Important New Film Exposes Neocon Stranglehold on Washington
Fascinating and frightening, hard to watch at times, but important and ultimately very compelling
Enter Robbie Martin’s film seriesA Very Heavy Agenda.
The three-part series begins in the weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when neoconservative thought leaders opportunistically used the country’s anxiety about another attack to push their agenda. A Very Heavy Agenda Part 1: “A Catalyzing Event,” details how Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and others shaped the policy response to the 9/11 attacks utilizing a playbook written at The Project For A New American Century (PNAC) well before the attacks .
Part 2: “How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The New Neocons,” picks up at the end of the Bush presidency, when the neoconservatives largely discredited by the Iraq War re-brand themselves and seek to resurrect past Reaganite glory by instigating conflict with Russia. PNAC is re-branded as The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), which pursues the same agenda with new lines of attack and operatives who make up for their lack of intellectual rigor with a savvier understanding of media manipulation.
In Part 2, the audience gets a look at the new “Information War,” where US state media, Russian state media, and those with various contradicting and corresponding interests battle it out on a host of platforms to control the narrative of the crisis in Ukraine and other world events.
Part 3: “Maintaining the World Order,” is set to be released in February and will provide an in-depth look at the role of the Kagan family and other neoconservative actors, who are still influencing and implementing US foreign policy. What are the ultimate ends and motivations for their very heavy agenda?
The series goes beyond simply broadening the understanding of the ideological dimension of the Bush years. It shows both the surprising continuity of neoconservative influence between the Bush and Obama Administrations, as well as how the neoconservatives adapted in the wake of their stunning policy failures in the Middle East.
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