A monstrous attempt to silence a troublemaker

Mr Moore's film will certainly be seen, even if he has to show it in village halls

Mr Michael Moore, the professional troublemaker, has made a new film. It follows in the wake of Moore's previous film polemics, such as Roger and Me, about the corporate spoliation of middle America, and Bowling for Columbine, about the American gun laws, as well as print rants like Stupid White Men, and other provocations.

This is a curious situation: evidently manufactured to some degree, or so one might conclude, but all the same suggestive and rather appalling. Mr Michael Moore, the professional troublemaker, has made a new film. It follows in the wake of Moore's previous film polemics, such as Roger and Me, about the corporate spoliation of middle America, and Bowling for Columbine, about the American gun laws, as well as print rants like Stupid White Men, and other provocations.

In this case, the film, Fahrenheit 911, purports to shine a light on George W Bush's links with important Saudi nationals; links which may be known about in general terms by anyone curious about the oil industry, but news of which have apparently not reached the general public. It is quite easy to predict one line of mildly paranoid investigation which the film may pursue, given the reluctance of the American authorities to make much of the fact that many of al-Qa'ida's known operatives and its leader are Saudi nationals, and what will certainly prove its inflammatory conclusions.

Similar investigations of Saudi affairs have in recent years run, as one might say, into the sand, and Moore, it could be suspected, has orchestrated a first-rate row in advance of the film's distribution. Anyone who reads the preface to Stupid White Men, detailing the publisher's attempts to suppress an anti-American polemic after 11 September, will wonder whether Moore does not rather relish such rows, but this promises to be an enormous one.

The principal investor in the film is Miramax Films, which is in an unusual position. Though its founder, Harvey Weinstein, is a substantial donor to the Democratic party, it is also a division of Disney, which does not have the same political affiliations. The film, we are told by Ari Emanuel, Mr Moore's agent, is under threat from the parent company for a particular reason. In his version of events, the Disney corporation are refusing to distribute the film because it relies heavily on the benevolent tax regime in Florida, where many of its most profitable enterprises are situated. The governor of Florida, of course, is George Bush's brother Jeb.

According to Emanuel, "Michael Eisner [CEO of Disney] asked me not to sell this movie to Harvey Weinstein... he definitely indicated there were tax advantages he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."

Disney are not exactly denying this. "In May 2003, the Walt Disney Company communicated to Miramax and Mr Moore's representatives that Miramax would not be the distributor of his film. Contrary to his assertions, Mr Moore has had and continues to have every opportunity to either find another distributor or distribute the film himself."

This curiously open statement admits that the parent company instructed its subsidiary to drop the film, without giving any solid reason why. And it is difficult to think of any other: after all, Moore's last film, Bowling for Columbine, won an Oscar and was immensely successful in financial terms. There would be no reason for a distributor to refuse to touch it apart from distaste for its subject, or fear of the consequences of distribution. Moore and his representative have made sensational allegations here, and no one at Disney seems to think it worthwhile pretending to deny them.

In the wake of the photographs of Iraqis being tortured by US personnel, it is hard to see this grubby episode as anything but another demonstration of the fragility of the American values supposedly being fought for.

In the case of the Iraq photographs, it is extremely easy to see the conclusions which ordinary citizens will come to: "You claimed you were coming here to liberate us from a tyrant who tortured and humiliated us; you promised that you would bring us the fair and decent rule of law of a great Western democracy; now, on our television screens, we can see what that rule of law really consists of."

In the case of Michael Moore, the conclusion he would like us to reach is also, perhaps, the correct one: "The political classes now governing America claim to be fighting for freedom of speech and truth; when they are presented with dissent, they take steps to silence it, not directly but through financial means understood by multinational corporations; what they mean by freedom of speech is what Stalin meant - statements acceptable to them, or enforced silence."

Of course, it is not as bad as that just yet. Mr Moore's film will certainly be seen, even if he has to pay someone to print it and show it in village halls; in reality, someone more shameless than Disney will pick it up and make a tidy profit.

I don't have a lot of time for Moore, whose films seem to me largely over-excited paranoid rants and scenes in which he humiliates underpaid security guards and receptionists. But there is clearly a huge audience for his polemics, and it is monstrous that anyone should so blatantly attempt to silence him, simply because they disagree with what he says.