Posted on 01/26/2021 9:28:19 PM PST by lowbridge
You’ve probably never heard of Gareth Jones.
You’ve certainly heard of the writer he inspired, and the classic dystopian novel that writer created. You were forced to read it, or at least the Cliff’s Notes, in high school. But shorn of its context, that novel lacks the full punch it could deliver. Mr. Jones (2019), starring Peter Sarsgaard and James Norton, directed by Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland and written by Andrea Chalupa, provides that context in a must-see film. Mr. Jones is powerfully relevant today, even more than when it premiered in 2019.
You have undoubtedly heard of “cancel culture,” in which one comment or tweet, or even silence, can cost anyone their job and turn their life upside down. Cancel culture appears to be a recent phenomenon from our college campuses. It isn’t. It sometimes appears to target the famous, but it usually doesn’t. The obscurity of a given target is part of cancel culture’s message intended to terrify everyone. No one is safe.
Mr. Jones tells the true story of speaking real truth to actual power, be it a government or an all-powerful newspaper. Gareth Jones (Norton) was a young idealistic Welsh journalist who wanted to interview Stalin, whom many in the West regarded as a savior of mankind. That’s not an exaggeration. In 1933, when Mr. Jones takes place, both Hitler and Stalin were widely regarded as men who were delivering the future: socialism. Collectivism. The new man as global citizen. They had the intelligentsia’s ear from Paris to London to Washington and Hollywood and points between.
Jones despises Hitler and travels to the Soviet Union to try to score the big get, the interview with Stalin. He also wants to probe the possibility of an alliance with the Soviets against Hitler’s Germany.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Love to read this in a book with footnoted references.
Incredible movie. And astonishing how topical it is. New York Times and big government killing a story about a brutal dictatorship because powerful business interests are at stake.
The movie could have been set today and featured communist China.
Everyone covers for the dictatorship... and the New York Times leads the way.
Bookmark
For later.
L
A freeper recommended this movie several months ago on a thread and we watched. Incredible piece of history and well done.
A relevant article from the FR archive...
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate has adopted a resolution recognizing that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin committed genocide against the Ukrainian people in the early 1930s, when millions died in a horrific famine known as the Holodomor.
...the State Department referred to a 2017 statement that described the Holodomor as “one of the most atrocious acts of the 20th century.”
The Senate “recognizes the findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine as submitted to Congress on April 22, 1988, including that...’Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932–1933,’” it said.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3694125/posts
A pathetic and useless complicit media is part of the big lie. If anyone reads “The Gulag Archipelago” this very thing is mentioned.
They helped keep the holocaust, Ukraine and Mao out of written word.
Is there a way to get this movie without using CommieZon?
Preferably on DVD or Blueray.
Great movie and recommended viewing.
bookmark
.
Duranty was key to the Roosevelt Administration’s recognition of the Soviet Uniion. The State Department’s Kliefoth memo points out that Duranty admitted that “in agreement with the New York Times and the Soviet authorities’, his official despatches always reflect the official opinion of the Soviet regime. Like CNN head Eason Jordan admitting that he deliberately whitewashed Saddam Hussein’s atrocities. True, but if you mention “fake news” you are a racist.
Bookmark
FROM AN AMAZON REVIEWER:
This is the story of journalist Gareth Jones who traveled to Moscow during the famine in the Ukraine. In 1933 he issued a press release describing the widespread famine in detail. The Holodomor, ‘to kill by starvation’, was the greatest crime of the 20th century. It is still being largely ignored. Journalists assigned to Moscow were completely aware of the situation in the Ukraine. They preferred to ignore it for their own selfish ends. Millions of people perished without a care on their part. Jones was cut from a different cloth. His report was unwelcome in a great many newspapers, as some elements of the intelligentsia were in sympathy with the Bolshevik “utopia”. The movie depicts the depravity of the media elite. They may be described as Stalin’s degenerate bootlickers. This is not unusual behavior for the media. Former CNN head Eason Jordan admitted in a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece titled “The News We Kept to Ourselves” that CNN distorted the news in order to maintain access.
The movie deals with the significant role Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty played in Washington’s recognition of the Soviet Union. The New York Times published a denial of Jones’s statement by Walter Duranty under the headline “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving”. The New York Time’s ran the headline: “Russian and Foreign Observers in Country See No Ground for Predications of Disaster.” Of course, since they were not permitted to leave the city. Unfortunately the movie does not deal with the June 4, 1931 Kliefoth memo. This memo reveals that Duranty was aware of the massive deaths and that the New York Times had an agreement with Moscow to only report on issues approved by Moscow.
Jones was kidnapped and murdered in 1935 while investigating in Japanese-occupied Mongolia quite possibly by the Soviet NKVD. This is a high quality movie but is definitely not a Hollywood production.
I’m going to rent it. Thanks.
Walter Duranty the Godfather of fake news. The Times later employed Herb Matthews another communist sympathizer who ran cover for Fidel.
Walter Duranty the Godfather of fake news. The Times later employed Herb Matthews another communist sympathizer who ran cover for Fidel.
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How things haven’t changed.
Does it appear as though the we all have been working as actors, for free, in a textbook portrayal of the book? 😲
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