Oliver Stone: “American Politics post-1945 Is the History of Unimaginable Paranoia”

From the Editorial Office

A three-times Oscar winner, director Oliver Stone is probably one of Hollywood’s most politically active personalities. He began his career with a film about the war in Vietnam, continued with a bold picture on the murder of John F. Kennedy, and his peplum Alexander was a direct response to the actions of George W. Bush in Iraq (Stone, by the way, studied with the former U.S. President at the same university – ed. note). In his latest work, the mini-series The Untold History of the United States, Stone took on a critical review of the history of America for the past 70 years. The conclusions that director came up with while working on the film are not comforting. The director stated the main ones publicly during this year’s film festival in Karlovy Vary. Especially for you, Youth Time publishes in its pages the speech by the controversial director.

Project “Polishing the World” and the growth of American power

The Untold History of the United States is a very big project. We didn’t limit ourselves to footage and archives. For a long time I’ve gone to colleges, universities, librarian associations, and teachers’ associations all over the United States and the world. We have been to France and England talking this thing up. If you look at the title closely as at a semantic structure, not just the name of the film; The Untold History of the United States, as political as it seems, is a story of domination. It’s a great story of a country that loses its way, which was a relatively innocent country before World War II, but became obsessed with the idea of its national security. What the United States goes through from 1945 is an unbelievable story of paranoia. Roosevelt unfortunately died in April of ’45, which was one of the most tragic premature deaths, if he’d lived three more months the world would have been a different place. But Truman was a small man, and he had a bad advice. He dropped those bombs in August on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the world has never been the same, as the U.S. created enormous superiority and moral power. The point is that, after the Soviet Union fell in 1991, instead of declaring an end of the Cold War and disarming, what did the USA do? It did not hesitate to keep making guns and growing military forces. In the conditions where there was neither the Soviet Union nor someone else to control or compete, the U.S. quickly becomes a sole superpower and, more importantly from the historic retrospective, the Global Security State. Don’t get me wrong, it was not a bad thing that the Soviet Union broke apart. Communism became oppressive and horrible, there was no compassion in it, and there were many other problems. And so it fell and didn’t work. But, of course, right wing in America used the fall of communism as justification for its “polishings” to continue around the globe, which are: capitalism and enterprise, the gap between rich and poor growing, money and money, banks and banks around the world. What about NATO? They’re the defensive liars. It should have ended in 1991 and Bush, the father, told Gorbachev that he would not expand it. Did he keep his word? No. I’m not saying that the U.S. is solely responsible for it. But who told you to join? And where did NATO get you? Well, Czech troops went to Afghanistan!

Bush Jr. raped, looted, and destroyed in Iraq

Then all the launched processes started to speed up and expand: military interventions, chases etc. One of the 10 episodes of The Untold History of the United States is about the war in Iraq – terrible mark on the history of the country. Bush made a disaster of Iraq. He did everything that the western colonialists are known for: rape, loot, destroy the culture, trash the place. My film Alexander (came out in 2004, starring Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie – ed. note) and its protagonist Alexander the Great at the moment of release was compared to George W. Bush, as Alexander is his opposite. Alexander also went to the East, but what he did was stay. He treated the conquered very well; he gave them land in the east that he didn’t steal from them, enriching both east and west. If you think about it, Alexander was allowing for different cities to govern themselves. There were Carthage, Rome, cities in Spain, Egypt, Greece, Western and Eastern Asia. There was a possibility for an inter-dependent world trade and culture out of which all of mankind would have benefited. What did Bush Jr. do? Made as much money as possible, and got the hell out.

Obama is not the answer

Barack Obama, unfortunately, is incapable to stop or solve the existing problems. He is not that reformer candidate we thought we voted for in 2008. It’s a disgrace that Obama is more concerned with hunting Snowden, than reforming. Obama should be reforming the injustices left after his predecessor, rather than concerning himself with this man Snowden, who has actually done the world a great favor. I believe Snowden deserves to be a citizen of the United States and go back home. The “Dick Cheneys” and the “George Bushes” should go to jail for war crimes.

Snowden – a hero with no place in the modern world
To answer the question about Snowden, he is, of course, a hero to the news. He revealed secrets that should concern us all, that show that the U.S. has violated the 4^th Amendment repeatedly since 2003. This man has no place to hide in the whole world, except for a few countries in South America. Why? Because every country is, in some way, intimidated by the U.S. This should not be like this! In the 1950s this could have never happened, because there was the Soviet Union that was willing to challenge and fight the U.S. There were also many third world countries that called themselves “neutral.” There was a term “neutral block.” There were leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Jawaharlal Nehru in India, Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia, and Sukarno was a great leader in Indonesia. The USA could not get rid of Nehru or touch Tito, as they were tough guys, so they lasted. The point is, the neutrality was called immoral and everyone in this room got affected by the U.S. Big Brother approach to controlling the world.

“If he gets in our way, we get him removed”

Think of it, that’s a very unbalanced world, a very dangerous world we live in, as our destinies depend on a very few people. For example, if there is a politician in Greece who wants to change the power and go against American interests in Greece, that politician is being listened non-stop by Global Safelight Communications. If he gets in our way, we get him removed. All we do, we give his secrets to the enemies in his country, who will take care of it, and no one will ever know of the U.S. part in this. How long can you stay and speak independently in this world? We need strong countries. We need a strong Brazil, Turkey, Egypt, China, and Russia, Venezuela, a strong Iran. The world would be a healthier place. History has taught me one thing in five years, is that no empire will last. Nor will the U.S. Empire last.

Photo: KVIFF

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