A public policy focused nonprofit is getting into the movie business. It wants Hollywood to produce more social and politically themed products selling the George Soros worldview. From the New York Times:

The Harmony Institute wants to change your mind — at the movies. In the last few weeks, a little-noticed nonprofit with big ideas about the persuasive power of movies and television shows quietly began an initiative aimed at getting filmmakers and others to use the insights and techniques of behavioral psychology in delivering social and political messages through their work.

John S. Johnson III, a descendant of Robert Wood Johnson – founder of Johnson & Johnson, doesn’t want more movies like An Inconvenient Truth, Bowling for Columbine, or Capitalism: A Love Story. He wants more movies like The Day After Tomorrow or The Day the Earth Stood Still remake:

Mr. Johnson made a study of what his group calls “the science of influence,” with the help of friends like Kenneth Broad, a director of Columbia’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, and Eric Johnson, a professor of business and marketing at Columbia, both of whom are now on the institute’s advisory committee. Michael Douglas, the actor, who according to a spokesman is related, through his mother, to Mr. Johnson’s family, became involved after a conversation in which Mr. Johnson argued that movies like “The China Syndrome,” about the dangers of nuclear power, pointed the way.

Johnson is right. Influence begins with art and entertainment, and ends in politics and public policy. Put aside The China Syndrome’s politics and you will find a well-crafted film that draws the audience into the story told on screen. That is why it worked so well in selling ‘No Nukes’ thinking, setting the stage for a 21st century America dependent on foreign petroleum and unwilling to tap its own energy resources.

The Harmony Insitute has joined forces with the Left-wing Pacific Foundation and Free Press to push its political agenda through entertainment. Johnson is also on the Pacific Foundation’s Board of the Directors, a fact conspicuously left out of the NYTimes story, linked above. Furthermore, according to Discover the Networks,

[Free Press] founders and conferences call for revolution, the overthrow of the capitalist system, and the socialization of America, [it] has been regularly granted audiences not only with members of Congress, but with those overseeing media policy at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). For example, when Julius Genachowski, who worked as a prominent leader in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, became chairman of the FCC (on June 29, 2009), he promptly appointed Free Press spokeswoman Jen Howard to be his press secretary. By late September, three months into his new job, Genachowski announced his plan to push for net neutrality.

So, what does Mr. Johnson and his so-called Harmony Foundation want to see in more movies?

… story lines about children who fall behind in school because they lack access to the Web, or about small-business owners who “risk financial ruin” when they cannot reach customers because a site is blocked or slowed down.

Why?

… people can be persuaded to support net neutrality if they see [those story lines].

Net neutrality is Johnson’s pet legislative project, which he pushes through the Pacific Foundation and Free Press. Who, besides the left-wing Free Press, Pacific Foundation, and Michael Douglas, mentioned above, supports Mr. Johnson and his bid to manipulate public opinion through the movies? Those named in the Times article include:

Ridley Scott, Ted Hope and Arianna Huffington.

But, it isn’t as if Left-wingers in Hollywood have an agenda or anything.

—Daniel Crandall