{"id":427,"date":"2014-12-20T23:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-20T23:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=427"},"modified":"2014-12-19T20:38:06","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T20:38:06","slug":"the-interview-is-a-terrorist-fantasy-might-as-well-be-about-chopping-obamas-head-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/12\/the-interview-is-a-terrorist-fantasy-might-as-well-be-about-chopping-obamas-head-off.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Interview” is a terrorist fantasy: might as well be about chopping Obama’s head off"},"content":{"rendered":"

La beaut\u00e9 sera CONVULSIVE ou ne sera pas.<\/em><\/p>\n

Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or not at all.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Breton<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Americans, the\u00a0folks\u00a0who scream and whine\u00a0more\u00a0about\u00a0“terror” threats to their nation more than any other people in the world,\u00a0are now slamming\u00a0North Korea after the state\u00a0took alleged cyber-protest actions to oppose\u00a0a Hollywood movie blatantly calling for the assassination of\u00a0the head of state of North Korea.<\/p>\n

For example, in an MTV article called “All The Moments From ‘The Interview’\u00a0That The Hackers Didn’t Want You To See”<\/a>, entertainment blogger\u00a0Shaunna Murphy ridicules North Korea’s prudish protectiveness of its leader’s image, attempting to shield him from the apparent humiliation (not to mention the movie’s slightly more troubling rabid\u00a0encouragement\u00a0for his assassination.)<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Picture That That Greedy\u00a0Corportion Didn’t Want Me To Use<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Obviously, I’m not impressed by Shaunna’s reasoning, or the reasoning of anyone else defending The Interview<\/em> as a legitimate\u00a0artistic work faced with extrajudicial\u00a0censorship. It strikes me as some\u00a0truly bizarre and hypocritical commentary\u00a0coming from the US, which is the most paranoid and heavily-policed regime in the world, which would detain\u00a0and torture anyone who threatened the life or well-being of its own head of state. Note that America itself\u00a0is quite harsh\u00a0against what it deems to be “terrorist” literature, and that includes works of art, so the US is in no position to accuse any other society\u00a0of being too protective of its leaders and national symbols. I think the\u00a0world’s “greatest” country just\u00a0needs to take a serious look in the mirror, before it begins\u00a0to criticize anyone.<\/p>\n

Sure, North Korea has reacted disproportionately\u00a0paranoid and touchy about what could have just been a harmless piece of Hollywood entertainment. But this is a pretty unprecedented movie. No Hollywood movie has ever focused so heavily on encouraging and justifying\u00a0the assassination of an incumbent head of state before (except maybe one or two featuring\u00a0Saddam Hussein, but I’m not sure his assassination\u00a0was actually depicted in or central to those movies.) But are\u00a0Americans any better than North Koreans in this regard? If Americans believe\u00a0the United States is\u00a0some kind of open, liberal society where everything is permitted – including films encouraging the assassination of US presidents and living public figures and iconoclasm against America’s bizarrely sanctified flags and national symbols –\u00a0they are living in a fantasy world.<\/p>\n

It kind of reminds me of the conservatives who burn the Qur’an, as if the violent backlash\u00a0somehow\u00a0proves how intolerant the Muslims are, but they themselves\u00a0incite violence\u00a0against Muslims\u00a0who set\u00a0the star-spangled banner on fire. Tell me, why\u00a0is your stripey, dirty little pajama trouser\u00a0of\u00a0a\u00a0flag\u00a0more precious than a holy book that has been praised and nurtured\u00a0by billions of people who believe its words to be divinely inspired?<\/p>\n

Realize that the\u00a0US is just as paranoid and heavily secured against this kind of literature promoting assassination and treason as North Korea. If you were a radical subversive who made a movie encouraging Obama to be publicly humiliated and killed\u00a0before the eyes of the American people as The Interview<\/em> does for Kim Jong-Un, you could\u00a0be tracked and\u00a0shot dead by Navy SEALs, or taken away to Guantanamo Bay and tortured. Is this the behavior of a regime that can call North Korea closed and paranoid, or are American\u00a0justifications for vigilance against “evil” more justified than North Korea’s justifications?<\/p>\n

