[rad-green] Frank Capra’s Battle With the Deep State and Hollywood’s Role in the Cold War Era

*https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/12/21/capra-battle-with-deep-state-and-hollywood-role-in-cold-war-era/
<https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/12/21/capra-battle-with-deep-state-and-hollywood-role-in-cold-war-era/>*

*Strategic Culture Foundation          December 21, 2019*

Capra’s Battle With the Deep State and Hollywood’s Role in the Cold War Era

*By Matthew Ehret*

[image: image.png]
*© Photo: Wikimedia*

For those who find themselves with excess time this holiday season which
they would prefer not to squander with idleness or Netflix binges, then I’d
like to offer this serving of Frank Capra films to uplift the soul.

Frank Capra (1897-1991) stands as one of the most brilliant
directors/producers of the 20th Century, and sadly also one of the least
understood -- known at best for the film* It’s a Wonderful Life* played
every year as a Christmas tradition, or *Mr. Smith Goes to Washington*.

Unbeknownst to even many film connoisseurs today, Capra was not only a
pre-eminent cultural warrior who took every opportunity to expose fascist
movements during the 1930’s and 1940’s but also fought to provide a* positive
principled understanding *of the divinity mankind’s higher nature in all
his works. When asked to put into words what motivated him to create movies
he said:

*“My films must let every man, woman, and child know that God loves them,
that I love them, and that peace and salvation will become a reality only
when they all learn to love each other”*

During World War II, Capra’s Why We Fight
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm3GsSWKyso>series was one of the most
important educational tools used to shape the hearts and minds of the
American population towards the strategic nature and purpose of the war
against the fascist machine which had received much of its support from
financiers in the Anglo-American establishment. In America, these groups
were masquerading as “patriots” under the American Liberty League promoting
America’s neutrality in that conflict. It was an open secret that these
groups preferred to let Hitler and Mussolini usher in a new order which
they saw as a wonderful opportunity to rule the world, and it was to these
groups that FDR declared famously *“they who seek to establish systems of
government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of
individual rulers call this a new order. It is not new and it is not
order”.* The President knew of what he spoke as he had declared open war on
these American fascists from 1932 onward
<https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/11/08/how-to-crush-bankers-dictatorship-lesson-from-1933/>
.

Capra not only struggled to revive Roosevelt’s mission to end poverty,
hunger and war after the war ended, but also struggled against the CIA-run
Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF)
<https://risingtidefoundation.net/2019/11/15/why-must-aesthetics-govern-a-society-worthy-of-political-freedom-ask-the-cia/>which
was created in 1949 to shape the new era of art, music and cinema in the
post war age as weapons against communism. The CCF had spared no time in
purging Hollywood of all “FDR patriots” under the FBI-steered witch hunt
known as Mcarthyism on the one hand while promoting a new culture of
banality on the other pouring millions of dollars into mind deadening film
scripts conducive to an age of white collar consumerism. This CIA/CCF
agenda was recognized by only a few leading film directors as a spiritual
virus that had to be stopped at all costs.

Other film makers at the time that stood against this corruption included
Robert Kennedy’s close friend John Frankenheimer, and Director Stanley
Kramer, whose film Judgement at Nuremberg
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbqDuUjm4aU> (1961) still stands alone as
one of the most potent artistic exposures of the western support for
eugenics and fascism.

Frankenheimer’s 7 Days in May (1964)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOd5lGVXOZw>showcased the real-life
planned coup to overthrow JFK which had been arranged by the Military’s
Joint Chiefs under the helm of Anglophile General Lyman Lemnitzer in 1962
after Kennedy rejected the General’s plans for Operations Northwoods.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods> (1)

Capra’s approach to combating this virus during the years of Cold War
terror took a different path to that chosen by Frankenheimer and Kramer.
Rather than exposing the rot directly, Capra focused on uplifting the image
of mankind by channeling all his efforts on science documentaries
<https://www.google.ca/search?q=frank+capra+science&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBx5Smq7jYAhWJRSYKHT2oAdAQ_AUICygC&biw=1242&bih=602>
for
children which he felt would have the most long term benefit to humanity.

Capra had been a target of the House on Un-American Activities due to his
friendship with many blacklisted film makers, and watched as Hollywood was
purged of those key individuals who acted as its conscience when Hollwood’s
role as a tool of patriotism or fascism was still undetermined. Just as the
political world was being re-shaped to a new post-moral world order, so too
was Hollywood, and as historian Micheal Medved stated,* “Capra refused to
adjust to the cynicism of the new order.”*

Capra’s documentary* The Strange Case of Cosmic Rays* illustrates his
powerful technique that sought to unite science and art through a reverence
for God’s creation which is in many ways as cutting edge today as it was 60
years ago.

Capra’s Greatest Films for this Holiday Season

After watching the brilliant It’s a Wonderful Life (1946
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jrzugs9a3w>) which not only exposed the
crushing schemes of Wall Street financiers who sought to ruin local
productive businesses/commercial banks but also awoke a higher sentiment of
transformative love in the hearts of the audience, I would highly recommend
watching his lesser known, yet equally powerful pieces You Can’t Take it
With You (1938) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRdPA42PK8M>, Meet John
Doe (1941) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaF2Q8lFI-I> and State of the
Union (1949) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vvpVsNbmhU>. Taken alongside Mr
Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Mon_wODYc>, these films act as
incredible Schillerian masterpieces which express the best potential for
the moral use of cinema as a tool to both spiritually and politically
ennoble a nation’s citizenry.

Capra dedicated himself to John F. Kennedy’s challenge to embark upon a new
age of “open-system” collaboration around un-ending discoveries in space,
producing his last film “Rendez-vous in Space”
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEd0WUBnaY8> in 1964. Spliced with
Beethoven’s 9th Symphony which set Schiller’s immortal poem Ode to Joy to
music celebrating humanity’s eventual emergence into an age of reason,
Capra had his narrator end with the powerful words:* “The Sun still lights
up and gives life to our planet, but only the mind of man can light up, and
give meaning to the light of the universe.”*

Even though darkness clouds the path to that better future towards which
world citizens like Frank Capra dedicated their lives, the light that they
knew was there is getting stronger by the day. So take the time to welcome
the year 2020 by adding some spiritual kindling onto your flame and let
Capra’s intention come alive again.

Happy Holidays to all.

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