fundraising drive.

Promotion of Fahrenheit 9/11 dominates Moore’s website, featuring a mischievously doctored picture of him holding hands with a jolly-looking Bush. The first batch of links concerns the documentary’s content and what political action viewers can take. The ‘Okay, I’ve seen the movie. What do I do now?’ link takes us to ‘Mike’s action guide’, which urges viewers to adopt a pledge. This will commit them to registering at least 10 people to vote; spend a weekend in one of 17 swing states (ie, where the Bush/Kerry presidential vote will be extremely tight); adopt five non-voters and escort them to the polls; and volunteer on election day to boost turnout through street stalls, leafleting, etc. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there seems to be a common thread uniting these activities …

The guide moves on to more electoral activism, with more tips around voter registration, how to vote, how to stand for office, places where Greens can be elected “without feeling guilty”, and more on swing voting. Perhaps the most interesting of these is ‘Take back congress!’ Of course this means securing a Democrat majority in both the senate and house of representatives. However, Moore qualifies this with the necessity of “reminding them to vote the way Democrats are supposed to, and we’ll demand that they grow a backbone”. Unfortunately for Moore, given that the Democrats have historically been a schizophrenic alliance between northern liberals and southern conservatives with their respective constituencies, just how Democrat representatives are “supposed” to vote is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Other items in the action guide include pieces on the Guantanamo Bay prisoners, a round-up of news items culled from mainly “real news” sources (it definitely says something about the state of the US media when The Guardian and the BBC can be classed thus), a forceful guide to the authoritarian Patriot Act and the proposed measures to be included in supplementary legislation. It will be interesting to see how the USA’s rightwing clique of media punditry squares measures that allow the government to ‘disappear’ and strip people of their citizenship with the press freedom Americans supposedly enjoy.

Another interesting feature is ‘How can I help the soldiers?’ The first part concerns the ‘Books for soldiers’ website, where those in the armed services post requests for titles which are then donated by viewers. Cannily Moore has muscled in by offering free copies of his Stupid white men and Dude, where’s my country? to those occupying Iraq. Given that most of the left has a paper position of agitating among the armed forces, this seems one way of offloading piles of political books and pamphlets that are otherwise gathering dust. Other offerings include writing to the Selective Service System (the agency responsible for supplying the army with personnel) to state your conscientious objector intentions for when a draft takes place, and a collection of letters from soldiers in Iraq.

Communists can criticise Moore’s politics, which are essentially liberal with a strong radical-populist bent, on many counts. However, Marxists should acknowledge Moore’s positive political achievements. The first of these is obvious - his skilful use of the media to both promote his documentaries and books, and the ability to provoke acres of media coverage to reach audiences not usually receptive to politics left of Bush. More important though is his effective appeal to the democratic side of American national identity. Moore’s work is helping to turn this traditional bastion of US conservatism into a battleground on which progressive ideas can make an advance. There is a lesson here for the left.