First-rate propagandist Oliver Stone

Finally finished watching Oliver Stone's Ukraine On Fire. It took me 3 days. I had no idea Stone was a first-rate propagandist. I thought he was just a typical Hollywood doper.

Allow me just make three points. 

1. Like any typical propaganda, Stone presents only one side or a few spots of one side of a story. The big difference between Stone and any typical CCP propagandist is that Stone makes his story look extensively researched with reviews from a slew of people.

All the interviewed people are from Putin's side, but not everyone knows them well, so I can imagine innocent people falling for his narrative. He does not even bother to pretend to show the argument from the other side.

2. He also tries to show the historical background of the events, but in an extremely highly selective way to show all the problems of Ukrainians while completely avoiding the massive tragedies caused by the Soviets. Ukrainian soil is among the richest but 3.5 M Ukrainians died during the Holodomor (1932-1933 famine). Stone does not bother to mention this but he focuses on Stepan Bandera who collaborated with Nazi Germany for Ukrainian independence though was arrested by Gestapo later.

Let me give you two examples of similar figures.

A. Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's father is considered the father of modern Myanmar. He served as the war minister of the puppet Myanmar government set up by the Japanese fascists.

B. Widely respected late Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui volunteered to join the fascist Imperial Japanese Army in WWII.

Does this mean Burmese and Taiwanese are Nazis and need denazification?

3. Though Stone does not say it explicitly, his movie implies that the majority of Ukrainians are ill-informed and stupid, and Russians immersed in Putin controlled media are a better people.

If the CCP does not hire Stone, they can follow Stone's scheme to make movies about the 1989 Beijing and 2019 HK pro-democracy movements to portray the protesters as fools and radicals played by Western governments.



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