In 2012, Oliver Stone co-wrote The Untold History of the United States with American University professor Peter Kuznick. The book received somewhat mixed reviews. While many hailed its brave unveiling of a history otherwise left untold in American classrooms, others felt threatened by the facts within.
Now that the book has been made into a ten-part documentary series on Showtime, many of those same exaggerated criticisms have been leveled against the authors.
"This Stone-Kuznick film could have been put out in 1955 as Soviet propaganda," CUNY professor Ronald Radosh told the New York Times.
Comment: To authoritarian followers accurate history is 'propaganda' while American propaganda is history.
But before taking these criticisms at face value, it's worth evaluating what Stone's series says to provoke attempts at discretization.
"We've destabilized the entire region, created chaos. And then we blame ISIS for the chaos we have created," Stone said, according to Anti Media.
This is a major focus of both the book and series: a thorough look at the true rationale behind America's wars in the Middle East. Truths that the mainstream media would rather overlook.
"When I studied the untold history, one thing that really hit me hard was the history of our involvement in the Middle East," Stone told Middle East Eye.
"We create these messes, then we have a grand military plan to solve them," Kuznick added. "And the military solutions just don't work."
Comment: They do a great job of making more problems to 'solve'.
Analyzing US history from the end of World War II right up until the Obama administration, Stone's documentary attempts to provide an alternative version of events, one that counters the propaganda taught in standard American textbooks.
"American exceptionalism has to be driven out of our curriculums," Stone said, according to Anti Media.
"We're not under threat. We are the threat."
Such lies that we tell ourselves, like how exceptional we are, make it impossible for us to be driven out of the curriculum we are in charge of... we like it the way it is, thus "we are the threat" is more accurate in that the only way to drive this BS out is to kill it, and that is never an easy and clean operation, as it takes complete and utter destruction to do so, and how many of us are really ready to do that? to even allow that necessity to enter our minds? Most of us still think we can 'fix' it.... and that's what keeps it alive.... we keep it alive within our belief that we can change it, fix it and like a child's boo-boo, 'kiss it and make it better' once again... but we cannot, without killing it within ourselves first... and then the 'butterfly effect' will take hold... just be ready for the chain reaction and the resultant decline of the empire of lies, damn lies, destruction and death of all we know of as 'civilization'.