1917

by | Jan 20, 2020

I’ve long thought that if you want to see through the deceptive camouflage to the truest essence of the state, you need to study the Great War, renamed World War I after the 20-year intermission between it and World War War II. As you study the prelude to the war that began in August 1914, you grasp how the rulers of each of the great European powers — Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia — shared responsibility, though not in equal measure, for the insanity that was to follow, an insanity that annihilated the flower of a generation and inflicted mind-numbing devastation throughout Europe and beyond.

Lately, I have been watching whatever documentaries and movies about the war I can find, so the appearance of a new movie, 1917, is perfect for me. This is not a movie about how or why the war that had 40 million total casualties happened. Rather, it focuses narrowly on two British privates on a mission that takes them out of the putrid trenches, across terrifying no-man’s land, and through possibly former German-held territory in France. And we accompany them throughout their ordeal; there are no cuts to other locations. I was on edge for nearly two hours. The movie’s remarkable cinematography conveys what that killing field must have looked and felt like to the poor souls thrust into it.

I enthusiastically recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see the misery that states are capable of inflicting on innocent people.

About Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

Our Books

latest book lineup.

Related Articles

Related

Ban “Ethnic Cleansing”

I propose that we defenders of individual rights stop using the term ethnic cleansing. Why? Because it is the sort of euphemism bad people would use to disguise what they are doing when they expel or annihilate large numbers of people viewed as members of the wrong...

read more

The Eternal Panopticon: The State as Predator

Lizard Farmer did an excellent synopsis of how the state stalks its prey. The observations are older but still germane. If London had this technology in 1770, America would not have been born and Paul Revere, the Committees of Correspondence and his colleagues would...

read more