Originally published by GR in February 2009, this article focusses on the role of Hollywood as an instrument of propaganda. The Deep Politics of Hollywood are part of the broader process of media manipulation and disinformation in support of US led wars.

Here we build a prima facae case supporting the idea that Hollywood continues to be a target for infiltration and subversion by a variety of state agencies, in particular the CIA. Academic debates on cinematic propaganda are almost entirely retrospective, and whilst a number of commentators have drawn attention to Hollywood’s longstanding and open relationship with the Pentagon, little of substance has been written about the more clandestine influences working through Hollywood in the post-9/11 world. As such, our work delves into the field of what Peter Dale Scott calls “deep politics”; namely, activities which cannot currently be fully understood due to the covert influence of shadowy power players.

Actor Taron Egerton, known by many for his role in the 2014 action/comedy The Kingsman, plays rock legend Elton John in the upcoming movie Rocketman. Many have complained that since John is gay, the role should have been played by someone from the LGBT community instead of a straight man, but John is having none of that.

“That’s all bulls***, I’m sorry,” John told The Sun in a recent interview. “If people don’t like it, review-wise, or it doesn’t make one dollar, it’s the movie I wanted to make and that’s all that counts.”

“I can look back and say, ‘You know what, I love it. I can live with it,” John said.

John took the position that the film needed to please him, personally, regardless of whether LGBT groups or any other political agendas were served. Much of that satisfaction comes from the good job Egerton has done in portraying the piano rocker.

US social justice activists incensed at the Cannes Festival’s intent to honor Alain Delon have started a petition to stop it, citing the legendary actor’s “close-minded” views. The festival, and the French public, were not amused.

Cannes organizers have held firm in their intent to honor the actor, now 83, with a Palme d’Or for lifetime achievement. One of the most prestigious European film festivals kicked off this week with posters of Delon from his 1960s heyday as a sex symbol.

American adults spend enormous amounts of money playing video games, mostly on smartphones, and at a rapidly increasing pace, according to Reuters.

According to annual research from the Entertainment Software Association, over 164 million US adults play video games - a figure that's 20% more than a year ago and over 85% more than in 2015.

A staggering $43.4 billion spent in 2018 was mostly on content, as opposed to hardware and accessories. Of pay-to-play games, “Call of Duty: Black Ops III”, “Red Dead Redemption II” and “NBA 2K19” took the top spots for most units sold but the list did not include free games such as “Fortnite.”

“Games are striking an important chord with American culture,” said Stanley Pierre-Louis, ESA’s acting president and chief executive officer. “That’s what makes it the leading form of entertainment today.”

“Hatred will prevail!” screams the man on stage, as two leather-clad women gyrate in cages behind him. On a pedestal above, a man in a black leotard slices the air with a staff shaped like a toilet plunger. Meet Hatari (pictured), a self-described “anti-capitalist, bdsm [bondage-discipline-sadism-masochism] techno band”. They are Iceland’s entry for this year’s Eurovision song contest, best known for featuring cheesy ballads and launching the careers of abba and Céline Dion.

Last Monday, on behalf of my friend and client Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama, I appeared in front of the former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia who is now on senior status, the Honorable Thomas J. Hogan (courtroom illustration above). The reason? I had filed a complaint against the low-class comedian Sasha Baron Cohen, Showtime and its parent company, CBS, over their having maliciously defamed Judge Moore by falsely portraying him as a pedophile.

Disney’s Avengers: Endgame, the culmination of 22 prior movies connecting the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), made an astounding $1.2 billion at the global box office this weekend. [‘Avengers: Endgame’ Sets Global Box Office Record: $1.2 Billion, by Christopher Palmeri, Bloomberg, April 28, 2019] But the plot signals the end of the line for MCU white super heroes—and consequently, I predict, for the series. Call it America: The Microcosm.

It was seven years ago when a bunch of white superheroes got together to save the world in The Avengers: Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, The Hulk and the Black Widow. the foundational characters the entire MCU was built upon (See my The Avengers—“A Bunch Of White Guys Saving The World”? Can’t Have That!).

SPOILER ALERT: what follows will include spoilers about plot of Avengers: Endgame, so if you haven’t seen the movie you may want to stop here].

Lee Daniels begrudgingly commented on the ongoing Jussie Smollett situation during an appearance on Good Day New York Wednesday morning.

