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Puppet pups: is PAW Patrol authoritarian propaganda in disguise? | Film

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Bad news for parents of children under the age of seven this week: PAW Patrol: The Movie has landed on UK screens, all the better to spoon-feed a generation of Covid-hardened kids with authoritarian neoliberal propaganda in the guise of an upbeat cartoon about puppies. That’s right: the early years TV show that criminology professor Liam Kennedy suggests is complicit in “a global capitalist system that produces inequalities” is back!

PAW Patrol’s astonishing popularity has made it a fascinating case study for the tastes and cultural politics of a generation. The show’s move from small to silver screen has highlighted many of those peculiarities. The first thing to say – though it seems obvious – is that parents can’t simply leave their children in front of PAW Patrol: The Movie, as you might with a television show. Perhaps because the film-makers know adults will be watching, it has somewhat dialled down its usually frantic goings-on. Indeed, a somewhat pointed early scene in the film involves a fireworks display in which all the rockets go off at once in a pandemonium of colours and noise, and the man in charge says: “Hey – I’m trying to build momentum here.”

Adults may be relieved with this odd bit of downtime, but in general the film maintains the programme’s deathless vibrancy, a world in which everybody is alert and ready at all times, and where dreaming and imagining are likely to get you run over by a screeching car. This seems of a piece with a modern culture in which children are evidently overly stimulated and connected.

PAW Patrol’s chief singularity is the way young people are called upon to rectify the mistakes or crimes of adults. Ryder, Charlie to the pooches’ Angels, is a 10-year-old vigilante, and in the new film has become a magnate at the head of a lucrative empire. The animals themselves, the movie reminds us, are conspicuously not dogs but puppies – never ageing, like Bart Simpson or Just William. This is important, because it aligns with a sensibility in which youth, unclouded by ambition or other adult considerations, is able to save the day over and over. Perhaps this is pleasing or recognisable to children brought up by late millennials having to become adults in a world where traditional markers of ageing (such as house ownership) are shifting. Also, children raised post-Philippa Perry are probably used to being considered on a more equal footing to grownups than previous generations.

PAW Patrol: The Movie works quite hard to repair some of the most obvious damage of the series, in which only one of the super-pups is presented as female. (Skye is depicted as so girly that not only is her uniform hot pink, but, freakishly, her eyes are too – the properties of biology clearly coming second to gender essentialism in the movie’s universe.) The film introduces a new female character, Liberty (finely voiced by Marsai Martin – the film’s best asset). It remains to be seen if Liberty will become canon: another female puppy, Everest, appears a number of times in the show but is kept to the sidelines. Liberty is a decent enough character, although why this streetwise ragamuffin would yearn to join the ranks of these narcs is unclear. In the end, she is fitted with an apricot-pink outfit of her own.

‘The film draws amusing parallels between the pups’ antagonist, Mayor Humdinger, and another blond North American megalomaniac’ … PAW Patrol: The Movie. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy

The film’s dismaying gender politics are in tune with the franchise’s gross rightwingery, which sees these privatised dog-Avenger types endlessly called upon to undo the failings of various functionaries. A sort of Ayn Randian objectivism prevails in the film, visible most queasily when Chase (the most cop-like of the lot, in his blue uniform and police car) is told that he was “born to be a hero”. The film draws amusing parallels between the pups’ antagonist, Mayor Humdinger, and another blond North American megalomaniac, right down to the grotesque tower that Trump – I mean, Humdinger – erects in his own honour. But the film’s own sensibility is not vastly different to Trumpian individualism, disdain for the state, and capitalist materialism – indeed, in the film the dogs have a new tower of their own, subsidised by selling merch, and come with gleaming luxury gadgets that make Liberty, the poorer dog, swoon with envy.

How PAW Patrol will come to be viewed in years to come is an interesting question: it seems likely that a generation of children coming-of-age in a time of far greater gender fluidity than ever, will have little time for the show’s patriarchal gender performance. In other words, abandoning their children to this ceaselessly cheery neoliberal nightmare for 90 minutes shouldn’t worry parents too much.

PAW Patrol: The Movie is released on 13 August in cinemas.

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The Propaganda War Intensifies in Afghanistan as the Taliban Gain Ground

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KABUL, Afghanistan — First, a remote provincial capital in Afghanistan’s southwest fell. The next day, it was a city in Afghanistan’s north. By Sunday, Taliban fighters had taken three more cities, including their biggest prize yet, the major provincial capital of Kunduz.

All the while, the Afghan central government has acknowledged very little of it.

In three days, at least five provincial capitals have been seized by the Taliban, in a ruthless land offensive that has led many local officials to abandon their posts and flee the cities they run.

But the nation’s government, still trying to promote the impression that it has the upper hand against the Taliban, has been relatively silent on the enormous losses suffered across the country. Rather than admitting that the cities have fallen, the government has simply said that Afghanistan’s brave security forces were fighting in several capitals around the country, and that airstrikes have resulted in scores of dead Taliban fighters.

“The country’s security and defense forces are always ready to defend this land,” the Afghan Ministry of Defense tweeted Sunday as Kunduz was under siege. “The support and love of the people for these forces increases their motivation and efforts.”

With cities falling and the American military campaign mostly finished, the propaganda war in Afghanistan has taken on outsize importance. For the Taliban, it is an effort to communicate a drumbeat of victories, large or small, and to create an air of inevitability about their return to power. For the government, it is an all-out effort to stave off panic, boost morale and minimize losses.

In recent days, the Taliban have shared videos of cheering crowds welcoming them into provinces (though some say Afghans are doing this only to avoid being harmed by the Taliban later). On social media, Taliban spokesmen have been blaming civilian casualties and infrastructure damage on the Afghan government, rather than on the group’s aggressive takeover of vast segments of the country.

