Film Review: J. Edgar (2012)

Film Review from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

In J. Edgar, Leonardo Di Caprio, under Clint Eastwood’s direction, gives a thoroughly credible performance as FBI Chief, J. Edgar Hoover. Di Caprio portrays him as the paranoid, vindictive, delusional, hypocritical (he refers to Senator McCarthy as an opportunist) and egotistical man that he was; certainly not high on the list of guys you’d want your daughter to marry.

Arnie Hammer as Hoover’s paramour, Clyde Tolson, Naomi Watts as Helen Gandy, his long-serving secretary and Judi Dench as his overly attentive mother (“You will restore our family to greatness”) all turn in fine performances. Hoover is, in fact, shown as a mama’s boy who went in for crime-busting to please the law-and-order obsessed lady.

Too much is devoted to exploring Hoover’s sexuality, though screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who is gay, probably felt it necessary. To quote Black, “it was a thing you couldn’t discuss even in the privacy of your own home and even with someone you might have feelings for, because it was still a love that did not speak its name.” Black, surprisingly, has Hoover enrage Tolson by confessing he once shared a romantic liaison with Dorothy Lamour.

This gives one some idea how petty he was. Hoover’s ambitions knew no bounds; when shut out of the Lindberg kidnapping investigation by the New Jersey State Police, he had Congress pass a law making kidnapping a federal instead of a state crime so the FBI, could horn in.

Surprisingly, Black makes no mention of Hoover’s greatest ambition to make the FBI a world-wide intelligence organization, which the CIA eventually became. Hoover had his vast army of agents pursue whatever grudges: criminal, political, sexual or personal, that he held – and he held plenty of them. He kept tabs on the extra-curricular activities of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Eleanor Roosevelt.  In Eleanor Roosevelt’s case that included spying on her trysts with lovers of both sexes. No-one in the FBI was allowed to be more popular than Eddie baby. That meant destroying the career of agent, Melvin Purvis who had gunned down John Dillinger.

Too much attention is devoted to his relationships with Tolson, Miss Gandy and his mother in this 135-minute movie, which fails to pursue more intriguing matters – such as, Hoover’s refusal to pursue organized crime as opposed to nickel-and-dime bank robbers. Rumour has it the mob had photographs of Hoover in drag and in a compromising position with Clyde Tolson who he made his number two man in the FBI.

Nor did the movie show his relentless persecution of homosexuals, eventually forcing them out of the closet as an act of retaliation. One psychiatrist would later say, “They should call that the J. Edgar Hoover Syndrome – persecuting the very thing he was.”

When Richard Nixon was elected it was the proverbial and possibly the literal death knell for Hoover. Nixon, though heterosexual, was very similar; mean, ambitious and unscrupulous (no kidding). Nixon wanted possession of Hoover’s files and the only way to get them would be to kill him. It isn’t mentioned that Hoover wanted to be Director for life, a life many would like to see end ASAP. It is only slightly implied that his doctor injected him with chemicals that wouldn’t exactly prolong it. Rumour has it that a life shortening pill, which looked like an aspirin tablet, was put in amongst them.

The most significant aspect of Hoover’s career wasn’t mentioned. He became head of the FBI in 1924, a year after the Teapot Dome Scandal in which some senior members of the Harding administration were implicated. In 1973, a year after his death, the Watergate Scandal broke out, but in the intermediate 48 years in which he reigned as the Bureau’s boss, there were no major scandals affecting the presidency.

One may wonder if the seven presidents he served under and their administrative staffs were not like Nixon’s thugs at all; that they were all goody-goodies who wouldn’t stoop to an illegal act.  Or, perhaps – just perhaps – once or twice they did and J. Edgar was on hand to contain the mess, conditional on getting the laws passed and the budgets he wanted – take your pick.

One comforting thought is that it’s highly unlikely in a sane society that anyone would be as sick as J. Edgar Hoover, but if there was such a person, he would receive help, and as the movie makes clear, he surely needed it.

Steve Shannon

Leonard Peltier and the primal needs of Capital* (2004)

From Issue 19 of the World Socialist Review

In a remote section of South Dakota just north of Nebraska lies an Indian reservation known as Pine Ridge. At one time largely agricultural, it became hugely attractive to the U.S. government when it was discovered that beneath the Indian lands lay one of the largest uranium reserves in the United States. All through the years, treaties with the Indians had been consistently violated because of the major mineral reserves beneath the Indian territories.

