The term "astroturfing" refers to grassroots movements that on the surface seem to be organic but which are in fact craftily organized, usually by some cultural elites who remain in the background and who provide the funding. The Occupy Wall Street Movement was one that beneath its surface would appear to fit this description.
I remember when these occupiers were front-page news back in 2011 and how many people didn't know what to make of them. Who were these mobs camping out in central parks and town squares, in their tents and sleeping bags, in cities like Manhattan and Los Angeles, and what were they protesting? If you listened to the mainstream media at the time, the OWSM primarily involved twenty-somethings into spontaneously showing up at these events in order to protest Wall Street greed and the power & prestige of the one-percenters.
OCCUPY UNMASKED pulls back the curtain on this supposed organic movement to reveal a showy phenomenon that was highly orchestrated by influential far-left organizers, in order to further their radical political agenda.
This here is a fine expose that features the late, great Andrew Breitbart who, although appears intermittently to offer his thoughts, generally keeps a low profile throughout the film, letting the captured images and other interjecting voices (such as David Horowitz) tell the behind-the-scenes story.
The first observation one is likely to make when watching footage of these protests is the type of people which these events seemed to attract. Although in appearance many of these protesters could have passed for panhandlers and squatters, what the film reveals is that a number of those in attendance were actually well-off students, laptops in tow, attempting to blend in with the crowd. Additionally, these events also tended to attract numerous fringe characters and hangers-on, ranging from grubby stoners & scruffy drop-outs to outright hate-mongers & public defecators. These were certainly scenes to behold and OCCUPY UNMASKED effectively captures the entire mob-minded spirit of this manufactured movement, showing at its periphery buskers alongside long-bearded geezers and at the center of it all throngs of stentorian malcontents spouting speciosity, people undoubtedly regarded by the few brains behind the movement as a bunch of useful idiots.
These were not just people protesting social inequality and corporate greed but, as the film argues, the very system itself, by way of street theater or more accurately, theatrical Marxism. Breitbart and his team reveals how many of the occupiers were paid to demonstrate, whereas others would show up to scream and shout merely for fun, perhaps unaware that they were supporting an anti-capitalist (if not outright anti-American) agenda. Indeed, how sadly impressionable and misguided these occupiers appeared to the 98% of us looking in on their circus back in the day.
Bill Maher, Bernie Sanders, and Michael Moore are all shown by way of video footage as having been in support of this movement. No surprise there. One of the more memorable moments in the film is a camera pan of Moore's sprawling vacation home as we listen to an audio clip of him at one of these protests, denouncing fat cats. What a joke.
Of interest, too, is one of the commentators in the film who makes the connection between Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Quite intriguing, this.
The film also highlights how the Occupy Wall Street Movement worked to demonize law-enforcement officers in the mainstream media, portraying them as one-dimensional expressers of "police brutality," officers who were only doing their job in trying to restore order to those protests which became unruly.
OCCUPY UNMASKED plays like a time capsule and takes us back to a period in American history that, as with the filmmakers, not all have forgotten.
I remember when these occupiers were front-page news back in 2011 and how many people didn't know what to make of them. Who were these mobs camping out in central parks and town squares, in their tents and sleeping bags, in cities like Manhattan and Los Angeles, and what were they protesting? If you listened to the mainstream media at the time, the OWSM primarily involved twenty-somethings into spontaneously showing up at these events in order to protest Wall Street greed and the power & prestige of the one-percenters.
OCCUPY UNMASKED pulls back the curtain on this supposed organic movement to reveal a showy phenomenon that was highly orchestrated by influential far-left organizers, in order to further their radical political agenda.
This here is a fine expose that features the late, great Andrew Breitbart who, although appears intermittently to offer his thoughts, generally keeps a low profile throughout the film, letting the captured images and other interjecting voices (such as David Horowitz) tell the behind-the-scenes story.
The first observation one is likely to make when watching footage of these protests is the type of people which these events seemed to attract. Although in appearance many of these protesters could have passed for panhandlers and squatters, what the film reveals is that a number of those in attendance were actually well-off students, laptops in tow, attempting to blend in with the crowd. Additionally, these events also tended to attract numerous fringe characters and hangers-on, ranging from grubby stoners & scruffy drop-outs to outright hate-mongers & public defecators. These were certainly scenes to behold and OCCUPY UNMASKED effectively captures the entire mob-minded spirit of this manufactured movement, showing at its periphery buskers alongside long-bearded geezers and at the center of it all throngs of stentorian malcontents spouting speciosity, people undoubtedly regarded by the few brains behind the movement as a bunch of useful idiots.
These were not just people protesting social inequality and corporate greed but, as the film argues, the very system itself, by way of street theater or more accurately, theatrical Marxism. Breitbart and his team reveals how many of the occupiers were paid to demonstrate, whereas others would show up to scream and shout merely for fun, perhaps unaware that they were supporting an anti-capitalist (if not outright anti-American) agenda. Indeed, how sadly impressionable and misguided these occupiers appeared to the 98% of us looking in on their circus back in the day.
Bill Maher, Bernie Sanders, and Michael Moore are all shown by way of video footage as having been in support of this movement. No surprise there. One of the more memorable moments in the film is a camera pan of Moore's sprawling vacation home as we listen to an audio clip of him at one of these protests, denouncing fat cats. What a joke.
Of interest, too, is one of the commentators in the film who makes the connection between Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Quite intriguing, this.
The film also highlights how the Occupy Wall Street Movement worked to demonize law-enforcement officers in the mainstream media, portraying them as one-dimensional expressers of "police brutality," officers who were only doing their job in trying to restore order to those protests which became unruly.
OCCUPY UNMASKED plays like a time capsule and takes us back to a period in American history that, as with the filmmakers, not all have forgotten.