Their posts call on Afghan security forces to surrender, with promises that they will be treated humanely, accompanied by photos of seized weapons and security forces who have given up. Notably missing from any Taliban messaging is any mention of reconciliation with the government.

The government’s information strategy has sought to create the opposite impression, with often exaggerated and sometimes false claims about military victories, retaken districts and assertions of Taliban casualties.

This approach emerged this summer as a stand-in for something much more concrete: a publicly enunciated plan to defeat an enemy that seems on the verge of crushing Afghanistan’s fragile government institutions. Instead, Afghan leaders offer assurances, meeting regularly for an elegant group photograph at the presidential palace, conveying an image of stability and calm in the face of the violence.

But the news outside of Kabul, the capital, has created a disconnect, particularly as alarming reports filter in from provincial officials of Afghan security forces — exhausted, hungry and under-resourced — being overtaken by insurgents, or surrendering altogether.

In the north, the key city of Mazar-i-Sharif is now largely surrounded, as the capitals of three neighboring provinces fell to the Taliban Sunday. In the south, the economic hub of Kandahar has been under siege for a month, despite an escalation in U.S. airstrikes to slow the insurgents’ advance.

By Sunday, senior government leaders still had not publicly acknowledged the seizure of any provincial capital; instead, tweets from the Afghan Ministry of Defense touted the deaths of hundreds of Taliban fighters, but the government has inflated these casualties in the past.

A fledgling plan to slow down the Taliban’s string of victories does now exist, U.S. and U.N. diplomats and officials say, and it hews closely to longstanding U.S. recommendations that the Afghans consolidate their remaining forces around crucial roads and cities, as well as key border crossings, effectively abandoning most of the dozens of districts already seized by the Taliban.

Mr. Ghani alluded to this plan in a speech to Parliament on Aug. 2: “The Afghan Army is going to focus on strategic objectives,” he said. “Afghan police officers must provide cities and strategic districts with security.”

But the Ministry of Defense continues to insist that the government intends to retake all of the hundreds of Taliban-captured districts within six months.

“Our strategy is to increase the number of airstrikes on the Taliban,” said Fawad Aman, the Ministry of Defense spokesman — though in recent weeks it has been U.S. airstrikes that have been playing a major role in slowing down the Taliban. “First, we will recapture the districts that are very important. Then we will try to recapture all the districts in the control of the Taliban.”

That would run directly counter to what Americans have advised for months: not to defend the rural districts. This is in effect what has been happening anyway, as Afghan forces, in district after district, have surrendered or fled, at times without a fight.

And despite counter messaging from the government that it’s killing Taliban fighters at astonishing numbers, any casualties they have incurred appear to have had a limited effect on the group’s military campaign. Since the beginning of May, the Taliban have captured about 200 districts, putting them in control of more than half of the 400-plus districts in Afghanistan.

At times, the government has claimed to have recaptured districts that never actually fell to the Taliban — like Pashtun Kot in Faryab Province and Ahmadabad in Paktia Province. At other times, the government’s contentions appear clearly wrong to the people in the supposedly reclaimed districts.

“There was no operation,” said Lutfullah Mashal, a delivery truck driver in Balkh district in the north, which the government falsely claimed to have recaptured after it was overtaken by the Taliban in June. “The Taliban are moving freely around the district. They tax people and they have implemented all their old rules.”

The driver’s observation was confirmed by an official at the provincial police headquarters who was not authorized to speak to the media.

Where the government fails to hold a district it has recaptured, if only briefly, the consequences can be severe for the residents.

On July 18, members of a pro-government militia recaptured Malistan district in the province of Ghazni, populated by Hazaras, a largely Shiite ethnic group persecuted by the Sunni Taliban. The next day, the Taliban pushed the militia members out. Some 20 of the district’s Hazara civilians were killed by the Taliban; dozens more fled to Kabul. The government never publicly acknowledged the renewed loss of Malistan district.

The government’s fitful narrative appears to have convinced few. “The government does have the capability to recapture districts,” said Mirza Mohammad Yarmand, a former deputy interior minister. “But the main point is, what are they going to do after recapturing them?”

“The districts will soon collapse again,” he added.

A senior officer in the country’s military, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation, noted that many Taliban conquests are carried out by a small force of 10 or so fighters from whom it should be easy to take back districts. Yet even if they were to do so, he said, Afghan security forces would be unlikely to hold them because of weak defenses, weak local leaders and a lack of central government support.

Bashir Ahmad Nemani, a local police commander in the northern province of Badakhshan, saw those weaknesses firsthand. The province, including his district of Khwahan, is now almost entirely in the hands of the Taliban — a bitter pill for the government as it was the one area in Afghanistan that resisted the insurgents throughout their reign in the late 1990s.

This time, faced with a Taliban onslaught, Badakhshan’s provincial police chief “promised reinforcements,” said Mr. Nemani. “They never came.” The local militia working with the government quickly collapsed.

“There was no option,” he said. “Everything was destroyed. The police collapsed.” Mr. Nemani fled across the border to Tajikistan with six of his men.

Flown to Kabul by the Tajiks, he said he wants to continue to fight and is only awaiting word from the government to return and take up arms again.

“There is a lot of pain in my heart,” Mr. Nemani said. “Who could be happy with this brutal situation?”

Najim Rahim contributed reporting.



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US

Jihadists flood pro-Trump social network with propaganda

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It underscores the challenges facing Trump and his followers in the wake of his ban from the mainstream social media platforms following the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots.

Islamic State “has been very quick to exploit GETTR,” said Moustafa Ayad, executive director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism, who first discovered the jihadi accounts and shared his findings with POLITICO.

“On Facebook, there was on one of these accounts that I follow that is known to be Islamic State, which said ‘Oh, Trump announced his new platform. Inshallah, all the mujahideen will exploit that platform,’” he added. “The next day, there were at least 15 accounts on GETTR that were Islamic State.”

