Propaganda in Film Part 1 | Bob Barney (TRANSCRIPT)

 

 Bob Barney Propaganda in Film Part 1

Hi, Bob Birney for The Plain Truth Today brought to you by theplaintruth.com. Welcome to anotheredition of The Plain Truth Today. And today’s topic we talk about many times and I’ve had some other shows similar about it, but I’m going to play some excerpts from movies because today’s topic is political propaganda in movies. And we go back to World War II for what I’m going to do today and show you that many of the films that you think of as great entertainment films were actually propaganda films by the United States government supported by our military and our government.

And some of the most famous movies you may not even realize was made to change the minds of the American people. You see in World War II or right before that in the 1930s, America felt like they were hoodwinked into World War I. World War I was a very terrible war. Gas warfare, biological type weapons, and many American soldiers were maimed.

It led to the very famous lost generation of the 1920s. Ernest Hemingway, for example, was a writer that basically was mirroring the episodes of the lost generation and he was a part of that lost generation and that he wrote most of his war correspondence. He was a reporter duringWorld War I and an ambulance driver.

And he had a lot of battles that he was involved with the World War I and saw firsthand the horrors of that terrible war. It was as bad as a war as the world had ever seen probably up until that time. Thousands of people died per day.

We had some of the most terrible military blunders from the French, the English, and the Germans, and the Russians. The Americans, by the way, the American generals were quite smart and American casualties weren’t necessarily as bad as those of Britain, France, Germany, and Russia because those people did not know how to fight a modern war. They were putting 10,000troops on one side, 10,000 troops on the other side, and they would meet in the middle andslaughter each other in one day’s battle.

And it was inept. So by the 1930s, Americans and America felt that they were duped into World War I. And so when the real World War II actually started, believe it or not, in 1933, when Japan invaded Manchuria, China. People do not realize this, but World War II did not start with the United States entering the war after Pearl Harbor in 1941.

It didn’t even start at the Battle of Britain in 1939 and 1940. No, it started when Japan raised its ugly head and going into Manchuria, and Mussolini’s Italy went into Ethiopia, I think it was 1934, 1935. That is the beginning of World War II.

And as I say today, I think we’re in the beginning of a World War III. I’m not predicting that it’s the end of the world. I’m not predicting the tribulations around the corner.

I’m not one of these people that try to make money, because we do not make money with the plain truth. You can’t send us any money. You can’t advertise on this program.

We advertise my paint company and that’s it, and that’s what funds most of this program. But we do not try to predict dates on when things are going to happen like a lot of charlatans do. Even some well meaning people out there try to do so, try to figure out when Jesus is going to return, although they never evidently read in the Gospels when Jesus was asked by his disciples when he was going to return.

He flatly denied that anyone knew, including himself. Only God the Father knew when that day would happen. So why would little old Bob Barney think that I could figure it out if Jesus says you’re not going to be able to figure it out? So I just want to make that clear right here.

But getting back to the political propaganda films that I was talking about and what it means, the point that I want to make with this program is we’re going to study World War II propaganda films. I had a course, two courses, in fact, in this in college, in my political science degree days. And the reason I’m using the World War II example, because I think it was the best, most honest propaganda films ever made.

The reason I say that is the father of World War II propaganda films, Frank Capra, who was a movie producer, director, It’s a Wonderful Life After the War, or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, or what was the Jimmy Stewart one where he goes to the Senate, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. These were Frank Capra, very pro-American movies. But he also did the Why We Fight series, and hehad a very great quote that said, when the truth is on your side, just highlight the truth.

And that’s the best propaganda film ever, because when propaganda is true, then people will understand what they’re supposed to do, and the film will be successful. And that is why when people study, and I was told, or I read, I should say, that Donald Trump studied Adolf Hitler’s propaganda films, according to his first wife. Well, studying Adolf Hitler’s propaganda films, Lina Wilmer, I believe her name was, I can’t pronounce or think of her name.

She had the very famous 1970s movies, Swept Away, very good movie, by the way, Swept Away. But she did a terrible job with Hitler’s propaganda films, because he was a megalomaniac. And so you had to show that all the time, that he was the greatest thing, he was a Christlike figure, all of these things that when you watch it today, it’s so hokey that you know propaganda when you see it.

Well, when you watch Casablanca, did you know that was a propaganda movie? I bet you didn’t know that. You see, what happened with the movie Casablanca was, although World War II had begun earlier, I said in 1933, and in England in September of 1939, by the December of 1941, the time Casablanca is set, and it’s really before Pearl Harbor, I believe, most Americans believed thatthe United States should stay out of the phony war in Europe, and that’s what they called it. In fact, a Gallup poll taken during the first year of the war indicated that an overwhelmingly 96% of all Americans wanted the country to remain neutral.

