preview

Point Of Order Paranoia

Better Essays

Point of Order by Emile de Antonio directly eludes to the paranoia surrounding Communism of the 1960s in our government and society. Using primary evidence including recordings and jury trials the spawning and believability of conspiracies in the government was growing exponentially. My topic is dealing with the conspiracies of the 1960’s that are attributed to the Communistic scare with the film Point of Order reinforcing the concept. The 1960’s is a time period full of tragedies including the assassinations of President JFK, equal rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., and constant feuding with the Russians rather it be the Cold War or the Space Race. I intend to analyze the recordings and trial snippets in the film to associate why there …show more content…

He reached out to Richard Ellison of CBS to find footage of the trials. However, there was over 188 hours of total footage of the trial in form of kinescopes. Emile was not the first choice as producer, but after Daniel Talbot decided that he did not like the direction the first producer was taking the documentary and eventually decided to go with Emile that agreed to produce the film for free. Emile then utilized the 188 hours of kinescopes and hired Robert Duncan who helped edit the film roughly to 90 minutes. The length was not the only part edited. Emile and Robert both decided that they wanted all the extra music, narration, and other extremities cut out as well (Inside Out). In the first eight minutes of Point of Order Senator McCarthy stated “we are at war, a war we have been losing. If this war is not one our civilization as we know it will end” causing all who is listening to start panicking. He then proceeds to state that the utilization of the Army was to find out that the government is holding Schine hostage, so they cannot find the communist that are compromising the government from the inside. Although these allegations were eventually disproven in the video and McCarthy’s senator position stripped the events that occurred in the trial was directly related to increase in conspiracies types and conspiracy theories revolving around the …show more content…

which also elevated the concern of the general populace. Through the cultural movements and social reforms of the sixties there was already elevated tension between whites/African Americans and government/nongovernment entities. Martin Luther King Jr. quickly ascended to the top of African American leaders with his peaceful protest and ideology of one day having a peaceful and equal America. As his famous I Have a Dream speech concluded, the government issued a statement ““In the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech yesterday he stands heads and shoulders over all other Negro………We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security” although he wasn’t publicly addressed as a national threat, he was treated as one (Mental Floss). There are many conspiracies on how or why Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, but the one that stands out the most is in 1999 the family of Dr. King won a court case against the government for the death of Martin Luther King Jr. (Conspiracy Thinking). JFK and MLK assassinations were on the forefront of the conspiracy theories, but there were many others which includes area 51, Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, landing on the moon, and many more. None of these conspiracies would have reached that stature that they did if it were not for the expansion

Get Access