While GETTR does not provide access to its data to track the spread, or virality, of such extremist material on its platform, POLITICO found at least 250 accounts that had posted regularly on the platform since early July. Many followed each other, and used hashtags to promote the jihadi material to this burgeoning online community.

In the months since he was kicked off Twitter and suspended from Facebook, Trump has sought alternative ways to engage with his base online. While his supporters decamped to other online venues — including the social network Parler, where they could express themselves without facing increased scrutiny — Trump’s own effort to create an internet bullhorn has stalled.

In May, he launched a blog — titled “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” — but it was taken down just weeks later amid widespread ridicule and poor readership.

So far, GETTR has been the highest-profile pro-Trump platform launch, given the names behind it: Jason Miller, former Trump spokesperson, is its chief executive, and the site is partially funded by Miles Guo, the business partner of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Trump, himself, is not directly involved in the operation, nor has he officially signed up to the platform. The social network has touted a “free speech” policy that, purportedly, would allow users to fully express themselves without the censorship of tech giants.

Yet this MAGA exodus to fringe social networks that champion unfettered speech has also caught the attention of supporters of Islamic State and other jihadist groups, according to extremism experts.

In response to questions about jihadi material being shared on GETTR, Miller told POLITICO that ISIS was attacking Trump because the former president had destroyed the group militarily. “The only ISIS members still alive are keyboard warriors hiding in caves and eating dirt cookies,” he said in a text message.

These terrorist communities have similarly faced widespread removals from the largest social networks, which have often promoted their clampdown on Islamic extremists as an example of how the tech companies are policing their global platforms for harmful content.

In response, Islamic State supporters have quickly shifted gears, looking for new spaces online where they can spread their hateful material, as well as piggybacking on tactics and platforms first used in the United States.

“Is Daesh here?” asked an account whose profile photo was of the Islamic State flag account, using the Arabic acronym for jihadi movement. The replies were in the affirmative, with some praising the social network for its willingness to host such content.

Days after GETTR was launched on July 1, Islamic State supporters began urging their followers on other social networks to sign up to the pro-Trump network, in part to take the jihadi fight directly to MAGA nation.

“If this app reaches the expected success, which is mostly probable, it should be adopted by followers and occupied in order to regain the glory of Twitter, may God prevail,” one Islamic State account on Facebook wrote on July 6.

Some of the jihadi posts on GETTR from early July were eventually taken down, highlighting that the pro-Trump platform had taken at least some steps to remove the harmful material.

Larger platforms like Facebook and Twitter now work via the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, an industry-funded nonprofit which shares terrorist content between companies — via a database of extremist material accessible to its members — so that the material can be taken down as quickly as possible.

GETTR has yet to sign up.

In the platform’s terms of service, it outlines how offensive or illegal content, including that related to terrorism, may be removed from GETTR. “This may include content identified as personal bullying, sexual abuse of a child, attacking any religion or race, or content containing video or depictions of beheading,” a clause reads.

Though the site has had notoriously spotty luck in moderating users on the platform — in its early days, it was flooded with a wide spectrum of pornography — Miller has drawn the line at doxxing, or sharing other people’s addresses, or advocating physical harm.

In interviews, GETTR’s chief executive has touted the site’s content moderation policy, primarily based on a combination of human monitoring and algorithms.

Four days after POLITICO submitted several requests for comment to GETTR, many of these accounts and videos are still up.

The overall amount of terrorist propaganda that POLITICO found on GETTR represented a mere fraction of the mostly right-wing content — which also includes the promotion of the Proud Boys white supremacist movement. More mainstream conservative influencers and policymakers like Sean Hannity and Mike Pompeo also regularly post on the platform.

Still, the fact that such jihadi material was readily available on the social network, and GETTR’s failure to clamp down on such extremism, underlined the difficulties that the company faces in balancing its free speech ethos with growing demands to stop terrorist-related material from finding an audience online.

“The content we’re coming across on small platforms is basically similar to the content that is being automatically removed from Facebook and Twitter,” said Adam Hadley, director of Tech Against Terrorism, a nonprofit organization that works with smaller social networks, but not GETTR, in combating the rise of extremist content online.

“Many of the smaller platforms do not have the resources to automatically remove this type of content,” he added. His organization’s membership includes Tumblr and WordPress, the blogging platform.

Extremism analysts who reviewed POLITICO’s findings said that Islamic State supporters’ use of GETTR appeared to be an initial test to see if their content would escape detection or be subject to content moderation.

In their ongoing cat-and-mouse fight with Western national security agencies and Silicon Valley platforms, jihadi groups are quickly evolving their tactics to stay one step ahead of online removals.

“The terrorist organizations are always experimenting, because they’re fighting a real battle to continue to have access to public spaces to spread their propaganda,” said Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab and the author of “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.”

So far, Islamic State supporters are enjoying their incursion into GETTR and the possible new audience they could reach. “We will come at you with slaying and explosions you worshippers of the cross,” wrote an account whose name referenced the extremist group, adding: “How great is freedom of expression.”

“ISIS is trying to attack the MAGA movement because President Trump wiped them off the face of the earth, destroying the Caliphate in less than 18 months, and the only ISIS members still alive are keyboard warriors hiding in caves and eating dirt cookies,” Jason Miller, CEO of GETTR, said in a statement. “GETTR has a robust and proactive moderation system that removes prohibited content, maximizing both cutting-edge A.I. technology and human moderation.”

Rym Momtaz contributed to this report from Paris.

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World

Star Trek Icon William Shatner Spars With Journalists About His New Show on Kremlin TV

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Star Trek star William Shatner has taken to Twitter to trade blows with journalists who called him out for hosting a new show on the Kremlin’s notorious state-funded network, RT.

