The Matrix as Marxist Propaganda

The blockbuster science fiction film Matrix: Revolutions stands as the preeminent example of post-communist socialist realism and Nihilistic cultural terrorism. "Cultural terrorism" is a significant underground political phenomenon in the Western world, complete with self-proclaimed "cultural terrorist networks" and manifestos to this ideology commonplace on the Internet (typically in news-groups that are also connected to "radical underground" and left-wing run "rave" scenes). It is a Euro-Left "philosophy" rooted in Marxist Anarchism and political Nihilism, which extends socialist realism (the creation of cultural foundations for a new socialist order) into the realm of cultural anarchy perpetuated through media, e.g., the portrayal of virtual worlds as something grounded in Anarchist propaganda rather than mere illusions.

Cultural terrorism, as practiced in the Matrix trilogy, is the exaltation of destruction of cultural idioms. In the Matrix we are not asked by the studios and the film’s creators to imagine a new or alternative reality or illusion (as in traditional socialist realism). Rather, the audience is openly solicited to explore the deeper philosophical meaning of a massive killing spree fantasized about in a drug-induced illusion by the "hero" of the films – the character Neo. That core plot line is designed to draw in audiences with Western mythology and Christian doctrine, including a protagonist in the role of a New Christ figure, only to have the heroes of the film openly reject that programming and engage in a blood-soaked rampage through a Westernized Republican America (symbolizing Chicago ruled by supposedly evil FBI/Secret Service Agents that all look and act the same) that results in the complete and utter annihilation of Western Civilization. It is film designed as cultural warfare. The victors in this trilogy stand atop a new order premised on a revolutionary "anti-imperialist" alliance among: anarchists and Marxist revolutionaries out of the ghettoes of Chicago and Harlem, anti-Nazi Zionists run by a Bolshevik-like party command structure and dressed in ancient Chinese military uniforms, and a "race" of living machines ruled by a dread-locked Machine God, whose society exhibits Asian influences (Chinese especially) and is programmed by Indian Gods.

Never before in the history of cinema, not even in Stalin’s Russia, has the terroristic and "virtual" annihilation of Western civilization been portrayed as a romantic and revolutionary adventure, until now. The bizarre aspect of this agenda is that few critics cared to comment specifically about it, even though virtually all mentioned the existence of what was to them opaque signaling in the film. However, the true purpose and context of the signaling is all readily transparent to anyone who bothers to actually read the published words of key figures behind the film’s creation. They talk openly of hidden plot lines and character references, battles over the symbolic racial composition of the cast, and most importantly the important role played by two authors who reportedly helped inspire the screenplay (one with a cameo role in the films and the other with a key book and essay shown in the first film): the first is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (a "reformed" Marxist-Leninist party), and the other is a French writer who has outlined a Euro-trash philosophy of virtual and theoretical cultural terrorism (and is a key source for the concept of "hyper-real" cultural terrorism). More incredibly, all of this was presented to the drum beat of music from a band, Rage Against the Machine, openly preaching violent armed insurrection in the United States.

The Matrix trilogy, which was created by Chicago's Wachowski brothers (Larry and Andy), has so successfully woven Marxist propaganda into a web of mythology and Christian doctrine that reviewers and movie-goers are still debating whether it was a positive or critical take on Western and Christian culture in America. The Wachowski Brothers stated in a November 1999 online chat interview that there are many coded messages in this film:"There are more than you’ll ever know." That was then. Now, with the release of Revolutions, the ultimate "purpose" of this trilogy stands revealed. The Matrix is classic Hollywood dissimulation of Christian allegory intended to promote "hyper-real" political Nihilism and cultural terrorism against the West, Christianity, and America via a "revolutionary virtual" orgy of destruction.

The world of the Matrix is portrayed on film as being modeled on French author Jean Baudrillard’s vision of using theoretical (as in philosophical and virtual) violence to promote cultural destruction. It is a "virtual simulation" of Marxist materialist dialectics, anti-imperialist struggle and Red Terror in America, including an atomic explosion (modeled using rain in a possible ode to the famous Japanese film about Hiroshima and Nagasaki called "Black Rain") over a virtual representation of Chicago, and the extirpation of Western Civilization by an Indian revolutionary serving the interests of a master race of machines (in the role of industrial proletarians from the East). The "reboot" of civilization follows the revolutionary death of a fallen pseudo-Christ and new superhero of Red revolutionaries, who "saves" a Bolshevik-style political-military command in "Zion" – complete with militarized costumes that draw on ancient Chinese influences.

It would have been easy to ignore the Marxist and terrorist propaganda in the trilogy, if it wasn't so fundamental to the story-line and marketing of the film, and if the creators, promoters, and so many Euro-trash radicals didn't take it all so darned seriously. Promoters of these films are going to great lengths to solicit "philosophical" inquiry about the films, and there are long treatises, most lacking any depth of understanding at all, which can be found on web sites set up by the studio. At the same time, the films are utterly without humor or wit, unless you are a Leftist who "gets it," and can therefore snicker at Western culture or how broadly such vulgar Marxist propaganda is being debated. What is not funny is that the courts of the United States are being flooded now with mass murderers claiming a "Matrix defense," most preposterously by the "sniper" Lee Boyd Malvo. In an age when Western values and nation-states are facing threats to their very survival this century, and the radical Left exercises near hegemonic control over the social imagery that divides nations, this clever, but foolhardy, attempt at lauding the extermination of Western Civilization and spread of Nihilism and Marxist revolution worldwide deserves to be unmasked - and moviegoers given the light to wake up from the dream world of "revolutionary virtual cinema."

The Matrix trilogy interprets Hegel's dialectic from a Marxist perspective, in that the world is characterized by technology-based commodities (humans as batteries and simulations as drugs) and structured according to the supposedly enslaving nature of a capitalist system represented here by green computer code, which is the currency of "power." In other words, humanity has enslaved itself by progressively transforming substance into subject and form - that is, through capital/capitalism and technologically enhanced social illusions and lies (the Matrix and Christian allegory here). Marxist theory is a utopian philosophy that offers the illusion of liberation from a self-created prison of capital (the green code of the "artificial intelligence" era), oppressive state "architectures" (the Matrix), and machines/industry generally.

Are the humans in the Matrix enslaved because they don't have knowledge and spirit, or because they don't control the means of production? The answer is apparent only after the third film - all of the above. The solution, and propagandized philosophy, is that knowledge and spirit (gnosticism, nihilism, and revolutionary ardor) will emerge with "time" among individuals who are able to "save themselves" (like "The Kid"), while final "peace" and liberation, at least for the Bolsheviks of Zion, comes through war, terrorism, and creative destruction focused on shaping and controlling the culture of the Matrix, that is, the social imagination and spirit of a world reduced to the ultimate commoditized means of production -- batteries.

The Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky offered the following treatise on materialist dialectics in film for his essay "The ABC of Materialist Dialectics"(Dec. 1939):

"Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion. Dialectics does not deny the syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing reality. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into quality, development through contradictions, conflict of content and form, interruption of continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc...Hegel operated with ideological shadows as the ultimate reality. Marx demonstrated that the movement of these ideological shadows reflected nothing but the movement of material bodies. We call our dialectic materialist, since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths of our "free will", but in objective reality, in nature. Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the organic world out of the inorganic, the solar system out of the nebulae. On all the rungs of this ladder of development, the quantitative changes were transformed into qualitative. Our thought, including dialectical thought, is only one of the forms of the expression of changing matter. There is place within this system for neither God nor Devil, nor immortal soul, nor eternal norms of laws and morals."

Here you have pretty much the core plot line of the Matrix trilogy! Virtual laws of motion or "revolutionary virtual cinema" used to combine simulations/syllogisms in a way that enhances understanding of eternally changing realities according to the laws of Hegelian Logic: changing the quantity of the harvest (human batteries) into the quality of revolutionaries, such as gnostics, nihilists, Marxists, and societies like Bolshevik Zion and the Hindu Goddess Sati's "world"; development through contradictions expressed by "anomaly" and struggle for equality and "balance" between both the revolutionaries & machines against "Agent Smith" [played by Hugo Weaving] and machine vs. man; conflict between social illusion and the "reality"/content of slavery; interruption of continuity via the increasing probability of a catastrophic breakdown in "the system" (described by the Architect character in Reloaded) resulting from "action/reaction" (The One vs. The "Negative" One and Oracle vs. Merovingian clashes) and the "systemic anomaly" (described by the Oracle, Merovingian, and Architect), and the change of possibility into "inevitability" seen in the path of self-awakening taken by Neo (and asserted by the Agent Smith character – "Not impossible. Inevitable!" he sneers in Revolutions).

The Matrix represents a materialist dialectic because it is rooted in a virtual "objective reality." That is, the world as we know it is framed as a "hyper-real" representation through a computer code that is the capital of the technology/artificial intelligence (AI) age, and a mathematically precise, though systemically "unbalanced," Identity Matrix. This basic order does not come from heaven. Nor is it rooted in "free will," and the choice to be slaves to God's will rather than that of a Machine God. Rather it is portrayed in the films as having emerged as a result of the purported hegemonic exploitation of modern technology by the world we are shown inside the Matrix (which ultimately triggers the emergence of a leveling revolutionary "race" of machines called "AI" and sets the stage for the next revolution). Moreover, in another bow to Marxist theory, the cultural imperative of "love," which is so central to Neo’s awakening, is portrayed as emerging out of the physiology of "need" (expressed by the character Mouse to Neo [played by Keanu Reeves] in Matrix 1.0 and by Neo to Trinity at copulation in Reloaded). Meanwhile, we see a wholly organic world run by bio-mechnical and squid-like machines in synthesis with intelligent computer programs that can "love" and sacrifice, like Zion humans, clash and then reach a synthesis of man and machine in a world governed by the philosophies of gnosticism, nihilism, and Marxism. The basic struggle of humanity in this fantasy world is one of "red pill" revolutionaries, guided by a revolutionary party-military Council, waging a campaign of terrorism in a "war" to control the means of production and "power," expressed both as code and as human batteries.

The most direct path to understanding the "hyper-real" messages of the film is to explore the very prominent roles of two known advocates of left-wing revolution in America - Cornel West and Rage Against the Machine's Zach de la Rocha. Cornel West is a leading member of the radical Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and a professor of religion and African American studies (a library of his works can be found at http://www.pragmatism.org/library/west). He moved last year from Harvard to Princeton after being criticized in 2001 by Harvard University President Larry Summers for missing classes to campaign for Al Sharpton and engage in certain artistic ventures. Mr. West revealed, in an interview published in the Los Angeles Times on May 20, 2003, that Larry Wachowski had invited him to appear in the sequels because:"He said my writings had been influential in his writing the movie. He had read my first book, 'Prophesy Deliverance!,' and 'Race Matters.' I was flabbergasted. He said he had written a role for me, Councillor West, and he wanted me to play it. I said, 'You've got to be kidding.' " West explained to the LA Times reporter that the movies are a "sophisticated work of art" that are intended by the brothers to promote a "fascinating" critique of "salvation narratives."

The most important work for those curious about the origins of the Matrix concept remains West's Prophesy Deliverance (1982), which promotes a vision of neo-Christian Socialism for the African-American community. Sound familiar? Our intrepid heroes are portrayed as virtual (caught in a simulation and divorced from their "true" nature), literal (under attack in Zion and not "free" according to Cypher's critique), and spiritual (to the "program" of Christianity) slaves. Their revolt is a Marxist one, fought against a materialist "system" that has divorced them from their true selves, against intelligent forces of revolution and industrialization (the machines), and against the religious "programs of control" that keep them enslaved to the "system," the industrial machinery of the "real" world, and God. Morpheus [played by Laurence Fishburne] explained to Neo:"You are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage, kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind." That is, Marxism for a virtual illusion.

Long before we get to see Cornel West in a sequel, the role of the franchise as Marxist propaganda was hinted at by the choice of music, of all things. Most of the groups and songs deployed here are trivial (including the nihilistic Marilyn Manson). However, the fact that the group Rage Against the Machine was even associated with the movie seems more than coincidental, because it has published quite a few songs with imagery that parallels the world of the Matrix. This particular group, whose lyrics are written mainly by the group's lead singer, Zack de la Rocha, has published albums with titles like "Battle of Los Angeles" and songs like "Bullet in the Head," "Bombtrack" ("Landlords and power whores. On my people they took turns. Dispute the suits I ignite. And then watch 'em burn"), "Evil Empire" (portraying America as such, with a "land of chains" maintained by a system of control in the form of "American dreams"), and themes like "Take the Power Back" from agents of the "machine" with "Red, White, and Blue disguise." In one song, Zack de la Rocha preaches:"we gotta take the power back...like the ##$@$ Weathermen." That's right, it's a group preaching armed revolution and terrorist violence as the Weathermen engaged in, and makes no bones about it in its lyrics and sales propaganda.

