Global Elites Get Their Own Netflix Hit: In The Diplomat, Aaron Sorkin’s Protégé Creates Biden Propaganda

Sometimes ugly things come in thrilling packages, and, when it comes to political propaganda, this occasional reality is the rule. Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary Triumph of the Will, released in 1935 to celebrate Hitler’s regime, was praised at the time of its release for its stunning visuals—not surprisingly considering its state-supported crew of 120, unlimited budget, and the Nazi Party staging the Nuremberg rallies for the film. Riefenstahl explained her filmmaking approach as separate from politics: “Whatever is purely realistic, slice-of-life, what is average, quotidian, doesn’t interest me…. I am fascinated by what is beautiful, strong, healthy, what is living.” But Riefenstahl’s film was the opposite of realistic. Instead, it used art to remake reality for politics: cancelling out the coercion of the Nazi regime with Nazi-produced beauty from a talented filmmaker rejecting the “average” and making art that moved audiences.

This is a familiar enough problem today. America isn’t Nazi Germany, but we’re a country more and more in hoc to “art” that’s not art so much as indirect propaganda from an intrusive government. For a shockingly explicit and commercially successful example of this rewriting, look no further than Netflix’s The Diplomat, which premiered top on the streaming charts with 1.3 billion minutes of viewing in the United States its first week, ahead of reality TV and Star Wars spinoffs.

The show is produced by familiar players. It’s distributed by a studio locked in controversy over wokeness, whose board members included outgoing Biden Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice. It’s helmed by Debora Cahn, a veteran of pulpy shows celebrating intelligence agents and medical professionals (Homeland, Grey’s Anatomy) who got her start working on The West Wing, created by Aaron Sorkin: the pioneer of the first contemporary “collaboration” between Hollywood and the American government in 1995 whose shows sent aspiring young Democratic politicos to Washington between 2000 and 2020. But The Diplomat is not just politically themed. It’s a faithful imitation of the last two years of politics that uses art to reconfigure reality: telling us that what looks bad really isn’t, because it’s the result of smart, attractive, intense people working each day to make our world better.

The Diplomat’s reworking of reality starts with Iran, which is seemingly responsible in the first thirty seconds of the series for blowing up a British aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. The project of containing the Right-wing British Prime Minister’s response lands in the hands of Katherine Wyler (Keri Russell), a career foreign service officer married to Hal (Rufus Sewell), a Democratic ambassadorial legend on the outs for his public candor. Katherine has been appointed ambassador to Afghanistan in Hal’s stead, but after the explosion she’s transferred to London, a more “ceremonial” post where her job is to look “sad.” Still, Katherine and Hal make the most of the new posting. They don’t think Iran’s responsible for the attack, they suspect the Saudis or Russia, and they use high-level contacts in Iran to suss out the situation. Meantime, behind Katherine’s back, Hal’s working with the White House Chief of Staff to get the elderly Democratic American President to ditch his uninspiring woman Vice President and replace her with Katherine.

There are a lot of surprisingly on-the-nose touches at work in The Diplomat. Iran is treated as the force it is in the world, and the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal is a major plot point, since Katherine and Hal forged their Iranian connections working on it. Ukraine is repeatedly mentioned, mostly in connection with Russia. The elderly president is clearly Joe Biden; his uninspiring vice president Kamala Harris. Billie, the Chief of Staff (Nana Mensah), has the experience of Biden handler Ron Klain and the forthrightness of Harris handler Symone Sanders. The opportunistic British Prime Minister short on detail and long on guff (Rory Kinnear) is the media’s idea of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. His straight-laced, under-appreciated Foreign Minister (David Gyasi) is the media’s idea of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Hal is an old-line, hard-charging, controversial Democratic diplomat like Clinton adviser Richard Holbrooke or Bush adversary Joseph Wilson. Katherine has echoes of Hillary Clinton, but her character is likely lifted from the experiences of foreign service official, wife of Joseph Wilson, Democratic congressional candidate and Hollywood movie staple Valerie Plame.

There’s also a lot of thrilling scenes on offer in the series, mostly because of the characters, who wield rat-a-tat dialogue culled from The West Wing. Katherine’s a fast-talking tomboy who’s in it for the mission, which is exactly what the President’s handlers, fed up with political double-dealing, want to see.  Her embassy colleagues are smart, intense, competent, quirky and high-strung but not in ways that interfere with their jobs. The old-line British staff, hosting the Wylers in gorgeous old-world settings, is impossibly discreet; the Wylers’ Iranian counterparts, harried and suspicious and suffering from health troubles, are eager to repair relations. As NPR put it, in a line often used about The West Wing, “The Diplomat is Smart, Twisty TV About Being Great at Your Job.”