Earlier this week, the 90-year-old Canadian actor—known for taking on the legendary role Captain James Kirk in the Star Trek saga—announced he would be hosting a new general talk show on the American branch of RT called “I Don’t Understand,” where he’ll be posing questions to guests on a variety topics. The show is set to debut later this month.

Alexey Kovalev, an investigative editor for Meduza—one of the most popular independent Russian-language news outlets—had some choice words for Shatner on his work with the network.

“Quick reminder about [RT’s] views and editorial policies @WilliamShatner is now endorsing (whether he wants to or not),” he tweeted on Thursday, linking to a thread that ends with “Don’t go on RT, unless you are okay with sharing a mic with some of the most vile racist degenerates out there. It’s not a legitimate media platform. It has no redeeming qualities. And if no other platform will have you, then you really shouldn’t have *any* platform.”

Those comments seem to have hit a nerve with Shatner, who wrote back, “Perhaps instead of rebuking me with facts that have zero influence on my show, a better use of your time would be to move? It seems that you being in Moscow means you are directly supporting the very regime you are berating me about. #hypocrite.”

In response to another tweet backing up the Russian journalist, the actor suggested Meduza should “find better editors who can spend time on real issues & not berate an actor in a distribution deal, right? All he’s doing is showing how petty his professionalism is. He should watch the first episode & then tell me his thoughts if he thinks it’s propaganda.”

RT has long been dubbed a Kremlin “propaganda machine” by journalists and experts across the world. The various news shows featured on the network are largely packed with Putin loyalists dedicating significant amounts of airtime denigrating the U.S—and any Putin rivals, for that matter.

The head of RT, Margaret Simonyan, has warned of an “inevitable war” with the U.S., is a staunch supporter of a “sovereign” state-controlled Russian internet, and once tweeted that she was “jealous” of Belarus over their abhorrent nabbing of a dissident journalist mid-flight.

Responding to yet another jibe over his RT deal on Thursday, Shatner tweeted: “If you are berating me that the RT network picked up distribution rights to my show as a horrible thing while you are sitting in Russia, contributing to the economy & paying taxes to them: it is hypocritical.”

That tweet even caught the attention of exiled oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was once the wealthiest man in Russia. “No regrets I’ve never watched #StarTrek,” he wrote.

And of course, there were those who had an altogether different reaction to the news of the American actor joining team RT—namely, the network’s editor-in-chief, Simonyan.

On Thursday, the infamous propagandist tweeted: “Captain Kirk went over to the good side.”



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Entertainment

Comedian Jamie Kennedy on How He Ended Up in the Anti-Abortion Propaganda Film ‘Roe v. Wade’

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There are a number of names you might expect in Roe v. Wade, a new anti-abortion film that walks the line between melodrama and propaganda. Jon Voight, Stacey Dash, Roger Stone, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Tomi Lahren all make appearances. MyPillow conspiracist Mike Lindell pops up in a bizarre cameo. It is co-directed by and stars Nick Loeb, best known for waging legal war against ex-fiancée Sofia Vergara in order to gain control over their embryos. And then there is Jamie Kennedy, the stand-up comic and star of films like Scream and Malibu’s Most Wanted.

Kennedy plays Larry Lader, an abortion-rights champion who founded NARAL. In the film, which is packed with conspiracy theories and lies (though claims to be “based on a true story”), Lader is depicted as part of a behind-the-scenes cabal of rapacious activists pushing abortion to make money (there is no evidence that Lader conducted himself in this way). And Kennedy, a 50-year-old “centrist” who supports a woman’s right to choose, seems both intrigued by the controversy that the film has stoked and worried about the ramifications it may have for his career. After all, as I reported during filming, a number of crew members—including the director, first assistant director, costume designer, and location manager—all quit during the production after learning of the film’s extreme anti-abortion bent.

“People would walk mid fuckin’ stream and say, ‘I didn’t know it was going to be this,’ and that’s not good,” recalls Kennedy. “And maybe you’re saying, ‘Hey Jamie, why didn’t you follow suit?’ and I guess because I just rode it out and wanted to see what the final product was.”

He adds, “I’m not some crazy right-winger, but I’m also not some crazy left-winger. I’m a guy who needs to be educated some more about politics. I’m not some guy in Hollywood who acts like they’re an expert about politics, and you can print that. I’m sick of that.”

In a wide-ranging conversation with The Daily Beast, Kennedy discusses how he wound up in one of the most appalling movies of the year.

OK, so with Roe v. Wade, I’m curious what attracted you to the film.

Well, you know, here’s what it is: In Hollywood, a lot of people were talking about this movie, and first and foremost, I’m an actor. I act. I’ve worked with Jon Voight twice before, and he’s one of the greatest actors ever. I thought it was an important story, and to be honest, I got offered the role. It was a more dramatic part and a real offer, and so I did some research. I knew there was a lot of stuff we were walking into but in other parts in Hollywood, I have to read, read, read, and this was a nice offer.

This is obviously a controversial subject, so what about the story itself attracted you to it?

It’s such a controversial subject. It’s so hard to comment on it as a man, you know, because we don’t conceive the baby. We help. Look, Cathy [Allyn] and Nick [Loeb], the directors, producers, and writers, they were like, “This is a movie, it’s gonna be about Roe v. Wade.” They showed me all of these books. I was reading the script and like, “Did this happen?” and they were like, “Here’s the quote.” They introduced me to a lot of the history of Margaret Sanger, Larry Lader, and Planned Parenthood. I knew it was going to be a hot-button issue going in, but I saw what they were quoting from, and I was like, “That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.” They said everything in this movie was taken from books. Whether they took some liberties, I don’t know. I didn’t fact-check everything.

