This is a film about #Jens Stoltenberg#. No, it immediately becomes clear that this is not a film about Jens Stoltenberg: it’s a film to naturalise the Ukraine war and a contribution to the global narrative of Russian or Putin’s unprovoked, aggressive and surprising assault on Ukraine in 2022. And NATO’s efforts to save no less than humanity.
A film of this kind of lingering personal focus rivals toothpaste commercials in its use of sterile, spot- and lifeless surroundings, gleaming white teeth, fashionable Belgian colonial architecture and black Mercedeses, lonely breakfasts (‘I live alone, now,’ Jens reveals) contemplative, introvert scenes of solitude between hectic NATO meetings and the Oval Office. Welcome. Spit it out.
Despite the film’s single-minded focus on an individual face interrupted by the trained body dynamics of a protagonist who resiliently moves from capital to capital, conference to conference, handshake to handshake, the film manages to hold – at least this viewer’s – attention. After all, he’s ‘our man’ up there among the big boys. He is the man of the #Conservatives as well as the #Labour Party#, the man of the Reds and the Greens, housewives and fathers, clerics and scouts: He’s our man out there fighting the bloodthirsty hordes of the East. He is Jens.
The questions it doesn’t ask
But then it’s over. Dark images as in the beginning of the film, with quiet conversations in the background. Quiet conversations between important men and women – those who protect us in the dark while we sleep. We can be just as scared as it takes for NATO and Stoltenberg to get our applause and our billions, but we don’t need to worry because they are there.
If this had happened 30 years ago, we would have bought this narrative. Because we would have had nothing but the media’s serviility to the ‘correct’. But today, in this country, we still have alternative media, independent authors, investigative journalists, #Wikileaks and solidarity communities outside the military media research community. So, we know more. That’s why everything the film doesn’t say and all the questions it doesn’t ask are what I’m left with.
Because the #Ukraine story is not sealed in a vacuum by the NATO press office, we do not even need to go to the ‘alternative’ sources. All it takes is a dose of honest #journalism, searching capacity, memory intact – and a willingness to tell the story:
CNN has told us about the grotesque #Nazi environment in Ukraine. #Boris Johnson# told us about the country’s ultra-right that refused to allow Zelinsky to make peace compromises back in 2019. Open Western opinion polls tell us that Ukrainians were not interested in joining NATO or the EU in the years leading up to the #Maidan coup in 2014 and the ‘full-scale’ invasion in 2022. That the coup was directed by the US is immortalised in the notorious Nuland-Pyatt audio recording. Through Kyiv’s own press, Ukrainian Pravda, we have received confirmation that there were no Russian soldiers in Ukraine in 2014–2018, contrary to what the #mainstream media# keeps telling us. And we have recordings of Stoltenberg himself stating that #Putin invaded because Russia did not want a threatening NATO that was constantly approaching with missile launch bases, bio-labs, and troop movements. We know from Merkel and Holland that the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements were not meant to be respected, but to give time to rebuild a disillusioned and deserting Ukrainian army. While the EU’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, talks about her intention to dismantle Russia into forty or so individual nations, it is Putin who is called aggressive and threatening.
The Ukraine story is not sealed in a vacuum by the NATO press office.
That’s how we know today who engages in aggression and lies and who is not to be trusted. It’s the West with NATO and Stoltenberg at the helm. And if we look at NATO’s narratives, we are at the very heart of #propaganda. We don’t see facts or arguments, but repetitions, repetitions, and repetitions until ‘it sits,’ with what they want people to believe: Russians are evil. We are good.
That’s what this film is about. Not about Jens or his friends or family, or his habits or bad habits, leisure time, or hobbies. Not about a flesh-and-blood human being, but about the surface of a machine-like instrument that, on behalf of unidentified forces, tours the world while stirring up a conflict that has cost the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of people and billions of dollars in replaceable and irreplaceable assets.
Swiss NATO and #Warsaw Pact# expert Jacques Baud claims that NATO is an organisation that works to solve the problems it has itself created (Operation Z, Stockholm, 2022). Jens Stoltenberg allows himself to be used for this task. Perhaps that’s why this reviewer sits and watches this entire long 100 minutes of NATO news. Undisturbed. Fascinated by a film that does not for one second seek to describe Stoltenberg the person or the consequences of his work – in blatant and shameless NATO propaganda mode.
Beyond this NATO film, however, the experts are talking about something completely different – about the organisation’s total failure and probable disintegration – a disintegration that comes 25 years, and hundreds of thousands of deaths, too late. It is more than likely that this will be the theme of the next film about NATO.
