America: Freedom to Fascism (2006)

Director: Aaron Russo

Review by Herman Gardner

Aaron Russo is a man with guts.  A former music promoter, talent agent, film producer, and near candidate for President of the Libertarian Party, Russo is one of those uniquely American iconoclasts whose stubbornness has led him to stray far and wide to satisfy his intellect.

Initially a film about his search to find out whether Americans indeed are required to pay Federal Income taxes, Russo became compelled to delve into much deeper topics related to political corruption, the influence of international banking on American policy and, ultimately, the fate that awaits our nation if we continue to allow our government to increase its control on our daily lives.

While Russo's film is somewhat unpolished compared to other documentaries, one should not mistake rough editing and grainy film for lack of seriousness and depth of information.

While many Americans go to great lengths to inform themselves of daily goings on around them, if only to understand how their future may be affected, most Americans curiously shy away from looking with an open mind at how our government currently operates on the large scale and what it may mean to their lives.  Partly, this may because most Americans feel they have little control over the political process, and anyway, any corruption that emanates from Washington occurs despite the many checks and balances we've been told exist in our political system.  What can any of us do in the end but stick to that which we can control?  And who would pretend to have the answers anyway?

Yet, this sort of blinder mentality has increasingly resulted in people actively disparaging those who try to analyze and parse government's motives in order to distill them to some logical conclusions.  In the absence of an open system of government with a truly independent media reporting on Washington's operation, independent observers who attempt to look at the bigger picture are, by necessity, forced to fit their findings into often imperfect paradigms.  As a result, fact finders like Russo are working at a disadvantage.  But it is a great mistake to confuse imperfect theories with misinformation.  After all, even imperfect theories hinge on ample numbers of data points that together assemble a series of rough but cogent pictures.  Yet any picture is infinitely greater in helping one to comprehend our reality if our only alternative is to rely on sheer ignorance or on pumped up government propaganda that has lately become so shrill.

I have to admit, before the film I was completely skeptical of the claim that Americans are under no legal obligation to pay Federal Income Taxes.  Russo begins by describing how the Supreme Court has both consistently ruled that the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution did not give the government the authority to impose a labor tax and how the Court has also specifically defined 'income' as neither worker wages nor labor but as corporate monetary gains.  He describes how a group of international bankers, including Meyer Rothschild, worked with influential Washington senators to create the Federal Reserve System, basically a credit line, from which the U.S. Treasury borrows money at an interest rate to be paid for by a federally mandated income tax.  Like a teen with a bottomless Visa card, the US government borrows money and then we end up paying the interest on the borrowed money, an expensive habit that becomes ever harder to reconcile with our budget.

The result is that our government has had to resort to ever more brutal tactics to get its money from the people.  Tactics that range from IRS and police brutality, to bullying of juries sitting on court cases, to the increasing threat of universal tracking mechanisms such as radio frequency (RFID) tags on both goods, money, and, by 2008, citizens.

The control given up by our leaders to the bankers, in Russo's conclusion, explains the seeming paradox of why our ostensibly democratic government is so interested in curbing the freedoms and liberties on which this country was founded.

After seeing Russo's film, I can also understand the deep concern our government must have if the majority of people were to finally figure out that they indeed hold the cards in dictating to our government how and under what conditions it should operate.

The movie is scary.  At various points in the documentary, Russo interviews an expert on RFID tags, a former IRS commissioner, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, victims of IRS shakedowns, and numerous former IRS and FBI agents who have come to realize our government is perpetrating a fraud on the American public.  Together, these interviews offer a compelling portrait of a government gone wrong and spinning relentlessly out of control.

To paraphrase another reviewer, you will be "angry and disgusted," but for those with an open mind (what else, if anything, have libertarians?) this film is one of the best primers on the big picture of our day.

See:
America: Freedom to Fascism