7 November 2011 >>
Recently, I brought a camera and a few multiple-choice questions to Zuccotti Park, where I conducted a quiz game with some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. As a reward for getting the answers right, contestants were able to choose among several options for prizes. Unfortunately, one gentleman in the audience apparently did not appreciate the prize selections made by his fellow protesters, so he disrupted the game, bear-hugged me, grabbed the question cards out of my hand and attempted to run off with them before I stopped him.
You can watch the video embedded below, or visit YouTube:
Click through to the video page to see footnotes for the questions in the quiz.
Video >>
10 October 2011 @ 4:57PM >>InsideAcademia.tv’s Andy Nash recently interviewed me via Skype, and the interview is now available online:
We discuss the history of campus political correctness, what inspired me to make the film Indoctrinate U, and the effects of the continued politicization of academia.
31 March 2010 >>
Not too long ago, taking to the streets to protest your government was considered a patriotic act.
It’s true!
But it seems that publicly airing your grievances stopped being patriotic right around noon on January 20th, 2009.
Once President Obama was sworn in, protesting became incitement to violence.
If you’ve opened up a newspaper or watched a cable news program in the past week or so, you’ve probably seen members of the media painting Tea Party activists as dangerous bigots. That’s because disagreeing with President Obama on issues like government spending and high taxes makes you a racist, you see.
What’s interesting about the media’s latest freak-out is that there were radicals a-plenty under President Bush. They protested in the streets. They talked openly about revolution and killing. But oddly, the violent imagery used by people claiming to be advocates for peace never registered with the media. They were too busy fawning over Cindy Sheehan.
Why the difference in coverage? Did the media cheerlead protests against President Bush to hurt him politically? Are they trying to marginalize the increasingly powerful Tea Party movement because they favor President Obama’s agenda?
One thing’s for sure: If there is such a thing as dangerous rhetoric, then the media is at least one president too late in reporting the story.
Don’t believe me?
Well, then let’s take a trip down memory lane...
Video >>
13 October 2009 @ 6:22PM >>
Months before Barack Obama formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, the name “Obama” was already being stamped on or sewn into objects of every type, and these objects could be purchased just about anywhere you happened to be standing. Keychains, buttons, hats, t-shirts were all readily available. I saw Obama skateboards and heard rumors of Obama bongs. Eventually, companies usually seen selling things like pewter gnomes and porcelain kittens got into the game, hawking commemorative coins and Obama dinner plates on late-night cable shows.
Video >>
20 August 2009 >>
Not too long ago, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets with signs comparing our president to Adolf Hitler, painting him as “the world’s biggest terrorist,” even calling outright for his killing. Here in New York City, posters of a cartoon George W. Bush replete with simulated bullet holes began springing up around town.
It was a time when Democratic politicians complained loudly whenever they felt their patriotism was being impugned. In those days, bumper stickers reminded us that “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, declared that disruptive protests were “very American and very important.” Now that protests are directed against a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, Nancy Pelosi thinks such disruptions are “un-American.”
During the Bush era, the media looked the other way at the extremist element in the protest movement; the large number of protest signs bearing swastikas and mathematical formulae like “Bush=Hitler” just didn’t interest them. But it did interest me, and because the media didn’t want to report it, I did some reporting of my own. The videos I posted online inadvertently launched me on a second career as a documentary filmmaker.
I recently dug through my old footage and found many examples of the same kind of inflammatory speech that the media and the Democratic Party—forgive the redundancy—now decry. What follows are just a few examples.
More >>
21 May 2009 @ 7:26PM >>
In 21st century America, the federal government’s solution to every financial problem seems the same: people who are responsible with money are forced to foot the bill for the reckless.
Video >>
20 March 2009 @ 9:08AM >>
A television producer recently asked me for my reel. It had been quite a while since I updated it, so I put together a new one:
By the way, I’m looking for an agent, so if you know a good one, please let me know!
11 March 2009 >>
I was pleased to have been invited on CNN to discuss Indoctrinate U with Lou Dobbs, but I was blown away at how complimentary he was. Dobbs called the film “terrific” and said, “I can’t recommend it highly enough.” He closed by recommending that viewers “get this documentary. It’s extraordinary.”
In related news, Indoctrinate U will be shown at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival on Tuesday, March 24th at 6:00PM. The film will be shown at the Village East Cinema, on 12th Street and Second Avenue. Tickets are available online.
1 February 2009 >>
Here’s a TV report from 1981 predicting the future of newspapers. What’s interesting is how much of it misses the mark...and how much of it doesn’t.
