In the 2012 Sight & Sound Magazine’s Poll of the Greatest Films Poll,
only one critic and two directors saw fit to include YOJIMBO on their lists of ‘Ten Greatest Films of All Time’. This may hardly seem unjust considering there are plenty of greater films. Even among Kurosawa’s films, it ranks below SEVEN SAMURAI — indisputably his greatest film — and possibly below IKIRU, THRONE OF BLOOD, HIGH AND LOW, and KAGEMUSHA. If I had to come up with a list of ten greatest films, YOJIMBO would be nowhere near the top. Even so, considering the sheer number of ridiculous films that also received votes — indeed many more than cast for YOJIMBO — , one has to wonder just what in the hell is happening in the so-called cinephile community. After all and at the very least, there’s no doubt YOJIMBO is one of the greatest films of its kind, still bold and fresh, and belongs to a group of two or three dozen most influential films in cinema history. In style, vision, and sensibility, it was one of the key films of the Sixties, and a whole series of movies — and movie careers — owe their very existence to Kurosawa’s film. In the less-than-dignified world of cinephilia, YOJIMBO and Tarantino’s worthless KILL BILL each garners a single vote, making us wonder ‘why so few’ with the former and ‘why so many’ with the latter.
Of course, every movie lover knows something about YOJIMBO, and the title has even gained cultural currency, not unlike ‘Rashomon’. If the latter has come to serve as a shorthand for ‘unreliability of subjective reality’, the former stands for ‘duplicitous manipulation of two or more sides so as to lead them toward mutual destruction’. Kurosawa was, of course, not the originator of these ideas and themes. RASHOMON was based on the short stories of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and YOJIMBO has been compared with the works of Dashiell Hammett, especially RED HARVEST and THE GLASS KEY. Even so, Kurosawa, the creative personality and committed moralist that he was, twisted them with his own eccentricities and imbued them with his peculiar view of humanity and the world. Though YOJIMBO is considered a classic — even critics and scholars who didn’t vote for it in the Sight & Sound poll surely recognize its significance — , it isn’t a work that stirs up much discussion these days. (If anything, the meteoric rise of Ozu over Kurosawa among film critics is highly indicative of the cultural shift that has taken place. Perhaps, there’s something of a backlash that consciously or subconsciously blames Kurosawa for the rise of Spielberg, Lucas, and even Coppola. Or, maybe the preference for Ozu reflects the rise of SWPL biases and vanities among cinephiles. Or maybe it’s the influence of certain key critics who’ve spread the notion that while Kurosawa was good or even great in his own way, he wasn’t really authentic as a Japanese artist, and furthermore, he lacked the subtlety and fineness of someone like Ozu, relying too much on a loud, splashy style. While I respect Ozu, this kind of thinking sounds to me rather dumb. Does anyone wish Ozu had made SEVEN SAMURAI, YOJIMBO, or HIGH AND LOW? Would anyone wish he had tried? To be sure, one could argue that Ozu was a purer artist than Kurosawa in the sense that he settled upon a view of life and purified it to perfection. In contrast, Kurosawa was a more versatile artist — one might even say restless — who made films about the feudal past, contemporary issues, ‘little people’, powerful people, criminals, and etc. Kurosawa was like a man atop a horse stampeding all over the map whereas Ozu found his niche in the order of things and crafted his vision to its purest essentials. One could also argue that Kurosawa too often got distracted. His most Ozu-like film is perhaps DODES’KA-DEN, in which there’s too much going on and the pieces just don’t come together. In some ways, it’s a social drama comedy about the outcasts of Japan, but in another way, it’s a splashy experimentation in strained formalism. Everything in the movie neutralizes itself. The characters are too wild and uncouth for Kurosawa to move about in ordered patterns, but, at the same time, the style and manner are too rigid for the down-and-out and down-to-earth characters to stretch out and express themselves. Ozu was content to be Ozu, but Kurosawa sometimes came across as trying to do too much. DODES’KA-DEN is like a cross between one of those naive humanist films about ‘little people’ from the 40s and 50s crossed with modernist aesthetics. It also tries to be childlike/innocent and adult/tragic at the same time. It’s too elaborate and ‘complex’ to work in dramatic terms, and too simple-minded to work as an experimental film. It is one of Kurosawa’s worst films, but then, given the general quality of his output, it’s still nothing to be ashamed of, and there’s a lot in it to praise — and still leagues above most movies now being made in Japan or elsewhere. Sometimes, Kurosawa bit off more than he could chew, and his great ego and ambitions led him astray. But it was also this bigness of vision that enabled and pushed Kurosawa to explore a wide range of human emotions and experiences than most Japanese directors — or those of other nations for that matter — dared to tread. Kurosawa didn’t fear treading on the tiger’s tail, and at his best, he made some of the most powerful movies in movie history. For me, SEVEN SAMURAI is the greatest film: So rich, varied, and compelling on so many levels that people who regard it as essentially a Japanese Western, even in praise, are blind to its deeper meanings and virtues. The only film that is comparable in power and scope, at least for me, is SIBERIADE by Andrei Konchalovsky — as fate would have it, Konchalovsky would come to direct RUNAWAY TRAIN written by Kurosawa.)
Anyway, there are always trade-offs in life. Ozu, in pursuing his form of perfection, really only made one kind of film — though one can surely discern a gradual evolution in his style. He was like a jeweler or gardener, working small but with the finest precision, and Japanese cinema has been immeasurably enriched by his films, the influence of which still lives on in the works of Hirokazu Koreeda, especially in the recent film STILL WALKING, possibly his finest work. There was the touch of the gardener in Kurosawa — a quality that seems to have come naturally to the Japanese of his generation — , but Kurosawa was more like an explorer in the wild forest. Consider the tracking camera through the trees in RASHOMON and THRONE OF BLOOD. Outwardly, Ozu’s films are about a world without surprises whereas Kurosawa’s world is full of them in the form of crime, political upheaval, corruption, war, betrayal, and etc. Watching Ozu’s films is like sitting quietly in a garden. Watching Kurosawa’s films is like trekking through a forest, never knowing what — bandit, animal, bad weather, etc. — might leap out of the bushes. Even so, upon closer observation, Ozu’s films are actually full of surprises except they come and go at a more subliminal and poetic level. A garden may seem tranquil, but if one’s senses are calmed and attuned to the placidity, one begins to realize that the it is hardly static and is indeed abuzz with activity, some of it beautiful and some of it disturbing, which is why David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET — a film I don’t much care for, by the way, as I much prefer ERASERHEAD and MULHOLLAND DR. — is like a perverse American cross between Ozu and Bunuel. A bandit leaping out of the forest and threatening you and your woman — as happens in RASHOMON — is an obvious kind of surprise. In contrast, a family in an Ozu film may, in terms of social manner and formality, appear to be going about its daily routines, but close observation of the slow accumulation of details leads us to realize that profound changes, for better and/or worse, are afoot in Ozu’s world under the facade of well-established-and-agreed upon social norms. So, does this mean Ozu was the finer or better artist? Was Kurosawa — like Elia Kazan, Vittorio De Sica, Frank Capra, Federico Fellini, and Martin Scorsese — too showy as a director and too enamored of colorful characters to truly delve into the deeper meanings and realities of Japanese life? There is a group of film scholars who, relying on such critical premise, favor the works of Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, and Yasujiro Ozu — even the miserable faker Hou Hsiao-hsien — over directors like Kurosawa.
I have a different take on such matters, which is to say ‘live and let live’ and ‘long live the difference’. I have no use for people like David Thomson who, in his BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM, says “Ozu and Mizoguchi were (Kurosawa)’s master.” Personally, while I would rate Mizoguchi above Kurosawa, it makes little sense comparing them in a game of ‘who was whose master’, especially considering their different outlooks and personalities. It would be like comparing Leonard Cohen with Led Zeppelin, or Beatles with Bob Dylan. We are fortunate Mizoguchi made UGETSU and Kurosawa made SEVEN SAMURAI. And I’m glad Ozu made AUTUMN AFTERNOON and OHAYO. Similarly, we should be grateful that John Ford made MY DARLING CLEMENTINE and Sam Peckinpah made THE WILD BUNCH. It seems pointless to wonder whether Ford was Peckinpah’s master or Peckinpah was Ford’s master and how exactly Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann, and Sergio Leone might fit into all this.
Ozu’s films may have been subtler, but then his preferred material was the very stuff of subtlety. But is subtlety necessarily better than boldness and dynamism in works that call for the latter? Besides, there is one kind of subtlety that can thrive in any kind of expression: Irony of course, and Kurosawa at his best was a superb ironist. Some may believe that action and violence in movies have too often served as shortcuts for grabbing our attention, but it’s no less true, in the cinephile community at least, that stillness and inertia have too often served as a shortcut for ‘depth’, ‘meaning’ and ‘art’. So, even though the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien are unwatchably boring, he’s been ridiculously praised by pretentious film critics for having delved into deeper truths invisible to most film directors. It rarely occurs to these silly cinephiles that while Ozu was a poet, a jeweler, and gardener, Hou strictly works with bricks and mortar, with every brick being the same as the next. The difference is between someone who knows how to slice and serve sushi and someone who only knows how to make rice gruel. Hou’s films are rice-gruelingly boring.
Though cinephiles may divide cinema into the ‘Kurosawa school’ and ‘Ozu school’, in reality Kurosawa and Ozu crucially had one thing in common: they did what came to them naturally and pursued what they believed in. Therein lies the greatness of both artists. They were real and genuine in their own way, to the best of their (different)abilities.
In contrast, though Hou has been compared with Ozu, the comparison is a really an insult to Ozu for Hou is a poseur and a faker. I don’t doubt for a moment that Hou really believes in his ‘art’ and has dedicated his life to making the sort of snoozers he churns out, but he a filmmaker with no natural talent, no natural vision. In the lack of such, he painstakingly concocted a ‘personal style’ that is no style at all. But it is so dull and contrarian that it has fooled enough people in the cinephile community that maybe he’s a real artist whose ‘inscrutable’ expression hides some deep profound meaning.
Actually, one of the most amusing tendencies of Western cinephiles has been their proclaimed preference for what is ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’ in other cultures — like they would really know. Of course, the preference for authenticity has a certain validity, especially as we are aware of how tourism and cultural-exchange industries are turning the world cultures into charming kitsch for generic consumption. We know the difference between real Hindu art and the silly Hindu-ish trinkets sold in souvenir stores. But, such considerations can be untenable in our appreciation of cinema, an art form that developed as a modern, personal, and international form of expression as well as a national, historical, and cultural one. Besides, I wonder why pro-globalist SWPL types would give a crap about ‘authenticity’ anyway when they don’t even care about the appreciation and preservation of their own cultures. For example, if Europeans so dearly care about the preservation of authentic cultures all around the world — be they Tibetan, African, Muslim, or what have you — , why don’t they care if their own ancestral lands are taken over by barbaric Muslims and savage black Africans and manipulated/ruled by globalist Zionists? In their repression of their own tribalism, have white liberals found the outlet for their tribal urges in preserving OTHER cultures?
Anyway, let’s assume that Ozu’s films are indeed ‘more Japanese’ than Kurosawa’s. Would that make them better? When it comes to Kabuki and wood block prints, maybe there is something to be said for authenticity. But modern cinema, as part of the modern world, took shape from the cross-breeding of inspirations across national and cultural boundaries. Was Kurosawa wrong for having found inspiration from Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Eisenstein, Lang, and Ford? Taking this logic further, should he also be faulted for having influenced Leone, Eastwood, Coppola, Scorsese, Peckinpah, Walter Hill, and many others?
Kurosawa was accused of being un-Japanese or improperly appreciative/representative of Japanese-ness, and it’s too bad he often took a defensive posture. He insisted on his Japanese-ness, even saying he felt himself to be the most Japanese of Japanese directors. He should just have said he did what to him naturally. Since his inspiration came from abroad as well as from Japan, it was pointless to pigeonhole his films as ‘Japanese’ or ‘Western’. (We should also keep in mind that Mizoguchi and Ozu were respectively older than Kurosawa by twelve and seven years. That may not seem like much, but in the rapidly modernizing Japan in the first half of the 20th century, they would have undergone considerably different cultural influences. We must also keep in mind that Kurosawa was from a samurai family while Ozu and Mizoguchi were from merchant families. And while Kurosawa was most enthralled with masculine themes, Mizoguchi had a great fascination with femininity and Ozu is said to have been gay. Indeed, the dramatic rise of Ozu’s reputation in the West could have been due to his ‘conservative gayness’, especially in an era when so many gays are into stuff like ‘gay marriage’ and making movies like FAR FROM HEAVEN, which, despite its critical view of the past, waxes romantic about how more elegant and finer life had been before all the crazy and grubby ‘liberation’ movements took hold since the 60s. Many gays may be ‘radical’, but they generally prefer form and order to the kind of barbaric disorder so prevalent at Woodstock and Altamont. Fashion and design can be wild, but they must always be a willed or controlled wildness. Gays don’t like to leave much to chance, and Ozu’s films are amongst the most controlled ever.) Perhaps, it was this criticism that made Kurosawa work in a more of a ‘Japanese’ vein with RED BEARD — for which he was profusely praised in Japan — and DODES’KA-DEN, for which he was attacked to his surprise. The dismissal must have been especially hurtful since DODES’KA-DEN is, in many ways, a color version of RED BEARD in a modern setting. Kurosawa, perhaps encouraged by the great success — critical and commercial — of RED BEARD, may have expected similar praise, but he was either ignored or ridiculed by most people.
YOJIMBO’s star may have faded due to two related reasons. One could be movie fans prefer the movies inspired by YOJIMBO than YOJIMBO itself. After all, there have been far more rip-roaring, exciting, stylish, and violent samurai, Western, and gangster films since YOJIMBO. So, Kurosawa’s film may no longer seem special to an audience that has since grown accustomed to John Woo shoot-em-ups and bloodbaths like Zach Snyder’s 300. As for young cinephiles watching it for the first time, they might be disappointed by its failure to live up to its reputation as a ‘badass’ action movie.
In a way, it’s unfortunate that YOJIMBO has been promoted essentially as an action movie or samurai movie because, in a crucial way, it isn’t(though, in some ways, it is). If one must tag it with a label, it should be ‘satire’. The entire movie virtually takes place in a single street of a gangland town, and there are only three action scenes of special note — and the violence comes and goes in a flash. (Its sequel SANJURO has more of what might be considered drawn-out action scenes.) There are other moments of violence but not quite in an ‘action cinema’ manner. (And even in genre terms, it’s hard to say if YOJIMBO is more like a Western or a gangster movie. Not surprisingly, Kurosawa took some ideas from GLASS KEY, a movie with gangsters, and YOJIMBO inspired not only A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS but LAST MAN STANDING, a kind of Western-gangster-movie.) And though the story is set in the samurai world, it has little if anything to do with samurai culture, ways, and means. The lead character played by Toshiro Mifune is not only a ronin — a masterless samurai — but devoid of most values, codes, and characteristics associated with samurai culture. Since samurai were raised to serve and obey, ronin were desperate to find admittance to a clan. A masterless samurai was like a dog without a home. He was a man without purpose or dignity unless he could soon find another lord to serve, another clan to defend and fight for. The character of Sanjuro played by Mifune, however, exhibits no hang-ups about being a masterless samurai. If anything, it is difficult to imagine him faithfully serving any lord. He seems happy to be a ronin, a wanderer from town to town. (Incidentally, the culture of serving/belonging lives on to this day in Japan, which is so many salarymen in Japan have found it so difficult to face new reality upon being let go by their companies. Just as samurai ideally wanted to serve one lord/clan from beginning to end, the ideal of Japanese employment has been to serve one company from the first day to the last. But due to the massive recession, competition from abroad — especially China — , being eclipsed by America in high-tech & computers, and massive inefficiencies, many Japanese firms were either forced to downsize or go under, and this resulted in many layoffs and firings. While no one anywhere wants to lose his or her job, it’s been more traumatic to the Japanese for so much honor, self-worth, dignity, pride, and meaning in Japan are attached to the status of belonging and serving. Thus, when Japanese workers lose their jobs, they feel like masterless samurai, like ronin. In the films TOKYO SONATA and DEPARTURES — not very good, by the way — , we see the psychologically scarring effect of Japanese men losing their jobs. They are so ashamed that they don’t tell their wives, still dress up in the morning and leave for work that they no longer have, and spend time walking the streets, idling at cafes or at the library. And if they eventually find some ‘less dignified’ work, they keep that a secret too. Perhaps, it’s a good thing that Japanese are eager to work and be purposeful in life — it sure beats the shameless slovenliness of American Negroes and British yobs — , but Japanese, especially the men, need to take some cues from Sanjuro in YOJIMBO. Sometimes, you gotta accept the new reality for what it is and take things in stride. Maybe that was why YOJIMBO — as well as the thematically related ZATOICHI movies — was so popular in Japan. The wandering and freewheeling hero made Japanese feel a kind of freedom they couldn’t have in real life.)
Another feature of samurai-dom was not to question the lord and just do as commanded. Samurai were not raised or trained to think but to follow orders. Sanjuro, in contrast, seems to possess strong will and mind of his own. Furthermore, he seems to have a keen moral sense — despite its perverse eccentricities. Thus, Sanjuro is like a man-out-of-time. His irreverent, satirical, and humanist morality — albeit coarsened with cynicism — seems anachronistic in the world depicted in the movie. Granted, all cultures are full of surprises, and every society has its share of individuals who travel to the beat of a different drum. Whatever Buddhism is ideally about, there have surely been Buddhists — even in traditional societies — who did things their own way. Indeed, the very appearance of Buddhism is a testament to the fact that mavericks, rebels, or revolutionaries can arise from even the most conservative order. And what ancient Jew would have expected someone like Jesus to come along and change the entire world? Whatever the culture and values of a society, there is the matter of personality, and some people have strong personalities that simply cannot be bent to the iron will of the times. And take CANTERBURY TALES, a lewd series of stories written when England was supposed to be devoutly Christian. Regardless of training or upbringing, every society is bound to have its share of outcasts and free spirits.
Even so, there’s something remarkable about Sanjuro’s rugged individuality and lack of conventional scruples in thinking and acting the way he does. He seems to be a nihilist but isn’t really. The arch-villain of the movie, Unosuke(Tasuya Nakadai) with the pistol, really fits the mold of a nihilist who pursues power for power’s sake. Sanjuro, in contrast, plays the game of nihilism to serve what he deems to be a moral purpose: let scumbag kill scumbag so that the town could be rid of gangsters and gamblers.. (To be sure, one wonders to what extent Sanjuro is really concerned about ridding the town of bad guys and to what extent he’s looking for sick pleasure in using criminals like chickens in a cock fight. In the first half of the movie, he seems to have no emotional investment one way or the other and essentially plays it as a game of bluff and dare. He becomes emotionally involved only when his heart goes out to be a pitiable family and when he learns — near the end — that an old man who provided him with food and shelter is in danger.) Anyway, even allowing for the existence of free spirits in any culture in any time, the character of Sanjuro simply isn’t believable as a historically viable character, but this doesn’t hurt the movie since YOJIMBO unfolds and delivers as a satirical fantasy.
In some ways, it is like a cartoon with live-action characters. To the extent that some of the characters are compared with animals — Sanjuro with dog, Unosuke with wolf, the younger brother of the town chieftain with a wild hog, and the town chieftain’s own name, Ushitora, is said to mean ‘cow-tiger’ — YOJIMBO is closer to ANIMAL FARM than to other samurai films. The setting of the movie is more pretext for allegory than context for history. Because of this broad element of unreality(further exaggerated by hilarity), YOJIMBO is not a film of psychological depth or biographical detail that Masaki Kobayashi’s HARAKIRI is, but then it wasn’t meant to be. In the Kobayashi film, it’s essential that we learn how a proud samurai lost his fortune and status, his loved ones, and his dignity(first as a samurai and then as a human), eventually coming to reassess his life and the samurai system that made him what he is. He becomes an atypical kind of samurai, but we are shown in great detail how something/someone implausible could become plausible under great duress that forces a man to question the core values he has served all his life. So, even though HARAKIRI may actually be no more historically plausible than YOJIMBO, it is made believable through its intimate portrait of a man driven to the edge of madness. (In some ways, the situation is crazier in HARAKIRI for the hero has to challenge a seemingly ideal samurai order. Both Sanjuro and Tsugumo — the hero of HARAKIRI — are rough-looking ronin, and both are up against a crazy world. But the craziness and evil in YOJIMBO are plain to see as the town is run by gangsters, gamblers, and unscrupulous & greedy merchants. Though there are plenty of men with samurai swords, there is no samurai honor and no samurai order about the town. In HARAKIRI, the social madness is more difficult to ascertain for the clan that Tsugumo patiently subverts has the reputation of being one of the best in the land. Sanjuro need only to destroy dishonorable men whereas Tsugumo has to ferret out the hidden dishonor among men who consider themselves to be honorable. One thing Sanjuro and Tsugumo have in common is the need of subterfuge, manipulation, and trickery to direct events to their desired ends.) YOJIMBO, in contrast, is populated with caricatures than characters, and Sanjuro himself, as savvy and intelligent as he is, must also be seen as a caricature, or at best, an archetype.
YOJIMBO also works on the level of a thought-experiment or theorem on the nature/game of power. Kurosawa and his co-writer Ryuzo Kikushima pose series of questions of ‘what if’ and ponder the possibilities of what might happen if the forces under scrutiny could be manipulated in so many ways. On this level, Sanjuro functions as a kind of crude blend of social scientist and diplomat working in bad faith. Chinese, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, had a saying, ‘make barbarian fight barbarian’, and a similar mind-set is operative in YOJIMBO. Thus, the town in the movie, small as it is, serves as a microcosm of the bigger forces at work in the world. The scale may be small, but the dynamics are the same. What Sanjuro manages is somewhat akin to Bismarck’s diplomacy in the 19th century and Kissinger’s in the second half of the 20th century. Granted, Sanjuro’s design is far more extreme than anything imagined by Clausewitz or Machiavelli. He’s not a diplomat trying to maximize power for any particular side but an agent of destruction attempting to trigger off something like a nuclear apocalypse from the tensions of the town. He figures once he gets the chain-reaction going, the ‘end of the world’ is done deal and nothing can be done to stop it. (There are similar apocalyptic elements in Godard’s ALPHAVILLE and John Boorman’s ZARDOZ, which also have outsider-heroes entering something like a closed systems and secretly working to destroy them from the inside.) In this respect, YOJIMBO presaged the even more outrageous vision of Kubrick in DR. STRANGELOVE. Though the character Strangelove doesn’t actually trigger off the events that brings about the end of the world, he seems to exult in the destruction no less than Sanjuro does. Though the character of Strangelove is a far more perverse and wicked — even evil — character than Sanjuro, they both lack sentimentality for humanity by and large. As it turns out, Sanjuro does have a soft spot for good people trampled on by the rich, powerful, and corrupt, whereas Dr. Strangelove hangs around the rich and powerful for protection(not least because of his Nazi past) and privilege, but both are of the conviction that it would be no great loss — indeed it might be a net gain — if fools that comprise most of the world vanished from the face of the earth.
Though YOJIMBO works wonderfully as satire, it might disappoint audiences expecting an action film, and I can vouch for this personally. Back when I became interested in film-as-art, most films were simply not accessible. The first Kurosawa film I recall watching was KAGEMUSHA in 1980 when I was in 7th grade. Having read about in the local newspaper, I made my parents to take me and found it to be a revelation, never having seen anything quite like it. Now, this was when most homes didn’t have videotape players. And even after VCRs became commonplace — our family got one in 1985 — , most local video stores mostly carried the latest movies from Hollywood. I finally found some specialty video stores around 1987, but not only were most tapes of foreign films of horrible quality, most classic titles of foreign cinema were not available. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. After KAGEMUSHA, I had to wait three years before I saw another Kurosawa film, SEVEN SAMURAI. If, as Woodrow Wilson said, THE BIRTH OF A NATION was history written with lightening, Kurosawa’s movie was like an epic created out of a storm. I have seen a lot of films since but have yet to see anything as powerful, with the possible exception of SIBERIADE by Andrei Konchalovsky.
Fortunately, my local library screened IKIRU — a faded 16 mm print — that winter, and that became my third Kurosawa film. Naturally, I wanted to see more. More by Kurosawa and all the other artists like Fellini, Bergman, and Antonioni that I could only read about in library books. But such films almost never showed on TV — I recall some did in the early part of the 70s on PBS, especially the rerun of SEVEN BEAUTIES which aired over and over, at least until Jewish liberals decided Lina Wertmuller is politically incorrect, but then I was too young to appreciate most of them, though I do recall watching parts of MIRACLE IN MILAN and BLACK ORPHEUS as a child — and the nearest art house or revival theater was a good way off, and I didn’t have my own car. So, I mostly read about them at the local library, imagining them as movies in my own mind before I finally got to see them. The library had a respectable section on cinema, and I read the screenplays of RASHOMON, L’AVVENTURA, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, and few others considerably before I got to see them. Of course, what one imagines isn’t the same as what’s actually there on screen, and comparing my imagining of the movie with the actual movie made for some interesting contrasts. There was no book on YOJIMBO per se, but there was an useful book on Kurosawa written by Donald Richie, and I got to imagine most of Kurosawa’s movies through Richie’s book before seeing them on screen. One book that passingly referenced YOJIMBO was MARTIAL ARTS FILMS by Marilyn D. Mintz. It was no great work of scholarship, but I remember it fondly for introducing me to much that couldn’t be found elsewhere at the time. (And whatever its shortcomings, it may be still be the best book on the subject of martial arts cinema, though to be sure, the book uses the term ‘martial arts’ rather loosely, including not only Bruce Lee and Zatoichi films but the works of Kurosawa, most of which really aren’t martial arts films at all.) Anyway, I developed a picture of YOJIMBO — a rather full one — in my mind before I saw the film, and that may have accounted for my partial disappointment in my first viewing. (Also, the fact that I’d eagerly waited to watch a masterpiece made it nearly impossible to live up to expectations.) When a still from a movie is used as the cover for a book called MARTIAL ARTS FILMS and when the movie has been hailed as having revolutionized the action genre, one would naturally expect something more fast-moving and exciting. I caught YOJIMBO and SANJURO as a double feature in 1984 and found much to admire, but they were not quite what I’d imagined. (This raises some questions about the nature of film culture prior to the rise of the video recorder/player — and even greater changes brought about by the internet. A film professor in college recalled the impassioned nature of film discussion in the 60s and early 70s, despite or perhaps especially because of their lack of availability. When I began attending college in the 1985, some of the film culture was still around but only around the edges. While my college peers loved movies as entertainment — this was the age of Spielberg, Lucas, Zemeckis, John Hughes, teenage sex comedies, the Hollywood blockbuster, Rambo movies, etc. — , there was little if any cultural indication that they cared about film as art, cult, obsession, or life. To be sure, on weekends, screenings of older and even some foreign films would fill up the place of screening, usually YMCA building — movies like THE GRADUATE, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and HAROLD AND MAUDE never seemed to lose their cult appeal. Though film-as-art didn’t have much of a culturally visible presence on campus, the right kind of people would come out of the woodwork at appropriate times. The second Godard film I saw was HAIL MARY, and the church building serving as the screening room was packed. When I revisited the campus some yrs later in the early 90s and attended the screening of THE GRADUATE, the place was almost empty, whereas it’d been full in 1985 with an enthusiastic audience wildy cheering for Ben and Elaine. During the early 90s, Film Culture really seemed to be fading, at least on the evidence of the demise of campus screenings, one of the key features of so-called Film Generation that bloomed in the 60s. And yet, the 90s was also the decade of the new American Independent Cinema that stirred up a new kind of excitement — but was fatally derailed by the hype surrounding and trailing Tarantino’s PULP FICTION, which was less a new model of personal filmmaking than the apotheosis of film geek as the driving force of film culture in all three areas of fandom, criticism, and creativity. And with the rise of the internet, it was no longer so necessary to have concentrated forms of Film Culture. There was no need for film lovers to come together in one spot — indeed even go to a big city or college town — to have access to independent, art, and foreign films. But I wonder, could such dispersed film community be called a ‘community’ or ‘culture’? Suppose a lot of people are religious but only a few bothered to congregate in churches. Could there be said to be a religious community? This also goes for porn culture. Why were men like Russ Meyer so legendary? Why did films like DEEP THROAT become such a big deal? Part of the reason was they were ‘pioneers’, but the other reason was that, prior to the VCR and internet, porn films were shown in movie theaters and, as such, created a visible community — even if most audience members wanted to hide their identities. They were forced to congregate in theaters, and that, in and of itself, created a social phenomenon that was deemed worthy of discussion even by intellectuals like Susan Sontag and John Simon. But once porn came to be viewed in one’s home, it was less a public than a private matter, and therefore a less fitting subject for social discussion. It’d been more interesting to discuss why a whole bunch of raincoat-wearing middle aged men would flock to a porn movie theater than why a bunch of private individuals would be watching that stuff in their bedrooms. But maybe the dynamic is changing again because the internet, in a way, has dissolved the barrier between private and public. Even with the advent of the VCR and fading of pornhouses, pornists had to congregate in rental places, and that produced something of a community, especially if the rental place also sold books, music, and coffee — like the former place of my employment — , allowing customers to hang around and talk at length about everything from foreign cinema to who sucked who’s whanker in the last porn video. If, prior to the VCR and the internet, men went to public theaters to watch porn, and then, with the advent of home machines, they were whanking off in the privacy of their own homes, the internet has allowed the private to be public, allowing everyone — at least anyone perverted enough — to record their private activities and upload them on porn sites for all to see. In that sense, Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was very much in tune with the spirit of the times. The president of the internet age got embroiled in a sex scandal that might as well have been a pay-per-view internet porn narrative of private individuals. More recently, there was the scandal with NY mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner who shot images of his whanker and tweeted them to a whole bunch of young women. So, what is private and what is public anymore? Maybe we need a new word, ‘privlic’. Anyway, we were talking about Film Culture when it had been most exciting and passionate in the 60s and early 70s and how that excitement may have been related to the accessibility of films. One might say films were more available back then in at least one sense: there were many more film clubs, societies, meetings, and journals, and out of necessity as out of passion, people had to make an effort to form and sustain any kind of collective film consciousness in order to keep the torch burning. On the other hand, without VCRs and the like, many people back then could only have heard or read about a lot of movies, and even if they got to watch the movies, there was no guarantee they’d be able to see them again any time soon — if ever — , and so they could only project them over and over in their minds in the form of cinememory. What are the conditions that are most inducive of great passion and commitment? If one wants something but there’s NO CHANCE of attaining it, there’s no point in getting all worked up. If, on the other hand, one can easily get what one wants, there’s no reason to get excited. But if one wants something and that something may be attainable but only with much effort and/or patience, that builds up excitement borne of expectation. This is why Christmas is so wondrous for kids. They know it’s coming, but they have to wait and wait, and it’s only once a year. During the height of Film Culture, there was the hope of catching art films from around the world, but one still had to make an effort, one still had to wait eagerly for the film to make it to one’s city or college town. And this made the culture all the more lively. It’s the same with religion like Christianity. If God is thought to be completely mysterious and beyond understanding, there is no use getting all worked up over Him. On the other hand, if God is too easy and available to everyone — according to liberals, Jesus would even be for ‘gay marriage’ — , then the whole concept has no special value. If the meaning of God can be molded to serve any cause or purpose, what would be the point as God would only be an all-purpose social agenda tool? God and religion bring out the greatest passion among those who believe that He is indeed great, mysterious, and difficult to access BUT lends His ears to our prayers and opens His gate to the Kingdom of Heaven to those who are sincere and devout. It was during the peak of Film Culture when films from around the world were becoming more available — therefore increasing the level of hope and excitement — and yet remained unattainable enough to make people long for them and dream about them. It’s something I can relate to because my greatest excitement with cinema was during the 1980s when the films I wanted to watch were very difficult but not impossible to find. As a result, I read about them and imagined them in my mind while waiting for the day when I might finally see them. Even if you haven’t actually seen the film, such mental habits have a way of making the movies belong to you even more because you’ve ‘dreamt’ them as your own. In some ways, you might even think that your preconception of the movie is truer than the actual movie itself. In MISERY, some crazed woman thinks her idea of the novel written by someone else is actually truer to the spirit. And the first time I saw ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, it took some effort on my part to adjust to the actual movie for I’d imagined something very different based on what I read in the reviews coming out of Cannes. Thus, I kinda understand why the professor meant about all those young people in 60s arguing passionately about movies they hadn’t even seen. I’m guessing that they, as myself with YOJIMBO, imagined the movies in their own minds and, as such, felt almost as if they owned the movies as their personal visions. It’s like every passionate Christian believes he or she understands God better than other people and may secretly even believe they understand God better than He understands Himself.)
Another problem for me was knowing that YOJIMBO inspired A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, one of the most impressively stylistic movies ever made. YOJIMBO is certainly not without style — indeed, one could argue it has style to burn — , but it doesn’t feature the kind of showiness(accompanied by whooshing/whipping sound effects) that came to define later action movies. Even so, SANJURO and YOJIMBO stayed in my mind, and I began to assess them differently. Instead of seeing the bulk of YOJIMBO as setups for action scenes — it makes more sense to see the violence as momentary respites from the unrelenting conspiracies on all sides — , I came to realize that with a filmmaker of Kurosawa’s caliber, the real fun is to found in his handling of every detail and moment. You learn to appreciate the language of cinema more closely than read it as a running sentences ending with exclamation marks. Of course, YOJIMBO probably seemed a lot more exciting — and even shocking(Dwight MacDonald noted the image of the severed hand in a dog’s mouth as akin to the shower scene in PSYCHO, i.e. cheap shock effect) — in 1961 for the simple reason that it marked such a departure in style and treatment from its predecessors in both the West and East. Similarly, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which will likely bore many people today to tears, was thought amazing by audiences in 1968 for its mind-blowing special effects. (Kubrick’s science fiction film was also interesting for bridging — probably unintentionally — the Counterculture with Organization Man culture. In a way, it was a tribute and celebration of America’s achievement in science, technology, and managerial organization. It has handsome great white males, able and professional in their work. At a time when young people dug rock music, 2001 blared or waltzed with classical music. At a time when young people were going ‘back to nature’, cities were burning with race riots, and liberals were embracing ‘radical chic’ and more color, Kubrick’s epic was an all-white and all-clean affair, it was set in outerspace and in the future far removed from the socio-political problems of the 60s, and it was also made in U.K. a far whiter nation back then and one to which Kubrick emigrated to get away from America. Fortunately for him, he found the people of Britain rather pleasant, utterly different from the thugs in STRAW DOGS. On the other hand, Kubrick feared the rise of science and technology as substitutes for cultivation of the human soul, and both 2001 and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE expressed doubts as to the value of ‘progress’. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE was a dystopian nightmare where future generations of British youths are raised on mindless consumer culture and soulless state socialism, and on this count, Anthony Burgess and Kubrick did see something of where the future was headed. With the breakdown of traditional mores and social hierarchies, there is the rise of aimless freedom and the cult of perpetual youth — notice the way Alex’s mother dresses — , and such freedoms would lead to all sorts of social problems. Since society cannot return to old forms of social control, science and technology are to be increasingly employed to control human behavior, but man is not a machine. The great paradox of modern social science is that, in seeing humans as animals, it undermines both spiritualism and humanism, and in having done so, tries to fix human-animals as machines. If man is really just an intelligent animal, then God is a myth and so is the notion of man being the center of all things. However, even if humans are indeed animals, they cannot act like animals if we are to maintain social order, so what is to be done? Humans must be conditioned and manipulated like animals in laboratories, i.e. they must be programmed from animalism to machine-ism. Thus, man is no longer man but animachine. Another problem facing the modern liberal West is the contradiction between its drive for social control/order and its fetishistic obsession with Negro virility and wildness. Thus, white liberals celebrate the wild animalism of Negroes and tell white kids that they too should dance and boogie-woogie like savage monkey-ass jigger-jivers. But when this kind of behavior makes social problems ever worse, white liberals are utterly confused and grasp at straws. White liberalism is in love with both black animalism and politically correct machine-ism. It wants to program us to be more peaceful and ‘less hateful’ yet it promotes violent and aggressive jigger-jiver-ishness as ‘cool’ and ‘badass’ — even as morally and spiritually uplifting, redeeming, and liberating. Since white liberals, due to their self-deceptions, cannot make heads or tails out of this mess, they have now arrived at a desperate way to control black aggressiveness through accusations of ‘black homophobia’. Since ‘evil’, ‘privileged’, ‘racism-tainted’, and ‘powerful’ white people are assumed to have no historical or social justification to condemn black behavior, the only way black violence and aggression can be condemned and controlled is by accusations of ‘homophobia’ since gays have been elevated as a ‘saint victim’ group higher than all others except Jews, at least according to elite academia — whose dictates are followed to the letter by the lesser academia of public universities — and by big media that happen to be mostly controlled by Jews. Given the way things are, should it be surprising that the dominant socio-cultural modes of today’s U.K. is trashy Negro-ism and yob-ism on the one hand AND robotic political correctness and surveillance state on the other? Anyway, 2001 had greater appeal to older people and to conservatives because so much of it is about order, hierarchy, and professionalism. If those attributes were generally mocked in DR. STRANGELOVE, it wasn’t so in 2001, where Kubrick expressed respect, reverence, and wonderment with the scientific and technological feats of white males, and he knew such feats could never have been achieved by pot-smoking hippies having orgies at a rock concert. And yet, 2001 also appealed to the Counterculture for its sense that no amount of science and technology could solve the problems of man, and that indeed, the greater hope was to be found in a new kind of spiritualism and transcendence. Young people of Counterculture could relate to it in the same way they did with THE GRADUATE where the main character breaks out of the seemingly ‘perfect order’ of his social world and makes the leap into a new kind of freedom, meaning, and love. Kubrick was scientific and rational enough to understand that humans were indeed animals, but he was also fascinated with the ‘spiritual’ side of man possessed of the ‘infinite’ and ‘cosmic’. When the ape-man touches the monolith and feels a sudden spark in his mind/soul, he has become something more than animal, indeed something more than intelligent animal; intelligence alone doesn’t make man ‘man’. The Hal computer is super-intelligent but only as a logical system; it cannot dream, it cannot imagine, and not being able to do this in the face of the unknown, it goes ‘crazy’. The tendency to imagine too much can be said to be a kind of craziness, but such craziness could paradoxically have therapeutic value and prevent us from becoming totally crazy. In imagining and fantasizing what is not real — as long as we don’t take it too far — , we find a kind of inner-peace or meaning via a kind of controlled or mild craziness. Hal can only think in terms of true or false, and so when it is faced with something that can’t be ascertained as either, it cannot ‘imagine’ something just to ease its ‘mind’. It emotionally obsesses logically and empirically, and this kind of cold craziness may be even crazier than the kind of craziness we humans are used to. Anyway, something of the godly has taken over the soul of the ape-man in 2001 upon touching the monolith, and it’s not just about physical power as there are plenty of creatures stronger than his kind. Rather, it’s the power of imagination, to envision oneself as more than one is and then to be shaped into something else or higher by such leaps of imagination. Consider that even primitive man didn’t simply make useful tools but beautiful tools engraved with or designed for the sake of mythic significance. An animal cannot imagine itself to be anything other than what it is. But humans can imagine, and even if imagination isn’t the same thing as reality, it can plant the seeds of new realities. Thus, when man imagines, he doesn’t just fantasize about what isn’t real but what could/should be real, possibly paving the way for the day when it might be real. Clearly, due to the power of his vision, Kubrick developed a devout following, and so maybe it made sense for him to seclude himself in a manor in Britain, just like Bob Dylan withdrew into private life in Woodstock, New York. Both men were Jewish and not easy to pigeonhole ideologically, politically, or philosophically. As Jews, they were different from most of the gentile world, but as strange Jews, they were also different from most Jews. Their attitude was like that of hero at the end of SANJURO. The young samurai admire him and wanna follow him, but he tells them to get lost and walks off on his own. Like Sanjuro, Kubrick and Dylan sometimes got into the fray of things and became the talk of the town, but they always valued their own individuality and kept their distance. They wanted the attention of the cultural world but also to remain apart, and in that sense, they were different from Jews like Woody Allen who always has to be in NY or Paris or Steven Spielberg, who constantly has to be rubbing shoulders in Hollywood.)
