America: Freedom to Fascism

The documentary rests on two claims. First: there is no law in the United States requiring anyone to pay income tax. Second: the Federal Reserve is in the hands of private banks and the power to issue money has been taken out of the government's hands. To make the case, Aaron Russo talks to tax officials, members of Congress and anti-tax lawyers; in some of the encounters the person opposite cannot answer, or ends the interview. Aaron Russo directs; a hundred and nine minutes. Russo had been a producer; this was his last work and he died in 2007. The central claim has found no support in law: American courts have rejected the no-law defence repeatedly, the sixteenth amendment names the tax explicitly, and people who have used these arguments have been penalised. Criticism of how the Federal Reserve is structured is a separate argument, and one economists do have.