Under this presumption of professionalism, political shadings sneak in. Populism gets demoted to a dangerous inconvenience: e.g., a bereaved military wife goading the Prime Minister to promise to rain hellfire on Iran, which creates a diplomatic crisis for Katherine to solve. Distrust of institutions gets disposed of by the CIA head of station, Katherine’s eventual confidante, who dismissively rattles off a list of conspiracies that many Americans don’t find so implausible. The Washington Establishment gets celebrated to the point where Katherine references recent, highly controversial, real-life actions by military and political figures and gives them unvarnished support. But, The Diplomat implies, we should believe what its characters say, because they mean well, are good at their jobs, and are relatable human beings The older men are flawed and profane; the younger ones finicky and hopeful; Katherine’s loping determination is matched by her fear that her competence can’t match Hal’s charisma. What’s not to like, and believe?

But, like all political propaganda, The Diplomat is a carefully executed fantasy, ignoring real-world facts reported even by establishment media organs like CNN and The New York Times. These elisions begin but don’t end with geopolitics. Unmentioned in the show is that Hal and Katherine’s service in Afghanistan was terminated by the same Administration that exposed the country to takeover and, in the process, probably encouraged Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Also unmentioned is that Iranian foreign policy politicos have used the cooperation of the Biden and Obama Administrations to marginalize Israel and Saudi Arabia as they strengthen ties with Russia and China and send warships to South America. Far from risking confrontation with these players, which is Katherine’s and Hal’s big fear, the Democratic Party has encouraged them, accommodated them or, when the offense becomes glaring, funded low-risk proxy wars against them.

The series’ portrait of Katherine’s and Hal’s milieu, the Democratic and globalist elite, has a more subtly tortured relationship to reality. Recent statistics and analyses contradict the series’ glowing portrayal, showing a Left-leaning ruling class miserable on its own terms and estranged from the country. Depression is soaring at elite universities and socioeconomic gaps are appearing between the people running things and the people helping them. Centrist leaders like Rishi Sunak are distrusted by both Left populists and the majority of their base. Old-line Democratic movers like Holbrooke or Biden, who made their careers pushing packages or policies which many people think were bad ideas, seem simply corrupt, have been sidelined, or have gone woke to survive. Democrat- appointed officials feel free to weigh in on issues outside their expertise like trans rights and abortion politics, to defend military courses on “white rage,” and to produce recruitment videos tuned to wokeness.

Nor, despite the series’ implications, is foreign policy immune from Democratic politicking. The Iran Nuclear Deal Katherine and her husband helped broker and defend was promoted by President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, an institution-minted elite who felt comfortable telling The New York Times that he had mobilized foreign policy experts to deluge “clueless” reporters with pro-Iran talking points and create “an echo chamber.” The same foreign policy figures Katherine and her colleagues serve under helped manage the current President’s election by delegitimizing information that could have damaged his campaign. Again, none of this is mentioned or even dismissed in The Diplomat. Instead, the show creates an alternate reality: letting viewers into “the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world” where no other truth gets acknowledged, which is what propaganda is.

In this imaginary world, America’s problems aren’t systemic, the result of a disconnected elite accruing unwarranted power. They’re the result of not having the right elites in Iran and America, Britain and Russia, coming together; or, as Katherine says, having “friends we can call when the world is truly fucked.” In other words, the series tells viewers, sit back and leave governing at home and abroad to the well-connected, well-educated, expert global operators holding everything together. Doing anything else means becoming what Katherine calls an “infinitely ravenous American”: e.g., Donald Trump.

And this message comes from a telling lineage. Aaron Sorkin has been cinema’s Whisperer for the Democratic Elite for thirty years: writing troubled renderings of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and wish-fulfilling ones of Bill Clinton and Dan Rather. Since that elite has come under threat from Donald Trump, he’s been vocal in its defense. Now, Sorkin’s former writer Cahn is making good on his vision. Cahn’s work, like Sorkin’s, can rile you up and make you forget reality. It’s “beautiful,” it’s “strong,” it’s the opposite of “average,” it’s “living.” And, like all political propaganda, it lies.