Newsletter #2: Loach, Benn, Stone

The Icons Who Endorsed My Work - Plus My Latest News

From a baseline of zero last year, this Substack becomes a community of 317 subscribers - you guys are here at the start😊 It jumped by 100 this past month, following my articles on Bono and Gaza - which received 6,000+ views.

For the equivalent of buying me a coffee each month you could become a supporter on Substack. Or gift a subscription as a present to someone else. I have not signed with an English book publisher for fifteen years now - my work is as independent as it gets.

This newsletter’s featured publication is National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence Of Government Control In Hollywood, which I wrote with the incredible Tom Secker.

Here’s what Hollywood legend Oliver Stone said about National Security Cinema:

“Frankly, I wasn't aware of the infiltration of Hollywood by the Pentagon and the CIA [but] I've since read the book National Security Cinema, in which [Alford & Secker] lay out clear evidence, which is shocking to me... wonderful, it's so necessary what they did.”

Oliver Stone [above] - as he appears in our documentary Theaters of War.

National Security Cinema was a surprise hit, so in 2021 a French publisher picked it up and produced a gorgeous expanded, colour-illustrated hardback.

Our book revealed for the first time specific script changes made by the US government on dozens of blockbusting films and franchises like Transformers, Avatar, Meet the Parents, and The Terminator. State agencies had suppressed important narratives about: CIA drug trafficking; illegal arms sales; military creation of bio-weapons; private armies and their oil company chums; the mistreatment of minorities; torture; coups; assassinations, and the failure to prevent 9/11.

By the time we made Theaters of War, we could demonstrate that more than 10,000 films and TV shows had been directly impacted by the US government. I followed up this work in 2024 by summarising the role of the state in videogames - see here. More to come on the British cases over the coming years.

National Security Cinema was a follow up to my solo book (2010, 2022), which elicited comments such as:-

“The Hollywood myth is that its films are just 'entertainment'. Far from it… Read this book before you see the next blockbuster” Ken Loach, Director

Here I am speaking to Ken about attacks on his film in Northern Ireland:

Other endorsements have come from Tony Benn MP [below], Jack Shaheen, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky (“interesting, convincing, and instructive”), George Galloway (“A very great expert on media and the underlying narratives”), cinematographer Haskell Wexler, and the satirist Tony Allen.

---

Tony Benn, above.

I strongly believe both British and American foreign policies are criminal enterprises that present an existential risk to everyone’s survival. In fact, our whole media and popular culture is directed - secretly - by powerful elites who want to legitimate myths and outright lies about our brutal role in the international system. The vast majority of my work is either directly or indirectly designed to wake people up and bring about humanitarian changes, for the sake of our own country as much as everyone else’s.

My written work on Substack is free but every few months it automatically drops behind a paywall, so if you want those pieces please do donate and open them up.

The majority of my YouTube videos - about 500 of them - are for members only, though I make sure the latest stuff goes out for free and dozens of videos remain public and organised under new playlists. Membership quadrupled to 1,200 this past year.

I’ll be posting on Substack and YouTube regularly, including: some shorts on conspiracies; analysis of the second Trump administration, and more podcasts with my friends at Complaints on a Plate. Watch this space.

Oh and share this newsletter and follow my Facebook 💥💥

With love,

Matthew Alford