Mid-Michigan readers can hear Rick Cole every Tuesday at approximately 6:30 a.m. on Lansing radio station WILS 1320’s “am Lansing” program hosted by Walt Sorg.

by Richard Cole
September 16, 2008

I was prepared to see the next wave of “swift boating,” the two-word political equivalent of “water boarding,” when I decided to view the two-year-old film Obsession. I have learned to expect to see the worst and most blatant propaganda during autumn of a presidential-election year. I may have seen it.

Obsession, a controversial documentary — I’d call it a shock-umentary — in DVD form which first aired on Fox, had arrived as an advertising insert in my recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. This newspaper is subscribed to by nearly 80,000 academics and has a total readership of 350,000, according to its website. So, imagine that perhaps as many as 500 to 1,000 copies of this DVD have been delivered to the homes of local Michigan State University faculty and others connected to the higher education community in the East Lansing area. (As if one copy of the controversial film was not enough, I received a second copy as in insert in my Sunday Lansing State Journal after I had completed the first draft of this column.)

The Huffington Post website describes the 60-minute production as “right-wing, terror propaganda” and contends that 28 million copies, subtitled “Radical Islam’s War against the West,” “are being mailed and bundled in newspaper deliveries to voters in swing states.” After reading its one-paragraph review, I wondered if anyone at Huffington had even bothered to see it. So I thought I’d see it myself.

Propaganda is a strong word, and it is a subject that interests me greatly. I generally fall on the side that defines propaganda not on the basis of its content as much as on the basis of its intent. But even here, the issue is more “gray” than it is “black and white.” When asked about his participation in propaganda campaigns, ranging from the work of the Creel Committee to use words in warfare in WWI to the anti-communist campaigns in Latin America in the 1950s and ’60s, legendary PR maven Edward L. Bernays would wink and say, “Propaganda — not im-propaganda.” Where you stand on a particular “information campaign” depends a great deal on where you sit.

My initial suspicion, of which I have not been relieved, is that elements friendly to the McCain campaign are using this video to whip up anti-Arab sentiment in order to set the stage for a series of swift-boating ads attempting to connect Obama, somehow, to Islamic extremists. I have no proof. But the timing of the free delivery of the movie does seem strange, at best.

Regardless of its intent, however, Obsession describes what may be the defining international issue of the 21st century. It begins with horrifying footage of the terrorist bombings of the school in Beslan, Russia, in September 2004. A “screen crawl” admonishes the viewer to understand “that most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror. This film is not about them.”

The testimony of a number of experts, however biased or impartial these experts may be, is interspersed with clips from Middle East television and other footage of Jihadist leaders calling, among other things, for the 1.2 billion Muslims of the world “to bring down the West.”

Controversial conservative Daniel Pipes agrees with the viewpoint of a Palestinian journalist who stresses, “Islam has been high-jacked.” Muslims are the victims of this Jihad, he says, because “if they disagree, they will be killed.”

Reminding us of horrifying incidents ranging from Kenya to South Africa to Bali to Istanbul, Madrid, London, and Beslan, Russia, it was no coincidence that the Clarion Fund (I was not able to find out much about this “fund,” but I have my suspicions) chose the seventh anniversary of 9/11 to distribute the film. This is a controversial film with a definite bias. It may, or may not, be accurately characterized as propaganda from the right. Nonetheless, it should be seen.

The film is designed to horrify, and that it does. Among the features of the film, two stood out as most horrifying.

First is the dramatic comparison of the words and symbols representing what the film called “common denominators” between Hitler’s Nazis and the current radical-Islamist Jihad. Jihad is defined as a “self-struggle,” much as Hitler’s Mein Kampf (“my struggle”) was defined as his attempt to overcome any hesitation that would suppress his quest for Jewish extermination and world domination. Among the most chilling scenes in the film is historical footage of a 1936 meeting between Hitler and then “Grand Mufti” of Jeruselum, Haj Amin Al-Husseini. To the degree that he would enlist non-Aryans in his cause, and his reward was the opportunity for world domination, Hitler’s mission was secular and godless. In the language of the radical-Islamist leaders and clerics, however, the rewards for Jihad are eternal, and derive from direct instructions from God, giving rise to speculation that Jihad will be more persistent than was the mission of Der Furher.

A second horrifying comparison is both movements’ — the Nazis and the Jihadists — focus on youth. This segment of the film juxtaposes the testimony of repentant child-soldier in the Nazi youth camps, late author Alfons Heck, with television footage of Jihadist youth training programs. It features elementary school-aged radical Islamist militia squads, and it quotes from a Jordanian school text — “This religion (Islam) will destroy all other religions through Islamic-Jihad fighters.” The chilling reality sets in that no matter how small or isolated these examples are compared to the totality of the Muslim world, none of us — Muslims and non-Muslims alike — will live long enough to see this dangerous situation resolved.

Those featured in the film obviously were selected on the basis of the degree to which their biases would support the film’s underlying themes. The Christian-convert daughter of an “Islamist martyr,” Nomie Darwish, said of her childhood: “We were taught…to conquer the world for Allah.” Former federal prosecutor John Loftus tells us that “this worst form of child abuse is to teach children to hate.…The world is in denial.” Celebrity attorney-author Alan Dershowitz warns: “If you ignore a real threat, the world will pay with many deaths.” Brigette Gabriel, a Lebanese-Christian refugee turned journalist, pleads: “It is the duty of all moderate Muslims to speak up against the hate. Let us hear your voices.”

As my wife and I were leaving East Lansing for a Ramadan feast with a Dearborn Muslim family we have grown to respect and love, I wondered whether I would have the courage to discuss this film with them. I recalled Darwish’s words in the film: “We are strangling ourselves with our political correctness.” I agree entirely with that statement. But, in the end, I avoided any serious conversation of the film, or the possible effect of its widespread distribution, for fear of spoiling one of the nicest evenings of my life, and hurting the feelings of some of my closest friends.

Richard Cole is professor and chairperson of the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing at Michigan State University.