Documentary Explores the Ideological War Against the West

Documentary Explores the Ideological War Against the West
Gloria Greenfield at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference. (Nathan Su/The Epoch Times)
Cynthia Cai
5/27/2019
Updated:
5/27/2019

With the 2020 elections coming up and campaigns underway, the idea of democratic socialists and socialism has become a major topic of conversation.

The Hill states, “A majority of Americans say socialism is incompatible with American values, and only 10 percent of voters in a new poll have a positive view of socialism.”

Nonetheless, ideologies with their roots in socialism have increasingly spread in the United States over the years, which brings up the question of how this has happened and what kinds of ideologies these are.

Gloria Greenfield, a documentary producer, director, and writer, produced the recent documentary film titled “The Fight of Our Lives: Defeating the Ideological War Against the West.” The film explores “anti-Western ideas, ideologies and movements, along with their subsequent penetration into Western academia, politics, and society,” according to the film website.

The film warns about the high risk of collapse of any great empire or civilization, and how the rise of critical theory studies, political correctness, attacks against free speech, and other ideologies threaten the value systems of western civilization.

Greenfield told The Epoch Times that she first developed the inspiration to create this documentary when she was working on an earlier documentary that explored hatred against Jewish people.

Through creating that piece, Greenfield realized that “to understand contemporary Jew hatred, one really had to understand the broader context,” she said.

This inspired her to create a documentary that explores the ideologies that have been changing and shaping our society over many decades.

When asked how she found and gathered all the commentators for the documentary, Greenfield said she conducted extensive research on the topic and sought out scholars and experts for interviews.

“I usually interview about 45 or 50 experts and scholars, and in this film, I used 31 of them. But all of the interviews, all of the experts and scholars I interviewed really bring value to the film, either by making me aware of other aspects or helping me clarify what the issues [explored in a film] are,” said Greenfield.

“The Fight of Our Lives” includes Melanie Phillips, a British journalist and author. Greenfield said, “She’s written some very important books related to the issue of external forces against the West. … Melanie Phillips happens to be a very principled and articulate journalist and author.”

Another scholar who contributed to the film commentary was Bruce Thornton, an American classicist at California State University Fresno and research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

“[Thornton’s] understanding of what he refers to in the film as the ‘therapeutic age,’ where feelings are the most important and there’s been a rejection … of taking any responsibility for their actions—I thought that was a very important notion that needed to be addressed in the film,” said Greenfield.

The movie has garnered a variety of reviews and has been generally well received and enjoyed by viewers.

“Soon after the film came out, I received an email from a professor in Paris, who was so grateful for the film and told me that he was using it in his classrooms,” said Greenfield.

The film is also being shown in various film festivals around the world.