Even so, the excitement that greeted YOJIMBO owed not only to its outlandish violence but its outrageous sensibility, as well as the outsized personality of its character. If YOJIMBO is an action movie, the thrill derives less from the violence — of which there may actually be less than in HARAKIRI — than from the wolfish charisma of Toshiro Mifune and the rollicking ruckus of its visuals and sounds/music. The opening scene simply shows Sanjuro walking down a country road, but his swagger to the raucous music fills it with excitement. Thus, if we may broaden the definition of ‘action’, what matters in YOJIMBO isn’t so much the violence as the rowdiness. Its playful air and tone of unpredictability keeps it rolling along. (Much the same could be said of many Westerns, which actually aren’t all that big on action, and that may have been one of the reasons why the Western genre eventually died out. Not only did its formula become overused and its setting/themes increasingly seem old and irrelevant in a new American obsessed with technology and hedonism — freedom in Westerns was about struggling to survive in a dangerous land whereas the new hedonism was about ENJOYING freedom with convenience and without worries, e.g. hippies at Woodstock didn’t want to farm the land but to sit back, smoke pot, and listen to music — , but Western movies, like country songs, were really more about storytelling than action. The lyrics matter less in the appeal of Rock music where thrill and volume are king, but country music has depended to a large extent on its storytelling. And Western movies told stories, and it often took awhile before there might be any action, which at times, felt like a pesky intrusion onto the peace of the town. Leone made the Western more exciting by loading it with style — when the violence came, it could be especially explosive or grandiose/operatic — or with adventurism, especially in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, which is actually more a treasure hunt movie than a Western in the classic narrative sense. There had been adventurous Western movies before — SEARCHERS and VERA CRUZ for instance — , but they tended to focus on some central meaning: a noble cause, a quest, or a sense of home. The hero of VERA CRUZ does become morally involved in the Mexican Revolution, and the men in THE SEARCHERS intend to return home, with or without Debbie. But there is no sense of home or cause in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. It’s adventure for adventure’s sake. Though all action movies tell some kind of story, the kind of action cinema that gained popularity since the 60s and 70s — 007 movies, Spielberg movies, STAR WARS saga, BOURNE trilogy, LORD OF THE RINGS videogame movies, etc. — are actually short on storyline and really strung together with a series of action-scene extravaganzas. Thus, even though such movies might feature genuine stars, they hardly develop as characters. They are what they are in the beginning, middle, and end of the movie. We don’t ever expect Indiana Jones to change — at least not in the way some of the James Stewart characters change in Anthony Mann westerns or how John Wayne changes in THE SEARCHERS — , and even the so-called changes, as when Luke becomes a Jedi Knight or Han Solo becomes a noble warrior, are perfunctorily dramatized at best. Things happen more slowly in Westerns because horses are slower than cars & spaceships and because the world of the West, as wild and free it may have been at times, wasn’t fantastical. People actually had to do be doing things all the time in order to survive. To make the Western popular again for modern audiences, some movies have sped up the action and loaded up the violence — compare the original 3:10 TO YUMA with the awful remake — while others, especially the dreadful TV series DEADWOOD, went for foul language and non-stop gratuitous vulgarity. Given the relatively slow story-telling and character-driven nature of Westerns, only famous movie stars/directors have been able to get backing to make them and turn them into moderate successes, as were the cases with PALE RIDER and UNFORGIVEN. I doubt if such projects would have gotten backing if not for the popularity of Eastwood, and I doubt if many people would have seen them, again, if not for Eastwood. YOJIMBO is Western-like in favoring story over action, but in some ways, it FEELS like an action film because of its nonstop rowdy boisterousness.) YOJIMBO feels alive because Kurosawa seems engaged with all facets of the material — dramatically, comedically, stylistically, aurally, ‘politically’, etc. Indeed, its core action could be said to be the rough-and-tumble wrestling of the genres it draws from. In most samurai or martial arts films, things sort of die between action scenes because they’ve been built around action than to have the action serve as the outcome of the tensions inherent in the material. Thus, IP MAN has some excellent fighting scenes but has little to offer between them..
Some action movies have fantastic violence and engaging characters/stories but not much in the way of meaning. Though YOJIMBO isn’t exactly profound, it is provocative as satire and offers food for thought. Oddly enough, despite its liveliness, it may be actually be one of Kurosawa’s ‘slowest’ works up to that time. One reason could be the almost claustrophobic cramped use of spaces. The main street or square, enclosed by the buildings, feels like a prison, and inside the buildings, the tight framing makes us feel as if inside a prison inside a prison. The slowness is also owes to the emotional coldness or detachment among the characters. ONE WONDERFUL SUNDAY or NO REGRETS FOR OUR YOUTH may not be the most exciting movies, but they overflow with love, youth, idealism, and/or tragedy. Their human interconnections engage us emotionally. And there is anxiety in IKIRU from the old man’s fear of death and his desperation to redeem his life in the face of death. (IKIRU makes an interesting contrast with Ingmar Bergman’s SEVENTH SEAL, another film about a man faced with sure death. If the man in IKIRU hadn’t done anything in life and finds meaning by doing a small deed before death, the character of SEVENTH SEAL has done and seen much — he’s a Crusader returning from war fought in the name of God to reclaim the Holy Land for Christendom —, but he’s no closer to the truth or meaning of his existence.) But for long stretches in YOJIMBO, we really don’t care about anyone — whether they live or die — since just about everyone in town comes across as a cockroach. We care about Sanjuro, but his art of living is not to care or only ‘caring’ enough to gleefully goad bad people kill bad people.
This ‘nihilistic’ element feels liberating and edgy in the first 30 minutes, but you can’t make an 110 min movie where we’re not supposed to care about anyone, which is one of the reasons why, I suppose, there’s a side story of a woman and her husband and their child who are held in bondage by the big shots of the town. Even so, they constitute a minor narrative at best — though crucial to the development of the overall plot — , and the overall film is defined by the utter aloneness of its anti-hero character. Sanjuro befriends a crusty old man — an innkeeper or restaurant owner — and a semi-nice coffin-maker, but we know he’s too different from them to form meaningful bonds. And so, much of the movie has Sanjuro plotting and acting on his own, and this aloneness ‘slows’ down the movie. And since we don’t care about the fates of most people in town, we have no emotional involvement as to whether Sanjuro’s plot works or doesn’t work. Because of its lack of emotional core and meaningful bonds among characters, the only bond that really matters is between the actor and the director. Though Kurosawa is off-screen, that’s where most of the ‘action’ emanates from. This is all the more interesting in consideration of the contrasts between the nature of Kurosawa’s style and the nature of Mifune’s charisma. Mifune was one of the most spontaneous and dynamic actors in cinema, especially in Japan where few actors even came close. He was a force of nature no less than Kurosawa, indeed one might say Siegfried to Kurosawa’s Odin. Yet, he accepted Kurosawa as his master, and their chemistry was one of the most powerful and mysterious in cinema. It’s one thing for a circus master to work with dogs but quite another to work with a wolf or tiger. Mifune was that wolf. Kurosawa prized him because he could deliver what few Japanese actors could. There was an explosiveness about Mifune that Kurosawa clearly wanted to harness. Yet, Kurosawa, who thought of himself as the ‘emperor’ of Japanese cinema, wanted total control over everything. Thus, Mifune was never Kurosawa’s loyal samurai but a ronin who formed an uncertain pact with the master. And it was this ronin aspect of Mifune that Kurosawa prized. In SEVEN SAMURAI, Mifune’s character is neither samurai nor peasant nor bandit. Though born a farmer’s son, he plays at being samurai. He rejects the world of peasants from which he sprang but is also mocked by samurai, and yet he ends up fighting alongside the samurai to help out a village of peasants.
Of course, Kurosawa, to an extent, identified with Mifune. He too possessed a rebel streak and had been something of a maverick all his life. But being older by ten years made a huge difference as Japan had been changing dramatically due to modernization, war, and other social upheavals. Also, Mifune’s upbringing in Manchuria had made him different from most Japanese. He spoke the language and acculturated himself to the rules, but something of the Northeast Asian barbaric spirit animated his soul. It was this wild quality that Kurosawa sought to both fan and tame, and it may have been this tension that eventually led to a rift after RED BEARD that could never be healed. In the end, what drove them apart was not so much that Mifune couldn’t be tamed — a master can forgive the wild side of an animal — , but that he began to take charge of himself. Since the late 50s, Mifune had formed his own company, but in deference to Kurosawa, the man who made him what he was, he’d made whatever sacrifices in his other enterprises to work under Kurosawa. But when the making of RED BEARD dragged on for nearly two years, Mifune lost patience and aired some of his grievances. It might have been no big deal in America — or it might have led to screaming soon followed by hugs — , but things worked out differently as matters such as social form, manners, and loyalty were of paramount importance in Japan. Though many of Kurosawa’s films were critical of Japanese values and attitudes, he couldn’t break out of the cultural mold himself. He couldn’t forgive people who seemed disloyal. As much as he idealized maverick characters on screen, he didn’t want to be confronted by anyone who might challenge him. (Similarly, though Mao Zedong made himself out to be a rebel-egalitarian on the side of youth, he could only tolerate ‘rebellion’ that he himself could control and own. One of his quotations was ‘To Rebel Is Justified’. It should really have said, ‘To rebel must be justified by me’.) To be sure, there’s a lot of this to be found in the West as well. Just ask anyone who dealt with Peckinpah, Kael, Sontag, Kubrick, or any number of other creative personalities. People with big egos tend to hold grudges forever against those who are perceived to have pricked their massive egos. When Kurosawa was younger and saw a Japan ruined by older people and the old ways, he tended to side with the mavericks and rebels. And there was a time when it’d been daring to stick up for the rebels and outcasts. But as the culture changed in the 60s, and Kurosawa felt challenged by younger generation and directors full of hostile attitudes, his views began to change, and by the time he made KAGEMUSHA and RAN, he seemed to identify more — if not exactly agree with — the old order than with young mavericks. The clan in KAGEMUSHA is destroyed by the young son who’s full of himself, who rashly thinks he can take on his enemies in one big swoop and own it all. He kinda reminds us of Mifune’s character in SEVEN SAMURAI when he decides to go solo to grab another gun from the bandits for the sake of personal praise and glory.
But the ironic thing is Mifune really didn’t do anything wrong. He did loyally serve Kurosawa in the making of RED BEARD and made a lot of personal sacrifices. All he did was lodge a justifiable complaint when the making of the film seemed to drag on forever. It was not a wild animal striking out against his master but a loyal animal calling out the master where he was wrong. But Kurosawa couldn’t handle the criticism. Furthermore, Mifune’s displeasure may have been especially discomfiting because it exposed Kurosawa as a kind of tyrant hypocrite who failed to live up to his own principles. Even if Kurosawa went to extremes with RED BEARD in the name of Art and Truth than in the name of money or greed, he was being greedy with his own ego and self-importance, as if everyone else had to give up their lives in order to serve Kurosawa in the creation of a pure and holy work of art. Though RED BEARD is about a maverick doctor helping ‘little people’, Kurosawa acted like an established director lording over his minions; indeed, notice how the doctor in RED BEARD is made out to be both a maverick and a wise infallible teacher, implying Kurosawa, like the doctor, has the lock on both rebellion and wisdom. It’s possible that a part of Kurosawa held a grudge against Mifune for the rest of his life. On the other hand, maybe he felt remorse but was too proud to express it. Maybe the scene with the father and the third son in RAN was a kind of apology made through the big screen. When the old man hands over power to his sons, the youngest son speaks truthfully, but the father only hears disobedience and disrespect. The father is ruined by people who speak ‘honeyed words’ because he shut his ears to everything but praise. After RED BEARD, Kurosawa was to go through some dark times due to his out-of-control ego on the set of TORA TORA TORA and the backstabbing of moneymen to whom he’d given his trust. It goes to show that no matter how much one surmises and exposes, through arts and letters, the rotten and corrupt ways of the world, one can be swindled and led astray just the same by the very things one has warned against to other people through one’s works. In the end, art and theory are no substitute for life and experience. Even the supposedly super-rationalist Ayn Rand fell for the trickery of Nathaniel Branden. There’s nothing stopping the ego from seeing what it wants to see.
Kurosawa’s relationship with Mifune was indicative of the changes that took place in Japan as a whole. Born in 1910, Kurosawa was already 35 by the time WWII ended. One could argue that Kurosawa’s formative years were actually between 1925 to 1935 when he was 15 to 25, a period when people come into adulthood and happen to be most impressionable about art, values, and ideas. As with many educated people of his generation, Kurosawa’s life straddled between two, three, or even four or five very divergent worlds. Perhaps one reason why Kurosawa was deeply impacted by the Western films of John Ford was that the new and changing Japan had undergone — and was still undergoing — profound changes as those that transformed the American West.
(Though the American West was a new frontier while Japan was an old civilization, what they had in common were the stark contrasts within their dynamics. Europe was also undergoing profound changes in the late 19th century, but the changes were seen as part of the historical and cultural continuum. As for most of the non-Western world, things tended to remain static and conservative OR, despite considerable transformations, under the thumb of Western powers, thereby without the sense of power. The American West and Japan were different. Though the white pioneer in the Wild West was part of Western Civilization/History, he found a new promise of freedom in the West, indeed much more so than the first white settlers who’d arrived on the East Coast. If the original settlers of America tried to recreate Old Europe in the New World — and this was even truer of Latin America, which is why much of Latin American tended to look and feel so conservative — , the people who settled the West, despite their ties to Old America and even Old Europe, developed a new independent identity and pride. And though they did their utmost to tame the land and move red savages to Indian Reservations, something of the Indian rubbed off on the white man of the American West. There could be no Cowboy without the Indian, at least in the spiritual sense. Thus, there was a sense of a ‘break’ in the rise of the American West. In a way, it was like a bold new beginning. If East Coast Americans looked to Europe for culture and values — despite having fought a war to be independent of the British Crown — , for the pioneers of the American West the ‘old world’ meant not Europe but the East Coast. And though pioneers wanted to build towns and cities, they also wanted to be free of East Coast stuffiness and crowdedness. Thus, the rise of the American West was like the second revolution of America. In a way — for a time, at least — , the West had ‘seceded’ from the East more than the South ever managed to secede from the North — and indeed even the war between the North and the South was triggered by questions about the future of the West. No war of secession was fought to free the West from the East, but there was a spiritual sense of a renewal in the wide open spaces yet uncluttered by settlement and civilization. And given that so much of the West was rocky and unfit for agriculture — and indeed more suited for the ‘nomadic’ life of cattle raising/driving — , a different kind of mind-set developed among Westerners. Thus, there was a dramatic sense of something truly new in the American West — and this new sense of Americanism defined the American spirit in the late 19th century and would come to impact much of the 20th century as well through the mythology of the Western, and for a time, the international image of the American was that of the cowboy. It seemed like a fresher and more vibrant form of Americanism than one rooted in prudish New England towns. But eventually, the East Coast was overrun by Jews and immigrants from Southern/Eastern Europe, and these immigrant ethnics, especially the Jews, supplanted even the Americanism of the West with the new kind of Americanism of ‘diverse’ propositional-ism. What the Japanese of the late 19th century had in common with the American West as a profound sense of ‘breakage’. For the Japanese, modernization was something foreign and alien, not a continuation of their own civilization — as the case was for Europe. Like Americans of the Wild West, the Japanese were faced with a pioneer future as their old civilization was about to come under an extreme make-over. And yet, if the story of the American West was about whites becoming cowboys and taking over from the Indians, things were stranger in Japan for Japanese were like both the cowboys and Indians, i.e. Japanese had to put on cowboy hats and vanquish their old ‘Indian’ selves . Thus, if the white cowboy defeated the red Indian, the yellow cowboy defeated the yellow Indian. Some of this comes across in THE LAST SAMURAI, which, while not great, is a pretty rip-roaring fun movie — and Tom Cruise looks smashing in samurai gear. But it wasn’t easy for the Japanese ‘cowboy’ to utterly defeat the Japanese ‘Indian’ since so much significance of what it meant to be Japanese depended on ancient lore and traditions. Thus, even as modern Japan did away with the samurai caste and order, much of the samurai spirit and values was allowed to permeate through a bloodstream of new Japan — in a kind of similar sense, though the American Cowboy vanquished the American Indian, some of the wild spirit of the Indian passed over to the white man. The new Japan couldn’t wholly wipe away the old Japan, but the old Japan couldn’t reassert itself in the new Japan, and this tension would lead to serious tensions, finally leading to the Pacific War where it wasn’t easy to pigeonhole the historical role of the Japanese: As imperialist conquerors of continental Asia, they were playing the role of the cowboy and fighting other Asians as if they were the Indians. But in fighting America, Japanese were like Indians taking vengeance on the imperialist cowboy whose power and influence had too often insulted the sacred honor and pride of the ancient tribesmen of Japan. At any rate, it must have been something of a shock to many Americans — and even to the Japanese themselves — that such a small nation would dare to wage war on a superpower. Maybe this could be understood through the ‘meek/freak paradox syndrome theory’. The theory posits that people who are meek as individuals can especially freak out and go nuts as a group. Why would this be? When Americans met Japanese as individuals, the latter tended to be timid, bowing-all-the-time, quiet, and inhibited. They seemed meek and submissive, indeed hardly the type to invade other nations and wage war against a great power like the US. But people who are meek feel small, wimpy, and lacking in self-pride. If their culture approves of their meekness, they can at least find consolation in being ‘good members’ of society. But when such people become aware of the larger world where their meekness is only seen as weakness, they feel sort of worthless. Once Japanese modernized and rubbed shoulders with the rest of the world — as a nation and as individuals — , they began to feel their smallness. Now, due to Japanese genetics and culture, Japanese were incapable of asserting themselves as individuals. From an early age, Japanese were taught to bow and be meek. Yet, as Japanese became aware of the larger world and the global game of power, they wanted to feel strong. Since Japanese couldn’t express their power as individuals, they could only express it as a group. Thus, Japanese individuals, each of whom was meek on his own, suddenly felt a surge of power as a group but only as a group. And this was true of POWs too. Japanese soldiers who could be full of burning rage and pride as a fighting team, upon being captured as individuals, were back to meekness and wimpery. Though crowd psychology is a universal phenomenon — people always feel more power as part of a group — , it was more explosive with the Japanese because their sense of power as individuals had been stifled for so long. Americans feel power as individuals and feel more power as a collective. Japanese felt no power as individuals, and so they could only feel power as a group; and so, when they came together as a group, they tended to be extreme and freak out in their display of power. We may be seeing some of the same dynamic in China. Most Chinese tend to be geeky and dorky, but when they come together to protest against something like Japan taking over some disputed islands, they fly into complete wild rage. It’s kinda like the logic of forest fires. If you allow limited fires to burn now and then — ridding the forests of excess wood — , forest fires won’t be so extensive and dangerous. But if you allow woods to pile up in the forest without any kind of fire for a long time, it’s gonna be a massive forest fire when it comes. Americans feel power as individuals and so their inner firewood gets burned off now and then, and so when they come together, they may be angry but they are not crazy-mad-angry. But things may be different in East Asia where the people, unable to feel power as individuals, end up with a lot of unspent wood-fuel piled up inside them, and all of that just burns up and goes crazy when the individuals come together to express a kind of collective rage. So, people who mostly seemed meek as individuals totally freak out as a group.)
When Kurosawa was growing up, much of Old Japan had gone and a new modern Japan had risen in its place. But instead of a radical revolution that did away with the old system entirely, much of the Old Ways remained or were revived through arts, refurbished mythologies, and modern ideologies. Paradoxically, Japan’s Westernization paved the way for a more powerful kind of right-wing nationalism. There were several reasons for this. Though Japan initially Westernized/modernized in fearful and defensive awe of — and in grudging respect for — the mighty West, the strengthening of Japan via modernization also filled the Japanese with assertive-turning-aggressive pride. Also, the Japanese elites who’d embarked on the course of modernization did so not in order to change Japan but to preserve it — at least culturally and spiritually. Of course, as time passed and educated Japanese came under greater Western influence, they began not only to learn about Western guns and factories but Western ways of philosophy and thought, arts and expression, values and morality. In time, more Japanese came to genuinely admire the West and embrace change not so much to defend/preserve Old Japan(from the ‘foreign barbarian’) but to formulate and bring about a wholly new Japan. Yet, as Japan’s standing rose in the world, its elites also realized that Western powers would never accept Japan on equal footing. Though treated as ‘honorary whites’, Japanese would still be seen as part of the ‘yellow peril’.
There was also the matter of wounded pride. Many Japanese artists and intellectuals who’d adopted Western ways and traveled to the West were met with condescension or neglect. Or, they were criticized by white intellectuals/artists for trying to be ‘Western’ — being imitative — than authentic and true to their own culture. So, a certain degree of cultural schizophrenia was bound to settle into the modern(izing) Japanese psyche. The powerful West had pried open the gates of Old Japan and essentially forced Japan to adopt Western ways. In time, many Japanese did just that, but the political elites of the West didn’t show Japan equal respect, and Japanese artists/intellectuals who’d visited foreign lands were actually criticized for their ‘imitative’ adoption of modern art and the like. The Japanese cultural elites felt confused. They thought the West wanted them to emulate the advanced ways of the West, but when they finally met up with Western cultural elites, the latter told them to be less imitative of the West and be more Japanese, i.e. make more woodblock prints than Western-style paintings, especially of the modernist kind. One of the problems was that the Japanese — even those who adopted change and progress — weren’t fully aware of how fast the West was changing. What was considered ‘Western’ or ‘modern’ in 1860 was very different in 1880, and changes between 1880 and 1900 were even more dramatic, and by the end of WWI, the West was again a very different place. The West that had smashed down the gates of Japan in the 19th century had been proud and confident, believing that the non-West would do well to emulate the West. But by the early 20th century, the West, under the influence of modernism and effects of WWI, Great Depression, and Bolshevik Revolution(and other radical ideas/movements), had undergone great changes. This West was no longer the West of the 19th century. With the rise of new technology, this West was more powerful than ever but increasingly losing self-respect and civilizational confidence. Though Western POLITICAL elites still believed in ‘great power politics’ and imperialism, many of the Western CULTURAL and INTELLECTUAL elites were on the Left(and were often Jewish), into subversion and rejection of traditional culture, and fascinated with non-Western cultures. The West was losing its cultural missionary zeal. Picasso was drawing influences from non-Western cultures, and around this time, a new kind of anthropology developed that idealized the non-West. Many Japanese intellectuals and artists who traveled to the West probably expected a proud people, a proud culture, and proud arts & letters scene. What they found was a much changed West where the cultural scene was beset with doubt, subversion, avant-garde experimentation, cynicism, and even radical self-rejection. Some Japanese got caught up in this heady mix of modernism, radicalism, and/or decadence, but many of them must have been confused or even offended when these Western cultural elites told them that they should really be making traditional wood-block-prints or arranging flowers than joining in Western modernism. There was some validity to such Western attitudes for there were specific historical and cultural developments as to why the West arrived at this juncture. Thus, good or bad, modernism was ‘natural’ and ‘authentic’ to the West since the West underwent the very changes and traumas that produced both tremendous new possibilities and profound doubts. In contrast, Japan hadn’t undergone the same historical process(even as or especially because it had done so much to ‘imitate’ the West, or graft the West onto the East); it hadn’t ‘earned the right’ — or deserved the curse — of modernism, which was regarded as much as a disease as well as a cure for the new age. Similarly, there’s a difference between an old Negro who’d seen and felt much of life and ‘earned the right’ to sing the blues, and a young middle class white guy with little experience of life(especially black life) singing ‘black music’. So, to many Western artists and thinkers, much of Japan’s attempt at modern art was feebly imitative, lackluster, and uninspired. It was a case of ‘monkey see, monkey do’. Yet, such criticism was valid only to an extent for Japan had indeed earned the right to not only understand but to exercise a form of modernism. Japan in the early 20th century was no longer the Old Japan of wood block prints — though some of that still existed, if mainly for export — but a fascinating and new society rife with all sorts of tensions, questions, and challenges. Given the magnitude of changes taking place in a modernizing Japan, modernism had rightfully became a part of Japanese culture and expression. And for a time, Japan would produce some of the most interesting modernist artists in literature and cinema — and even a giant in modern music in the figure of Toru Takemitsu. But, as they say, old habits die hard, even among so-called ‘progressive’ or ‘radical’ peoples, and this was true of both Westerners and Japanese in the early part of the 20th century, if for different reasons. Though Western leftists and radicals rejected much of their own traditions and values, many of them were still marked by old ‘prejudices’. Consider how most of the socialist parties sided with the nationalists in the buildup to World War I. Though the Great War profoundly altered the direction of the Western Left, even the Communist parties of advanced nations were not so keen on abandoning the empire. Ho Chi Minh had a rude awakening in France when he discovered that most French Leftists supported the French imperial project in Vietnam. And it wasn’t until after WWII that the French Left decided to support the struggle for ‘liberation’ in Algeria — and largely because the colonial war seemed unwinnable and because France itself had been under occupation by another nation and was still thought to be under ‘American Imperialism’. For the first half of the 20th century, most of the Western Left was not defined by Third World struggles. That only happened with the loss of empire following WWII, whereupon Third World revolutions became a convenient way for European leftists — and even some rightists — to counter the growing power of American ‘neo-imperialism’. For much of the early part of the 20th century, there were plenty of Western leftists who still believed in the ‘civilizing’ influences of imperialism, though, to be sure, WWI dealt a blow to such confidence, i.e. if the civilized West mindlessly slaughters its own people, what right does it have to be preaching ‘civilization’ to everyone else? WWII sealed the fate of Western pride and confidence for good — especially because Western peoples themselves had come under German invasion and domination, it seemed less defensible to justify their own domination over other peoples, especially as Nazism gave the notion of ‘Western superiority’ a really bad name. Even so, there were many in the West — even on the Left — who resisted the loss of empire and came to accept it as fait accompli only when they realized their empires couldn’t last long due to the combined pressures of dire economic costs, rising American and Soviet hegemony, the spreading wildfire of third world nationalist consciousness inspired by the example of Mao’s victory in China, and growing political unrest at home related to issues of imperialism.
Anyway, many Japanese modernists, semi-modernists, would-be modernists, and wanna-be modernists didn’t know what to make out of the fast changing West in the early part of the 20th century. There were too many mixed signals. And things got even more confusing when Russia, the most backward of the great European power, overnight became the ‘most advanced and revolutionary’ nation on the planet — or came to be billed as such by the international progressives. Russia, which used to be the butt of jokes for its outdated imperial order and Czarism, backwardness, reaction, and the stain of having been the first/only Western nation to have lost a major war with a non-Western one(though, to be sure, the Russo-Japan War was really a draw than a victory for Japan), all of a sudden was hailed as the revolutionary locomotive surging into the future, leaving the capitalist West behind. What was to be made of such confusion? The prevailing image used to be of the “progressive and advancing capitalist West as opposed to the backward Czarist Russia”. But soon after WWI, Russia was seen as leading the path to the glorious future of prosperity, unity, justice, and modernity. Though communism was embraced only by Japanese leftists, we shouldn’t ignore the nationalist aspect of this fascination — and it would later be reflected in all Marxist struggles in the Third World or non-Western World for the ‘revolutionaries’ were as, if not more so, driven by patriotism as by ideological leftism. Even when the ‘leftist revolutionaries’ were sincere in their adherence to Marxist economics, the main appeal of communism for Third World nations was nationalism. The Third World, anxiously eyeing the seemingly unchallengeable power of the modern capitalist West, wondered if there might be some magic weapon to break the iron spell of Western power. The rise of Bolshevik Russia was a lightning bolt in this regard. Especially with the sudden rise of the Soviet economy under Stalin, many non-Western peoples became convinced that here was an ideology and system that could not only be used to unite, inspire, and train a people to fight the Western imperialists but be used to build powerhouse economies overnight so that the Third World could catch up to the West in almost no time. Despite the horrors caused by Stalin’s mass industrialization programs, the fact is Russia went from an industrial backwater that had lost to Germany — which was also fighting two other major powers — in WWI to a nation that would not only absorb the massive surprise attack by Nazi Germany but roll back the invaders and break the back of Hitler’s formidable war machine. Also, if Czarist Russia only managed to fight the Japanese to a draw — though it felt more like a defeat since it was thought unthinkable that a white nation could really lose to a non-Western one — , Soviet Union beat the utter crap out of Japan in the skirmishes in the 1930s. So, the ideology of communism wasn’t the only appealing factor to Japanese leftists. Though Japan had made great strides and become a major power under its ruling elites, communism seemed to promise even greater advance in Japanese power and glory. It is, then, no surprise that so many Japanese communists changed loyalties overnight and supported the military regime when it went all out in the Great Power game. You’d think Japanese leftists would have resisted the military regime with greater intensity, but it was the opposite. Many, though certainly far from all, Japanese leftists had embraced communism as much out of nationalist passions as for its ideology. And if Japan had prevailed in WWII and maintained its hegemony over Asia, one wonders if so many leftists in the post-war era would ever have been critical of Japan’s role in the war.
People are always more than what they think they are. Ideologies, expressed through ideas and values, are essentially conscious, but consciousness only represents the surface reality of our lives. Thus, there is no such thing as a pure Christian, pure communist, pure Zionist, pure anything. One can ideologically assume oneself to be purely committed to one thing or another, but the deeper emotions may hold and serve different loyalties. Were most black communists committed to Marxism for the sake of serving communism or black interests?
Given the rise of psychology and its concept of dark, hidden subconscious and ‘irrational’ urges, it’s no wonder that so much of the arts, culture, and ideas of the 20th century revolved around doubt. There was moral doubt arising from the horrors of WWI, but the seeds of doubt had been sown earlier by men like Nietzsche and Freud when their ideas and insights came to undermine the notion of rational truth, universal morality, and conscious free will. (Behaviorism, especially as developed by B.F. Skinner, seems not to make too fine a distinction between the rational and irrational since it de-emphasizes — if not totally disbelieves in — the notion of conscious free will. Human behavior is considered to be the product of all the conditions played upon it, and therefore, it doesn’t make much sense to speak of rational consciousness and/versus the irrational subconscious. Rather, there is the mechanics of human behavior, and the basic fact is people will behave in ways they are conditioned to behave. And conditions are essentially externally applied, and therefore, how a person is shaped by society and institutions is far more important than what a person may consciously/rationally think and/or how those thoughts might be undermined by irrational subconscious forces. A person is an animal, and therefore, ‘it’ can be conditioned/trained like other animals. A person may think he has rationally arrived at a certain decision/conclusion by free thought and free will, or he may think he’ll understand his ‘true self’ if he could access his subconscious — especially through the aid of a psychiatrist — , but both views are wrong according to behaviorism. A person is really the sum of all the external conditions that surrounds him. If we are to change the person, the conditions around him must be changed. Though behaviorism taken to radical extremes is dangerous — like any other theory — , it holds some degree of truth. Indeed, even much of our ideas and values that we think we’ve arrived at freely have been conditioned into us, especially from an early age. Of course, it’s true that some people who were conditioned to be one thing may change into something else later on, but more often than not, it’s not so much the result of that person’s free individual thought-processes but his having come under new influences/conditions. In other words, a person who’d been conditioned to ‘think’ one way has been shaped to ‘think’ in another way. And conditioning is happening all the time and not always by intention. After all, animals in nature are continuously conditioned by the environment. A wild cat that is bitten by a snake and survives understands from the natural conditioning not to approach other snakes. And a liberal who’s been ‘mugged by reality’ has been conditioned by the reality of Negro thuggery, and so he will be warier of blacks and, in time, even his ideology might change. So, there is controlled conditioning — as in laboratory or institutional settings — and wild conditioning as happens in nature and in dangerous neighborhoods. When dangerous animals or Negroes go on the attack, they are not trying to condition their victims. They are just acting wild and aggressive, but their actions do have a conditioning effect on their victims. There is direct conditioning by immediate experience — like getting mugged by a Negro —, and there indirect conditioning shaped largely by institutions such as the media. Thus, a white person in a safe town with few or no blacks may not know much about the true reality of Negroes and only know the false ‘reality’ of Negroes as wonderful/colorful people as disseminated by the media. During the 1930s, millions of Ukrainians were being killed by Stalin and his Jewish henchmen, but people conditioned by Soviet propaganda thought USSR was some kind of workers’ paradise. But even if one knows the true reality, there could be other forms of conditioning that undermine a honest reckoning with that reality. For instance, many whites do know about black thuggery and crime, but they’ve been conditioned so much with MLK worship, ‘white guilt’, Magic Negro-ism, and black-music-liberated-white-folks-ism that they feel embarrassed to admit that they might have harbor some negative views of Negroes. So, even when blacks ruin entire communities with bad behavior and crime, we put all the blame on whites. Why did so many Americans become favorable to interracism and ‘gay marriage’ in so short a time? Because of conditioning by the media and academia controlled by Jews. Though some people use the media and academia to gain greater understanding of the truth, others use them as tools of control. And Jews, despite all their official BS about equality, look down on most of us as dumb animals. Therefore, we are not to be told the full truth or even encouraged to think about the truth. Instead, we are conditioned like laboratory animals through a barrage of images, sounds, symbols, and associations that are supposed to mold us in certain ways. Thus, muttering ‘racism’ has the same effect as saying ‘NO’ to a ‘bad dog’. When whites hear ‘racist’, they ‘sit’ and look sorry/guilty before their Jewish masters. When Jews say, ‘Israel’, it has the same effect as ‘fetch, dumb goy’, and all goyim, from Obama to Romney, go fetching the stick for Jews. Even goyim who understand the mechanics of this conditioning cannot break from its power because their emotions have been conditioned to submit to the Jews. Even if they know Jews are dirty a**holes, they’d feel dirty and foul if they pointed out Jewish dirtiness and foulness. And if an academic knew the truth about race and racial differences, he would still be deathly afraid of discussing it with his peers because he’ll be put through the grinder of politically correct conditioning of shaming and shunning; indeed, his fear is proof that he’s been conditioned to be a white boy coward. The shaming-conditioning has even happened to a big name liberal like Larry Summers when he opined that there may be more male super-geniuses than female ones. So, if a big name Jewish liberal can come under such shame-conditioning, imagine what will happen to anyone else. Things are especially bad because the basic ideal of today’s academia is Power than Truth. In a way, it’s an ideological leftist corruption of Nietzscheanism. The left even accuses real/hard sciences as white male patriarchal tools to gain power over the world. So, even real scientific truths are secondary to the considerations of power, and since power is the name of the game, the thing is to gain more power, even if lies are favored over truth. So, black academics go for ‘storytelling’ where truths no longer matter. As long as the ‘storytelling’ gives more power to blacks, it is justified for its empowering effect. Thus, even principles don’t matter since power is what it’s all about. So, ‘progressives’ support principles only when such suits their side; if principles don’t , just bend or suspend them. So, Jews will invoked the Constitution when it came to protecting the free speech of Jewish communists in the 1950s, but Jews don’t care about pissing on the Constitution in the support of illegal immigration, nationalized healthcare, and anti-white-gentile ‘affirmative action’. One of the odd things about the Left is it pretends to be for the powerless but is obsessed with power. Now, the idea of giving more power to the powerless in the name of justice sounds like a valid idea, but that isn’t what the moder ‘left’ is about. Jewish leftists have tremendous power, but they always want more power. Feminists say they are for the victim but then seem to be obsessed with women of power even if such people tend to be monstrous, trashy, and hideous. It’s no longer about power to do good but power for power’s sake, a kind of nihilistic narcissism of power. Fight the power to hog the power. This is what Wasps didn’t understand when they were faced with challenges in the 50s and 60s. They thought Jews and blacks and others just wanted a fair shake when, in fact, the radical Jews and raging blacks were out to totally kick white boy’s ass and hump as many white bitches as possible and turn them into whores. Today, Jews control all of the media, and they are so powerful that we cannot even say that they control the media because such a notion would be ‘antisemitic stereotyping’ EVEN IF THE STEREOTYPE IS TOTALLY TRUE. If people really arrived at supporting ‘gay marriage’ on the basis of consistent reason and logic, they would be supporting ‘same family marriage’/incest marriage and polygamy/group marriage too — as long as consenting adults are involved. But why are they so adamant about the importance of ‘gay marriage’ but do not call for other kinds? Because people have been conditioned by the media and academia to think of gays as so wonderful, lovable, brilliant, handsome, saintly, rainbow-colorful, and spiritual. One of the most effective conditioning tools is the use of the metonym and other devices of association. Thus, if the media use handsome clean-cut gays as the face of the gay community, we think all or most gays are handsome, clean-cut, and decent. And if the media use fat, ugly, and gross-looking ‘redneck white trash’ as the face of the white community, people are conditioned to think of all conservatives as disgusting; since they look disgusting, their ideas must be disgusting too. Jews are also masters of the science of taboo. Jews know how to destroy old taboos and create new ones. Old taboos — ones Jews don’t like — are mocked and ridiculed by being associated with fat, ugly, dumb, and disgusting people, and new taboos are created by sanctifying certain peoples as saintly, pure-hearted, sacred, and noble. Thus, we have the holy Holocaust Jew and the Magic Negro, especially of the kind-old-soulful voice of Morgan Freeman and the mountain-sized Negro who wuvs a wittle white mouse in GREEN MILE. Thus, it becomes evil to say bad things about Jews and Negroes — and gays — since they’ve been newly anointed and sanctified by the Jew-controlled media. But it’s okay to mock, ridicule, and degrade ‘Muzzies’ and Hindus as a bunch of funny retards. Indeed, the prevalence of so much cognitive dissonance proves that most people — even so-called rational liberals — are not free thinking rational individuals. Consider the fact that 98% of Americans say they would vote for a Jew as president but only 2% said they would vote for a Muslim-American as president. If one is a committed liberal who believes it is wrong to judge people on the basis of race, color, or creed, then he or she should be willing to vote for a Muslim-American as long as his or her ideological views are in line with the Democratic Party. But why are even so many liberals unwilling to vote for a Muslim-American while he or she is willing to vote for a Jew? Because the Jew has been anointed and sanctified by the Jew-controlled media while the Muslim has been depicted as subhuman terrorist scum by Jewish-controlled Hollywood. Sure, there was the thing with 9/11, but Jews played a major role in communism and killed millions of Christian Europeans. American Jews were heavily involved in radical leftism, and many worked to send atomic secrets to the USSR, giving Stalin the ability to blow up the Free World and murder tens of millions; American Jews also aided Castro to power, and that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis — but Jews made a series of Hollywood movies that have Americans shooting nukes first at the USSR. Now, why don’t most American goyim care about all of this? Partly, they don’t know about it since the Jewish-controlled media hide all such facts from them. But even if they did know, the notion of Jew-as-villain is disapproved as ‘antisemitism’ while Jew-as-saint is hailed as wondrous and redemptive. Since everyone’s been conditioned to fear being tagged as an ‘anti-Semite’, they remain mute and dare not speak the truth. In some ways, white Americans are ‘turning Japanese’. They bow down before their Jewish masters and are even willing to figuratively disembowel themselves before the Jew just like samurai bowed down before their masters and were willing to slit their bellies in the name of duty. Now, suppose the polling had shown that 98% of Americans are willing to vote for Muslim but only 2% of Americans are willing to vote for Jews. Would the media have just reported it ‘objectively’ and unemotionally? Of course not. The Jewish-controlled media would have gone all out to accuse America of antisemitism and neo-Nazism. So, the media conditions us that it’s okay to not want to vote for a Muslim but it’s just horrible to even think of not voting for a Jew. Since Jews control the media, they can control the language and the nature of the debate. Jews can say the GOP is the party of ‘angry white males’, but white males cannot say the Democratic Party is that of ‘hideously repugnant Jews’, ‘disgusting criminal black thugs’, ‘degenerate gay radicals’, and ‘parasitic illegal immigrants’. Jewish liberals can accuse white conservatives of being ‘mean and nasty’, but white conservatives cannot say anything bad about Jewish liberals. Obama has to be treated with kid gloves — because it would be ‘racist’ to do otherwise — , but Obama can put on brass knuckles and punch away at his enemies. Welcome to Jew-run America. Our social reality is so messed up that white people now do the opposite of what they’re supposed to be doing. One of the lessons of life is DO NOT POUR GASOLINE ON A FIRE. If something or someone is naturally prone to act in a certain way — especially in a manner that might cause you harm — , by all means don’t encourage it and, if anything, do whatever is necessary to counter-balance the natural inclination. What is the natural inclination of the Negro? The Negro is naturally stronger and more aggressive than whites. The Negro male looks upon the white male as a ‘faggoty’, flabby, soft, dweeby, and wimpy-voiced dork. Though there are bleeks — black geeks — and big strong white guys, the general truth is that the black man can destroy the white man. The Negro not only feels contempt for the ‘slow white boy’ but lusts after the white women. Thus, the Negro wants to whup the white boy’s ass and take his girl, a truth demonstrated by THE BIRTH OF A NATION, one of the most honest movies about racial reality — if not about historical facts — ever made. And on the occasion that white guys might go with black girls, black guys will attack the white boy and whup his ass. If a black guy is with a white girl, even ‘racist’ white guys will be too afraid to say anything about it. Not only will the white boy fear the charge of ‘racism’ but the black fist smashing his face in. But if a black guy sees a white guy with a black woman, he’ll just beat up the ‘faggoty-ass’ white boy for dating a black woman — though surely any white guy blind and stupid enough to date a black ho deserves no sympathy. What is the natural inclination of the black ho? She feels angry that her man be going for white girls. Black girls, so full of themselves, are angry that white girls be prettier; and they be feeling that white girls be ‘stealing’ black women’s sexy styles in ass-shaking and hump-dance to lure away black studs from black ho’s. So, the natural inclination of black women is to hate white girls. Given this reality, does it make sense to ENCOURAGE blacks to act wild, crazy, aggressive, jive-ass, punkass, animalistic, and hostile? Yet, that is just what our culture seems to ‘celebrate’ of the black community. In sports and popular culture, disgusting animalistic blacks are prized as superstars. Liberals yammer about the ‘bad ole days’ of ‘racism’, but at least whites in the past had a better understanding of black nature. White ‘racists’ could see that blacks were more muscular, more impulsive, more aggressive, and more dangerous. So, whites understood that the natural black inclination to beat up whitey, hump white women, and act like apes had to be counter-balanced by justifiable and rational race-ism. Though the old order was socially unequal, white folks must choose between social inequality or biological inequality. There can be no equality with blacks since whites and blacks are intrinsically different. If social inequalities are removed between blacks and whites, you don’t have equality. You have stronger/tougher/more aggressive blacks bullying, robbing, beating up, murdering, and/or raping whites. And you have white women, turned on by muscular Negroes, losing respect for soft ‘faggoty’ white boys and going off with black men. Negro males win by kicking white boy’s ass and getting white pussy. White women win somewhat by having bigger orgasms with bigger, stronger, and studlier Negroes. Black women seem to lose but they win in the long run. Why? Because when a white girl has children with black men, the children will be considered black, and white prettiness will have been passed into the black community. Halle Berry has a white mother, but she considers herself a black woman and is seen as such by all black women; so, in the end, the interracist white female passes her aesthetic gene pool to black womanhood. Black women may not like a white women stealing black men, but what comes out of the white pussy that’s been pummeled by a black cock are mulatto black babies. Boy or girl, the kid will be raised as black. And that white pussy, now belonging to the Negro, is unlikely to produce more white kids, boy and girl. So, when a black guy takes a white woman, he essentially turns her black by turning her pussy into a Negro-producing machine. The mulatto girl that comes out of her pussy will belong to the black community. Thus, white prettiness will have been passed over to blacks. But what do the white male get from this? He has lost his women, his dignity, his pride, his manhood, his everything. Sure, he can pretend he’s a goody goody ‘anti-racist’ and feel he has redeemed himself morally, but he’s just a ‘faggotized’ loser. He’s as pathetic as a dorky Asian guy who’ve lost all the pretty Asian girls to white guys or black guys. Thus, white males are ‘turning Japanese’. The natural inclination of the Negro is to whup the white boy and hump the white girl, but popular/intellectual culture — owned and controlled by Jews — is encouraging Negro males to do so and encouraging white women to go with Negroes. And it’s encouraging white males to ‘celebrate’ this by telling themselves, “gee, how wonderful, we’ve sure come a long way.” Come a long way to what? Your eternal castration and pussification, you stupid ‘faggotized’ white boy? Jews too have their natural inclination. It is to be pushy, hostile, mean, nasty, rabid, virulent, noxious and obnoxious, self-righteous, cunning, devious, hideous, and vengeful. And Jews are also very smart. Given this natural propensity of Jews, the sane thing would be to counter the Jews, watch the Jews, blow the whistle on Jews, inspect Jews at all times, and never ever to trust the Jews. Jews are also naturally resentful. They are resentful because even though they are smart and have the power, they are surrounded by majority goyim. They are resentful because white goyim are better-looking. And culturally and emotionally, Jews like to believe that they know better, they know more, and they are ethically better than everyone else. Given the nature of the Jews over history, gentiles of all kinds were deeply wary of Jews and kept a close watch. Nothing is more natural and healthy than ‘antisemitism’. It is immunity against the Jewish bacillus of subversion, hate, hostility, sneakery, and deviousness. Just look how Jews gained power in America and are using that power to undermine everything great and glorious about White America. What Jews are doing is obvious, but most Americans are blind to Jewish foulness because they’ve come under constant barrage of sounds and imagery controlled by Jewish media. Indeed, the reason why the Jewish propaganda machine works so relentlessly is because Jews know that the mindless Jew-worship among white Americans is UNNATURAL. By nature, White America should wake up and rise up against hideous Jews and whup some butt. The reason why White Americans are so brainwashed is because they’re inundated 24/7 with sound and fury to worship Jews, worship Holocaustianity, worship MLK, feel ‘white guilt’ and ‘white self-loathing’, and etc. The vast majority of Jews can create and make someone like Obama into president, but the only thing that white conservatives feel about Jews is “We Wuv You So Much.” If a Jew spat in the face of a white conservative, the latter would get on his knees and beg, “Can I please suck your dick?” At this point, Jews feel great contempt for this sorryass fallen race of ‘faggoty-ass’ whites. Given the naturally virulent, hateful, and arrogant way of the Jew, white Americans should never trust Jews, always counter and challenge Jewish power, and fight tooth-and-nail when it comes to who gets to decide the destiny of this country. But as with Negroes, white Americans pour gasoline on the fire. By flattering, praising, hugging, obeying, and indeed worshiping Jews, they have made Jews feel even more arrogant, more pushy, more special, more megalomaniac, and more hostile. By encouraging Jews to be as Jewish as possible, Jews are showing their true faces, and HOW UGLY IT IS. The real face of the Jew is that of Sarah Silverman, Howard Stern, Tim Wise, James Toback, Frank Rich, Cass the Ass Sunstein, Peter Beinart, and other filthy Jew motherfuc*ers out of whose mouths come nothing but seething venom against White America. Instead of fighting and countering this power, what do most white conservatives do? They praise Jews for beating up and oppressing Palestinians. Well, if it’s cool for Jews to disenfranchise Palestinians, why wouldn’t it be cool to do the same thing to whites? If whites cheer on the Jews to kick Palestinian ass, I suppose Palestinians can at least find comfort in Jews kicking White America’s ass. How did White Americans become so pathetic? Negroes act like thugs, but white Americans cheer and honor the Negro thug, and so Negroes act even more like thugs. Jews act like weasels, but they are only met with praise and worship, and so why wouldn’t they act like even bigger weasels? It’s like giving more alcohol to an alcoholic, it’s like giving more money and toys to a spoiled child. White America needs to be spanking the Jewish ass and kicking the black ass, but all it does suck the Jewish cock and bends over to be rammed in the ass by some giant Negro dick.) There was also the impact of Darwin whose ideas suggested that the rise and progress of life-forms had nothing to do with cosmic design or blueprint but were the result of random mutations and selective pressures guided by the ruthless ‘logic’ of survivalism. And in the arena of culture, the Age of Reason was shaken by the Age of Romanticism, but Romanticism wasn’t the real enemy to the cult of Reason. Romanticism operated in the fields of arts, music, and expression; and thus, it didn’t threaten the spheres of science and reason, i.e. it may have favored art and imagination over science and reason, but it generally didn’t confuse the former with the latter. Also, despite its fascination with darkness, Romanticism was a cult of beauty(aesthetic hierarchy) and, therefore, less subversive of the Old Order. It didn’t reject beauty but added extra layers of passion and darkness. And the focus shifted from the Passion of Jesus and saints — spiritual passion — to the passion of man/woman; there had been countless images, songs, and themes of love, but it was with romanticism that emotions came to be expressed with rapture. Even so, at the core of Romanticism was a certain mythicism and/or reverence, evinced in the music of Brahms, Berlioz, and Wagner. What distinguished romanticist grandeur from the previous kinds was the element of personal-ism. The grandness of feeling and imagination counted for more than the actual object. Indeed the ‘object’ of grandeur could purely be imaginative, as in the Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’, a poem that has nothing to do with the actual historical figure and everything to do with Coleridge’s opium pipedream inspired by the legendary Mongol. There was greater sexuality in Romanticism but as love warped and wrapped with beauty, tragedy, and other ‘higher’ or ‘deeper’ themes. Modernism, in contrast, was something else. Modernism in art and culture not only rejected the old certitudes of Reason but the overflowing and fusing/unifying agent of emotions found in Romanticism. Romanticism was like a lake or ocean that submerged everything in feeling. Modernism drained the lake and, in doing so, revealed all the junk and clutter on the bottom. There’s a kind of spiritual or mystical romanticism at work in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky. Consider the motif of the water and mist in STALKER. Though the landscape is filled with junk and trash, the various elements of the mist, greenery, and water have a unifying(and even healing) effect, as if everything in the end shall return to the organic harmony of things. Thus, even while Romanticism has been known for bursts of violence and darkness, it always make you feel part of something bigger, something grandly meaningful. The world may be destroyed at the end of Wagner’s opera, but the music pulls you into a kind of Valhallaic glory, and the end of the world becomes part of the grand cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Though Nietzsche is thought of as a philosopher, his ideas would really be nothing without the emotions of an essentially romantic nature. He was a philosopher as visionary prophet. The power of his ideas derive from his overflowing emotions and imagination, from which his ideas are indeed inseparable. If most philosophers calmed, controlled, or repressed their emotions to use reason to come closer to the truth, Nietzsche’s ‘philosophy’ was essentially an intellectualization of the pandora’s box of his emotions.
