Zeitgeist: The Movie Parts 2 & 3
First a little background: I run a skeptical social group in Buffalo, NY called "Drinking Skeptically" we are a part of the Center For Inquiry and are only a few months old. During our second meeting a newcomer was asking about the movie Zeitgeist. He was quickly introduced to me, because conspiracy theories are kind of my thing (obviously), and asked me what I thought of the film. I admitted that I hadn't seen it but that it comes up on my "recommended" list on Netflix. A few attendees (I'm not using names since I don't have their permission) informed that it some parts made sense but overall it was just a conspiracy theory documentary but that I should really check it out. I spent two weeks watching it because my laptop's hard drive crashed (also why I haven't updated in awhile), and I was finally able to finish it with extensive notes on it. What follows is a review of the movie.
I must first explain that part 1 of the movie covers the story of Jesus and how it's a complete fiction. I'm going to skip this because it's a whole bunch of religious claims and I have a different blog for that. I'll post a link in the future and because Part I of the movie bears no relevance to the second and third parts. Generously you could tie it to the movie's overall concluding statement, but it would be a stretch.
The biggest fault in the movie is that it doesn't know what it wants to say. I mean, it has a point, but it doesn't get to it until the end and until then it's a mish-mash of three conspiracy theories which have little connection to each other than a tenuous claim that there is a "they" that wants all human beings as slaves. This movie doesn't stretch into David Icke, interdimensional lizard demon land, but it comes about as close as you can get. The second general problem here is that the movie's conspiracy arguments contradict each other in several places.
For example part I is the 9/11 conspiracy. This part alleges that 9/11 was an inside job, but also that no planes were used, or there were planes but they were remotely piloted because one of the terrorists did poorly in flight school.* The best the movie gets consistently is to make a claim that planes hit the WTC buildings but then there were explosives on the inside of the buildings to make them come down. Fine, we can play along, but why even us the planes in the first place since the WTC had already been exposed to a truck bomb attack in the 90s? The best type of conspiracy is one that has the fewest moving parts possible--limits the number of things that can go wrong. In general this conspiracy theory is thoroughly debunked so putting it in the movie does one of two things: it either makes the movie a straight up 9/11 truther film or it distracts from the ultimate point. Here it is the latter because there's no link to the overall thesis.
The third part claims that the banks control everything. That the federal reserve is run by the elite families (Rothschilds, Morgans, Warburgs, Rockefellers) who are in control of everything and start wars to plunge nations into debt so that they can collect the debt and get rich? I lost the thread of motive here. Yet, this conflicts with the general point of part II. See, 9/11 was faked in order to give us justification to invade Afghanistan, but part III claims that because of the economic control over the money supply by the federal reserve they don't need to do any of this. They can just make the war, but every time they want one they need to get public support by staging a disaster. It's curious that they didn't drop in the Spanish-American war and the Maine here since that one is actually true(-ish, the explosion wasn't staged but the blame was manufactured).
The largest problem with Part III is that it doesn't understand the economics behind the federal reserve bank or money in general. For example, the movie claims that as the 1908 financial collapse was beginning, the federal reserve bank should have increased the currency supply but instead it shrank it and this created a large debt. Ok, that's about half right, but the solution is wrong. If the federal reserve bank just increased the money supply that creates inflation. It's the exact thing that Weimar government did after WWI which devalued the German currency to the point where it was effectively useless. Zimbabwe had to introduce currency notes in millions, and billions of units where each note was worth nothing despite the large number printed on it. If you shrink the currency supply you keep the value of the currency and this actually protects against inflation, which can be catastrophic. This isn't graduate level economics either, I only know how this works from arguing with Ron Paul libertarians back in 2008 as they tried to convince me the US should return to the gold standard.
I could fill a series of posts with the errors the movie makes and the conspiracies it pushes, but I'll move on since I'm just trying to critique the movie. The movie closes with about four different spots, so it's worse than a Peter Jackson trilogy. In makes the claim that "they" won't have to take our liberty, we'll ask "them" to do it. Now, this, I have to say, is a good point. After 9/11 most American supported the Patriot Act, and most Americans now freely give up their privacy by posting everything they are doing or thinking to places like Facebook and Twitter (I guess I should put in Myspace because of the time period). They are right, the general zeitgeist of American society is one of fear. We fear foreigners, we fear people that are different, we want something to fight against, and that's where the surrender of control is happening. The Patriot Act didn't occur after the Oklahoma City Bombing even though American anti-government militia groups are just as dangerous as foreign anti-government groups (in some cases more dangerous), but we happily signed on to a domestic spying program that used a series of legal loopholes in order to get warrantless surveillance. Yet, the movie tries to make the point that there's a puppet master in all of this which is to the detriment of the main point.
It claims that the goal is a series of permanent resource wars in order to push government spending so "they" can collect on the payments. Why is any of this necessary? Is it because "they" aren't very smart and can't think of a better way to do this? Or is it because the claim is so weak that it needs to force post hoc events into the narrative? Clearly, it's the latter since "they" aren't a thing.
Another concluding claim is that eventually we are going to all need RFID chips so that the government can track us. To what purpose? Who knows, but again it's unnecessary since we all gleefully carry GPS enabled phones on us with microphones and cameras on them.
