Red Scare Hollywood Propaganda During the Cold War

In Holly Hightower and Travis Hancock’s board game Hollywood 1947, released last year, players are secretly assigned to one of two teams: “Patriots” or “Communists.” In the game, they work to ensure that movies made by Hollywood at the time correspond to their respective ideologies, with the winner making the most movies and securing the broadest reach.

“Our games focus on dark periods from history, and Hollywood 1947 follows that,” Hancock told Jacobin:

I’ve always loved watching old movies from the ’40s and ’50s, and found the anti-communist propaganda fascinating. It made me want to make something that encouraged people to take a look into what Hollywood was like during that time.

In particular, Hancock and Hightower were creatively inspired by the story of Hollywood’s blacklisting of acclaimed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo after he refused to testify on alleged communist influences in the industry in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although Hollywood 1947 doesn’t push a political message or ideology, Hancock told Jacobin that the game is critical of Hollywood censorship, and that he hopes it “gets people to go in and actually learn about the history themselves.”

Hollywood 1947 is a sharp and inventive way to showcase the extent of the government’s editorial control over the film industry as the Cold War got underway. Scores of Hollywood films from that time echoed US foreign policy perspectives. Some, like The Iron Curtain (1948) and The Green Berets (1968), were subtle in their political messaging and centered around the American values of freedom and justice prevailing over the supposedly evil communist ideology. Others, like Face to Face with Communism (1951), which dramatized the horrifying consequences of an imaginary Soviet invasion of the United States, and Invasion USA (1985), which saw Chuck Norris fight Soviet-backed Cuban guerrilla fighters for 107 minutes, were more overt.

The US military was not a passive beneficiary of these cultural products. In many cases, especially the most overt ones, it actively helped create them. Face to Face with Communism was produced by the Air Force, and Invasion USA was made after its script was approved by the Department of Defense (DOD).

There’s no indication that Rambo III was made with direct US military involvement (though it did benefit from direct assistance by the Israeli military). Nevertheless, its driving ideology was perfectly compatible with the US military’s objectives at the time. And like many other anti-communist films, Rambo III was hugely influential. It racked up $189 million at the global box office and, to many, remains an enduring action classic. The movie was still playing in theaters when the real-life mujahideen forced the Soviets to completely withdraw from Afghanistan in February 1989.

Three years later, the Soviet Union dissolved, and the United States emerged victorious in the Cold War. Consequently, the stream of American anti-communist propaganda films abated. Hollywood maintained a general jingoistic, nationalistic fervor, but without a clearly defined enemy. And then 9/11 happened.

Same but Different: Post-9/11 Propaganda

In the years since Osama Bin Laden orchestrated the attack that killed nearly three thousand people on September 11, 2001, the government, through the CIA and the DOD, has expanded its editorial control over movies, TV shows, and video games, shoring up what has since been termed the “Military-Entertainment Complex” — the systematic cooperation between the armed forces and the entertainment industries. It’s a relationship many don’t even know exists, even though it is evolving with unsettling speed.

The CIA and the DOD have cowritten or coproduced a slew of popular twenty-first-century movies. Captain Phillips, Transformers, and Top Gun: Maverick, as well as some Marvel films, including Iron Man, Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman 1984 are some of the many that the DOD has coscripted in recent years. The 2022 documentary Theaters of War alleges that more than 2,500 films and TV shows have been supervised by the military, with the extent and volume of supervision increasing in recent years.

Among all these films, one stands apart as having been subjected to the most scrutiny and direct editorial control from the CIA: Kathryn Bigelow’s historical — or rather, pointedly ahistorical — drama about the decade-long international pursuit of Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty.

“We really do have a sense that this is going to be the movie on the UBL operation — and we all want the CIA to be as well-represented in it as possible,” stated an internal email sent by Marie Harf, from the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs in June 2011, about Bigelow’s movie.