When Pine Ridge became the focus of the United States government, the Indian residents were strongly opposed to uranium development on their turf. Bitterness grew as problems were exacerbated with the increasing threat of U.S. intervention. Turning to the American Indian Movement (AIM) for assistance led to military conflict with the FBI, which refused to listen to the complaints of the Indians. The struggle lasted 71 days, resulting in the deaths of two Pine Ridge natives and the outlawing of all activities at Pine Ridge.

During the following three years, now referred to as the “Reign of Terror,” violent assaults continued to take place in which vast numbers of Indians were murdered or maimed. With the government intent on destroying the AIM and thereby removing a major obstacle in their plans to exploit the uranium booty, homes were burned, shootings and beatings became rampant. So many native Americans were killed that Pine Ridge had the highest annual murder rate in the U.S. Again the AIM came to their assistance, and among those who responded was Leonard Peltier. The conflict led to three murder indictments including that of Leonard Peltier, accused of shooting two FBI agents. No evidence was ever introduced to support the accusation. Subsequently, Peltier escaped to Canada, convinced that he would never receive a fair trial in the U.S. Less than a year later, he was apprehended.

Myrtle Poor Bear was an Indian woman who had never met Leonard Peltier. Terrified under interrogation by the FBI, she testified against him. This terror-induced accusation led to the extradition of Peltier to the U.S. All of her incriminating statements were later withdrawn, and Myrtle Poor Bear confessed that her fear of the FBI had led her to make false statements. With the government determined to pin the guilt on Peltier and thus remove the bête noire from their uranium quest, her confessions were thrown aside and ignored.

Despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence, the trial was rigged against him with perjury and manufactured evidence. No witness was ever found who could identify Leonard as the man who shot and killed two FBI agents. Hundreds of thousands of pages of critical evidence pinpointing the unprovoked attack on Pine Ridge were withheld from the trial.

The events here described and the part played by Peltier were detailed in a book by Peter Matthieson, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. This revealing report was kept out of print for eight years, while the FBI sued the author and publisher for libel. Although the Supreme Court eventually denied the suit, the stunning evidence produced by the book was unavailable at the time of Leonard Peltier’s trial.

Today Pine Ridge has an 86 percent unemployment rate, the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant mortality rate in the nation. The government’s vindictiveness toward the Lakota people led to the ruin of innumerable lives. The ongoing penal servitude of Leonard Peltier at Leavenworth Prison is the direct consequence of the FBI’s unabated pressure to keep him confined.

Despite worldwide appeals from human-rights organizations, and the publicity given to the merits of his case, 500 FBI agents marched in Washington to oppose clemency for him. They continue to use their authority to thwart all efforts to obtain his freedom, now denied him for 28 years.

Leonard Peltier is not in prison for the murder of two FBI agents. Of that he is demonstrably not guilty. Leonard Peltier is in prison because he is a potential threat to governmental forces intent on exploiting the mineral resources that lie buried beneath In- dian territory. The facts of Leonard’s conviction are well known. Well known also is the bitter massacre of the Indians at Wounded Knee, which left an entire community devastated.** Terror-stricken families and ruined lives draw little compassion from those whose motives are purely profit-driven. They are “collateral damage.” The drive for profit under capitalism overrides all human considerations. Like the conflict in Iraq, the huge loss of lives and the obliteration of the infrastructures are a price worth paying for the control of huge oil reserves needed for the operation of the capitalist machine.

Such reports are not unique to America. All over the world human values are subordinated to the primal needs of capital.

Indeed, they scream out for a change from this power-driven, cash-oriented social system to one that emphasizes cooperation, and in which human values are the measure of all human action. They send a message to all who will listen that the world hungers for a society that will eliminate needless suffering and re- place it with opportunities for all human beings to lead fulfilling lives.

Mardon Cooper

* Sources: Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, Anthony Rayson (Prison Abolition), Matt Sherman (AIM) and Leonard Peltier (“Prison Writings”).

** The massacre at Wounded Knee took place on December 29, 1890. See, for example, http:// www.lastoftheindependents.com/wounded.htm. The siege at Wounded Knee, referred to above, began on February 27, 1973 and lasted 71 days.

Leonard Peltier has provided us with words that should resonate with those who share this vision:

The Message 

Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
Just as doing nothing is an act. 

