Hollywood studios aligned with government because they saw profit in patriotic hate films

Evidence

Under Creel, too, the American government joined forces with the movie business to screen some of the first American propaganda films. A special division of the committee produced features like Pershing’s Crusaders and America’s Answer to the Hun, both of which enjoyed solid ticket sales. Early on, Creel had made clear to the private film industry, just then in the midst of relocating to Hollywood, that any productions “prejudicial” to the war effort would be suppressed. After some prodding, the studios began to see both the patriotic and commercial potential of patriotic “hate” films, like Wolves of Kultur, which came out in fifteen episodes. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 159

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the current platform/government entanglement debate — the earliest instance of the state and the attention industry discovering mutual commercial benefit.
• ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the moral-panic economics in the immodesty article — manufactured outrage sold as product.