In Zero Dark Thirty, protagonist Maya (Jessica Chastain), the self-proclaimed “motherfucker” who found Bin Laden’s hideout, is based on Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, who was the CIA’s chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station from 2003–5. Maya faces great moral quandaries when torturing inmates, even though the person she is based on did not. On one occasion, Bikowsky insisted on the kidnapping, detention, and torture of an inmate at a CIA site in Afghanistan even after it became clear that this person (Khaled el-Masri) had been mistaken with another (Khalid el-Masri). The movie portrays the US military as do-gooders who are willing to sacrifice everything to kill Bin Laden, including contradicting their morals in the short term for the greater good. The movie does not engage with the death toll and destruction wrought by the “war on terror.”

The film regularly reminds audiences of the real and imminent danger Maya faces when in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. But it takes no pains to demonstrate the corresponding danger to Pakistani civilians, many of whom died in drone attacks authorized by the CIA. An estimated 24,000 civilians were killed in these strikes.

I lived in Islamabad during the 2000s and was surrounded by the misery faced by millions of Pakistanis whose very existence was uprooted by the war on terror. Curfews, travel restrictions, school closures, and a serious possibility of imminent death were facts of life in Pakistan at the time. In fact, I could have died on September 20, 2008, if the Marriott Hotel restaurant where I was supposed to have iftar (the evening meal during Ramadan) had not been fully booked.

There are countless Pakistanis with similar stories and many more who weren’t as lucky as I was. In Zero Dark Thirty, the suffering of Pakistani civilians is omitted. They are merely terrorists or untrustworthy collaborators — obstacles to eliminating Bin Laden.

Tanner Mirrlees is an associate professor in digital media studies at Ontario Tech University who has authored multiple books about propaganda in the entertainment industry. In his 2016 book, Hearts and Mines, Mirrlees claims that a key part of the CIA and DOD’s input in films like Zero Dark Thirty revolves around framing, omission, and decontextualization. “Far from being trifling entertainment that offers viewers a blissful escape from the politics and practices of the US Empire,” Mirrlees writes, “many Hollywood TV shows and films tell stories about the coercive agents of the US state that legitimize war and covert ops by making them seem normal, necessary, and good.” In that regard, “Hollywood TV shows and films are pernicious forms of PR for the US Empire.”

The Abu Ghraib torture center, images from which shocked the world, get a mere throwaway line in Bigelow’s 150-minute-long film — with no mention of what it was and what took place there. Zero Dark Thirty does, however, tell you how effective torture is and how much easier it would have been to confirm Bin Laden’s location if they could continue utilizing “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which were curtailed after what went on at Abu Ghraib was exposed.

So overt is the sentiment regarding the necessity of torture in the movie that even Republican senator John McCain criticized the film, calling it “grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the capture.”

Top Gun: Maverick and Recruitment Shortfalls

The DOD and CIA’s relationship with Hollywood doesn’t exist solely to celebrate the military and affirm the validity of its objectives. It also serves a more functional purpose: to encourage enlistment at a time when the military suffers from severe recruitment shortfalls.

The US now has its smallest military since the end of World War III, and recent years have seen some of its most aggressive recruitment drives. Alongside other initiatives, such as relaxed requirements, hiked bonuses, and expanded efforts to recruit lawful permanent residents, Hollywood movies are also being used to boost enlistment. The most clear-cut example is Top Gun: Maverick, which was the highest-grossing film of 2022, making $1.5 billion worldwide.

The original Top Gun (1986) led to an increase in Air Force enlistment, perhaps as much as 8 percent. This was no accident: Top Gun’s producer, John Davis, has openly claimed that the movie was a recruitment tool. Its sequel in 2022 sought to do the same.

Recruiters were stationed outside several theaters across the US to engage with impressionable teenagers who had just watched Maverick, which was released a year after the United States pulled out of Afghanistan and when COVID-19 was squeezing the list of applicants for the Air Force. Unlike the original, Maverick did not lead to an enlistment boom, but its aim to do so when confidence in the US military was at its lowest since 9/11 was unmistakable. Maverick heavily centers on camaraderie in the Air Force against the backdrop of thrilling, unrelenting action sequences. Who wouldn’t want to be like Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, or Glen Powell, flying fighter jets to save American democracy from the evils of the world?