Here, the creators of The Matrix use one of Rage Against the Machine's most well-known songs,"Wake Up," as the veritable theme song for the trilogy. That song has the following phrase, which sums up the basic propaganda message of the group, and more tenuously that of the movie-makers that embraced it:"bomb a left upon the fascists, yea, the several federal men who pulled schemes on the dream... abandon his supposed obedience to white liberal doctrine of non-violence...and embrace black nationalism." If the plot, characters and casting didn't look so obviously like a pitch to promote just that kind of vision, it might have been easier to pass off the use of their music as a coincidence. However, "Wake Up" (recorded for their first album released in 1992) sounds like it was written for the movie, or maybe vice-versa.

The attacks on Western culture, as well as Republican and Christian America, were hard to miss in Reloaded. We see in that film many of the screens in the Architect's office flashing countless images of atomic explosions, wars and violence along with Republican political leaders, including many images, both large and small, of our Presidents named Bush, opposite Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. Moreover, we learn from production staff, courtesy of Cinefex magazine, that the screens carried images covering the period from WWI to just before 9/11 [although a closer look at the screens reveals mainly wars in which America was involved]). These television images symbolized Neo’s mind-set in his fateful encounter with the Architect, that is, all of the things he presumably read about or experienced as a "late 20th Century" iteration, as well as his desire to break from a world order defined by the 20th century struggle between American empire and all of its foes. His purpose, as revealed in the plot line, is to reject, this time, repetition of Western and American tradition in "The One" program, and slowly accept the "inevitable" consequences of that "choice" (either destruction of humanity or adoption of a new Eastern cultural and revolutionary order through which Zion can be "saved").

President Ronald Reagan is referred to in the trilogy. When Cypher [played by Joe Pantoliano], the Judas character, plots with Smith in the first movie, his name is pronounced "Reagan," and has been out of the Matrix for 9 years (the date on the first call shown in the movie was Feb. 1998 – do the math). It is Reagan who declares that for betraying the revolutionaries - Communists -- he wants to be "someone important...an actor," and remember "nothing." In the end, the viewer is left no doubt that the film portrays Reagan/Cypher as evil. He filled the role of Judas in denying the New Christ while discouraging and betraying not only Neo, but also Trinity (in the first scene of the first film), Morpheus, and the rest of the crew. Cypher was even dressed for the role in red clothes and sported a Mephistophelian goatee and mustache, of the sort that several famous early Bolsheviks sported. For those who know the history of socialist movements well, it was also striking how much Mr. Pantoliano in this role looked like a middle-aged Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, who was an ideologist for the early Bolshevik leadership before being executed as a counter-revolutionary on Stalin's order in 1938. All of which is rather curious, because a number of reviewers have picked up on the seemingly odd circumstance that Cypher doesn't actually focus his betrayal on Neo (that is, play out the Christian allegory). In fact, the betrayal doesn't fit the Judas theme precisely, because he is merely providing the Agents with the means to destroy Zion, and doesn't believe in Neo or the Christ narrative anyway (telling Neo at one point to not even think about using his powers, but rather simply "run"). Cypher’s statement of purpose behind his actions -- that the Matrix is more "real" than Zion -- indicated that his primary objective was betraying the entire cause of Zion. That is, he was betraying the revolution, like an anti-Communist or enemy of Stalin (with Morpheus fitting the latter role on the ship – "All I ever do is what he tells me to" protested Cypher).

Other symbols of the American "system" are peppered throughout the films. "Agent" Smith is, of course, a knock on the Secret Service and FBI (and obliquely via their choice of weaponry modern Israeli forces). Neo is portrayed as a mimic of a comic-book American hero - "doing his Superman thing" (in Revolutions). Trinity, we learn in the nightclub scene from the first movie, hacked into an IRS database (while Neo, we learn from Smith in Matrix 1.0, is rebelling from a life that includes paying taxes). The Nebuchadnezzar even had a plaque on its "core" computer declaring at the bottom:"Made in the USA!" – in an apparent representation that the nightmare worlds portrayed on film were created by the world shown inside the Matrix.

Radical Left-wing propaganda linking America to a neo-Nazi state makes it into the story-line at several points. First, Neo accuses the Agents of "Gestapo crap." He then ends up in a Zion world alongside the character representation of the anti-Nazi exile Karl "The Kid" Popper (the character that runs around declaring the "war is over" towards the end of Revolutions). We also see the Architect flashing images before him that lump Hitler in with our President George H.W. Bush as symbols of human "misery" that Neo is rebelling against. Finally, in yet another curious coincidence, the destruction during Reloaded of the ship Nebuchadnezzar, which has a plaque indicating that it was dedicated to carrying the neo-Christ, was modeled, in part, on the Hindenberg disaster, according to a person involved in the production.

The first Utopia was a "perfect" world wrecked, according to Smith - the FBI or Secret Service Agent, by the primitive mind rejecting the Utopian programming in favor of the Christian salvation narrative. Smith claims this was because humanity is characterized by a subconscious need to order the world in terms of "suffering and misery," along with a "virus"-like behavior of consuming natural resources (in a Green critique of capitalism). What the Matrix evolved into, courtesy of a path winding through the historical symbolism of Greek mythology and Christianity, was a simulated reality characterized as a "prison" for the mind in the form of Big Brother and a Republican New World Order (The Matrix as government in Chicago in 1999, along with the term New World Order were reportedly explicitly used in the 1996 screenplay, along with references to "fascism," and the like).

Hollywood has promoted many films in the past with images and messages promoting the devastation and destruction of America, Western culture, and Christian faith, but almost always in the context of having the heroes of the film try to "save" or transform at least one or some part of the above. Not here – it is ALL destroyed. Atomic explosions over American cities have always been from "bad-guys" and "evil" people, and unwanted by the film’s heroes (from Red Dawn to Sum of All Fears). Indeed, while Terminator 3 shows the end of the world as we know it incited by an artificial intelligence (Skynet), in The Matrix Morpheus explains that it was "WE who scorched the sky," that is, launched a nuclear winter, in order to deprive the AI of energy resources (events animated in an Animatrix short). The climactic battle sequence between Neo and Smith involves an atomic-like "water bomb" explosion over the "Mega-City" representation of Chicago. Never, in the history of American cinema, or Chinese or Soviet, or even Iranian, have we seen terrorism and atomic destruction of the West, Judeo-Christian traditions, and an American city glorified as part of a romantic revolutionary adventure. Until now. America’s most vile enemies could never have dreamed of generating such widespread discussion and acceptance of anti-Western cultural terrorism.

Liberation, we are shown in this trilogy, supposedly comes through political, ethical, and existential nihilism and permanent revolution against "The Machines." Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin and Leon Trotsky, architects of their own levels of Hell, would be proud of these kids. It was the Russian revolutionary Anarchist Bakunin who composed the nihilist/anarchist mantra:"Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unsearchable and eternally creative source of all life--the passion for destruction is also a creative passion!" (Reaction in Germany, 1842). We see Bakunin in the Seraph character's comment to Neo that "you do not truly know someone until you fight them." More simply, it is preaching permanent war/violence, even revolutionary death/sacrifice, as the route to personal discovery and salvation - nihilistic anarchism to discover one's own potential or power to remake the world and one's own reality.

The concept of virtual reality and simulations shaping reality through "hyper-real" representations comes from the French author, Jean Baudrillard. Neo's path to discovering The Matrix, which we are shown in the first film, is supposed to come by reading Baudrillard's work Simulacra and Simulation (1981) – and in particular the essay "On Nihilism." Keanu Reeves is reported to have indicated that the brothers asked him to read this book and others before even reading the script.

Baudrillard’s essay is presented as the location of Neo's secret stash of illegal s(t)imulations (compared by the character Choi, who buys one from him, to the illegal narcotic mescaline/Peyote). The book was open in that scene to the chapter "On Nihilism," as a clear signal that the Wachowski brothers are advocating the discovery of political nihilism (and descent into cultural terrorism) through Neo’s journey (and drug use). It was Baudrillard who wrote in that essay:"being a nihilist is carrying out, to the unbearable limit of hegemonic systems, this radical trait of derision and violence, this challenge that the system is summoned to answer through its own death, then I am a terrorist and nihilist in theory as the others are with their weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource left to us." Thus, the Matrix trilogy represents "hyper-real" theoretical terrorism and nihilistic violence against a perceived hegemonic "system" that is nothing less than Westernized Christian and Republican America.

Later, when we see Morpheus explaining the situation to Neo, he quotes Baudrillard directly:"Welcome to the desert of the real." In the 1996 version of the screenplay, which has been posted widely online, this line was reportedly:"You have been living inside Baudrillard's vision, inside the map, not the territory." The two concepts "map" and "desert of the real" are actually different levels of abstraction in Baudrillard's presentation, where the Matrix "map" is presented as a mirrored perversion/counterfeit or copy of reality of a culture, nation, or "empire" (the "territory"), while the "desert of the real" (Zion/Machine world here) is presented as a "hyperreal" simulacrum (without an origin - as cinema fantasy) - one that supposedly represents the true nature of things seen through Marxist doctrine, and in a way that post-modern societies taking their social cues from fantasy, video-games, and cinema would see as being authentic.

In Baudrillard's matrix, the hyperreal "map" can precede the emergence of an actual "territory" or empire. In other words, the "hyperreal" Matrix fantasies are promoted here (by citing Baudrillard - although that author distances himself from all this [see above]) to propagandize for the creation of a new "territory" in our world. That world would be one in which the Judeo-Christian and Roman traditions, and all of the culture and institutions that are derived from belief in the truth of His existence and extension through Jesus Christ – our laws, religion, social norms, economies, and political structures (Western Civilization writ large), are viewed by a generation of techno-savvy (and media and video-game addicted) knowledge worker elites (the new leveling and globalizing revolutionary elites described by Alvin Toffler, Robert Reich, and Rosabeth Moss Kantor in our world, among others) to be nothing but programs or simulations, "theoretically" subjected to the leveling effect of smart technologies stripped from Western control (by the Eastern "race of machines..AI"), as well as the terroristic violence of Marxist and other revolutionaries. That is, Western Civilization will be annihilated – virtually and theoretically (in films from Hollywood).

This is the same Jean Baudrillard who wrote an infamous article for the French newspaper Le Monde shortly after 9/11 called the "Spirit of Terrorism," in which he accused America of provoking September 11 and advanced the nihilistic claim that many in the West "desired" the attacks. His bizarre world view parallels that of the films – American-led globalization incites terroristic reaction and death, which will lead ultimately to its destruction by a natural "anti-body." "Power is complicit with its own destruction," in his view, because it "intensifies a will to destroy it." That is, the concentration of power resulting from "globalization" created a desire among Europeans of his ilk to see the symbolic representations of that accumulation of power (hegemonic system) destroyed – preferably by an oppressed subject of transformation by our hegemonic power (in this case, from the Islamic world). This process is all explained by Baudrillard as a sort of natural force and "desire" of all men to see any kind of concentration of power and society built on eliminating the need for death or sacrifice (or rooted in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) subjected to the symbolic shock of death and destruction. Baudrillard talked glowingly, and repeatedly, and again and again (his circumlocutory and repetitive style is so French! and utterly boring), of how "every domination apparatus creates its own antibody, the chemistry of its own disappearance." He has to warp reality into his own world of illusion by claiming that "liberal globalization" lacks ideology and any sense of morality behind it, as it spreads a world order rooted in terror, of "total control, a policing terror." In American English -- America supposedly begets evil resulting from reactions to our power, but also, preposterously, "in the very heart of those who share its benefits." In this context (according to Baudrillard), globalization and terrorism are both equally "immoral" – and jointly complicit in the creation of "events" like 9/11. A clear example of the "infantile disorder" that even V.I. Lenin decried! If Communists are spreaders of "psycho-politics," as many have argued, then political Nihilists like Baudrillard and his disciples are the psychopaths.

About the only thing Baudrillard got right in that essay was that the "black magic" (his words) of terrorism exploits the power of "white magic" mass media to spread and amplify the cultural and political shock waves of events. For example, here we have seen our Constitution and 4th Amendment nearly destroyed by over-reacting political "leaders," and two nations invaded and occupied, all in response to the death of 5,000+ Americans, whereas twice as many die each year from deadly diseases imported from Asia due to lax border controls, tens of thousands suffer life-altering assaults, murders, rapes, and job losses resulting from illegal invaders, or 1.2 million Americans die each year from abortions, and so on. This is, of course, absolutely nothing compared to what The Matrix portrays as a "virtual terrorist" training exercise – the wholesale annihilation of every guard, agent, soldier, and defender of the "system" and Western culture.

