Civil War is a movie in the same way a grenade is a source of light.  Whatever else Civil War might be — a dystopian work of fiction, for one — it is foremost a psy-op exercise masked as a brave work of creative storytelling.  Its bombastic violence is the shiny thing that distracts attention from the deeper purpose of the movie: to dissuade and demoralize any who would support Trump in 2024.

As with any psychological operation exercise, the movie’s mission is to change enemy behavior, shape the battlefield, and reduce the adversaries’ will to fight.  For Alex Garland, the movie’s writer and director, Donald Trump and his right-wing supporters are the enemy.  The battlefield is the 2024 election.

Garland, in his own words, is a man of the left — as in “I’m left-wing” and “[I’m] picking a fight.”  He explains he is willing “to lie to get to what I think is truth.”  (These quotes are from Canadian Tom Power’s interview with Briton Alex Garland, key to understanding Garland’s motivations and the movie’s psy-op methods.)

The movie is a shot over the bow of the right; it promises that if you elect Trump, civil war will happen.  It is also a call to arms for the left; it promises that if Trump is elected, we will wash him away.  (Know that neither Garland nor his movie has timid goals.)  Woven within the shock and awe of the visual and audio assault on viewers’ senses are the many practiced ways Garland uses the subliminal and visual to embed his political message deep in the moviegoers’ emotions.

To make Garland’s psy-op techniques more concrete, consider this partial list of subliminal messages he inserts in the flow of the movie to influence viewers:

• The movie’s president character delivers a wandering speech, as is Trump’s recognized proclivity.
• President wears a red tie — red for GOP, red as Trump’s signature tie color.
• President disbanded the FBI — Trump is said to have threatened to do this.
• President is in his third term — Trump accused of this unconstitutional intention.
• President uses military against U.S. citizens — Trump accused of being a fascist totalitarian willing to kill Americans to achieve his goals.
• The most egregious “killers” are camo-wearing rural white men — not Portland Antifa in their signature black uniforms, nor BLM in city context.  Both of those groups did kill people.
• The gas station killer is a rural white male wearing a red jacket and Christian cross.
• The body-pit killer is a camo-clad, xenophobic Aryan male wearing rose-colored glasses.
• The hot spot is Charlottesville, VA — “A Predictable Atrocity in Donald Trump’s America.”

It is through the shocking visuals and pounding sound that Garland gains ground.  It is through the subliminal that Garland gains power.  The whole work is designed to grip and to control and to misdirect.

This analysis leans heavily on U.S. Army handbooks for understanding PSYOP Fundamentals and Psychological Operations and ultimately the fifth principle of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to recognize the tools Garland uses to make his movie accomplish two ends:

1. Demoralize and weaken conservatives.

2. Inspire and embolden progressives.

Before and immediately following the movie’s first showing, promoters flooded the print and digital worlds with declarations the movie was balanced.  Balance was the chosen word on which all things turned and the only acceptable frame through which to view the movie.  Here again is psy-op in action: impose and imprint a desired message to shape the target’s mind to bring change to the target’s behavior.

Yet if Garland had wanted even the façade of balance for his grossly unbalanced movie, he could have included subliminal messages and images showing actual threats to America:

• the invasion of millions of illegal aliens across America’s southern border;
• the shoplifting gangs raiding retail stores in liberal cities, open crime on the streets of liberal cities, rampant carjackings in liberal D.C., street thugs sucker-punching Hasidic Jews in liberal NYC, and
• the Pelosi purge via her January 6 totalitarian prosecutions and the Schumer shrug-off of the Ashli Babbitt shooting by Capitol Police.

In truth, the movie is not the least bit balanced.  But it is obscure.  The two are not the same, and Garland uses obscurity and the absence of clarity to hide the fact that the movie is purposefully unbalanced to confuse heads and capture hearts.  For while facts inform, emotions move people to action.

The movie has resolute purpose.  “I’m in some respect picking a fight,” Garland warned.  “I’m not making this movie accidentally.  I have a position.”  This is important because if you don’t make your intellectual mind override your emotional heart, you will surrender to Garland’s psy-op methods and goals.

At its core, the movie is a platform from which Garland launches an array of almost constant subliminal messages and images — it is propaganda à la Joseph Goebbels, with Saul Alinsky twists, and, most of all, Sun Tzu’s tenets that all warfare is based on deception, and one wins without fighting by undermining the enemy’s trust in their leadership and confidence in their own position.

At the end of the interview (time track 34:10–34:25), Garland spills the beans.  He says, “I am concerned.  Right.  I am concerned.  So I’m taking a position on things that I, on an ideological level, disagree with.”  Civil War is that position. 

Greg Moo is a former high school principal, college teacher, organizational development consultant, and author of articles, a white paper, and a policy book: Power Grab: How the National Education Association Is Betraying Our Children.  

Image: LIDayo via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.