23 January 2009 @ 9:01AM >>
Apparently, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are trying to do my work for me. I can’t find a better illustration of the disturbing cult-like quality among President Barack Obama’s more enthusiastic supporters than this video put together by the celebrity duo:
Movie star Susan Sarandon compared President Obama to Jesus. Broadway and film actor Alan Cumming thought of him more like Mahatma Gandhi.
“He is a community organizer like Jesus was,” Sarandon said Tuesday night on the bright blue carpet leading into the Creative Coalition’s 2009 Ball at the Harman Center for the Arts in Chinatown. “And now, we’re a community and he can organize us.”
I get why people like our new president. I understand the historical significance of his election. And there is one thing about his election that makes me very happy: it disproves the leftist slander that America is a racist, bigoted country.
But all this pledging to blindly follow and serve The Leader not only highlights the intellectual unseriousness of the pledgers, it also shows that none of these folks know enough history to understand where this sort of groupthink can lead.
19 January 2009 >>
Congressman Charles Rangel has been in the news quite a bit lately. He’s having trouble keeping up with his taxes, despite being the chairman of the committee responsible for writing the nation’s tax laws.
Video >>
Keith John Sampson, a student at Indiana University - Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI), was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book about a riot that took place in 1924 between Notre Dame students and the Ku Klux Klan.
Called Notre Dame vs. The Klan, the book’s author describes it as a discussion of a historical event and a celebration of the defeat of the white supremacist terrorist group in that event.
In an odd twist, the very book that led to Sampson’s racial harassment “conviction” was carried in the school’s own library!
But that didn’t stop the IUPUI’s Affirmative Action Office from finding Sampson giulty of racial harassment.
You can watch Andrew Marcus’s coverage of this case here:
If this is the kind of story that infuriates you, check out Indoctrinate U if you haven’t already.
25 August 2008 @ 9:10AM >>
Barack Obama launched his political career with a fundraiser in the house of Bill Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist who—along with his wife Bernardine Dohrn—founded a radical Marxist group in the 1960s called the Weather Underground.
The Weather Underground was responsible for a number of bombings around the United States, including the U.S. Capitol building and the Pentagon.
On the morning that the World Trade Center was collapsing, the New York Timesran an article on Ayers in which he was quoted as saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” You have to wonder whether Ayers felt some level of glee watching the news that day.
The relationship between Ayers and Obama is extensive: for years, they worked together on a project called the Annenberg Challenge.
You’d think the media would delve into this relationship a little. If John McCain kicked off his political career at the house of, say, a bomber of abortion clinics, you probably would have heard about it by now. But the media, so clearly in love with Barack Obama, isn’t doing its job.
In election cycles a decade or more ago, that would have mattered more. But with the establishment media’s weakening grip on controlling coverage—ask John Edwards about that—the old gatekeepers can’t prevent this news from being discussed.
If anything, the media’s reluctance to discuss Obama’s shady connections may end up torpedoing the Democrats’ chances of taking back the White House. Ironic that the media’s desire to see Obama elected ended up causing the Democrats to nominate someone who might be the least electable candidate.
Because the media hasn’t been doing its job covering Obama’s connection to Bill Ayers, ads like this one are going to resonate this fall:
The second video shows what happens when a sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice comes to give a speech on campus. In Welcome Wagon NYC, students at NYU Law School object quite strongly to the presence of Antonin Scalia, giving him a reception worse than the President of Iran received at that other large Manhattan institution, Columbia University.
7 February 2008 @ 9:22AM >>
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group featured in Indoctrinate U for their role in defending the free speech and free thought rights of students and professors alike, has launched a video project highlighting their work. Andrew Marcus and I worked on their first two videos, the first of which FIRE released yesterday:
This video [...] serves as an introduction to FIRE, its principles and issues, and its commitment to liberty on campus. It then turns to FIRE’s case at San Francisco State University, where students endured a months-long investigation for stomping on Hamas and Hezbollah flags during an anti-terrorism protest.
18 November 2007 @ 12:26PM >>
Jared Lapidus, who got his start in professional filmmaking shooting footage for Indoctrinate U, has just released a short film he directed called The Libel Tourist.
The film covers the abuses of exceedingly loose, plantiff-friendly libel laws in Britain, where American authors can now be sued for books never published there.
As long as a single after-market copy of a book is sold in Britain—such as on eBay or Amazon’s used books section—British courts can claim jurisdiction and rule against authors for things that would be protected First Amendment speech here in the U.S.
The Libel Tourist covers an issue that’s going to become increasingly important in a world where it’s next to impossible to contain the written word within a single country’s borders.