Sickening was Baudrillard’s parroting of the mythology of Matrix illusion – that singular symbolic events (like the battles between Neo and Smith or 9/11) can lead to the wholesale destruction of a culture and system. The collapse of the World Trade Towers was not anywhere close to the "mother of all" events he described in Le Monde -- on a scale of a World War IV all at once. His analysis talked of how 9/11 represented the sum of a long period without a dramatic "event" comparable to the collapse of the Soviet empire (the end of "World War III"), even though the world was supposedly resisting "globalization" (there weren’t too many countries or people resisting the entry of American investors – or not welcoming the investment dollars). In this context, the attack on the towers supposedly marked a sort of ultimate terrorist act (a "war" in one act) – one that would see cultural and political shock waves so great as to cause the complete collapse of American power and "globalization." Thus, the article took on the character of Euro-Left cheer-leading that this battle between camps (Islam vs. American-dominated "globalization") might lead to victory over a philosophical power system. That is, a "system" that Osama Bin Laden and his co-conspirators most likely haven’t got a clue what Mr. Baudrillard is ranting about. OBL, et al., see themselves fighting forces that their forefathers have been attacking for hundreds of years – long before "globalization," and long before America was founded. We are just the latest target of convenience for these advocates of permanent war, Arab fascism, and Jihad. OBL and associates even use the term "Crusaders" to describe us. If only! If only the West’s governments were really still run in keeping with the faith and our Western heritage, then we might have sent our enemies to Hell a lot sooner instead of coddling the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and pursuing a policy of "embracing Islam" via the corruption of socialist and "global" democracy.

Ironically, Jean Baudrillard has actually criticized the Matrix films for being too virtual. He stated in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur (June 19, 2003) that:"There is a misunderstanding of course, that is the reason why I previously hesitated to talk about The Matrix. The Wachowski staff did contact me after the first episode to involve me in the following ones, but that really was not conceivable!...These people take the hypothesis of the virtual as a fact and carry it over to visible phantasms…The real nuisance in this movie is that the new problem of the simulation is mistaken with the very classic problem of the illusion, already mentioned by Plato. Here lies the mistake....The world as a complete illusion is the problem that faced all great cultures and they solved it thanks to art and symbolization. What we did invent in order to put up with this pain is a simulated real, a virtual universe cleansed of everything dangerous or negative and which now override the real, to which it is the final solution. Now, The Matrix is totally that! Everything that is related to dream, utopia, phantasm is present there, "realized", a complete transparency…there exists no distinction between the real and the imagination...The false Freud speaking at the end of the movie said it: sometime in the past, we have had to re-program the Matrix in order to integrate some anomalies in the equation. And you, the opponents, are part of it. So here we are, in my opinion, in a complete virtual circuit with no out door...The message of The Matrix is its very propagation, by relentlessly contaminating everything." In plain English, and as this author interprets these comments, the Wachowski brothers appear to have started from the premise that our worldly "virtual universe" of social context is "fact" – that Chicago in 1999 is every bit as nightmarish as portrayed inside the Matrix (with its Marxist interpretation of "reality" in America today), and from that developed a series of illusions that are rooted in a cinematic socialist realism.

Nihilism ("nothingness") is a philosophy, of sorts, of extreme cynicism & skepticism of existing orders, along with a quest for super-human progress through destruction that one can find at the heart of every socialist (black or red) movement and totalitarian dictator, even some of the petty dictators we may face in every day life. The "founder" of this philosophy was Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), who was rightly accused as being "unbalanced" enough to believe he was a god. He directly challenged the "slave morality" of the Christian faith, which is rooted in a sense of devotion/enslavement to the will of God, in favor of asserting a "will to power" by asserting the self (knowing oneself) to such an extent that the individual becomes a superior man/superman. Sound familiar? Neo is that superman and super revolutionary/terrorist - the result of an "unbalanced" equation. Neo's journey is to break through, with will and a zeal for destruction rather than smarts or the Holy Spirit, the levels of imprisonment for his mind.

Nietzsche, in his book, Will to Power, offers that this journey to becoming superman requires the "belief" that "everything deserves to perish...one actually puts a shoulder to the plough; one destroys." So when we hear in the trilogy various characters declaring "I believe," what are they really coming to "believe" in? Destruction. Neo also explains this point in Reloaded when he tells "The Kid" - not to believe in him, because "you saved yourself." That is, "believe" in the power to destroy - to exert untrained superhuman effort to open Gate 3 using an "APU" (Armored Personnel Unit). The Anarchist corollary to nihilism is to be cynical, self-substantiating, and violent against government - as we find in our dull band of revolutionaries inside the Matrix, which IS the representation of government as the violent radical Left perceives "fascist" (Choi in the 1996 draft screenplay) and "bourgeois" (Merovingian character in Reloaded) America today.

The Wachowski Brothers indicated in a 1999 interview that nearly all of the characters have names that were carefully selected, and have multiple meanings. The trilogy clearly picks up where William Gibson, the architect, as it were, of the concept of "cyberspace" and the genre of cyberpunk science fiction, left off in Johnny Mnemonic (which extended his vision of a "matrix" of lattices of logic first described in his book Neuromancer). Indeed, the Wachowski brothers and Gibson later published a book together titled The Matrix: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script Series, 2003). Keanu Reeves not only starred in the 1995 film based on Gibson’s short story by the same name, but we see Mr. Reeves trading simulation programs comparable to the implanted memory chips of his character in Johnny Mnemonic (JM) and the "squid" playback devices (memory recordings of other people’s experiences) of the 1995 film Strange Days (which were also portrayed as addictive and drug-like). It was in JM that we saw the concept of information and stored human knowledge (implanted) as a commodity, as well as the SQUID or "superconducting quantum interference detectors" making it into science fiction. The latter is a technology used to hunt submarines by measuring magnetic fields applied in JM as a device for reading and locating cybernetic activity (resembling the "squiddies" of the Matrix tracking subterranean, rather than submersible, ships when they are "broadcasting" to hack into the Matrix).

The cyberpunk genre embraces the potential of modern technology, and in particular, virtual simulations to redefine "reality" in contemporary culture. However, it generally does so not to advance images of a future golden age, as was the norm in the 1950s (and which created such optimism for the technology revolution in subsequent decades), but rather to follow in the footsteps of some nightmarish science fiction from the 1930s by delivering the same kind of images of despair, war, and cultural destruction. While similarly nightmarish, the Matrix offers far more than your typical cyberpunk tale.

Our journey through the trilogy centers around the character of "Neo," who is a "New"-Christ and New Superman figure seen as he progresses through different stages of self-awareness and rejection of Western culture. We have the opportunity of paying to watch as he defiles Christianity (and Trinity) by swearing, taking Christ's name in vain ("Jesus Christ, that thing's real!"), engaging in criminal behavior, selfish love-making based on physical "need," drug dealing (selling s[t]imulations acting as the digital version of the illegal hallucinogenic mescaline), and committing mortal sins (the murder of innocents). He then evolves during Reloaded into a gnostic/militant atheistic Neo-Superman and revolutionary fighting Nazi-like America and supposedly evil Secret Service/FBI Agents and U.S. Marines (there are many portrayed in the battle to rescue Morpheus). After 3 films we have witnessed a struggle purportedly between good and evil, but the "evil" in Agent Smith and Merovingian characters are shown to be perverted, and inherent, contradictions within the Western and Christian narratives. Christianity is thus portrayed as intensifying the "evil" supposedly inherent in the simulated world of "bourgeois" Westernized Christian America.

The Wachowski Brothers, when asked in an online chat session on Nov.6, 1999 what the role of "faith" was in the film answered:"that is a tough question! Faith in one’s self, how’s that for an answer?" Later they responded to another question about their religious beliefs with the statement that they are:"non-denominational." So why then are so many reviewers still debating whether it was a positive take on Christianity?

We follow the "good" guys in this trilogy on a journey of mass murder for narrow revolutionary objectives. All of their journeys of nihilistic self-substantiation are to save tiny Zion through a Long March of slaughtering hundreds of policemen, guards, and innocents that ends in Reloaded with Neo's making the "choice" of risking total human annihilation to save his selfish love interest and then renounce the Christ programming as a lie and "program of control." Towards the end of Revolutions, Neo proposes (just before the deadline set by the Architect [or Greek Father Heaven, as played by Helmut Bakaitis] in Reloaded), and the Architect or Machine God accedes, to a duel between him and Agent Smith that leads to the extirpation of Christian and Republican-controlled America (Western Civilization more broadly) in favor of a successor "program" of socialism imposed by an Eastern (Indian) culture. In that scene, he was not crucified for the salvation of anyone or anything. He was engaged in a revolutionary death intended to liberate Zion and its fellow travelers, and destroy the West.

Hooray for Nihilism, Marxist revolution, and the rise of the socialist revolutionary East! -- destroy the white Christian Republicans is the theoretical/virtual message of these films: they're only batteries and "agents" of the "system." Viewers of the films surely noticed that every single "battery" human, and nearly all of the special characters, killed in the Matrix by our heroic revolutionaries are "plugged in" white Americans - in sharp contrast with the multi-cultural, amoral, and drug abusing underground of Zion. Moreover, we see in Zion not a single true intellectual – the APU commander even talks of having never completed a training course. Rather, what we have is a "savior" and revolutionary leader who is "not too bright," and a motley mob (that even Trotsky might call "vulgar") of assorted radicals and feminists (Zee is seen with a very butch character holding a rocket launcher with "XX" on it). The high-point of their culture? The most massive orgy ever portrayed on screen (in Reloaded).

About the only thing that is "real" in this trilogy is a substantive attack on the tyrannical and evil nature of societies that give over their culture (decision-making) to "machines" (or any power out of their control for that matter). This results in a loss of decision-making power (Smith to Morpheus in the interrogation), control (Councilor Hamann to Neo at the bottom of Zion), and ultimately coerced conformity (Agent Smith) by an all-powerful police-state. The sad irony is that this lesson is most appropriate for unmasking the "machine" and hegemonic media power behind the coerced conformity of political correctness, anti-Americanism and anti-Christian violence, masquerading in this case as "revolutionary virtual cinema." In the world of the Matrix, this totalitarian and oppressive "system" is taken over by an "Agent Smith," who is both Lavrentiy Beria (the film borrows from George Orwell's 1940s era critique of the Soviet totalitarian system in his 1984), the ultimate agent of conformity (turning everything he touches into a copy of "me" - in a critique of the conformist attitudes of the American "me" generation), and the Anti-Christ (the agent of "darkness and death" [quoting the Oracle character]) combined. Nevertheless, it is difficult to pierce the opaque sea of Bolshevik, Marxist, Gnostic, Atheist, and Nihilist messages and allegories in the films to find only one overtly anti-Communist reference - the ode to Orwell's 1984, and not conclude that this was so only because it was intended to ridicule conservative American culture in a manner comparable to the Trotskyite critique of Stalin for murdering Bolshevism by ordering the death of so many early revolutionaries.

The role of the FBI/Secret Service "agents" of the Matrix police-state in suppressing speech and violent revolution was revealed early in the trilogy. Agent Smith even goes to the length of warping the Matrix to close Neo's mouth. Neo's Room Number in the first movie is 101, while one of the Merovingian's clubs is marked "Room 101" when they enter at ground-level in Reloaded (101 is repeated as part of the password used to hack the power-station computer). This theme is taken directly from George Orwell's description in the book 1984 of an all-encompassing "Big Brother" police-state, and in particular the one room, Room 101, that is the location of the "worst things" in the world, the sum of all evils marked mostly by torture and death -- Hell on Earth by Stalin.

Orwell's take on the Soviet empire reflected a general understanding among educated Western elites, which eventually led to President Reagan’s description of that defeated prison of nations as the "Evil Empire." The latter was not a unique insight. During the 1920s, the Bolshevik dictatorship was known in Central Europe as the "Empire of the Anti-Christ." One might be tempted to see in the film’s references to 1984 that the Soviet Empire is the "territory" of Agent Smith's "My World" - the World of the Anti-Christ (Agent Smith) seen in Revolutions. However, the films are clearly using such references only to throw them back in the faces of Republicans and anti-Communists like President Ronald Reagan (Cypher inside the Matrix). Indeed, it was a bit disconcerting to see Hollywood illusion and propaganda be paralleled by contemporary political debate when former Vice President Al Gore took a moment in Nov. 2003 to compare the Bush Administration with the tyranny described by Orwell.

