Chris Spencer

Based, in part, on: Raymond Chandler, on the Struggles of Hollywood Writers, The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/11/writers-in-hollywood/

Raymond Chandler was an author and a screenwriter. He is best known for his detective novels and their protagonist, the private detective Philip Marlowe. More...

Hollywood likes to fancy itself as the moral guardian of the world, a fearless lighthouse of justice, equality, and social activism. The red carpet is a platform for star-studded declarations of steadfast support for human rights, climate change activism, gender equality, and advancing cause of wokeness. The Oscars are no longer a celebration of cinematic achievement, but have morphed into a freakish, politically-correct ritual where actors lecture us on the evils of the world and demand change from their gilded platforms.

Hollywood manages to juggle a rather odd set of moral contradictions - glaring silence and active complicity when it comes to some of the most horrific and ongoing human rights abuses on Earth. It's the same Hollywood that boasts about its "moral bastion" that dares to lecture the world on matters concerning human dignity, equity, and justice.

Hypocrisy and Silence: Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon

Hollywood's hypocrisy is unbelievable once we turn toward Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Funding ethnic cleansing, occupation, and even genocide in Occupied Palestine are not issues of heated debate, but cold, hard realities. Hollywood, with its global platform and strident advocacy for "human rights" causes, remains eerily silent when the blood of Palestinian civilians is spilled. Hollywood, minus woke sensibility, are the fund raisers and cheerleaders of genocide.

The red-carpet impassioned speeches stop short of demanding an end to apartheid. No #FreePalestine hashtags trending among the stars. Instead, we are treated to a parade of films and media that cheer on violence in the name of "self-defense." Stars stand in support of colonial projects and offer nothing more than token gestures in the direction of justice.

Hollywood cognitive dissonance is astounding. Hollywood, in all its moral posturing, endorses and profits from the very powers that carry out these atrocities. Yet, it remains first in line to present itself as the world's preeminent advocate for the oppressed - so long as those oppressors are anyone but their sponsors.

The "Moral Policing" of Earth: Hollywood's Selective Compassion

Let's begin with the concept that Hollywood has become the moral conscience of the world. During the last few decades, the film industry has molded itself into the self-anointed keeper of virtue. Every awards show serves as a virtue-signaling opportunity whereby actors and filmmakers pat their own backs in self-congratulatory unison on everything from climate change to racial injustice while basking in the most excessive indulgence of private jets, mansions, and multi-million-dollar contracts. They are, after all, the prophets leading us mere mortals to the Promised Land.

But on matters close to Hollywood's purse or those ruffling the feathers of its rich and powerful patrons, suddenly the moral compass goes awry. Hollywood does not even flinch when churning out a spate of films demonizing regimes in countries whose political and economic systems go against the interests of the U.S. Think American Sniper or Zero Dark Thirty: films positioning the US military as knights in shining armor, their violence sanitized with ideological fig leaves, along with war crimes.

The seldom times the conversation shifts to the Middle East, the narrative changes drastically. The same moral giants who decry injustice in every corner of the globe fall silent or, worse, actively promote the very forces that commit crimes against humanity. Israel has long enjoyed a favorable relationship with Hollywood. From media moguls receiving generous financial backing to actors who repeatedly refuse to speak out against the apartheid state, Hollywood's complicity in Israeli violence is an open secret.

The Silent Apocalypse of Gaza: When Israeli Airstrikes Rain Down

When Israeli airstrikes rain down on Gaza, when 44,000 Palestinians are killed and their homes reduced to rubble, Hollywood - the moral paragon - responds like frightened crickets. There may be that rare, occasional filmmaker who dares to take on the situation, but even then, it's carefully measured, usually 'balanced' with Israeli narratives, rarely critical enough to upset the political elite or their corporate sponsors. Set that against the hue and cry over human rights abuses in other parts of the world, and the disconnect is painful to see: the moral outrage in Hollywood is a contrived performance, much more about optics than actually seeking justice.

What is even more astonishing is how easy it is for Hollywood to keep this farce up. One moment, - celebrating diversity with films like Black Panther, lauding representation of Black empowerment; the next, - standing shoulder to shoulder with those whose actions directly contradict the values of liberty and equality. Can Hollywood, in its moral delusion, really hold the mantle of justice when it simultaneously supports genocide in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon and calls itself the "moral bastion of the earth?"

Presstitutes of Today, Media Circus

But Hollywood is by no means the lonely contributor to this grand narrative of moral bankruptcy. I said that the mainstream media-which I call presstitutes-play their role in this global farce. The media, which should have been the Fourth Estate, now is largely an integral part of the corporate-owned estate-the military-industrial complex-serving the interest of the powerful while keeping the masses misinformed and malleable.

