28 million copies of the anti-Muslim propaganda film Obsession
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4236351http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/11-1 by Isabel Macdonald, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
In the midst of remarkably cynical election-time mud-slinging, the Obsession campaign is truly in a class of its own.
Over the past weeks, 28 million copies of the anti-Muslim propaganda film Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West have been delivered to the doors of newspaper subscribers in swing states. The 2006 documentary, which has been a mainstay of David Horowitz's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," describes "radical Islam" as a menace comparable to Adolf Hitler that, according to the film's website, "is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western civilization under the yoke of its values."
For the groups behind the film's distribution, the goal seems pretty clear: Scare the holy hell out of millions of voters in swing states about a possible Muslim takeover of the U.S. It's hard to see the targeting of electoral battlegrounds as anything other than an attempt to help John McCain get elected--perhaps by capitalizing on the widespread whispering campaign that Obama is a "secret Muslim."
And one has to admit that the Obsession campaign's marketing plan has been quite slick. After all, what better way to disseminate hate propaganda than under the unassuming guise of a documentary film delivered in Americans' daily newspapers? A plan that, sadly, many newspapers were all too happy to go along with for the sake of corporate profits. While a handful of newspapers--the Greensboro, N.C., News & Record, the Detroit Free Press, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch--have taken the ethical stance of refusing to carry the DVD (the News & Record called it "fear-mongering and divisive"), some 70 papers, including the New York Times, have delivered it to their subscribers as a paid advertising supplement.
There has really just been one small glitch in the plan: The public doesn't seem to be buying it. Newspapers that carried the DVD have faced floods of complaints from readers, and the past week has seen protests and press conferences denouncing the film.