The Empire creator was on the morning show to promote the new play he is producing, Ain’t No Mo’, when he was asked about Smollett.

'It's so painful that our souls are cracked,' said Daniels.

'It's just too painful to talk about.' Then, after a bit of poking and prodding, he revealed that Smollett's future on Empire is very much up in the air.

At the same time, Daniels confirmed that Empire has been renewed for a sixth season at Fox.

It may be difficult for some to understand the impact that a pop icon has on social and political events, but these cultural figures possess enormous psychological sway in the minds of millions. Their actions make a difference. So it can be quite jarring when one of those icons goes against the justified demands of an entire people, especially when they have been oppressed and persecuted for decades.

This May Madonna is set to perform two songs at Eurovision in Tel Aviv. She will reach an estimated 180 million viewers. She has moneyed backing too. Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams has pledged to pay $1 million dollars for her performance at Eurovision. And she will simultaneously flip the bird to millions of Palestinians who languish under a brutal system of colonial oppression, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Madonna is no stranger to this controversy. In 2012 she launched her MDNA tour in Tel Aviv against the urging of BDS activists.

Alec Baldwin, the actor who is well known today for his widely ridiculed impersonation of President Trump, as well as his violent temper, is now considering a run for president.

In a Monday morning tweet, Baldwin asked his followers if they would vote for him if he decided to run for president, adding that beating President Trump would be "so easy."

Then again, he wouldn't be the first candidate to take that view.

Baldwin added that he wouldn't ask for any money (suggesting that he would self-finance his campaign), and that "I promise I will win." Of course, the actor has no political or government experience to speak of (unless you count his portrayal of CIA director Alan Hunley in the 'Mission Impossible' movies), and it's not clear exactly what his policy platform would be, aside from 'Trump bad.'

Human remains found inside the Oregon home of entertainer Dennis Day are believed to be those of the original Mouseketeer. Though officials have not confirmed Day is dead, his sister shared a post on Facebook referring to her brother as being in Heaven.

Day, who would have turned 76 on Sunday, was reported missing in July of 2018. If the body is that of Day, which appears to be now widely reported but not confirmed, it’s not clear why the Mouseketeer was not located sooner given where his body was discovered.

Day, who was one of the original cast members of the Mickey Mouse Club in the mid-1950s, disappeared from the small town of Phoenix, Oregon.

Day told his partner of a near half-century Ernest Caswell, that he was off to visit friends. Caswell, who suffers from dementia had been hospitalized and now lives in a nursing facility, alerted friends. and police were called.

Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin has spent the past few years relentlessly bashing President Donald Trump and anyone who supports him. Now, this has all come back to bite him as he’s facing a lawsuit that is exposing the actor for who he really is.

Fox News reported that Baldwin is being sued by a man he allegedly assaulted in a parking dispute in November of 2018. Baldwin allegedly lost it on Wojciech Cieszkowski when the latter dared to park in a parking space that one of the actor’s family members was saving for him. After allegedly hitting Cieszkowski, Baldwin pled guilty to second-degree harassment and was forced to undergo anger management classes.

Now, Cieszkowski has filed a lawsuit against Baldwin in the Manhattan Supreme Court, going after the actor for his violent tantrum and for his “Saturday Night Live” impersonation of President Donald Trump.

Chris Evans, star of the upcoming film Avengers: Endgame said that he would be “disappointed” in himself if he didn’t speak out against “dumb shit” President Donald Trump, even if it means alienating half his audience.

“You don’t want to alienate half your audience,” Chris Evans told The Hollywood Reporter. “But I’d be disappointed in myself if I didn’t speak up. Especially for fear of some monetary repercussion or career damage — that just feels really gross to me.”

The 37-year-old also admitted that he would have a hard time being friends with someone who was a Trump supporter, specifically in reference to New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

Actress Rosanna Arquette declared that the United States is ruled by a “sick dictatorship” under President Donald Trump, who has normalized everything from mass killings to the sexual abuse of children.

The Pulp Fiction actress said she found it hard to wake up in the morning knowing that the U.S. government was responsible for such atrocities.

“It’s hard to wake up this morning and realize we are living under a sick dictatorship, that we now have a government that has normalized racism rape, mass killings from Guns Pedophilia, homophobia, the destruction of our environment,” she wrote. “This government has normalized stupidity.”