But modernism was different. It drained the pond. Psychologically speaking, rationalism was like the art/science of sailing ON the surface of the water. Romanticism was like swimming IN the water, feeling the water all around. Modernism was like diving deep into the water, finding and removing the water plug, and then draining the pond. Walking amidst the dry bottom of the pond cluttered so much junk, the experience was initially fascinating but eventually dispiriting and dissatisfying. It was difficult to find beauty or meaning this way. Initially, the lack of (conventional)beauty and meaning was welcome since so many new things were found that offered new possibilities, but all said and done, it just so happened to be the case that people are biologically programmed to seek beauty and meaning of ‘deeper’ nature. The problem with modernism — a lot of it anyway — was that once its initial novelty passed, it just wasn’t all that appealing. The works of the Ancient Greeks, Renaissance, and etc. may be considered ‘old hat’, but we never tire of looking at them, and countless generations will return to them over and over. But once the initial excitement passed away from much of modernist art, what was there? It may be even truer with classical music vs modern(ist) music. This isn’t a criticism of modernist art but merely the recognition — that all honest people must admit — that modernism, given its cult of permanent revolution, was bound to burn out sooner than later. Indeed, even among the creative elites, it has gotten tiresome, which is so many art galleries and museums go for the fusion of ‘serious art’ and popular art. Another problem of modernism has been its thorny contradiction between intensive expertise and rebellion/individuality. Modernism waged a two-front war against both popular expression(for the masses of unwashed dummies) and traditional hierarchy in art. Modern art waged war on the elite but not in the name of the masses. The notion of the ‘avant-garde’ is to be ahead of the time, and that meant a truly great work of modernist art, at the time of its creation, couldn’t be appreciated by the masses. If uneducated and unwashed dummies could understand or like it, how could it be said to be part of the ‘advanced guard’? So, modernist art wasn’t something just anyone could do. It wasn’t popular art and it wasn’t folk art. One needed special training, extensive knowledge, high intelligence, mastery, and expertise to be a true modernist artist. Preferably, one attended an elite art school or, at the very least, was part of an exclusive artistic community patronized by rich people of cultural knowledge and interest. And yet, modernist art also waged war on the notion of art as a passing down of tradition/craft from masters to apprentices, with innovations gradually accumulating over the ages. Traditionally, the ideal was for the apprentice to absorb the expertise of his master as much as possible and then add something of his own, i.e. a new work of art should be 90% traditional and 10% personal; and this held for most of the 19th century. Modernism, in contrast, was impatient for innovation, individualism, and newness; and in a short manner of time, it was as if the new ideal for art was 10% traditional conventions and 90% personal expression. But here was the problem: if the new art had no rules and could be anything, who is to say what is good or bad? If I take a pen and scribble lots of stuff on a piece of paper and call it personal expression, who’s to say it has less value than other examples of personal expression? Also, when everyone is doing his or her own thing, the ‘new’ and ‘different’ become tiresome. Anyone can write Dada poetry. When Godard employed a free/anarchic camera style for BREATHLESS, it was fresh and exciting, but when over a hundred other New Wave directors did the same, it just got boring. In a way, there’s nothing easier than to “create one’s own thing”. Go to any art school, and there are endless examples of canvases with scribbles and scriggles all over. And there are tons of ‘alternative rockers’ who come up with weird songs that may be ‘different’ but dime-a-dozen. It’s easier to write a Patti Smith song than something like “Daydream Believer” or “God Only Knows”. This was why Dada was soon a deadend or dadaend — and this is why modernism, though promising of new freedoms, turned into enclosed communities, cliques, and schools, each with its own rigid set of rules as to what ‘avant-garde art’ should be, and, in a way, it became even less individualistic than traditional art. Though conservatives attack Marcel Duchamp for the Urinal or The Fountain, they are missing the point. In a way, Duchamp was both celebrating and mocking the idea of the new art. He was implying that “if anything can be art, why not say a urinal is art?” He was genuinely provocative. Why were so many people so quick to find it scandalous? Because of its association with pissing. But why should a urinal be lacking in aesthetic value because of what it’s used for?
Anyway, the blanket of reason came to be removed in modern art. And the water of emotions came to be drained. Generally, mankind had grown accustomed to using reason in conscious states and relying on emotions in dreams/reveries/imagination. Thus, a scientist uses reason to figure how things work. And an artist or dreamer explores through the flow of emotions. In that sense, Romanticism respected the borderline between itself and Rationalism. Romanticism wasn’t so much trying to usurp Rationalism as lend emphasis to creativity and emotions as an equally important sphere of human existence. It was with modernism that the barriers between Rationalism and Romanticism broke down, and this process was achieved vertically than horizontally. It wasn’t as if the wall between Reason and Emotions was removed or battered down but as if the water that sustained both were removed. Above-water was consciousness ideally driven by Reason, and under-water was subconsciousness dominated by emotions. One should be rational/intellectual about rational/intellectual things and be irrational/creative about irrational/creative things. What modernism did was turn the gaze of the rational on the irrational. By removing the water, a kind of ‘World Is Psychologically Flat’ dynamic took over the cultural landscape. Notice how Freud wasn’t treating dreams as dreams — the world of the irrational — but as actually warped rational signposts that, when read correctly with the tools of psychology, could be understood no less rationally than any scientific manual. Thus, Freud upended two notions at once. He not only showed that rational consciousness was constantly under the influence of dark irrational forces — and therefore wasn’t all that rational — but also showed that what is considered to be ‘irrational’ and inscrutable is actually marked by signs and symbols that, when decoded, can be easily understood rationally. Dreams aren’t just idle fantasy or weird muses of the sleeping mind but a process driven by the inner-logic of the mind seeking to resolve anxieties and traumas of life.
At any rate, the lack of both logic(the readily discernible kind) and emotionality(the readily felt kind) in modern art was bound to confound a lot of people. We are generally used to things that make sense. Grammar makes sense. Mathematics makes sense. Science makes sense. Narratives in conventional novels make sense. Most movies make sense in terms of plot or character. We can appreciate things that make no (clear)sense if it stirs or moves us emotionally. Music makes no clear sense, but we feel its power; it washes over us; it can be as satisfying as eating or drinking, or maybe taking drugs for some people, which may explain why no artform as been as closely linked to drug use as music. But what are we do to when confronted with something that not only lacks rational ‘sense’ but offers no ‘emotional’ pleasure? We prefer one or the other or even both, which is what we get from movies like CITIZEN KANE, 2001, and VERTIGO, films of great logical construction and emotional power. But many — though not all — works of modern art leave us feeling confounded and lost. Whatever hidden logic or set of rules may be learned or accessed to heighten one’s appreciation of such art, the appeal has been and will always be limited — and indeed most modernists wanted to keep it this way. And the lack of unifying emotions prevents our immersion in the work, just like we can’t dive into a swimming pool without water. It doesn’t matter what the plots of Verdi or Wagner’s operas are; we can go with the flow of emotions expressed through the music. But modern art forces us to think and explore what is before our eyes. Since it doesn’t make immediate sense, we have to probe it for meaning. And since it makes us acutely aware of our thinking about it, the ‘art’ of modern art isn’t only about what is before our eyes but the process happening between the object and ourselves. If a work of art immediately pleases us, we are less likely to think about it — and about our thinking about it — , but if a work confounds us, we are forced to think about it, and thinking-about-it-ness can become the main focus of the appreciation. And in the absence of recognizable emotions to wash over us, what qualifies as ‘emotions’ is a sense of unease, anxiety, confusion, and prickly fascination that is never complete or satisfying — but then it isn’t meant to be.
Perhaps, the art form that was most conducive to modernism was painting, which may be why modernist painters owned 20th century fine art. But modernism was less conducive to other mediums and forms. Language works by vocabulary and grammar. Though grammar can be experimented with, language can never be used as ‘freely’ as colors, textures, and shapes in paintings. Though I haven’t read ULYSSES(I did see the movie) by James Joyce, I did flip through the first pages of FINNEGANS WAKE, and I dare anyone to make sense of it. I’m not knocking it as I don’t understand it, but that kind of literature didn’t own 20th century literary culture. Modernism could also go only so far with architecture, a very expensive enterprise that, however experimental, has to serve some kind of function and has to be accountable to the public. Though Stravinsky, Debussy, and Schoenberg are considered the giants of modernist music, 20th century music was really owned by men like Gershwin, Ellington and other Jazz greats, Rock musicians, Broadway, and even movie music. Though many popular musicians may have been influenced by elements of musical modernism, modern music never gained anything like the respect won by modern painting. The reason for this seems simple enough. Music, by its nature, is just too pleasurable, and most people would rather enjoy and feel the music than think about prickly music that sounds really weird. Even in the world of ‘serious music’, the favorites among the educated tend to be ‘timeless’ classical music than most of modern music. And even among the modern music giants, those bridging the old and the new tended to have greater appeal than those who were committed to the ‘radically’ new. In other words, Richard Strauss — who may or may not qualify as ‘modern’ — looms larger than John Cage. And consider that Prokofiev and Shostakovich, whose modernist experiments were severely curtailed in the USSR, may have produced more lasting works than once-fashionable modernist experimenters of the 50s and 60s. Even serious music scholars today would rather study Bob Dylan, Beatles, Gillespie, Hendrix, or Michel Legrand than modernist composers who specialized in blips, blaps, gronks, and wonks. This isn’t to knock modern music but merely to address the fact that in the minds of many people, that kind of music goes against the very spirit of music as most folks are concerned. One could make a case for sculpture as one of the high points of modernism, but given that so many places have been aesthetically pocked by modernist eyesores made up of broken pieces of metal melded together in the ugliest way possible, I don’t think there’s much love for that either.
But modernism and painting were almost perfect for one another, especially with the advance in the photographic image. If one could perfectly replicate reality with a click of the camera, there was no more need for paintings to be representational. Also, painting is one artform that is, at once, highly elastic in its expressiveness(and experimental potential) and highly cerebral in the appreciative/analytical responses it elicits. A painting doesn’t have to make immediate sense like grammar and words in a novel; it allows us the time to study and ponder it for meanings that may not be immediately apparent. Thus, one can approach a modern painting as something that initially makes no sense but gradually arrive at a point where it seems to hold certain meaning(s). Studying modern painting is like psychoanalyzing creativity itself. The colors, patterns, textures, and shapes are, at once, fluid in encouraging our free-flowing exploration and constant in allowing our careful observation. Painting is the one art-form that can happily and paradoxically make no sense and all the sense. Of course, things like this have a way of getting out of hand.
If initially, the ideal of modern art appreciation was to respect the great provocative artist and pay attention to works DESERVING of the attention, eventually the art of ‘paying the attention’ came to override the art itself, i.e. it came to favor the intellectual, critic, and scholar over the artist and his art. Though modern art provoked some deep thoughts and questions that traditional art had avoided, the modern art world came to favor the thought itself to the work in question. So, if a very clever but deluded critic or scholar came along and said interesting things about what was really a pile of junk, the junk got conflated with the thought itself. Especially with the rise of post-modern-art, the talent that really matters is less creating great art than promoting onself to be noticed by ‘people who matter’ — the elite critics, curators, rich patrons, and etc. As long as one’s ‘art’ — no matter how worthless — is supposedly ‘radical’ enough and receives the attention of ‘leading critics’ who write ‘thought-provoking’ fancy essays in some hip-and-highfalutin journal(read by the cultural elites), then one is ‘in’, and all kinds of doors open up. The reason why art critics love Andy Warhol is because they get to feel the power. Someone like Van Gogh doesn’t need critics to tell us that he’s great, but someone like Warhol would be nothing without his ‘intellectual’ defenders who come up with all sorts of bogus but fancy-pants reasons(that gullible suckers fall for). And it’s also fun for intellectuals to promote the likes of Andy Warhol since such ‘artists’ happen to be part of the ‘cool and hip’ world. Critics may be dorks and geeks, but they want some glamour too, if only by association — this is appeal of Quentin Tarantino, the Warhol of cinema. Intellectualism is easily corrupted because even smart people are driven by vanity, desire, and narcissism. So, they might fall in love with something for reasons that are rather silly or ridiculous, but they have the INTELLECTUAL ability to make their excuses sound smart. It’s like what happens in the movie LOVE AND DEATH IN LONG ISLAND with John Hurt. Hurt’s character is rather like Brian Epstein who ‘discovered’ the Beatles.
Epstein was into classical music and didn’t care for ‘low’ pop culture, but he was a Jewish fruiter, and he fell head-over-heels over John Lennon when he first saw the Beatles on stage. Had it not been for that crush, he wouldn’t have become their manager. Epstein wasn’t a critic or scholar, but he was a highly educated and cultured man. The point is he readily found the rationale and justification to become a manager of a ‘lowly’ rock-n-roll band because he had such homo-hots for Lennon. But, that wasn’t so bad because Beatles did turn out to be a great band, but the situation is truly ridiculous in LOVE AND DEATH IN LONG ISLAND. John Hurt’s character is a literary snob, an old-style intellectual who even disdains modern technology. By accident, he ends up walking into a screening of some stupid American teenage comedy, and he becomes smitten with one of the actors on the screen. He’s so besotted with the fella’s beauty that he later finds all sorts of reasons and excuses — and make all sorts of life adjustments — to justify his obsession ‘intellectually’ and ‘rationally’. Sometimes, he’s fooling himself and he knows it; he’s also trying to meet the actual person by concocting lies. Yet, his mad love for the pretty boy is such that he seems to half-believe in the ‘intellectual’ nonsense he cooks up — it’s like Camille Paglia made more of Mudonna than there really was. Hurt’s character’s intelligence and erudition make even a ridiculous obsession sound like sophisticated, and the pretty boy, upon meeting the man, is greatly flattered and impressed. Anyway, this sort of thing happens with intellectuals all the time, but they mask the silliness with smart talk, and all the suckers fall for it and believe they too must appreciate whatever the intellectual/critic likes because it sounds so intelligent and ‘radical’.
We all know that very smart/educated people can lack for taste and sense, which is why Camille Paglia thinks Mudonna is a great artist and which is why J. Hoberman thinks JEANNE DIELMAN(the worst film of all time) is a masterpiece. What such people have to say about Mudonna or Chantal Akerman is actually more interesting than the ‘artist’, which goes to show that even shit can inspire highfalutin thoughts. Over time, the lesser minds beholden to the so-called ‘leading lights’ of the critical community come to swallow the hogwash, and so, worthless garbage such as JEANNE DIELMAN end up on personal lists of the 10 greatest films of all time. It’s also a way of saying, “I belong to the esteemed club”, a tendency more pronounced among the young and impressionable so eager to impress others that they too are ‘cutting edge’ and ‘ideologically committed’(to the political correctness of lesbian-Jewish-Marxist-decadent-flaky-bitch-ism). It’s amusing that all these individuals who consider themselves to be ‘different’ fall so easily in line with the prevailing orthodoxy: since ‘leading critics’ such as Amy Taubin, J. Hoberman, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Stuart Klawans, and other bunch of radical Jews say JEANNE DIELMAN is a masterpiece, it must be a masterpiece, and that is that. If Hollywood Jews seek to hook the unwashed dumb masses with endless barrages of orgasmic sounds and imagery, academic Jews seek to own the educated class by making them submit to formalistic purity in the service of either radicalism or Jew-centrism. Thus, Jews own the hearts and minds of both the masses and elites. In this sense, JEANNE DIELMAN and SHOAH have something in common. Both movies are long and boring, and in order to ‘appreciate’ them, one has to suppress one’s natural instincts and SUBMIT to them. A sane person wants to bolt from his seat after 30 minutes of JEANNE DIELMAN, but he or she must stay and watch the entire thing if he or she wishes to be part of the ‘intellectual’ and ‘progressive’ crowd. And he or she must try to convince himself or herself with the darndest effort that he or she really got something out of it and was made into a ‘better person’ by having sat through a 3 ½ film by a radical Jewish lesbian Marxist something or the other. A movie can be long and slow and be full of wonders, like ANDREI RUBLEV. One willingly surrenders to genuine greatness. But the fake ‘greatness’ of JEANNE DIELMAN is something one must willfully submit to for everything sane and healthy in one’s psyche and body yells out, “It’s shit.” Same with SHOAH. The Holocaust is a great subject for a film, and SHOAH is not without its moments, but for the most part, it is a pretentious, holy-shmoly, pseudo-profound, and self-aggrandizing dull-fest that almost makes you believe that most Jews in the camps died of boredom. It treats the Holocaust as a new kind of religion, an opportunity for avant-garde-ish formalist experimentalism, and a ‘meditation’ on the profundity of the banality of evil that might be called the boringness of evil. Its refusal to use historical footage and its slow takes are supposed to tell us something about time, memory, loss, and whatnot, but Lanzmann was no Chris Marker, a true artist. So, the result is dull, and even Jews don’t feel like sitting through all 9 hrs. So, the film is more an object of worship than genuine appreciation. Some people claim to admire it to have its ‘profundity’ reflect on them. To like SHOAH means you’re so moral, so wonderful(for going boo hoo for the Jews), so intellectual, so philosophical, so radical(given the film’s experimental formalism), so deep, and etc. Indeed, you can kiss your career goodbye in cultural/intellectual/academic/media spheres if you say you didn’t care for SHOAH. Why, it might even be construed as a form of Holocaust Denial, or Shoah Denial. Pauline Kael, though Jewish, got in a lot of hot water — from Jews and their goy lapdogs — for saying it was boring as hell. Not liking the movie was her greatest sin. Even Kael’s biggest defenders condemn her on that one. She could put down KILLING FIELDS and ELENI, movies about the evils of communism. She could praise movies about robbers who go around laughing and killing innocent people. But how she dare not worship at the altar of SHOAH? So, even if you haven’t seen the film or were only able to sit through only an hour, you must, at cocktail parties with the right sort of people, claim to admire it in hushed breath in the hope of being admired for your morality, spirituality, and intellectuality(as SHOAH’s ‘experimentalism’ won’t make sense to most people). And if find yourself yawning while watching the damn thing, you must try to suppress your yawn as if at a church service. I mean it’d simply be wrong not to worship Jews with total devotion. Saying that you don’t like SHOAH is a bigger sin in intellectual/academic circles than putting down God or Jesus, which might actually be a plus. Secular liberals mock religions but want young people to get on their knees and worship some pompous film — along with saintly gays and their messiah, Obama with the gay halo above his head. Even conservatives got into the act, with George Will calling SHOAH the ‘greatest use of film ever’ or something like that. The problem with a movie like SHOAH is it poses a false question: How could civilized Europe round up and kill so many wonderful and saintly Jews, and why did so many Europeans do nothing about it? It doesn’t ask the other question, which is “what have Jews done so many things to offend, degrade, and subvert the rights and values of gentiles?” Lanzmann himself is a disgusting a**hole Jew. He moans and groans about the Holocaust, but he was, as a friend of Jean-Paul Sartre, a Stalinist in the 1950s. So, it never crossed Lanzmann’s mind that maybe many Europeans hated Jews because so many Jews collaborated in the Soviet mass killing of millions of Christian Slavs. In a way, Hitler turned out to be Jews’ best friend in one of those wicked ironies of history. If it hadn’t been for Hitler’s war on the East, most Slavs would have seen Jews as their main oppressors and enemies. It was only when scum Nazis came invading that Slavs saw radicalized Germans as a bigger threat. If not for Hitler’s wars, most Europeans would have seen Jews as the main threat and rightfully so. The only reason why Jews came to be the object of sympathy was because of Hitler’s madness. Otherwise, Jews would have been the biggest butchers of Europe in the 20th century as Jews played a huge role in communism. Anyway, films like JEANNE DIELMAN and SHOAH are useful as intellectual-control tools of Jewish power. Both were made by Jews and promoted by Jews. Most gentiles will naturally find them boring and/or Jew-centric. To ‘appreciate’ them, gentiles must suppress their natural feelings and submit to Jewish-centrism and Jewish intellectual totalitarianism. Despite the intellectual pedigree of such works, they must really be accepted on the basis of faith. In other words, just like white goyim must suppress their natural instincts for racial tribalism and submit to the Jewish supremacist agenda of globalism, educated white goyim must suppress their natural boredom/irritation with Akerman/Lanzmann and submit to Jewish intellectual supremacism. In this regard, there is something similar between JEANNE DIELMAN and ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand the nut Jewess. Though ideological opposites, Akerman and Rand both roll over us with their never-ending train(s) of thought, and we are to remain lying between the tracks in faithful submission.
Anyway, we were talking about the confusion of Japanese modernists in the new era. Japan, one of the most isolated nations in the world — even from nearby China and Korea — , had been suddenly thrust into the world stage. One of the most rigidly conservative societies underwent some of the most profound changes in a short period of time. So much changed yet so much stayed the same. Even as or especially since the changes were so drastic, there was an intensified invocation of nationalism and traditionalism to maintain the essence of Japanese-ness as a counter to all the uncertainties and anxieties wrought by the changes. Similarly, the rise of Zionism in America precisely at a time when Jews were becoming more assimilated may have been no accident. Jews, becoming ever more generically ‘American’ and universally liberal, needed something powerful to cling to maintain their Jewishness; since Jewish religion lost its hold on Jews, the most educated people in the world, the sources of Jewish identity/pride/rage became Zionism and the Holocaust, which also gained greater currency in the 60s.
Similarly, black nationalist ideology took off just when blacks were becoming more accepted into American society and life. Blacks wanted to become integrated in white America but also feared losing their identity as the result of ‘racial progress’. And notice how political and economic reforms in Turkey have also fueled the rise of neo-Islamism. And there’s been increasing calls for Political Correctness just when the internet and other forms of communication have expanded our choices and freedoms. It’s as if liberals and leftists, fearful of losing their grip on society, are working ever harder to maintain their control through new means. So then, returning to the subject of Japan in the throes of modernization, great changes in the first half of the 20th century meant not only more progress and possibilities but also more anxiety and confusion, i.e. the more Japanese became Westernized, more ‘radically’ they clung to Japanese-ness. With so many changes happening all around, increasing numbers of Japanese began to question what they were all about. Also, the democratization of power worried the elites. With sons of factory workers and farmers gaining more rights as years went by, what could be done to keep the masses in their place? The answer was nationalism, tragically expressed through imperialism that eventually led to a fatal face-off with China, United States, and the USSR. Though Japanese leftists ostensibly sided with the workers and the ‘downtrodden’, one of the major appeals of communism was not so much liberating the workers as controlling them. Just about every would-be communist leader came from the bourgeoisie, and his big dream was to rule over the workers, not be one of them. And there were also conservatives or right-wing elements, especially in Europe, who drifted to Marxism as the last bastion of privilege, which was especially true in the UK. Having lost their empire, businesses, and privileges, the only way the sons and daughters of the rich could maintain their privileged status was by embracing ‘progressive’ or ‘radical’ ideology in universities, spout all the correct words and cliches, be accepted by the new order, and work as managerial/bureaucratic overlords in the service of ‘diversity’ and ‘equality’.
Anyway, some degree of retrenchment was bound to happen for it was simply the way of human nature. Take the story of the Prodigal Son. The son goes off but eventually returns home and is welcomed by the father. The loyal son who stayed at home complains about the forgiveness indulged upon the ‘bad son’, and the father offers a rationale; but there’s something disingenuous about the reasoning. More likely, the father was forgiving — and even admiring — of the errant son because every man has a need to go off into the big world and discover his own truths before coming back. Indeed, only by going through such a process can one’s loyalty truly be tested and given meaning. If one never leaves home and sees the larger world, one isn’t really loyal to one’s place since one’s place is the only world he knows. He stays put because he’s stuck. But if one goes off and consciously decides to return home, then his act of return is a conscious and earned kind of loyalty. Also, boldness is prized in men. The prodigal son may have acted ‘badly’, but he also acted boldly like a man; he ventured off to see the bigger world. The loyal son may have acted ‘goodly’, but maybe his goodness was just cowardice and maybe he stayed close to his pa out of comfort. So, even though the prodigal son acted ‘badly’, he proved himself more the man, and so that could be the reason why the father was especially happy to see him — the Real Man has returned home. In a similar way, the Japanese military authority was forgiving of those Japanese modernists, leftists, and pro-Western types who’d ‘returned home’ and were willing to serve the nation. (For some reason, Japanese military regime took the loyalty of the ex-communists and ex-leftists in good faith whereas leftist regimes that appealed to the return of their national compatriots often held the returnees in great suspicion, and in places like the Soviet Union and Red China, the idealistic/patriotic returnees were essentially handing themselves death sentences or long dark years in labor prisons.) At a certain age, many young people wanna see the big world and break away from the ‘stuffy’ and ‘conventional’ constraints of the world from which they’d sprung. After much venturing around and stumbles, most people reach a point where they either wanna return or settle down and put down roots and start a stable life.
It appears an entire generation of Japanese artists and intellectuals underwent such an experience. Many had been overly enthusiastic about the idealized West of their imagination, but when reality failed to live up to their dreams — and/or when they just grew older and got tired of adventure — , many returned to Japan with disappointment, bitterness, or resignation. And maybe it also had to do with other factors. Most of the Japanese who went abroad were men, and Japanese men tend to be short and scrawny, and they may have felt small in the world of bigger white folks; in time, maybe they got tired of being such midget folks and were happy to be back in Japan where they were on equal physical terms with everyone else. Another factor was the rising power of Japan. If Japan had been a hopeless case, maybe many Japanese abroad might have tried to stay put and start new lives than go back to dinky Japan. But Japan was on the rise, and there was hope for a Japan as a great power. Naturally then, many Japanese wanted to be a part of that rise and play constructive roles in it. We may be witnessing similar patterns among the Chinese. Reading Time or Newsweek magazine in the 80s, one got the impression that humility and curiosity were the main traits of the Chinese. Poor and backward Chinese were eager to learn from the advanced West, appreciative of new knowledge, and etc. The Tiananmen Protests of the 1989 were directed at the government, with countless Chinese in the streets believing that in order for China to become a more prosperous and free nation, it must be more like the West. Since then, many Chinese have made trips to the West, and perhaps many returned to China just as Japanese abroad returned to Japan in the 1930s. Maybe some of these Chinese had bitter experiences in America; maybe they found certain things about America too decadent and crazy. But most of all, hearing about the rapid rise of a new China, maybe many Chinese intellectuals who’d been critical of their own nation and government became more proud and more appreciative, more willing to work with the system to steer China to superpower status than play the roles of sourpuss critics slavishly worshipful of the West. Freedom may have a universal appeal but so do power and pride. If Jews had to choose between democracy & Jewish weakness AND autocracy & Jewish power, what would they choose? Notice how secular Jews are willing to support religious Jews in Israel even though the latter are hostile to secular aspects of Zionist democracy. Why? Because religious Jews have lots of children, and that means Jewish demographic dominance over Arabs. Besides, if your people have power, it means they have more collective freedom to steer the destiny of the world. Similarly, more power for China means China will have a freer hand in world affairs. Some people may be willing to sacrifice a measure of individual freedom for the sake of ‘collective freedom’ on the international level. We can certainly see this shift in Zhang Yimou’s terrible HERO, where a man willingly sacrifices his life for the good of the empire. This is essentially a militaristic kind of thinking: the notion that one’s death/sacrifice isn’t really a loss or an end if one’s truer self is defined as being part of the larger community. Thus, as long as the community survives and thrives, one never dies since one is more than an individual but a unit of the everlasting group. If the group survives, one survives. Something like this was said by the sergeant in FULL METAL JACKET.
This mind-set, of course, also has a religious pedigree, but then religion is, to an extent, the militarization of spirituality. Jesus went through one hell of a boot-camp to earn his stripes from the grand general above. Perhaps in no society was spirituality and militarism fused as in Japan, feudal or modern(at least up to the end of WW II). There was the notion of the Christian Soldier in the West and Islamic Warrior in the Near East. But both the Christian soldier and Islamic Warrior saw themselves as humble servants of God. Whatever blood they spilt, it was in the higher service to the Lord. Thus, fighting was a means than the end of their social ideals and order. And this could be said of communism as well — if we were to recognize(correctly) Marxism as a kind of secular religion. Communists had to be willing to fight — and indeed communism produced some of the most committed and toughest soldiers the world had ever seen — , but the final goal of communism was to create a peaceful workers’ paradise where people would no longer need to fight. In contrast, the Japanese spirituality was inseparable from the ideal of the pure warrior. The samurai wasn’t just a good soldier of God or gods. His cult of violence wasn’t a necessary evil to serve a higher good but the very essence of holiness itself.
Though he pledged obedience to the Emperor who was supposed to be a living god, the will of the Emperor was either opaque or unknown, and indeed the Emperor didn’t have much power(if any) throughout most of Japanese history. Thus, the Emperor was more a symbol than a spiritual authority. He didn’t even have the power of the Pope who himself had to bow down to God. The seat of the Emperor mattered more than the power(or even the figure) of the Emperor. In a way, the Japanese imperial throne was a variation of the Buddhist notion of the body as a vessel of souls. Thus, each Emperor was a bodily vessel through whom the entire spiritual lineage of Emperor-ship flowed. English monarchs each had distinct individualities, and this could be said of Popes too. But ideally, each Japanese emperor has to forsake any notion of individuality and ceremonially maintain himself as the vessel that receives and then passes down the spiritual essence of Emperor-ship. He had to be lofty, above worldly affairs. His mind and soul were too pure to be fouled by mundane matters of the world. He was like the Boy in the Plastic Bubble(of the TV movie with John Travolta). What exactly the Emperor stood for, no one could say. There were no moral teachings centered around the Emperor as there certainly were around Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad. Japanese morality came mainly from Confucian and Buddhist sources. Though ideas embedded in those cultural influences affected the definition of moral authority in Japan — including that of the Emperor — , the Emperor himself(and the throne that symbolized/embodied the whole of Japanese bloodlines back to the beginning) wasn’t directly linked to any value system. Indeed, one of the great tragedies that befell Japan was largely due to involving the Emperor — or his title — too closely with worldly affairs beginning in the late 19th century. In order to legitimize their ‘radical’ modernization program, the reformers needed a potent symbol of Japan, and who better than the Emperor? And so the Imperial Throne became the tool of politics, and Hirohito played a not insignificant role in the dangerous road that led to the Pacific War. Paradoxically, the symbol of the Emperor was very powerful because the Emperor himself wasn’t powerful. The Emperor was, in a way, like the queen bee of the hive. Maintained deep within the domain, he didn’t get to do much or have much freedom to move around, yet everything in Japan was said to be connected to him in one way or another. Though the line of Emperors in the modern(izing) era didn’t have much say in the thrust of Japanese politics, — though historians argue that Hirohito actually supported Japan’s militarist actions that led to WWII, he was more going along with the plans of others than formulating his own, just like puppet-presidents of Jews, George W. Bush and Obama, have been little more than symbols than genuine historical agents — they came to be used as brazen symbols of Japanese aggression. If Emperors of old were almost never seen by the people, let alone by the rest of the world, Emperor Hirohito was filmed and shown in newsreel footage all across the world as the great holy leader of Japan, giving the impression that the militarists were merely obeying his orders. Notice the cult of personality especially around Obama. Jews have turned him into a godlike myth, and in some ways, he’s the most celebrated and worshiped president in American history(at least by his braindead liberal minions), but look closely and there is no there there. Though the Seat of the Presidency has gotten ever more powerful, the individual figure of the President has become weaker than ever because American economy, government, academia, law, and media have become so thoroughly dominated by the globalist-Zionist Jewish cabal. The President can do a lot more than before, BUT the person in the seat of the presidency must follow the dictates of the Jewish handlers and agents who made him. Obama knows that Jews made him president, and Jews, with their vast wealth and media power, can destroy him overnight. He acts like ‘black jesus’ but is just a ‘puppet jesus’ whose strings are pulled by hideous Jews.
