What's bizarre is that filmmaker Robert Goldstein's offense wasn't for making antiwar statements. Writes Root, "Goldstein's 'crime' was producing a silent film about the American Revolution titled The Spirit of '76. Among other things, the film reportedly contained scenes that depicted British troops bayoneting women and children. Because Britain was then an ally of America's in the First World War, the U.S. government quickly suppressed the film and prosecuted Goldstein for interfering with the war effort."
Under the Espionage Act he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
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This took place in a country where "Freedom of Speech" is the first amendment to the Constitution.
What does this have to do with us today? Well, we live in a time when spokespersons are at war over what is acceptable as regards free speech. Who decides what is good and what is bad? Since funding propaganda is included in our nation's budget, how do we know what is true and what is spin? [OK, we already know that spinning is ever ongoing from all sides, Left and Right, media and governments.] Who decides who the good guys and bad guys are in this battle for control of the narrative?
We live in a mediated world. Before entering World War One, very few Americans knew much about Germany, its history and its aims. (The 8 million Germans who had immigrated here, of course, knew their history.) But as the drums of war began to sound, there were plenty of messages being piped into our brains through the news media, striving to form a national will to take up arms against Kaiser Bill and those German brutes.
But who were these brutes, really? Stories of German aggression were circulated as if Otto Bismarck and later Kaiser Wilhelm were out to take over the world. In point of fact, history didn’t bear this out at all. It was the British Empire that had had a 300 year hold on the world, famously declaring with pride, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”
The spin was in, and America began creating the rationale it needed for to enter the war. Thus was born the Committee on Public Information (CPI), whose aim was to influence U.S. public opinion to support the war effort. Wilson’s Executive Order 2594 set in motion an ever broadening series of events.
This anti-German sentiment had serious consequences. Hatred was aroused toward German-American citizens and “being anti-German became a way of showing patriotism for the American war effort.” Even though there were more immigrants from Germany than from any other country, many libraries pulled books off the shelves that might be considered pro-German. Laws were passed specifically hostile to German-Americans.
The climate became so paranoid and hateful that by 1918, South Dakota prohibited the use of German over the telephone and in public assemblies of three or more persons. “By the early 1920s, 34 states had passed English-only requirements in their schools. These laws were argued before the Supreme Court in the case of Meyer v. Nebraska.”
Years ago I remember reading about German Americans having their dachshunds murdered by hostile neighbors. These actions were generated by the propaganda machinery of our government, hand-in-glove with the powerful newspaper media network. This anti-German sentiment came directly from the Wilson White House. (He’d formerly been president of Princeton, an idealist and educated fool, which he’d soon have ample opportunity to prove before the end of his second term.)
Getting back to the main point, the Wilson White House had an agenda and used its power to promote the war effort. Of this I was aware, and the practice of using government power and tax dollars for whatever ends those in power believe is justified continues to this day. I was unaware that a film maker would be sentenced to ten years in prison for a scene portraying an actual historical moment. How many other such imprisonments have taken place in this manner?
