A Review of the Film Hoaxed, by Mike Cernovich

Here is an review of the film Hoaxed by Mike Cernovich. The review is from a Leftist at Medium. He calls it "the most subversive film" of our time.

As a lifelong liberal who voted for Bernie and Hillary and graduated from an Ivy League Institution, I may be the last person you would expect to write a review in favor of the latest documentary by Mike Cernovich, who, after all, is described by Wikipedia as: “an American alt-right social media personality, writer, and conspiracy theorist.” This seeming paradox can only be untangled by watching Hoaxed itself. Cernovich has been made, seemingly, persona-non-grata by the media not because he is what they accuse him of, but because he is a very dangerous and outspoken opponent of an enormous industry, the mainstream corporate media. This industry is responsible for the deaths, literally, of millions of people via their willful complicity in leading the US Government into countless wars, most notably the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

I will make a bold claim here: Hoaxed will go down as the most subversive documentary, perhaps film, of the current decade. Cernovich explained in the Q&A afterwards, “I didn’t want to make a film that was just red meat for MAGA Trump supporters.” He clarified that he wanted to make something entirely non-partisan, and valuable to viewers on either the right or the left. While it will be shunned by the mainstream, Hoaxed has the potential impact of some of Michael Moore’s early work, such as Roger and Me. 

For those resistant to seeing this film due to Cernovich’s support of Trump (which I get), I would actually argue that you need to see this documentary the most, and with an open mind. In a roundabout way, the media itself is one of the most direct culprit’s of Trump’s election. All press is good press, and the media’s constant attacks on Trump have only seemed to bolster him. Despite something in the vicinity of 90% negative news coverage, Trump’s approval ratings are still higher than Obama’s at about the same point in their presidencies. In other words, even if you don’t want a Trump Presidency in 2020, the mainstream media is not your friend. And with that, enough of my ramblings, here is my review of the documentary itself: 

The movie begins with close-up hi-fi noir images of a man staring at a computer screen, a frame of a single pupil dilating in response. Smoking a cigarette, loading an assault rifle. It was an allusion to Edgar Maddison Welch, a 29-year-old man who shot up a pizza parlor in D.C. over his false belief that said parlor possessed a dungeon filled with child sex slaves. This event was emphatically blamed on Cernovich by the mainstream media, something which, to this day, they have never been able to prove. This leads into an introduction to Cernovich himself, which sets the tone of the film as a thorough investigation into the concept of “Fake News.” 

The central thesis of the film (from the author’s perspective) is that the mainstream media lies repeatedly, deliberately, and willfully to impose a narrative that is beneficial only to them, their profits, and the corporations and industries that they are in a symbiotic relationship with — such as the arms industry. 

These media corporations do not care that many of their stories are false, or that they serve to divide an already fractured and hurting nation. They do not care that their lies may lead to wars that claim the lives of thousands or millions of innocent civilians. Through myriad interviews and pieces of contextual background, Hoaxed goes on to prove, beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt, that this phenomenon exists, and that it has serious and lasting consequences.   

Cernovich first interviews Cassie Jaye, former darling of Planned Parenthood and other left-leaning women’s groups, who was the victim of a vicious smear campaign because she dared to question feminist orthodoxy by exploring the issue of Men’s Rights in her film The Red Pill. Jaye’s impassioned and heartfelt description of these attacks and the effect they had on her. She said it felt as though she were being reviled for the last 4 years of her life, simply because the establishment disagreed with the viewpoint she espoused through her film.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.