I can pinpoint the exact moment where the makers of Zeitgeist lost all credibility in my eyes.
At 1 hour and 32 minutes in, the movie says that in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor Japan became enraged at the United States for, among other things, selling weapons to the Britain; a nation that Japan was at war with.
It is true that the United States was selling weapons to the British in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. I'm not sure if Japan was enraged by this or not. But what I do know is that
Britain did not declare war on Japan until the after Pearl Harbor. December 8, 1941.
It was so stunningly, blatantly, and breathtakingly wrong. So they lost all credibility with me after that. Now you might be saying "Why? Discredit the whole movie just for one error?"
Well, yes.
For one, it would have taken them about 45 second to fact check it.
To illustrate, lets' compare it to another mistake in the movie. Around the end, the narrator tries to make a Nazi comparison. Something to the effect of "The Nazi's set the Reichstag on fire and used the fear brought by to pass legislation taking away everyone's rights" (I paraphrase as I'm going on memory).
Historians generally agree that Hitler, while guilty of plenty of unpleasantries, was not responsible for the Reichstag fire. While true, the Nazis used the fire for propaganda, Marinus van der Lubbe did the deed and even got a fair trial.
But you know what? The Reichstag fire myth is actually very pervasive. It will show up in high school textbooks and the like. If you got a book on Nazi Germany from the 60's you might see it in there. It pops up on Hitsory Channel documentaries. I could understand how someone would make that mistake.
But here's the difference. There is not a book in the universe written by a professional historian that says that the United Kingdom and Japan were at war prior to Pearl Harber. Not one.
Not only that, but no one who has ever read a book on WWII would make that mistake. So one hour and 32 minutes into Zeitgeist, it hit me:
"Oh shit. I'm being lectured to about WWII by a person who has never read a book on WWII".
It becomes clear several times throughout Zeitgeist that the producers is did not do their own research. They strike me as some guys who are really good at using audio/video software who took a bunch of stuff they read off the internet, read it out loud, and put visuals to it.
Take this other example.
They're talking about the great depression and how it was orchestrated by the international banks. To back up their claim, they bring up this dude Louis McFadden. They quote him TWICE at 1:21 and 1:24.
Apparently he stood up to the banks and tried to get impeachment procedings going against the few board. They show McFadden's picture and quote him saying:
"It was a carefully contrived occurence. International bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair, so that they might emerge the rulers of us all"
They then go onto mention that "not surprisingly" after two assasination attempts was McFadden was finally poisoned. DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUNNNNN!!!!!
I had never heard of this McFadden but according to the Zeitgeist guys, he sounds like he was pretty on the ball. So I slid over to wikipedia to see if the above was true. Well, apparently it was.
But there's a bit about this McFadden cat they forgot to mention. Are you ready? This is pretty good....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_McFadden
McFadden was known as openly antisemitic. He claimed that Jews controlled the American economy, and that the United States had to choose between "God and the money changers who have unlawfully taken our gold and lawful money into their possession." McFadden also blamed Jews for president Roosevelt's decision to abandon the gold standard, and claimed that "in the United States today, the Gentiles have the slips of paper while the Jews have the lawful money." McFadden was also a supporter of Hitler and the Nazis' anti-Jewish policies. McFadden encouraged Hitler's attempts to destroy the alleged Jewish control of the German economy, media, education, and professions. When McFadden ran for the presidency in 1936, one of his slogans was “Christianity instead of Judaism.”
This is the guy the people at Zeigeist hold up to corraborate their conspiracy theory.
Now, I know that a guy can have racists views and still have something legitimate to say on other issues. But in this case, I think his feelings about Jews have greatly influenced his attitude toward banking.
But anyway, the fact that they would use this guy makes me think one of two things. First is that they don't do their own research and have never cracked open a book on the subject they are talking about. They just saw a quote from this guy, thought it was cool and fit what they already believed and ran with it. The second option is that they knew who this guy was, what his views were but felt that being a paranoid anti-semite did not discredit him in their eyes.
Wait there's more!
McFadden also claimed that Wall Street bankers funded the Bolshevik Revolution through the Federal Reserve banks and the European central banks with which it cooperated.
1932, he moved to impeach President Herbert Hoover, and also introduced a resolution bringing conspiracy charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. The impeachment resolution was defeated by a vote of 361 to 8; it was seen as a big vote of confidence to President Hoover from the House.
The video seems to imply that McFadden was killed for his opposition to the Fed but this is unknown. The guy was a clearly kook and not much of a threat if his attempts at impeaching Hoover were much to go on.
In addition to McFadden, they also use a clip of Hitler's brunch buddy Charles Lindbergh ranting for a little while. Chuck could fly a plane but he was a bit of a kook in all other areas.
Moving along. There's also all these contradictions.
Like there contention that the bankers manipulate countries into starting wars cause it makes them shitloads of money. War is just just this cash bonanza. But you know what their REAL goal is? One world government!
Now wait a minute. If there was a one world government, that would mean there would be no more wars!
Apparently the banks were powerful enough to get us into WWI but weren't strong enough to get us into the League Of Nations...
And this is another fun one. At 45 minutes, it says "At least 12 countries warned the US regarding intelligence about an eminent attack on America" and it shows news headlines about this or that country giving us warnings well in advance.
Fast forward to one hour and 8 minutes.
"The 911 Truth:
Criminal Elements within the US Government staged a "False Flag" Terror Attack on its own citizens, in order to manipulate public perception into supporting its agenda
They have been doing these for years
911 was an inside job"
OK, wait up. Time out. So it was an inside job AND we had prior warning of it from foreign countries? "Mr. Bush? Yeah, this is Jacque Chirac. We got intelligence that you are going to attack your own country."
The first part is kind of interesting but not really relevant to the rest of their theory.
They are very bad about citing their sources. That's probably because they didn't read them and at best are going entirely on secondary resources.
They didn't go into a lot of detail and someone on here said that's because there's too much to go through. Well, I think if you are going to make outrageous, you have to be very specific cause I sure as hell ain't gonna take your word on it.
Anyway, as far as kooky conspiracy videos go, it ain't bad. It's better than Loose Change. But honestly, I've seen videos denying that the holocaust ever happened that were more persuasive than this. And the holocaust most definitely happened!
EDIT: I just looked it up. Apparently recent research has uncovered evidence that suggests that the Nazi's did, in fact, start the Reichstag Fire after all. Isn't there ANYTHING Adolph is innocent of? I'm very disapointed in him for doing that!