Left-wing Hollywood stars have spent the past two years spreading wild conspiracy theories about President Donald Trump and Russian “collusion,” with a slew of celebrities calling him a “traitor,” a “puppet,” a “thug,” a “urine-lapper” for Putin and predicting that he will be “in chains” soon.
Many Hollywood stars made these accusations following Trump’s press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland. Others accused Trump of treason for no apparent reason at all.

Yet, according to the Attorney General William Barr’s letter to Congress Sunday, special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence whatsoever of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia during the 2016 election.

Here are 50 Hollywood stars who participated in the conspiracy smear campaign against the president.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford issued a statement Monday denying weekend media reports that the US plans to leave around 1,000 troops in Syria, saying the reports are “factually incorrect.”

Dunford presented the current planned “residual force” as 200, saying that this hadn’t changed since February. The US announced 200 would stay on February 21, but on February 22 officially increased that number to 400.

It’s not clear from Dunford’s statement where the “incorrect” aspect of the new report, which came out of a Wall Street Journal, exists. That report suggested that the 1,000 figure was not yet finalized, but was being discussed. Dunford’s comments didn’t include any details on what is actually being discussed, but just that nothing was finalized.

Hollywood star Gary Sinise just opened up about why he has devoted so much of his time to helping veterans, and to lament the fact that many of his peers in the entertainment industry have politicized honoring the military.

Sinise has helped thousands of war veterans through The Gary Sinise Foundation, and he just told TIME that he does not see helping the military as a partisan matter.

“How have our defenders become a political issue? They defend us all. They are us all,” said the Forrest Gump star. “There are Democrats who serve our country, there are Republicans who serve our country.”

"Empire" actor Jussie Smollett pleaded not guilty in a Chicago courtroom Thursday to 16 charges stemming from an alleged hate crime hoax.

Smollett's lawyer, Tina Glandian, entered the plea on Smollett’s behalf just hours after Judge Steven Watkins was assigned the case. The next court date was scheduled for April 17.

Smollett was initially charged with one count of lying to the authorities on Feb. 20. Last week, a grand jury indicted Smollett on 16 felony counts of lying to authorities — eight counts for what he told the officer who responded to the report of the Jan. 29 attack in downtown Chicago, and eight counts for what he later told a detective about being the victim of a brutal racist and homophobic beating by two masked men.

The superhero blockbuster Captain Marvel is a perfect case study for how the United States military uses Hollywood to spread propaganda.

The US military is at the center of the plot of Captain Marvel. The film’s protagonist, Carol Danvers, is a former US Air Force pilot who becomes a superhero after absorbing the powers of an advanced technology created by another US military scientist. (That scientist happens to be a member of the advanced alien race known as the Kree, who for unexplained reasons decided to do groundbreaking military research for, of all the myriad places in the universe, the US of A).

As soon as the film opens, it bombards viewers with two hours of non-stop US military propaganda. And it is not even subtle; at the plot’s climax, Captain Marvel changes the colors of her suit to match those of the American flag.

If you searched “Brie Larson” on YouTube a couple of days ago, the top search results were calls for a boycott of Captain Marvel, and angry rants about Larson’s involvement in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With one small change, YouTube made all of that disappear.

This week, YouTube recategorized “Brie Larson” as a news-worthy search term. That does one very important job: it makes the search algorithm surface videos from authoritative sources on a subject. Instead of videos from individual creators, YouTube responds with videos from Entertainment Tonight, ABC, CBS, CNN, and other news outlets first.

As discussed in ‘Reclaiming An American Hero: Bobby Fischer The Fearless Genius’, Bobby Fischer was widely criticized for his controversial statements outside of chess. For example, Dick and Jeremy Schaap questioned Fischer’s sanity, while Charles Krauthammer wrote that “he’s clearly a sick man.”[34] However, it would be more accurate to state that Fischer used his prodigious intellect to read widely and deeply to discover many of the lies that pervade our society. His exposure of the Holocaust hoax is especially praiseworthy. Bobby Fischer was truly an authentic American hero.

After Rotten Tomatoes purged 54,000 negative captain marvel reviews
that had the film around 32% audience score, there was an addition of
thousands of positive bot responses with the exact same text for each
review to bring its 32% audience rating to 48%.

