(Catholic Herald. Gavin Ashenden).
Robert de Niro has been one of the more strident voices warnings about the danger of a Trump win in the American election.
When he played the Jesuit Mendoza in the film The Mission some years ago, he made an enormous impact on me and many others. He came to embody a gritty courageous Catholic persona. In the same way that Julie Andrews would be forever Mary Poppins to some, De Niro is always Mendoza the Jesuit to others.
And although he has had the widest variety of roles, something of the existential authority of the Jesuit hangs onto his coat tails for me and perhaps many. I still hear the music of The Mission when I see atholichim on the screen. So when De Niro pours his heart out about the coming election and warns anyone who will listen that Trump is the next Hitler, it’s hard not to feel some degree of alarm.
But in our post-truth society, everything depends on where you get your news from.
So when turning to the newly baptised Russell Brand, one finds his YouTube channel, followed by over 7 million people, presenting an expose of the FBI who have just admitted in court, during a recent prosecution of Donald Trump, that the photograph of restricted documents presented to the press was faked by them. No one in the FBI has any idea how it happened.