This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

"Citizen Kane"
1941
Directed by Orson Welles

This is supposed to be one of the greatest films of all time. It had 9 nominations
for Oscar awards, but received only one, perhaps because the Amerikkkans at the time
red-baited Orson Welles. At the time, "Citizen Kane" was a breakthrough for lighting and
depiction of background scenery.

A man born the sixth wealthiest man in the world loses his mother and father as a child as a term
of his inheritance, finds himself raised in a boarding school and then proceeds to lose his
first wife and son in an accident after divorce and finally loses his second wife
when they both spiral downward in an anti-social way. For the rest of his
life after his second wife leaves, Citizen Kane clutched to an image of his sled 
when the bank ward took him away from his parents. Thus, for the ordinary persyn 
this is already a depressing film, that even the world's richest face such calamity, thus
casting doubt on what is possible, at least within capitalism.

What makes it much worse for the communist is knowing that the public ignorantly red-baited
Orson Welles for this movie. A few days before the elections for governor, the public finds
that Citizen Kane has a girlfriend and suddenly public opinion changes against Kane, thus proving that 
in the mind of the public there was never any question of political substance between the corrupt
politician running New York and the bourgeois Citizen Kane running a newspaper. Alas, what is true 
of how the public judged Citizen Kane in a movie is true of how the public judged real world people ranging from
Orson Welles to Bill Clinton. While the real political struggle in the movie is to keep a newspaper
honest and out of the hands of special interests, the public could care less, instead seeking the latest
gossip about street crimes and romantic affairs.

At this point the public apathy to the issues is so deep and this phenomenon so pronounced that
MIM has spoken of the dominance of the gender aristocracy, the leisure-time rulers.
It's difficult to take the Amerikkkan adult public seriously when it whips itself into
anti-communist hysteria regarding things it does not know about and proves that the real substance
of politics is knowing who slept with whom last before the elections. When the bourgeoisified
and pornified public finally does learn about a war, it does pay attention, but it knows nothing 
of its background. There is only sex and violence and it appears it will take much violence 
sustained over a long period of time to interest the public in issues more deeply than it is now.

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