Though the individual Japanese Emperor didn’t have much power, the seat of the Emperor-ship became more powerful than ever in the first half of the 20th century. Through most of Japanese history, the Emperor just stayed in Kyoto while military rulers ran the real affairs of the state. And most samurai were loyal to their lords. And most peasants didn’t know anything and simply toiled from morning to night. There was no need for a unified ideology. All that was needed for social order was social hierarchy where those at the top used ruthless means to keep those below in line. And it was under such conditions that militarism became a kind of spiritual essence in Japan. Later to unify into a nation than most other major nations, with civil wars raging on and off for centuries — and with no activist universalist ideology like Christianity to spiritually unite the people — , the only hope for eventual unity was fighting, and the side that was bound to prevail was one with the best and most loyal soldiers. Also, Japanese craftsman created some of the most beautiful weapons in the world, especially the samurai sword, and warriors who pondered such objects must have seen and felt a kind of spiritual kinship with them. It’s difficult to imagine a Germanic barbarian seeing his big crude axe as a spiritual object. There was the spiritual sword of Excalibur in pagan Arthurian legends, but England, like rest of Europe, eventually came under the control of Christianity — and besides, even in the legend, only the King’s sword has the magic. When a Japanese saw, handled, and used his sword, he didn’t just see a weapon. He didn’t just see a work of art. He saw it as the reservoir and projection of his own soul. Thus, for a samurai to lose his sword was like losing his own soul. Of course, the weapon that played a more important role in the unification of Japan was the firearm imported from the West. And even prior to the arrival of Western firearms, a bunch of peasants recruited and trained with lances were a match for any bunch of samurai, but the sword had taken on a mythic quality in the Japanese cultural and spiritual psyche, which is why even during WWII, when the stupid thing was utterly useless in modern warfare, many Japanese carried it as a kind of spiritual talisman. Anyway, in Old Japan, there was no need for much of a national ideology since most people — dirty peasants — humbly bowed their heads and minded their business(because if they didn’t, some samurai might come along and chop their heads off like in SHOGUN where the runty little samurai named Omi decapitates some guy who refuses to bow). But a new Japan, which got rid of the samurai system in order to modernize, needed the pull together the abilities, strengths, and commitment of all Japanese to do ‘great things’. Through most of Japanese history, most things had remained at the local. Even when feudal Japan was unified under the authority in Edo(later Tokyo), the message was “most of you, stay where you are, keep your heads bowed, and mind your business.” This worked fine as long as Japan was willing to be an isolated island nation looking inward, but it wouldn’t do if Japan were to become a world player. Farmers had to move to cities in huge numbers to fill up factories. Vast new modern school systems needed to teach children all over and Japan and choose those with the best minds to run institutions.
Paradoxically, it was in the interest of the samurai caste to get rid of the samurai system. The samurai elites understood that the main resistance to change would come from the samurai caste, and so the simplest way to undermine such resistance would be to get rid of the caste altogether. Thus, many samurai were suddenly without special privileges and ‘rights’. But of course, the elites who were already entrenched in higher seats of power needed not fear the end of samurai privileges since they had political and economic power.
Another paradox is the removal of the military caste in Japan paved the way for a more ferocious kind of militarism. Samurai had been brutal, but they were also cautious in their use of militarism since stoking mass passions could bring about social turmoil that might challenge samurai privileges. Similarly, revolutionary France under Napoleon was far more militaristic than France had been under the rule of noblemen, aka military aristocracy. Noblemen fought battles but were cautious to limit the extent of wars, not only because wars were costly but because wars could bring down their own orders(and who knows what new terrible thing could arise from the rubble). Similarly, the kind of mass brutality unleashed by the populist Nazis was beyond anything attempted by Germany when it had been ruled by the Kaiser and his aristocratic career-militarists. Indeed, WWI was fought by the aristocratic classes in Europe not so much to stoke populist passions but to control them. Throughout the 19th century, European aristocrats and elites(in democratic nations) took notice of the alarming fact that the masses were becoming more restless, aggressive, and demanding. Some of this new aggressiveness was socio-economic, some of it was cultural, and much of it was nationalistic. With the rise of populist presses, the people demanded that the government do something about national pride when such-and-such nation had insulted the honor of their nation. Thus, the European governments got stuck between a rock and a hard place. If the leaders didn’t do enough to satiate the popular anger, they would be seen as weak and fuddy-duddy. But if they played along with those passions, the political heat could start a forest fire like WWI. The old aristocrats were no democrats or peace-lovers, but they had trepidations about all-out wars, not least because of the long shadow of Napoleon throughout the 19th century: The People’s Leader of the Revolution had led massive armies all over Europe, upending the old order everywhere he went; and he would have succeeded too if he hadn’t gone into Russia. Thus, aristocrats favored limited wars — and better yet was the art of diplomacy among fellow aristocrats. Also, as aristocrats cared more for privilege of class than national honor, they were willing to settle conflicts by focusing on small details than obsess over macro-issues of History. They were more into the necessity of manners than the destiny of man. But the fact is united and nationalistic(and sometimes democratic) France and Britain had set the template for the rest of Europe. The power of united Britain and united France seemed to be spreading in Europe and all around the world. This meant that for Germans to have any chance of fending off the Anglo and Franco power, they too had to unite and form a nation. And this germ spread to Italy as well. Achieving this was easier for Prussia and nearby Germanic states as most of them were inhabited by Germanic folks. It was much more difficult for the Austro-Hungarian Empire where German peoples comprised maybe 20% of the overall population, with the rest either tolerating Austrian rule or hating Austrians(and other ‘nationalities’ different from one’s own). But just as Prussia was trying to create a more Germanic Germany, diverse Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russian Empire were trying to define their nationalism by contradictory impulses. Though Pan-Germanism grew rife among Austrians, the Austrian elites still tried to maintain the notion of the greatness of empire made of many cultures. Similarly, though Russians played on Pan-Slavic sentiments, they also told non-Slavic Muslims in Central Asia that they should be proud to be part of the great Russian-ruled order. (Later, Japanese would get stuck in a similar kind of contradiction. On the one hand, militarist Japan was fiercely nationalistic, but it also tried to persuade other Asians that they should be happy and grateful to live in the wonderful Great Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Maybe Americans are having similar problems in the Middle East. We fight Zionist-controlled wars to make the area ‘safer’ for Israel, but we also try to convince all those Arabs and Muslims that it’s really for their own good.) Anyway, the emperors and aristocrats had no idea what they’d unleashed when WWI broke out, but then democratic France and UK were hardly wiser. If France had wisely broken its alliance with Russia, the war might have been limited, with a victorious Germany over Russia within a year. But France decided to fight. And had democratic UK stayed out of the war, Germany might have defeated France in a year or two, and far fewer people would have died. But Brits just had to enter into the fray. And then, stupid Americans entered in 1917 and mucked things up further. Germany, having defeated Russia, would either have beaten France or settled for peace, but American entry ensured the defeat of Germany and all the hell that ensued. I suppose it makes no sense condemning those decisions with the benefit of hindsight. It’s too easy for us, and I’m sure everyone back then thought they were doing the right thing. But one thing for sure, the unleashing of democratic energies led to greater militarization and greater violence — and this also goes for the US, a nation founded through a long a violent war, fighting a horrible civil war in the name of ending slavery, expanding Westward by warring with Mexicans and American Indians, waging one war after another in the name of either spreading democracy around the world or protecting the ‘free world’ from evils such as Nazism and Communism, and even after the Cold War, maintaining a massive military to crush any enemy of the Jews and rattling its saber at Iran, Russia, and China.
If in the old order, the aristocrats had used much of their power to keep the masses in their place, in the new order of free peoples, the elites were fearful of the masses. The less fortunate masses might take to something like communism. Or, even without communism, the new democratic order might do away with aristocratic powers and privileges. Thus, the only way the aristocratic class could legitimize their power in the eyes of the masses was to promote themselves as the proud, tough, and manly executives of national will and pride. But the aristocratic class had not been brought up to play such a role. They’d been raised to hold their noses above the stinking masses, not to deeply inhale the air and exclaim, “Ah, I love the smell of the People!!” The aristocratic rulers of Germany and Russia could be ruthless, but they didn’t know how to be ‘radical’ in a populist way. Communists like Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin knew how to rabidly mobilize the entire nation to push forth with grand schemes to turn the world upside down. Stalin eventually exterminated many of the Russian military class with aristocratic background(even though they had pledged their loyalty to the Revolution). Though Hitler didn’t similarly purge the German military, he disdained the generals with aristocratic background as lacking balls, inspiration, and vision to do truly ‘great things’. The aristocratic generals were conservative and cautious; they were unwilling to gamble everything for the sake of Destiny. They’d been raised in privilege and defined by the manners of their class. In contrast, Hitler had risen from the bottom, from the stink of the streets, from the trenches of WWI, from the gutters of the unemployed. He’d smelled their smell, heard their voices, shared their anger, fumed with their resentments. Since he came from nothing, he had nothing to lose and was willing to gamble everything for everything. He had the ‘vision thing’, no matter how crazy it was. Ironically, the conservative German generals decided to obey Hitler precisely because they were so unlike him. Hitler had big balls(even if he might have only had one testicle)whereas German generals had small balls. They could be tough and disciplined men, but they had little will of their own. They’d been raised to follow, go along, obey, and take orders. Confused by the modern/democratic world, they placed their bets on Hitler who seemed to be a nationalist fighting for German glory and honor.
Indeed, this is why the military can often be the most servile elements of society, and why so many military commanders who are so loyal to Power A can suddenly shift their alliances to Power B. Why was it that so many Russian generals who’d loyally served the Tsar(and then the Provisional Government) switched their alliances to Bolsheviks? Why did so many German generals go with Hitler? Because military men are raised not to think but to obey and follow orders. (And this is why the military can be easily be infiltrated by radicals. When Marxist uprisings failed for the most part in Latin America, the new strategy was for leftists to go into officer training, take over the military and rule as leftist caudillos or military dictators. Hugo Chavez is the most famous example. Because military men are so lacking in ideas and thoughts, they tend to be blind to the subversion all around them. It’s far more difficult for conservatives or rightists to infiltrate leftist or ‘progressive’ institutions since such are defined by ideas and intellect. It’s not easy for right-wing dummies to pretend to be leftist intellectuals and activists. But any fool can put on a uniform and march around with rifles and give and take orders. Even gay radicals can do it in the American military. And so, the military, once a right-wing institution, easily became left-wing ones.)
We are seeing the same kind of dynamic in the US. We like to think of American military men as conservative, gung ho, patriotic, and tough. Yet, look how weakly, meekly, and wimpish-ly the military kowtows to everything foisted upon it. One could argue that this is due to the supremacy of civilian power in America, but that alone doesn’t explain it since much the same happened in other nations without a strong tradition of civilian rule. America’s first president was a military general who disobeyed the authority of the King of Britain. We are told that Benedict Arnold was a traitor, but then, so was George Washington, the military general who turned against his own king. And the Civil War was something of a military rebellion from the South. And Lincoln himself partly ruled as a military dictator to restore the Republic. So, the military element in America wasn’t always so slavish. During the Korean War, General MacArthur disobeyed Truman, and though he was fired, most Americans saw him as a great hero and welcomed him as such while Truman’s approval rating slipped further and further; not only that, Truman was followed by a Republican general, Eisenhower, who was popular for eight long years. So, even though America did have a long history of civilian rule, its military wing maintained its own pride, own cultural domain, and own values. (Jews understood this and have been working to undermine it by racial integration, more women in the military, gays in the military, and more Jew-worship and Wars for Israel for the military.)
Why is it that some military generals have the guts to stand their ground or even rebel while most don’t? Not that rebelling generals are necessarily a good thing, but is it good when military men continue to obey the system even when it’s turning terribly wrong? After all, Hitler and Stalin ruled as civilian leaders. Might it not have been better if Russian generals and German generals forced a coup d’etat against Stalin and Hitler? Even if thousands or tens of thousand might have died in the ensuing violence, might it not have been better for history in the long run and saved many more lives? Indeed, think of the great favor Augusto Pinochet and Chilean generals did for that country when they ousted that Marxist scumbag Salvador Allende, who like Hitler, shot himself in the head. Though a few thousand were killed, Chile was saved from Castroite communism and the economy was revived, and Pinochet had the magnanimity to step down from power and restore democracy. In contrast, Cuba is still run by the communist party, and people still have no freedoms. Funny that liberals who condemn Pinochet and weep over 2,000 dead often make excuses for Castro and rationalize all the killings done by the communist regime. Or, imagine if German generals had acted like Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Franco prevented Spain from falling into the clutches of Spanish Stalinists who surely would have killed millions of people. Furthermore, Franco had enough sense not to get involved in the crazy wars of Mussolini and especially Hitler. If German generals had acted like Franco, they would have ousted Hitler around the same time, and all of Europe could have been spared the madness stemming from the civilian rule of Hitler. White Americans are awful proud of their history of freedom, but they are fooling themselves if they still believe America is a democracy when, in fact, America is a Jewtocracy run by the globalist-Zionist cabal who play fast and loose with the American Constitution.
In America, Jews played it real devious, cunning, and safe. In the Russian Revolution, Jewish communists screamed and declared, WE GOT THE POWER AND THIS IS THE NEW ORDER. And they killed a lot of people right away. But the recent revolution in America has been bloodless, and for that very reason it may be far more dangerous. Because it’s been bloodless — unless we count all the dead whites from black violence and Wars for Israel — , most white Americans think they’re living in the same country of their ancestors. Not so. This is a Zionist-Imperialist state where the hideous Cabal controls all the levers of power. Since they control the media and academia, they control the hearts, minds, eyes, and ears of all Americans. Even so-called educated Americans repeat the same mantras about ‘diversity’, ‘equality’ and blah blah fed to them by Jews who are NOT equal with the rest of us and who push ‘diversity’ only to play divide-and-rule among the goyim. If white Americans had any guts and values, and if American military men had any balls, there would be a second American Revolution at this moment led by a new George Washington, a rebellious military man. Why should white Americans obey elite institutions dominated and manipulated by a cabal of jackals whose people make up only 2% of the population? What are white Americans thinking when they wet their pants over Obama, the product of some vile black African and a mudshark who acted as a skank-slut whore to the black communist pervert Frank Marshall? Though it’s been a gradual, invisible, and bloodless revolution whereby Jews took total control of America, most stupid white Americans still think they’re working, living, sleeping, and waking up in the same country.
(It used to be that Americans like to see themselves as REFORMING and REVISING themselves. Crucial to such ideal was the importance of REMEMBERING their history and heritage. Thus, America changed but as part of a continuum. Jews came along and replaced the ideal of reform/revision with RE-INVENTION. So, we are constantly told that Americans just love to REINVENT THEMSELVES, in effect by REJECTING their past altogether. But are white Americans really reinventing themselves on their own, or are they being reinvented via the manipulation of Jews who control the academia, media, and government? Did Americans one day wake up and decide to reinvent themselves to be a bunch of ‘gay marriage’-pushing sheeple, or were they manipulated to be that way and then also manipulated to believe that they chose to do so on their own? Jews not only manipulate our minds but make us believe we did it on our own. Cass the Ass Sunstein call it ‘nudging’. Jews nudge us in so many subtle and devious ways that the sum effect may make us believe that we arrived at certain conclusions on our own. We are putty in the hands of the Jews. In a way, what Jews do to us is rather like what Mark Antony does to the masses in JULIUS CAESAR. He begins by cursing Caesar and praising the men who killed him. The crowd is with him and totally agree. But gradually, Antony makes Caesar seem like a tragic hero and makes the conspirators seem like traitorous scoundrels. He does it so subtly that the very crowd that had been for the conspirators end up calling for their death. The crucial thing is the crowd think they came to that conclusion on their own though they’d been nudged that way by Mark Antony. Shakespeare thought like a Jew, especially as a member of the merchant class acting as a member of the creative class working to entertain the noble class; he slipped in and out of three or more realms. Jews operate like Mark Antony. They ‘antonize’ us. So, the very Americans who’d been ‘virulently’ against ‘gay marriage found themselves rabidly for ‘gay marriage’. And the insipid fools think they came to the conclusion on their own. And it won’t be long before most conservatives become as pro-gay as they’re pro-Zionist. To be sure, conservatives don’t really need much help in their dumbness and stupidity. Though called ‘conservatives’, American conservatives should really be called ‘amnesiacs’ as most of them care about nothing but the symbols of immediate comfort like country music, guns, and Nascar. With such lack of respect and reverence for their past, it’s no wonder that Jews have such an easy time REINVENTING America.) But US is not the only nation taken over by Jews. Britain’s main historian is the hideous Jew Simon Schama, a main supporter of Obama — the darling of globalist Jews everywhere — , and he says he loves America for ‘remaking itself’. What he really means is that he loves the fact that America has been remade from white-ruled-and-dominated society to a Jewish-dominated one. Jews have employed the mantra of CHANGE in their promotion of Obama, but by ‘change’, they don’t just mean change of parties in the White House. They mean the fundamental change whereby white Americans are continuously denuded of their power. If Jews really love all forms of ‘change’, do you think they would welcome the kind of change that leads to less Jewish power on Wall Street, less Jewish power in the media, less Jewish power in Hollywood, less Jewish power in law, and etc? No, the kind of change that Jews welcome is less power for whites and MORE POWER for Jews. Jews don’t like change for change’s sake. That is only for dumb white suckers who cheer for Clinton when he says it’s golly gee great for America to go from a white majority nation to a white minority one. Can you imagine any Jew cheering the prospect of Israel going from a Jewish majority state to a gentile majority state? Can you imagine Jews cheering on the prospect of Mormons taking power from Jews in Hollywood? Can you imagine Jews welcoming porn being dominated by Mexicans and using Jewish women as cumbuckets of goy men? Can you imagine Jews welcoming Arab-Americans becoming as powerful as Jewish Americans?
Jews learned from history. Radical revolutions of the kind that happened in Russia tend to be too traumatic and may eventually boomerang back to the Jews. If you drop a frog into hot water, it may leap out at you and smack you in the face. But if you slowly raise the temperature, the frog becomes gradually dissipated and cooks in the pot. Jews once gave the world figures like Trotsky. Now, it gives us guys like Cass the Ass Sunstein who’s perfected the ideological science of Nudging or Nudgology. Of course, Jews being what they are — pushy, obnoxious, and abrasive — , they cannot always hold back their vileness and hideousness. So, John Judis of the New Republic(aka Jew Republic) surmised that the victory of Obama in 2008 signaled a PERMANENT restructuring of American politics whereby the GOP was doomed for good. And Frank Rich of the New York Times(aka Jew York Times) was giddy with joy when he wrote a column saying that given the demographic changes(engineered by filthy Jews), White America couldn’t take the country back. And Charles Blow, the House Negro at Jew York Times reiterated the same theme in his token Negro column; but then, when it comes to ideas, Jews lead and goyim follow. And of course, Tim Wise pretty much spat on the faces of the ‘greatest generation’ when he rejoiced the prospect of the fading of White America. Let me say this: Hitler was a scumbag and deserved what he got, and thank heavens that Nazi Germany lost(if only to spare Slavs from Nazi murderousness), BUT not a single American life should have been sacrificed in fighting Hitler for the simple fact that no decent white American should ever die for a Jew. When we look at Jewish behavior in America — Woody Allen, Tim Wise, Larry David, Sarah Silverman, Howard Stern, Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Noam Chomsky, Amy Taubin, Elena Kagan, Steven Spielberg, and so many others — all around us, what sane person would want to lay down his life or his son’s life to save such a vile people? I mean Jews are stinking disgusting. No, the Holocaust was evil, and we shouldn’t be making excuses for any regime that carries out such a thing, but what is the point of sacrificing your own people to save a people such as the Jews? (One thing we all need to know about Jews is they have no sense of limits, especially after they stopped believing in God. This is where Jews are different from Wasps. Though the British once tried to and did rule much of the world, the British always had a sense of moderation, restraint, and sense of limits — and burying the hatchet. Thus, the Brits decided to divide the world between themselves and the French. The British respected the power of Russia across Eurasia. The British came to terms with the independence of America even though there had been a long and bitter war. And even in their control of other peoples, the British never went for total control. British allowed the subject peoples in Africa, Asia, and Near East to maintain their own cultures and social systems. British wanted to rule over much of the world but didn’t want to control everything in the world or to convert everyone and everything to the British way. The British also came to respect the power of Japan in the East; and even though the Spanish Empire had long been in decline, the British, for the most part, didn’t make moves on Spanish holdings. As powerful and ambitious as they were, the Brits were also restrained by a kind of gentleman culture. American Wasps could be said to have been more aggressive and ambitious, but they too had a sense of limits. Indeed, their form of discrimination against non-whites wasn’t so much to control them as to leave them alone so that they would leave whites alone. Anglo-Americans put Indians in reservations so that Indians would do their own thing while whites would do their own thing. Also, even though the white man initially depicted the red men as savages, once the dust settled and the white man won, the white man showed respect to Indians as noble warriors who’d fought for their land and culture. Whites were willing to let bygones be bygones. And though US whupped Japan and Germany real bad, once the war was over, Anglo-Americans wanted to bury the hatchet and start anew as allies in peace. Indeed, German-bashing was revived as an American sport as Jews gained greater control over the media, whereupon the entire German nation was portrayed as a race of mass-murderers while Jews were depicted as eternally innocent angels. And segregation in the South had the same purpose, that of limits. For the most part, whites didn’t much care what the Negroes be doing as long as Negroes didn’t act too crazy. As long as Negroes did their Negroish things in their part of town, it was no business to whites. Anyway, once whites gained sufficient power and wealth, they began to feel that they had enough, and it was time for them to make amends, be good folks, be gentlemanly, be fair, and etc. And because Jews had suffered so badly in WWII, American Wasps figured they should be extra nice to Jews. And American Wasps thought that Jews, upon gaining great power and wealth in America, would take their cue from American Wasps and start thinking in terms of limits too. But this is what Wasps totally misunderstood about Jews. Jews have no sense of limits in whatever they do. Remember that the Jewish God is a ‘jealous’ God. He has to be the one and only God, the all-powerful God, the perfect God. This Jewish God was the projection of the Jewish ego. If at least the Jewish God had served as a collective lid on the Jewish ego — no matter how smart, brilliant, or knowledgeable a Jew may be, he was deemed to be nothing compared to the almighty God — , once the Jewish God died in the hearts of the Jews, every would-be-great-Jew began to erect himself or herself as the fountain of all truth and knowledge, and as such, deserving of all the power and/or wealth. Thus, the Nietzschean notion of ‘God is dead’ really — and ironically — had the greatest impact on the Jewish community. Even when Jews took up ‘egalitarian’ ideologies, they were trying to be the superior men or ‘supermen’ who’d cracked the real truths of history. Thus, Marx saw himself as the god of history. Noam Chomsky may be a leftist, but he is above all an egomaniacal ‘superman’ of supposed highest intellect and morality. The secular Jew is more dangerous than the secular Christian. The secular Jew wants to be god in a world without God. The secular Christian, in contrast, wants to be the good servant or good Son of God. Jewish God may be good and moral, but He is also about Great Power. He is ‘jealous’ and seeks to dominate all. The Christian God as manifested through Jesus as a re-conceptualized God as serving the needs of man. Though Jesus was the Son of God, He chose to die for mankind. So, the ‘power element’ is less important in Christianity. Indeed, God, in His highest manifestation, chose to suppress His power and suffer in the name of the higher good. And in the end, such mentality came to define Wasp power. Wasps, for a time, became the gods of history. British Anglos and American Wasps — along with Canadians and Australians — had unbelievable amount of power all over the world. But then, just as almighty God descended to the world of man as the Son of God to live and die for the sake of man, the once almighty Anglos and Anglo-Americans began to think they should care less about power and care more about the greater/higher good for all mankind. Instead of going from great power to greater power, they began to think “We have enough power, and so we should use our power to do good.” And this is when Jews began to gain on Anglo dominance for the Jew has no sense of limits. Take the old man, Oliver Barrett Sr, in LOVE STORY. He’s a very rich guy, but he almost feels sorry for being so rich — and his son is even more uneasy with wealth and prestige. Though he asks his son to put off marrying Jenny Cavilleri, he’s not too proud of it and even tries to put in the nicest way possible. He doesn’t tell his son, “Don’t marry the dago greaseball whore.” Now, Italian-Americans do talk that way. Look how the Corleones talk about Jews and blacks in THE GODFATHER and look how the ‘wop guinea goomba’ hoodlums talk in GOODFELLAS. They are always talking about ‘kikes’, ‘niggers’, ‘faggots’, and ‘micks’. And when they have some hankering for Chinese food, they say, “let’s go to the chinks.” Of course, redneck Anglos do talk like that, but once Wasps became rich and classy, they tried ever so hard to be dignified and gentlemanly about stuff. Even in their prejudice, they tried to be ‘nice’ and ‘accommodating’, which made them come across as both more pleasant and more hypocritical. Anyway, it’s like the Barretts feel they’ve made enough money and have enough prestige, and they shouldn’t be looking for more but really should be doing stuff to win respect and trust. LOVE STORY was written by Erich Segal the Jew, and it’s a rather sneaky work for it serves as critique, celebration, and idealization of wasp elite life. As critique, it points to the ‘old money’ prejudice of the wasp elite. As celebration, it shows that the Barretts are a rather decent sort. The son is socially liberal and even the father isn’t proud of his prejudices and full of compassion for his son at the end. In the novel, the son even cries in his father’s arms. As idealization, it seems to say, THIS is how Wasp elites should act: they should stop thinking of more money and power and instead, think of using their wealth to do ‘good work’ — so that while Wasps are wasting their energies on trying to be good and fair, Jews will gain more wealth and more power. Anyway, once Wasps gained great power and wealth, they felt they had enough and didn’t think they needed any more. They thought they should make do with what they have or they should work to make the world a better place; or they should just take it easy and slowly fade away, like William F. Buckley Jr. and his dorky son — though, technically, the Buckleys are Catholics. METROPOLITAN by Whit Stillman is a good movie, but you don’t get any sense that those Wasps will amount to anything. They got privilege and money, but they don’t have the iron balls or the cunt venom to strike at the world for more power. But Jews are different. They have a limitless supply of iron balls and cunt venom. And this Jewish lack of limits and their hunger for total power and control don’t necessarily have to be economic or political. Even intellectual Jews seek the knowledge of EVERYTHING. Thus, Karl Marx wasn’t content to be just another social philosopher but had to be THE social philosopher whose ideas would not only explain all of past history but would guide all of future history. And Freud wasn’t just content to be a psychologist but THE psychologist who’d figured out the true nature of the human mind and its connections to the human body, especially the genitalia, and all of society. And Betty Friedan, unlike previous feminists, made herself out to be THE liberator of womanhood, which is why so many women who’d come under Jewish mind-control believe that before Friedan arrived on the scene and liberated sisterhood, all women had been nothing but slaves. She is their god. And Jewish-run Hollywood is never satisfied with its dominance of world movie markets. It has to win more and more market-share, indeed monopolize just about everything. Even Jewish liberals of Hollywood who are ideologically on the side of ‘diversity’ want Hollywood movies to gain even greater foothold in foreign countries and push out domestic films. Shakespeare understood the nature of the Jew and dramatized it in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. He’s been called an ‘anti-Semite’ for that play, but judging by Harold Bloom’s limitless praise for Shakespeare, I get a sense that some Jews — perhaps many Jews — privately speculate that Shakespeare was really a Jew. Possibly, only a Jew could understand a Jew so well. Most ‘anti-Semites’ judge and condemn the Jew from the outside, but in MERCHANT OF VENICE — at least from the movie as I haven’t read the play — we get a feel for the Jew from the inside. How could Shakespeare have understood the dark soul of the Jew so well unless he was a Jew himself? Perhaps a self-loathing Jew, but maybe he understood the Jewish heart because he had one buried within himself. Or maybe THE MERCHANT OF VENICE isn’t as ‘antisemitic’ as it is semito-vengeful. Though Shylock may come across as the villain, there is a kind of dark satisfaction at the moment of his victory. Through his cunning, determination, patience, and will, he has found a way to win totally. And in a way, couldn’t one say Shakespeare stole the hearts of so many Britons through his creative cunning and force of will? An artist is a merchant of dreams, and in that sense Shakespeare was the Spielberg of his age. Some Jews connect the dots between Shakespeare and Freud. Though Harold Bloom has never said — to my knowledge anyway — Shakespeare was Jewish, his argument that Shakespeare pretty much delved and explored what Freud later intellectualized seems to indicate a connection between the mind-sets of Shakespeare and Freud. If Freud is considered to have been an archetypally Jewish thinker, then it logically follows that Shakespeare too might have been Jewish since his thought processes on human psychology was so Jewishy. And given Shakespeare’s high intelligence, maybe he was indeed Jewish. Of course, most Jews prefer not to say outright that Shakespeare was Jewish since it would sound arrogant and jingoistic, as if Jews are best at everything. Anyway, the Jew has no sense of limits. The Jew is a ‘jealous’ man as the Jewish God is a ‘jealous’ God. The Jew must either have everything, know everything, control everything, judge everything, con and fool everyone, and/or own everyone. Thus, Jews feel a need to control finance, media, law, entertainment, sports, government, sex, morality, and etc. Even Christian Churches have essentially been converted to places of Jewish power and the worship of the Jew. Mainline Churches basically push Jewish social agendas like ‘gay marriage’, ‘interracism’, and ‘open borders’. And Evangelical Churches essentially worship Zionism, and Evangelicals raise their children to worship Israel/Jews more than Jesus and to go fight, kill, and die in Wars for Israel. But it’s not enough for Jews to hog and monopolize wealth and power. They must also hog and monopolize ‘powerlessness’, and so through the cult of Holocaustianity, Jews would have all of mankind believe that Jews are the eternally powerless victims in need of compassion, love, and protection. Even though Jews viciously beat up on Palestinians, we are supposed to save Jews who have tanks, Apache helicopters, and over 100 illegal nuclear warhead from Palestinian children whose bodies are covered with bruises from the rifle butts of Israeli soldiers. Now, some people might say that since many Jews are liberal and socially active, they care more about making the world into a better place than about power and wealth — just as ‘progressive’ wasps do — , but only suckers would fall for such delusion. When Wasps oppose the evils/excesses of power and wealth in order to create a ‘better world’, they are often attacking their own power and privilege. Wasps beat up on wasps in the cause of ‘progress’. In contrast, most Jewish liberals do NOT condemn Jewish power, wealth, and privilege even though Jewish power is the most powerful power in America — and by extension, the world. When Jews condemn power and privilege, they mean WHITE GENTILE power and privilege. So, if Wall Street commits great evil, we are supposed to blame the mythical ‘1%’ or ‘white male privilege’ when, in fact, Jewish women are far more privileged and powerful on average than most white gentile males. Wasps criticize white power for all the evils in the world. Jews criticize white power — not Jewish power — for all the evils in the world. If wasps and Jews have one thing in common, it is blaming wasps for everything bad and praising Jews for everything good. Thus, Jewish liberalism is also for Jewish power, and thus, it too, is a wing of Jewish supremacism.) But I’ll say this for the Chinese as well. Just look at those vile a**holes who skin dogs alive, boil cats alive, and do all sorts of horrendous things to animals. Suppose space aliens invaded China and decided to kill 6 million Chinese. Do you wanna send your sons to fight and die in a war to save the vile Chinese? Or look at those crazy Muslims in the Middle East. I would never endorse genocide of Muslims, but suppose space aliens decided to kill 6 million Muslims. Should you or your son go over there to fight(and die) to save those crazy Muslims? No, of course not. Well, the same applies to Jews. Jews bitch and whine, “Why didn’t the world do anything when Hitler was killing us?”, to which we should answer, “Why should I risk my life or my son his life to save a bunch of people like you guys who are filled with hideousness, vileness, ugliness, hatefulness, contemptuousness, and drive-me-up-the-wall-ness?” Besides, when all those Tutsis were being killed by Hutus, how many Jews volunteered to go fight on the behalf of Tutsis to end the Rwandan holocaust? Since when were Jews ever willing to lay down their lives to save the lives of non-Jews? If anything, a whole bunch of Jews like Noam Chomsky were making excuses for the mass genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. We should not deny the Holocaust or make light of it, but, especially with the benefit of hindsight, there was no reason for white Americans to sacrifice a single life to save Jews in WWII. To be sure, American entry into the war had less to do with saving Jews, but nevertheless, the point still stands that no white American should feel any obligation to die — or have his son die — so that vile and hideous Jews will live to piss on his grave. That’s what Jews do. If you give up your life to save him, he will spit and piss on your grave. At most, the Jew will think it’s only right that a lowly goy dog should give his/its life so that his/its rightful master, the Jew, should live. When Jews ask, “Why weren’t more white Americans willing to die to save Jews during WWII?”, they don’t mean “why didn’t you see us Jews as equal human beings?” but “why didn’t you see us Jews as SUPERIOR human beings for whom you should have sacrificed your and your son’s lives?” THAT is the nature of the Jew. Some of you might think Steven Spielberg is pro-American because he made SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but don’t be fooled. Spielberg couldn’t care less about the apple-cheeked Ryans of the world. The real hidden message of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was white American goyim should fight white German goyim to SAVE JEWS — the whole thing about is ‘saving Ryan’ is just a red herring. The real message of the movie is “all you goyim should fight and die to save Jews.” So, what is Spielberg’s favor to White America for having fought in WWII to defeat Hitler? He supports Obama who gave you Elena Kagan(who doesn’t believe in the First Amendment) and Sonia Sotomayor(who will decide to uphold discrimination against whites). And also Obama who’d enforce ‘gay marriage’ — aka ‘buttfuc* marriage’ on America. And what do Jews support in Russia, the nation that did most to defeat Hitler? Pussy Riot’s desecration of their Holy Church. It’s bad enough that Jewish communists destroyed in the order of 50,000 churches across the Soviet Union — something most people don’t know about though they know all about how Nazis destroyed Jewish synagogues. It’s bad enough that Jews never faced up to their historical crimes and never apologized. But now, World Jewry supports the desecration of a Russian Holy Site. And they’re using their shills in Russia to push for ‘gay pride parades’ and ‘gay marriage’. This is what Jews to do us. Do you still wanna lay down your life for a Jew? Then, you are worse than a running dog. Surely, even a lowly dog turns against its master when it’s abused enough.
Anyway, the samurai past may have seemed to modern Japanese of the first half of the 20th century as the Old West seemed to Americans of the same period. It was part of a bygone era that was no more, yet direct reminders of the past were still to be found everywhere — and in some ways, the myths were even more potent as a result of nationalist education and propaganda. Similarly, the American West truly became a national myth only in the 20th century, especially with the rise of Western movies. Though the samurai caste was no more, people who had been samurai were still around in the first half of the 20th century. Kurosawa and Yukio Mishima, born of samurai families, would have known older relatives who had once belonged to the caste and enjoyed special privileges. And even though modern Japanese of all stripes could see the advantages of modernization and Westernization, they also felt the loss of something uniquely Japanese, especially since the samurai order/culture hadn’t merely been a social reality but an almost spiritualist principle. A samurai hadn’t merely served his lord or master in the social sense but also in the spiritual sense. If the sword of the samurai was an extension of his soul, and if a samurai and his sword served their lord, then military service had essentially become the spiritual essence of Japan — though only 5% of the Japanese belonged to the samurai caste. Even though most Japanese were not samurai, the principle of sacredness of service came to infect and define all of Japaneseness to some extent. Thus, farmers were expected to serve their samurai masters as dutifully as samurai served their lords. While the European knight served his lords and kings, there was always the sense that there was an higher authority, God, and service to God was higher than service to any man or social order. Though one could make the argument that all samurai ultimately served the living god in the form of the divine Emperor, the monarch of Japan was too ill-defined and vague — and powerless — to stand for any set of higher principles. He was a symbol than a force, and even if there was genuine power in the symbolism, it was controlled by men other than the royal family and imperial Shinto priests.
The Jewish, Christian, and Muslim God doesn’t exist, but He does have genuine power over His followers in the sense that Jews, Christians, and Muslims are raised to appeal directly to Him and feel His presence in their hearts at all times. So, even though there might an elaborate clergy or hierarchy between a Jew/Christian/Muslim and God, it is also believed that God is directly accessible to all — and certain moral values are attributed to Him. Also, the moral tenets of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were profoundly simple. In contrast, the Japanese relationship to their Emperor was a more complicated matter, and in a way, it’s fitting that so many Japanese — especially Kobo Abe — took to the works of Franz Kafka for there was something labyrinthine and insect-like about the Japanese system.
Kafka’s works struck a nerve in the 20th century when old certitudes could no longer be relied upon. If in earlier times, most people had genuinely believed in the almighty, good, and perfect God, modern man was only sure about being unsure. There are all sorts of forces at work in THE TRIAL and THE CASTLE, but the true nature of their power — especially in their mutual cooperation, collusion, confusion, and/or entanglement — remains beyond the reach of clear understanding. Are they good? Are they evil? Are they afraid? Are they confused? Was Joseph K. accused by some grand design or conspiracy, or had the whole thing been just some bureaucratic foul-up? Though Kafka’s nightmare vision has often been compared with the sinister ways of Nazi Germany — not least because Kafka was a socialist Jew — , things were actually more Kafkaesque in the Soviet Union. After all, there was little that was mysterious as to what the Nazis were up to. They boldly stated their hatred of Jews, and Jews living under Nazi rule knew why they were being rounded up and/or killed. Things were stranger in the Soviet Union, a nation premised on equal justice and liberation but where countless people were accused, locked up, and jailed for apparently no reason at all. Rarely were the ‘innocent’ punished under the Nazis — by ‘innocent’, I mean those deemed as such by Nazi authorities. The strange thing about the Soviet Union was that the most ‘innocent’ members of society — those most loyal to the communist party — could end up imprisoned or dead no less than the enemies of the state. Indeed, in some cases, enemies of communism had a better chance of survival in the USSR than those closest to Stalin. It’s a system that devours guilty and ‘innocent’ alike.
In a way, the traditional Japanese system was quasi-Kafkaesque because of the contradictory layers of power and meaning that defined Japanese society. A light may be visible at the end of a long dark tunnel, but one can only see so much inside a twisted and distorted maze; and Japanese cultural spirituality was more like a maze than a tunnel. Japan was profoundly influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism, but both had been filtered through the ‘higher spirituality’ of military service and Emperor worship(which was too vague for categorization). Though Christian West was also ruled by its warrior caste for centuries, the Church was a real social, economic, and moral force in Europe, and it was agreed by all that God was the greatest power in the universe and the teachings/example of Jesus were the highest for all time. A person could be socially or politically wronged in a Christian order, but he or she could find genuine belief in the conviction that he or she was on the side of God. Thus, Joan of Arc was not in a Kafkaesque conundrum. She was in a long dark tunnel, but she could see the light at the end, a light that was meant for her.
