The Power Principle – An Interview with Scott Noble
Interview with Scott Noble by Soldiers for the Cause, a Veterans group set up in support of Occupy Wall Street
Scott Noble is the director of several acclaimed and politically charged documentaries, including Psywar, Human Resources and Lifting the Veil. His documentary on Occupy Wall Street, Rise Like Lions, took the #1 spot on Films for Action’s Top Ten Occupy films. His latest, The Power Principle, takes on the American empire, with emphasis on the Cold War period. We sent him a few questions. Here are his responses.
Your film “Rise Like Lions” charts the history of the Occupy Wall Street movement. What drew you to Occupy?
Well, I should probably begin by stressing that my opinions are likely to be more “radical” than much of your readership. The Occupy movement is made up of a very diverse crowd, ranging from “liberals” and “libertarians” who desire to reform the system while keeping most of its institutions intact, to “radicals” who wish to completely transform the institutions themselves. I fall into the latter camp.
Ken Knabb, author of “The Joy of Revolution”, has called Occupy “the most significant radical breakthrough in America since the 1960s.” One can hope. The important thing is that people are beginning to come together, on an international level, in search of a new society. Whether in the future these various movements fall under the name “Occupy” is not of much significance. The fuse has been lit.
The response by “authorities” has been telling. Rebecca Solnit at Tom Dispatch described the Occupy evictions as “maximum sub-lethal force on sleepers in tents, mothers with children, unarmed pedestrians, young women already penned up, unresisting seated students, poets, professors, pregnant women, wheelchair-bound occupiers, and octogenarians. It has been a sustained campaign of police brutality from Wall Street to Washington State the likes of which we haven’t seen in 40 years.”