Top Gun: Maverick is a brilliant film. Any film that can elicit the praise of Ben Shapiro, Willie Geist and Russell Brand, receive a five-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and make over $1 billion is, as the Stalinists would say, “objectively” brilliant. Moviegoers and film critics are loving it.
Unfortunately, for those of us opposed to militarism, empire and genocide, Top Gun: Maverick is not just a fun summer sequel to 1986’s Top Gun. It is also a preeminent cultural product of participatory fascism.
Participatory Fascism
Robert Higgs popularized the concept of participatory fascism in his book, Crisis and Leviathan.
“For thirty years or so, I have used the term “participatory fascism,” which I borrowed from my old friend and former Ph.D. student Charlotte Twight. This is a descriptively precise term in that it recognizes the fascistic organization of resource ownership and control in our system, despite the preservation of nominal private ownership…”
In Crisis and Leviathan, Higgs argued that corporate America had become “half master, half slave” to the National Government:
“As Charlotte Twight has shown, the essence of fascism is nationalistic collectivism, the affirmation that the ‘national interest’ should take precedence over the rights of individuals.”
Hollywood’s Subservient Fascist Participation
Hollywood promotes nationalistic collectivism with the full cooperation of the U.S. government. In their book National Security Cinema, Matthew Alford and Tom Secker wrote:
“For over a century, filmmakers in America have received production assistance in the form of men, advice, locations, and equipment from the US military to cut costs and create authentic-seeming films.”
Top Gun: Maverick received invaluable assistance from the Pentagon. According to U.S. Air Force Major General Edward Thomas, the military had an agenda: recruitment.
“Back in 1986, Top Gun got a whole generation excited about Naval aviation. Excited about coming and doing military flying and joining the service. And our hope is that as people go and see this movie…that they’ll get excited all over again about flying for the U.S. Military.”
While 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope did function as an uplifting nationalistic collectivist film, George Lucas intended it to serve as an anti-imperial story, particularly when most appropriately viewed as part of a six-film epic. This reading of the film has proved more enduring. No one talks about Luke Skywalker boosting military recruitment. Top Gun: Maverick, meanwhile, was dreamt up by Hollywood and the Pentagon to boost the ranks.
What’s with all the nihilistic, amoral, dark anti-hero leads in movies and shows? Are we supposed to treat horrible characters as pinnacles of human behavior now? The bleak content that’s crept its way mainstream over the last 10 years should concern us all. The stories we tell matter, for they influence what we believe and what values we adopt. Fortunately, a renewed appreciation for natural rights and individualism could be the antidote to the immense darkness that’s blanketed American culture as of late. That’s what we’ll get down to on this feature episode of Out of Frame.
The goal is a less political world, not a world which bends to our political will. We are not Imposers. So participate in politics and voting if you like, or refrain if you like. Voting is optional and anonymous for a reason. But never let anyone force you into taking a political stance, or even to hold a political stance. In 2020, privilege manifests as political extortion. Push back against these bullies.
Actor Chris Pratt finds himself a target of left Hollywood and various social media enforcers for his apparent lack of support for Joe Biden, a sin in his industry. Pratt has endorsed neither Biden nor Trump, which seems eminently sensible for a boy-next-door type who plays superheroes and adventurers in big blockbusters. But staying quiet is never enough for the political jackals, who insist silence is violence and a form of privilege. Trump is a Nazi; his electorate is full of hateful fascist enablers and this is no time for quietude. To make matters worse, the reticent Pratt also belongs to a Christian church which is “anti-LGBT”—which is to say not anti-LGBT at all, but simply not in full conformity with the language and demands of its accusers.
When his actor friend and sometime costar Mark Ruffalo rushed to defend Pratt’s character, the Twitterati reacted angrily but predictably:
This is a classic case of the Imposers positioning themselves as the Imposed Upon: LGBT advocates weaponize and contort simple words—hurt, harm, apathy, privilege, marginalized, vulnerable—in ways reminiscent of Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” They use words in consciously dishonest ways. They shift the parameters of what it means to “support” or “oppose” LGBT causes into a stark binary: you are for us or against us. Simply living one’s life peaceably is not an option in this bizarre worldview.
And the Imposer’s unconditional terms change constantly, seemingly overnight. One cannot avoid conflict by being “not overtly political,” as Ruffalo termed Pratt. The accusations against his church, for example, amount to nothing more than a demand for unconditional surrender of any theology or doctrine which does not comport with today’s instant (though far from universal) view of transgenderism. Unless and until that happens, his church is per se transphobic and evil: indifference, or even kind and loving disagreement, cannot satisfy the Imposers.