"I'll make it very simple and clear: Captain Marvel is really worth a watch. It's
just entertaining and visually impressive, exactly what it was meant to be."

Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were among more than four dozen people charged in a nationwide college admissions cheating scandal that involved wealthy individuals paying up to $6.5 million to place their children into elite universities, according to court records revealed Tuesday.

The alleged scam -- which involved students being placed into top colleges such as Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, University of Southern California, UCLA and the University of Texas -- was run by a man in California, William Rick Singer, who helped parents get their children into the schools through bribes, court documents unsealed in Boston showed. Officials have been investigating the scam for more than a year.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced her presidential run to the world while the Dolly Parton hit “9 to 5” played behind her.

Playing a hit song like that one — especially a tune that highlights the average American worker — can create quite a powerful moment for politicians.

Warren’s moment, however, was a bit unearned.

It turns out Dolly Parton never gave the senator permission to use her song. Her reason?

The country music star never allows her music to be used for political purposes.

“We did not approve the request, and we do not approve requests like this of [a] political nature,” Parton’s manager, Danny Nozell, recently told the Associated Press.

Rotten Tomatoes blames "a bug" for tens of thousands of audience reviews for Captain Marvel showing up within the opening hours of the latest MCU film before the site deleted them.

Within hours of Captain Marvel hitting theaters, roughly 58,000 audience reviews had flooded the critical aggregator site, plummeting the Marvel movie's Audience Score down to 33%. Captain Marvel's Audience Score now sits, at the time this article was published, at 53% with over 35,000 user ratings, while the film's critical Tomatometer score is certified "fresh" at 79%.

58,000 audience reviews hitting within hours of the film's release, as The Hollywood Reporter points out, "is more than the total of audience score reviews for Avengers: Infinity War for its entire theatrical run."

In last year’s Midterm race for seats in the United States House of Representatives, Anti-GamerGate personality and Revolution 60 developer Brianna Wu ran as a Democratic candidate in the primary election for Massachuset’s 8th Congressional District. Despite her political inexperience, Wu garnered 22.9% of the district’s vote (16,878 votes out of a total of 73,582), but ultimately lost the election to her incumbent opponent, Stephen Lynch. As the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections rapidly approach, Wu has once again announced her candidacy, which will feature a heavy emphasis on government regulation concerning internet relations.

The band has made it clear they view the contest as a political one and will seek to stage an anti-Israeli political protest onstage, despite Eurovision rules saying that such behaviour may result in disqualification.

Iceland has made its pick for Eurovision 2019 song contest: the industrial techno band Hatari whose members don BDSM-inspired outfits on stage. The band has a strong political agenda and has threatened to pull off an anti-Israeli protest during their performance at the contest.

Hatari, whose name translates as "Hater," have chosen a song entitled "Hatrid Mun Sigra" ("Hatred Will Prevail"), which features lyrics, such as "Europe will crumble", "Multilateral delusions, Unilateral punishments", and "Happiness will end For it is an illusion".

The band, which has long proclaimed that they aim to "take down capitalism," said they're planning a protest against the Israeli treatment of Palestinians during their performance.

The band has made it clear they view the contest as a political one and will seek to stage an anti-Israeli political protest onstage, despite Eurovision rules saying that such behaviour may result in disqualification.

Iceland has made its pick for Eurovision 2019 song contest: the industrial techno band Hatari whose members don BDSM-inspired outfits on stage. The band has a strong political agenda and has threatened to pull off an anti-Israeli protest during their performance at the contest.

Hatari, whose name translates as "Hater," have chosen a song entitled "Hatrid Mun Sigra" ("Hatred Will Prevail"), which features lyrics, such as "Europe will crumble", "Multilateral delusions, Unilateral punishments", and "Happiness will end For it is an illusion".

Director Steven Spielberg is facing a backlash from fellow Hollywood filmmakers after suggesting that the Oscars should no longer allow Netflix-produced films into consideration for its top awards.

The 72-year-old filmmaker, who has won multiple Academy Awards throughout his iconic career, has long been critical of Netflix’s approach to producing films as online streams, which he argues will detract from the theatrical industry.

“Steven feels strongly about the difference between the streaming and theatrical situation,” said a representative from Amblin Entertainment. “He’ll be happy if the others will join [his campaign] when that comes up [at the Academy Board of Governors meeting]. He will see what happens.”

