By J Conway…

On Wednesday 23rd December, I went with my father to see the Coen brothers’ latest film A Serious Man at one of London’s Everyman Cinemas. (The film is an excellent modern retelling of the Book of Job, I highly recommend it).

Before the film started there were, as usual, a number of adverts, mostly for mobile phones and Christmas presents. One such advert, however, was very different: it was a cross between a charity appeal and the trailer for a documentary about climate change. Dramatic music accompanied images of different people gazing at the camera as well as farmers from different parts of the world accompanied by captions describing the virtues of agriculture . At the end of the video a message popped up which read ‘Distributed by the European Commission and the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union’. At which point my father turned to me and said “What the hell was that?”
“Propaganda” I replied,
“I’ll say”

Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against farmers but I think it is disgusting that as people prepare to enjoy a film, the EU is targeting them with the notion that they must do more to support farmers and EU agriculture, if that even was the conclusion we are supposed to walk away with! (Perhaps this is some sick method to brainwash us into supporting the CAP.) Whatever the case, such images of muscular farmers with captions about how they are the pioneers of the world of tomorrow remind me of nothing other than Nazi and Soviet propaganda.

If you want to watch this neo-fascist propaganda you can watch it on the following link to the EU’s oh-so-necessary Youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/eutube?gl=GB&hl=en-GB#p/search/0/sNSHUEb9vqE