Unlike Christianity’s role in the West, the passive nature of Buddhism didn’t counter-balance the Japanese military system. If anything, Buddhism was essentially appropriated by the samurai caste as a mental discipline regimen to create better warriors. Buddhism’s teaching of detachment from worldly desires was distorted in Japan to mean something like, “If your lord orders you to massacre an entire family, do it without feeling or attachment.” Thus, Buddhism took on a nihilist character in Japan, and even in Buddhist monasteries, monks would go around twacking acolytes in meditation with sticks for the hell of it. (It’s no wonder something like the Rape of Nanking eventually happened though, to be sure, by all accounts, Japanese soldiers didn’t run riot in a spirit of detachment but in wild ecstasy. Maybe that was more the Matsuri — meaning festival — aspect of Japan. Matsurism is the Japanese equivalent of Dionysianism. All those rigid and uptight Japanese who’d been working as office drones for 364 days a year suddenly put on loincloths, bare their scrawny asses, wrap baby-bib handkerchiefs around their heads, and make total fools out of themselves in public. They suddenly let themselves go free and wild in a kind of Japanese version of Mardi Gras or Carnaval, which seems rather pointless since Negroes be acting wild all year round.) There was no way the moral contradictions of Japanese society could be resolved — and to an extent, the problem lingers to this day. Whether one agrees with the moral/spiritual tenets or not, some cultures/communities have dominant set of principles in regards to ethics and/or religion. The West had essentially been Christian for over a thousand years. And we know Islam defined the Near East. And we know Confucianism was the prevailing philosophy of China. Now, all societies have been beset with the problems of morality and power, not least because the stated morality and political reality of any society have rarely been in perfect synchronization. We all know of the real history of the Catholic Church, what with all the corruption and crooked popes. And the core moral contradiction of Confucianism has been its dual emphasis on virtue and loyalty. Though Chinese never pushed the notion of blind loyalty to the psychotic levels of the Japanese, there is something wrong about a moral system that says one must be virtuous yet also says inferiors must loyally obey the superiors. Confucianism does urge moral criticism but criticism by the social superior of the social inferior and self-criticism. There’s little room for criticism by the social inferior of the social superior. On the other hand, Confucianism never upheld the notion of ‘might makes right’, and thus, one didn’t need to have vast riches or great power to be a social superior. An educated and virtuous scholar, even if poor and powerless, could be the moral superior to a nobleman, military man, or merchant. So, at least in that sense, there was a genuine moral component to Chinese culture. Also, the Chinese emperor, no matter how great he might be, was never taken to be a god. Unlike the Japanese Emperor who was said to be divine, the most a Chinese emperor could hope for was gaining the Mandate of Heaven, and if he lost that, he could(rightly) be overthrown by those heralding a new order. Of course, many Confucian critics of the unjust system were punished or killed, but in time, some of them were rehabilitated and honored as courageous martyrs in Chinese history. In a similar way, there was the concept of the saint in Western Christian history. A saint could be misunderstood and persecuted by the powers-that-be in his or her time — as Jesus, the Disciples, and early Christians were — , but in time, their goodness and spiritual nobility would be recognized, and even those who’d done them wrong would confess their sins and ask forgiveness from the Lord. Take the case of Joan of Arc, who was tortured and burnt at the stake but then later revered as a saint. And this legacy carries on to this day in the West, with the lionization of the jigger-jiver turd-man Michael King, aka Martin L. King, and inexplicably, AN ENTIRE PEOPLE, the Jews — if the nutjob ‘reverend’ Mhoon came up with the mass marriage, Holocaustianity came up with mass sainthood whereby all Jews forever and ever are to be seen as saints, even if a whole bunch of them wallow in all sorts of nefarious activities like financial rigging, pornography where white women are used as cumbuckets for Negroes, white slavery in Israel, oppression of Palestinians, deracination and slow genocide of the white race, and etc. Anyway, just as Jesus lost in His world but triumphed for All Time, Christian saints are thought to have been misunderstood and persecuted in their own time but eventually recognized for their goodness and sacredness later on. Christianity is based on the notion that the truly good man(or woman) is so pure that he can only be ‘ahead of his time’. And his relative purity or ‘near-perfection’ angers most people who, having become compromised with the ‘real world’, feel morally threatened by someone who lives by a higher credo. The radiance emanating from saints sheds light on the darkness of our ways, and so we want to destroy the saint for exposing our sins. But after having killed him(or her), we begin to feel remorse, especially because he(or she)didn’t put up a fight but accepted his death in the spirit of sacrifice. And this remorse builds into realization — like with Zampano in LA STRADA — , and we confess our sins in having destroyed the good person and turn him(or her) into a mythic saint. (To be sure, there is a self-serving element to this, especially as the threat has been physically removed. By turning the martyr into an official saint, we come to own his memory. By expressing contrition, we flatter ourselves for our redemptive conscience. And by pretending to revere his sacrifice, we steal his radiance and shower it upon ourselves. It’s like what happens in the movie BECKETT where Peter O’Toole’s character indirectly instigates the murder of his saintly friend Beckett but then comes to own Beckett as a kind of official saint. We don’t want saints as living critics but as dead relics.) Though not all saints were pacifist — Joan of Arc was a warrioress — , the ideal saint is someone who doesn’t fight back but suffers the arrows of life with the words of Jesus: “they know not what they do.” The cult of sainthood has become so powerful in the West that we, especially in our democratic age, try to make saints out of just about anyone. The biggest mistake has been the sanctification of the Negro, the most violent and aggressive and the toughest race in the world. That the Negro used to keep his head bowed low is a fact, but it was only because the Negro was afeared of whites, not because they really believed in being humble and saintly. UNCLE TOM’S CABIN is a white fantasy, not Negro reality. It’s a projection of white spirituality onto the Negro. To an extent, this was natural given that Jesus’s sympathies were with the poor, diseased, lowly, downtrodden, oppressed, and etc. So, to someone like Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Negro seemed like the perfect object of her Christian sympathy. The Negro seemed lowly in every way: he had fat lips, nappy hair, black skin, worked as slaves, felt the whip if he got too wild and funky, and etc. The Negro also seemed childlike. But instead of seeing the Negro for what he really was, Stowe — like so many white liberals who came later — projected her own moral and spiritual fantasies onto the wild-ass Negro. Lincoln knew better. He knew slavery was a cancer of America, but he thought the powerfully built and dangerous Negroes should be shipped out of America once they were freed or, otherwise, there would come a time when Negro men would beat up white men and take white women, which is happening all over the Modern West, from London to Paris to Amsterdam to New York to Charleston to Atlanta to Dallas to Los Angeles. In a way, it would have made more sense to put Negroes than American Indians in reservations. While the Red Man had been dangerous with tomahawks and arrows, once he was defeated and put in his place, he was no danger to whites as an average Indian was no tougher or more aggressive than a white man. In contrast, your average Negro male can whup a white boy in no time, flex his muscles to show that he’s built like a naked gorilla, and swing his elephant dong to attract drooling jungle-feverish white chicks. Thus, we are seeing the rapid pussification of the white boy all over the West. Oddly enough, both white liberal males and white conservative males are helpless before this grand racial-sexual assault for opposite reasons. Liberal white males have been castrated by Jews and therefore think it’s ‘cool and hip’ to cheer on the racial-sexual domination of white women by black men. To them, it’s racial justice and payback; it’s also ‘diversity’ in action fitting in the cliche of “we’ve come a long way” and “change”. Since the ‘racist’ past is said to have been evil in every way, EVERYTHING that reverses the past must be good, even if it means white guys getting physically and sexually humiliated, dominated, and assaulted by tougher and meaner Negro males. (Liberal white males also foolishly identify with black males. Because they’re into Jazz, blues, NBA, and interracist porn, white liberal males think they are kinda spiritually black. So, they cheer on black male domination of the white male as if they themselves got some of that black soul. This was true of the rock critic Dave Marsh who mocked the Rolling Stones for being skinny white boys. Now, why would a liberal white geek feel that way? Marsh pretended he was one of the Detroit brothas! But there are beta male white liberals who welcome black male domination since it is the nature of beta males to cower before alpha males. Since blacks are the toughest males, liberal white beta males feel it’s only natural for them to bow their heads before the Negro. Liberalism pretends to be about equality, but there is nothing more ‘racist’ than liberalism.) But white conservatives are helpless before this reality also. Some are simply afraid of the charge of ‘racism’, but there are many white conservative males who cannot the face the truth of their athletic inferiority to the Negro. White male pride, having been forged for many centuries, has a hard time adapting to new realities. It wouldn’t be the first time stupid pride destroyed a great people. Now, some will argue that there is no single kind of ‘athleticism’, and so it’s wrong to say blacks are more athletic. I suppose that’s technically true. Maybe Chinese guys are built in such a way that they do make better ‘walkers’ than other races. But would anyone say the winner of the walking race in the Olympics is as athletic as the winner of the 100 m and 200 m sprints? Maybe it takes special skills to be a thumb wrestler, but would anyone say a thumb-wrestling champion is the equal of Greco-Roman wrestler? Athleticism in sports is an extension of athleticism of nature, and athleticism of nature comes in three main forms: fight, flight, and hunt. Many animals fight for self-preservation, territory, or sex. When faced with tougher animals, most animals take flight. And predators hunt to eat. Flight is about speed and rhythm. Fight is about tenacity, rhythm, speed, and strength; and the attributes necessary for hunting are related to those necessary in fighting. Now, which race has the upperhand when it comes to fight, flight, and hunt? Black race clearly has the upperhand. And any honest person would admit that the reason why whites win stuff like ‘strongman competition’ or weightlifting is because most blacks would rather go into sports that pays a lot of money and offers them access to thousands of white chicks. But too many right-wing white dummies cannot accept the truth, and therefore, something that can be a real game-changer in politics go unheard. White liberal men are only to glad to act like servile dogs before Negro wolves while white conservative men cling to the notion that whites can beat up blacks if somehow both guys were to be tied with ropes to tractors(in the bogus strongman competition).
Anyway, there can’t be anything dumber than turning blacks into saints. True, there is the history of blacks having suffered and having been humiliated in white America, and only a liar would deny that part of history. But blacks didn’t suffer because they were good or noble — any more than Chinese-Americans suffered while building the railroads in the 19th century because they were sacrificial saints so willing to toil-and-sweat and die for the white man. It’s fallacious to confuse victim-hood with sainthood, and indeed, Jews and the Left never make this mistake when it comes to their enemies. Many Germans and Japanese were killed in carpet-bombings and/or nukes in WWII, and they died or suffered horribly. But do Jews or leftists see all those victims as saints? Eugene Terreblanche, the white nationalist leader of South Africa, was brutally tortured and murdered in South Africa, but how did New York Times(aka Jew York Times)spin the story? “The low-life ‘racist’ deserved it.” And how do Jews feel about Palestinians? While some Jews will admit Palestinians have been victims, they deny noble sainthood to Palestinians on the basis for their victim-hood. Jews are careful to contextualize the suffering of any people. So, even if Jews will acknowledge that Palestinians were dealt a bad hand and did suffer as the result of Zionism, Jews will not fallaciously enter into a conclusion that says, “Since Palestinians suffered horribly, that makes them wonderful saints, and therefore, Jews should bow down before them and beg their forgiveness.” No, Jews correctly understand and perceive Palestinians as angry, enraged, hostile, hateful, and viciously antagonistic to Jews. Jews do not see Palestinians as white Afrikaners came to see blacks in South Africa. Afrikaners — at least the liberal ones — seem to think that since blacks were ‘oppressed’, blacks are a bunch of historical saints. No, blacks are a bunch of savages EVEN IF they were wronged by history. Even if blacks had been wronged, they were and shall remain savages. Similarly, even though Palestinians were wronged, they are livid with murderous rage at Jews. If Palestinians could gain power over Jews, I wouldn’t be surprised if 50% of Jews were wiped out in a matter of few weeks. Similarly, we mustn’t think that just because Jews suffered, it means Jews have been saints throughout history. Not all Jews who suffered or were persecuted were bad people — and many were innocent victims of mob violence or institutional oppression — , but most of them were not saints who suffered willingly as did Jesus, the Disciples, and the Christian saints. Even Virgin Anne Frank was no saint, and had her family escaped to the US, she would likely have been a subversive radical spitting on everything associated with White America. Indeed, more than any Christian or Muslim, Jews are raised to feel a strong animus against gentiles, and even Jews who join up on your side are only using you for Jewish interests.
The problem was not White America’s facing up to the wrongs done to Negroes or the West’s facing up to the wrongs done to Jews. Those moral-historical issues needed to be addressed and corrected(at least to the extent that they could be). The problem was in the sanctification of Negroes and Jews, the two most dangerous people to sanctify, indeed two peoples who are least saintlike. The natural way of the Negro is to flex his muscles, shake his or her booty, howl like an ape, threaten and rob, rape and pillage, and act like thugs. And we see this reality all around. But we are helpless to do anything about it because of the sanctification of the Negro in our culture. What is IMDB’s choice of #1 movie of all time? SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, and I’d wager it has a lot to do with the saintly Negro figure played by Morgan Freeman. Dang, he be in jail but he never done meant no harm, and he done paid his dues. And he done have that velvety godlike soulful voice that Morgan Freeman done take out a patent on. Does anyone really think most Negroes in jail are like this? The two most famous black female athletes are the gross and disgusting William Sisters in tennis, but we have movies like THE HELP that serve to perpetuate the image of the suffering noble Negresses under white ‘racist’ power. If anyone thinks black rule is so much better, check cities across America dominated by blacks. Or check Haiti or black Africa. It’s like we’re being attacked by rabid dogs, but we’ve all been brainwashed that the rabid dogs are really cuddly teddy bears. As for Jews, what people are as cunning, hideous, manipulative, hateful, contemptuous, and vicious as the Jews? True, much wrong has been done to the Jewish community, and those problems needed to be addressed. But if any people should come under scrutiny, criticism, inspection, and serious appraisal, it’s the Jewish community for Jews are not only smarter than gentiles but driven by thousands of years of culture that has regarded goyim as filthy animals to be exploited for the interests of Jews, the Chosen People. But the sanctification of Jews would have us believe that Jews are saints for all time, that we should have blind faith in them, and that any criticism of Jewish power amounts to the unforgivable evil of ‘antisemitism’. The Jewish snake is injecting its poison into your vein, but you’ve been brainwashed to think it’s medicine.
While it’s always stupid to sanctify an entire people of any race or ethnicity, it is downright crazy to sanctify a people who may gain power over you in one way or another. Negroes have the natural power to gain physical and sexual power over whites — and even cultural power since our democratic society is so wild about sports, sexuality, and funky music, all of which are dominated by blacks. And Jews have the power to gain intellectual, economic, legal, and political power over you. Sainthood implies someone committed to pacifism and willing to lay down his or her own life(or suffer terribly)for the good of humanity. Are most Jews and blacks like this? Even Michael King, aka Martin L. King, was only a faux-saint created by the Jewish media machine. In real life, he was a thug, lout, and boozer who only acted a role to fool gullible whitey, a Trojan or Brojan Horse used to trick America. He was more satyr than martyr.
There isn’t much harm in sanctifying American Indians or Tibetans. Even if we were to see them as the Children of Nature or the Preservers of Shangri-La, neither American Indians nor Tibetans are gonna have any power over us. American Indians are not stronger or smarter than whites. And Tibetans don’t have the funky power, muscle power, numerical power, economic power, or the intellectual power to pose any threat to the white race. But Jews and blacks are different. Blacks have taken over entire cities and neighborhood blocks with their jungle-jive form of thuggery. And Jews have taken over the media, academia, finance, government, and etc. Jews not only send your children to fight Wars for Israel and return in body-bags but also promote ‘gay pride and identity’ and interracism — mostly black male and white female — in the military. White America used to be a proud America, but it’s now a pussy America. And American military men, who once used to loyally serve White Power America, now cower before their new overlords made up of the alliance of Jews, gays, and blacks. And as I’ve said before, this shouldn’t be all too surprising since military culture instills its officers and soldiers with the values/habits of blind duty and service. Though military rebellions are generally — and rightly — seen as negative, a truly noble military knows when to rise up and take power when civilian rule has become utterly corrupt, conspiratorial, and vile. And indeed, American ‘democracy’ is essentially oligarchic rule by the Jewish cabal, and if the US military had any nobility left, it would do what George Washington did against the King of England. It should do what Pinochet did in Chile, what Franco did in Spain, and what German generals SHOULD HAVE DONE in Germany against Hitler. (German officers eventually attempted a coup against Hitler but it was too little, too late.) It’s no wonder Stalin liquidated so many of the military class. He feared that some of them might actually have the spine and balls to overthrow what was turning into a radical government committed to destroying much of Russian heritage and culture. But instead, the US military has sunk so low that its commanders now bow their heads before some obnoxious Jewish bitch Senator like Barbara Boxer, and NO ONE on the conservative side comes to the side of the officer. The officer, in addressing Boxer as “ma’am” obviously meant it in respect — as “ma’am” is often used in the military — , but Boxer the vile Jewess twisted it around and, putting on a Judge Judy act, made it seem as though the officer had insulted her.
In a way, what has become of the American military is more pathetic than what became of the Japanese military after WWII. True, Japan became a political whore of the US, but Japan still remained in the hands of the Japanese. Japanese military was greatly reduced, but its still run by the Japanese.
The US military is the most powerful in the world, but it is no longer controlled by white Americans but by international Jews like Barbara Boxer and the Wall Street gang. All those white American gentiles died in Wars for Israel for scum Jews like Boxer, but just consider her vile and contemptuous attitude toward white guys in the military and why? For the great crime of referring to her as “ma’am”. Now, you know why Jews have been hated through the ages. What people are this vile, vicious, arrogant, self-righteous, and hateful? Do you want your children to go fight in Wars for Israel and return in body bags for a scumbag like hideous Jewish shit Boxer? What’s really funny is that Boxer says she ‘worked so hard’ to win the title of Senator. Right! The lowlife Jewish bitch bought her way into the senate seat like all the other rich Jews and had it easy all her life, but she acts like she’d been through some great struggle. She ought to look at the dead bodies returned from the Iraq War, aka War for Israel, before spouting off like she’d struggled all her life. She ought to look at what Zionists in Israel have done to the Palestinian community. She ought to look at what Zionist policy did to the lives of Iraqis. She ought to look at the statistics of American soldiers who committed suicide since returning from Iraq. But no, instead the vile Jew scum bitch whines about how the general referred to her as “ma’am” than as ‘senator’. Most Jews think, feel, and act like Boxer. Now, it wasn’t wrong for Boxer to want to be referred to as ‘senator’, and she could have made that request in a dignified manner, but instead in her vile and hostile Jewishness, she made it out like the general willfully insulted her. She projected her own hostility and vileness onto the general. This goes to show that Jewish Persecution Complex and Hysteria are totally out of control and out of order. Yet, these filthy Jews complain about the ‘paranoid’ ways of McCarthy. A Jew sees an ‘evil anti-woman and anti-Jewish conspiracy’ even in a man calling her “ma’am”.
Our universities are filled with this kind of Jewish scum, and then you can understand why there are so many Oleannas all over America. But what’s truly pathetic is the general didn’t even try to explain himself, didn’t even stand his ground and tell the vile bitch that SHE was out of order. He just folded like a pussy and shrunk to the size of a mouse. Jews own Anglo-Americans more than Anglo-American ever owned the Japanese. Anglo-America defeated Japan but had no wish to own Japan. Anglo-America respected Japanese sovereignty. But it’s not enough for Jews to gain great power in the US. They must castrate all white males, turn all white women into mudshark whores, and turn all your children into lobotomized robots of Political Correctness controlled by Jews.
True saints are people who willingly accept defeat in flesh to gain victory in spirit. Whatever defeats blacks and Jews may have suffered in the past, it was never moral or voluntary. They didn’t choose to lose in the name of some higher nobility but simply got whupped because they were no match for either the white man with better technology or white folks working together in greater numbers. While we can address the history of oppression and sympathize with victims in the past, there’s nothing in the history of Jews or blacks to suggest that they ever chose to suffer or sacrifice themselves in the name of higher morality for another people. Never.
In a way, our attitude toward the Chinese is a lot healthier than toward Jews and blacks. We can clearly acknowledge all the horrors suffered by the Chinese due to Western imperialism(especially British sale of opium), Japanese invasions, and the impact of a poisonous Western-Jewish ideology called Marxism. As the result of historical events unleashed by foreign intervention, tens of millions of Chinese perished in the 19th and 20th century. And we all know that American treatment of Chinese was on the nasty side. But, that doesn’t mean Chinese were wonderful saints who’d chosen to suffer nobly. No, they were often nasty in their suffering, and they were looking forward to the day when China can rise again and wreak vengeance on the outside world. Also, much of the problems that befell the Chinese must be blamed on the Chinese themselves who were corrupt, vile, cruel, backward, reactionary, and ridiculous(especially with their funny language and godawful music that can really be said to be ‘chinky’; if the music is the soul of a people, then Chinese music could well have turned Chinese more ‘chinky’ in a foul way. I mean compare Western opera with Peking Opera. Peking Opera is to the ears what cat feces is to the nose. With such foul culture, it’s no wonder Chinese became such a cruel, petty, and vile people. Maybe there is a connection between the horrifying music and demented behavior in the movie FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE by Chen Kaige). Anyway, even as we acknowledge all the suffering experienced by the Chinese — and despite our sympathies for the victims — , we don’t go around feeling that the Chinese are ‘spiritually’ better than us. We just say they were dealt a bad deck of cards for about a century and half. Also, though China did undergo great tragedies in the modern era, they also had much to gain from having been forced to join the world community. For every loss, there has been a gain. Then, our attitude to blacks and Jews should be the same. Blacks and Jews are not saints. Whatever tragedies they suffered in relation to white gentiles, it was not a simple case of evildoers on one side and innocent saints on the other. Also, if blacks and Jews are indeed saints or saint-like, why are both groups so nasty, aggressive, and demanding? Saints don’t act like that; saints don’t complain of victim-hood; if anything, saints willingly embrace victim-hood out of higher morality and have no regrets. Blacks and Jews are in vengeful and demanding mode, not in forgiving and pacifistic mode. (And blacks and Jews, just like the Chinese, gained a lot more than they lost in their relation with the white world. If whites hadn’t brought blacks to be slaves in America, what would blacks have ever amounted to? Nothing. And in which part of the world did Jews achieve the most? Africa, Middle East, Asia, or Europe and America? If there had been no white/Christian West, Jews would have been a bunch of camel jockeys living alongside Arab camel jockeys.) Indeed, even most Christians were never saintlike throughout Western history. While wrapped in the mantle of Christian love and forgiveness, most Christian power-brokers were doing everything in their power to gain more land, more wealth, more advantages vis-a-vis the rest of the world. More often than not, Christian morality and spirituality were used as covers to justify Western hegemony around the world. Genghis Khan’s empire had been founded on naked power, on might-is-right. Christian West intuitively understood that such wouldn’t do if the West were to hold sway for a long time, preferably forever. And so, they used the cult of Christian sainthood and martyrdom to spread their power around the world. In the past, the great saints venerated by the Western Order were those missionaries who’d been killed by native savages and infidels. In the name of those saints, Western imperialists used naked power to subdue non-Western powers. So, sainthood had often been used ‘politically’ by the West. But if the West once used it to boost its own people, nowadays most white folks have chosen to sanctify non-whites and vilify whites in their practice of secular neo-Christianity. It is incredibly stupid and suicidal, especially since blacks feel no sense of responsibility for all the horrors they’ve committed as ugabuga ‘jungle bunny’ savages in Africa and as street thugs & home-invader-rapists in America. Also, keep in mind that blacks gained far more than they lost by having served slaves under whites. Just about all the great achievements of blacks in the past 200 yrs have been due to white influence — even ‘black music’ would be inconceivable without white instruments and influences; and even white slave-owners(at least in America)treated blacks better than blacks treated one another in savage sub-Saharan Africa. And what would Jews be if not for their long relationship with the white goy world? Whatever bad things happened to the Jews in the West, suppose all Jews had been stuck in the Middle East or suppose all Jews had gone off to Africa than to the West. Jews wouldn’t have amounted to much. Anyway, Jews feel no guilt over their long history of practicing slavery and killing millions of Christian Slavs in the name of communism. If we had any sense, we would look upon blacks and Jews the way we look upon Chinese: that is to acknowledge the reality of history but never to conflate the suffering of a people with the nobility of sainthood. Jesus understood this all too well. Though He clearly sympathized with the poor and wretched of society, He never mistook suffering for goodness. The poor and diseased were unfortunate, but that didn’t mean they were necessarily good people. Similarly, our hearts go out to suffering animals in the wild, but we also know that when those animals were in their prime, they killed and brutalized other animals. So, we fret over a cute bear cub that is threatened by a big male bear, but we also know that when the cute cub grows into a big bear, it will act likewise to other little bears. This is what makes the animal world sad and pitiable, but it doesn’t mean the animal world is filled with saints. Though saints suffer, the hope of their suffering is the suggestion that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The saint, by suffering and serving as the higher moral example, may awaken our eyes to something better and higher, and such inspiration may help us end the cycle of violence. Animals don’t have this option since they’re trapped in the instinctive cycles of violence.
But there’s a negative side to everything, and the problem of sainthood is it’s been misapplied to the worst possible peoples. We’ve made Joan of Arc from the likes of Sarah Silverman; we’ve made ‘martyrs’ out of worthless Negroes. So, even though the Jena Six were a bunch of foul louts, the Jewish-controlled media made them out to be poor victims of Red State ‘racism’. The new Red Scare — or redneck scare — is the Jewish hysteria about ‘bigotry’ among rednecks in the South when, in fact, most of the violence and vileness is the other way around, with stronger blacks beating up frightened white boys. And then, think of the ridiculous cult of Trayvon Martin, the monkey-like thug who beat up George Zimmerman who, in self-defense, shot the disgusting piece of turd. But the Jewish-controlled media ran photos of angelic Trayvon and made it like Zimmerman is just some psychopath who’d decided to an angelic black kid ‘armed with only skittles’. Was it with skittles that Trayvon Martin beat the living shit out of Zimmerman? I guess black fists are not weapons according to Jewish/white liberals. I guess when Mike Tyson roamed the streets with a bag of cookies and beat up people, he was just an innocent kid ‘armed with a bag of cookies’.
Anyway, the quasi-Kafkaesque complexities of Old Japan were due to the perversely contradictory nature of its structures of power, a seemingly untenable yet harmonized layering of moralism and amoralism. Buddhism and Confucianism are two profound moral systems that shaped Japanese society. And yet, so much of Japan was essentially animist via Shintoism and militarist via samuraism. If anything, one might say Old Japan sanctified the warrior as a kind of blood saint. (Mishima saw himself as the ‘kamikaze of beauty’.) The samurai was not just a warrior as fighter but warrior as poet, artist, and monk. He didn’t just chop off heads or holler like a barbarian thug. He chopped off heads like a Catholic priest giving communion. He was supposed to do it properly, respectfully, cleanly, and spiritually. The Way of the Samurai or Bushido was a kind of spiritual cult. Samurai had to be willing to give his life at any moment, and death was a constant in his mind, no less than in the minds of a saint. If a saint expected to be killed by sinful folks, a samurai was willing to die while fighting for his lord. Indeed, what a samurai ideally wished for most was to die well. Such warrior cults were, of course, not unique to Japan. After all, Germanic barbarians believed courageous warriors fallen in battle would go to Valhalla. And Muslim warriors believe that giving one’s life in a jihad will open the door to heaven where they might get to bang a lot of hot babes. But Germanic barbarians were a rough bunch. They howled, swilled mead or beer, beat their chests, were hairy all over, and acted like Hulk Hogan. So, even though courageous death in battle led to Valhalla, the whole point was to gain entry to the biggest fraternity in the world to drink more beer and party some more. As for Muslims, the glory was less in fighting and death than in serving Allah. Also, even as Germanic Barbarians and Muslim Warriors were willing to die, they didn’t prefer to die. For many samurai, the right way to die could be more important than the right way to live. Furthermore, the Way of the Samurai was greatly poeticized and ritualized. Samurai couldn’t just act like a bunch of Big Boss Man, nor even like Mr. Saito. They had to be disciplined like the Jesuit priests. They had to meditate on death before chopping heads off or plunging a blade into their bellies in ritual suicide. The nature of the act itself was far more important to the samurai than to a Germanic barbarian or a Muslim Jihadist.
Because of the primacy of samurai cult, one could argue that Confucianism and Buddhism didn’t so much penetrate Japan as a thing of substance than polish Japan as a gloss of style, i.e. Japanese became superficially moral in Confucian or Buddhist terms. And Japan’s rejection of Christianity altogether may have owed to the far greater activist and aggressive moral stance of the Western religion — at least much more aggressive than Confucianism or Buddhism. (Jews, having rejected Christianity as well, may actually admire the Japanese for their allergy to Christian domination. It’s something they can identify with.) Buddhism was demanding but on the self than on society. As such, it could be fashioned to serve the warrior. And Confucianism’s moralism could be reinterpreted to justify the hierarchical order of Japan. But a Christian missionary, even without the gun or sword, was a spiritual warrior as committed as the samurai towards the goal of dominating society. Indeed, one could argue that the Christian spiritual warrior was even more formidable than the samurai for all the Christian needed was a crucifix. A samurai, no matter how devoted to the warrior cult, was nothing without his sword and a master to serve. But a Christian warrior, even without a sword and far from home, was full of fighting spirit and willing to die for God. This was a great kind of power. A Japanese outside Japan was nothing. And a samurai without a sword and master in Japan was nothing. But European missionaries far from home and without guns were still filled with courage and spiritual honor in Japan, and this must have been both admirable and frightening to the elites of Japan, which is why they used the most ruthless methods to root out Christian influence in Japan. During the Tokugawa period, Japan was more isolated and ‘xenophobic’ than even China, and this may have paradoxically owed to Japan’s experience of the West — especially the Portuguese, Spanish, and the Dutch — during the period of the civil wars. Though Japanese warlords eagerly traded with the West to obtain better weapons to gain supremacy over their rivals, they must have also realized that the West was indeed not only very powerful in terms of its technology but in terms of its spirituality. (If China felt safe in its massive size and population against the encroachments of the West — at least until the 19th century — , Japanese were getting nervous as early as the 16th century since theirs was a small island nation.) So, Japanese elites wanted to learn only so much from Western traders so as to gain the upperhand over their rivals, but once their side won, the goal was to close all gates to the outside world since foreign influence was too destabilizing, revolutionary, and threatening. There was also the danger of rivals clans gaining even better technology in the future from foreigners. Furthermore, the established hierarchy might break down if increasing numbers of Japanese became captivated with foreign ideas, values, and objects. But one wonders why Japan felt a need to close itself off from China as well. Possibly, Japan’s great military advances thanks to trade with the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch made them less respectful and reverential toward China. Or perhaps Hideyoshi’s misadventures in trying to conquer Korean and China wised up future Japanese leaders that it was better to mind domestic affairs than be tempted by future dreams of conquering the riches of China that might only lead to more wasteful ventures.
Anyway, Japanese moral system was influenced by a strange mix of profound(and even universal)moral systems, isolationist tribalism, and amoral cult of the warrior. Also, the samurai was not a warrior who stood tall but bowed down at most times. The Mongol order of Genghis Khan was horrifying, but there was ‘moral’ consistency in the only rules being tribalism and might-is-right. Mongols may have been evil, but they were consistently evil. Japanese, in contrast, could be as ruthless and cruel as the Mongols, but their view of social/moral order was also defined by universalist Buddhism and moralist Confucian philosophy. And the samurai believed there was a kind of Tao to being a warrior. The samurai wasn’t so much a spiritualist warrior — in the Western sense of man serving a higher spirit — as an embodiment of the warrior spirit. Since this warrior spirit couldn’t be explained or understood in philosophical terms that made logical sense, it could only be expressed through correct action, and a samurai could never be sure when the moment might arise. But when it arose, everything that had made him what he was came together for its perfect execution. The samurai might kill and win or he might die and lose, but he had to do it just the right way. (This is why the defeats are so humiliating to the clan in the film HARAKIRI or HARA-KIRI. Not only did the warriors of the clan lose the duels but instead of dying honorably, they chose to live.) Thus, in a way, both Miyamoto Musashi and Kojiro — legendary rivals of samurai lore — are winners in the final duel. Miyamoto wins the duel, but as Kojiro fought beautifully and properly, he died poetically as a samurai should. This warrior ‘spirit’ is so important in the culture of the samurai that the title of master swordsman cannot be earned simply by winning tournaments. One could beat everyone and win all the tournaments but still be denied the honor if he is seen to be lacking the ‘essence’ of what makes a real samurai.
There’s a certain fascination to such a cultural mind-set, but it’s also open to all kinds of obfuscatory corruption(even if it operates only at the subconscious level). In the West, at least in practical or physical fields, the ideal has been “let the best man win”. But in the Japanese samurai/kendo tradition, the ‘best’, even in something like swordsmanship, is not determined in clear terms of who is the best fighter or competitor but who happens to best embody the ‘proper spirit’, which, in its enigmatic quasi-Kafkaesque mystique, is never a clear thing(and not only to outsiders but even to insiders, indeed even to those invested with the authority to make the decisions). There is the ideal of sportsmanship in the West, and those who violate that can be disqualified, but the Japanese emphasis on ‘spirit’ is entirely different in meaning. According to the video above, even if you obey all the rules and pass all the requirements — even if you won a whole lot of tournaments — , you may still not be approved for promotion to the higher level if you don’t show the ‘proper spirit’. One can never be sure if the rules are genuinely complex or essentially arbitrary. Yukio Mishima supposedly reached the highest level in kendo, and so we should be skeptical of the whole business. And however sincere the judges may be, it sounds like an elaborate means to maintain their control and authority over the culture via rules no one — even those making decisions — really understand. In STAR WARS, the Jedi order is said to possess this mysterious power called the Force that remains a mystery to everyone outside the order. And even within the order, only a handful of Jedi masters have full understanding of its powers. But the power of the Force could still be quantified by how many heavy objects Jedi warriors can toss through the air. We know Yoda has lots of Force because he can hurl back huge machine parts at the bad guys. But how does one qualify or quantify the ‘spirit’ in kendo? Of course, we can’t, and we are not supposed to for the whole culture has been geared to favor those deemed worthy to be ‘insiders’ while keeping everyone else out. Since only a few made it as ‘insiders’, it’s in their interest to maintain their holy aura and authority by sticking to rules that make no sense except to allow in as few members as possible. If you ask me, it sounds rather bogus. It sounds like a club of faded or second-rate kendo masters with an elaborate means to hog the power and prestige by maintaining a set of criteria where promotion to the uppermost ranks are to be judged by rules only they can understand. The other negative side effect is it promotes the cult of slavishness in the culture at large. Instead of questioning the validity of this rather dubious process of promotion, it seems plenty of Japanese are willing to submit to this ‘exam’ or trial to be considered worthy of entering the higher ranks. If this represents the creme de la crop of Japanese thinking, just what is the nature of meritocracy in Japan?
Now, the idea that a proper warrior mustn’t only be a great fighter but an embodiment of certain virtues isn’t the problem. This is especially true in something like kendo, a form of ‘martial arts’ that didn’t develop merely as an athletic event but as the art of real warriors. So, there is an element of something like chivalry to the whole concept of bushido, of which kendo could be said to be an extension. The problem is with how such ideas can easily be manipulated and take on a ridiculous logic all their own, and this danger exists in all endeavors, religions, ideologies, and what-have-you. It goes from a way of determining quality to demarcating membership. And it could even lead to triviality taking precedence over substance.
And Kurosawa dealt with this problem in SANJURO(sequel to YOJIMBO) where it turns out that a ruffian ronin is a truth-telller and a good guy while a handsome and well-groomed samurai with all the correct expressive formalities is the bad guy. Manners are necessary to a good and well-functioning society, but they can also be used to mask lies, hypocrisies, and injustices of the system. That was the point of the recent Korean movie POETRY where it turns out that the respectable members of the community try to resolve a case involving rape-and-suicide through polite talk and bribery while a seemingly uncouth and gruff police man actually turns out to be a man of true honor. Of course, we must be careful not to fall into the fallacy that manners = hypocrisy AND vulgarity = honesty. There are plenty of rough-talking, trashy, and loutish folks who are a bunch of no-good liars and disgusting tards. Just look at all them horrible Negroes, drunken Mexicans, idiot white trash, dog-eating Chinese, English yobs, and nasty Jews. They may speak their minds and say all sorts of crazy shit, but they are no closer to the truth than sneering snobs who put on fancy airs. Anyway, those who hold the power are always on the lookout to maintain their control and privilege by manipulating the ‘spirit’ and form of the rules and ideals they are supposed to represent. Thus, liberals take pride in standing for freedom and tolerance, but they rig the game so that it has to be their form of ‘freedom’ and ‘tolerance’. So, if James Watson freely and honestly talks about racial differences, that is NOT okay. Only certain forms of freedom expressed with the correct ‘spirit’ is okay. And notice how college entrance requirements have become more bogus in the name of ‘diversity’. So, if a black applicant’s grades and test scores are not competitive with those of white students, the applicant may still be admitted based on his or her essay that expresses the proper ‘spirit’ of ‘diversity’ and ‘overcoming adversity’. Or there may be interviews where the applicant is said to express a certain ‘charisma’, which also cannot be quantified. It’s a kind of voodoo admittance or promotion, and such is also being used to promote more blacks and Hispanics in police and fire departments. Since blacks and Hispanics often don’t score as high as white candidates, new methods of promotion are used whereby the applicants are judged for their ‘spirit’ of whatever-the-powers-that-be-wants-to-see. In our world, if someone as stupid as Sonia Sotomayor feels herself to be a wise Latina over all those white boys, it must be a kind of ‘spiritual’ essence that white folks, in their lack of proper wisdom, just don’t understand.
In a way, it makes sense that Kafka was Jewish, and not only because of his intelligence and neurotic personality. It was because of the great contradiction within Judaism itself and the problems of Jews living in a goy majority world of exponentially increasing contradictions. There is a universality and finality about Christianity that is satisfying and comforting. Granted, the Christian West hardly lived up to the principles of Christianity — and if it had, it would have perished, as it is doing today by mindlessly embracing brotherly love with all of humanity — , but spiritually and philosophically, Christianity is an affirmative faith. The Messiah arrived, spread the Gospel, and it’s up for mankind to accept and spread this Faith. God loves us all, and Jesus died for the good of everyone. Judaism, in contrast, never resolved the conflict between its one and only universal God and its tribal ideology of the Chosen People. And if Jesus thought deeply about the contradictions in Judaism and brought forth a unified vision of spirituality and a life of greater clarity and consistency, there is no clear meaning in Judaism. Though there are the Ten Commandments, there are many more Mosaic Laws, and then there is the Talmud. Christianity is essentially a pamphlet religion. If you read just one Gospel of the New Testament or hear a single sermon, you pretty much get the gist of Christianity, just like one can get the essence of Marxist communism by reading the breezy COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. But there’s no way one can summarize Judaism by fixating on a single Prophet or single story or single teaching or single text. Getting to know Judaism is like trying to get through the entire volume of DAS KAPITAL. Christianity, like THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, makes one feel liberated. Judaism via the Old Testament and Talmud, like DAS KAPITAL, takes you on a meandering labyrinthine journey where it’s easy to get lost. One gets the sense that as much as Marx tried to thread a single logic and argument through his tome, he often got lost himself, which may be why he managed to finish only volume one — while volume two and three were assembled by Engels from leftover material. If the God of Christianity is about love and forgiveness, it’s difficult to say what the God of Judaism is about, which is why the latter is more interesting and why the Jews became more interesting thinkers than Christians. Christians were raised with a religion of faith whereas Jews were raised with a religion to be fathomed. In a way, the homework has already been done for Christians by Jesus who supplied all the answers, and in a way, the New Testament is like a cheat sheet of spirituality. In contrast, making sense of the Old Testament, the history of the Jews, and the Talmud is a daunting task, and there are endless ways of interpreting all the contradictory material in the sacred and intellectual Jewish texts. This is why even crazy rabbis on youtube are more interesting to listen to than stupid Christian preachers.