Let who you are ring out and resonate
in every word and every deed.
Yes, become who you are.
There’s no sidestepping your own being
or your own responsibility. 

What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message. 

You are the message.

Rear View: Poor People’s (ongoing) Campaign (2018)

The Rear View Column from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poor People’s (ongoing) Campaign
The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination was covered widely in mainstream media last month. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for combating racial equality through non-violent resistance. For the last five years of his life, King was subject to scrutiny by the FBI. J Edgar Hoover was concerned about ‘communist’ infiltration of civil rights groups and unions but proof proved elusive. Baptist minister King had apparently read some of Marx’s writings and did not like his materialism, but such influences can be seen here: ‘the profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be making a living than making a life.’ He even stated ‘the fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad,’ yet rather than seeking to replace capitalism with socialism he campaigned for reforms to restructure it – e.g. he strived for a universal basic income as well as end to ‘overpopulation’. Days after his death Congress passed the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination in housing basis of race, religion, or national origin. Decades later, Obama’s ‘change’ meant business as usual. Today, racism is waxing not waning, 40 million Americans live in poverty, the top 1 percent has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, and ‘just 1 in 10 black Americans believe civil rights movement’s goals have been achieved in the 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr was killed’ (theindependent.co.uk, 31 March). And this, from Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer winning historian, says it all (probably unwittingly) : ‘all the issues that he raised toward the end of his life are as contemporary now as they were then’ (nytimes.com, 4 April). Dr. King focused famously on the ‘Triple Evils’ of poverty, racism and militarism, i.e., symptoms rather than the underlying disease.


Poverty without end
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela died the same week as the anniversary of King’s death. Media reaction was, unlike to that of Dr. King, very mixed. ‘Winnie was working as a hospital social worker when she realized the abject poverty under which most people were forced to live in, created by the inequalities of the system. It is from this point that she strived to bring change and equality’ (standardmedia.co.ke, 3 April). She married Nelson Mandela several years prior to the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 (289 murdered). Established in 1912, the African National Congress had employed largely non-violent means in its campaign to secure voting rights for non-white Africans, but this changed in 1961 with the formation of an armed wing. When Nelson was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, the South African state punished Winnie too. She was beaten, tortured and held in solitary confinement. Andrew Malone writes as if she deserved such treatment, describing her as ‘an odious, toxic individual who continued to preach hatred rather than reconciliation right up to the end of her life’ (dailymail.co.uk, 3 April). Yet for a woman accused of murder, fraud, kidnapping and theft, comments from the South African Human Rights Commission in an article titled A tribute to Madikizela-Mandela: ‘A true revolutionary is guided by great love’ (thetimeslive.co.za, 3 April) seem equally over the top. No, the most apposite remarks were made earlier by another and anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu: ‘They stopped the gravy train just long enough to get on themselves.’ He went on to say that Zuma’s administration is ‘worse than the apartheid government’ and that he would ‘pray for the downfall of the ANC.’ ‘More than two decades after South Africa ousted a racist apartheid system that trapped the vast majority of South Africans in poverty, more than half the country still lives below the national poverty line and most of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of a small elite’ (npr.org, 2 April).


One world, one people
'Nothing should be allowed to obscure working class unity nor to hamper its struggle to set up the new social order. We know enough of racism, and of what it does to human beings, to reject it as a destructive, anti-social force. There is a better way; we have a world to win and little time to lose’ (Racist myths, Socialist Standard, June 1988).

So They Say . . . (1974)

The So They Say Column from the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rouble Backhanders

A "Housing Scandal" was reported in The Times on 6th November. A Trade Minister, a Mayor, a chief city architect and various senior officials were sacked for corrupt practices and "numerous instances of gross violations of legality".

Those involved are charged with abusing their official positions by allotting housing space through favouritism, and flagrant contravention of the laws and regulations.  . . . (The Mayor) was removed for abetting various people in the illegal possession of flats and by his general acquiescence. The chief architect was dismissed for neglecting long-range plans for the city's future development, for falling to improve the quality of construction work and the unauthorized occupancy of a flat in the same board of trade housing development.

This sounds like an extract from the Poulson proceedings, but it is not. The report comes from the Times' Moscow correspondent, and refers to Tbilisi, the capital of the Soviet Republic of Georgia. We used to hear that this sort of thing happened only in the "decadent" west' but capitalism has the same effects everywhere.