However, by the time Casablanca premiered in November of 1942, the bombing of Pearl Harbor had already occurred, and the United States had been at war for almost a year. Nevertheless, many Americans continued to support an isolationist foreign policy, and were uneasy about the U.S. participation in a war that was thousands of miles away. Kind of sounds like Iran today, doesn’t it? To counteract this negative public sentiment towards the American military participation in World War II, the Department of War enlisted a war films division and hired filmmakers like John Ford, Frank Capra, and who is Casablanca screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein, as well, to travel to Washington, D.C. to create a series of seven American war propaganda films, and we’re going to play some of this, which was called the Why We Fight series by Frank Capra.

But also, Warner Brothers produced some 600 training and propaganda films under the division of the War Department. But between 1942 and 1945, Hollywood did its part with 1,700 feature films, 500 of which dealt directly with war-related material, and Casablanca was just one of them. What is the reason of Casablanca? Well, it’s very clear.

Casablanca was that Rick, the czar, Humphrey Bogart, was neutral, like America. He didn’t want to side with the Germans, he didn’t want to side with the French, or the American cause. He wanted to remain neutral.

And his love affair, Alina was her name, was married to somebody else, and he ended up leaving her to go fight the war. What do you think that meant? That the war was more important than the love of his life. That was the message of Casablanca.

Now, another very famous film, won Academy Award, was Greer Garson’s Mrs. Miniver. I think it’s one of the most elegant movies, most profound propaganda movies, I think, better thanCasablanca. It is directly related to England’s Battle of Britain, where Mrs. Miniver is a well-to-do, high-middle-class woman, whose son goes to be in the RAF, and he’s fighting the Germans over England.

And it’s a tragic story of death and sacrifice, and the British upper lip type movie. It also had a very great scene in the middle of the movie of the famous Dunkirk escape, when the British asked boat owners, I’m talking about little fishing boats and little, you know, people’s pleasure boats, 15-foot, 30-foot craft, to go across to English Channel, and thousands and thousands of boats to go across to English Channel and take the soldiers that were trapped at Dunkirk, that would have been eliminated, some half a million troops, by the Germans if they couldn’t get repatriated back to England. And civilians did this in England.

This was a great story. But at the end of the movie, and I’m going to play this right now, at the end of the movie, the priest, of all things, the Anglican priest, stands up and talks about the war. Listen to this speech of propaganda.

But by the time you have watched this movie, and see how bad the Germans were, and how great the British were, you were ready to fight alongside this priest. We, in this quiet corner of England, have suffered the loss of friends very dear to us. Some close to this church.

George West, choir boy. James Ballard, station master and bell ringer. And the proud winner, only an hour before his death, of the Belden Cup, for his beautiful Miniver Rose.

And our hearts go out in sympathy for the two families who share the cruel loss of a young girlwho was married at this altar only two weeks ago. The homes of many of us have been destroyed,and the lives of young and old have been taken. There’s scarcely a household that hasn’t beenstruck to the heart.

An interruption here in this speech by the priest. You’re looking, if you can see this movie, watch it someday, you’re looking at a church, everyone’s in their pews, looking at a priest, and you’re looking, and behind the priest the church is destroyed, and you can see the outside and the mountain behind it. The entire backside of the church has been blown off during the Battle of Britain by German bombs, and these people are in church listening to this priest, while they’re looking at him and behind him, the destruction.

And that is a very good Hollywood ploy, was to show you how bad it was for the Battle of Britain. Let’s go on. And why, surely you must have asked yourselves this question, why in all conscience should these be the ones to suffer? Children, old people, a young girl at the height of her loveliness.

Why these? Are these our soldiers? Are these our fighters? Why should they be sacrificed? I shall tell you why. Because this is not only a war of soldiers in uniform, it is a war of the people, of all the people, and it must be fought not only on the battlefield, but in the cities and in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home and in the heart of every man, woman, and child who loves freedom. Well, we have buried our dead, but we shall not forget them.

Instead, they will inspire us with an unbreakable determination to free ourselves and those who come after us from the tyranny and terror that threaten to strike us down. This is the people’s war. It is our war.

We are the fighters. Fight it then. Fight it with all that is in us.

And may God defend the right. And may God defend the right. It was the first war where it was assumed that it was going to be not military actions against military forces, but it was going to be a people’s war.