Smith's nemesis, and the presumed savior of both the revolution and Zion against Israel's enemy in the Old Testament - the "Ai," here the computer-generated Artificial Intelligence (AI), is none other than the New or Neo-Christ, or simply "The One"/Neo. The Matrix throws Greek Gods into a Christian paradigm and sprinkles in elements of European/Western mythology (Angels, Ghosts, Vampires, even Werewolves and Aliens are mentioned), along with Chinese visions of martial arts (as they have been imagined in Jackie Chan/Hong Kong films), Nihilism, Zen Buddhism, and Hinduism, and manages, against the odds, to leave the sagacious movie-goer surprised at each step in Neo's struggle to "save the world." Neo journeys not merely down the "rabbit hole," like Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (as Morpheus declared in the first film), while being chased by 3 beastly agents (symbols of the divisions of sin) in Dante's Circles of Hell (the room Morpheus and Neo first meet is supposed to be 1313, according to the 1996 screenplay, that is, the year of publication of Dante’s Commedia), only to be baptized at the hands of Morpheus (John the Baptist) and propelled towards Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, that is, through the depths of Hell towards sacrifice and liberation (and crucifixion machine-style in Revolutions, complete with wings comprised of a fiery aura and machine umbilical cords).

A fantastic story, indeed, but all mere simulations of historical contexts - a lesson in historicism - through which the viewer is blatantly solicited to find Marxist and Nihilist doctrines. The entire story-line rests on a "critique" of identity politics as viewed through a computerized Identity Matrix. Here we see a classic Hegelian approach, but Marxist in substance, in that the Matrix is based on a green code that is the currency/capital/"cost" of "power" (according to the Merovingian), simulations are the product (as Neo shows by selling illegal drug-mimicking simulations, and the Merovingian does in selling a cake program laced with aphrodisiacs to a customer of his club), and human bodies are the ultimate commoditized means of production. This notion of presumed "scientific" and mathematical precision at the heart of Hegelian and Marxist dialectical theory is an old one, and treated most recently by John Rees, in his Algebra of Revolution: The Dialectic and the Classical Marxist Tradition (Routledge, 1999).

The concluding Matrix: Revolutions preaches what it openly promises in its title: a vision of permanent revolution and communist revolutionary terrorism. So how many "battery"-style Americans, from guards to policemen and power plant operators, were killed by our "heroes" in this struggle? One of our supposed heroes, Morpheus, is portrayed as the "most dangerous man alive," and a "known terrorist" -- the most violent terrorist alive. More precisely, the films offer Marxist pedagogy for revolutionary struggle through anti-white and anti-American revolution and faux Christian Socialism in order to build the foundation for carrying on the Radical Left's higher order of struggle - against God and reason. The trilogy was clearly produced to create a climax of "revelation," after the last scene in Revolutions or outside the theaters, that much of what the movie-goer has just seen - from the Matrix itself to the Zion world, including religion, faith, hope, love, family, idealized beauty, even the "freedom" of a nearly wiped out Zion - are all just elements of a larger system for control and the means to an end of "hyper-real" cultural terrorism. Indeed, both Zion and The Matrix are ultimately simulations without foundation in an actual world, but still promoted as "hyper-real," that is, communicating theoretical substance and purpose. The viewer is coached, through hyper-real simulation to "see" that the only path to "peace" and freedom from religious and political slavery is revolt against all cultures based on social structures -- and theology itself. The path? Marxist revolution, destruction of Western culture, and adoption of an Eastern culture and nihilist belief in WILL -- the power, in theory, of any human to become a "One" in an Identity Matrix (humanism and will triumphing over traditions taken to comic book and totalitarian lengths).

"What's really going to bake your noodle later on," to borrow a phrase from the Oracle [played by Mary Alice in Revolutions, picking up the role from the late Gloria Foster], is pondering how the movie flashes American Western Judeo-Christian images only to denigrate them and ultimately exterminate them, upon Neo's request and with Zion's blessing, as part of a failed "system" of "control." The clear "purpose" of the films is to propagandize against American values, and critique the exceptionalism and salvation inherent in the Western Judeo-Christian faith. The series' apparent anthem, Rage Against the Machine's "Wake Up," shouts "what you reap is what you sow," and thus mocks God and the Biblical teaching that is the reverse:"whatever a man sows, so shall he reap." That is, Christian faith, which is rooted in sowing seeds of salvation by waking up the sinful, is restructured by the band and creators of this trilogy into a scheme to "reap" control.

We are shown in Reloaded that Neo and the Zion program, and thus Jewish and Christian faiths, were created by Mother Earth/the Oracle (Gaea), and "accepted" by the Architect/Machine God as programs "for control." The "peace" Neo negotiated was merely an "acceptable" level of "existence" according to the Architect/God machine (from Reloaded). This Machine God, which controls with money/green code, also offers the somewhat rhetorical (since he usually knows the answer) question at the end of the movie:"How long do you think this will last?" Thus, the Architect was portrayed in that last scene questioning the value of religion for keeping order in the Machine World, or in any world. Indeed, the "God Machine" did just that only moments before by shouting to Neo a critical phrase: "WE don't need you!" That "we" also reflects the collectivist culture of the machines, who display only rare hints of individualism.

Thus, the "end" of the trilogy turns on its head the Christian doctrine of the Son of God saving man from evil and original sin, and suggests that it is not the Architect, but the Mother of Earth (Gaea/"Oracle") who created Neo merely to fill a revolutionary "purpose." It was Neo, "the One" program, that leads to the emergence of Smith -- his perverted copy (anti-Christ) or "negative" (as the Oracle stated in Revolutions). Thus, we are led to "see" that it is Jesus Christ himself and all who aspire to follow within the historical context of Western empire that are the purported creators of all of the evils of the world. That is, "evil" in the Matrix is a function of Western culture creating its own levels of hell.

The Oracle is our "key" to the Matrix, because it she, not Neo, who is the real leader of this revolution – waged from a "hyper-real" public housing block in a Harlem-like setting. She, like the Architect (Father Heaven to her Mother Earth symbolism) has elements of Freud (analyst of human psyche) and Marx (supposed predictor of human behavior and revolution). The Architect explained to Neo that she is "an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father of the matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother." Her comments appear to reflect the view presented by the philosopher Heraclitus that the Oracle "neither conceals or reveals the truth, rather only hints at it."

In contrast, Morpheus, as the erstwhile conjurer of miracles, promised the "truth" - only to be disappointed at the end of Reloaded to hear from Neo that it was all a lie. Morpheus had a dream, too. Christian-like salvation for the multi-cultural Zion through a Neo-Christ figure (there is even a scene in Reloaded of the main characters arriving at Zion with Neo surrounded by people who treat him like a Christ figure). However, like the film’s anthem "Wake Up!," the trilogy offers a simulation of a world in which Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of a non-violent Christian "dream" world is rejected as an illusion in favor of nihilistic/Anarchistic revolutionary struggle (the path taken by Morpheus).

The film also relies, in part, on the portrayal of Neo as "Alice" in Alice in Wonderland. Neo is even instructed to follow the "White Rabbit" to venture into a sado-masochistic "rave" club intended to mock the "Victorian" values of a Christianized "Matrix" America. The original book by Lewis Carroll (Charles L. Dodgson) was a critique of Victorian values (1865) that rested on a rejection of participation in other people’s dreams. It appears to fit in Matrix 1.0, where Neo is revolting against the American dream world. Neo also rejects attempts by Morpheus to fashion him into a neo-Christ, for the sixth time in a row we learn (with the Christian allegory revealed to be a programmed dream sequence led by Morpheus [in the John the Baptist role]). However, we later find Neo and the "Kid" applying superhuman ego to preserve the equally illusory world of Zion and its revolutionaries (liberating them from all green digital currencies of power in the "bourgeois" world, but incorporating the Eastern concept of auras). Zion is the true "dream world" and illusion of the film – it is Neo’s mescaline-induced drug trip or trip Through the Looking Glass [mixing in an allegory to another work by Carroll, as portrayed in Matrix 1.0].

The Oracle’s revolutionary struggle has a distinct Eastern context to it. We see her character training "potentials" in Matrix 1.0 – cultural revolutionaries -- to promote Eastern cultures within the Westernized Matrix. They range from Zen Buddhism to possibly Maoism (a "potential" with a little red book with Chinese characters is seen briefly). In Revolutions she takes on an apprentice in the form of the Hindu goddess Sati [played by Tanveer Atwal], who comes from the Eastern Machine World and is the daughter of a God in charge of the "power plant." Whether the Oracle created all of Zion in the first place is not clear, although it is interesting to note that it exists as a dream world unto itself, as reflected in the brain/synapse-like structure of the core of Zion. The Oracle's self-declared "purpose" was to "unbalance" the equation, that is, promote "change." Before the Architect, Neo's "purpose" is limited to only "balancing the equation" and maintaining control, not truly liberating mankind: rather only himself, the revolutionaries and others that "choose" to be "free" (proletarians). In the end, tiny Zion only gets a small piece of the "desert of the real" and an illusory measure of sustainable "freedom," but not a Kingdom of God or an Empire. Although the Oracle says to Sati that she did not know of the inevitability of this outcome, she does proclaim that she "believed" – in Neo and, as the film title says, revolutions.

This last line of the Oracle’s was most intriguing because the only way any character in these films is supposedly able to "believe" is through "love" (in oneself or another). The Oracle loved Neo? Yes. It was curious to find the Oracle character placed in a Harlem-like tenement building. There are also "bits and pieces" provided online by the brothers which portray a "2nd Renaissance." Thus, it appears that the Oracle may, in fact, represent the leader of the "Harlem Renaissance," a vigorous opponent of American foreign policy in Asia/The East (including the use of atomic bombs), supporter of black separatism and revolution in the U.S. – one Zora Neale Hurston [1891-1960]. Gloria Foster did look an awful lot like Zora Hurston (who is commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp for 2003).

In this latest installment, Neo starts out spending time (at risk of forever) in a purgatory called "Mobil" Ave., which is an anagram for Limbo (and Dante's 1st Level of Hell). This subway "limbo" is controlled by the Devil or Hades, the kidnapper of Persephone (the Goddess of the Soul/Wisdom and harbinger of spring in Greek mythology), who rules the Hell of the Matrix. Our heroes in this movie actually press a button marked "Hel" to get to the Merovingian's Club Hell, only to have the Devil chide them that they "fought through Hell" to get there. It is a hedonistic and sinful night club that looks like one of Dante's Levels of Hell, and is populated by perverts, ghost programs, and vampire guards. A character in another club run by the Merovingian, which was seen in Reloaded, was even dispatched by Persephone [played by Monica Bellucci] with a silver bullet, while a movie about vamps played on the big screen TV in the background.

It is the Greek Goddess Persephone who gives the hapless "programs" from Zion a ray of hope, when all appeared lost, by suddenly appearing at the elevator. She also teaches Neo what is most important for "hope" to spring eternal - love: gnostic selfish love to be precise (as reflected in her pursuit of something so "trivial as a kiss"). However, true to form in these films, she is simultaneously shown to be defiling the American mythology surrounding the tale of "Snow White." The costume designer for the sequels, Kym Barrett, was quoted in PR for the film as saying:"I see the Merovingian and Persephone as the king and queen of hell...Snow White inspired their evil-in-rubber look." So totally unnecessary for the plot, yet still included in the design - it is revolutionary virtual cinema, after all, and ridicule of America’s cultural icons is the agenda.

Worse still, the form of "love" Persephone educates Neo in is portrayed as "insanity" and justification for theoretical mass murder. When Trinity confronts "Merv" (knocking Merv Griffin) in Club Hell, Persephone says:"She'll do it. If she has to, she'll kill every one of us. She's in love." To which the Merovingian replies:"It is remarkable how similar the pattern of love is to the pattern of insanity." The narrowly-interpreted meaning of that phrase is a lie, and a rejection of all morality and theology (that there is reason behind love). Yet, Trinity and Neo are shown to agree with the insanity defense. The story portrayed in Revolutions presents it as a statement of how Neo and Trinity come to discover nihilism and the power of WILL - self-love and selfish love as "insanity" (Neo even gets a chance to put at risk all of humanity just to love Trinity [his illogical "choice" defined by the Architect]). This triumph of selfish will is at the root of psychotic anti-social behavior and totalitarian impulses. It rests on a belief in the power of the individual to reject God, and every limit/inhibition on Earth, and then transform an actual world into a Utopia, or dream world, as he or she wishes to perceive it (while destroying anyone getting in the way).