Would Shaunna Murphy<\/a>, who wrote the MTV op-ed I linked here, be as enthusiastic in insisting that we all watch a terrorist\u00a0Gif\u00a0of Obama’s severed head rolling\u00a0on the broken\u00a0steps of the White House, or a movie celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, just to prove that we can beat state censorship? Of course she wouldn’t. Her fake, limited rejection of censorship\u00a0is so narrow that it is prudishly\u00a0restricted\u00a0to criticizing specific countries such as North Korea, and never her home country. If faced with vitriolic anti-American cinema on par with The Interview<\/em>, she’d\u00a0be quick to disavow any violent themes in it and reject such literature as not screen-worthy. In fact, if\u00a0the situation were thus reversed, she would probably be the one actively calling for state censorship and state paranoia to protect “society”, because she’d get all protective and patriotic for\u00a0her own country, just like a good North Korean.\u00a0In\u00a0the minds of these\u00a0patriots, the laws and sensibilities of other countries are always dismissed as irrational\u00a0and paranoid, but these people\u00a0still tell us that\u00a0a bunch of equally irrational US laws and sensibilities are sacred and have to be upheld to protect us. For instance, respect for the\u00a0person of the US President should be maintained\u00a0to a certain extent in media coverage\u00a0and he should not be subjected\u00a0to assassination calls and death\u00a0threats.<\/p>\n

This new low in hypocrisy is even more evident in some of the reactions that followed\u00a0alleged North Korean threats to America, in which the North Koreans are labelled “terrorists” in comment threads\u00a0for their threatening words about war and retaliation, but a\u00a0US movie encouraging the death of Kim Jong-Un is explained\u00a0as a legitimate\u00a0artistic venture. How so? Why should one side\u00a0be accused of terrorism for non-lethal literature such as\u00a0its threatening words or its cyber-attacks, but the other should be allowed to behave even more menacingly by producing\u00a0an influential artistic work encouraging terrorism and packaged for circulation among millions of people?<\/p>\n

If we compare the two societies, I think the US in no\u00a0position to even begin to call North Korea closed or paranoid, or overly protective of its head of state. At best, the United States is just as protective of its own president and his family as\u00a0North Korea is of its dictatorial leader and his family. Don’t accuse others of terror while promoting terror, if you don’t want to be exposed as a hypocrite and a bigot.<\/p>\n

US officials have been recently\u00a0exposed torturing\u00a0and molesting\u00a0hundreds of suspects simply because they\u00a0<\/em>cooked\u00a0up fantasies about murdering US leaders and attacking the US regime, but\u00a0Hollywood producers are\u00a0such buffoons and\u00a0political\u00a0illiterates\u00a0that they think they have to travel all the way to North Korea to find the nearest\u00a0paranoid and\u00a0unstable regime. If they are so open to ridiculing the state and its censorship, why\u00a0don’t\u00a0they make a movie encouraging\u00a0the US President to be beheaded\u00a0by ISIS radicals in revenge for the events in Iraq, and his family\u00a0taken hostage and killed?\u00a0How about a movie about current Hollywood executives being publicly\u00a0flogged\u00a0and murdered in a violent revolution\u00a0against\u00a0their<\/em> fat, flabby, overindulgent lifestyles in America? Because those guys\u00a0wouldn’t get\u00a0offended or start a lawsuit, would they? In sum, the\u00a0hypocrisy of these cowards is unbearable, and there’s no kind way to discredit them.<\/p>\n

If you found my arguments convoluted or you still don’t get it, here it is in short. The Interview<\/em> is just equivalent to an ISIS movie\u00a0about beheading Barack Obama. If you don’t understand the North Korean reaction, try to envisage that and imagine what kind of mind\u00a0would find comedy in it. Such a production, were it vulnerable to cyber protests, would certainly be hacked, taken down and opposed by the hypersensitive American regime at all costs, but that fact won’t stop American pundits form accusing North Korea of being too touchy after it harshly objected to a movie about the murder\u00a0of its own head of state.<\/p>\n

If #TheInterview<\/a> was about #ISIS<\/a> humiliating and cutting off @BarackObama<\/a>‘s head, would Americans still be trying to get everyone to see it?<\/p>\n

\u2014 Harry J. Bentham (@hjbentham) December 18, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For the record, I strongly oppose making a movie\u00a0obsessed with\u00a0the idea of\u00a0any head of state being assassinated, whether that\u00a0is real (as in Saddam Hussein or Qaddafi’s death) or in a fictional\u00a0form such as\u00a0this movie The Interview<\/em>. It’s simply\u00a0barbaric, and it invalidates whatever political statements\u00a0people were trying to promote via such media. I criticize US policy, yet\u00a0I never\u00a0want to see\u00a0Barack Obama be humiliated or\u00a0have\u00a0his head chopped\u00a0off, real or fictional. However, I invite people who do find entertainment value in barbaric productions mocking\u00a0the assassination of state figures to publish and circulate\u00a0such a video clip\u00a0to prove they are as unafraid of censorship as they claim to be.<\/p>\n

\n

By Harry J. Bentham <\/a> \"HJB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La beaut\u00e9 sera CONVULSIVE ou ne sera pas. Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or not at all. 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Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. His work at Press TV and the L'Ordre blog featured at the multi-faith Beliefnet website has gained increasing attention and praise, including in the international media. Commentaries on political and ethical controversies by Bentham have been published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, Dissident Voice and numerous other publications. 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