Hitler had brought the war to the people of London and the English and the Americans were determined they were going to use their own citizens, but they were going to bring the war to the German population as well. Hitler started it, and FDR, Churchill, and Stalin were going to go after the German people, the Japanese citizens, because that was the new modern warfare that was unleashed not in World War I or ever before. I have to admit, if you are a student of the Civil War, it’s the very first modern war in the history of mankind where the North, not the South, the North, the Union soldiers, brought mass civilian casualties, destroyed civilian properties and lives in order to bring an end to the war.

Sherman’s very famous march to the sea, for example, was an example of bringing the war to the people. Well, this is what World War II was about. The people were going to fight on both sides if they liked it or not.

And it was to get the American people and the English people especially to understand they were going to join this fight. And the American people did, and the English people did. And it would not have happened if it was not for propaganda films.

And I’m going to explain the idea of propaganda films and what it means today, because you may not be aware of this, but your entire life of watching TV, if it was the 1950s, 1960s, or 70s, the 1980s or 90s, or to this day, when you watch TV and you watch a movie, many times there’s propaganda there. A lot of the last 50 years of Hollywood has been a very liberal anti-American propaganda with a few movies in between that celebrated American heroes like Apollo 13 or some of the Band of Brothers and things like that TV show. So there is always propaganda in your life.

You’re just probably not aware of it. You should always be aware of when somebody is trying to control your mind. You should be aware of propaganda even if you agree with it.

When I watch these programs, I agree with the propaganda and the idea Americans had to fight World War II. We couldn’t stay isolationist. This is my problem today with what’s going on, and my problem with the Donald Trump administration.

I am not against taking out Iran. It could have been done. I’m against the politicalization of the Iran war and the people getting rich off the Iran war, and nothing is being accomplished.

It reminds me of Korea and Vietnam all over again. You got to hand George Bush I, I call him King George I, who followed Ronald Reagan, when he went to war with Saddam Hussein, it lasted about six weeks and it was over with. They had learned the lessons of Vietnam that his son did not learnwhen it came to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and neither did Barack Obama and neither did Joe Biden, even though he ended the war, but in a miserable way, but now it appears neither didDonald Trump, and we are stuck in a war that America finds unpopular and is bringing us back to isolationism, and we are the superpower of the world.

You cannot be an isolationist, and you know if you listen to this program long enough, you know that I’m predicting what the predicts about the United States of America. If you know our identity in the Bible, and we the Ephraim of the sons of Joseph of the Bible, you know that we’re going into captivity. We are going to be destroyed.

We are going to lose our power and our superpower status from within. It’s prophesied it will happen. I wish we could put it off longer, and I did not expect that the president that I supported gave money to to run was going to be the catalyst to start the king of the north, the king of the south, the kings of the east, and the decline of American power, superpower.

Did not expect it, but that is what’s happening. Now I want to get on to the next propaganda filmthat was not intended to go to the American people. It was intended only to be seen by soldiers,and why they were going to fight.

There were seven episodes, but I only ever really have found five since my college days. I watched all seven in my junior year, University of Connecticut, and Frank Capra was the person that put that together for the government. There’s a very funny story, by the way.

He was a very, very famous director and producer in the 1930s, probably the biggest there was at the time, and when he went to sign in, he was given a title of captain in the United States Army, and when he was doing his sign-in, a young soldier, you know, probably 18 years old, filling out the paperwork, was asking him the usual questions. Name? Frank Capra. Age? He gave his name.

What do you do? Hollywood producer, director. What’s your salary? And he said, I think it was $5,000. And the kid looked up at him and said, sir, you make $5,000 a year? He goes, son, I make $5,000 a week.

A week. This was a guy who gave that up for a $1,760 a month job making propaganda films for our people. Listen to this from the first of the Why We Fight series, Prelude to War, Why We Fight, Part 1, Frank Capra’s Manchuria episode about Manchuria, Ethiopia, and Hitler.

And the slave. Let’s take the free world first. Our world.

How did it become free? Only through a long and unceasing struggle inspired by men of vision. Moses. Muhammad.

Confucius. Christ. All believe that in the sight of God, all men were created equal, and from thatthere developed a spirit among men and nations which is best expressed in our own declarationof freedom.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. It is the cornerstone upon which our nation was built and the ideal of all the great liberators. Washington.

Jefferson. Garibaldi. Lafayette.

Kosciuszko. Bolivar. Lincoln.

Lighthouses lighting up a dark and foggy world that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Fighting. Living.

Dying. For what? For freedom. That for which men have fought since time began.

