AMERICA: From Freedom to Fascism

AMERICA: FREEDOM TO FASCISM is a new documentary from director Aaron Russo (The Rose, Trading Places) that tracks the increasing government surveillance of American citizens through the use of new technologies was released in five major U.S. cities today.

According to Russo the primary goals of the film are to; "Stop the polarization of America, stop the domination of the Democratic and Republican parties over our political system, shut down the Federal Reserve system, return America's gold to Fort Knox and have it audited, have Congress and the IRS, in a public forum, reveal the law that requires Americans to pay a direct, unapportioned tax on their labor."

Below are excerpts of ten published movie reviews (pro and con). If you decide to see the film, please send us your review and we'll post it here!

THUMBS UP...

* Todd David Schwartz of CBS says ...
"FOUR STARS (Highest Rating). The scariest film you'll see this year. It will leave you staggering out of the theatre, slack-jawed and trembling. Makes 'Fahrenheit 9/11' look like 'Bambi.' After watching this movie, your comfy, secure notions about America -- and about what it means to be an American -- will be forever shattered. Producer/director Aaron Russo and the folks at Cinema Libre Studio deserve to be heralded as heroes of a post-modern New American Revolution. This is shocking stuff. You'll be angry, you'll be disgusted, but you may actually break out in a cold sweat and feel a sickness deep in your gut; I would advise movie theatre managers to hand out vomit bags. You may end up needing one."

* Robert W. BUTLER of The Kansas City Star says...
"By all means, approach “America: From Freedom to Fascism” with caution. You’ll leave Aaron Russo’s movie (opening today at the AMC Studio 30) feeling besieged, paranoid and furious. Of course documentaries, like the Bible, can be twisted to accommodate almost any point of view. So the best thing about “From Freedom to Fascism” may be the debate it should generate about “truths” most of us accept without thinking. I’m a movie critic, not an economist or political scientist. So I can’t begin to say how many of this film’s dire predictions have a basis in fact. But if “America: From Freedom to Fascism” is right only 10 percent of the time, we’re in big trouble."

* New York Magazine reports...
"Determined to find the law that requires American citizens to pay income tax, producer Aaron Russo set out on a journey to find the evidence. Neither left, nor right-wing, this startling examination of government exposes the systematic erosion of civil liberties in America since 1913 when the Federal Reserve System was fraudulently created. Through interviews with two U.S. Congressmen, former IRS Commissioner and former IRS and FBI agents, tax attorneys and authors, Russo connects the dots between money creation, federal income tax, and the national identity card, which becomes law in May 2008 and will use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. This is a precursor to an impending police state in America."

* Chuck Baldwin of Conservative Voice says
"The film begins with a critical review of two monumental events that happened in 1913: the adoption of the 16th Amendment, which has been interpreted to authorize the forced taxation of individual income and the creation of the Federal Reserve, which turned the governance of America's financial system over to a centralized private banking interest. The film intelligently and convincingly makes a strong case for the opinion that both the 16th Amendment and the Federal Reserve System are flatly unconstitutional and may not even have been legally adopted."

"Many very credible personalities are interviewed in the film including Texas Congressman Ron Paul, constitutional scholar Edwin Vieira, Jr. Esq., former IRS special agents and investigators, and several others. Russo also interviewed former IRS commissioners, and reviewed copious court cases, including Supreme Court cases. Predictably (for such a documentary), notable tax resistors such as Bob Schulz and Franklin Sanders were also interviewed. And, frankly, their arguments are compelling!"

"The overall arguments and conclusions of the film are more than convincing! It will be very difficult for anyone objectively viewing this film to attack the facts and evidence presented. And for that reason, I'm confident that both the political and financial interests of this country will hope that no one watches it!"

"There were only a couple of disappointments with the film. I noticed two words that will be offensive to Christian audiences. Plus, had Russo added the cross-examination by the inquisitor-esque Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, churches and pastors would more quickly be able to identify with this film. And if any group of people needs to see and take to heart Russo's film, it is today's pastors and churches!" "My other disappointment was with the way the film ends. I won't spoil the ending for those who have yet to see it, but, personally, I felt Russo could have done a better job with the film's conclusion."

"The film runs for about one hour and forty five minutes. It is quite refreshing to see a first-rate documentary film which reveals the truth about the very real efforts of elites from both major parties and from international bankers to turn America into a fascist, globalist state, which is exactly what they are doing! I applaud the film and heartily recommend it! I further encourage Mr. Russo to produce a sequel and to seek assistance from likeminded Christians who can help him bring in those elements that will help his message connect with pastors and churches."

"Russo's film is debuting in several major cities across the country over the next few weeks. If you have an opportunity to see it, by all means do so! If you are a real American, the film will anger you (as it was designed to do) and also challenge you to not sit passively by as international elitists steal our country out from under us."