There were a lot of liberties taken. I did try to fact-check the film before speaking with you about it. Your character Larry Lader, for instance, is depicted as a shady figure pulling strings from behind the scenes who treats abortions as a money-making operation.

Um… OK… So, you’ll have to educate me. So… what I was told is that Larry was a student of Margaret Sanger. I don’t know enough about Margaret Sanger, but one thing I know is that she was a women’s activist, right? And they say that she also may have done some stuff with eugenics. In the movie, Larry hooks up with Betty Friedan, who’s obviously a huge feminist icon, and it looks like he’s saying that with Planned Parenthood, there’s some money to be made there. For sure, the character says that. It looks like he’s in there for some profit, for sure. But is that true? Is there money being made? That is the question.

Let’s unpack that. At the film’s end, it presents a “fact” that “Planned Parenthood made $1.6 billion last year.” So, I pulled their most recent annual report, as they’re a non-profit with 501(c)(3) status, which reveals that while Planned Parenthood pulled in $1.64 billion in revenue, they had $1.57 billion in operating and other expenses, and only have $22 million in total assets. So, they’re not making a ton of money. That is a blatant misrepresentation at the end of the film. Also, the idea that they’re making all this money off of abortions is strange as well. Abortion is only 3 percent of what Planned Parenthood does. Fifty-two percent of it is STI treatment and testing, 25 percent is contraception, and 6 percent is cancer screenings. The idea that Planned Parenthood is raking in money due to abortions is a lie.

Yeah, I’ll have to look at the facts again. Like I said, I’m just an actor. You do hear one thing in the media, and then you hear another thing when we’re on set. A woman and a man made this movie together—they’re co-directors—and whatever people write about Nick, he’s done nothing but treat me with the utmost respect. And Cathy is a level-headed, intelligent person.

Were you wearing prosthetics in this?

[Laughs] Yo, that’s fucked up! My hair, we thinned it out a little bit and combed it over, and I put a little weight on. I wanted to look different. For me, it’s cool to get a cool role. It’s controversial, but that’s what good TV and movies should do. They should make you talk.

As a comic, I imagine you’re anti-censorship, and one thing that struck me as odd is that this film is co-produced by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which is a pro-censorship organization that attacks any media that pokes fun at the Catholic Church. This group has come after Dogma, Kathy Griffin, and a number of other films and comedians just for lightly mocking the Catholic Church.

I didn’t even know that, and to be real with you, there’s a lot of people that produced this, and… I didn’t even know that. I didn’t know the Catholic League did that. I believe in free speech, too. I just thought it was a very cool role. Did I know how controversial it was going to be? No. Did I know Nick’s background enough? No. Was it directed by a woman? Yes. But she left, and another woman came in. I’m in the middle as a human being. I’m a centrist.

“That is true. A ton of people left, from high up, like camera crew and editors, to PAs who were like, “Fuck this, I’m out!” mid-shot. I had never seen anything like that. People did leave.”

You mentioned that the director left and was replaced by Cathy. But there were many crew members that left during production, right?

Tons! That is true. A ton of people left, from high up, like camera crew and editors, to PAs who were like, “Fuck this, I’m out!” mid-shot. I had never seen anything like that. People did leave.

Why did they leave? From my reporting, it seems like some members of the crew were misled as far as what the film would be about.

I mean, that’s a slippery slope if you say that, but I see what you’re saying. When I signed on to the movie, I knew I was walking into a potential ticking time bomb. But there was a lot of stuff in the thing that people just weren’t vibing with. There’s a part where a song happens and I remember that day a couple of people just said, “This is it,” and they left during that song.

The scene where characters sing, “There’s a fortune in abortion.”

Yes. And [Nick] said, “It’s in the book.” It’s taken from, I believe, Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s book, where they apparently sang this.

This is a good example of how the film distorts things. In Nathanson’s book, he claims that as an intern some people sang this song. So, it was never sung by Larry Lader or any other activists, and again, he claims it was widely sung among medical interns at the time yet Bernard Nathanson—in his book, after he became a die-hard anti-abortion activist—is the only person to ever mention its existence.

Yes. So, therein lies the rub.

Well, it’s taking a single dubious source’s claim as fact. And again, Nathanson claimed it was sung when he was an intern, so having Larry Lader and members of NARAL sing it in the film is at best a wild distortion. The film has this song being sung by leading pro-choice activists of the time, which never happened.

You know, I don’t know how to answer that.

Nick Loeb’s character says in the film, “We can’t turn a woman’s body into a business negotiation.” That struck me as pretty ironic, given that it’s pretty much what he did in real life with Sofia Vergara?

Now, I don’t know enough about that. So, you’ll have to educate me. I know he’s in some battle over her embryos.

A curious thing about this film is that it was filmed in Louisiana, the same place where he had initiated legal proceedings against Sofia Vergara to try to claim full ownership over their embryos. So, he was essentially shooting an anti-abortion propaganda film in the very state that he had pursued this case, and at the same time. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. But they broke up, they had frozen embryos, and he wanted to unilaterally, without her consent, assume control over the embryos.

I don’t know enough about that case, but I’ve been hearing and reading some stuff about it. I guess… I don’t know enough about it, but there’s definitely something going on there, and people can assume what they assume.

The film features Milo Yiannopoulos as an abortionist. Were you aware that that was going to be happening?

Certain people came on the movie that I didn’t know, really. All these other players came in the day before [shooting] and stuff. I don’t know about Milo yet, but I know he’s a highly controversial figure. I think he’s called a right-wing person, but I see him on a lot of left-wing stuff.

Well, he’s defended hebephilia and he launched a racist campaign against Leslie Jones over the Ghostbusters movie. He once penned an article with the headline, “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy,” so it’s frankly ironic that he’s in this movie.

I don’t know enough about him.