There has also been a push to coproduce Marvel movies to reach out to younger audiences, many of whom go to the cinema to see cool action sequences, oblivious to political messaging. A stark example is that of the (so-called) feminist action movie Captain Marvel. The DOD and the Air Force were both involved in the film’s production, distribution, and promotion.

Not only was the Air Force involved in the production of the movie, but it also authorized pilots to engage with the media to promote the movie and perform flyovers at the movie’s premiere. Brie Larson, who plays the film’s protagonist, said that one of her character’s most central traits was “the spirit of the Air Force.” In a Los Angeles magazine piece, journalist Samuel Braslow criticized Captain Marvel’s militarism, writing, “The movie takes a page from the 1985 PR bonanza Top Gun . . . but updates it for a 2019 ‘woke’ audience wary of the Armed Services after 18 years in Afghanistan and over a decade of sexual abuse revelations.” Like Top Gun, Captain Marvel grossed over $1 billion worldwide.

Call of Duty and the Military-Entertainment Complex

The military-entertainment complex hardly stops at movies. In fact, one of its most relied-upon strategies is the production of video games. At its core is the military’s collaboration with the popular series Call of Duty (COD), which has seen twenty-three installments since it premiered in 2003 and has sold over 400 million copies worldwide.

The US Army Esports is a competitive video gaming team in which active military personnel compete against other professional COD teams. These competitions are very popular: the game’s premier tournament saw peak viewing figures of 294,000 last year. With a burgeoning presence in the competitive gaming scene, the military essentially says, “Join us; it’s like playing your favorite game in real life.”

In Hearts and Mines, Mirrlees dedicates a thirty-page chapter to the “DOD–Digital Games Complex,” where he reveals how Anders Breivik, a white-supremacist fascist who killed sixty-nine teenagers at a socialist youth camp in Oslo in 2011, declared he used COD to prepare for his terrorist attack. In his manifesto, Breivik wrote, “COD: Modern Warfare 2 is the best military simulator out there.” COD: Modern Warfare 2 has sold over 25 million copies since it was released in 2009.

COD has never shied away from politics either. Rather, it thrives on it. The series, which will see its latest installment released in a couple of weeks, has often revised history. COD: Modern Warfare (2019) involves a mission called “Highway of Death” in which the Russians bomb the only road through which civilians can flee an invasion in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Urzikstan, to the disgust of our protagonists. It’s a strange and telling appropriation: “the Highway of Death” is the name given to the very real six-lane highway connecting Kuwait and Iraq. It was given that name because, in February of 1991, the American-led coalition indiscriminately bombed the road, killing military personnel and civilians alike as Iraqi troops retreated from Kuwait after their illegal invasion. At least two hundred civilians were killed.

The COD series has also occasioned missions wherein the player assassinates Fidel Castro, as well as fictional characters who pose striking resemblances to Hugo Chávez and Qasem Soleimani — feeding revised history to a generation of young people, who are unaware of the realities that underpinned the Cold War and the Gulf War.

This isn’t coincidental. Brian Bulatao, the chief administrative officer of Activision Blizzard, the company that makes the COD games, previously worked for the CIA, and also served as the under secretary of state for management for Donald Trump’s government before joining Activision Blizzard. Frances Townsend, who was senior counsel at Activision Blizzard until September 2022, served as George Bush Jr’s national security advisor from 2004 to 2008.

The upcoming COD installment Black Ops 6 will be set in 1991. It will span the Gulf War, will feature Saddam Hussein, and will embody a story in which the CIA is infiltrated by rogue agents. It is bound to be yet another example of revisionist history and playing up nationalist fervor to encourage impressionable teenagers to enlist.

Forty years ago, you could revel in your nationalism by watching Rambo kill the evil Communists, only wishing that you could be like him. Well, now you can. You can pilot gunships and take out tanks with a PlayStation controller. And if that creates more of an itch than video games can scratch, there’s a recruitment office down the block.

With COD: Black Ops 6 releasing on October 25, many more will join the various branches of the US Armed Forces, not realizing what they’re getting themselves into. Some will be killed in active duty, some will kill the civilians they have been made to dehumanize, and some will return irreparably broken, all because they were told that joining the military would be like playing their favorite video game.