Jasper Rees

Sexed-up pacifism

What exactly is the point of this earnest documentary surveying the anti-war marches of 2003?

Thousands of protesters gather for an anti-war demonstration in New York, 2003. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images 
issue 23 May 2015

Big-screen documentaries never change the world. Blackfish has not shortened the queues to see maltreated killer whales leap through hoops at SeaWorld. Super Size Me reduced neither the all-American waistline nor the profit margin of McDonald’s. The Cove did not prevent the Japan whale industry slaughtering dolphins. So what possible chance, more than a decade after Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, has a mere film of bringing about that most chimerical of holy grails: an admission that the case for invading Iraq was knowingly built on a lie?

We Are Many revisits the anti-war marches of 15 February 2003. On that date there were demonstrations in 789 cities across 72 countries, plus Antarctica, attended by many millions of people of all ages, creeds and colours, none of them frightfully persuaded by the neocon project — eventual cost: $6 trillion — to give that goddamn Saddam a biff on the conk.

In this powerful account of the epic failure of public opinion — and of the House of Commons — the usual suspects say their piece about peace.

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