the far right of Bush. It’s all about story telling and if you can tell a good story and your right of Satan, then we’re in trouble. Just remember Voltaire when he said
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”.
He had the first French revolution to draw down on where the blood ran, quite literally, in rivers. He also said “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong”. Never have the governers of our world been more wrong. We live in dangerous times.