Rabbis, even when most ridiculous, are always thinking and trying to figure things out whereas Christian preachers talk like they have all the answers fully ripe on their lips and about to burst with the juice of God, Jesus, and Glory Hallelujah. Even so, Jews needed not fall into a truly Kafkaean funk until the modern era for their belief in and awe of God was real, and God provided them with a sense of certainty even if He remained uncertain. It was with the loss of spiritual confidence that Jews began to feel lost in the world(and take up the challenge of forging a new outlook). And as the loss of faith spread across both Jews and Christians, everyone began to feel lost and confused. Formerly divided by religion and faith, newly unbelieving Christians and newly unbelieving Jews found themselves drifting on the same ship of disbelief. Of course, there were lots of new things to believe in — science, arts, ideologies, and etc — , but in a way, those new things threatened to unleash even more confusion, more divisions, and new dangers. (German Christians and German Jews of the 19th century, in some ways, tolerated one another better than modern Germans and modern Jews in the first half of the 20th century. Holocaust wasn’t about Christians killing Jews but about modern ‘Aryans’ killing modern ‘Semites’. At least Christians and Jews shared the same God and the same morally restraining influence of God.) The modern world led to thousands of new doors but each one had a different lock requiring a different key. Thus, more freedom paradoxically led to more barriers; more paths meant more gates. And who were to be the gatekeepers? And were the rules of gate-keeping rational and logical, spiritual and illogical, fair and universal, discriminatory and tribal, arbitrary and absurd? Or were there really no big secrets, and were the fears just paranoid projections of unbalanced minds? Could one become paranoid of one’s own paranoia? Kafka, though a Jew, spoke for everyone in the 20th century because modernity had removed — or was in the process of removing — certainties(scientific, moral, spiritual, cultural, etc) that had served as compasses in the past. One might argue that modernity turned all of us into Jews, but it might be more accurate to say we’ve all been made into faithless Jews.
Possibly, the Japanese were among the people who found themselves in the most Kafkaesque situation. In some ways, one gets the sense that Kafka-ism is more at home and more relevant to Japan than to America. American vibrancy always had a way of uplifting American spirits and simplifying/solving matters. And Americans took to modernity with less trauma than most peoples, especially in the absence of — or at least removed from the influences of — the Old World. (Europeans today may be especially obsessed about being ‘progressive’ because, for so long, America had been the beacon of progress and revolution while most of Europe had been the bastion of tradition and reaction. Thus, a kind of political inferiority complex set in among Europeans, especially since America saved them in both WWI and WWII. Also, since Europe couldn’t beat America in terms of Power — not least because US was one nation while Europe was divided amongst various nations — , Europeans hoped to defeat America in political morality, the means of which was by adopting progressivism even way beyond what Americans practiced. And so, Europe became more leftist/socialist than America. Paradoxically, this development was preferable to the traditional European elites because socialism — as long as it wasn’t radical communism — was less disruptive of the social and cultural order than the creative-destructive dynamic of American style capitalism was. Socialism meant more goodies for the masses and lower orders, but it also meant MORE CONTROL over them as well by the elites. Socialism also meant that the government — controlled by educated elites — would have greater control over the capitalist class that had done most to transform Europe from aristocracy to modernity. And for those with ‘aristocratic’ tastes and manners, it was easier and more dignified to reach elite status through fancy education and government than entrepreneurship and business competition. Because of the cachet of ultra-progressivity, many ‘sophisticated’ Americans love to point out how Europeans are so far ahead of us and how we should try to catch up to their wonderful social-democratic accomplishments. Educated Americans also look to Europe as the place of philosophy, literary culture, and art films as opposed to American culture of fast food, TV, and Hollywood. Yet, if educated Americans wanna make America more like Europe, it seems as though Europeans wanna make Europe more American. Europeans feel that their homogeneous whiteness makes them uncool and lame in music and sports, especially in the absence of Negroes. So, while American elites try to Europeanize America economically, Europeans try to Americanize Europe demographically by bringing in tons of Negroes from Africa and West Indies. Of course, once black Africans come to Europe, they’d rather sing rap than read Racine.) And one could argue that in the second half of the 20th century, Europe arrived at some kind of unified and universally accepted truth, good or bad: democracy, peace, liberalism, Jew worship, socialist ethos, ‘gay rights’, and multiculturalism. Though Japan officially accepted democracy and peace, Japan never made the same kind of total transformation into New Modernity that the West did — and this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing since Japan, despite its demographic problems, has a better chance of surviving as a people and culture than do the politically correct nations of the West that will likely be overrun by Muslims and Negroes(and are controlled by Jewish elites and bankers).
Also, despite all the problems caused by modernity, modernity was part and parcel of Western development and progress. West changed profoundly but as the result of its own logic of historical development. This cannot be said of Japan where the element of modernity, though having profoundly transformed Japan, was always seen as an outside/foreign force. Thus, it hasn’t been as easy for the Japanese to make peace with modernity as has been the case with the West. But then, Japan has serious cultural issues with Asia itself. Most Western peoples are agreed that they are the products of Greco-Latin-Germanic-Slavic-Celtic blood and influences. And though there are contradictions between secular/rational Hellenism and spiritual/moral Hebraism, they share the aspiration for universal truth. Greeks wanted to know the laws governing the universe, and Jews wanted to know the God that ruled the universe. Thus, Jewish and Greco-Roman influences could eventually merge to form the new religion of Christianity. But, things have been much thornier for the Japanese who never had any concept of the ‘universal’. For smaller Asian nations surrounding China, China could be seen as the middle of world civilization, and of course the Chinese flattered themselves with the same notion. So, even though the Chinese too had their powerful sense of uniqueness, their world was big enough to make them feel that they belonged to their own universe and didn’t need any other or even to know any other. Japan was relatively much smaller and, as an island nation at the furthest reach of the Far East, shouldn’t have mattered much at all. Had it been adjoined to China like other Asian nations, the Japanese might have come to see and respect China as the center of all things too. But its geographical separation imbued it with a sense of pride and confidence lacking in other smaller East Asian nations. Yet, this separateness also made for greater paranoia about its weakness. The Thais, Vietnamese, and Koreans would never have dreamt of considering themselves the equal of China. Though Vietnam fought many tough battles with China — and usually came off better — , it still understood that China was the big fish and saw itself as the small fish. Vietnamese never imagined taking over China; they just wanted the China off its back while it moved into Cambodian territory. Japanese, in contrast, developed a ‘great power’ mentality long before modernization, but Japanese must have realized it could never hope to match China in power since the latter was so much bigger. And so, the Japanese sought to strengthen itself as much as possible to maintain its status as a great power — albeit one existing all by itself — , and in order to this, all of society had to be regimented and militarized; and so, feudal Japan became somewhat like Spartan Greece, another state that was both supremely arrogant and supremely xenophobic. Interestingly, while most other Greeks enslaved non-Greeks, Spartans reduced fellow Greeks to a slave ‘race’ known as helots. Similarly, feudal Japan essentially enslaved their own people in order to create an ultra-disciplined state that would be unbreakable from both within and without — that is until Westerners arrived with really big guns. Granted, it was hardly a rarity for a people to ‘oppress’ — by our modern understanding of the term — their own people, and there were plenty of examples of ‘oppression’ all over Asia, Middle East, and Europe in the same period, but Japanese may have taken it to a higher level. This may seem all the stranger since Japan, at least for a long time, was more secure from threat of outside forces than most civilizations. Consider that Japan was just about the only part of East Asia that didn’t come under Mongol rule. And even though Europeans had superior ships and weapons even as early as the 15th century, East Asia was just too far off for the West to dream of conquering as it had with the New World inhabited by either half-naked savages or wobbly civilizations made up of people who had no resistance to Old World diseases. Spanish took over Philippines, but then, Filipinos were a semi-barbaric bunch, not a civilized people. (What the indigenous people of the New World suffered as the result of ‘European’ diseases was a replay of what Africans, Arabs, Europeans, and Asians had already gone through. Huge numbers of peoples in the Old World had been felled by deadly diseases — that sometimes destroyed half or more of the populations — and the survivors developed immunities that then passed down to their descendants. For that reason, though the term ‘genocide’ has been used to describe what happened in the New World due to the arrival of Europeans, a more appropriate term might be germocide or pestilocide — mass deaths from pestilence — , and so, the people of the New World simply underwent a process that had affected the people of the Old World already. In time, the indigenous survivors of the pestilence in the New World became as hardy and resistant to diseases as people in the Old World had become earlier.) Given Japan’s relative safety, why did it become so enclosed, repressive, and rigid? In the case of Britain, the opposite seems to have happened, leading to the emergence of a society generally more liberal and open-minded than most of continental Europe. One reason was probably genetic. Japanese are, by nature, more inhibited, timid, and obedient. East Asians may have evolved under Ice Age pressures even more pronounced and prolonged than what Europeans underwent, and this could have led to a more servile, slavish, rigid, and repressive mind-set. Or maybe the huge size of China made Japan more inward looking. There was no united Europe, and so the Brits often dealt or played with Continental Europeans by forming all sorts of shifting alliances. Sometimes, Brits would ally with Germanic states against France, sometimes with France against Germanic states, sometimes with Germanic states against Russia, sometimes with Russia against Germanic states, etc. But Japan couldn’t play that kind of game with Asia since China was the dominant power; there were far fewer cards to play. And yet, it would be too simple to make geographical isolation the crucial factor in the development of individuality and freedom in Britain and in the stiffening of repression and rigidity in Japan. The great paradox of Britain was it was both more free and more rigid than other European states. In terms of political liberty and philosophy on rights, England was indeed ahead of most European nations. But in terms of manners and propriety, the English were, in many ways, more rigid, repressive, and intolerant than relatively backward Europeans. It would have been more forgivable to be a drunken, ball-scratching lout in Poland, Russia, or Italy than in Britain. In some ways, Anglo freedom/liberty was made possible by the tight controls of so much of human emotions and behavior. Only by restraining the beastly passions in man and in maintaining an orderly society based on manners — where even lowly uneducated types took off their hats and said “aye, guv’nor” to their social superiors — could the elites of England feel confident enough to allow more freedom. Without such system of manners, more freedom could lead to social chaos, thuggery, and loutishness; it could lead to the freedom of animalism, which is a form of oppression by barbaric hordes. Look at black parts of the US. In some ways, they can be said to be the most free, what with men and women having sex like animals and kids cussing all the time and pissing all over and skipping school, and etc. But who feels safe in that kind of society? The freedom of animals leads to the oppression by thuggery, or thugarchy. And it appears that Britain is headed in that direction, what with the rise of yob culture and Negro rap culture. In some ways, postwar Brits were right to examine the hypocrisy at the core of the British concept and practice of freedom/liberty: that it was unequal and founded on social/emotional repressiveness. Yet, reality was as paradoxical as it was hypocritical since the practice of human freedom/liberty must be based on and balanced by values, order, civility, and ideals. Without such proprieties, there’s only animal freedom and the path toward yob-ish or Negro-like thugarchy. Though Brits in the past may gone too far with their repressiveness, British freedom had been dependent on British social form and manners. If freedom is like liquid or gas, it needs a firm vessel to contain it. If the vessel breaks, wild freedom spills out all over, and society ends up with something like the foul Punk culture of the 70s and Negro-led London Riots of 2011. Since ours is the age of demotic vulgarity, the idea of returning to manners and civility of old seems impossible, and so the new vessel designed and pushed by the state is political correctness, but it is no less problematic than earlier ones. If traditional Britain repressed and controlled wild emotions so that people could be free intellectually, literarily, scientifically, and philosophically, the new Britain encourages people to act like wild Negro louts — the craziest mofos there be — but then punishes them when their loutishness inevitably veers into the wrong idea or sentiment. So, you can bark like a mad, rabid dog in modern England but you better not bark at Jews, blacks, and gays. You can be barbaric as possible as long as you don’t offend certain favored groups.
UK today is especially troubled because of its long tradition of Repressive Civility. It worked more or less when the elites believed in their own powers and privilege. They saw themselves as more educated, more sophisticated, more intelligent, more dignified, and more worthy to rule and more worthy of respect. They saw themselves as social exemplars for the rest of society. So, even as they believed in the culture of civility, they were willing to pull out the rod and twack those who got out of line and upset social order. So, if lower classes acted like boors, they were turned into soldiers and made to serve in foreign wars. And if they committed crimes, they were shipped off to Australia to raise sheep or wrestle with crocodiles, eventually giving rise to a hero named Dundee. Thus, British manners were backed up by British manliness. Also, British elites could take pride in themselves as the rulers of the greatest empire the world had ever known. As such overlords, they had the respect not only of the bloody savages and barbarians who looked up to Anglos as god-men but the respect of British masses who, despite their hardships in factories and farms, took great pride in being ruled by such a mighty elite. Even if you were a dirty factory worker, it must have felt good to know that the rulers of your nation ruled the world, and therefore you were also a part of this great empire. But British elites didn’t just take pride in power and wealth but in progress and morality. Brits spearheaded the efforts to end slavery around the world, and thus, their imperial project came to be morally justified and something to celebrate. It seemed like the Brits owned everything: power, influence, wealth, progress, morality, the best ideas. But then, there were trends that would eventually upset the system. As more people of non-aristocratic backgrounds rose up the social ranks during the Age of Industrialization, there was bound to be class resentment. The new members of the elite from non-aristocratic backgrounds often felt themselves to be smarter, more moral, and more able, but the aristocratic classes were still favored over them in many elite institutions and circles. This was especially problematic if the new members of the elite happened to be Jewish. Indeed, the original Liberalism was pro-business and pro-bourgeois, as it was the enterprising business classes that were the forces overturning the old order of aristocratic privileges. And it was the 19th century liberals of Britain who were the most avid supporters of British Imperialism and thought it should be extended even more. Though the new elites wanted entry into the traditional elite order, there was a good deal of bad vibes between the old elites and new elites. The old elites has the breeding and pedigree, but many of them were indeed semi-inbred dummies. The new elites were often smarter and more energetic but lacked the haute or hoity brand — and if one were to look into their ancestry, one might find a bunch of cutthroat sharks like the Struan Clan in NOBLE HOUSE. Recall how the newly rich in TESS — the movie as I haven’t read the book — bought the title of the “d’Urbervilles” to be more respectable. But the changes were happening within the old elites too. While some members tenaciously clung to old privileges, others became distraught and disillusioned as the result of the influence of new ideas — to which many of them were susceptible since they weren’t too bright, just like less intelligent Wasp elites in America so easily fell under the sway of Jewish ideas — or as the result of resentment arising from their loss of power. Since the aristocrats lost the power to the bourgeoisie/capitalist class than to the working class, it was only natural that some people of aristocratic background would ideologically side with the workers against the bourgeoisie — not out of any profound love for the proletariat but out of vengeful feelings toward the class that had done them in. A similar dynamic can be seen in the resurgent elements of the Right in America. American conservatives had been for the wealthy, the rich, and the successful; for the longest time, they were under the impression that America’s elites were patriots on their side against the leftist subversives and foreign elements. But actually, it was the rich who either pushed or allowed globalism, multiculturalism, open borders, and a host of other things that led to the demise of White America. Therefore, the anti-rich feelings of the New Right isn’t necessarily anti-rich per se, but anti-rich-ism as a form of vengeance. Since the rich class undermined and destroyed the white race, some on the New Right wanna do whatever possible to undermine and destroy the rich class. And this goes for the New Right’s hatred for Israel and Zionism too. I personally had no ill feeling toward Jews or Israel. And I can admire much of Zionism. But given what Jews have done to the white race — pushing it to utter shame, decline, and destruction — , it is only right that all white people unite to do everything to hurt Jews. Much of history is about vengeance, and indeed, much of what Jews did has been in the spirit of vengeance. It’s about time whites realized this and do to the Jews what the Jews have done to the white race. Whites must work to destroy Israel and destroy as much of Jewish power and privilege as possible. If Jews use ‘affirmative action’ to favor blacks and non-white Hispanics over white gentiles, and if ‘affirmative action’ is here to stay, then the only logical thing is for whites to call for Jews to be categorized as a separate group and be discriminated against so that less intelligent whites will be favored over Jews who happen to be vastly over-represented in the choicest, most powerful, most influential, and most rewarding elite positions in America. Do to the Jew what the Jew has done to you.
Anyway, the Cult of Civility made the British elites especially defenseless before the New Order of open abrasiveness and historical guilt. Recall that the old British elites were into niceness, manners, and civility but also willing to pull out the whip and put vulgar louts in their place if they got out of line. Such discipline had succeeded so well that the elites eventually came to take their social respect for granted, especially if they happened to live in enclosed privileged communities and hired other men to do the ‘dirty work’ to maintain social order; similarly, the Southern aristocracy in Antebellum South could put on airs of being benevolent and magnanimous because overseers handled the dirty work of keeping the Negroes in their place; and in contemporary America, affluent liberals and moderate conservatives can put on airs of ‘tolerance’ and generosity since they hire other men to police the streets and keep order among the blacks and illegals; affluent liberals also use Hispanics and working class whites as social buffers between themselves and blacks; indeed, if affluent liberals had to police their own cities and deal with thugs and criminals, their air of ethical superiority would dissipate overnight.
Anyway, many of the English elites forgot that English order was founded on violence and repression of loutish behavior among the masses. But, there were still those who hadn’t forgotten the ruthless basis of British civility and didn’t hesitate to use violence to maintain social order. And they felt moral and social justification in their use of violence since why shouldn’t the best-bred and best-educated people lead and dominate society — or so they thought? But as the pillars of their pride began to weaken — due to modernity, WWI and WWII, spread of Marxist ideology, rise of America and decline of the British Empire, and easing of social barriers and distinctions — , the elites still had the manners but no longer the manliness to back it up and to force the maintenance of manners on rest of society. IF, in the past, the elites felt pride in themselves and took for granted that they were liked/respected — after all, why shouldn’t they be since they had the best learning, best wit, best manners, and ruled the greatest empire in history — while it had been up to the lower orders to prove that they were worthy of being approved by their social superiors, the New Order was one where the denuded elites had to prove that they were worthy of being liked by the lower orders(and then non-whites) while the lower orders increasingly felt like saying “Go fuc* yourself” than “Aye, guv’nor.”
Manners, if wielded and used correctly, can be a useful tool of power. It can be a way of saying, “We have better manners because we are more civilized, and our being more civilized means we have the right to rule over you slobs, and if you slobs wanna be like us, you have to emulate our social form and manners.” But manners without such moral and historical confidence can make one powerless before the forces of change. There are times when a man must take off one’s kid gloves and fight like a man. And old elites knew when and how. They had manners but used the manly whip if the masses got out of line. But in the changed order where the elites of Britain were accused of everything evil — both the evil of imperialism and the shame of the loss of empire, social injustice, class privilege, snobbery, and etc. — , the elites no longer had any fight left in them. But their manners remained, and these manners required them to maintain good form, show social grace, and keep a stiff upper lip though their world — and their nation as a whole — was crumbling all around them. Consider when London burned last year. The natural response would have been for the British elites to fume with anger and fury at all those useless Negroes and shitty yobs. Instead, there were all these carefully worded articles and essays by elite media figures who urged that they, as good gentlemen, must try ever so hard to ‘understand’ why things went wrong. Well, whoopity-doo and Whoopsy-poo.
And of course, the Wasp elite of America has also been molded by this Anglo-elite emphasis on manners, which is why the Cult of Nice-ness prevails so much among American Wasp elites who seem incapable of ever waking up and calling a spade a spade. (Anglo-Americans of old backed up their manners with manliness, but now they only have manners and whimper ‘nicely’ when accused of all the evils of the world. Look at that worthless ‘faggotyass’ Romney.) Despite their ideological commitment to equality and diversity, both English and American wasp elites put on lofty airs and try to come up with ‘civil’ and ‘nice’ explanations instead of getting to the heart of the matter and admitting, “NEGROES ARE THE PROBLEM!” Actually, one elite commentator, David Starkey, said as much, but he was hounded by Jewish-controlled multi-culti politically correct media. Perhaps, his gayness spared him prison time. In the past, British elites had manners but also had the manliness to say it like it was; they could talk honestly about blacks, Jews, and etc. Even so, the great emphasis on civility and form had a tendency to favor what-was-acceptable over what-was-true; a kind of ‘social correctness’. As long as talking-honestly-about-Negroes was socially acceptable in elite circles, there was honest talk about race — though, to be sure, it had to be worded nicely and civilly. (Maybe this emphasis on putting-in-nicely eventually changed the perception of reality itself. Reality is often ugly. But one can discuss ugly matters with civil, pretty, nice, or objective/neutral language and terminology, i.e., one can acknowledge reality as reality even while using words to make it sound ‘less vulgar’. But over time, this attitude of putting-it-nicely may not only sanitize the discussion of ugly reality but fumigate the very admission that such reality exists. And we can see this in the current political debates. In order to understand racial reality in America, we must discuss the muscular power of Negroes and their giant penises that so many white women are wild about. We must discuss the pornographic imagination of Negroes and white mudsharks; we must confront the fear of white males in their pussified states. We must discuss the resentment of ugly Jews who delight in the humiliation of the ur-Nazi white male and mongrelization of the white vagina. But such ugly reality is too upsetting to right-wing males who prefer bland discussion about ‘high ideas’ about Nietzsche and high principles of libertarianism. Because they don’t wanna face the ugly reality, they make believe as if it doesn’t even exist, which is so many alternative right white guys still pretend that blacks are not physically tougher and that only fat ugly white girls go with black males. Alt Right white boys cannot handle the truth. Same with the discussion of homosexuality. Because of the ugly nature of ‘gay sex’ among homo males — where the male sexual organ goes into the fecal hole or anus — , we pretend such things don’t even happen among gay males. Now, it’s vulgar to say, “faggots love to fuc* eachother in the ass.” So, we can use more neutral language such as, “gay men practice a form of fecal penetration where the penis enters the excretory hole of other men”, which is true but not put in vulgar terms. It is a form of putting-it-nicely, but the reality is still not nice — as fecal penetration can never be made to seem pretty — , and so we choose to pretend that gayness is not about male buggery of bungholes. We are to make believe that gayness is about cherry-picked handsome gay guys getting married on the cover of Jewsweek, aka Newsweek, or it’s just nice middle class gay people marching with rainbow flags. So, while putting-it-nicely is necessary for civil discussion, the danger is that the centrality of niceness may lead to repression of reality itself if reality is too ugly to be made nice. Since ‘gay sex’ cannot be made nice even with the use of neutral/pretty terminology, we are to pretend that gay men don’t do such stuff. And same goes for black crime. We know too many blacks act like animals. Now, saying ‘niggers act like apes’ may be vulgar and trashy. So, we need to put in neutrally and civilly: ‘A lot of blacks or African-Americans commit crimes of assault and battery against weaker non-black races.’ But even if put nicer, the reality is ugly, and liberals just can’t handle the reality. And so the news of black thuggery is either hidden or we are to believe that ‘youths’ and ‘teens’ are acting out of order. This cult of Niceness is all the weirder for liberals love to guffaw at vulgar trashiness of THE SIMPSONS, FAMILY GUY, MTV SHOWS, SARAH SILVERMAN, RICHARD PRYOR, and etc. I guess like most things in our society, it’s a matter of ‘who, whom’.) But once such issues became socially ‘undignified’, few dared to raise the subject no matter how much truth there was in what was said. And that is what prevails today as well. Though the Free West takes pride in exploring the truth, so much of what passes for Truth depends on what is thought to be socially acceptable or socially unacceptable. But, it would be misleading to think that things were freer in the past. What was different the topics of discussion. Otherwise, people were just as much governed by the rules of what-is-allowed-to-be-said. One of the problems pertaining to the discussion of Race in the 19th century and early 20th century was the taboo on discussion of sexual issues and possibility of white inferiority. Among polite members of the elite back then, one could say that blacks were less intelligent and Jews were more cunning. But one couldn’t say that blacks were athletically superior to whites. Now, if such fact had been spoken and expressed more openly, white men would have understood the true threat posed by the black race. But white men — among elites, middle, and lower orders — were filled with too much pride and arrogance to admit that black men could beat them up and reduce them to pussyboys. Also, the other big issue pertaining to Race was sex. Since black men were tougher and stronger — and more savage and aggressive — , they wouldn’t just beat up and pussify white men but take white women. Worse, though white women might initially resist interracism — like the dignified Southern women of THE BIRTH OF A NATION — , it might not be long before white women, crazed by jungle fever, might look upon white men as ‘flabby faggoty white boys’ and run into the arms of muscular, studly, deep-voiced, and big-donged Negroes. If whites had the guts to discuss such truths, the history of the West might have been different. But instead of thinking honestly, the world of white males was governed by the dignity of White Pride and White Superiority that was taken for granted. Of course, the rules of debate has been changed. White people — at least respectable kind — can no longer discuss matters such as white superiority and racial differences, but they aren’t able to discuss the fact of white inferiority either — as Jimmy the Greek found out. But truth has a way of sneaking up on you just the same. You can repress it, but you can’t snuff it out. And indeed, liberal Jews are working extra hard through the media to make whites accept the fact of their pussyboy-dom vis-a-vis the Negroes. So, there are more TV commercials, TV shows, and movies that feature white boys as sorryass losers and dorks in relation to tough, masculine blacks. But this is overlaid with jokes and laughter. Jews think that if white guys can be goaded or ‘nudged’ to laugh at their own pathetic state, they won’t be so outraged by the new racial order of black masculine/sexual/athletic superiority over them. A proud white guy would feel offended by the new order. But a white guy raised to be a dorky, sorryass, pathetic, and self-mocking fool would be willing to accept his subservient role as a kind of White Uncle Tom or white Steppinfetchit.
In a way, it’s a reversal of what had been done to blacks in the past. There was a time when black men were not allowed to feel black male pride, and so their resentment and shame had to be sweetened by images of funny-ass coons and jive-ass-shuffling clowns. The idea was that since black folks are a bunch of ape-like caricatures to begin with, they shouldn’t even bother with such matters as pride and dignity. They should be happy to be lowly monkeyass clown coons shuffling to make white folks laugh. Similarly, white masculinity has been cartoonized, mocked, and made the object of ridicule; and entire generations of white boys have been and will be raised this way. Without white male pride — replaced by self-effacing white dorkiness — , white males will be less resistant to the new racial order where black men take white girls. Already, the only way a white boy can feel any group pride is if he’s a homosexual. If a white boy is not a homo, the best he can opt for is metro-sexuality where he’s supposed to be a bland, whitebread dork who should be worshiping Negroes and imagine being cuckolded as his girl has sex with a big black stud. How did the white race turn into such a shitpile in so short a time? Even in the 1970s, white guys were not this pathetic. Indeed, there were plenty of proud white guys even in the 1980s as I remember. But just look at the state of White America. It’s pathetic. Look at the UK. Most Britons now say that mulattos look ‘more beautiful’ than their own people. It’s one thing to say mixed-race people have their own appeal, but that’s not what’s happening. Brits now believe that mixed-race people are racially or interracially SUPERIOR to the indigenous native peoples of Britain. One wonders to what extent this is sincere or the product of politically correct brainwashing. It may even be the effect of the Cult of Niceness. Since it’s so important for Brits to be Nice(at least according to the rules of PC), maybe it’s just ‘nicer’ to say that a mixed-race person is better-looking than a one-race person. In that case, the mixed-raced peoples of North Africa and mixed race people of Peru must be the most beautiful people on Earth.
A people so governed by the Cult of Niceness and Civility will gravitate toward whatever the prevailing rule or symbol of Niceness is. If Niceness happens to be on the side of pure-blood, all ‘nice’ people will reject race-mixing. But if the rule of Niceness is interracism, all ‘nice’ people will be for race-mixing. Most white people today are surely afraid to say they think white is more beautiful than other races, but they’ll gladly say non-whites or mixed races are prettier or more attractive than whites. Maybe, modern Brits think it would be ‘arrogant’ to say one’s own people are better at anything. Why, that would smack of chauvinism. So, they are into maniacally praising others at the expense of one’s own people.
The Cult of Servility works like the Cult of Niceness. Consider the case of Japan. Japanese, who’d been servilely willing to die in the millions for the Emperor, were instantly willing to servilely bow before the victorious Americans.
Jews understand this because they understand psychology. Social reality isn’t just about the WHAT but the HOW. HOW does the mind work? If the mind works in a certain way, then the mind that is wildly fixated on A can just as easily be fixated on B: Same dynamic(how) but different object(what). So, the very dynamic that had made Americans ‘racist’ in the past can make them ‘anti-racist’ today — by manipulating the same kind of servility, the same kind of zeal, the same kind of conformism. Modes can remain the same while one thing is replaced with something else. This is why atheists can be just as blindly fanatical as religious nuts. The object of their mental fixation may differ from that of religious nuts, but the mode of their thinking/feeling is structurally the same as the mode of their enemies.
So, paradoxically, much of the decline of the West owes to the social, emotional, and moral dynamics of the West itself. The process at work today isn’t all that different from the process fifty or hundred years ago. What changed is that the new elites channeled the currents differently so that different streams of thoughts are allowed. The person minding the rudder is new, but it’s very much the same old motor.
There’s a scene in the film THE GO-BETWEEN by Joseph Losey that well-demonstrates the vulnerability of the British class system. GO-BETWEEN is like a MANDINGO story but centered around class than race. Alan Bates plays a beefy proletarian type who is having a secret affair with a woman of a high-class family played by Julie Christie. In one scene, Alan Bates is swimming in a private lake without permission, and a bunch of young elite members gripe about the violation amongst themselves, but when Alan Bates comes out of the water, none of them has the guts to face him and complain about his trespassing; instead, they maintain a jolly, cheerful, and civil face and tell him it was no problem. Having been raised in a world of manners and privilege, most of these highborn folks don’t know how to stand their ground and deal with threats to the order. They’ve been raised to take for granted that their highborn world is safe and sound, as if that’s the way it will always be. They think good manners are all they need to maintain their privilege, but they’re putting the cart in front of the horse. British elites were able to enjoy their nice manners and privilege in their world because the lower orders had been ruthlessly put in their place and reminded over and over in the harshest terms to obey laws and rules — or else be hanged or end up in Australia to wrestle with crocodiles. Similarly, in the American South, gentlemen could put on their airs and take it easy because the Negroes had been put in their place and reminded, time and time again with the pain of the whip, not to mess with the white man. But when a social order lasts for a long time, its members — especially if born into soft privilege — begin to take their privileges and lofty positions for granted and become unwilling to take a hard look at the real foundation of their power and privilege: violence or the threat of violence against their potential enemies. And since manners are so important to highborn and refined people, the elites come to think that manners, rather than ruthless will to power, are the most important attributes of belonging to the elites. And tied to manners is the notion of magnanimity. Now, the Alan Bates character in THE GO-BETWEEN is not a bad guy; one could say he’s even something of a swell fellow, and I don’t much care if a white prole guy humps a rich white chick, especially as so many elite British men were acting so gayish. The point is if you want or want to maintain your power, you have to understand that manners are merely the facade that hides the ruthless will to power — or it’s the gravy served with the real meat of power. This is what Jews understand all too well. Jew on TV will often act nice and kindly, but they really think and operate with knives. In contrast, American Wasps, though having founded and developed America with ruthless will and vision, genuinely went into the mode of good manners, good will, and magnanimity. Given the higher intelligence of Jews — and Jewish alliance with white liberal wasps and white ethnics before forming new alliances with blacks and Hispanics — , the decline of Wasp power may have been inevitable, but it needed not have been so dramatic if Wasps had understood the true source of their power. Compare the films of Stanley Kubrick the Jew and Robert Redford the wasp. Kubrick tried to explore and understand the nature of power, whereas Redford was only eager to point out the flaws of Wasps and make amends for all the tewwible things Wasps did, oh boo hoo. Good faith and good-will always lose to bad faith and ruthless will.
UK has a special problem with vast social changes because of the peculiarities of its history. One is the effeminate manner-centered culture of its men. With such effete elites — David Cameron might as well be gay, and Nick Griffin is the sorriest sack of shit pile of lard to head a right-wing organization — , who is gonna stand up for Britain that is under the assault of International Jewry, wild Negroes, and barbaric Muslims? Not that American conservatives are much better — George W. Bush and Romney might as well be gay too, and, if anything, gays are more aggressive and have bigger balls than most straight white male conservative maggots today — , but it must be said that some American politicians, even if pathetic puppets of Jews, do have more of a manly style than the fairy-like finger twiddlers of the British elite. Take Newt Gingrich. A scumbag to be sure and an opportunist who sold himself to highest-bidding Jews like Sheldon Adelson — , but when he talks, he at least talks big, even if it’s at the behest of his masters. (In the Jew-dominated order, white men of pride and integrity cannot win as they’ll immediately be denounced and destroyed as ‘racists’ by the Jewish-controlled media and government. Thus, such men fall by the wayside. The only white men who can ‘win’ are those willing to be servile to Jews and gays, and such opportunists or suckers generally lack principles, courage, integrity, and/or truth. Thus, the best white males lose while the worst white males win, which explains why the ‘white elites’ are so pathetic. It’s because we don’t have a real white elite since the only ‘white elite’ that is allowed to exist is one willing to be servile to Jews. The current white elite doesn’t lead whites but follows Jews.) But there’s something wrong with UK, a nation where the toughest leader in the past 40 yrs was a woman — Margaret Thatcher. John Majors, Tony Blair, and David Cameron are like three gay boys. Brits are so into proper form and dignity that they are deathly afraid of saying anything that might seem uncouth or out of line. (They could get away with controversial statements in the past if said with sufficient wit and irony, but even that won’t save anyone today who utters politically incorrect ‘hate speech’. Looks like Puritans finally won in modern Britain even if in the service of the mighty Jew, Negro, Gay, and Muslim than in God.) But only those with the guts and balls to say what is ‘uncouth’ can speak honestly about the dangers facing Britain. There is no ‘nice’ way to put the horrors that are befalling that country as the result of vile Organized Jewry and its open borders policies that will inundate EU with black Africans and Muslims. (Jews are doing this out of both revenge and to exploit ‘diversity’ to create a situation of ‘divide and rule’ among goyim.) But, British leaders and thinkers are too obsessed with being ‘nice’ and ‘dignified’ to say anything that might earn their disapproving looks — and even time in prison under ‘hate speech’ laws.
But then, this is a repeat of what happened between WWI and WWII. While it’s true that Germany was handed a raw deal following WWI, the Brits should have taken a harder look at the true nature of Hitler’s rise to power. But wrapped up in their cult of manners, dignity, and gentlemanly handshakes(and guilt over having brought upon too much misery on the Germans) , the elites of Britain thought they could deal with Hitler by trying to understand him — just as British elites today try to ‘understand’ the rising tide of Negro violence instead of seeing it for what it really is, which is the natural product of Afro-black savagery of a people who’d rarely if ever created or maintained anything resembling a complex civilization.
If Nazism was a new kind of barbarism disguised as the defense of Western Civilization, Blackism is a scourge of savagery hiding under the cult of ‘diversity’ and ‘equality’. There can be no equality with blacks. They will continue to mess up schools, burn down neighborhoods, beat up weaker white guys, and hump white women who will then give birth to trashy mulatto kids who ape black-American rap culture.
But as far as the politically correct Britons are concerned, to reject blacks is a kind of Neo-Nazism. They just don’t get it. No one is saying blacks should be gassed. Sensible people are saying blacks should be sent back to their own African countries where they can run around, chuck spears, and act like hairless apes all they want. They just shouldn’t be allowed to do it in the UK, one of the greatest nations that was ever created.
Another problem peculiar to UK is its relation to America. In many ways, U.K. has been closer to the US than to rest of Europe, and it could also be said that US has been closer to U.K. than to Mexico or even to Canada. Mexico is connected to the US, but Americans never took Mexicans seriously on a cultural, political, or social level. Canada can be said to be a part of Anglo-America, but it was never a major power and culturally didn’t make much of a difference in the world. But US and U.K. were, for a long time, two of the great powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. And due to the common Anglo stock of their elites, they understood one another — even if they didn’t see eye to eye — more than they did with other peoples. If the cultural and social influence had been mostly from U.K. to US until the early 20th century, things began to reverse, and in the second half of the 20th century, the current was overwhelmingly from US to UK. Though there was the British Invasion, British Rockers were inspired by American rock-n-rollers. And intellectually, British social thought began to reflect American social thought.
But there was another factor. Much of Rock music had black roots, and Jews dominated American social thought in the second half of the 20th century. So, if the influence from UK to US had been Anglo-folks to Anglo-folks, the influence from US to UK has essentially been from Jews/blacks to Anglo-Brits. As Brits became ever more enamored of Afro-Judeo-American culture, they became more slavish to Jewish ideology and black musicality and sexuality. And Ireland, as a part of Anglosphere, caught the bug too. This happened just when the British class system began to loosen, and therefore, many Brits came to associate Jewish radicalism and black music/sexuality with having liberated the uptight and repressed Brits from their cages.
Also, both Anglos and Americans shared the same language. (As English becomes a more international language, I wonder if America and UK will be influenced by many other peoples. It has already happened to some extent from India to UK because Indian elites essentially speak English.) So naturally, Britons, in time, wanted to be more like Americans, and since America was supposed to be so great due to its colorful blacks and ‘diversity’, Britons decided the only way UK could be as colorful as the US was to have more immigration from non-white nations. Of course, blacks were causing all sorts of havoc in America, but most Brits got to know about America through liberal BBC, leftist education, and Hollywood movies; and the impression they got was of ‘noble blacks’ being oppressed by ‘evil redneck whites’. Another peculiarity of British history was having owned colonies in Africa and West Indies. Having lost the Empire but desperate to maintain the myth of its relevance via the British Commonwealth — and desperate to redeem its history of ‘racism’ — , Britain opened up its doors to a whole bunch of blacks from Africa and Jamaica and Hindus and Muslims from India and Pakistan. Now, given all the problems resulting from these trends and developments, you’d think Britons would honestly discuss what ails their country and reverse the policy, but that isn’t happening because of the effect of Jewish ideology. The cult of Holocaustianity and the mindless ideological belief that ‘racism’ is the root of all evil FORBID the British intelligentsia and public from having a honest discourse on race. It is taboo. If we define ‘racism’ as blind hatred of other races, it’s not a good thing. But if we define it as race + ism = belief in races and racial differences, it is absolutely necessary in order to make people aware of the fact that blacks(being stronger, more aggressive, and meaner) pose a genuine threat to the white race and that Jews(being smarter, more cunning, and more ruthless) are never to be trusted. In a truly open society, such things should be discussed, but they cannot be discussed in UK and US because hideous International Jews have exploited the British cult of manners to forbid ‘thoughts and expressions deemed to be in bad taste’. So, race-ism(the necessary belief in races and racial differences)cannot even be put on the table for rational discussion. This has become such a iron taboo that even British conservatives speak the same multiculturalist gobbledygook as the Labor Party does. And even the BNP did its best to come across as ‘non-racist’. A people so obsessed with manners and face don’t have the guts and balls to speak the truth. But then, is the US any better? No. If anything, US is even more under the thumb of Jewish-controlled political correctness, and American Wasps — the second most powerful group in America after the Jews — would rather commit suicide as a people than say anything that might upset the ‘good nice decent manners’ of their liberal wasp world.
It’s all very ironic. Jews have long mocked Wasps for being so bland, white-bread, repressed self-restraint, and manner-oriented. But if Wasps had been different, they would not have fallen for the dirty Jewish trick of messing with the minds of others. Imagine if Jews had tried to pull the guilt-and-conscience trick on Arabs, Chinese, Mexicans, Ugandans, or etc. They would have grabbed Jews by the neck and hung them out to dry.
In a way, characteristics such as blandness, whitebreadness, self-restraint, and manners are all related to the culture of fairness. Every side has a flavor, but the referee cannot favor any flavor. And it was because Wasps were so ‘bland’ that they could eventually come around to judging, appreciating, and rewarding quality — whatever the flavor — for what it was worth even if it was non-Wasp in origin. As the culture of white ‘blandness’ fades due to the rise of strong flavors unleashed by multi-culturalism, there will be more clashes of flavors, and it will be more difficult to say objectively and fairly what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong.
But Jews are only concerned with reducing the relative size of the white population for all they really care about is securing Jewish power, and Jews figure it can only be secured if there is no dominant racial/ethnic majority in any given nation(except Israel). That way, the Jewish elites can just play divide-and-rule among the various minorities of goyim. In a way, the decline of the GOP for Jews signals the decline of white majority power. Notice that California can never be Republican again, or even if a Republican like Schwarzenegger is elected as governor, he is just a useless RINO. Eventually, all of US will become like California, i.e. a world without a clear majority, in which case it will be up to elite Jews to form shifting alliances among various groups while maintaining their own elite supremacy. Jews are already so powerful that even GOP candidates dare not bring up issues about ‘gay marriage’(the favorite issue of most Jews), and it won’t be long before even conservative talk radio personalities come out in favor of it. And since most conservatives are servile dolts anyway, they’ll too come around to going ‘dittos, Rush, dittos Rush’ when Limbaugh the fat slob comes out for ‘gay marriage’.