Is it unfair to you and the cast for the filmmakers to insert incendiary far-right figures into the film after the fact? Because now you’re going to be associated with these characters.

I mean… yeah. That’s not fair to me, but it’s also not fair for people to think that because I’m in a project with them that I’m like that, or that I believe in this stuff. That’s not fair.

If someone popped up in Triumph of the Will, I would probably assume that they don’t like Jews very much.

Yeah, that’s a good point. I didn’t know all these people, and I didn’t know their histories. I didn’t do enough research on every single person in the movie.

Are you worried that you got roped into a right-wing anti-abortion film? Essentially a propaganda film?

I mean, yes and no. Films should make us think. This is making a loud noise about a subject that’s very polarizing, and this subject needs to always be at the forefront, because it’s a very important subject. Did I know it was going to be this controversial? Probably not. It’s going to be looked upon as a certain way, but I’m not that way.

“Did I know it was going to be this controversial? Probably not. It’s going to be looked upon as a certain way, but I’m not that way.”

You’re not anti-abortion?

I’m going to be as open as I can with you: My personal beliefs shouldn’t matter because I just did this as a role, but I’m not anti-abortion. When I started this movie, I was pro-choice. As I did this movie, I am still pro-choice, but I got educated on certain things that I have questions about, and I believe that, ultimately, it’s a woman’s right to choose. But I do have questions.

What are those questions?

How can I say this, dude? It’s all gonna blow up in my face, but I’ll just go for it. Let’s try to have responsible sex. The guy should come with a condom. If he doesn’t have a condom, men have to work on that. So, that’s number one. There are lots of ways to prevent pregnancy in a normal situation.

Condoms break.

It’s not that hard. When you’re about to climax, keep your condom on. Boom. And if something happens, there’s something called the morning-after pill. But late-term abortion? Come on, man. I don’t know anybody who really understands late-term abortion that can talk about that easily.

Late-term abortions are rarely practiced, and really only usually done if the health of the mother or fetus are at risk.

The people on this film will tell you different.

I’m going to be transparent with you and say that I believe in a woman’s right to choose. And the issue I have with some conservatives—and a lot of the people who are going to watch this film—is that you can’t crack down on contraception and also be anti-abortion. What is the solution then? If you do both those things, you really just want women to have the baby and be tethered to the guy.

I one thousand percent agree with you. That’s a conflicting message. I believe it’s a woman’s right to choose, and it’s a woman and a man’s right to be responsible. But yes, everybody has a right to have contraception.

One scene that I really took issue with in the film involves a secret abortion that’s taking place at a five-star hotel in Chicago, with mafioso-type gangsters overseeing it, and police conduct a sting operation and find buckets of baby parts in the room. I’ve done a lot of research and can’t find any evidence of an incident that comes close to this one. And the scene implies that the rich were getting abortions from doctors at five-star hotels and Chicago gangland-types were in on it in some sort of criminal conspiracy.

I’ve only seen the movie once. I do remember this scene. It was a very disturbing scene, dude, and when I saw it, I was sick to my stomach. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I guess they’re alluding to how people were getting abortions any way they could. Probably, if you talked to people back then, there were some horrific abortions. I don’t know how the mob were connected to doctors. I don’t know. I’m an actor in it, and I don’t know what liberties were taken there.

Abortion is a very emotional and difficult thing for women to deal with, and in this film, all of the women having abortion procedures performed on them, we often don’t even see their faces. Not only are they given nothing to say, but they’re treated as disposable and interchangeable. In every scene in the film where the woman is getting this procedure done, she’s not a character. What does that say?

I agree with you, and maybe that wasn’t a part of this movie—and it should be—and obviously, it’s a very, very difficult choice. But, you know, you’ve definitely talked with women and they’re like, “Yeah, I got an abortion.” There are some women that are like, “Eh, I did it very quickly.”

Every woman I’ve talked to who has gotten an abortion has been pretty affected by it. I don’t think there’s a single woman who isn’t affected by it.

I agree with you, but I think there are some. I agree that it is the most important decision that a woman can make in her life. You know, people are saying this movie is “Jamie and a slew of right-wingers.” You can look this up: I only voted once in my life, and it was for Obama in 2008. I haven’t voted before, and I haven’t voted since, and you can judge me, and that’s a whole other article. To say it’s a slew of right-wingers is not true. There are people who are super right-wingers and people on the left. Jon Voight is a beautiful guy, and one of the most talented actors. When you go out with him, he’s the most courteous guy. He’s the first on set, he’s the last to leave. To think that Jon is a wild right-winger… I don’t know all of his beliefs.

“You can look this up: I only voted once in my life, and it was for Obama in 2008. I haven’t voted before, and I haven’t voted since, and you can judge me, and that’s a whole other article.”

I mean, he called Joe Biden Satan.

[Laughs] What can I say? Touché? I don’t know everything that he’s said.

I was frankly surprised to see you in this. A lot of the other names didn’t surprise me, but yours did, so I wanted to talk with you about it.

Like I said, I didn’t know what type of movie it was totally going to be. It was a great role, it was a respectful offer, and it was a great group of people. They took care of me as good—if not better—than any movie set I’ve ever been on. Some of the messaging in the movie is going to ruin people’s opinion of me, and I apologize for that. I’m an actor. Certain parts in Hollywood make me read nineteen times for the tenth season of a TNT show, and here comes along this detailed character. I’m an actor. I apologize if I’ve pissed people off. I’m willing to talk. You can look at the history of my career, and I’ve done a lot of stuff—some good, some bad—but the other stuff hasn’t been pro-right. Maybe the next thing I can do will be pro-left to even it out. But I’m going to get judged to the high heavens, and I have to deal with it.

I think you have been sold a false bill of goods here.

[Laughs] Probably!

This seems to be a pretty insidious right-wing propaganda film that you’ve found yourself in.