25 October 2007 @ 9:07AM >>
Last night, David Horowitz came to speak at Emory University as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, an event created to highlight the human rights abuses committed in the name of Islam around the world. Horowitz started off by showing a picture of a woman being shot in the head for “sexual improprieties.” In some Muslim cultures, sexual impropriety includes being a victim of rape, something for which countless women have been killed in an attempt to restore the “honor” of the rape victim’s family.
It used to be that leftists would be outraged by such a thing. After all, they claim to sympathize with the oppressed. But these days, when women are killed for being the victims of rape, or when gays are executed for being who they are, leftists first must look into who is doing the killing. If it’s a Muslim doing the killing, then for some reason, it is excusable.
That’s because there is a hierarchy of political correctness, where one group’s rights can be superceded by another group’s rights depending on which group is viewed as more oppressed by Westerners. This leads to some rather strange double-standards: if a Christian opposes gay marriage on religious grounds, he’d be branded a bigot and would be blacklisted from campus. But if a Muslim leads a country that routinely executes gays, he would be welcomed with open arms.
This is the environment into which David Horowitz stepped when he tried to demonstrate the very real crimes against humanity that are committed in the name of Islam. So, naturally, the leftists at Emory University had to make sure that Horowitz’s speech got shut down: in today’s politically correct world, the “rights” of radical Muslims to murder women who run afoul of Sharia law apparently trumps the right of David Horowitz to criticize those murders. So, naturally, Horowitz needed to be silenced.
The Emory University College Republicans, which sponsored Horowitz’s speech, issued a press release describing what happened:
On Wednesday evening, the Emory University Chapter of the College Republicans hosted acclaimed author and activist David Horowitz for a lecture on radical Islam as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. From the beginning of Horowitz’s speech, rowdy protesters continually interrupted him and less than half an hour into the event, the crowd became so disruptive that police were called in and Horowitz had to be escorted off stage.
Over 300 people - a cross-section of students, professors, and Atlanta community members - packed into White Hall where the event was held. The audience included a wide range of Leftists from Amnesty International, Veterans for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as Muslim groups such as the Muslim Student Association. In addition, members of “National Project to Defend Dissent & Critical Thinking in Academia,” an organization dedicated to opposing Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events throughout the country, participated in the protests dressed in orange attire as a reference to Guantanamo Bay. There was also a sizable group of men and women dressed in traditional Muslim garb as well as students wearing Kafiyehs, a symbol of Arab solidarity.
“I’ve spoken at Emory University several times and I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Horowitz responding to the crowd as they shouted and jeered. “This is exactly what the fascists did in Germany in the 1930s.” Protesters began their efforts as soon as Horowitz was introduced with boos and chants of “Heil Hitler.” Despite the people who stood with their backs to Horowitz and the shouting of obscenities and other remarks from audience members, Horowitz attempted to deliver his speech that covered academic freedom and radical Islam. The loud chants, sign-waving, and disruptive gestures continued to escalate from audience members until the atmosphere was so chaotic that even the police present were unable to subdue the crowd. Horowitz was led off stage and left the campus under tight security, and the event came to an abrupt end.
This is yet another example of how college campuses no longer have any tolerance for diversity of thought. Free speech is only welcome on campus if you say the right things.
11 October 2007 @ 3:32PM >>
Michael Totten brought his video camera along on a foot patrol in Ramadi, the capital of the once-violent Anbar province in Iraq. He returns with 18 minutes showing what happens when it’s time for the barbed wire to come down.
31 July 2007 @ 12:01PM >>
Over at the Indoctrinate U film website, we are starting to post some of the scenes we loved but ended up having to cut from the film.
This less-than-five-minute video may prove embarrassing to the administration of Columbia University, which very clearly did not want me filming—unless I could convince them that my film would paper over the truth and make the university look good.
20 June 2007 @ 8:18AM >>
As Hollywood gears up the hype machine to promote Michael Moore’s most recent political advertisement, it would be wise to remember that entrusting your health to government bureaucrats does have its risks. A look at Canada’s government-run system shows what happens to those who fall through the cracks: permanent, life-altering damage or even death.
Free Market Cure, a newly-launched website, provides some facts you might not see in Moore’s film. The site already contains four short videos covering healthcare issues, with more to come.
Michael J. Totten’s latest dispatch from Iraq, “Meet the Iraqi Police in Kirkuk,” contains a compelling four-minute video taken after Iraqi police arrested the driver of a vehicle whose passenger was shooting at a crowd. The video is half-way down the page, embedded in one of Totten’s characteristically vivid reports.
Totten is a groundbreaking reporter—calling him a blogger seems to diminish the stature of his work—who writes (and now films) from all over the Middle East thanks to contributions from people who find his work valuable. If you think as highly of his work as I do, please dump a few coins in the tip jar at the end of his post.