You’d think France would be spared the problems of UK since one of the defining elements of French society and culture has been anti-Americanism(as well as anti-Anglo-ism). So, if Brits eagerly soaked up what American culture had to offer, many French, on both the Left and Right, tended to eye American culture — movies, music, and etc. — with a degree of hostility. When the French praised American culture — especially cinema and Jazz — , it was generally to imply that Americans were too dumb to see the genuine worth of their own culture. So, the French spun a narrative whereby Americans just regarded Jazz as pop music whereas the French appreciated it as a sophisticated form of Art Music. And while Americans tended to treat movie directors like John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock as entertainers, the French appreciated their worth as full-fledged artists. The French went so far as to argue that Jerry Lewis was an ‘auteur’ too. (Given the state of most French comedies — especially slapstick ones — , it’s not difficult to understand why they found Lewis funny.) Anyway, there were two fatal flaws that doomed France to racial and national suicide. One was ideological hubris. Ever since the French Revolution, the French got into the habit of discussing Frenchness as an idea, or the Idea of France(as even the conservative De Gaulle called it later). Thus, the French people were not French because they had roots in Frenchness but because they were part of this ‘idea’ called France. Since France was an idea, anyone around the world could be French if he or she partook of this idea(and its attendant culture). Initially, it was a convenient excuse to justify the French Imperial enterprise. The French would go to Southeast Asia, Middle East, and Africa, and spread the civilizing ‘Idea of France’. Thus, French imperialism wouldn’t really be exploitive since the French would be sharing the cultural/intellectual glory of France with peoples of the world. Since the French regarded French literature, music, art, philosophy, fashion, food, wine, and etc. to be the summit of civilization, they figured they were bringing the light of reason and truth to the entire world if everyone learned to appreciate stinky cheeses.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with ‘sharing’ one’s culture with the world. I’m sure even a member of the Nation of Islam enjoys white man’s ice cream — vanilla flavor too — , and even the staunchest opponent of illegal immigration loves tacos. The problem results when culture is intellectualized to the point where it becomes an ‘idea’. Though the meaning of ‘culture’ is varied and one could argue that philosophy and intellectualism are part of the culture, the essence of any culture is particularist.
The point of certain endeavors is to find the objective truth regardless of cultural precepts, prejudices, or biases. That 2 + 2 = 4 is true regardless of what culture one belongs to. And the law of gravity applies equally to all places at all times. And philosophy searches for universal truths regarding the nature of reality, truth, power, and morality; and the main tool of philosophy is reason governed by logic, and real logic is governed by rules, not by vision, imagination, customs, sacred memory, and/or tradition. So, if French science or medicine arrives at some truth, it’s not really a French idea. It’s an idea discovered by a Frenchman, but it’s not a truth that is particularly French nor belongs to the French alone. And though there’s a national flavor to many schools of philosophy — Greek philosophy, French philosophy, Anglo philosophy, German philosophy, and etc. — the objective of all philosophies is to arrive at the truth through observation, reason, discourse, and logic that is of universal or higher value. If the point of philosophy is primarily to justify the ways of a people, it’s more cultural customs and propaganda than genuine philosophy. So, even though science, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy all arose from and within certain cultural contexts — and even though certain cultures, by the nature of their values and attitudes, have been more likely to encourage/produce rational and philosophical thought than others — , their real purpose and value are meta-cultural and transcultural. Culture can be understood through ideas, and it can be intellectualized, but culture — at least what humanity has come to know as culture — didn’t spring forth as an idea. And it cannot be formulated into a set of ideas. While ideas can be extracted from a culture and such ideas can be turned into a ‘philosophy’ or ‘proposition’, but such endeavors tend to undermine the unique richness of the culture. For example, Judaism is a very cultural religion. There is no single set of ideas or values. It’s a hodgepodge of different narratives, visions, histories, ruminations, musings, and things pulled together into a heritage/tradition that really belongs to the Jews. Christianity was an attempt to turn Judaism into an idea, but in trying to do so, it simplified and rejected much of Judaism. (This is why Christianity is problematic as a culture. There is a well-established set of rules and customs governing what it means to be Jewish, but the ‘culture’ of Christianity is less obvious since Jesus preached universalist moral teachings but said almost nothing about what to eat, what to wear, what kind of art to create, what kind of rituals to perform, etc. To be sure, a culture and set of rituals did develop around Christianity — especially among Catholics with eating crackers & wine and even more so among Orthodox Christians — , but those were still not the essence of Christianity. One could dress like an Nigerian, eat like an Nigerian, and speak Ugabugese and still be a Christian if one just accepted the teachings of the New Testament. Or could dress like a Chinese, eat like a Chinese, and speak Chinese and be Christian simply by believing in Jesus and accepting His teachings. This is the great power and advantage of Christianity but more as a spiritual and moral idea than as a culture for there is no definite culture of Christianity.) For an idea to make sense, it has to have logical consistency in its scientific reasoning or moral reasoning. Thus, for Christianity to be a spiritual idea for all peoples, all places, and all times, it had to reject Judaism as a culture and invent a new religion established as an idea. And Buddhism sought to do the same thing in relation to Hinduism. Islam is a special case because it blended the universality of Christianity with the cultural tribalism of the Arabs, which is why it makes less sense than Judaism and Christianity. Judaism makes sense as a culture, and Christianity makes sense as an idea. But Islam, in trying to be both, is satisfying as neither. To be sure, certain cultures spawn ideas that, in their search for the higher truth, keep undermining the particularist premises of the community. Even before Judaism gave birth to Christianity, the idea of God in Judaism had gone from a particularist God with definite form to an abstract God hovering over mankind as a spiritual idea, or ideiety. Old Testament begins by with man being made in the image of God, suggesting that God looks like man. And in the early stages of the Biblical narrative, God is emotionally man-like and seems to be very close to a tribe of people who would eventually come to be known as Jews. But, as the story progresses, God becomes less and less of a cultural representative and more of an idea, though never to the full extent He would become via Christianity. This change have been due to the particular genius of Jewish intellect and also the fact that nomadic Hebrews, for long stretches of time, had no place to call their own. As a result, their God had to be made portable and had to be a God of words(the tool of ideas)than the God expressed through idols erected in a particular time and place. Nevertheless, even as the Jewish God became ever more abstract and conceptual, Jews established the notion of Jewish blood and the sacredness of Jewish semen. Thus, no matter how idea-like their God became, the Jews remained a very cultural people. It also helped that they had all sorts of dietary laws. And though Jews couldn’t make idols of stones, they could throw stones to kill a bunch of folks who supposedly offended God. And the laws of stoning also served to define the particularist nature of Judaism. Different cultures prosecuted and punished differently, and the Jewish way was to throw stones at people who did stuff like sodomy and not keep the Sabbath. So, even though Jews were not allowed to make idols out of stone, they could stone the idolatrous.
One of the reasons why Jews rejected Christianity was because they greatly valued their own culture. If all Jews were to become Christians, they would still be worshiping the same God. They could still read the Old Testament as well as the New Testament — as did the Christians — , and all that. But they would be giving up what it culturally meant to be Jewish. And so, Jews resisted the idea of turning Judaism fully into an ‘idea’. There were ideas within Judaism, but they had to remain attached to Jewish history, customs, blood, semen, language, and etc.
Given the success of Christianity, one might be tempted to believe that an idea can trump culture and create a new world order based on universal truth. Though there was that side to the rise and spread of Christianity, the need for ‘culture’ eventually became evident in Christianity itself. Though formulated by St. Paul as an idea, Christianity over time also accumulated its own particular attachments, associations, rituals, narratives, traditions, and expressions. As such, different forms of Christianity became different cultures of Christianity. Thus, Egyptian Coptic Christians, Syrian Christians, Roman Catholic Christians, English Christians, German Christians, Greek Christians, Russian Christians, and Mexican Christians many others formed their own culture of Christianity. This led to many disagreements, conflicts, wars, and violence, but it also led to much cultural richness. Would it have been better if only one kind of Christianity governed the entire world? Whether universal truths exist or not, every path toward that truth has its particularist aspects. It’s like a mountain may have a peak, but the mountain can be approached from various directions, and each pathway to the peak offers its own particular sights, experiences, dangers, and scenery. (Perhaps there’s a weird logic to the idea of God appearing in the form of Man in the form of Jesus — at least according to Christianity. If Christianity was an attempt to thoroughly divorce God from a particularist CULTURE and turn Him into a universalist IDEA of goodness and truth for all time, why would He show Himself to mankind in the form of Man? Why would a Deity who moved away from anthropomorphism toward abstractness feel a need to show Himself in literal human form? In the beginning of the Genesis, it says God made man in His image, but then, as the narrative progresses, God becomes less and less manlike. Maybe in order for God to finally let go of His association to manlike-ness once and for all, He had to, for one last time as a kind of grand finale, show up as the Perfect Man and live and die most perfectly. Since He was saying goodbye to manlike-ness forever, He had to live the one last perfect life as Man. It’s like a guy having a bachelor party before he gets wed. He knows he’s saying goodbye to his days of freedom, and so, for one last time, he decides to spend a night as an out-of-control wild man — a stupid rite, but then lately, women have sicko bachelorette parties too where white girls suck Negro cocks of male strippers before they get hitched. We are living in a sick world. It’s like “suck a giant muscular Negro stud before you say goodbye to the SEX AND THE CITY lifestyle for good and settle down with some dweeby but stable white guy.” Though it won’t do to compare God with some sicko individuals of modern society, it’s not uncommon for people to really LIVE IT UP FOR ONE LAST TIME before saying goodbye to it forever. Thus, paradoxically, just before God of the Old Testament was about to turn into the purest spiritual idea, He also took on the form of the most perfect Man.)
Anyway, the idea of turning France into an idea was perhaps the biggest folly of French history. However idealistic and well-meaning the pontiffs of the concept may have been, it was an act of hubris and arrogance that would eventually come to humble and shame the French. If you make huge claims, you are obligated to live up to them. And if you fail to do so, you come under the accusation of fraudulence and hypocrisy. And to dispel the accusations or to redeem the failings of past hypocrisies, your people are obligated to go out on a limb to live up to the impossible ‘idea’ of your nation. To paraphrase Harry Callahan, “A nation’s got to know its limitations.” There was a time when France considered itself the best, most beautiful, most inspired, most creative, most intelligent, most powerful, most civilized, most brilliant, and most etc people on Earth. And though the French Revolution fully turned this cultural attitude into an ‘idea’, the seeds of such hubris had been with monarchist France too. There’s no doubting the great achievements of the French — just check out the Versailles on Google Earth — , and there’s no doubting that France had long been the cultural capital of Europe. French ballet traveled to Russia. French food, painting, music, sculpture, and etc. had huge influence on other nations. And it’s no wonder that the French royal court were fascinated with the Chinese. The idea of the ‘Sun King’ was borrowed from China. Just as China was the cultural center of East Asia — what with nations around China adopting Chinese words, musical instruments, philosophy, spirituality, architecture, and etc. — , the French felt themselves to the cultural sun around which the rest of Europe revolved. If French spoke French, others should too since it was the most beautiful language. If French danced in a certain way, others learned the same steps. If the French snorted snuff and sneezed, others did the same. If French men powdered their faces — with fake moles on the cheek — and wore funny wigs, the elites of other nations were soon doing the same. And the kings and aristocrats of other nations often spoke in French than in their native tongues. Generally, we like to think of ideas traveling from nation to nation while cultures remaining put in their particularities. But some cultures are so outstanding, radiant, glorious, and etc, that other cultures eagerly imitate them. Thus, what is particular to one culture can, in some cases, be universalized — like Western suits wore by people all over the world. (To be sure, one can argue that modern Western suit is not really Western but universalist in design — even if Westerners designed it. If traditionally, clothes were designed to suit and express a particular culture, modern suits — especially men’s wear — have often been designed according to functionality and usefulness. Thus, many modern suits aren’t so much designed as engineered — like the shape of cars in relation to aerodynamics. Much of the appeal of Western suits is their lack of ‘cultural design’. An Arab, Turk, or Japanese might not have wanted to dress like a French aristocrat of the 18th century — as French aristocrats dressed to look very French — , but the modern Western suit could be appealing to all peoples for it is fashioned according to need and neatness than to express any kind of cultural flavor or essence.) This had also been true during the days of Roman Empire when the various peoples within the Empire aspired to speak Latin, dress like Romans, and even lie around eating grapes. And so, even before the French Revolution, there developed the Idea of France, i.e. French culture was so great and glorious that it was more than a culture of one people; it was The Way for all who aspired to be truly civilized. In this sense, one could argue the seeds of French Revolution weren’t just in the political and philosophical ideas of the time but in the mind-set of Frenchness itself. Royalist or Rationalist, the French came to feel that they had a special mission in the world. The French court thought all courts in Europe should emulate the French, the best of the best. And French Rationalist revolutionaries thought France, as the center of the world, should lead the revolution to bring forth the light of truth and progress. Though French Revolutionaries sought to establish the truth beyond culture, in the end they could not escape from the power of culture because French culture was just too magnificent, intoxicating, and flavorful. Even if a Frenchman tried to speak logically and rationally, the very nature of French language made him all flamboyant, expressive, and passionate — like with the guys in Abel Gance’s NAPOLEON and Andrej Wajda’s DANTON.
In the end, the Anglos were better suited to creating the new universal order since English language and manners are less colorful, less passionate, more incisive, more balanced, and more stable. The cultural style of the French — rooted in Latin temperament — just couldn’t hold itself back. The French could never just be plain and simple French like English could be plain and simple English. French had to cook up something special when it came to cuisines. French had to be fragrant with all sorts of perfumes. French had to be showy with all sorts of feathers in dresses. Even in their subtlety and demureness, French had to put on a special act, putting on Lolita-like coquettishness. Anglos folks could have substance without style, but the French always had to have style with their substance, and often, they had the style without the substance(like Claude Lelouch’s A MAN AND A WOMAN). In the past, the French possessed expressive style and real substance as a great power that really mattered in the world. But as French power waned vis-a-vis England, Germany, and then America in the late 19th century and 20th century, the French began to cling more and more to Arts & Culture. Unable to compete with the new giants in muscle, the French turned more to muse. But when even Arts & Culture domination passed from Paris to New York the French were desperate to come up with new ways to remain relevant and ‘great’ in the eyes of the world. And so, the notion of France as an Idea became ever more radicalized and ludicrous-ized. Though the Left is generally associated with anti-nationalism, French Left’s version of anti-nationalism had a strong nationalist streak. Though it was filled with loathing for France and French traditions, French Leftism had a very strong French flavor with its elaborate theorization, intellectual card-tricks, self-conscious flamboyance and accentuated subtlety. Even when the French made no sense, they were careful to make no sense in such an opaque, elliptical, brilliant, and elusive manner that it often made for a Emperor-Has-No-Clothes scenario. Now you understand why so many fools are taken with the worthless films of Chantal Akerman. They make no sense, but hey, maybe something that meaningless hides something of great meaning. And so, a whole bunch of impressionable young movie lovers read intellectual film critics who pretend to ‘sort of understand’ that sort of stuff, and in order to belong to the same club of intellectual/radical profundity — which is supposedly ‘20 yrs ahead of our time’ — the young fools include an utter pile of shit like JEANNE DIELMAN in their list of ‘ten or twenty greatest films of all time’. No sane or honest person could do that. Only fools under the poisonous spell of politically correct leftist scholars — and their intellectual puppets — could fall for such nonsense.
Since the end of WWII, French philosophers had a profound influence on the West, and this owed largely — and paradoxically — to their utter indecipherableness and total commitment(to political activism). Few people really understood guys like Jean-Paul Sartre, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Barthes, Althusser, and etc. And of course, those thinkers didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. And I’m not even sure they understood themselves. And I have a feeling that much of French thought was actually driven by egomania than search for truth, i.e. French philosophers, thinkers, and intellectuals were less interested in truths that could be observed, solved, demonstrated, or proved than for the fetish of using mental acrobatics to show off that they were superior minds. If great thinkers are supposed to be difficult to understand, then the role of intellectuals is to become as difficult as possible — even when they don’t need to be. Thus, French thinkers developed a fetish for not being understood, but that was part of their appeal. Not really understanding them, their admirers could worship them as Jews had worshiped God whose appeal was “God is so great that He cannot be understood.” After all, if they could be understood, it would mean they are ‘too easy’, and that would mean they aren’t so great after all. But if they cannot be understood except by a choice few — and even they disagreed endlessly about the true meaning — , then maybe the philosophers were truly the gods of the age. Thus, many admirers of French philosophy were less keen to understand than to be impressed by the sheer elusive brilliance and labyrinthine awesomeness of French philosophy. To understand was not the point. To seek answers was also not the point. The real point was to be bowled over by a thought process that was so far out, so advanced, so elevated, and so erudite beyond erudite that one felt special to be in holy communion with such a mind. And Godard got into this act too since the late 60s, basically making one film/video after another that just about made no sense. But we are not supposed to complain(because that would mean you’re just an anti-intellectual, uncurious, conventional, and provincial American) but just feel grateful that such a genius is still making films and sharing his wisdom with us. So, what exactly is his wisdom? What does it matter? Just have faith and sit at the great prophet’s feet and soak up his vibes. And whenever a Godard film is playing, enter the theater like it’s a Church. Just as God cannot be understood, the gods of French philosophy are not to be understood either. Just watch their films, just read their books and essays. And even if they make no sense, remember the fault is not with them but with you because, you see, they are THAT smart and you are THAT dumb. So, just read without understanding and just be grateful that your humble eyes are grazing over such magnificent thoughts. Now, the problem is not philosophy or intellectual thought — or art for that matter — raising more questions than providing answers. The world is full of mysteries, and there is no single answer to anything. Everything can be seen from many angles, many perspectives. Everything exists within shifting personal and cultural contexts. Emotions play with or interrupt ideas and vice versa. And at their best, French have brilliantly posed one provocative and even poetic question after another. One of the best documentaries is Louie Malle’s PHANTOM INDIA, not least because it doesn’t pretend to understand India. Instead, it approaches India from many perspectives, through many voices, through many eyes and ears, through many musings and speculations. Malle also showed how Indians don’t fully understand their own country, a nation of so much diversity and conflicting cultural narratives, of deep ancient traditions and of modern political conceptualization. And Chris Marker could be equally fascinating with ‘documentaries’ like LE JOLI MAI. And his elliptical and poetic musings about the world — modern and primitive, real and artificial, seen through and seen at, etc. — in SANS SOLEIL makes for one of the most kaleidoscopic thought experiments on film. And Jean-Luc Godard’s ALPHAVILLE and MASCULIN FEMININ are absurdly fascinating contraptions of ideas and poetics. And the same goes for Alain Resnais’s HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR and MURIEL, films of endless emotional, social, political, and philosophical critiques and resonances. And this sensibility is also found in the Tati’s PLAYTIME, less a laughing comedy than a bemused concept, where elements of comedy are trapped in a modern maze as interruptive as connective. Instead of ready-made buttons to push for laughter, the buttons are hidden or don’t always work as expected, and this feeling of comicus interruptus probably doomed it at the box office.
A film that raises more questions tend to be more interesting than one that provides all the answers. Ingmar Bergman’s WILD STRAWBERRIES, despite its excellence, is like an exam sheet with all the answers filled in. Objects and motifs, as symbols, radiate with clarity, and there is but one way to read them. You get it, and once you get it, there isn’t much else to get. So, even though it aims at modernism, it has an almost Norman Rockwellian quality. Remember the famous Rockwell painting where an old lady and a young kid is praying in a restaurant surrounded by modern cynical people? There is that element in WILD STRAWBERRIES, even in apparently dark and ‘modernistic’ scenes. For example, the dream sequences — modeled on Dali or Magritte? — , though masterfully executed, are rather obvious. You can admire Bergman’s intelligence, but it comes across as too thought-out, too consciously elaborate — in contrast to the truly remarkable dream scene in Luis Bunuel’s LOS OLVIDADOS. VERTIGO’s richness derives from the multiplying effect of its interpretations; as it shifts and spirals, it plays an endless game of hide-and-seek on the screen and in our minds; it’s like a complex maze where each winding path, though leading to the same exit, reveals its own truths while hiding others along alternate paths. Thus, VERTIGO is many movies than one movie, depending on one’s preferred angle, fixation, identification, fascination, and bias. Though PLAYTIME is about many characters while VERTIGO is really only about two, both films leave it up to the viewer to see what they want to see. In this sense, VERTIGO is like Romance-Kafka and PLAYTIME is like Comedy-Kafka. (That most serious film people in America of the 1950s and even in the 60s favored WILD STRAWBERRIES — and even the movies of Stanley Kramer — over VERTIGO reminds us of the important role played by French critics in changing cultural sensibilities. Americans, in their neo-puritanism, wanted ‘serious art’ to be entirely separate from ‘entertainment’; they were blind to the portals existing between the two realms. French could see these portals because they, at their best, were often more imaginative, poetic, and elegant thinkers and theorists.) And a film like MURIEL, one of the greatest poetic works in cinema, shifts the grounds under our feet, eluding our mapping instinct for clear signposts. Even when the varying elements eventually coalesce into a discernible ‘truth’, our emotions still remain adrift, unresolved, as in VERTIGO and L’APPARTEMENT. WILD STRAWBERRIES doesn’t have what is exactly an happy ending, and there’s no assurance that things will work out for its characters, but the whole business about ‘absence of faith in the modern world’ and ‘alienation and lack of communication’ are featured as Big Themes falling on our laps with a thud. Bergman must have picked up on his limitations for he moved into a new direction beginning with PERSONA, but then, he went to the opposite extreme, willfully making movies like PASSION OF ANNA that make no sense at all, emotionally and intellectually.
Anyway, the problem was not the French preference for questions than answers. The problem was the French turned mysteriousness and the unknowable into fetishes. It’s one thing to search for truths without finding them and quite another to wallow in the un-find-ability as a kind of automatic profundity — which is why LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, as visually impressive as it is, is rather empty as a mind-game without a point. Early Godard at least strove for the truth — and played on the tragicomic poetry inherent in the quest for the ever elusive and infinitely multi-faceted; it could be a woman’s face, the direction of modern technology, the relation between the personal and the political, the tension between the sacred past and the uncertain present. But when the Great Man sat on his ass and decided to churn out spiritless films that clearly made no sense, the audience could either take the bullshit on faith or reject it all together. Pauline Kael saw through the BS of the later Godard while the likes of Richard Brody claim to appreciate stuff like DETECTIVE which no sane person should have to sit through. And did anyone honestly get something out of KING LEAR, KEEP UP YOUR RIGHT, and WOE UNTO ME? Oddly enough, just when Godard started to become most undecipherable, he also became most committed, and so we come back to the paradox of how so many post WWII French intellectuals were, at once, utterly beyond comprehension yet so fervently committed to political causes around the world. How is it that so many young people who had no idea what Sartre really meant in BEING AND NOTHINGNESS decided Sartre had all the answers about the political/moral problems of the world? How could a nutjob like Foucault, who was into S&M and the philosophy of Marquis De Sade mixed with Nietzsche, be one of the intellectual champions of the Iranian Revolution? How could Godard, the avant-garde solipsist, go for something as infantile as Maoism? Why did so many French intellectuals, whose theories weren’t understood even by most educated people, feel so close to the illiterate mobs of the Third World?
To an extent, it was in the age-old tradition of Theory and Practice. Philosophers, rational or spiritually inclined, didn’t merely want to understand the world but to change it. Plato didn’t just think of perfect forms but came up with his own vision of an ideal society. And same could be said for Confucius. And even if Buddha and Jesus emphasized ‘spiritual salvation’ over material transformation, their teachings required their followers to make profound changes in their daily lives. And Karl Marx didn’t intend his ideas to be only read but to be used as the blueprint to change the world. Theory and Practice is like Mishima’s concept of the Harmony of the Pen and Sword. And no doubt, the Rationalist French philosophers of the late 18th century clearly wanted to use their ideas to change France, then all of Europe, and eventually perhaps even all of the world. But, here was the problem with the post-WWII French philosophers: there was a huge divergence between their theories and their practices; there was also a huge divergence between how-the-world-really-was and how-they-wanted-to-see-the-world. The French, being naturally prone to imagination and flights of fancy, often came to prefer their own view of reality over the real thing. Thus, French Maoists cared little about the reality of Maoism in China; what mattered was how they could fancifully formulate their own view of Maoism. It didn’t matter that Maoism was utterly anti-intellectual; French intellectuals intellectualized it just the same, just as Sartre made Che Guevara out to be the ‘most perfect man’ and Frantz Fanon’s WRETCHED OF THE EARTH some kind of profound statement. But such delusional tendencies go back to the court of the ‘Sun King’ that also preferred the imaginary China to the real one. French are like Pepe Lepew in this way(and gay French are like poo-poo Lepoo). They are so wrapped up in their own self-image of love, greatness, and high intellect that they often fail to notice the real stinkery of reality, especially when the stinkery comes from them. It’s to be expected from a people who eat cheese that smell like sweaty toes? If French were to convince themselves that shit smells like fragrance, there’s nothing to stop them. Their noses can be so stuck up with fancy ‘ideas’ that they fail to smell the real smell. (And this goes for power as well. French got so highfalutin about their great power that they often imagined having more power than they really did. So, Napoleon went into Russia. And France foolishly got entangled with Prussia in the 19th century. In the 20th century, French needlessly got involved in WWI and WWII, essentially losing both — WWI was won only thanks to UK and US. And then, there was the grand myth of the Resistance, a kind of collective fantasy about French courage and virtue under German occupation.) It’s no wonder the French don’t take regular showers and prefer to stink up buses and subways. They are so used to thinking of themselves as lovely, romantic, and fragrant — with all those fancy perfumes and fashions — that they don’t seem to realize that one stinks if he or she doesn’t shower for about a week, especially if one’s diets consists of stinky cheeses, fecund tasting snails, and constipating white bread products like croissants.
Same goes for French ideas. They could be pure nonsense but as long as they’re presented in some elliptical ooh-lala fancy pants manner in French language — which adds fragrance to everything — , the French easily fall for the BS. Take the word for ‘shit’, ‘fart’, and ‘bile’ in French: ‘merde’, ‘elan’, and ‘meme’. In good ole plain English, shit, fart, and bile sound as they should: shit, fart, and bile. But in French, even shit, fart, and bile sound good. You’d almost want to use the French terms as names for your kids.
Considering these problems, perhaps the high regard for artists like Bresson was a kind of French ‘correction’ against their own floweriness. Bresson, sparse and severe, got to the core essence of things instead of indulging in fanciful style. And one could also say the humanism of Jean Renoir was, in many ways, more Anglo than French in a way. There was a down-to-earth quality. On the other hand, considering writers like Hugo, Zola, and Pagnol — and the French realist painters of the 19th century — , it’d be wrong to characterize all of French culture as having been ooh-lala and fancy-pants. On the other hand, despite Bresson’s harshness, there was an opaque, elliptical, and elusive quality to this works that surely appealed to the French — and in that sense, he worked very much in the French tradition, especially in his three films of the late 60s and early 70s: UNE FEMME DOUCE, LANCELOT DU LAC, and FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER, three films where beauty is an essential link in the narrative.
Anyway, if there was an one-on-one link between old theory and old practice, it wasn’t easy — and often impossible — to find any meaningful links between New French Theory and New French Practice. When Plato wrote of his ideal Republic, he really meant that Greeks should use his ideas to create such a society. When Confucius said his fortune cookie sayings, he really meant Chinese should do stuff like bow down before their fathers and show filial piety and etc. And when Marx said the revolutionaries should lead the working class to victory when the bourgeoisie create conditions for their own downfall, he meant every word of it. So, their ideas made clear sense regardless of whether they were right or wrong. Their ideas were formulas for clear action. Their theories were like manuals for a TV or appliance. If you followed the manual, you might learn how to turn on and use the TV. But in the post-WWII order, it was often difficult to find any meaningful connection between the theories of French philosophers and the political action they urged. I mean what was there in BEING AND NOTHINGNESS that could be connected to Sartre’s commitment to Stalinism? Though Sartre wrote lucid and easily digestible political tracts, how were they really related to his philosophy of existentialism? At least Albert Camus understood the problems of theory and practice. Even though a man of the Left, he knew the ‘truth’ sought by existentialist artists and philosophers could not be easily harmonized with World Revolution, which is why he became the subject of fierce attacks from Sartre and his gang. Though Camus’s main sin was ostensibly an unwillingness to fully throw himself into the ‘good fight’, the real offense may have been that his example served to underline the fact that the allegiance between post-WWII French philosophy and French political radicalism didn’t make much sense. In a way, Sartre’s radicalism was an expiation than an extension of his core philosophy that smacked of ‘bourgeois’ intellectualism. He grew up privileged and even lived through the Nazi Occupation without trouble and worries. He had a good life and continue to have a good life. He was bourgeois with fancy intellectual theories. So, for a bourgeois intellectual to redeem himself, he had to go all out in the game of Radicalism and support every crackpot ‘liberation movement’ around the world to show that though he may be compromised by circumstances, he was redeemed by total commitment. And Godard and others later played much the same game, demonstrating the endless manners of vanity, egomania, and deceptions(beginning with self-deception) that exist in intellectual circles. (And there’s plenty of that in American colleges too. Consider white intellectuals who think, “I’m white and privileged, and that’s why I have his plush job in an elite institution, and in order to expiate myself from this white privilege which I enjoy, I must secure and use my privileged white position to undermine white privilege, blah blah blah.” It really comes down to, “We are deserving of OUR white privilege because we good progressive whites are working to end it for OTHER whites, especially those of working class or middle class conservative backgrounds(who aren’t even privileged to begin with).” The cult of so-called ‘ending white privilege’ is appealing to so many affluent liberal whites because they have so much to gain in terms of status, wealth, and influence in the name of ending it. (And given the Puritanical intellectual and moral roots of America, even white liberals need a new pure faith to commit to. Even when white liberals pretend to be ‘liberated’, they come across as more dogmatic than free and loose. Take the Vagina movement of late. It’s not vagina as juicy pussy but blunt cunt.)
A white liberal who graduates from an elite university will be favored in government, academia, and media if he or she professes to want to ‘end white privilege’. It’s actually no different from why so many people joined the Communist Party in the USSR; they did it in the name of equality but were trying to rise up the social ranks as a party member. Paradoxically, for white people to secure their privilege in New America, they must join the Party for Ending White Privilege. Affluent white liberals need not worry since they can sacrifice the interests of poor whites, working class whites, and middle class whites — and conservative whites — in the name of ‘ending white privilege’ while boosting their own white liberal privileges(especially if you’re gay and/or Jewish). It’s not affluent white liberals who must live with dangerous Negroes. No, most Section 8 Housing is built in working class and middle class white communities while elite white liberals live in communities that are turning into self-enclosed whitopias. And it’s not rich Jews or rich white liberals whose children are affected by affirmative action. No, it’s the children of middle class and working class whites, especially in small towns. White liberals take all the moral credit for ‘ending white privilege’, but all they do is boost their own privileges by undermining the interests of white middle class and working class folks. This is why Jewish liberals are among the most vile and hideous people on Earth.
Anyway, the relation between French Theory and French Practice became ever more tenuous in the second half of the 20th century. What did Sartre’s existentialism have to do with Marxism? What did Foucault’s Nietzschean Sado-Masochism have to do with the Iranian Revolution? The twisted logic that sought to explain the connections became ever more farfetched and fanciful. In the 19th century, Nietzsche wisely didn’t support any particular social or political movement because he understood that his ideas could not be formulated into a simple plan. If anything, he attacked Wagner for trying to turn his art into a kind of political/national statement. But, in the 20th century — the ‘age of extremes’ according to Eric Hobsbawm — , even thinkers with weirdo ideas felt this need to commit themselves to some ideology or movement. Thus, Heidegger sought to harmonize his impossibly dense and difficult ideas with the babytalk of National Socialism. And so, Sartre, though deeply influenced by Heidegger, decided to link his ideas to the babytalk of Stalinism and Maoism. But what did BEING AND TIME really have to do with Nazism, and what did BEING AND NOTHINGNESS have to do with Stalinism?
The difficulty of French philosophy has been a moral/political problem as well as an intellectual one because so many French thinkers purported to have answers for the world of the common man. Sartre was a very activist thinker, and so was Althusser and others. Foucault even traveled to Iran. Godard, for a time at least, insisted he was making revolutionary instructions in the form of film. But really, what the hell is one to make of stuff like WIND FROM THE EAST, ONE PLUS ONE, and TOUT VA BIEN? Later, when Godard dropped his overt politics and made films as philosophical tracts, what was he trying to say? Again, I don’t expect thinkers and artists to supply the answers, especially as there are more than one to anything, and heaven knows there are endless number of questions that can be raised. Even so, the point of art is to engage and provoke us, not to ignore us. I’m not sure what Chris Marker’s SANS SOLEIL is really about, but you can sense a probing/wandering mind at work throughout the film. But in Godard’s later films, it’s almost like he sitting in some corner of the room with his back turned to us and reading or writing something we aren’t privy to, and we are left with nothing but to accept the man as a great genius because, well, he’s the legendary Godard. The whole thing reeks of bogusness and arrogance, and only serious neurotics like Richard Brody, snotty insiders like Rosenbaum, and conceited radicals like Brenez could go for that kind of crap. (But so many white liberal boys and girls who went to elite colleges wanna feel so much a part of this ‘cutting edge’ community, and so, they’ll just mindlessly go along, pretending to be ‘stimulated’. In a way, they’re being fooled, they’re being had. This isn’t to say Godard is a fraudster for he’s probably serious about whatever he’s doing. The problem is I seriously doubt he knows what he’s been doing since the late 60s. I think he’s one of those mentally ill people who can function in normal society, which is why he hasn’t been institutionalized. Though his fans claim to feel intellectually ‘elevated’ by his works, many of them find comfort in their slavish faith in Godard, which makes sense given the way of human nature. If anything can be said of human nature, it’s that human nature is contradictory. Human nature is, at once, superiorist, egalitarian, and inferiorist. There is something in us that wants to be superior to other people, but the problem of superiority is the burden/responsibility/paranoia that comes with power. Those with power are to supposed to take charge and rule, but this is very stressful, which is why parents are more stressed out than their children. Parents have power over children but must also protect and feed the children. Another side of us is naturally egalitarian, and this has to do with our resentful nature. When someone has more, we want some of what they have. Animals steal from other animals. We compete not only to rise above others but to bring down others to our level. But there is also an inferiorist side to human nature. Though we generally don’t like to be inferior, inferiority can be comforting and offer security. We are like dogs in this sense. A dog would rather serve its master and be fed than run wild & free and look for its own food. Because the world is so dangerous and confusing, the inferiorist side of us wants to follow great leaders, listen to great thinkers, and respect great teachers. By accepting their superiority, we can use them as shields against the rain and storm of confusion. When the French Revolution went crazy and led to chaos, most Frenchmen were willing to bow down to the great superior Napoleon and follow him. They found comfort in being inferiors before the great superior Man of Destiny. And look at the slavishness of liberals before the ‘great’ Obama.)
In a way, the lack of clear link between French Philosophy and French (radical)Politics in the postwar era had a certain appeal. Since the links were not clear, only intellectuals and those-in-the-know could articulate why Sartre’s ideas of freedom were indeed linked with Marxism and Stalinism. Even amongst ‘progressive universalist egalitarians’, there is this desire to be ‘different’ from the conventional rabble who don’t know nothing about nothing. Even a semi-literate worker could understand the basic links between Marxist Ideas and Proletarian Action, but only specialists could explain the links between Sartrean existentialism drawn from Heidegger and the need to support the Algerian rebels.
Another appealing factor was the centrality of culture, and this owed both to the revival of Antonio Gramsci and the Left’s envy of the modern Right’s cult of ‘irrational and creative sacred-ism’. Gramsci’s idea of ‘cultural hegemony’ could conveniently justify leftist intellectualism’s dabbling in Arts & Culture(so often condemned as ‘bourgeois’ by radical Marxists) than remaining stuck with issues of economics and politics. A leftist intellectual, by invoking Gramsci, could say that he or she is indeed working for the revolution by gaining control of the culture. That way, one can have the cake and eat it too, i.e. one can get a plush job as a privileged academic in a university and read books BUT also defend one’s career as ‘radical’ and ‘revolutionary’ since he or she is working to politicize the cultural department. He or she may be teaching films in college instead of leading the ‘toiling masses’ — though, to be sure, today’s leftists care more about the demands of privileged gays and Pussy Riot than the plight of working class people in America — , but hey, he or she is teaching gullible students to appreciate JEANNE DIELMAN as ‘one of the greatest films of all time.’ How radical and committed!
Yet, there was another reason for the culturalization of the Left, and it had to do with the Left’s envy of the modern Right’s hold on the concept of Culture. The Left had been defined by the idea of ‘civilization’ — universal, rational, cosmopolitan, radiant — whereas the modern Right had embraced the idea of ‘culture’ — particularist, irrational, tribal or blood-and-soil, creative. Leftism was like a science whereas Rightism was like an art. Leftist Marxists claimed to understand the science of history and spread the idea that history would work out inevitably according to its logical inner dynamics. In contrast, the Far Right — at least in the modern sense — spawned Mussolini and Hitler who embraced the Nietzschean notion of the creative will to power. Thus, Fascism and National Socialism weren’t limited to a single world view or ‘materialist/scientific’ formula but were, instead, ideologies and movements that could shift form and change shape according to the needs of the community. Though the Left attacked fascism as ‘opportunistic’ and ‘shallow’, in truth the Left was envious of fascism’s creative and flexible qualities as opposed to the rigid orthodoxies of Marxism. Marxists were dreary in their condemnation of heretics, whereas there was a much wider room and tolerance of heresy in fascism. Under communism, everyone and everyone had to be a communist socially, politically, spiritually, economically, culturally, and etc. But under fascism, one could be capitalist, socialist, Christian, atheist, nationalist, trans-nationalist, traditionalist, avant-garde. To be sure, Italian Fascism was considerably more tolerant than National Socialism, and in the latter the issue of Race was the one single Iron Dogma that everyone had to adhere to — though, to be sure, Germans were tolerant and even admiring of certain non-‘Aryans’ in the German empire.
But if one were to probe as to why Israel has been a fascinating national experiment, it’s because of its essentially fascist than communist characteristics, i.e. it’s been the product of a creative blend of tribalism, nationalism, internationalism, atheism, spiritualism, capitalism, socialism, race-ism, and everything under the sun. Anyway, when it began to dawn on postwar Western intellectuals that Marxism was turning rather boring — especially with the domination of Stalinism — , the new leftists wanted an element of irrational creativity to their ideology and movement, and this is where Heidegger suddenly became useful to Sartre. Though Heidegger, Sartre could also channel Nietzsche, and in time, Nietzsche, who’d been associated with the Evil Right, came to be a staple of the New Left.
But most importantly, the high level of difficulty of French Philosophy and its radical intellectual commitment to the People in the postwar period were very much a reflection of the great contradiction in French history and culture that goes way back. Before the French Revolution, the French were obsessed with the finest in everything, especially in arts and culture. Thus, the French civilization came to be defined by “what our genius can do as opposed to what other poor sods cannot.” The French felt special in feeling special; they got addicted to specialness. But just like the Sun cannot keep its radiance to itself but must shine outward, the French believed that their great inimitable Frenchness should shine on all the world, i.e. the inimitable should be imitated. So, even if the non-French couldn’t be as refined and glorious as the French themselves, they should still the beneficiaries of the light and warmth emanating from French civilization and culture. Thus, the French were both arrogantly particularist and generously universalist. Maybe the non-French couldn’t bake pastries as well as the French, but let them all eat cake. And then came the French Revolution with its ideas of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Now, the French found themselves in a kind of conundrum. Their culture and pride had been shaped and formed by a great sense of superiority and particularity — “We great and glorious French can do what the rest of humanity cannot do, though they feebly do try their best to imitate us” — , but now the French were supposed to stand for EVERYONE without the precepts and boundaries of Culture. It’s one thing for a beer-bellied couch potato to feel that he’s representative of humanity. Anyone can drink a lot of beer, watch a lot of TV, and be a bum. And though Jesus came up with a demanding set of requirements for people to enter Heaven, it was about being good and faithful in simple ways. It took effort but not much mental effort. Jesus didn’t care if you were hairy, unkempt, unclean, stinky, uneducated, coarse, diseased, fat, or even a whore. As long as you got on your knees, apologized to God, and had faith in Jesus, you made it to Heaven.