It does not matter whether Pratt’s church welcomes everyone, even those individuals it considers engaged in sin (which presumably includes just about every person on earth). It does not matter whether Pratt is a good person or friend to his fellow actors. His church must affirmatively endorse the views of LGBT activists; Pratt must actively endorse Biden. Anything else is weaponized privilege.
Of course this is nonsense, but the Imposers always claim to be the Imposed Upon. Media and politicians play along, and then social media voices join the chorus until the original reality becomes completely obscured: both Chris Pratt and his church were minding their own business and not hurting anyone. The Biden and LGBT activists came looking for them, not the other way around.
What incredible arrogance and hubris! This is real privilege: the privilege of demanding others not only share your political views but also see the world in starkly political terms. This is real hate, actual hate, not the phony kind imagined on Hate Has No Home Here yard signs.
When taken to an extreme, a positive rights worldview requires not only conformity and acquiescence with the political project of the day, but your affirmative participation. Not keeping up with the latest outrage, political machinations, or campaign—not leading a wholly political life—becomes a dereliction of duty.
Political liberty is quite simple, but not easy. We all owe our fellow citizens a duty not to aggress against them or their property, and not to commit fraud against them. In the broader societal sense, we all should strive to be kind, open, and generous with everyone we meet, unless and until they give us a reason to be otherwise. But that is all we owe. Being apolitical or even antipolitical is your absolute right. At best, politics is an uneasy and imperfect mechanism for peacefully transferring political power; at worst, it is barely a substitute for war. More commonly, politics is a turf battle waged by rival gangs to control the state apparatus (the turf is us and our money). Politics is not noble, virtuous, or even necessary. The people attacking Chris Pratt, and even hoping to harm his career, reputation, and finances, hold no moral high ground.
My great aunt, now departed, once told me about a decision she and her husband made as newlyweds just after World War II. Starting life together in a very modest house, they wanted to build lasting memories with family and friends. So they made a pact: they would never discuss politics in their home or allow guests to discuss politics. In her view politics was like sex and religion, a private matter. They wanted to avoid the disharmony and rancor they had witnessed among their own parents and families a decade earlier over the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal programs. They determined their hearth and home would be devoted to happiness, an apolitical refuge where every visitor would be welcome.
The goal is a less political world, not a world which bends to our political will. We are not Imposers. So participate in politics and voting if you like, or refrain if you like. Voting is optional and anonymous for a reason. But never let anyone force you into taking a political stance, or even to hold a political stance. In 2020, privilege manifests as political extortion. Push back against these bullies.
Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute. He previously worked as chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul, and as an attorney for private equity clients. Contact: email; Twitter.
The US has the largest military budget in the world, spending over $611 billion – far larger than any other nation on Earth. The US military also has at their disposal the most successful propaganda apparatus the world has ever known… Hollywood. Read the rest of this entry »
Much of the media nowadays is portraying itself as heroes of the #Resist Trump movement. To exploit that meme, Hollywood producer Steven Spielberg rushed out “The Post,” a movie depicting an epic press battle with the Nixon administration. But regardless of whether Spielberg’s latest wins the Academy Award for best picture on Sunday night, Americans should never forget the media’s long history of pandering to presidents and the Pentagon. Read the rest of this entry »
That said, I would suggest it’s a good idea to keep in mind Ronald Reagan’s admonition that government is not the solution to our problem, but, rather, government is the problem. Then, once this reality is firmly entrenched in your mind, the challenge is to plan your life accordingly.
The most masterful perpetrators of The Big Lie are those who wear personality masks intended to deceive. They are, in the words of M. Scott Peck, “People of the Lie.”
A few examples include:
Media personalities who posit themselves as professional commentators while relentlessly pushing their hate-inspired agendas. They are, in fact, People of the Lie.
Politicians who cast themselves as champions of “women’s rights,” defenders of the “middle class,” or protectors of “the poor” in an effort to win votes. They are, in fact, People of the Lie.
Those who justify the use of violence by claiming to be in hot pursuit of “social justice.” They are, in fact, People of the Lie.
Hollywood scum are racing to see how quickly they can climb on a soapbox and claim they had no idea this was happening! This is what hollywood has run on since its inception. The sheeple eat it up when twits like Streep claim holier than thou ignorance.
When a sex scandal erupted against producer Harvey Weinstein, his first response was to pledge that he would “channel anger” in a campaign against the National Rifle Association, one of the most reliable devil-dolls liberals stick pins in to prove their bona fides.
Weinstein must have been shocked when this gesture did not gain him instant forgiveness for his sexual sins and shortcomings. After all, were not guns phallic symbols? Was not his anti-gun gesture therefore a symbolic repudiation of his own out-of-control manhood?Read the rest of this entry »
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