Rich Lowry, on Michael Moore:

His voice...joins a vast, age-old chorus of left-wing bafflement and disillusion at American exceptionalism — our national traits that have prevented the development of a statist politics along continental European lines. Moore’s explanation for this phenomenon is typically twisted: Americans are saddled with debt from college loans and health care, and that keeps us from demanding French-style pampering from our government for fear of foreclosure by The Man.

Tellingly, Moore picks up this theory in an interview with Tony Benn, an old-school British socialist of the sort who simply doesn’t exist in the U.S. Here, our left-wing politicians vote for war funding before they vote against it, always trimming to keep from rubbing too strongly against the American grain. Moore fervently wishes that grain were different, and he celebrates all countries where government has a vaster reach and tighter grip — from Cuba to France.

Moore is Riefenstahl like Chavez is Napolean.

There's some truth to your point:
- Riefenstahl never made all that much money
- Moore probably doesn't really believe
- Riefenstahl had artistic/cinematic talent (albeit overly teutonic)
- Moore is mostly just loud and unrefined to the point of self-contradiction
- Riefenstahl had some basic human charm despite all her severe faults
- Moore has the more intelligent leftists and isolationists worrying about severe backdraft

I'm sure there's more.

But what about the crucial point? Is Moore as effective as Riefenstahl in relation to his target audience? I would say that he is.

Is Moore as effective as Riefenstahl in relation to his target audience?

If Moore has a target audience then that is who want to believe everything sucks. Don't know that Riefenstahl had a target audience but that gets into whether she was a willing tool or useful fool. For sure, she had no trouble continuing her work for some fifty years after the bunker incident.