What the movie seems to be attempting is to unite right wing conspiracy types with left wing conspiracy types. To grab both ends of the horseshoe, the most extreme tea party trump supporter on the right and the most leftist Bernie bro OWS on the left: if we remember the Tea Party and OWS had the same goal before they both got extremist about it. I'll say this: it's well made but it's too bad that the movie uses debunked and false claims to make its point.
And I'm still confused by the purpose of the Jesus stuff in the beginning.
*Which is false, the student in question wasn't a bad pilot he was a disruptive and terrible student. Those are two different things.
I must first explain that part 1 of the movie covers the story of Jesus and how it's a complete fiction. I'm going to skip this because it's a whole bunch of religious claims and I have a different blog for that. I'll post a link in the future and because Part I of the movie bears no relevance to the second and third parts. Generously you could tie it to the movie's overall concluding statement, but it would be a stretch.
The biggest fault in the movie is that it doesn't know what it wants to say. I mean, it has a point, but it doesn't get to it until the end and until then it's a mish-mash of three conspiracy theories which have little connection to each other than a tenuous claim that there is a "they" that wants all human beings as slaves. This movie doesn't stretch into David Icke, interdimensional lizard demon land, but it comes about as close as you can get. The second general problem here is that the movie's conspiracy arguments contradict each other in several places.
For example part I is the 9/11 conspiracy. This part alleges that 9/11 was an inside job, but also that no planes were used, or there were planes but they were remotely piloted because one of the terrorists did poorly in flight school.* The best the movie gets consistently is to make a claim that planes hit the WTC buildings but then there were explosives on the inside of the buildings to make them come down. Fine, we can play along, but why even us the planes in the first place since the WTC had already been exposed to a truck bomb attack in the 90s? The best type of conspiracy is one that has the fewest moving parts possible--limits the number of things that can go wrong. In general this conspiracy theory is thoroughly debunked so putting it in the movie does one of two things: it either makes the movie a straight up 9/11 truther film or it distracts from the ultimate point. Here it is the latter because there's no link to the overall thesis.
The third part claims that the banks control everything. That the federal reserve is run by the elite families (Rothschilds, Morgans, Warburgs, Rockefellers) who are in control of everything and start wars to plunge nations into debt so that they can collect the debt and get rich? I lost the thread of motive here. Yet, this conflicts with the general point of part II. See, 9/11 was faked in order to give us justification to invade Afghanistan, but part III claims that because of the economic control over the money supply by the federal reserve they don't need to do any of this. They can just make the war, but every time they want one they need to get public support by staging a disaster. It's curious that they didn't drop in the Spanish-American war and the Maine here since that one is actually true(-ish, the explosion wasn't staged but the blame was manufactured).
The largest problem with Part III is that it doesn't understand the economics behind the federal reserve bank or money in general. For example, the movie claims that as the 1908 financial collapse was beginning, the federal reserve bank should have increased the currency supply but instead it shrank it and this created a large debt. Ok, that's about half right, but the solution is wrong. If the federal reserve bank just increased the money supply that creates inflation. It's the exact thing that Weimar government did after WWI which devalued the German currency to the point where it was effectively useless. Zimbabwe had to introduce currency notes in millions, and billions of units where each note was worth nothing despite the large number printed on it. If you shrink the currency supply you keep the value of the currency and this actually protects against inflation, which can be catastrophic. This isn't graduate level economics either, I only know how this works from arguing with Ron Paul libertarians back in 2008 as they tried to convince me the US should return to the gold standard.
I could fill a series of posts with the errors the movie makes and the conspiracies it pushes, but I'll move on since I'm just trying to critique the movie. The movie closes with about four different spots, so it's worse than a Peter Jackson trilogy. In makes the claim that "they" won't have to take our liberty, we'll ask "them" to do it. Now, this, I have to say, is a good point. After 9/11 most American supported the Patriot Act, and most Americans now freely give up their privacy by posting everything they are doing or thinking to places like Facebook and Twitter (I guess I should put in Myspace because of the time period). They are right, the general zeitgeist of American society is one of fear. We fear foreigners, we fear people that are different, we want something to fight against, and that's where the surrender of control is happening. The Patriot Act didn't occur after the Oklahoma City Bombing even though American anti-government militia groups are just as dangerous as foreign anti-government groups (in some cases more dangerous), but we happily signed on to a domestic spying program that used a series of legal loopholes in order to get warrantless surveillance. Yet, the movie tries to make the point that there's a puppet master in all of this which is to the detriment of the main point.
It claims that the goal is a series of permanent resource wars in order to push government spending so "they" can collect on the payments. Why is any of this necessary? Is it because "they" aren't very smart and can't think of a better way to do this? Or is it because the claim is so weak that it needs to force post hoc events into the narrative? Clearly, it's the latter since "they" aren't a thing.
Another concluding claim is that eventually we are going to all need RFID chips so that the government can track us. To what purpose? Who knows, but again it's unnecessary since we all gleefully carry GPS enabled phones on us with microphones and cameras on them.
What the movie seems to be attempting is to unite right wing conspiracy types with left wing conspiracy types. To grab both ends of the horseshoe, the most extreme tea party trump supporter on the right and the most leftist Bernie bro OWS on the left: if we remember the Tea Party and OWS had the same goal before they both got extremist about it. I'll say this: it's well made but it's too bad that the movie uses debunked and false claims to make its point.
And I'm still confused by the purpose of the Jesus stuff in the beginning.
*Which is false, the student in question wasn't a bad pilot he was a disruptive and terrible student. Those are two different things.
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