Moves in a Mysterious Way

Some time ago and American sued thirty churches for redress after an injury to him was attributed to an "Act of God". heath and Wilson may both be thinking on similar lines. Under the headline HEATH WARNING ON UNCONTROLLABLE ECONOMIC FORCES, the Prime Minister was recently reported speaking of things beyond him: 

. . . we are faced by economic forces outside the nation's control which affect the livelihood of every man, woman and child in this country. (Times, 6th December 1973)

The same night, Wilson expressed the same sentiment in a party political broadcast:

But the leader of the Opposition said he would not blame everything that was happening on the Government. "For example, I've made it clear I do not think they are responsible for the present oil crisis . . . Some aspects of world prices, foodstuffs, are not their responsibility."

So these Men of Destiny, casting masterful eyes on the turbulence round them, say — what? That they are stumped.

Ask Them Another

However, it must not be thought that the current economic troubles are due to the ineptitude of fatheads like Heath and Wilson. Similar admissions are now being made by heads of state and erstwhile whizz-kids all over the world. On 2nd December the Sunday Times Business News had JAPAN: BRAKES ON THE BULLET ECONOMY. The Tokyo correspondent wrote:

The oil crisis, commodity shortages, a Cabinet re-shuffle including a change of Finance Minister, not to mention he usual uncertainties of economic forecasting, all these have thrown Japan's exports into a state of nearly total confusion.
The Economic Planning Agency admits: "It is impossible to give a responsible answer." A more assured member of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry says: "Nobody really knows, but . . ."

There was a symmetry between this and the item below it, headed THE US: NO ONE REALLY KNOWS. It spoke of forecasts of "unemployment nearly doubling to 7.5 per cent. or 8 per cent", and went on:

Most professional economists now admit that they have only the vaguest notions of what will happen in the next 12 months . . . no one knows how US export trade—considered to be one of the strong factors of the American economy—will be affected by economic slowdowns in Europe and Japan.

All now agree unanimously — but, being "experts" only temporarily — with the Socialist Party's case that capitalism cannot be controlled.

Alone I Did It

An example of the absurdity and anarchy of capitalism is shown in a report from Brazil. Like every other country, Brazil has sought "growth". As elsewhere, this is supposed to promise higher living standards for the workers — but, of course, not in the foreseeable future. Antonio Delfim Netto, "the Erhardt of Brazil's economic miracle" is quoted six months ago explaining what would happen of wages rose: "Easy, there would be runaway inflation." 

But labour shortages have enabled Brazilian workers to demand, and get, higher wages. And this has enabled the pragmatic Delfim (a) to admit that growth has nothing for the working class, and (b) to pretend he arranged for a labour shortage instead.

Last week Professor Delfim admitted that Brazil's chosen vehicle of expansion (the market economy) did not provide any mechanism for reducing the level of inequality, but professed himself happy with the effect which the emerging shortages of labour have produced. "This," he said, "is what we have worked for all the time." (Guardian, 4th December 1973)

Obviously this "miracle-worker' hasn't a clue, except to making up ingenuous answers. What will he say when labour shortage gives way to redundancies?

Beware of Them — They're Like Us

We have from America a leaflet headed WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT COMMUNISM, apparently issued by the FBI. It urges every citizen to look out for "espionage, sabotage, and subversion activities". What it refers to, of course, is state capitalism: the first thing people should know about Communism is that it does not exist in the places implied, Russia, Cuba, China, etc.

But even taking the leaflet at its face value, it contains a curious self-contradiction. One side says, quoting J. Edgar Hoover:

Why is Communism a threat to you? Communists want to control everything: where you live, where you work, what you are paid, what streetcars you ride (or whether you walk), how your children are educated, what you may not and must read and write . . . 

On the other side people are told they can combat Communism by:

1. Being good students (doing a good job at school)
2. Being good citizens at home and in the community
3. Learning more about the history of America
4. Being willing to do their share for our country.

Thus, the way to prevent being told what to do, what to read, etc. is to let yourself be told what to do, what to read, etc. Which highlights the fact that there is no difference worth troubling about.

Putting it Simply

We are often told that the language of Socialist economics is too weighty for the man in the street who reads football reports. The report of Queens Park Rangers v. Sheffield United in The Observer on 9th December began:

The leather spheroid never looked like evading the custodian.

It means nobody could get the ball past the goalkeeper.

Robert Barltrop