And I didn’t realize that. And now I gotta deal with it. My agent was like, “Oh, you’ve gotta do this,” and I kind of got put in it. I don’t know… I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Do you stand by the final product?

I have to watch it again. I haven’t seen it in a long time. I like my performance in it. I have to see if there are real facts in it.

There’s an end-credit sequence in the film that features Norma McCorvey, or Jane Roe. The voiceover says that she became pro-life, and it features her giving an anti-abortion spiel. But the documentary AKA Jane Roe came out last year featuring McCorvey where she gave a confessional interview saying that her anti-abortion shtick was all a lie—that she was always pro-choice, that she was a lesbian, and that she’d received bribes from anti-abortion Catholic organizations. McCorvey and the documentary even provide documentation of the “benevolent gifts” she received from these organizations to the tune of $456,911. She says in the film, “I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money, and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say.” So, presenting McCorvey as an anti-abortion crusader at the end of the film when we know what we know now…

…That’s misleading. I agree, that’s misleading. I never knew any of that. I just was told that she was Jane Roe, and this and that, and I saw a bit of the Nightline stuff. Now, if what you’re saying is a hundred percent true, then there’s some duplicity going on.

You should watch AKA Jane Roe. It’s her deathbed confession.

I didn’t know that, and that’s crazy if that’s true. Here’s my thing: people are gonna say what they’re gonna say. I went into the movie as an actor with a very cool part that Hollywood doesn’t normally offer me. Do I have to be aware of what I’m getting into? Of course. Do these things change and turn as they go? Yes. Did this movie change like no other movie I’ve done? A hundred percent. But I knew what I was getting involved in, so I’m not totally innocent, but there were some things that were beyond my control. Do I have to be aware of the things I’m involved in? A hundred percent, and I have to be aware of the messages they put out. So, at the end of the day, I gotta see what the message is, because I hear one thing from those people, and I hear one thing from The Daily Beast side, and I gotta make my own assessments.

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US

Trump’s post-presidency: On the attack with the help of a cable propaganda machine

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Former President Donald Trump was audible, if not visible, all day long on Monday — and the effect is to keep him front and center in the Republican Party conversation.

His unwillingness, or inability, to lay low is exactly what many Trump observers expected, but a stark departure from the behavior of other ex-presidents.

“The code of the presidents club is to get out of the way and let the new commander in chief have a year or two,” CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said.

But Trump is so narcissistic that “he cannot accept to be out of the spotlight for a day,” Brinkley concluded.

Lately Trump has been doing what comes naturally to him — dictating tweet-like statements, calling into conservative talk shows, and generally stirring up trouble. “I like this better than Twitter,” he claimed on Newsmax. “Actually they did us a favor. This is better.”

Trump has shown no courtesy to President Joe Biden since leaving the White House. To the contrary, he has repeatedly jabbed the Biden administration in the eye.

On the phone with one of his biggest sycophants, Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, on Monday evening, Kelly speculated about Biden’s mental faculties, prompting Trump to say “there’s something” going on with Biden. Trump then questioned “whether or not he understands what he’s signing” when bills cross his desk.

Trump is the first US president to lose re-election in nearly thirty years. The last president who failed to win a second term, George H.W. Bush, “made clear that he expected to retire from public life,” according to historian Tim Naftali’s biography of Bush.

Naftali said Bush told his successor, Bill Clinton, in November 1992 that “when I leave here, you’re going to have no trouble from me.”

The outgoing president added, “I will do nothing to complicate your work and I just want you to know that.”

Trump, of course, proudly stands as the GOP antithesis of Bush 41. President 45, as some of his allies now call him, lest they identify him as “former,” was uncharacteristically quiet upon leaving the White House. But he set up an office in Florida within days and began issuing statements that were widely picked up by the media — a cheap replacement for his account on Twitter, which banned him in the wake of the Capitol riot.
On the mid-February day when broadcaster Rush Limbaugh died, Trump resumed his old habit of calling into TV networks, with two calls to Fox and one call each to Newsmax and One America News.
At the end of February, he delivered a huge ratings boost to both Fox and Newsmax when he delivered the keynote speech at CPAC.

Since then, he has gradually increased his visibility, with emails to members of the media from “45 Office” so far in March, twice as many as in February. His “Save America PAC” has also become quite active in recent weeks, with numerous endorsements, critiques of “RINOs,” and media bashing statements.

Trump seemed self-aware about his media approach during a podcast taping with Lisa Boothe, which was released on Monday morning. Trump was Boothe’s inaugural guest — which means the podcast does not yet have a high profile or a massive following. Trump said in a statement that she has been doing “an outstanding job” on Fox, so perhaps he wanted to give her new podcast a boost.

In the conversation, Trump said “people have seen some silence” from him, “but actually, if you take a look at what’s happened over the last period of time, we’re sending out releases. They’re getting picked up much better than any tweet.”

Trump also teased plans for “our own platform,” something that senior adviser Jason Miller also promoted in an interview on Fox on Sunday. Neither man went into detail about the plans, and Trump has a long history of inflated promises and failed business startups.

Trump told Boothe that he now believes official statements to the public are “much more elegant than a tweet, and I think it gets picked up better. You’re seeing that.”

“Picked up” was the key phrase. The need for pickup — meaning attention from the American news media — is at the heart of Trump’s post-presidential actions.

Rather than flying to a vacation destination and drafting a memoir, he is trying to remain relevant and on the media radar. And he is continuing to push the incendiary claims that led up to the January 6 riot, about winning the 2020 election and Biden stealing it from him, despite pleas even from within his own party to stop lying.

“Trump’s unique in that he wants to make a lot of racket and garner attention after leaving the White House,” Brinkley said. “And it comes from his psychological belief that he remains the real president.”

