A very good article in Le Soleil with a Ukrainian viewpoint.
POLINA KHRYSTIUK ET EVHENIA VIATCHANINOVA
Au nom de la campagne « Sauver l’Ukraine »
(About Oliver Stone in Quebec)
On behalf of the "Save Ukraine" campaign
(English Translation)
VIEWPOINT / The tour of Oliver Stone in Quebec City as part of the Festival du cinéma de la Ville de Québec (FCVQ), a close friend of Vladimir Putin and one of the too many transmission belts of the Kremlin's discourse and Russian propaganda, makes us react.
As soon as we read the first press release last April, announcing Mr. Stone's visit to Quebec City, we were struck by the lack of sensitivity of the organizers and sponsors of the FCVQ. Mariupol has suffered a horrific siege; looting, accounts of gang rape and images of innocent civilians and children being killed by brutal Russian invaders in Butcha and Borodianka near Kyiv have made the headlines. Politicians no longer hesitate to "call a spade a spade", i.e. to raise the possibility of genocide.
We hoped that the FCVQ or its sponsors would insist that this visit be at least postponed, however it was clear that the Festival wanted to increase its visibility a little too much thanks to this star, following two years without activities due to COVID-19.
This visit was reported by the media as being too expensive (especially for taxpayers), and was devoted to a film on the fate of the 35th American president (which hardly justifies its "documentary" style, if we are serious). Yet, the media all did seize the opportunity to address the controversy surrounding Mr. Stone's admiration of Vladimir Putin.
Unfortunately, the local media, including our public broadcaster, have been less than rigorous in their research, having taken word for word what came out of the mouth of a conspiracy theorist in an interview, arranged by the public relations experts. And now, according to the media, Mr. Stone is even emerging as a great diplomat and promoter of peace in Ukraine!
Many media outlets concluded this week that Mr. Stone condemned the invasion as a mistake, without mentioning his several comments justifying Russian aggression since 2014 and his support for Russia in the weeks leading up to the invasion arguing that there was no evidence of such intent with the Russians.
We can't help but note that Mr. Stone continued to praise Russia after his first public "soul-searching" message, while spreading lies about the "fake corpses of Butcha" and other nonsense, which only serve to poison people's hearts and minds. What else could one really expect from a man whose son until the day of the invasion hosted a show on an international TV channel owned by the Kremlin and who believes in the conspiracy theories of QAnon? What else could we really expect from a man who asked the Russian president in 2019 to become his daughter's godfather, according to the official transcript of the interview posted online by the Kremlin?
Let's be clear: This visit and the public platform that the FCVQ gave Stone presented national security risks. The notoriety surrounding his presence in Quebec for several days risks the strong propagation of the lies he shared through his documentary on Ukraine, his interviews with Russian Federation President Vladimir
Putin, as well as his numerous messages on social media. It doesn't take a social media analyst to see immediately how this high-profile visit has emboldened local influencers and useful idiots (many of whom are anti-vaccine activists, by the way) to continue their pro-Russian propaganda activities.
In announcing the visit, Director General Genois said that Mr. Stone's meeting with the Quebec public will provide "a world of opportunity for questions and conversations.
No, Mr. Genois, the world is already filled with enough people who lend themselves to Kremlin disinformation and the propagation of alternative facts harmful to democracy and serving the cause of authoritarian governments. It seems that every era has its own Leni Riefenstahl. Today, it is Oliver Stone, and you, Mr. Genois, the FCVQ with its sponsors, have chosen to host him without taking into account political and especially human sensibilities.
####
And a reminder:
Previous Blog Posts on Oliver Stone's Politics
Relevant Links on Oliver Stone's Politics