Persephone’s husband, the Merovingian [played by Lambert Wilson], is a combination of Hades, the Greek God of the Underworld, and a Frankish/French maior domo, or mayor/boss of the palace/club. Here he is in the role of a mafia boss trafficking "information" and programs in a world whose only currency is computer code, or the language of power, understanding, and "cause and effect..action...reaction" (A little Marxist dialectic with that cake, Marie?). He not only sells programs for cake, but also keys to the code. The Merovingian is the controller of the "keys" to the Kingdom of the Matrix, and in particular its "keymaker" [played by Randall Duk Kim]. This is a veiled reference to the anti-Catholic cult of the Sangreal/"Holy Grail," which held that the 7th century Merovingian Kings possessed the blood-line "keys" to the Kingdom of Christ based on "holy blood" (Sangreal) going back to Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ. In the movie use of such "keys" provides a back door way to move within the dual worlds controlled by the mainframe by moving through the DNA equivalent of the programs "hidden in tumblers" (Seraph).

In Revolutions Seraph is called "my little Judas" by the Merovingian! Hades is both compared to Christ (in a direct attack on Christianity), and damning Seraph as betraying a Christian salvation narrative that empowers "Merv." After all, Hades' power is shown as a function of the Christian programming (much like Smith is a perverted copy of Neo). Without "good" there is, for such a creature, no "cost"/profit in the "evil" reaction.

The Merovingian is also thus firmly established as the evil twin of the Oracle program. It is "Merv" that is more closely associated with the Christian narrative than is the Oracle, who is seen training only Eastern cultural/religious "potentials." The Oracle does not train Neo or Trinity, but rather only hints at prophecy for them. She states at the end of Revolutions that she "believed" in Neo’s ability to, in effect, not only change the Matrix, but change his own programming/destiny by knowing himself [Temet Nosce, the Latin-worded plaque in her apartment]. That is, the entire "neo-Christ" allegory was a reflection of the need to control an inherently evil world shown in the Matrix (and dominated by the Merovingian), while she "believed" that Neo would ultimately -- on this his 6th try (before the metaphorical 7th day of rest shown at the very end of Revolutions) – chuck it all to adopt nihilism and destroy Western Civilization and Christianity.

The Merovingian/Sangreal (Holy Blood) heresy was premised on the claim of being descended from the original Jesus Christ. However, this was a false claim, so "Merv" was not derived from "The One" program (in the Castle Melee scene in Reloaded "Merv" observes that he has survived prior Neos), while the Seraph is only a "little" Judas. Thus, the Merovingian is more likely the reactionary copy – reflecting the class basis of the Matrix --- of the Oracle’s progressivism. "Action…reaction" becomes revolutionary vs. counter-revolutionary, with "Merv" in the role of a creature that understands well the Marxist dialectic, but has the characteristics of a capitalist, aristocrat (showing disdain for the "bourgeois" patrons), monarchist (Merovingian kings theme), and exploiter/profiteer all in one.

There is an anti-imperialist coalition at the heart of the resistance to the American/Smith empire. We see this in the film’s critique of American power in Asia, portrayal of a clash of civilizations representing a revolutionary East vs. Western empire, and even the use of Baudrillard’s concept of a "territory" based on "empire." The theme is carried over into what appears to be a representation of the real world persona of James Hardy Dillard (1856-1940, and former VP of the "Anti-Imperialist League") in the Councilor Dillard character, Cornel West’s appearance, and the Oracle’s apparent representation of Zora N. Hurston (a critic of American policy in Asia during the 1940s).

The most oblique reference to an anti-imperialist crusade comes in the representations of Neo as Dorothy and Morpheus as the Wizard – two characters from Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz (1900). Recall that Cypher tells Neo inside the Matrix to buckle his seatbelt because "Kansas is going bye-bye." Neo reinforces this reference in a call to Morpheus in which he shouts:"Mr. Wizard, get me the hell out of here!" Those familiar with the history of Baum’s work know that the fantasy world of Oz was actually intended to critique the imperial policy of the Republican administration at the time (following the Spanish-American War), as well as offer support for a proposed bimetal standard of gold and more plentiful silver - called the Free Silver Movement. The primary champion of that campaign, which failed, was William Jennings Bryan, who declared on July 8, 1896, that "you shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold." In Matrix: Revolutions we see Neo, and all of mankind of the "late 20th century," symbolically sent to the mines and then crucified on a cross of technology by a race of machines enabled/created by an expansionistic and omnipotent empire (America/Smith). In Oz (meaning ounce of gold), the Grand Wizard was a representation of an influential establishment figure of the day named Marcus Hanna (then controlling the Republican Party and influencing the McKinley administration), who, like the Eastern bankers or "witches" (and "Merv" in the Matrix) accumulates wealth and power through illusions of value, while the Wicked Witch, who is chasing Dorothy to steal her silver shoes (changed to ruby red for the famous film), has enslaved a race of yellow "Winkies" (representing the peoples of the new colonies).

The "Wizard" of the Matrix is the God of Man's Dreams, Morpheus, and is, indeed, a purveyor of both hope and illusion (false hopes, as Neo tells him at the end of Reloaded). Does Morpheus also represent a secret power behind the Republican Party like the Wizard of Oz? Yes!, but to different ends. It was Morpheus, in the role of the conjurer of Christ (the name Morpheus is itself a "critique" of John the Baptist and Christianity), who also ordered around "Reagan"/Cypher (against which Cypher rebels), and presumably freed him in Feb. 1989 (at the inauguration of President George H.W. Bush).

The Matrix that we are shown reflects the aftermath of a race war between a bio-mechanical and living "race of machines" (Morpheus to Neo in the first film) and mankind, which resulted, as is indicated more clearly in the 1996 script, from the desire of the MACHINES for equality. Morpheus, according to that 1996 script, was supposed to say about the machines:"At first all they wanted was to be treated as equals, entitled to the same human inalienable rights."

This aspect of the opaque core plot was developed further in the so-called "Zion Archives" (Comics/Shorts section) provided online by Warner Brothers, which includes a short story (prepared by the brothers) about the birth of AI. This is shown in a tale of a robot, of a "B-1" type (yes, clearly referring to our bomber turning on its developers, and hinting at a critique of the role of military needs driving technology development), which was intelligent enough, and capable of "human consciousness," to realize that its owner, a billionaire (of course), was planning to replace him for a better model. Once the machine realized this it killed its owner and another man. The "defense" of this robot involves a lawyer named "Clarence Drummond" and a "Senator Gunrich" who is calling the trial a farce, because he doesn’t believe machines can evolve to possess human consciousness. At least one name should be familiar to anyone who saw the semi-fictional and propagandistic take on the Scopes Trial called Inherit the Wind (made into a film in 1960). "Henry Drummond" [played by Spencer Tracy] was the fictional name in that film for the famous real-life lawyer Clarence Darrow. "Senator Gunrich" could be a representation of one or all of William Jennings Bryan, Congressman "B-1" Bob Dornan, and/or former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

In the Matrix trilogy we are challenged to define species of living things by discovering how organic and alive machines can become, particularly when they have a God, behave like living beings, and understand "love" through sacrifice. The comparisons between man and machine are carried further by the character Councilor Hamann [played by Anthony Zerbe] in Revolutions, who declares to Neo that he does not understand how either the machines or Neo "work," but does understand the ultimate Hegelian "purpose" of the water recycling machines. Hamann states that he does know that both man and machine depend on each other, to the point where the question of who controls whom (who over whom) is debatable - while Neo's response is a Nihilist one! Man can destroy machines, therefore man is in control - at least of the machines at the bottom of the tower/cave/brain/prison of Zion.

This exploration of the organic nature of the machine world is advanced at other points in Revolutions. We see the Oracle commenting that "cookies" (computer programs, like Neo) "need love, like everything does." We also see Neo discovering through the "father" of Sati, the God and programmer Rama, that programs from the machine world can also "love." Rama makes the case for the programs and machines using a Nihilist argument. Love, he says:"is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies," that is, sacrifice for that connection - do "anything" for his daughter. Thus, standing, or Hegel's "purposive activity," in the Matrix world rests on a willingness of a machine, program, or human to consciously sacrifice to save another out of "love" (sacrifices made by Neo and Trinity, Rama, and even Sentinels, who are shown dying off to re-start a "Digger"). The machines are shown as having purposive activity equal to that of man because they have attained understanding of "love" defined in nihilist (Nietzsche/Bakunin) terms - the WILL to create and "save" by sacrifice and destruction. The machines, which include monstrous giant squid-like devices called "Diggers" (perhaps a reference to the radical peasant revolutionaries of 1649 England), are the ultimate "levelers" of mankind - destroying the imperial nature of the world seen inside the Matrix in order to "save" all races (including the new "AI" machines) from Western Civilization.

This race war between man and machine leads to the destruction of blue (democratic influences) and green (environmental influences), as well as the division of mankind into black vs. red camps (fascist vs. Marxist). In the Matrix presented on screen, the black camp was defined as "the system" that is "our enemy" - all clearly defined in the "training program" shown in the first film. Look closely and you will find nuns, policemen, "lawyers," "carpenters," and "businessmen" by the hundreds, who presumably dine at elegant eateries of the sort we find Smith and Cypher plotting in -- all Anglo-Saxon and dressed in priest-like black and white. That is, they represent a "black"/fascist system ruled by Agent Smith (and others like him until Smith becomes a Hitler-like totalitarian dictator) and the Merovingian. The Woman in Red [played by Fiona Johnson] teaches Neo that even those showing their colors as red (potentially flying a false flag) can't be trusted, not merely because she represents an idealized vision of Anglo-Saxon beauty, but also because they are not "unplugged" (as in part of the drug, or underground revolutionary culture, if we factor in the early mescaline/vision theme). Meanwhile, the stylized (mostly black) uniforms of the crew as they appear in the Matrix are just that - uniforms/armor, like S&M spies operating behind enemy lines, and unlike anything they wear in the "real world" of Zion. Finally, we also see Smith using what has been called "black goo" by production staff (Cinefex #95, Oct. 2003) as a virus-like means of promoting Nazism, that is, of reformatting the programming of people targeted so that they not only act and think alike, but look alike. Smith becomes the "virus" that he decried to Morpheus after he is merged with Neo in Matrix 1.0 – and thus becomes simultaneously Neo’s evil "copy" or reflection and afflicted with human flaws. That is, Smith reveals a basic threat of any "system" (both black and red – with a critique of Stalinism also embedded in representations of Orwell’s Room 101 in Matrix 1.0) run in a machine-like fashion – it’s susceptibility to the "human" flaw of personal ambition for power.

Nearly all of the heroic figures in the film are people of color (black, Hispanic, Asian), or "potentials" focused on creating a new world order dominated by Eastern cultures (including Zen Buddhism/Hinduism). Reporting on early casting for the Matrix trilogy indicated that the original intent was to cast most of the heroes as American blacks, including Neo and Trinity, but this was resisted by the studio. Laurence Fishburne is reported to have stated to the Detroit Free Press (June 6, 2003) that the brothers were also under pressure from the studio to put a white actor into the role of Morpheus, but they held the line. In their only public interview in which they discussed the messages of the film (an online chat session in 1999), the Wachowskis indicated that Buddhism "has fascinated us for a long time." Throw in music at the end of the first movie from an openly Marxist/Anarchist music group (Rage Against the Machine), a cameo role on the Council for the radical socialist academic, Cornel West, and reports that the brothers originally offered Will Smith the Neo role before he turned them down (and were considering his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, for the Trinity role before Smith pulled out [offering her a customized role as "Niobe" [named after yet another Greek mythological figure] in the sequels instead]), and you can see the message of revolutionary struggle of the East in partnership with multi-cultural (mostly Afro-American) revolutionaries working within the "enemy" camp.

The political struggle of black Americans towards a "Zionist" ideal at the core of the plot line is signaled throughout the films. We see the character "Link" revealed to have the proper name of "Lincoln" when Zee cries out for him at the climax of the dock battle sequence in Revolutions. Trinity, Seraph, and Morpheus also chase the Trainman through a Chicago-like "Loop" station named Selma/Sellma (as in the town in Alabama where the famous civil rights march that launched a "revolution" of sorts took place). There are many other related thematic references explored elsewhere in this work.

Consistent references to the numbers 300 and 303 throughout the films (Trinity’s room # is 303, which appears on a truck in Reloaded, and elsewhere) represent something other than a code having to do just with Trinity. Indeed, the Brothers are reported by staff to have requested that the car carrying Trinity during the highway shoot-out in Reloaded have 300 bullet hits (here symbolizing violence over a period of 300 years). Moreover, the number of Smiths in the "burly brawl" scene was reportedly targeted to be circa 300. My guess is that 303 stands for 300+3 (deliverance from 300 years of slavery and Dante’s 3 types of evil [although the Holy Trinity is also a possible representation – see below]). Various authors refer to the "300 years" of slavery of blacks in the Americas. It might also be a fascinating coincidence, but the year 303 A.D. was the year that Diocletian launched his campaign of extermination against Christians – most of them slaves. Those not killed outright were sent ad metellam – to the mines.