If there is any doubt that there’s an aggressive left-leaning political bias in Hollywood, all one needs to do is look at the Jussie Smollett case — and compare it to the 2017 firing of Roseanne Barr.

Barr, an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, was abruptly fired from her own show “Roseanne” — which had just been brought back to television and earned monster ratings — after she put out a tweet that some deemed to be racist.

The tweet targeted former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett.

Barr said Jarrett was a cross between the “Muslim brotherhood and ‘Planet of the Apes.'” Considering Jarrett is black, there was immediate backlash against the tweet. Barr apologized multiple times for the tweet and insisted she did not know Jarrett’s race at the time.

She said her tweet was more of a criticism of Jarrett’s foreign policies.

In the wake of “Roma’s” three Oscar wins on Sunday, director Steven Spielberg is taking aim at streaming films’ chances at future Academy Awards.

Spielberg will present his case to peers at an upcoming annual board of governors meeting at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where the award-winning auteur will propose rule changes that would prevent streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu from competing in the Oscars without their projects getting a full theatrical run first. The news was first reported on Indiewire.

“Steven feels strongly about the difference between the streaming and theatrical situation,” a representative of Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment told the site. (A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to request for comment by The Times.)

The European Broadcasting Union received official notice from the National Public Television of Ukraine (NOTU) that they will not be participating in the Eurovision contest this year.

This happened as a consequence of all three of the winners of Ukraine’s national contest (1st, 2nd, and 3rd place) unanimously refused to represent Ukraine after learning of Ukraine’s ‘career ending’ and ‘highly politicized’ terms. Those winners were Maruv, Freedom-jazz in second, and Kazka Group in third.

Sadly, not everyone could get into the movie-loving spirit and simply put politics to the side for one night. Director Spike Lee, who reportedly threw a tantrum later in the night when his “Blackkklansman” film lost to “Green Book” for the Best Picture Oscar, got up and read a rambling speech from his notes upon winning the Best Adapted Screenplay statue. While he didn’t mention President Trump by name, there was hardly any mistaking his target.

The star-studded crowd roared their approval.

Some punched the air.

A few wiped away imaginary tears.

Others hugged each other.

This was exactly the kind of stirring, unifying, inclusive message everyone had been directed to crave at the most politically correct Academy Awards in history.

But viewers in South Africa reacted rather differently.

Because what Noah actually said in Xhosa – the Bantu language related to Zulu – was this: ‘White people don’t know I’m lying.’

I burst out laughing when I found out about this, hours after the event.

To kick start the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon, 2018’s First Man—the epic story of Armstrong’s journey to become the first man to walk on the moon—would be nominated for Best Picture. Ryan Gosling would be nominated for Best Actor for portraying the heroic astronaut.

Yet it was not meant to be, as First Man was accused of being anti-American for failing to show the planting of the American flag on the moon. The conservatives the film depended on stayed at home out of patriotism, ironically boycotting a beautiful movie that depicted the finest moment in the history of our nation. It was an insurmountable hole even the powerful engines of the Saturn V rocket couldn’t help First Man escape. Despite an 87 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes (meaning top-rated movie reviewers loved the movie), the movie only made $44 million domestically on a $59 million budget.

So… I tuned into the last ten minutes of the red carpet pre-game. Side boob as far as the eye could see — from women who will return to anti-rape culture activism when they get over their hangovers. Everybody on the runway was “stunning.” And they appreciated being informed of that, because they hear it so seldom. Glenn Close revealed that her gown contained four million beads and weighed forty pounds. I hope she donates it to the Clinton Foundation for HRC’s 2020 nomination acceptance speech.

Newspapers on the other side of the world are calling it “the biggest U.S. cinema event of all time.”

Critical acclaim has poured in from all corners for the BBC production They Shall Not Grow Old, a technical and emotional masterpiece on the First World War — the war Woodrow Wilson said would “make the world safe for democracy.”

The way the film brings old footage, and therefore the soldiers, to life is almost magical and powerfully moving. But because of how director Peter Jackson defined his film, a critical element is virtually invisible: the wounded.

Jackson distilled the stories of 120 veterans who spoke on some 600 hours of BBC audio tape done in the 1960s and ‘70s. His goal was to have “120 men telling a single story…what it was like being a British soldier on the Western Front.” He artfully presents it, using no narration other than the archive of BBC interviews.