In the Face of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed (2004) – PopMatters Film Review )

The latest offering from the cult of Ronald Reagan is the film documentary In the Face of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed, a ponderous and ideologically narcissistic account of the life and times of 40th U.S. president. With the apotheosis of Reagan as its goal, the film is steeped in overwrought biblical language and an aura of oppressive solemnity.

The film, directed by Stephen K. Bannon, is based on Peter Schweizer’s book Reagan’s War, a hagiography focused on Reagan’s fight against communism. Given the film’s origins, it’s no surprise that it presents a politically blinkered account of world history. It goes something like this: after the carnage of the First World War, Europeans were susceptible to promises of utopia from various ideologies, most notably communism and fascism. These totalitarian systems (which the film names “the Beast”) sought to destroy religion and individualism. Western elites ignored or played down the threat posed by these ideologies, and dismissed critics who called these systems evil as warmongers and cowboys. Reagan was one those who for a time was marginalized for his extreme views, until the U.S. Silent Majority put him in office to defend civilization. If not for Reagan, would the world as we know it have survived? The film’s resounding answer is no.

This is revisionism at its most audacious. To pull off this historical hijacking, the film engages in a wholesale distortion of recent American history. Reagan’s ratcheting up of the arms race is justified on the basis of the highly disputed claim that the Soviet Union enjoyed nuclear supremacy and had plans for a first strike against the U.S. Star Wars — the still unsuccessful attempt to create a space-based shield that can protect against a nuclear attack — is presented as a success, when in reality it has been a black hole for billions of tax-payer dollars. Reagan’s arming and financing of right-wing death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua is offered to us as an achievement during the Cold War. The invasion of tiny Grenada in 1983 is another example of standing up to the Beast.

The whitewashing of the Iran-Contra scandal is without peer in the film, however. Oliver North and the whole gang of Reagan administration officials implicated in the scandal are depicted as unfairly maligned patriots who only wanted to defend their country. That these men perjured themselves and were convicted of serious crimes is water under the bridge.

At various points during In the Face of Evil, U.S. excesses committed during the Cold War (also referred to as “World War III” in the film) are deemed forgivable. Liberals, though, are excoriated for opposing Reagan, even during his days as an anti-Civil Rights governor in California. The social and political turmoil of the ’60s is portrayed as a distraction from the business of fighting WWIII. When recounting a confrontation between Governor Reagan and student activists at Berkeley, the film reports that radicals had “infested” the school. Such outrageous attacks on liberals are central to the film’s attempt to appropriate the genuine achievements of history, like the defeat of the Soviet Union, in order to embellish the mythology of Reagan, and by extension that of conservatives as a whole.

It’s a tactic right out of the playbook of right-wing yahoo Anne Coulter. It’s no surprise that someone like Coulter comes to mind when seeing this film. In the Face of Evil is not only a product of Reagan mania, but also of the war on terror. At the end of the film, we are treated to a gratuitous shot of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center and people jumping to their deaths to escape the flames. The new Beast is Islamic terrorism, and history is repeating itself: a steadfast leader who calls evil by its rightful name is being dismissed by liberal elites as a warmonger and a cowboy. And again, a silent majority of Americans has wisely entrusted this leader with the responsibility of defending civilization. That George W. Bush is the second coming of Reagan is all but stated.

In the wake of the U.S. presidential election, right-wing ideologues will no doubt feel emboldened to perpetuate the myths that animate this film. The silent majority today consists of evangelical Christians who reside in Red States and unwaveringly support the president, despite immense opposition around the world and at home. Liberals are tagged as anti-American for opposing the president’s policies in a time of war. When I saw the film a few days before the election, I comforted myself with the belief that only a minority of Americans would subscribe to the film’s distorted version of history. I guess I did not understand the appeal of myths.