Flash-forward to the "end of the war" in Revolutions, and we see a "peace" premised, as "Councilor Hamann" hinted at with Neo during a tour of the machine underbelly of Zion, on interdependence ("I can't help thinking that in a way, we are plugged into them"). That is, by exterminating Christian America, equality and a "balance" of interdependence is restored for the non-Western races (organic living machines, "freed" people of color and Marxist revolutionaries of Zion, and "battery" humans living under an Eastern/Hindu dominion imposed by the young peer to the Oracle named "Sati").

Neo chooses, in Reloaded, to embrace anarchism and individualism, and selfish love - that is, reject his New Christ programming and become the New Superman. Architect to Neo:"Your five predecessors were by design based on a similar predication, a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the one. While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific. Vis-a-vis, love." It is because of his selfish love for Trinity that Neo walks through the door that supposedly ensures the destruction of all of mankind, only to tell Morpheus in a following scene that the entire Christian paradigm, especially its sexual morality and concept of "love," is a lie - a means of control.

Neo's love interest "Trinity" [played by Carrie-Anne Moss] is, of course, named after the Holy Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine of a "Holy Trinity" (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). This character serves mainly to dissimulate the communication of God's love, and joins Neo in rejecting God’s love for selfish lust derived both from Neo’s self-professed "need" (as coached by "Mouse") and gnosticism -- as we are left to infer from the presence of a ship named the Gnosis (with a crew member named "Corrupt"). Indeed, the film looks very much like propaganda for a fringe element of gnosticism that distorts the sacrifice of Valentinus/St. Valentine to manufacture a cult based on stressing discovery of God’s spiritual spark through physical lust.

The films of this trilogy are littered with images of deviant sexual behavior, ranging from brief images of sado-masochism to homosexuality and transvestitism. Neo is even introduced to Trinity in the sado-masochistic nightclub scene from Matrix 1.0, and says:"I thought you were a guy." To which Trinity responded:"Most guys do." Curiously, all of this deviant propaganda and sinful/selfish approach to "love"/lust appears to be tangential to the basic plot line. Indeed, it would have been more intriguing to offer a tale of true love between Trinity and Neo based on reason and "purpose." Instead, the "love" between Neo and Trinity is literally no more than what Persephone taught Neo – "trivial." There are, of course, no discussions of the sacrament of marriage. In fact, we see a portrayal of just the opposite: a break-up between Morpheus and Niobe resulting from the former’s religious crusade, and their return together after Neo destroys Christianity. One can’t help but see the superheroes skip straight from orgies of lust to revolutionary death, and wonder if this is not all an implausible plot twist designed to promote some personal prurient interest. Such speculation is propelled by lurid tales of Larry Wachowski's cross-dressing and sado-masochistic fetishism offered by his estranged wife in court papers for a bitter divorce battle, all of which have been posted on thesmokinggun.com. Whither the Christian Zealots?

Neo's small band of believers includes Morpheus (as John the Baptist) and Councilor Hamann [played by Anthony Zerbe]. Councilor Hamann appears to be a representation of the "father" of German classicism and Christian preacher, John Georg Hamann (1730-1788). It was Soren Kierkegaard who intensified interest in the works of Hamann, so, of course, in a move confirming this representation, we also see a minor character in the films named "Soren" [played by Steve Bastoni]. The Matrix version of Hamann fits the profile of John G. Hamann, because he is one of the few in Zion to actually believe the prophecy could be true.

The historical Hamann argued against the separation of God and state, and for the separation of church and state, that is, against the sovereign powers of the Holy Roman Catholic Church of his day, as well as against those who would promote state policies designed to marginalize religious influences in government. In contrast, today we have revolutionaries in American courts going much further down the path of anarchism by twisting "separation of church and state" to mean separation of God and state. To separate God and state, in Hamann's view, would lead inevitably to a nihilistic and amoral state and society. His presence on the Council may have been intended to support the vision of Cornel West in Prophesy Deliverance and other modern radicals promoting a revolutionary neo-Christianity (with a mountain of flaws in his analysis, but that’s another book). However, in the end, Councilor Hamann is just another character, much like "The Kid" Karl Popper, included mainly to explain contradictions from a Marxist dialectical perspective, and to be ridiculed, in Hamann’s case by: (1) having him talk of Hegelian "purpose" with Neo (while enthusiastically embracing his Nihilistic journey of rejection of Christ); (2) positioning the Architect, Oracle, Sati, and Smith to represent the ultimate convergence between God and state - as pure evil in Smith's case, and the lesser of two evils with regard to the others (all agents of "machine" rule and the levels of hell, after all); and (3) setting up Councilor Hamann to preside over the world's largest festival of sin.

Who is "The Kid" [played by Clayton Watson], and why does he play such a critical role in Revolutions, but without much character development? The Kid is a character first seen in an Animatrix short film, and emerges on the cinema screen in Reloaded and again towards the end of Revolutions shooting open Gate 3 (the Trinity as an obstacle to be destroyed in order to be saved) in a heroic action after declaring "I believe." The Kid is portrayed in the short film posted online by Warner Brothers as being able to see the future - a key point, as we shall explore. He takes a leap off of a school building (while being chased by agents) only to die inside the Matrix, but emerge "free" and "self-substantiated" in the Zion world precisely because he knew/predicted with certainty that the Matrix was the dream (we then see him inside the Nebuchadnezzar). It is in the Animatrix version of that ship, and again in Reloaded, that Neo informs him that:"I didn't save you kid. You saved yourself." His name? Michael Karl Popper (as put onto his Animatrix gravestone).

The Kid is, of course, a representation of Karl Popper, the famous 20th century Austrian Jewish philosopher, and self-proclaimed "critical-rationalist." Popper is one of the preeminent critics of Marxism and totalitarian systems (Nazis, too, where he was forced into permanent exile during the late 1930s). His scientific approach to philosophy generated critiques of positivism (will, reason and deduction), relativism, and pseudo-"scientific" analysis of social and political phenomena (including the historicism of modern totalitarian ideologies). In particular, Popper was a proponent of the idea of an "Open Society"/Liberal Democracy (subjecting all ideas, including Judeo-Christian narratives, Nihilism, and Marxism, to critical rationalism) and a leading critic of Freudian psycho-analysis (and thus the Oracle's role in the Matrix as the ultimate Freudian Marxist). It was Popper who generated a proof through the "falsification" of the unscientific/dogmatic nature, and predictive worthlessness, of modern psychiatry and sociology. Today, George Soros, who once studied under Popper, is financing "Open Society" programs that have been subjected to repression in Russia and subsidizing political efforts to unseat President Bush (for waging an elective war in Iraq and accumulating tyrannical powers).

We can see in The Kid character a representation of Popper's anti-Nazi permanent "exile" (forced into that "exile" by representations of Nazi agents inside the Matrix, he is presumably not able to go back). His leap into Zion (in a disturbing suicide fantasy scene) was not one of faith, but of certainty (knowledge that the Matrix was all a dream) and predictive ability. As a result, he is portrayed as affirming the predictive power of Nihilism through positive self-substantiation, or the mere will to "believe" that a dream can become real, something that the real Karl Popper rejected and refuted. Indeed, The Kid is shown throughout as fumbling and failing (from failing to turn off his cell phone in the Animatrix short to having to be rescued by Zee on film so that she can be with her lover) in a scheme to build a Popper-like case for Nihilism. That is, we see him "falsifying" success resulting from scientific and critical rationalist actions, such as the presumed need to complete a training program (rejected in conversation with the captain) or taking the unscientific approach of ramming a load of shells into the APU, to embrace an anti-Popper belief in his own WILL to "believe" that dreams can become real through suicide, war, and destruction. Such ridicule - an important element of nihilistic cultural terrorism - was carried on in other ways in the film, where we see him being upbraided by a commander, marginalized/ignored by Neo and Trinity, and ultimately succeeding only by pronouncing he "believes" (a very anti-Popper statement), that is, believes in the nihilist ideal.

Karl Popper has also been associated with so-called (incorrectly described) "therapeutic nihilism," that is, questioning the value of certain drug therapies based on whether they possess predictable results. There is very clear message in these films promoting hallucinogenic drug abuse – where the character Choi’s comments are portrayed as positively cool. Indeed, the entire premise of the Zion/Machine world, based on the Choi and mirror representations, is that it is all some drug-induced hallucination and path of enlightenment in a "real" world represented by the social and political architectures of the Matrix. Neo's journey is not one of faith in a Christian God (which is revealed to be a "lie" and a program of control), but rather self-substantiation and nihilism through drug use. While Neo sells Choi a mescaline/Peyote-like digital drug to help him "fly" and be "saved," the Wachowski Brothers confirmed in their 1999 online chat interview that Neo’s encounter with the mirror was also that of a "hallucination…the direct result of the pill Morpheus had given Neo." They then cracked a sick joke in response to a question about where the "idea for The Matrix" came from. Playing video games or shock therapy were the possibilities offered – the response:"No, designer drugs."

Despite all this, The Kid is shown becoming self-actualized without a "red pill." That is, he presented experience suggesting (Popper argued that nothing is ever positively or logically confirmed) that mescaline/s[t]imulations may not be necessary to "fly," "wake up," and be "saved" (Choi). The Kid, and his heroics at the end for Zion, thus present a Popper-like "proof" of the false nature of the hypothesis that Neo/the Christian narrative and/or abuse of drugs like mescaline are necessary for Nihilistic self-substantiation. Nihilists can, after all, be superhuman without training in political nihilism, religious faith, drugs, or even critical-rationalism.

The dating of the Matrix offers insight into the "coded" dialectic of the trilogy. Morpheus declared in Matrix 1.0 that the final battles we see on film are "closer to 2199," that is, after waiting all of his perceived life to find Neo (at roughly age 30, as was Jesus Christ at the comparable moment in the narrative). The "truth" is, as Morpheus, explained it - no one, including Neo, knows "for sure" the date, or when the "war" started and the Matrix was created. They can't, because they are locked within a wilderness of mirrors. The movie-going audience-member is not, and that is where the analysis takes a curious turn. There are three time-lines to consider here: Matrix simulation, Zion simulation, and hyper-real "virtual cinema" time.

The Nebuchadnezzar's core computer was made in 2069 (earliest non-Matrix simulation date), and the Matrix of the Neo VIth era represented the end of the 20th century or 1969-1999 (starting and ending each time with the birth and reintegration of a roughly 30-year old "The One" program). The date on the Nebuchadnezzar’s "core" computer is important, because it is the earliest known date of all the Zion simulation ships. That it says "Made in the USA!" appears intended to show that the entire AI Era – of technological imperialism, war, and revolution -- were "made" by the USA of the Matrix. Some fans of the trilogy are aware that various peripheral products (shorts and game) from the franchise hint at dating for several other ships that go into the early 22nd century. This is most likely due to the fact that all of the Zion world’s struggles, and ships, are a part of the "Zion" hallucination/simulation.

The ships Nebuchadnezzar and Osiris (thus, a King and God of enslavers of the Hebrews) both hint that there was a period during which the cave that becomes Zion had previously been under different dominions, which can be associated with the lost "crops" of the early Matrix period described by Smith. "Zion" appears to be the name given to the cave at the start of the 100 year war of liberation – of the Matrix. Morpheus talks of a war that has gone on for 100 years from the emergence of a Moses-like figure ("there was a man born…who freed the first of us" and presumably thus creates "Zion," and triggers the war of restoration) to the discovery of the 30 year-old Neo VIth program. Thus, there is a roughly 70 year period here – of Zion in exile (not actively seeking to overthrow the Matrix), that is, before the 30-year old Neo program starts (and is repeated 6 times). This 70 year period is more explicit in the "bits and pieces" "Zion archives" comic-book section provided online by the brothers, which is dated "2090-2139" (that is, ending 70 years after 2069). It appears to be less than coincidental that the Kingdom of Judah in the Bible experienced 70 years of captivity under Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, with its people thrown into exile until they were allowed to return and rebuild. That is, the "desert" described by Morpheus is not only a reference to Baudrillard’s "map," but also a representation of how a modern Babylon (the USA) turned the world of the late 20th century into a "desert of the real" in return for the sins/evil of that time, while also ushering in the era of exile for the Bolshevik revolutionaries of "Zion."