To be free. Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?Forbid it almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.

But what of this other world? Here men insisted that progress lay in killing freedom. Here they were putting out the lighthouses one by one. Here the march of history was reversing itself.

In Italy it began when an ambitious rabble rouser set his followers marching on Rome. The country, like every other country after the last war, was torn by political unrest, hard times, unemployment. Two courses were available to the Italian people.

They could solve their problems in a free democratic way or they could let someone else do the solving for them. They made the tragic mistake of choosing the second course. They put their trust and faith in this one man.

They believed he represented them. Actually he planned to betray them for the selfish interests of himself and the group back of him. Just as he had earlier betrayed those who first supported him.

Mussolini is who they’re talking about. In Germany another even more forceful demagogue said his followers marching from the Munich Beer Hall. He too had the sinister opportunity to take advantage of post-war chaos.

Showing the inflation of the German economy. But he also had certain distinctive Germancharacteristics to play on. To start with the Germans have an inborn national love of regimentationand harsh discipline.

By the way the Germans are the ancient Assyrians who call their land the fatherland like Germany and they’re very militaristic people and Hitler played on that and the future antichrist if he comes out of Germany is going to play on the same sentiment. We’re seeing it rising in Germany right now. He could give them that.

They set out to murder the newborn German republic. In Japan you’d expect things to be done a little differently. They were.

Here not one man but a gang disguised their little schemes of the will of the emperor and to the Japanese people the emperor is God. Taking advantage of their fanatical worship of the god emperor it was no great trick to take away what little freedom they had ever known. Again watch Germany and watch Japan and if you’ve been following along you know that I personally believe that 200 million man army of Russia, China and Japanese controlled that’s coming into Armageddon at the last final battle of mankind before Jesus Christ takes over.

Japan I believe is the military source for this. The brains. They are a warlike people as is Germany.

They gave up their rights as individual human beings I became a part of a mass a human herd.Although these countries were far apart and different in custom and in language the same poison made them much alike. Each got a new uniform.

In Italy the new bosses wore black shirts. In Germany the shirts were brown. In Japan they hid behind the uniform of the army but really they belonged to a sinister secret society.

Their symbol was a black dragon. The other fellows had to have a symbol too. Germany a swastika.

In Italy the old Roman symbol of the fascists. In Germany they called the new order national socialism or Nazism. In Italy they had a shorter word fascism.

In Japan they had lots of names for it. The new era of enlightenment. The new order in Asia.

The co-prosperity sphere but no matter how you slice it it was just plain old-fashioned militaristic imperialism. The Japs would get the prosperity and the others would get the coal. They say trouble always comes in threes.

Take a good close look at this trio. Remember these faces. That’s Mussolini, Hirohito and Hitler.

It’s a joke but it’s funny. Don’t hesitate. If you ever meet him you’re not going to meet him most likely.

So this is going to be part one of the show on propaganda in the movies. Like I said last Saturday was The Journey for Margaret and it’s still online. You can go back to the podcast and watch the movie.

You can cast it if you know how to your TV or if you have a big enough computer screen watch it. It is a fantastic propaganda film about orphans and an American journalist who decides he’s going to try to get them out of England during the Battle of Britain to save them and bring them to America. It’s a very touching story and it’s a story that I think you cannot watch and cannot see without being moved if you have any human instinct at all about how horrible war is on civilians and that war is coming to America.

War is coming to this world. Your Bible says so and it’s not going to be proven wrong and it’s going to be the worst war ever, ever faced. Now I’m not saying that World War III is the final war.

There may be a World War IV. There may be a World War V. I do not know the end times. Too many things have not yet came into existence to allow Christ to come back.

He gave some signs and all the signs are not here my friends. So don’t follow these people who say it’s going to happen next week or there’s some secret rapture. There is no rapture of the saints.

We’re going to have to live through if we’re alive. We’re going to have to live through what everybody else has to live through. We will have some divine protection and we know ultimately we will be resurrected from the dead if we are killed in that war and to eternal life, spiritual godlike life.

We will be gods. We will be the son of God where that makes us gods. That is our future.

Tomorrow we’re going to listen to more of the Why We Fight series. I want you to hear some of it. If you can watch them, TCM plays them a lot.

It’s really worth watching. The Plain Truth and I’ll start tomorrow’s program when I’m finishinghere. The Plain Truth is dedicated to inform you of what you need to know.

Educate yourself because you’re being misled all the time. Until tomorrow, Bob Barney for The Plain Truth today. Thank you for listening.

Bye-bye.