* Mark Yannone of phxnews.com says ...
"The feds definitely stink on ice in this movie--as well they might. Aaron Russo has earned his place in the preferred section of Heaven with this film, and the nation owes him a large debt of gratitude for having produced it. Eliciting cheers and tears from the audience, America: From Freedom to Fascism is so moving and effective that I wouldn't be surprised to read that Aaron Russo committed suicide by stabbing himself in the back four times before the train hit him, and all copies of the movie have mysteriously vanished."

"For anyone over the age of reason, including the 67 million Americans who no longer file federal income tax returns, missing this movie will be a costly mistake. Watch for it."

Steven Yates of Newswithviews says ...
"A MUST SEE MOVIE! Only we can change things—if we wake up! For the moment (thanks to the Internet) mainstream media corporations do not control the flow of information. Word about America: Freedom to Fascism is spreading. Thanks to a growing network, Americans will have the opportunity to see this film this summer in large numbers. It will open in selected theaters in New York, Chicago, Tampa, Kansas City, and Austin Texas beginning July 28. On August 4, it will open in five more markets: Los Angeles, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Orlando and Miami. Anyone living within easy driving distance of these locations ought to do it."

"Then get your loved ones, friends, neighbors, fellow employees, bosses, bank tellers, those who sell you your groceries, those who sell you your gas, etc., to see it. College and university students should definitely see it, since if nothing changes they will graduate into the emerging brave new world of high-tech controls. Sign up as a volunteer. South Carolina’s coordinator tells me that the website has had 500,000 unique hits. If each of these 500,000 people sees this film and then takes appropriate action, we may just have a fighting chance at taking our country back. But we’d better get our derriers moving. In the early 1990s, with the EU in Europe and NAFTA here, the global power network began to tighten down the screws. Today, there is abundant evidence on official (not “conspiracy theory”) websites of entangling alliances that will gradually erode America’s borders and create a North American Union modeled on the EU (see, e.g., the SPP, or Building a North American Community on the Council on Foreign Relations site). Wake up, America! Time is running out!"

THUMBS DOWN ...

* David C. Johnston of NY Times says ...
"Hyping films with fanciful claims is nothing new in Hollywood. But examination of the assertions in Mr. Russo’s documentary, which purports to expose “two frauds” perpetrated by the federal government, taxing wages and creating the Federal Reserve to coin money, shows that they too collapse under the weight of fact. Many of the reviews in major newspapers have accepted as having some factual basis the film’s main contention, that the government illegally extracts income taxes, even though every court that has ever ruled on these issues has upheld the constitutionality of the income tax."

* Nathan Lee of NY Times says "The mess we’re in never looked so messy"
"There are a number of problems with “America: Freedom to Fascism,” not least of which is a title so meaningless it would make Wittgenstein’s head explode. It would take two months on Google to sift through all the provocations of “America: Freedom to Fascism,” which begins with an intriguing investigation into the methodology of the I.R.S., then extrapolates its conclusions into a tirade against the Federal Reserve, the Homeland Security Department, Congress, presidents of the United States (all of them), judges (all of them), war, computer voting machines, the national ID card, microchip implants, overzealous police, the banking conspiracy, and so on. The mess we’re in never looked so messy."

* Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune says...
"Aaron Russo's "America: Freedom to Fascism" can't even think straight, it's so mad. It is a flailing Libertarian fever dream, aghast every second about why paying federal income tax makes you a patsy ruled by an increasingly totalitarian system of government. More broadly Russo paints a picture of a country replete with electronic voting machine fraud (no argument there), Third Reich-brand national ID cards and, soon enough, he argues, electronic implants to track our every purchase. The one-man-band filmmaker, who ran for president on the Libertarian ticket two years ago, starts with a worthwhile subject before flinging it aside for bigger, messier prey. In 1913 the Federal Reserve Bank was founded, effectively putting the government in the debt of a private banking consortium... His film, however, hasn't the savvy or the polemical skills it takes to marry effective argumentation to outrage."

* Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine says...
"Let me spare Armond White the trouble and call America: Freedom to Fascism a whacked-out piece of anti-American propaganda. The documentary begins as a rant about the not-so-unpopular belief that the IRS lacks the legitimate authority to collect income taxes, an argument director Aaron Russo's interviewees dutifully flatter—everyone else is a nutjob or unavailable for comment, ostensibly because they are unable to hand over the legal documents that state we have to pay the IRS. Russo appears to make a good case against the organization (the crux: that the 16th Amendment was improperly ratified), its illegitimate power and abuse of existing laws, but does so sneakily, belligerently, and from a grotesquely unattractive soap box. There's no consistency of style here, suggesting the film was constructed largely in the editing room, finished minutes before it was screened for press: Russo possesses the grace of an angry taxi driver, but when he's too tired to narrate this scare tactic himself (was Shannon Doherty unavailable?), he allows ugly skits and scrolling white-on-black text scored to manipulative music that might sound more appropriate in a Halloween movie to do the dirty work for him. The film is prone to truth-twisting and simplification but might have been all right had it ended after one of Russo's interviewees declares that the proof against the illegality of income tax collection is irrefutable. "Period. End of argument," the man says. But this is where the film morphs into a fear-mongering spectacle: about the value of the dollar, the Federal Reserve, and the RFID chips the government is bound to implant in your body if you don't say no to the National ID cards coming our way in 2008. Russo treats his audience like Pavlovian dogs, fascistically guilting us into submission with snarky use of the American anthem and images of Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and George Washington, but never clarifies if he'll pay our legal fees should we heed his Word."

*Harvey S. Karten, Member: NY Film Critics says ...
"Aaron Russo, who’s mad as hell and won’t take it any more, obviously has a chip on his shoulder, but ironically he does not want any of us to accept imprinting with a chip on the shoulder, on the arm, or any other part of our anatomy. He warns that America is heading down the road to fascism in three ways: 1) The ID card requirement which purportedly will become law in 2008; 2) The Federal Reserve banking system, a private corporation that forces the U.S. government to grovel when it wants to borrow money; and most strongly, the argument that 3) We as individuals are not required to pay a national income tax on our wages because a) the 16th amendment to the Constitution was never properly ratified in 1913 and b) there is no law that requires workers to pay taxes on the fruits of their labor–only corporations are required to do this, because “income” means “gain.”"

"Russo’s arguments make him sound pretty much like a libertarian, which is to say a person who embracesThomas Jefferson’s political theory that “that government is best that governs least” or, to put it more strongly, that government should exist only to defend the country against foreign enemies, domestic bad-guys, and to enforce contracts. Some of his points sound convincing, but his over-the-top notion that we’re heading into a system not unlike those run by Stalin and Mussolini, may scare some of us but abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghareb notwithstanding, this is Orwellian. Far out."

"Since everybody and his uncle hates to pay taxes, the initial part of the documentary is the most compelling. Russo, interviewing former IRS Commissioner Sheldon Cohen and others–including and women on the street in the style of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11" and a number of high-level IRS agents who quit when convinced that the tax is illegal–posits that the federal income tax is a hoax; that no one in government has ever produced a copy of the law. (Despite the amount of time Russo takes up on this theory, when one goes to Google “Federal Income Tax United States,” quite a few notations include copies of the Income Tax Code.) Russo, dressed throughout the picture in a bright orange shirt, open collared, confuses the audience. Is there a tax code, or is the 16th Amendment to the Constitution unconstitutional in that it was never ratified? The director does agree that the federal government has the right to tax corporations on profits, however."

"On the matter of the Federal Reserve Bank, which he insists is a private corporation that has government begging at its doorstep for money and then pays huge amounts in interest for the privilege, he does not make his case. We do see money being printed, but isn’t the department that shells out the paper bill–lamentably, he believes, no longer backed up by gold and therefore inflationary and even worthless–actually the U.S. Government mint? I visited the place some time ago, noting the big sign on the window, “No free samples today.”"

"His arguments about world government may well lead the audience to say “huh?” Considering how President Bush has contempt for such accords like the Kyoto Treaty on gas emissions, favored by most of the big powers, one can scarcely believe that the U.S. is about to surrender its ability to make decisions for its residents even if the rest of the world says “no.” Remember how we went to war in Iraq with only token if any cooperation from our European allies? Then again, the documentarian does say that the real organs of power are not in the White House or the Capitol building, but in financial chambers." ... More movie reviews

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

We'd like to share your review! Please email your review of this movie and we will post them in this space. Send reviews to: ideaman@myideafactory.net

PETITION TO HELP ABOLISH THE FED ... "We, the undersigned, demand that the United States Congress immediately shut down the Federal Reserve System and restore money creation to Congress as mandated in the U. S. Constitution. We also demand, without equivocation, that the United States government, on behalf of the American people, protect American national sovereignty and stop its head-long rush into world government."

READ MORE ABOUT 'THE FED: FRAUD OF THE CENTURY' ... "The folding, spindling and mutilating of America's monetary system became legitimized in 1913, when the Federal Reserve was formed. Long ago bankers discovered a nasty little secret referred to as "fractional-reserve banking" which is fueled by credit and debt creation out of thin air", writes Craig R. Smith in Rediscovering Gold in the 21st Century. This Special Report will expose the nation's extraordinarily deceitful banking and money system, and help readers make better financial and life decisions for yourself and your family.