Nevertheless, the ship we find Morpheus and Trinity leading in Matrix 1.0 is not an agent of Nebuchadnezzar’s prophecy, but that of "Mark 3 no. 11" (found on the ship’s computer core plaque), which is:"Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out saying,`You are the Son of God.'" That is, with the advent of the Neo/"One" program, the Babylonian allegory ended in favor of "children of Zion" like Tank returning to reclaim their land and world through Jesus (and failing). Zion is not their homeland. The Mega-City of the Matrix and its counterpart Machine City both represent Jerusalem and Rome in the context of the Zion/Christ narrative, as well as Chicago (indicated by everything from street names to a subway train with "Loop" on it). Zion is exile in the deepest cave possible at the end of sewers – and also a ghetto/camp/prison of the mind (in light of its brain-like structure). Their revolution is to return to the Matrix (and liberate all mankind), not merely achieve "peace" inside the cave. That is, the goal of revolutions is to create a world where the Zionist revolutionaries not only restructure the world – tell the world how to think to avoid the Agents and "make peace" with the results of scientific progress, but also get their own homeland.

There was a Utopia programmed for mankind sometime before "The One" program was implemented, as stated by the Architect in Reloaded and Agent Smith to Morpheus in the first film (who noted that "entire crops" [plural] were "lost" during this period). The simulated war between man and machine (since all of Zion and the Matrix are simulations) occurred sometime before 2069 (and after 2003), which means that this failed Utopian era programming, complete with a pre-Moses Zion (under Babylonian and Egyptian rule?), probably took place from 2069-2099 (with the latter marking the start of the birth of Zion and the Moses-Christ timeline and perceived 100 year war of return). The 2199 battle of Revolutions followed a Christian narrative simulation within a longer run-time Zion simulation, wherein the former "One" program is repeated – and everyone with it, like deja vu (recall the cat, Sati, and Oracle), where the "anomaly" begins. "Either no one told me, or no one knows" says Neo of the revelation to the Architect, meaning that Zion world participants don't know it either, while the Oracle, Merovingian, and Architect reveal the secret only to Neo.

The Zion simulation – or drug-induced hallucination -- includes illusions built into the program of a collapse (from the "peak") of civilization, emergence of AI, nuclear winter, black and red camps, and race war between AI and mankind set from (2017, actually anyone’s guess) to 2069 ("Made in the USA!"). This is followed by a period in which the revolutionary AI sought to impose a Utopian order – 2069-2099 -- under their dominion. It was a Utopia that looks a lot like pure Stalinism: man gets everything he "needs," even if all illusion and cannibalism (food is comprised of the liquified dead), in return for providing what they can – heat and "meat" (said Smith as Bane) – as proletarian "workers" or means of production (slaves) under the dictatorship of a pure industrializing revolutionary elite. You can’t get a more terrifying representation of what revolutionary Marxism-Leninism can create than the world of the AI – man reduced to a means of production. However, the plot clearly pits the Machine world nightmare of Stalinism and machine levelers against a Westernized Christian and Capitalist American empire in order to propose a supposed middle ground or third way (there’s that number again) for "peace" – radical socialist revolutionaries from Zion and the public housing projects of Harlem and Chicago in "balance" with the revolutionary East (machines) and under a new socialist narrative dominated by Eastern influences (Indian and Chinese) for a destroyed capitalist world (the West and Japan [the "code" of capitalism includes reversed Japanese characters]) inside the Matrix.

Once it is evident that both the Matrix and Zion, and every date you see on film, are ALL part of simulations within simulations, it is easy to see that there is no firm ground under even a "Machine God" time or reality. Instead, we are solicited to interpret a "virtual cinema" time that reflects the Zion simulation fantasy as grounded in "real world" historical timelines in the 20th century. First, the "map" within a "map" that is the Matrix simulation is of a conservative "dream world" pulled over the eyes of America after the revolutionary peak in 1968 and death of MLK (running roughly from 1969-1999, the approximately 30 years of the Neo program under a Christian/Republican America/Chicago paradigm inside the Matrix). The "virtual cinema" start date of the Zion illusion can be deduced from Neo’s mind-set, as shown in the television screens in the meeting with the Architect, which is said by production staff quoted in Cinefex magazine to have represented the 20th century starting from WWI. Thus, the war between AI/leveling machines and mankind represents the outgrowth of imperialism, world war, and the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, while the emergence of Zion represents the birth of the state of Israel, and the revolutionary struggle of "2199." The "Revolutions" of The Matrix are a hyper-real, but still notional, future repeat of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, but this time without a Christian West to prevent "peace" under a new order.

For this last insight we have the character Michael "The Kid" Karl Popper to thank. "The Kid" character, who represents Karl Popper [1902-1994], is given the final screen age of a sheepish almost 16 (having falsified 18), which hints at a hyper-real date of 1917 for Revolutions. Thus, while Neo is revolting against the West and American empire of the 20th century, and in particular America post-1967/8, The Kid and Zion are repeating the Zionist and Bolshevik revolutions – as the film’s title shouts. Note that it was called "Revolutions" – in the plural.

What we have then is "revolutionary virtual cinema" in which our heroes are simulating a second Bolshevik revolution led by Zionists and the struggles of a revolutionary East to overthrow an American capitalist empire symbolized by Agent Smith. Indeed, we see our hacker revolutionaries using antiquated rotary phones inside the Matrix and military technologies that look like the same sort of crudely manufactured devices the old USSR long struggled with. Lest the reader think that this is all mere coincidence, it is worth noting that the original release date for Revolutions was Nov. 7, 2003 (reportedly pushed forward by 2 days in early 2003). Sound familiar? It should. It is the 86th anniversary of the Bolshevik "October Revolution" (actually Nov. 7, 1917 by Russia's modern calendar). A similar approach was taken for the release of the first Matrix film on March 31, 1999 (first night of Passover – celebrating freedom from Egyptian rule). Moreover, Matrix: Reloaded was released on May 15/16, while the state of Israel was founded May 14, 1948.

Morpheus is seen in the Reloaded rally mentioning "Black Sky to Red Core." According to the 1996 script, the war between a new race of machines seeking only equality and a level of existence and the world shown in the Matrix (1999) turned the "face of the planet" to "black and red." The term "face" has broad cultural and political meaning. The path of evil is always presented as black – from the darkness of Smith’s "My World," to the black and white clothing for guards and the unplugged in the "training program" and the black virus used by Smith. In contrast, the path to enlightenment and liberation is typically red. The "red pill" (like Alice in Wonderland's choice of food and movement into a mirror world), and the red candy of the Oracle, likely symbolize the path to socialist revolution. Green code is the currency or "cost" of "power" that the Merovingian/underworld boss traffics in. This green currency is, of course, also the "money-changer" system that Jesus Christ fought (with his only act of violence), and represented here as the focus of the Neo-Christ's struggle in the Machine World. Indeed, liberation for Neo comes each and every time by the substitution of light for green code. He is tearing asunder the very cloth/skin that results from that code.

We see the color red used as a code for party loyalty in the films. The "Woman in the Red Dress" program was designed to teach the importance of understanding how even those who fly a false flag of red in a sea of black can really be "agents" of the "system," because they have not been unplugged by becoming criminals and illegal simulation/drug users and sellers - like Neo. The Woman in the Red Dress is also clearly a symbol for "the system's" control mechanism of idealized beauty (Anglo-Saxon white), and intended to contrast with the generally multi-cultural crew of Zion.

Where are the blue (democratic) colors inside the Matrix? The lack of blue shades, and its overriding emphasis on green, was reportedly deliberate, and appears to symbolize not only the "computer" feel of the world, but also "the system's" oppression of "democratic" architectures and its foundation on capital. In Revolutions we are shown scenes on a ship called "The Hammer," wherein "AK" declares that he sees in the Matrix "nothin' but blue pills" - meaning those who rejected red revolution to "believe what (they) want to believe" (as Morpheus stated in the first film). That is, the "blue" color of "democratic" socialist forces, which were suppressed in the race war between man and machine, are associated with self-generated illusions about the world in which the "battery" humans live (a classic Marxist critique of modern social democratic Liberalism). Liberation for the workers (having been reduced to the ultimate commoditized means of production) comes only through discovery of the "truth" of slavery and need for revolution, where we have many characters who take the red pill. Liberation comes in the end with a sky in the restructured Matrix that includes blue, but is actually more like a surreal/unnatural rainbow coalition (written by Sati and shown at the conclusion of Revolutions).

The red as socialist revolutionary theme is also advanced through the esoteric use of hammer references. The ship that picks up Neo, et. al., at the end of Reloaded is named Mjolnir/"The Hammer." This is an obvious reference to "Thor's Hammer," what with crew members named AK, Colt, Mauser, and Roland -- all types of modern weapons. The Mjolnir means "lightning," or hammer of lightning, which is a concept translated by infamous "black" socialists/fascists into the double sig rune or "SS." However, what we have here is not a black hammer, but a red one. Thor was adopted long ago by Nordic socialist movements as a working class liberator, while, close to home, the Socialist Labor Party of the United States uses the arm with a hammer symbol as its party logo.

Although Zion is tinted democratic blue, there is no such thing as representative democracy, as we know it, or military-political divisions in Zion! We have instead a Bolshevik-style party-military command structure in action. Indeed, Councilor Dillard is seen in Revolutions expressing a positive note concerning the fact that the ultimate decision-making power for the deployment of forces for the defense of the docks is not in the hands of Commander Lock (of the military). That is, the council and party control military decision-making (as in the Soviet model).

Who do we see controlling the Supreme Council? None other than a Politburo, or executive committee, of a representational Anti-Imperialist League. With so many characters having some political or mythological symbolism embedded, who then is the General Secretary Councilor Dillard [played by Robyn Nevin]? The most likely representation is that of Prof. James Hardy Dillard (1856-1940), the radical from the late 19th-early 20th century who taught at Tulane University and promoted both the social gospel movement and educational services for American blacks (while not black himself). He is honored today with the dedication in his name of Dillard University in New Orleans. What some of the university's PR won't tell you is that Mr. Dillard was also the vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League from 1907 through 1921 when it was disbanded following the Bolshevik revolution (and left-wing successors emerged). He was also affiliated with the early (then communist-dominated) American Civil Liberties Union and socialist Committee on Militarism in Education. He authored the article "Imperialism and Social Problems" (The Public 6, May 30, 1903), in which he assailed the imperialistic drives of the Tory and Republican parties. The platform of the League started with the lines:"We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free." Now, take a wild guess where the Anti-Imperialist League had its headquarters...Chicago.

Why is the Council comprised not of 6, 10 or 14 members, but 12? In yet another coincidence, that was the number of members in the central committee of the Bolshevik party in 1917-18. It is in this context that "Councilor West's" infamous line from Reloaded, which seems to have puzzled so many reviewers, fits perfectly:"comprehension is not requisite for cooperation" - party discipline is all that is needed.

Liberation does not come in this film through salvation, but rather destruction and reconstruction. "Peace" comes about only with a violent synthesis resulting in the complete annihilation of the Western Christian narrative, from which we are supposed to believe comes nothing but war, terror and violence in a perennial struggle between evil vs. good and socialists vs. oppressive "systems." As Neo asked Morpheus in Reloaded:"how can the prophecy be true if the war isn’t over?" That is, the Christian salvation narrative failed to bring "peace" 6 times. This time the ending would be different. Once Neo's journey of self-awareness is over he realizes that there is no point to going on as either the neo-Christ or in the Zion world, and that he, too, will/must die a nihilist and revolutionary death. In Revolutions, Neo sacrifices himself so that the Machine God can locate the Smith-controlled programs and wipe them out in order to reboot the Matrix without Smith and the world he represents OR any future Neo VII. This reboot is seen through the re-building afterwards, and a re-appearance of the Oracle/Mother Earth and the Matrix version of the young Sati.

The "balance" at the end was shown as being possible through adoption of a Hindu narrative/Eastern rite tradition of seeing the world as ephemeral or illusory. That is, under the "Eastern" Civ. narrative, the "batteries" will presumably "choose" not to engage in an endless cycle of struggle between "good" and "evil" defined in Western terms - they will accept that it is all illusion, a temporary state of being, and wait for reincarnation. This agenda is not merely imposed by the Architect, it is actually prepared for, both by the Oracle and Zion generally, and then sought by Neo on his journey of spiritual discovery and alternatives to the Christ/Anti-Christ paradigm that led him to "Mobil Ave." Indeed, we find the Oracle training Zen Buddhists, a boy with a little red book (Maoist?), and then taking on the Sati character as an apprentice. Off-screen in the Matrix paraphernalia that has been marketed on the studio’s web site there is also mentioned a ship fighting for Zion called the Brahma (another Hindu god and part of that culture’s trinity that includes Vishnu [the character Rama here in his 7th incarnation] and Shiva). Thus, the Oracle, Zion, and even Neo (through his journey of spiritual self-discovery and meeting with Sati via Mobil Ave.) were ALL working towards replacing the Westernized culture from which Smith emerges with one from the revolutionary East.

