The New Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex at War and Play

Bringing the War Home: The New Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex at War and Play
by Nick Turse complete article here

In his famed 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of a dangerous intertwining of private corporations, the armed forces, and the federal government for which he coined the term "the military-industrial complex." By then, the Pentagon had long been exercising script control over most war films made in Hollywood and the CIA was running covert operations in Vietnam through a front program at Michigan State University, but Ike wasn't focused on minor supporting players like the entertainment industry or academia. In the intervening decades, however, both have grown ever more central to the Pentagon's mission. No longer is the Ivory Tower's participation limited to advisory programs and research for future weapons systems or Hollywood's contribution a series of Why We Fight propaganda films or triumphalist John Wayne flicks.

In the late 1990s, the otherwise dreadful soundtrack for Godzilla, that blockbuster-flop of a movie, featured a track, "No Shelter," by rebel rap/rockers Rage Against the Machine that trashed both the movie ("And Godzilla pure muthafuckin filler, To keep ya eyes off the real killer") and a consumer-driven militarized Hollywood, writ large:

What ya need is what they sellin'
Make you think that buyin' is rebellin'
From the theaters to malls on every shore
Tha thin line between entertainment and war

The line had by then grown thin indeed. Today, it hardly exists at all. The military is now in the midst of a full-scale occupation of the entertainment industry, conducted with far more skill (and enthusiasm on the part of the occupied) than the one in Iraq. Perhaps the "front" where the most significant victories have been scored in the military's latest media-entertainment blitz is the one where our most vulnerable population – children -- resides. Through toys, especially videogames, the military and its partners in academia and the entertainment industry have not only blurred the line between entertainment and war, but created a media culture thoroughly capable of preparing America's children for armed conflict. This is less a matter of simple military indoctrination than near immersion in a virtual world of war beyond John Wayne's wildest dreams.

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This is the stuff I've been pushing lately. Watch movies on cable TV and it's one war propaganda film after another. Video games teach psychopathy. We have raised a whole culture that is immune to the deaths of our "enemies." For every anti-war movie there are 10000 pro-war movies. By the way, it was Malcolm Moos who wrote the speech for Ike and coined the term, military-industrial complex.

The majority of Americans form their ideas -- and hence their opinions -- through the prism of television and popular culture. The concepts and world views we are exposed to in these venues usually do more to misinform than enlighten.

Nick Turse's excellent article exposes the deliberate intentions behind this misinformation system, but goes further in exposing the indoctrination being administered through the violent games that have become so popular.

We are living in two worlds -- the fantasy world created for us by the powers that be, and the real world that will eventually burst this unsustainable bubble we've been living in.