by Nate Terani
As a young boy, I lived for a time under the rule of a totalitarian regime when visiting my parents’ homeland of Iran during the 1980s. It was only a few years after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the despotic new ruler, Ruhollah Khomeini, was investing heavily in his cultural propaganda machine. The Ayatollah’s dubious aim, like any new totalitarian, was to erase the proud culture of ancient Iran and replace it with one new and ideologically approved.
In 1983, journalist Amir Taheri catalogued many of the regime’s acts of cultural vandalism. One in particular stands out: The mullahs and their ideological hit squads sought to erase the “problematic” history and legacy of Persia’s founding fathers, such as the first Persian emperor Cyrus the Great. According to Taheri: “New history books [were made to] depict Iran’s heroic kings, such as Cyrus the Great, as ‘cruel tyrants’ who are now ‘all assembled in Hell’. Great events of history [were] entirely rewritten by the mullahs.”
The parallels between the totalitarian regime of the Iranian mullahs and the cultural vandals seeking to erase America’s history today are frighteningly uncanny. Sadly, however, I can safely attest that even the state-run propaganda machine of the Iranian mullahs doesn’t compare to the ideologically evil propaganda that Hollywood elites — and their corporate henchmen — are promoting in America today.
Andrew Breitbart once said, “Politics is downstream from culture.” I would simply specify that “politics is downstream” from popular culture. Although the difference may at first seem negligible, it’s key to understanding the current Hollywood phenomenon.
American culture, by itself, is meant to coalesce the disparate voices of 350 million people. The reality, however, is that only a few voices are amplified by the powers that be. And it is those few voices that today shape the very fabric of our political discourse and national values, writ large. I would wager that if you asked any mainstream American whether the Hollywood movies and television shows of today reflect their real-life experiences and personal values, you would hear a resounding, “Hell, no.” Yet Hollywood does not seem to get the message — or, maybe, Hollywood is interested not in getting the message but in pushing a certain message.
What Iranian mullahs and communist dictators alike know is that, throughout the history of mankind, a society’s culture was kept alive through the telling and retelling of stories. These stories were meant to amplify the values and greatness of their civilizations as well as share the triumphs and tragedies their people faced. At their core, such stories innately reflect the daily realities of a people and their history. For that culture, the stories conveyed tales of both sinners and saints, good and bad, sorrowful and comedic. But key has always been the honest representation of the shared values of that society.
It is for this reason that every time a totalitarian regime has committed a coup d’état, it has first sought to erase and replace that country’s cultural hallmarks.
For storytelling goes beyond history — a well-told parable can elucidate for a society such timeless and aspirational virtues as honor, courage, and morality. These values then inevitably lead to the creation of a society whose people aspire to great heights and noble endeavors. Conversely, when the stories told serve only to promote degradation, cowardice, indecency, and immorality, the very light of that society is all but extinguished. Thus, “popular culture” can either lift a nation to aspirational heights or serve to demoralize its people into a state of abject darkness and self-hatred.
If you were an evil entity seeking to destroy mankind’s last best hope for liberty, individual freedom, and decency, you would surely target America.
In that pursuit, as your cabal works to commit a secret coup so as to become the center of a new globalist utopia, your henchmen would not rest in their endeavor to destroy the spirit and religious faith of the American people. After all, America is the one society whose citizens give the most to charity, whose government commits the most resources for international aid, and whose faith groups willingly face perilous conditions to evangelize in foreign nations. Thus, in order to for your silent coup to succeed, you would need to dismantle the very values that lie at the heart of American society.
You might, in fact, choose to slither into the corporate boardrooms of powerful multi-billion-dollar asset management firms. You might then use your immense power to purchase leverage over once-vaunted American entertainment companies — like Disney — so as to influence, infiltrate, and corrupt the storytelling institutions of this nation.
Perhaps you would set up a new standards-and-measures system, much like the ideological litmus tests of the former Soviet Union and Maoist China, in the name of “promoting progress.” Of course, this new system must have a catchy name to promote your secret communist agenda — doesn’t “Environmental, Social, Governance” sound great? In fact, it sounds so great that anyone who is for it seems open-minded and enlightened, and anyone who questions it must be dangerously regressive.
Tragically, this is no longer just a thought experiment. In fact, this evil new beast is a cultural demon that has been loosed onto an otherwise unsuspecting American public — and now we are seeing its ramifications within our cultural stories.
Hollywood Now Divides, Not Unifies
There used to be a time when Hollywood proudly highlighted the religious faith and patriotic stoicism of good men as core virtues. Movie writers would depict women as moral, nuanced, and complex — innately powerful because of their femininity and faith in God. By and large, these stories represented the reality of American life, especially for the men and women who over the years built our society.
Until recently, our storytelling mediums told the story of us. And for generation after generation, American boys and girls, going to the movies, saw society reflected back to them — just as it had been to their parents and grandparents. This passing of the cultural baton was crucial to understanding one’s identity in American society.
I was one of those American boys who, growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, connected to the stories told by Hollywood. My parents immigrated to the United States from Iran, but I didn’t automatically identify with a Middle Eastern heel like “The Iron Sheik” on WWF, or the terrorists in The Delta Force movies, just because of my parent’s ethnicity. No, I identified with Hulk Hogan and Chuck Norris smashing the bad guys because I aspired to be a brave American — as should always be the case in a healthy society. But the America-hating ESG ideology seeks to destroy that national identity — and American pride as a whole.
Today’s cultural vandals seek to divide and confuse young Americans, as well as our future generations, by making a person’s most superficial traits their entire identity as a human being — and thus having them fall conveniently into either oppressed or oppressor. This propaganda-induced state of victimhood, at the hands of a perceived “systemic” bias, then leads to a loss of faith in the goodness of our republic and a permanent fracture within the foundation of our very society.
Destroy the Culture, Destroy the Country
It is no accident that throughout American history, our stories have served to unite, empower, and inspire us as one people. During World War I and World War II, the radio performers and film actors who couldn’t serve on the warfront brought it home to American people, boosting morale and selling war bonds. In the wake of the race riots of the 1960s and the economic and social malaise of the 1970s — a time similar to now — the movie writers of the 1980s gave us Glory, Top Gun, and The Right Stuff, reminding us of our fighting spirit and of our immense power as a nation when we’re united.
Movies and television today increasingly do the opposite. They exploit our perceived differences, deride our faith in God, emasculate our men, and promote immorality as a virtue for our women. The prevailing narrative of today’s storytelling is that America is inherently racist, sexist, and evil. Being a proud American, according to today’s ESG henchmen of Hollywood, is to be mocked.
The greatest lesson that I have learned as the son of Iranian immigrants and as a proud military veteran is that the essence of being an American — one unique to this country — means that we are one nation, under God, bound to one another by sacred oath and shared conviction, independent of race, religion, or any other such delineation. In our unity, we are a beacon of light in the world and a threat to the global forces of darkness.
If any power is ever allowed to undermine the foundational underpinnings of our republic, we would see a successful coup d’état indeed. And woe unto us if we stand idly by as it occurs on our watch.
– – –
Nate Terani is a military veteran, having served as a member of the elite U.S. Navy Presidential Honor Guard in Washington, D.C., and in HUMINT intelligence operations with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Nate’s writing has been published by the Huffington Post, Le Monde Diplomatique, the Nation, TomDispatch, and many others.
