Aaron Russo was a talented filmmaker, and it was sad and embarrassing to see him sink like this at the end of his career and life. The contents of this "documentary" and his personal tax problems aside, the publicity both before and after the release of this film was a disappointment. For example, the above-linked web site states:
America: Freedom to Fascism is a compelling and troubling account of how the wealth of our nation was silently passed from its citizens to a handful of powerful bankers in 1913. That's the year the Federal Reserve Act and the 16th Amendment were introduced, giving a privately held corporation the means to control our finances while ensuring its interest payments through the strong arms of the newly-formed Internal Revenue Service.
http://www.freedomtofascism.com/downloads/dvd.php
The Federal Reserve System, of course, is not a "corporation" -- public, private or otherwise. It's a
central banking system. Some of its components are indeed privately held corporations (specifically, the
member banks), other parts are quasi-private/quasi-governmental (the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks), and still other parts are strictly governmental bodies, such as the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. And the Internal Revenue Service was not "newly-formed" in 1913 -- not that this really makes any difference.
Russo's first and most cogent point is simple: Americans are not required to pay a federal income tax. [ . . . ] Russo takes that same belief to IRS employees and simply asks them to cite where it says an unapportioned income tax is required of us all. Guess what? They can't.
Whooptie-doo! Relatively few IRS employees can cite any constitutional provision regarding taxation -- or any Internal Revenue Code provision regarding taxation. In fact, relatively few tax practitioners need to be able to cite specific constitutional provisions on taxation.
One segment of the film I have seen shows Russo walking around, asking people on the street if they have ever seen the law making them liable for the federal income tax. And of course, virtually no one has. Just as virtually no one has ever seen the law in their particular state making it a crime to commit murder. I myself cannot cite the Texas statute on murder -- but I have read it many times, I know where it's located, and I can find it in a few seconds if I'm near an internet connection.
In a telling segment Sheldon Cohen, former commissioner of the IRS, goes so far as to reject Supreme Court rulings and the Constitution as benchmarks over what is legal with regards to taxation.
No, he doesn't.
Russo also interviews members of the tax honesty movement as well as disenfranchised IRS agents who agree that no law on the books conjures up a requirement to send the government part of one's hard-earned paycheck.
Ah, so the fact that the members of the ironically titled "tax honesty" movement and those "disenfranchised IRS agents"
agree means that there really is no such law?
Russo then showcases court cases where those accused of tax evasion have won precisely because the prosecution cannot provide evidence of a legal federal income tax law.
No, he doesn't. There are no such court cases.
Now, Russo can't be held responsible for this particular verbiage, since he's gone now and it was written by someone else and posted on the film's web site. But the same kind of disinformation was associated with the publicity for this "documentary" when he was alive -- at the time of the film's release, including the fake implication that the film had been entered into and had been a part of the Cannes Film Festival, when he actually only exhibited the film at the town of Cannes
at the time the festival was being held.
Russo also is reported to have used an infamous fake Woodrow Wilson "quote" supposedly on the subject of the evil ol', bad ol' Federal Reserve System that is constantly bandied about on the internet (if I recall, it is a combination of a fake quote with two actual quotes pulled from different places and placed together -- to make it appear that Wilson was talking trash about the Federal Reserve System).
The critics said it best. Scott Moore, movie critic of the
Portland Mercury, wrote:
There are a lot of stupid people in this world, and some of those stupid people are going to see ''America: From Freedom to Fascism'' and buy into its half-baked, hole-ridden, libertarian rhetoric about the alleged illegality of the federal income tax. And that's a shame, if for no other reason than it'll be a small defeat for logic. [ . . . ] By presenting half-baked ideas with the faux certainty that comes through sheer repetition and bending historical facts to fit his agenda, Russo manages to portray the legality of the income tax as something actually worthy of debate. Thing is, it's only up for debate among anti-tax conspiracy theorists who have anarchist, anti-social tendencies.
And Nathan Rabin of the
Onion A.V. Club wrote, on July 26, 2006:
One-time Libertarian presidential candidate and ''Rude Awakening'' auteur Aaron Russo has some very good news for you: You don't have to pay income taxes anymore! Congrats! Don't spend all that extra money in one place! [ . . . ] Now the bad news: any day now, jackbooted thugs will break down your door, seize your belongings, and insert a computer chip inside you so you can be monitored at all times by the looming one-world international government. Yes, ''America: Freedom To Fascism'' gives the Michael Moore muckraking-underdog treatment to the kind of delirious conspiracy theories generally associated with mentally ill homeless people screaming at passersby to stop stealing their brainwaves.
[ . . .]In his wildly digressive quest to uncover the (supposedly nonexistent) law forcing Americans to pay income tax, Russo unconvincingly indicts a rogue's gallery of scoundrels and heavies from both sides of the political divide.
From the IRS to the greedy bankers behind the Federal Reserve to The Patriot Act to globalization and multinational corporations, ''Fascism'' rails semi-coherently against bogeymen on the left and right, employing public-access production values and a world-changing sense of purpose wildly disproportionate to its paltry resources and amateurish direction. The film somehow manages the formidable task of being far more paranoid and hysterical than even its screaming tabloid-headline title would suggest.
Russo had approximately $2 million in Federal tax liens against his property. He also had state tax problems in California. Despite marketing his film as a "documentary," Russo reportedly refused to discuss his objectivity with respect to his personal federal tax problems with reporters -- contending that his
federal tax problems were not relevant to his motivation for making a film questioning the
legal validity of federal taxes.
"My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line." -- David Mamet
