“We have been attacked. We are at war.” On Sept. 19, actor Morgan Freeman appeared in a short video opening with this line. The Committee to Investigate Russia, a new nonprofit website focusing on Russia’s interference in U.S. politics, produced the announcement.
A brainchild of activist Hollywood director Rob Reiner, the site launched with backers from across the political spectrum, including conservative military historian Max Boot and President Barack Obama’s former director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., “trying to break through and explain … that there is a serious problem here that people don’t seem to really grasp,” Reiner said.
The video charged Russian President Vladimir Putin — once a KGB spy, always a KGB spy — with using cyberwarfare to undermine the global democracy that the United States has been defending since D-Day. It accused President Trump of inaction in this battle and urged him to act. More disturbingly, it garnished the narrative with hackneyed backdrops: Russia’s military might parading on the Red Square, followed by an American bald eagle looking troubled in a close-up, all with ominous music in the background.
These gratuitous and prejudicial flourishes that are the hallmark of propaganda, the celebrity narration and the nongovernmental sponsorship echo a disquieting Cold War tradition of mobilizing private American citizens to defend democracy with an information war fought on the home front.
Morgan Freeman is educating Americans on Russia. That’s a problem.
The dangers of leaving information warfare to private organizations.
By Yuliya Komska September 29, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/09/29/morgan-freeman-is-educating-americans-on-russia-thats-a-problem/
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The original drum-banging Uncle Tom
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/morgan-freeman-colin-powell-movie-1202593694/