While the mainstream may assume a posture of journalistic integrity, very close inspection betrays how easily their editorials often get compromised by the same motives as corporate dollars and political elites - and yes, the very forces responsible for Hollywood's moral gymnastics. This includes being intransigent with the brutal Israel policy toward the Palestinians, fitting the issue within a hostile media frame that sympathizes with Israel at the expense of Palestinian voices. In a rare moment of media transparency, the New York Times admitted to a pattern of editorial choices that have skewed public perception of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The headline alone, "Israel's Right to Defend Itself", screams bias, as though Palestinians have no right to resist occupation or defend themselves from unprovoked aggression.

This is where the media's selective outrage very poignantly juxtaposes their response to other global injustices. While mainstream media is ever ready, with a furor raised, over abuses of power in other countries, with regard to the State of Israel and actions no of ethnic cleansing, this collective media voice stutters, falters, and retreats into silence. Because of ownership patterns, political pressure, or outright complicity, the result is the same: truth gets buried under an avalanche of disinformation.

TikTok, YouTube, Social Media: The New Age Censorship

If you think Hollywood and the mainstream media were bad, wait until you hear what is going on with social media. Social media platforms, including TikTok and YouTube-all those that were once being held up as beacons for free expression-have in large part transformed into companies interested only in compliance, engagement, and above all, profit. These platforms have built themselves on the premise of censoring ideas that run counter to the interests of their sponsors, yet they continue to masquerade as neutral facilitators of free speech.

Algorithms put up by TikTok and YouTube are more than guidelines on how to get your viral cat videos or the dances. They are a symphony of algorithms designed for preventing content from exposing or evoking dissenting viewpoints but rather reinforcing the status quo. Any such content blaming Israel, even the doubtful one, from the hegemonic narrative, has come off through flagging, de monetization, and suppression several times. Any channel daring to speak against Israeli apartheid faces shadow banning or gets removed from search or is outright banned.

The new age of self-censorship is not just a feature of traditional media; it's baked into the algorithms of social media itself. Content creators are forced to play by the rules - rules that privilege certain ideas and narratives while silencing others. Want to talk about Palestine? Better keep tame, polite, and make sure you aren't upsetting the wrong people. Otherwise, your channel could just disappear into the void, and your stream of revenues with it.

The age of free speech on YouTube or TikTok is long over. Like their corporate cousins in Hollywood and the MSM, these platforms operate on a business model predicated on compliance. And as far as sensitive political issues - like Israel and Palestine - are concerned, compliance means silence. What was once an illusion of free expression has been replaced by a concrete reality of corporate-sponsored speech that mirrors the interests of the powerful.

A Global Power Struggle: Who Controls the Narrative?

Wrapped up in all that hypocrisy is one irrefutable fact: whoever controls the flow of information controls power. Hollywood, the media, and social networks are feeding from the same trough, the global oligarchy. These organizations may masquerade as champions of the downtrodden, but when it comes to the crunch, they are businesses, pure and simple. And like any other business, they will stop at nothing to defend their bottom line.

For Hollywood, that means complicity with military-industrial interests, the suppression of dissent, and the propagation of narratives that rationalize imperial actions. For the media, it means kowtowing to corporate advertisers and political masters rather than journalistic integrity. And for social media, it means designing algorithms to make the most profitable, not the most truthful, content rise to the top.

So, when Hollywood and its media cousins portray themselves as "champions of morality"-well, this is theater. This is an act, from a profiteering empire which knows how to sell you "justice" while selling out the very people who need it most.

The Empty Virtue of Hollywood and the MSM

The eventual result has been that Hollywood, the mainstream media, and new digital platforms are but mere shadows of what they used to be: paying lip service to justice when their actions reveal that this is only an idle fancy. They wrap their brands in "woke" causes provided such causes threaten none of their sponsors or other business interests. They hound others for accountability, yet never themselves stand to account for complicity in some of the worst injustices of our times.

It's about time we called Hollywood and the media out for what they really are: corporate puppets dancing to the tune of the powers that be. Sure, they may talk a big game of morality, but when it gets down to brass tacks, they're as complicit in the machinery of oppression as the very governments they pretend to decry.

So, the next time some actor is giving a tearful speech about human rights, or some "progressive" media outlet is condemning injustice, let's be real-these are the same institutions that stand and watch as genocide is committed on the world stage while counting their profits and patting themselves on the back over their own moral superiority. The moral bastions of Hollywood and the MSM are but hollow shells built upon the bones of their own contradictions.

And so, the asymmetrical morals show goes on:

Dec 3, 2024 7:16 AM EST

Amazon and Google accused of facilitating "world's first AI-powered genocide" in Gaza

By Kaitlyn Kennedy

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Amazon and Google have been accused of aiding and abetting Israel's genocide in Gaza in a new submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

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The Moral "Free Speech" Bastion of Earth: Hollywood, Media, and Progressive Hypocrisy
https://olivebiodiesel.com/Writers_In_Hollywood.html