On the podcast with Boothe, Trump falsely said that “we won, and they took it away.”

“He’s desperate,” Brinkley said, “to let people know ‘I haven’t thrown in the towel, I haven’t gone anywhere, keep covering me.'”

Brinkley likened Trump to “an active political hand grenade, ready to blow up the US political system any way he can. And he’s starting by threatening Republicans who have crossed him. He’s determined to ensure that it remains the party of Trump.”

He has multiple TV networks at his disposal that appear willing to help.

Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch said earlier this month that Fox’s job with the Biden administration is to be “the loyal opposition” — and predicted ratings would rise as a result.

Last week Trump called into Fox for a live interview with Maria Bartiromo. The next day his comments to Bartiromo were in heavy rotation on other right-wing networks and outlets.

In some cases, the networks are clearly seeking him out. On Monday, when he called into Harris Faulkner’s late morning program on Fox, Faulkner asked why he felt the need to issue a statement attacking Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: “Why did you feel you needed to on this issue?”

“Well,” Trump said, “you called me, I didn’t call you, in all fairness.”

To Kelly, he hedged about the possibility of a new social platform, saying that “something will happen with social media if I want it to happen.”

At the end of the interview, Kelly looked starstruck. “Very cool,” he said, “the president of the United States,” forgetting to call Trump the “former” president.

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World

Inside China’s propaganda efforts to pin COVID-19 on the US

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China has been waging a sprawling COVID-19 disinformation campaign through news and social media aimed at advancing a conspiracy theory that the US created and released the contagion as a bioweapon, according to a new investigation.

A nine-month probe published Monday by the Associated Press details how the communist government has spread the malicious lie like a virus in its own right.

On Jan. 26, 2020 — less than a week after the first case of the coronavirus was diagnosed on US soil — a man from China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region posted a video to the Chinese app Kuaishou claiming that the then-new virus was engineered by the US, according to the study.

The video was deleted, and its creator arrested, detained for 10 days and fined for circulating the false narrative.

But within a matter of weeks, that same theory was being advanced by Chinese diplomats around the globe, as well as the vast web of state-run media outlets at home.

The misdirection came as China was under intense scrutiny for its early handling of the coronavirus — which had escaped the country’s quarantine and gone international — and facing a similar theory that the outbreak originated in a Chinese lab, which has since been deemed “extremely unlikely” by international health experts.

On Feb. 22, the People’s Daily — an internationally-circulated newspaper serving as a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party — fired back, running a report based on speculation that the US military introduced the coronavirus to China, according to the AP report.

That report not only resonated at home, but also gained global traction, appearing in inserts in the New Zealand Herald and Finland’s Helsinki Times.

On March 9, an essay claiming that the US military created the virus in a lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland and released it at the Military World Games athletic competition — held in October 2019 in Wuhan, China, from which the virus sprang — circulated on WeChat, another Chinese social media platform.

The next day, an anonymous online petition was filed to the White House’s “We the People” site demanding that the US government respond to the Fort Detrick theory, according to the AP.

Though the petition garnered less than 2 percent of the 100,000 signatures needed to earn a response from the White House, the very fact that it was filed was extensively covered in Chinese media.

Biological science specialists in protective clothing at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland on March 9, 2020.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Days later, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, unleashed a wave of tweets amplifying the outlandish theory posited in the essay.

“When did patient zero begin in US?” Zhao wrote to his hundreds of thousands of followers. “How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe [sic] us an explanation!”

Twitter later slapped the post with a fact-check warning, according to the AP — but only in English, leaving the Mandarin version of the tweet untouched.

All told, the 11 tweets that Zhao fired off over March 12 and 13 were cited more than 99,000 times in at least 54 languages over the ensuing six weeks, according to the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which partnered with the AP for the investigation.

In turn, the accounts that referenced those tweets have nearly 275 million followers, according to the AP, which notes that that sum almost definitely includes some degree of overlap.

Ironically, tweets critical of Zhao’s conspiracy theory — such as broadsides from Donald Trump Jr. — spread the premise to the widest audience, the AP observed.

Dozens of accounts linked to Chinese diplomats, based in countries from France to Panama, also echoed the theory, exposing European and Latin American audiences to the conspiracy.

Accounts linked to Saudi Arabia’s royal family also gave the hoax weight, as did state-run media outlets in Russia and Iran, the investigation found.

The spread created a self-feeding cycle, where leaders in Russia and Iran weighing in on the China-created conspiracy made news back in China, further fueling speculation.

“Did the U.S. government intentionally conceal the reality of COVID-19 with the flu?” was the leading question asked in an op-ed published by China Radio International on March 22. “Why was the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick in Maryland, the largest biochemical testing base, shut down in July 2019?”

Within days, that piece was reprinted more than 350 times around the globe, primarily in Chinese, but also in English, Arabic, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, according to the AP.

Accounts promoting the op-ed across various social media platforms reached a cumulative 817 million followers, a total, again, almost certain to include some redundant accounts, an audit found.

The Fort Detrick conspiracy has never fully died since, being resurrected by Zhao in tweets over the summer, and last month by a spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pushing back against further suggestions from the then-outgoing Trump administration that the virus could have escaped from a Wuhan lab.

Hua Chunying, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman who has spread the Fort Detrick conspiracy theory.
REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

“I’d like to stress that if the United States truly respects facts, it should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its 200-plus overseas bio-labs, invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States,” said spokeswoman Hua Chunying in a Jan. 18 press conference, which went viral in China.

In a statement to the AP, the ministry insisted that China was within its rights to defend itself from conspiracy theories flung its way, and was dedicated to setting the record straight.

“All parties should firmly say ‘no’ to the dissemination of disinformation,” the ministry said. “In the face of trumped-up charges, it is justified and proper to bust lies and clarify rumors by setting out the facts.”

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