How a disastrous change in perspective disempowered the left and let the right rise | Jeff Sparrow

By dismissing the masses as fools, progressives confirmed all the culture warriors’ claims

In August 2001, the radical writer and film-maker Michael Moore presented HarperCollins with the manuscript later known as Stupid White Men. It was still being edited when the September 11 attack occurred. In the newly hyper-patriotic environment, the publisher baulked at releasing a book ridiculing George W Bush and the Republican administration, with chapters entitled Kill Whitey! and A Very American Coup.

Moore was instructed to revise substantially a work that would, HarperCollins decreed, appear under the more palatable title Michael Moore: the American. That extraordinary editorial intervention, which ostensibly came directly from Rupert Murdoch himself, attracted the attention of a group of librarians. The outraged book-lovers publicised Moore’s predicament with sufficient vigour to ensure the text’s release in its original form.

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