Gloria Greenfield available for interviews from Knoxville by Skype, Zoom, Phone
Intro: Western civilization is facing threats from both internal and external ideas and movements. These totalitarian forces are strengthening, and the enforcement of “politically correct” thinking, speaking, and writing is tightening its grip within academia, media, society, culture, and politics. Too many citizens are intimidated by the leftist thought-police; they dare not speak about issues that are not in alignment with what gets referred to as “politically correct” thoughts. And it’s not only fear of speaking about it, but there is a growing fear of even thinking about such issues.
Q&A
Q: At first glance, it seems that your latest film, The Fight of Our Lives: Defeating the Ideological War Against the West, has a very different focus than your previous films. What motivated you to make this film?
A: The Fight of Our Lives: Defeating the Ideological War Against the West was very important for me to make. Following the previous three films, The Case for Israel: Democracy’s Outpost, Unmasked Judeophobia, and Body and Soul: the State of the Jewish Nation, I felt it was urgent to look at the bigger context–and the bigger context being the ideological war against the West. When we talk about the West, we’re talking about Western Civilization, which is founded upon the Hebrew Bible and the Judeo- Christian values that emanated from it. When we connect the dots, we begin to see that in order for anti-Western enemies to defeat the West, to destroy the west, one has to destroy, demonize and destroy Judeo-Christian values and demonize and persecute Christians and Jews, which is what we’ve been seeing. And it is escalating at rapidly. Christians and Jews must work together to fight this assault. If we continue to work in silos, we will be at a loss in trying to confront these threats from both postmodern secularism and fundamentalist Islam.
Q: How has the west allowed itself to get in the situation where we actually are threatened by an ideology that hates everything that represents our Judeo-Christian heritage?
A: Well, there’s a couple of points that should be made about that. One is that many people think that the KGB’s priority was gathering intelligence. But in fact, the majority of the work that the KGB was engaged in was demoralizing the West. They planted the seeds. This demoralization has been going on for some time, going back to the 50s and the 60s.
While people have celebrated that the Soviet Union fell, in fact, they’re still harvesting what the Soviets planted. But also, following the Second World War, following the Holocaust, there was a demoralization that shook Europe. And philosophers like Foucault and Edward Said developed a whole perspective of the West being all that is wrong in the world.
You have college students today, throughout the West—whether we’re talking about Europe or Australia or Canada and the United States—who believe that Marxist Leninist ideology, or what they refer to as Socialism, even though they don’t know what Socialism really represents, that Socialism is the answer. They believe that Capitalism is terrible and we see the impact wherever we look. It’s no longer just in the universities, because the graduates of the universities are in the elementary and secondary schools teaching, they are in government, in media, really in every sector of society. This Marxist-Leninist philosophy and perspective, and some call it Cultural Marxism and some say, no, it’s actually Marxist-Leninism in a slightly modified way, but I’m not sure it’s so modified. I mean, this is what the internal forces, this is what the anti-western ideas and movements are going for and also the previous administration in the United States was going for. It’s a real problem because it also pushes secularization. It brings with it all of those elements of Marxist-Leninism. We see in the UK the closing down of churches. We see throughout the west, this diminishment and delegitimization of people of faith. We’ve got a real problem on our hands.
Q: Academic freedom of expression is now under serious threat, which is one of our foundational structures for our democracy. If this one goes, I dread to think what would happen. How have we allowed a situation where our universities are meant to be places of freedom of thought, freedom of academic expression, learning about ideas and having ideas shaped, and yet they seem they are actually being incredibly threatened?
A: It’s as though the administration of many of these universities are being held hostage by radicals in their student body, and the administrations at many of these universities are not standing up and enforcing discipline and consequence to behaviors. There are so many examples of this. The students are also weak. Even though they stand up to protest and riot, their character is weak they’ve been so pampered that they cannot handle debate. They cannot handle the challenge of processing another perspective. They don’t have to accept another perspective but they have to be able to engage in civil discourse with opposing views. If they can’t do that, they’re going to fail in the future. There are students who think that they could actually go to law school and be an effective lawyer or go to medical school and be an effective doctor, while in a literature class they can’t even handle reading a novel that might involve rape. How are they going to help a rape victim if they can’t read a book, if they need a trigger warning so that they could decide whether they can remain in the classroom to read that book?
Q: What do you think the world would be like in 10, 15 years’ time if our political leaders, our academics, our journalists, those who have a big impact upon our society and its values, don’t recognize what is happening. What state will the Western society be in a decade from now?
A: It’s unthinkable what will happen if we don’t turn things around. Now, I do want to say that I don’t think it’s necessary for the majority of the West to wake up. What we do need is a very strong minority to wake up. If we look historically, the majority of Jews did not leave Egypt with Moses. But a good minority did. The numbers fluctuate; some people say 20% left with Moses, some say 40% left with Moses. But it’s not just that event where we learn that you need a strong minority, and you don’t have to wait to get a strong majority. We know throughout history that if you have a strong minority, a strong resistance, and people of faith who have the passion, and the commitment and determination to fight evil, to fight for the good, we don’t have to do it alone, because we have God on our side.
About Gloria Z. Greenfield
Gloria Z. Greenfield is Honorary Artist in Residence at the University of Tennessee/Knoxville, where she has joint appointments in Cinema Studies and the School of Journalism and Electronic Media. She brings over 30 years of strategic planning, marketing, and management experience to her current work as a documentary filmmaker. Since founding Doc Emet Productions in 2007, where she serves as president, her film credits include The Case for Israel – Democracy’s Outpost (2008), Unmasked Judeophobia (2011), Body and Soul – The State of the Jewish Nation (2014), and The Fight of Our Lives – Defeating the Ideological War Against the West (2018).
Greenfield’s films have received international acclaim and have been translated into Arabic, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. The Fight of Our Lives – Defeating the Ideological War Against the West received the Special Jury Remi at the 51st Annual Worldfest Houston International Film Festival and was awarded “Best Libertarian Ideals” at the Anthem Film Festival. Her film Unmasked Judeophobia has been incorporated into the Yad Vashem Visual Center.
An alumna of the State University of New York at Oswego, Greenfield was honored with their Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1981. In 1985, upon conclusion of her graduate studies, Hebrew College awarded Greenfield the Sara Feinsilver Prize as the outstanding female graduating student; and in May 2005, the Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Boston presented Greenfield with their Keter Torah Award for her contribution to Jewish education. Greenfield was also the recipient of the Haiti Jewish Refugee Legacy Project’s 2012 Tikkun Olam Award for “shining a much-needed bright light on the dark seen and unseen world of anti-Semitism today” through her film Unmasked Judeophobia.
CONTACT: Jerry McGlothlin
919-437-0001