The Sati character is first seen in Limbo going back into the Matrix from the Machine World/Source. The Sati character is not a replacement for Neo within Western Civilization/The Matrix, but rather a new demi-God comparable to the Oracle character. Indeed, the Sati is taken on by the Oracle as her apprentice, and guarded by Seraph in a way that no other "potential" or Neo character ever was (in other words, as the Oracle's equal or successor). The Sati is even guided on the train by two Indian Gods, her "father" named "Rama-Kandra" or Rama Chandra [played by Bernard White], who represents the Hindu Lord Rama, and a wife named "Kamala."

Who is the Sati? The Sati may represent the Hindu vision of a virtuous woman, who is burned here on the funereal pyre/fiery aura of the spiritual world after the Smith/Devil character traps her and takes her over (revealed by Smith’s comment about the cookies to the Oracle moments later). In Hindu tradition a Sati goes directly to heaven, redeems her forefathers burning in Hell, and is worshipped as a goddess. In Revolutions, she is risen to the level of the machine Gods in order to become a peer of the Oracle (and replace her?) - and to create the rainbow (coalition) of the Matrix shown in the final scene.

Sati meets Neo in the train station at "nowhere" (Rama). Rama to Neo:"It is between your world and our world...if you want to take something from our world into your world that does not belong there, you must go to the Frenchman." That is, the route from East to West is along a path controlled by a Frenchman (a curious representation of France’s historical role during the Cold War). Rama's declared objective was to save Sati from "deletion" by giving her a "purpose" - after a visit with the Oracle, who has been busy in the trilogy shepherding "potentials" - replacements for Neo - premised on Eastern ideologies/narratives. When Smith finds the Sati character he calls her the "last exile," in reference to the fact that she does not belong in the Matrix/Zion mainframe -- as Rama commented to Neo in Mobil Ave:"My wife and I must return to our world." Rama, Kamala, and Sati came from the machine mainframe, which is accessible in only two places (in a play on Catholic doctrine) -- through the door Neo goes through to meet the Architect – the direct path to the Greek Father Heaven/Architect -- and via the first level of Hell or purgatory called Mobil/Limbo Ave., which is controlled by the Trainman for Hades/Merovingian.

Rama’s role in the machine world? He is the head of the "power plant" (as referred to by Cypher in conversation with Smith) in charge of "recycling" – that is, the program in charge of the battery fields and the "recycling" of the dead to feed the pod people (a grotesque critique of reincarnation [the film is about socialist revolution, not the spread of alternative religious ideals]). Rama is seen fleetingly in Reloaded, without any plot development, for reasons that are odd in light of the ending to Revolutions. We see him for a few seconds being manhandled by the Merovingian's henchmen. Why? The agreement between Rama and Hades/Merovingian is not fully explained, but includes letting Sati be exiled to the Matrix. For Rama this agreement is a scheme to save her from deletion by giving her "purpose" in a world dominated by Machines with a mainly Chinese (Maoist) anti-imperial culture contending with a Western imperial Matrix – all of which is an abstract incorporation of India’s history under British imperial rule and post-colonial entry into an anti-Western orbit of Non-Aligned countries (and alliance with the USSR), whereby the Sati finds "purpose" as a member of an anti-Smith alliance (a broader anti-imperial struggle against the West).

However, from the Merovingian's perspective it may be a scheme to see both her, and her mentor, the Oracle, destroyed by Smith. Here we must keep in mind that the primary objective of the Hades-like Merovingian is simply "power." He sees the Neo program becoming more powerful and challenging his influence, and possibly eradicate the Western world he thrives on, but is ultimately helpless to see the future, because he is blind to the power of choice/will (for example, inquiring about how Neo was able to get into Mobil Ave and using the phrase "where others see choice, I see cost"). Thus, his request of the merry band of invaders of Hell is for the "Eyes of the Oracle," or the ability to see all possible variations of the future as influenced by what I will call alternatively cultural destroyers & re-programmers like Neo (in the Bakunin/Lenin role) and Sati (a vision for our future when so much of America’s computer programming is being transferred to India).

Why are we shown the Mobil Ave. episode? Quite a few reviewers have had problems explaining this, along with the ending. Neo's sudden appearance in Mobil Ave. following his premature exercise of powers against the Sentinels in the Zion simulation is explained on film as having occurred without the knowledge of the Merovingian, but with the full understanding of the Oracle (via Seraph). That is, Neo ended up there on a journey of discovery – of revolutionary awakening, and a search for alternatives to the neo-Christ program he had already rejected. The key phrase is Neo's statement on the platform:"I had to" leave the Zion world - as he lay interfacing, but seemingly unconscious on a table in The Hammer. How come he "had to?" The answer is unveiled in Revolutions as his positivist (awakened) desire to seek an alternative to the Christian narrative - to find Rama and Sati (and to find them in purgatory, because he is no longer a "believer" -- after renouncing the entire Christian "program" of Heaven and Hell).

The final sequence of Matrix: Revolutions takes place in a new Matrix. The only participants in that final scene are characters that have demonstrated a "purpose" of being able to operate outside the Matrix, including: the Oracle, her protector (the Seraph), the Sati (Eastern salvation paradigm), and the Architect/Greek Father Heaven. Finally, the Sati states, in response to a query from the Oracle, that it was she who wrote the program they were all operating in at that moment. She had created a new Matrix based on socialist multi-cultural norms (the rainbow sky) "for Neo." This new Matrix was not written as a Hindu Goddess, where the result would have been more overtly an Indian culture, but rather as an anti-imperialist revolutionary saluting Neo’s sacrifice as a neo-superman.

The open question is what became of Zion? The world of Zion did not require a reboot, because it was already restructured by the "choice" of the Machine God in favor of "peace." However, only those already in Zion and "the others who want out" (Oracle) will be "freed" (Architect) – let the fellow travelers go! For those who don't want out? The illusion of socialism it is - in an interdependent relationship with a collectivist race of machines.

One of the more eye-opening "revelations" for this moviegoer was considering exactly who the Machine God and his "race of machines" really represent, that is, where they write their code. At first glance, the Machine God looked like a Rising Sun, which appeared to make sense considering that the Matrix code is written with Japanese characters. However, it soon became obvious that the Machine God was really a dread-locked black Revolutionary located at the end of a river valley and terrain looking suspiciously like some famous landscapes in China. The machine God’s "sentinels" are modeled on squids, which are most likely derived from William Gibson’s "squids," but also happen to be a common delicacy in the Far East. More intriguing is the fact that the regional lingo in Japan for a kite includes Ika ("squid") or ika nobori ("squid banner") - that is, flying squid. Here it appears that the machine world is basically a representation of an "Eastern" revolutionary world, complete with Chinese, Indian, and Japanese influences -- pitted against the Westernized Matrix.

The key to decoding this element is to consider why the language or "code"/currency of the materialist Matrix consisted largely of Japanese Katakana characters - in reverse. The Matrix is a representation of a "map" of an "empire" (Baudrillard) seen through materialist dialectics. "Tank" [played by Marcus Chong] also shows us in a scene how conformity with that empire is a function of reversing/mirrored brain patterns. Therefore, the reversal of Japanese language characters reflects their use by an original anti-imperialist power in opposition to a capitalist "empire" that includes Japan. The leader of the anti-imperialist struggle in the East, against a capitalist camp that includes America, Australia, and Japan was Bolshevik Russia, and is today neo-communist China. Little wonder then that we also see in the anti-Matrix revolutionary camp both a military ranking system in the clothing of Zion derived from ancient Chinese military dress and an Oracle character training mainly Buddhist and Maoist? "potentials." Keep in mind that ALL elements outside of the world inside the Matrix are part of Neo’s digitally-induced hallucination. That is, they are all integrated (as Neo belatedly comes to grasp by realizing that Smith can take over bodies in the Zion world), and ALL rooted in "Eastern" cultural narratives.

The climactic battle inside the Matrix (the war between American empire and the revolutionary East in alliance with anti-imperialists) occurs between Neo (the anti-imperialist) and Smith (the symbol of American imperialism), which is marked by a simulation of a Pacific War, complete with an atomic water bomb explosion in one scene (an interesting twist on the famous Japanese film Black Rain). Revolutions is a hyper-real representation of war by anti-imperialist powers of a revolutionary East led by China (the machines), with programming help from India (Rama, Kamala, Sati), Zionists and black American revolutionaries who are the heirs to the Russian revolution (led, not saved, by a Superhuman Neo). This is, in fact, for those familiar with communist and Soviet diplomatic history, the "core" of the "anti-imperialist" alliance led by a "revolutionary East" that was described and advanced by Lenin.

For most The Matrix is mere entertainment. However, the creators of these films included obvious (and widely discussed) references and symbols to position them as hyper-real simulations, that is, vehicles for propagandizing a critique of salvation narratives and the world we see inside the Matrix. How "real" might this all appear to deranged dreamers possessing a "splinter" in their minds driving "them mad" (Morpheus, Matrix 1.0)? This deranged view of permanent forces of "oppression" scheming against someone from all corners, and of mankind as lumpen flesh ("meat" to use the language of Smith/Bane[played by Ian Bliss]) to be ground into dust for the revolutionary agenda stands at the heart of Marxism-Leninism in practice. Indeed, Stalinist, Maoist, or North Korean communism are the real world "systems" that most closely approximate the machine world Hell of The Matrix. The revolutionary socialism of these films is the surest way to create such a nightmarish world.

The Marxist violence that the film glorifies is already having an impact in our "original" world. The Boston Globe on Nov. 9, 2003, published an article discussing the surge in psychopathic killers using "The Matrix Defense" in court as a ground for insanity pleas. Among the more notable Matrix devotees was the self-proclaimed anti-American terrorist, Lee Boyd Malvo, whose lawyer revealed that he, too, intended to use the movie in an insanity defense (having committed his spree of terrorism with a mentor who is an anti-American Islamic fundamentalist calling himself John Allen Muhammad). Moreover, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the architects of the Colombine massacre, are also reported to have seen the first Matrix film just days before their rampage. Time Warner subsidiary Warner Bros. Pictures has, of course, publicly denied any connection between the movie and real world violence.

The Matrix franchise takes the trophy for simulated Marxist revolution, or virtual cultural terrorism from the extreme Left. One can see in the Matrix trilogy the "peak" of Hollywood "civilization" -- fixated on personalized journeys into Circles of Hell, and offering here one of the bloodiest, fetishistic, nightmarish, politically childish (giving militant Anarchists "red pills" for thought along with virulent anti-American sentiments), and materialistic blockbusters in history. The films are balanced -- to keep the "system" of exploitation and cultural destruction running - with elusive and deceptive messages concerning faith, love, hope, devotion, sacrifice, and loyalty.

To "know thyself" in America these days it is necessary to understand the code of the oppressors of America - The Machine of Liberal Media and Hollywood, which destroys more than it controls by spewing out simulations and illusions as plentiful as the "squiddies." Just in the last 5 years Americans have been inundated, largely at the instigation of Harvey Weinstein (Miramax), Michael Eisner (Walt Disney), and the management at Viacom especially, with a host of films "critiquing" and defaming Christianity, and historical revisionist fantasies glorifying destroyers of Western civilizations, such as Attila. However, of all the examples of cultural terrorism Hollywood has generated since the 1930s, the Matrix trilogy ranks not only among the most widely watched in history, but also the most insightful into the "hyper-real" culture of radical Nihilists, Anarchists, Marxists and degenerates living in the intellectual sewers of Beverly Hills.

"term paper?" Maybe for this guy's class...

A Nation at Risk - Reloaded: part II
David A. Gabbard
East Carolina University College of Education
http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=19

That's a left-wing journal, and a professor seriously trying to use the Matrix films to guide policy debates over public education.

WTF is "marxist anarchy"? Marxism is centralized governmental control of everything. Anarchy is complete chaos and lack of governmental controls.

A guess. It seems some Anarchists believe Utopia will naturally come about when all governments are eliminated. Anarchy is just the means, with the same ends as Marxism.

Replying here to show that, if this article or any sources CaptDavis posted here didn’t prove that the first Matrix movie, let alone the second and third movies were Marxist propaganda, Larry (or rather, “Lilly”) blatantly confirms it in this article as well as basically her roundabout way of ranting about being born male instead of female: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8399919/Keanu-Reeves-reveals-agreed-Matrix-4-Lana-Wachowski-wrote-beautiful-script.html

Specifically, “Detailing how she felt making films helped her journey of self discovery, Lilly said the trilogy was ‘born out of a lot of anger and a lot of rage, and it’s rage at capitalism and corporatized structure and forms of oppression.’”

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