The path to political propaganda

At The Huffington Post today, Max Blumenthal looks at "the secret right-wing network behind ABC's 9/11 deception," that is, behind its highly controversial and highly erroneous "dramatization" The Path to 9/11, "a gross distortion of history":

In fact, "The Path to 9/11" is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11's director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to "transform Hollywood" in line with its messianic vision.

If you want to know what's behind all the fuss, this is a must-read post. For more, see Think Progress, AMERICAblog, TBogg, Orcinus, Firedoglake, and TPMmuckraker.

Joe Gandelman has also been following the story closely at The Moderate Voice. His latest post, with links to previous ones, is here.

At Unclaimed Territory, Glenn Greenwald puts the "dramatization" in political context:

The reason why there is so much intense objection over ABC's 9/11 propaganda film isn't merely because it inexcusably relies on total fictions in order to assign blame for 9/11 -- although that would be cause enough for protests. Well beyond its fabrications, what makes it so inexcusable is the timing of the film -- two months before a critical election -- along with the fact that it is tailor-made for advancing the Republicans' central electoral strategy of hyping the terrorist threat and blaming Democrats for failing to confront that threat.

Exactly. This isn't an accident. It's "basically one big five-hour, prime-time Republican propaganda political commercial on the most important political dispute our country faces". Republicans are desperate to hold on to power in November. And they'll do so, as they often do, by running on lies.