But the French revolutionary philosophers who cooked up ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’ were no slouches. They were highly educated, highly intelligent, and highly cultured people. Though they’d toppled the aristocracy, they were very aristocratic in their manners; some of them even wore those funny wigs and maybe even used snuff. They too were intoxicated with French greatness, French culture, French beauty, French poetry, French art, French everything. To be sure, Robespierre — at least as depicted in Wajda’s DANTON — was something of a puritan when it came to stuff like fine dining, which is why Danton(played by Depardieu) ate most of the fancy dishes while Robespierre stuck to simple food. Even so, Robespierre, though committed to atheism and a spartan-lifestyle, was highly demanding of himself as only a serious and idealistic intellectual could. He wasn’t simply simple like a rube but simple out of intellectual and moral reasons. So, typical of the French way, he was trying to show off his superiority even if through moral practice than through cultural expression.
The French have long been defined by an Air of Superiority but this came to be fused with the Mission of Universality. Paradoxically, the French believed that since they were the Best at Everything, everyone around the world should partake of French greatness. Chinese and Japanese also thought very highly of themselves, but they didn’t the world should be made to share in Chinese-ness or Japanese-ness(though Japan did attempt that for Asia during WWII, but that owed something to the influence of Western Imperialism). Since the glory of France had long been defined as much by culture as by ideas, the French concept of universality — liberty, equality, and fraternity — had a great cultural component. If Evangelicals just wanna spread the word of Christ — and don’t care in what vulgar populist fashion they do it — , the French didn’t just want to spread the ideals of Liberty but to ‘civilize’ people around the world with the ‘Cultural IDEA of France’. Because French culture had developed its fineness and quality under the aristocracy, it continued to have an aristocratic air even under democratic rule. So, French concept of liberty, equality, and fraternity didn’t mean everyone should take it easy and be a bunch of regular Joes munching on burgers and belching between gulps of beer; it meant that even ordinary people should be highly educated, refined in manners, intellectually vigorous, and cultured. It’s no wonder that in postwar France, workers were subsidized to attend Theatre for free. Instead of leveling everything down, the French sought to bring about equality by raising everyone up. Thus, French education had long been one of the most demanding in the world, or at least that was the case until the lunacy of the May 1968 Generation really began to mess things up. Late 60 radicalism was especially poisonous, especially when French intellectuals looked to Red China — then under the throes of the Cultural Revolution — for inspiration. Mao was attempting not only to further the Revolution but to destroy Chinese culture itself. Godard had a similarly sick idea in the film WEEKEND where he imagined zombie-like Marxist guerillas destroying all of Western culture so as to create something wholly new from scratch. As Mao said, ‘No Destruction, No Construction’. The madness of WEEKEND would be put into practice by the Khmer Rouge — whose leaders had been educated in France — with an attempt to create an entirely new society along the concept of Year Zero. Despite Godard’s foul movie, notice how he’s been met with nothing but respect and admiration whereas Riefenstahl was never forgiven for TRIUMPH OF THE WILL and Griffith is still reviled for the mostly truthful BIRTH OF A NATION — it may not be truthful on historical details but it sure is truthful about the nature of the Negro’s sexuality and destructive energies(as proven by so many Negro-dominated communities). The poisonous impact of the May 68 Generation cannot be over-emphasized. Even so, the May 68 Generation failed in its attempt to overthrow the entire system, and France did live on, and only gradually has the French education system eroded more and more, especially with the mass arrival of immigrants from the Muslim world and especially black Africa and with the rising influence of mindless American pop culture. As if to atone for his sicko madness during the late 60s and early 70s, the later Godard turned philosophical and began to ruminate deeply about culture, but the genie couldn’t be put back inside the bottle. Similarly, Sontag, who used to say dumb things like, “the white race is the cancer of history”, later turned more reflective and sober, more sensitive and truthful about the damage that radical movements had caused all around the world, especially in the Third World, much of which turned or reverted to nightmares in the absence of white rule. And when she began to suffer from cancer, maybe she became more sensitive and less flippant about its metaphorical conceits. Anyway, what the French since the Revolution were trying to do was no easy balancing act: they were trying to combine the sense of French cultural superiority with universal notions of equality, liberty, and fraternity. It was as problematic as Muslims trying to spread a universal religion wrapped in particularist Arab customs. Thus, to be a good Muslim, one can’t simply accept the credo of Islam but has to dress, eat, and carry on like a medieval Arab, which is why Islam is so problematic in the modern world. Despite its promise of spiritual universality and equality for all men, all true Muslims are expected to live according to the supposedly culturally superior ways of Medieval Arabs.
In the film DANTON, Robespierre is both an egalitarian true believer and a demanding disciplinarian who expects people to live by the highest standards. He’s a radical with an aristocratic soul — a radistocrat — , and this duality came to infect much of French modern history within both France and its empire. The French were less race-oriented than the British and Anglo-Americans; the French liked to pretend that France was an idea, and that as long as non-French partook of French ways and culture, they too were becoming ‘equal’ and ‘fraternal’ with the French. And this was one of the problems of French conflicts in Vietnam and Algeria in the postwar era. Though the French committed all manner of atrocities — and rebels committed their share too — , it was not a simple case of French trying to oppress other folks. French had a tougher time letting go of the colonies because they’d been culturally and ideologically more invested in them. The British policy was to rule over others but to allow them to maintain their cultural and racial separateness. And so, when people living under British imperialism told the white man to Go Home, the British, for the most part, figured it was time to pack up and leave. The French, in contrast, felt they had made genuine cultural and racial commitment to the colonies. The French had racially mixed more with the natives, and so the French tended to see their colonies less like possessions than love affairs. Also, the French had been more invested in spreading French culture to the natives, and a good number of Vietnamese, Algerians, and others came to become very French in many ways. So, the French came to see Vietnam and Algeria as genuine extensions of France or the Idea of France. Besides, given the humiliation the French under the Germans and then from the Brits and Americans — French were saved by Anglos and Anglo-Americans whom the French tended to look down upon as less cultured — , their empire was the last symbol of French glory and greatness in the world. In this light, it’s understandable why Albert Camus couldn’t simply take sides in the Algerian conflict. He understood that the political reality in Algeria was inseparable from the cultural reality. Though there were the French and the Algerians in Algeria, there was also a huge area of Algeria that reflected the merging of both France and Algeria. (In some ways, it seems as though the current mania for massive immigration among the French elites partly owes to this dream of recreating the lost empire at home. Since the French cannot recreate the empire abroad, it’s as though the French are trying to turn France itself into an empire where France-as-an-idea will finally prove its validity and worth, i.e. if all those North Africans, Africans, and Southeast Asians come to France and partake of French culture, then ‘all of humanity’ — at least within French borders — will have proven that Frenchness is indeed an Idea for All Humanity. The problem is all those immigrants would rather come to France and listen to black American rap music and watch Hollywood movies than look at Impressionist paintings or read Victor Hugo.) The problem of universalizing, equalizing, and ‘fraternizing’ French culture as an Idea is not only that culture isn’t the same thing as an idea but that French culture, owing to its aristocratic and/or intellectual pedigree, is not something that can be appreciated easily and instantly, especially by the impatient and horny young. It takes time to appreciate much of French literature, music, painting, sculpture, and etc., and to fully appreciate it, one must master French, which is not an easy language; even learning to speak it properly is pretty daunting for outsiders. This is why the French were bound to lose to America in the Culture War. It’s easier to turn the world into couchpotatoes or jigger-jiver-ish apes than to turn the world into esthetes, aristocratically-minded individuals, and intellectuals. You cannot learn and master Frenchness overnight like you can learn to talk rap shit. You can watch a Hollywood movie or sitcom, listen to an American pop song, eat American burgers and fries, and guess what? You’re already halfway finished to becoming a full-fledged globomerican. But there is no Instant pass to becoming French. Becoming French is not just about legality and citizenship. It’s not just about democratic ideals; it’s about the Cultural Idea of France. But as things are going, even white homegrown French prefer American and even British culture to their own. French youth today don’t feel much link to their rich traditions and history. They don’t even feel much connection to the May 68 Generation that gained control over society. What they feel close to are Hollywood movies, rap music, interracist porn, rugby, fast food, and etc. Check the final minutes of the film SUMMER HOURS, and it will make you sick.
In the movie, the old people live in their own cultural bubble. When they die, everything that surrounds them and signifies French Culture will die with them. As for their children, the May 68 Generation that sought to replace French Culture with Radical Ideology, they(now in their middle age) are discovering that their children don’t give a shit about ideology and intellectual ideas either — but the 68 generation are too full of intellectual narcissism to ever admit it, though, deep down inside, they know they really messed up. What their kids really care about is dancing to rap and having sex with black African jigger-jivers who don’t give a shit about French culture and just wanna ape American jigger-jivers. It’s sick, but this whole mess is the end-result of the foolish notion of ‘France as an Idea’. If it hadn’t been for such silly ideas, the French wouldn’t have used Frenchness as a cultural mission around the world. And without such notions, the French would not have opened their borders to so many immigrants and attempt to elevate them with French culture. Especially with the May 68 Generation’s self-loathing and the ideology of ‘blame everything on whitey’, why would non-whites who arrive in France wanna partake of a culture that represents the ‘cancer of human history’? Take the movie THE CLASS where a French leftist teacher — who no doubt thinks the greatest evils in the world are ‘racism’, ‘sexism’, ‘nationalism’, and etc. — tries so hard to spread French-culture-as-an-idea to his largely non-white students who don’t give a shit. These Muslim and African kids came to France for free welfare and free everything. They are not very smart, and they’ve been ideologically taught to hate whites by leftist education and Jewish media in the West. And they just love American junk culture and junk food, which is so easier to digest and understand. Worse, even the white French kids in the classroom are bound to become demoralized since they are told they are no more French than the African, Asian, and Muslims students — Frenchness is said to be an ‘idea’ universally accessible to the entire humanity, after all — , and yet, all around white French kids notice that Africans and Muslims don’t give a shit about French culture. Also, what with blacks being more muscular and badass — especially as they ape American black culture — , it may seem gay and effete to learn and practice French culture. Just about the only non-white kid who seems to give a shit about French culture is some Chinese kid, but then Asians tend to be drones who suck up to any teacher, so that doesn’t really count.
The French attempt to have it both ways — maintain an air of superiority and spread equality/fraternity — was bound to fail, especially in the modern democratic order where the elites have far less power over the masses and have lost confidence in their cultural elitism — though there are new implicit forms of elitist marking of the SWPL variety.
When the French Revolution happened, the elite revolutionaries had great power over the masses and ruthlessly dealt with people who got out of line; indeed, the vast majority of people killed by Revolutionary Terror were workers and peasants accused of sabotage and criminality.
And even after WWII, many of the old social controls were still in place. Though we don’t like to see the kid roughed up by authority figures in Truffatut’s 400 BLOWS, you need discipline and hierarchy if you’re gonna equally elevate all people to an higher level. The natural tendency of most people — especially kids — is to be bums. Thus, the natural tendency of democratic equality is to be a fatass couchpotato pig, which is why so many white trash, brown trash, and black trash in America are obese pigs whose idea of culture is watching TV, surfing for internet junk news and porn, watching sports, and playing videogames. And look what democratic values have done to Japan, a nation where most young people now wanna be cartoon characters.
The kid may have been handled a tad too roughly in parts of 400 BLOWS, but without such discipline, what are most kids gonna do? They are going to turn into louts and punks. So, once the old social controls faded in France, generations of French got sloppier and sloppier, and French culture lost its luster and meaning in the eyes of most people. Yet, old conceits die hard, and the French conceit of being both elitist and egalitarian has rubbed off on intellectuals around the world. Take the jerk Jonathan Rosenbaum in this video:
Now, I’m not saying SATANTANGO is a good movie or a bad movie. That isn’t the issue. Rather, notice how Rosenbaum tries to have it both ways. On the one hand, he loves showing off that he’s oh-so-very special and intellectual for having included a 7 hr Hungarian film on his list of ‘ten greatest films of all time’, but at some point, he says Bela Tarr’s film is really for the ordinary moviegoers than for elite film critics. Rosenbaum points out that very few critics showed up for the screening of the film whereas the theater was packed when screened to the public. It is BS. Rosenbaum surely knows that many critics skipped the movie because they’re either tired of slow-paced films like SATANTANGO that are dime-a-dozen at film festivals OR, being critics with special passes, they’ll likely have ample opportunity to watch it later. In contrast, the public has a far more limited access to certain movies, and so a bunch of people — mostly movie maniacs — may fill up a theater to catch it while they can. But Rosenbaum tries to turn the issue into “I’m with the people cuz we all like SATANTANGO.” That way, Rosenbaum pats himself on the back as an elitist who likes a peculiar film that most people will never understand but also positions himself as the champion of the moviegoing public. Not surprisingly, Rosenbaum spent many years in France and indeed has often commented on America through the lens of French radical politics and cultural contempt. He’s Jewish to boot, and we know how these hideous Jews are full of lies, conceits, and arrogance.
Indeed, Jews and the French are somewhat similar in that both are obsessed with superiority AND equality. Jews love the fact they are more intelligent and more intellectual than other peoples, but they also take pride in the conceit of Jewishness as a humanitarian Idea, i.e. “Jewishness is all about sympathy, moral commitment, and helping the underdog.” It’s no wonder that Jesus was a Jew. He was, at once, the most arrogant/exclusive Man that ever lived and the most humble/embracing. ONLY He could be the Son of God, and ONLY He understood the answer for the salvation of mankind, but He would also go among the people and be one with them. But in the end, most people — even those in France — will not come to appreciate French culture as an Idea. Things especially came to a head when the 60s spawned a generation that was filled with hatred of its own history and culture. In earlier times, the French Revolutionaries may have hated the king, the noblemen, and old privileges, but they loved their own heritage, traditions, and culture. But eventually, France as an Idea failed even among the French. Of course, it didn’t help that France lost wars to Germany, lost its empire, faded during the Cold War as just another European nation caught between US and USSR. Thus, not everything about French leftism was ideologically genuine and honest. It served as therapy for a people who’d lost their glory and pride. Having lost their own greatness, their only weapon left was to undermine greater powers through ideological gamesmanship. (An interesting thing happened in the 60s: While American culture was winning over the French masses, French culture was winning over American elites. French masses were watching Hollywood movies and even listening to Rock n Roll, while American intellectuals and critics were impressed with French writers, philosophers, and cinema. So, one might say a kind of fusion took place. Americanized French mass culture seeped up to the French elites, and Francified American elite culture seeped down to the American masses, even if indirectly, as with French New Wave allusions in Tarantino’s PULP FICTION. But in the end, it was the Jews who won the power game of both elite and mass culture across both sides of the Atlantic.) We can see similar developments on the American Right, especially as pertaining to Jews. People like David Duke and Pat Buchanan may now feel that White America is lost for good. Since it can no longer be saved, all they have left is to take vengeance on the very people who did most to kill white America, and of course that people happen to be the Jews. So, David Duke and Buchanan — and Kevin MacDonald — make a big fuss about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Not because they really care about Palestinians, but because they wanna get back at the Jews in a “you killed us, and so we’ll kill you” manner. If Jews used ‘anti-racism’ to destroy the white race, then the white race must use the same ploy to destroy the Jewish race. If Jews undermined white power and security in South Africa by invoking ‘racism’, then white people must use the ‘racism’ card to destroy Jewish lives in Israel. If Jews used the ‘inequality’ card to force whites to give up power to blacks and browns in the name of creating an ‘equal’ society, then dispossessed whites should use the same card to bring down Jewish privilege and power.
Though many on the French Left were genuinely leftist, a good deal of French ‘leftism’ was actually fueled by rage and resentment at the Anglos and Americans who’d colluded to strip France of its greatness and glory around the world. And even if Americans hadn’t played such a role, it’s only natural for a once proud people to undermine the new king of the hill. It’s interesting that — at least according to Richard Brody’s biography — Jean-Luc Godard used to have a good deal of right-wing tendencies in the 1950s. This implies that his shift to the Left was partly caused by anti-Americanism. Godard, increasingly hating the cultural and military hegemony of Americans around the world, found leftism to be more useful and relevant as a weapon against American dominance. There were signs of this already in A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, aka BREATHLESS. The French title means ‘out of breath’ but could also mean ‘out of air’. This is rather significant within the historical context of France for no culture has been as airy as that of the French. Take croissants, which is a very fluffy kind of pastry. In a way, it’s like French genius at its best. What should sag and lack form maintains its fluffy form. It’s rich(buttery) and light(airy)at the same time. It’s as if the French came to master the art of air. Notice how a lot of French words end with ‘ahhhh’ sound. And the word ‘souffle’ spreads out like air itself. This mastery of air made the French brilliant with mood, subtlety, refinement, elegance, evocativeness, style, and such things. German language and culture, in contrast, is solid-ic than air-ic. Teutonism has weight, and there is much heavy lifting in German music — though Mozart and Haydn not so much, but then they were Austrian-German than Germanic-German. Air is lighter to handle than matter, but it is also elusive and deceptive. Airiness can lead to something like the emperor-has-no-clothe syndrome. French airiness had both a positive side and negative side. On the plus side, it made for a more refined, subtle, stylish, and sophisticated culture. It’s no wonder Impressionism arose in France. By conveying the impression of the perception of the thing than the thing itself — by favoring the fleeting subjectivity of sensualism — , Monet’s art could realize levels of poetic insight and reverie that couldn’t be possible through mere realism. French were so airy that they sometimes didn’t even pronounce the ‘T’s, which is why Monet is Monay and not MoneT. And we don’t pronounce the T at the end of ‘Truffaut’ or ‘Bardot’ either. In a way, the French created an Empire of Air, and this lightness and nimbleness lent French art, expression, and ideas a mood and flavor missing in most cultures. But the negative side of France as the Republic of Air was the tendency to be mistake style for substance. This went back as far as the Battle of Agincourt. The British had trained with long bows for a bloody battle, but the French knights thought themselves invincible because they were dressed in all sorts of fancy armor and feathers.
And in the Franco-German War of the 19th century, the French greatly overestimated their own powers because they were so full of hot air. It was one thing to master the art of filling air into pastries and even coming up with a soup called ‘souffle’, but it was another thing to fill up the national ego with hot air. Though Germans lost WWI and WWII, we knew they had amassed real power and almost had the means to win. Germans almost won WWI and would have if not for American intervention. Hitler lost WWII but gambled with solid stuff and real power. In contrast, the French have tended to exaggerate their power because the very airy nature of French consciousness. French airiness could go from elegant and light to hot and inflated. But it takes just one prick to deflate the gasbag. Thus, French Civilization eventually came to be like a flat Michelin tire. And it’s this airiness that still prevents the French from seeing the truth and reality.
If the cult of manners is preventing the British from saying what needs to be said, it’s the cult of highfalutin air that prevents the French from diagnosing the cancer of their lungs. The French are so used to airy, sophisticated, subtle, and brilliant ‘truth’ that they don’t know how to handle the plain and simple truth. The real truth of France today is the all those black Africans and barbaric Muslims are messing up the nation. But such truth is just too solid, too blunt, too heavy, too real. So, the French prefer to cook up some fancy theories to explain the social problems. But of course, air never changed solid reality. In the end, there remains the raw basic fact that all those black Africans are bigger, stronger, tougher, more aggressive, and less intelligent than the French; and as in America, black guys will beat up French guys and take French women. Zionist globalist Occupation of France is turning out to be far more deadly than the Nazi Occupation ever was; and it is Zionist globalist control of France that welcomes even more immigration; partly, this is Jewish revenge against France for past antisemitism, but it is also an agenda to control France via greater ‘diversity’, aka ‘divide and rule’. Thus, white Frenchmen and Frenchwomen are now essentially under the Zionist-Africa-Muslim Occupation. (But French post-war ideology has been so poisoned by radical anti-racism and Holocaust cult that most Frenchmen think that further erosion of white power is part of an ongoing exorcism against Nazism. So, even though France is coming under black, Muslim, and Jewish Occupation, Frenchmen are still stuck in the memory of the 1940s, i.e. France is still spiritually occupied by Nazi ghosts, and the only way to be expunged of them once and for all is to turn France so black, so Muslim, and so Jewish-controlled that ‘evil white people’ could never come to power again. In other words, Nazism isn’t just the political ideology of Germans under Hitler but the bacillus infecting every white person; it is disease incubating inside every white soul. Therefore, as long as white majorities exist, the Nazi bacillus can once again spread like an epidemic; therefore the only permanent cure of the Nazism-as-a-spiritual-sickness-of-the-white-soul is to mix the white races out of existence or reduce them in a minority in their ancestral lands. Though Nazis were evil, so were many of the Jews. Because of Nazi evil against Jews, our tendency has been to see Jews as good. We like to think in terms of ‘good vs bad’. So, if one side is bad, the other side must be good. But reality isn’t a Hollywood movie. Evil could do evil against evil. After all, just because Stalin and the Soviets were suckerpunched by Hitler and Nazis didn’t mean they were good; they were evil in their own way. The lesson to learn from the Holocaust is not that Jews were/are good but that even evil Jews could be victims of evil. If we follow the Holocaust logic, we should have loved the Soviets after WWII since 20 million Soviets were killed as the result of the Nazi invasion. But there was the long Cold War because Soviets were not to be trusted. Just because they were victims of Nazi evil didn’t mean they were good. Similarly, just because millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis doesn’t mean Jews are automatically good and should be trusted. If anything, Jews are many times more devious and formidable than a bunch of drunken communist Russians ever could have been.) What to do with such stark reality? French intellectuals try to exorcize it away with all sorts of fancy theories on ‘racism’ and ‘imperialism’ and etc. But in the end, I will be proven right, and the French intellectuals will be proven wrong. Sometimes, one doesn’t need to think more. One just needs to see the reality and say it like it is. Thought can help us toward truth, but it can also serve as a fog or mist concealing the truth. Not all truths are beautiful, elegant, theoretical, and highfalutin. If you someone punches you in the face and your nose bleeds, that is the truth, and you don’t need to think about it.
Perhaps it was fitting that Godard’s first film was called OUT OF BREATH, or ‘out of air’. It was as if Godard was, consciously or not, coming to the realization that the Air that had defined France had gone out for good. France was a flat tire. The leading character Michael(Jean-Paul Belmondo) could stand for the new France. He’s a pathetic creature. He has the old romanticism and chases after the American Patricia(Jean Seberg) like Pepe Lepew chases the striped black cat. We first see him stealing a car from an American. And he’s furious when he sees Patricia kissing some American guy. A certain anti-Americanism defines his attitude and character, yet he is also totally taken with American popular culture, American cars, and American girls. By stealing an American’s car, he’s scoring a point for France against America, but he’s also imitating Bogart and other Hollywood heroes or anti-heroes. Though Patricia is learning French, and Michael is very possessive of her, she is American, and it’s like Michael finds her fresh Americanness more appealing than French femininity. Michael is trapped in a limbo that is neither France or America. He moves around in Paris but dreams of American pop culture. But he resents Americans and is filled with French arrogance. He served as an alter ego of Godard, who was also immersed and enamored of American popular culture while being resentful of American power and influence. Godard found American popular culture both liberating — especially for the French who’d been educated in ‘rigid’ regimen of high culture — but also feared that it would turn France into just another vast cultural wasteland of bubble gum and coca cola. ALPHAVILLE is one of the strangest works for its ideas of heroism and villainy are expressed through European high culture and American pop culture. The city of Alphaville is a combination-product of the ultra-intellectualism on the European model and the ultra-consumerism on the American model. It’s controlled by intellectuals and by a philosophically minded computer, but its people are also kept happy and content with regular doses of consumerist junk. The heroism in the film is, however, both American and European. The character of Lemmy Caution is like a French version of Dick Tracy. And yet, he’s heroic because he represents popular culture as an alternative narrative/expression of outcasts than as official consumerist culture enforcing homogeneity on all of society. Also, this Americanism is infused with many poetic musings and intellectual commentary drawn from European culture. Thus, the personal and poetic aspects of American and European culture find a way to escape from Alphaville, a combination of the totalitarian strain in European culture and mindless mass-conformity strain in American culture. It’s too bad that Godard couldn’t hold onto this great vision in ALPHAVILLE.
Once the air went out of the French hot air balloon, — and one couldn’t help but notice that the deflated France had been more gas than mass in terms of real power and influence — the French turned to the art of foggery. Having run out of breath or air, the French figured they could still maintain their relevance through foggy systems of thought that made little sense but would be provocative enough to fool a bunch of intellectuals that there was still something important happening in France. (Similarly, Alternative Right is falling into a similar kind of solipsism with neo-Nietzscheism. White men, no longer having the REAL power that they once had, now cling to a sense of superiority by reading the arcane theories of ‘right-wing’ intellectuals of the past. If you no longer have real power, cling to surreal power.) Remember what King Arthur says in the final battle in EXCALIBUR? “They won’t know how few of us there are in the fog.” Since the French had lost in the realm of real power and real knowledge — as sciences and technology came to be dominated by Americans, Germans, and the Japanese — , the French turned to the Art of Obfuscation, and a kind of emperor-has-no-clothes mentality took over. In a way, the cult of Foucault was occult.
To an extent, the appeal of such obfuscation was rooted in antisemitism. As Jewish scientists and theorists began to out-think, out-argue, and out-solve issues of science, history, and philosophy, the last bastion of self-importance among gentile intellectuals was either the cult of creative irrationalism — which is why Jung tended to be less rationalist and materialist than Freud — or the cult of elliptical roundabout-ism. (As civilization advances, certain things become more tolerant of ‘imperfections’ and ‘abnormalities’ while other things become less tolerant of them. This is certainly the case in America in the 20th century where science has gotten less tolerant while culture has become more tolerant. Advances in sciences come about by further differentiating truth from fiction. Scientific truth cannot tolerate what has been proven false. If 2 + 2 = 4 is true, that we cannot tolerate 2 + 2 = 5 or 6 or 7 or whatever. If evolution is true, biology classes shouldn’t tolerate stuff like Creationism or Intelligent Design. Scientific minds must be open-minded but only in the search for truth, never in the acceptance or tolerance of falsehoods. Thus, scientific advances make science more intolerant as we learn more about what is true and what is false. But when science had been less developed, it was more tolerant of speculation, fantasies, pseudo-science, and even occultism and spiritualism. A hundred years ago, H.G. Wells, a learned man, could believe in fairies and still be a respected thinker. Rules of science in the 19th century weren’t as rigorous as they are now. And in Ancient Greece, there was no clear division between science, math, philosophy, mythology, speculation, and etc. Science not only tolerated but could be other disciplines. As science became more ‘perfect’, it became more intolerant of imperfections. Top scientific universities accept only the best and have no place for those who don’t live up to the highest standards of science, and all scientists are supposed to adhere to the scientific method. But culture has become more tolerant, so there is talk of ‘gay marriage’, and there is no longer any meaningful division between high culture and low culture, between serious culture and popular culture. And most modern nations keep moving along with global trends of undermining the concept of core national identity in favor of ‘diversity’. Yet, in some ways, culture too is becoming more intolerant in unexpected ways. The gay agenda claims to promote tolerance of gays, but it’s utterly intolerant of those who oppose the agenda. If you oppose ‘gay marriage’, you are labeled as either ‘anti-gay’ or ‘homophobic’. That’s like saying someone who opposes Chinese eating of dogs is anti-Chinese; it’s like saying someone who opposes Zionist policies is ‘antisemitic’ — and indeed California government passed a resolution condemning all forms of anti-Zionism as ‘antisemitism’. It’s like saying if you oppose illegal immigration by Mexicans, you’re anti-Mexican. And if you oppose free birth control pills for affluent college women, you’re ‘anti-women’ or waging a ‘war against women’. Such hysteria are expressed by people who never tire of telling us that Joseph McCarthy was ‘hysterical’. Another way culture has become less tolerant — even if not by design or intention — is the domination of some cultures over others. Not all peoples are equally talented, and so sports culture has become less tolerant of non-blacks since non-blacks are less athletic than blacks. And same could be said for hip-hop centered pop music culture. And Jewish Hollywood pretty much dominates world cinema. Also, with the rise of technology in popular culture — given the fact that science and technology are closely linked — , the intolerance of science may be rubbing off on the intolerance of culture. More than ever before, new leaders of popular culture industry understand the human mind much better than people in the past. Via new psychological findings and marketing science, they know what turns people on and what turns people off and use the knowledge to maximize profits. So, our culture has become less like organic fungi growing of its own accord and more like synthetic drugs cooked in laboratories. In the 60s, Dylan and Neil Young were trying to come up with new eccentric kinds of music that took chances and risks, mutating in unexpected ways. Now, it’s as though pop music is being created in sterile labs with beats and rhythms that have been scientifically proven to have certain narcotic or meth-like effects on the human mind. Culture no longer so much engages us as addicts us. And some people use evolutionary theory to explain why some arts are worthier than other kinds, and surely this knowledge will be used to create artificial-intelligence-generated art. And Hollywood has narrowed its blockbuster formula to a set of ‘scientifically’ proven principles on what-the-audience-really-wants. And morality, once a part of culture, has been studied scientifically — or pseudo-scientifically by bogus social scientists — and, as a result, we are told that being on the wrong side of the moral debate is less a matter of individual disagreement than waging war on science and reason. So, if you oppose ‘gay marriage’, you’re not standing for certain cultural values but should really be forced to see a therapist since you’re ‘scientifically’ sick in the head. But since when is the idea of a male sexual organ entering a fecal hole of another man scientifically, let alone morally, valid?) There is a logic to wit and intelligence, and however one may think of Woody Allen as a person, we know he’s a brilliant wit whose jokes make real sense. Godard, in contrast, may be highly intelligent, but he lacks the systematic mastery of wit that Jews have. He could never consistently come up with funny jokes like Allen could or make observations with any real logic to them. So, he built a cult of obfuscatory mysteriousness about him where his admirers are always left guessing. For all we know, Godard’s thought or idea may actually be trite or stupid, but as long as he holds it secretly in his closed fist or as long as he offers it to us in the form of a modern koan, we might think he’s very provocative and profound even though we really have no idea what the hell he is talking about. Oftentimes, Godard, in movies or interviews, won’t say anything that makes any sense. He’ll often communicate with glances, non sequiturs, or just plain nonsense.
It’s almost as if he’s afraid of being found out as a fraud or phony if he were to communicate clearly, whereupon we’d see the real him. But as long as he keeps the core of his being — or lack thereof — veiled in the fog of his personality cult, there will always be Godardians. This is a pity because, at one time, he was a genuine artist. And even if he was never a real thinker in the systematic intellectual sense, he was extremely well-read and trained in the demanding French intellectual tradition. But then, maybe that was precisely the problem. The influence of postwar French philosophy encouraged his impulses to obfuscate than clarify. Again, the problem is not posing questions that cannot be answered. But there’s a difference between raising questions about complex matters and resorting to ridiculous questions to avoid answers altogether. Even when Godard seemed to be most committed to world affairs, his approach and outlook made no sense. As part of the Dziga Vertoz Group — which mainly consisted of himself and some nutjob named Jean Gorin — , Godard had the idea of aiding world revolution by making films that not only no one wanted to see but no one could understand. In a nutshell, Godard was trying to have it both ways. Like so many French intellectuals of the postwar period, he was trying to be relevant and pay lip-service to the French ideals of liberty, fraternity, and equality. He was for the worker, he was for the downtrodden of the Third World. Yet, his intellectual ego couldn’t help but make obfuscatory films that really didn’t make much sense out side intellectual circles. Earlier Godard films baffled a lot of people but in a good way. Godard seemed to be transcending old categories and inventing new ones, working not only as a ‘film director’ but as journalist, essayist, documentarian, and anthropologist through his films. He also engaging with himself, arguing with himself. In a way, both Pauline Kael(pro-Godard) and John Simon(contra-Godard) were right. The difficulty of pigeonholing Godard as one thing or another made him one of the most fascinating cultural figures of the Sixties. But by the late 60s/early 70s, Godard had pigeonholed himself into a fanatical Marxist-Maoist, which made him less interesting from an artistic viewpoint. Even so, if he’d at least made political films that made sense, he might have developed a new following and fan-base. At the very least, Sartre wrote political essays that accessible to the layman — unlike his philosophical works that required academic training to understand. In contrast, even as Godard professed to be ‘with the revolution’, he made little sense in his writings, interviews, and films during this so-called Dziga-Vertov period. In a way, unbeknownst to himself and his fans, he’d become a parody of French intellectualism, what with obfuscation serving as the central shtick. But of course, his acolytes could fool themselves that Godard was indeed making works for the world revolution and for the people — he was just ‘ahead of his time’ — , and there would come a day when people around the world will come to appreciate his ‘radical will’. In a way, such conceit says as much about leftist intellectuals as about Godard. They also happen to be motivated by contradictory and opposing urges. On the one hand, leftist/radical intellectuals love to show off that they appreciate, understand, and value things that the masses of unwashed dummies will never understand. I mean one must be a real far-out intellectual to sit through an utter 3 ½ hr bore-fest like JEANNE DIELMAN and pretend that one really got a lot of intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and whatever-else mileage out of it. All the young cinephiles weaned on Rosenbaum and Hoberman — who, I admit, can be extremely insightful at their best — wanna think themselves just as ‘intellectual’ and ‘ahead of their time’. But you see, leftism is supposed to be about equality, universality, and fraternity; and so, it behooves leftist intellectuals and wanna-be-intellectuals to realize that they are really a bunch of precious ‘bourgeois’ snobs who went to good schools, hang around elite circles, turn up their noses at the masses, and so on. One way to assuage this anxiety is to champion pop culture as well as junk culture. Maybe if you love John Woo as much as Chantal Akerman, maybe you’re not just some elitist intellectual geek but a cool hispter dude too. Or how about Wong Kar-Wai who combines populism and art-film-ism in stuff like the strained ASHES OF TIME and the dreary IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE? (The appeal of Hong Kong cinema among SWPL liberals has three facets: populist, geeky, and progressive. Populist because of the outrageous violence and comedy; geeky because Asians are generally not thought to be macho, sexy, & cool, therefore less threatening to geeky SWPL egos; progressive because SWPL’s willing acceptance of Asians as badass action heroes, fun guys, and sexy characters go against racial stereotypes. Especially since liberal-dominated Hollywood culture relies so much on racial stereotypes — especially with Asian males relegated to dorky roles — , white liberals might, if only to suppress their hypocrisy, overpraise a film like IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE that has a Asian male in the romantic lead or a movie like HARD-BOILED with Asian guys acting so tough.) Another way of dealing with such anxiety is to pretend there will come a day when the masses will come around to appreciating something like Godard’s KEEP UP YOUR RIGHT. Yeah, in about a billion years. It’s so much like Rosenbaum to show off that he, the great Mr. Intellectual, included the 7 hr SATANTANGO in his list of ‘greatest films’, while also pretending that the masses or the public are on his side and just dying to see it. Now, I’m not saying the world would be worse if more people would rather watch SATANTANGO than TRANSFORMERS or LORD OF THE RING movies. All I’m saying it IS elitist to watch and appreciate films like SATANTANGO, and it’s never gonna be a mass thing. True, a bunch of ‘cinephiles’ might dutifully sit through the latest Godard films, but it’s really more like attending church. They do it out of a sense of duty. And some of them may even pretend to like it and appreciate it and include in their list of ‘greatest films of all time’ — like some gullible young fools have been persuaded(or persuaded themselves) that JEANNE DIELMAN really is some kind of masterpiece when it is by far the worst film ever made. At least PLAN 9 FROM OUTERSPACE is good for laughs.
Given the nature of French postwar ideology, French anti-Americanism, and French arrogance — though one could argue Ugly American arrogance is no better — , many Americans have taken pleasure in the decline of French power and influence. Americans like to laugh at the French as has-beens still putting on an act(as a great power). Most Americans think French have faded in just about every category: militarily, economically, politically, and even culturally; after all, even most French kids prefer American cinema to French cinema, and far more Frenchmen eat American food than Americans eat French food; and French listen to American/Anglo pop, but almost no Briton or American listens to French pop; though French cinema may actually be more intelligent and of higher quality than most of American cinema, in terms of box office and worldwide influence, Americans — or Jewish-Americans — win hands down. And even French philosophy now matters far less in American college departments whose main ideologies seem to be ‘gay worship’, ‘Negro worship’, and ‘Jew worship’. (Indeed, a new school of Zionist ‘philosophers’ represented by Bernard Henri-Levy — kind of a Francois Truffaut of political thought — seemed to have taken over French thought as much as their Jewish counterparts have come to control British and American intellectual and moral culture.) So, the French conceit of self-importance seems amusing and ridiculous to Americans who feel they have all the power. But before Americans — at least white gentile ones — laugh at the French, they would do well to look at their own power, for they have been as denuded of power as much as the French have been. America is not controlled and owned by Americans. And white Americans don’t even own and control White America. America is really run by Jews, who are the true victors of the Cold War. In the end, it turns out that the masterful Jews played the US, EU, USSR, Japan, and China like the character Sanjuro in YOJIMBO played all sides. True, Sanjuro got hurt real bad at one point — just like Jews faced some dark times during parts of the 20th century — , but the people who truly came out on top are the Jews.
Therefore, even though the French pretense of power and influence may seem amusing to us, it must equally be amusing for Jews to see a White America that still thinks it’s in control of America. But look at the reality, and white gentiles — even or especially the once mighty Wasps — are nothing but putty in the hands of Jews. Remember how Amon Goeth used to shoot a whole bunch of Jews in SCHINDLER’S LIST? American politicians, in their pilgrimages to Israel, might as well stand atop a tower and shoot Palestinians women and children to show that they are running dog servants of the Zionist World Jewry cabal. But then, there is no need for American politicians to shoot Palestinians directly since they, at the behest of their Jewish masters, will approve any amount of ‘aid to Israel’ that will equip Jews with the military means to oppress and terrorize more Palestinians. 72 yrs after WWII, we still commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, but we feel no sympathy for the rebellion of Palestinians in Gaza against their Zionist oppressors who have become the new Nazis. When Jews used weapons provided to them by American taxpayers — who are all sheepish mental slaves of Jewish elites who control Wall Street, media, academia, and government — to kill thousands of Palestinians, we just ignore the horror, and of course, our Jewish-controlled media say close to nothing. And Obama turned out to be just another shill of the International Jews and kept his lips tightly shut about Zionist tyranny. White America power as it once existed is no more. When America had been ruled by white elites, the power of America reflected the will of the vast majority of Americans who were white and gentile. But with all politicians — except for Ron Paul — being puppets of Organized Jewry and with almost all elite institutions being controlled by Jews, American power is not about our power. It is about most of us sucking up to the power of hideous Jewish globalists who seek to corrupt society with garbage like ‘gay marriage’, to undermine white Americans further through massive non-white immigration, and to break the spine of white unity by encouraging white women to have sex/babies with big strong Negroes while white boys are reduced to metro-sexual dorks addicted to interracist porn. This is the nature of ‘American power’ today. It means Jewish power OVER YOU in America, not your power represented by elites who are of your kind and your values. White conservatives may look to Mitt Romney as their savior, but he’s just another shill of Organized Jewry that runs Wall Street, big media, and the law firms. In a way, white Americans have less control over America than the French have over France. Of course, France is also controlled by the Jewish cabal, but the French still have some sense of French culture and Frenchness. White Americans, in contrast, seem to have utterly forgotten what it means to be a white American. White liberals are nothing but SEX-AND-THE-CITY clones or hipster quasi-gays whose idea of morality is ‘gay marriage’ and ‘save Pussy Riot’; and white conservative idea of America is beer-swilling, getting an ass tattoo, and inhaling rubber fumes at Nascar events. But if the two nations have one thing in common, it is that Jews and leftists have exploited the founding Republican ideals to put forth the radical idea that both America and France are ‘universal nations’. America is supposed to be ‘proposition nation’ and France is supposed to be something that might be called an ‘adoption nation’. In a so-called Proposition Nation, there is no fixed/majority national culture or identity, and everything is in flux; so, it doesn’t matter what America once was because what really matters if what America should become. So, Old America was not real America, and present America is not real America. America is less a nation than a process. It is the process of America always becoming something else. That is the radical American brand of universalism. The French adoptive version of universalism posits that French culture is so radiant, glorious, and wonderful that it would be selfish for the French to keep it to themselves. France must adopt all the people around the world — especially from the former colonies of Africa — and help them adopt French culture as a universal ideal. So, according to the theories of both the Proposition Nation and the Adoption Nation, anyone can become American and anyone can become French. Both nations are paradoxically ‘exceptional’ precisely in not being exceptional in its cultural or racial identity. Unlike most nations that say, ‘our culture is of and for our people’, America and France says, ‘our culture is for all people’. American culture is supposedly a river valley that takes the inflow from the surrounding hills and carries it to the common sea of humanity; and French culture, having reached the summit of civilization, pretends to serve as the Everest that all humanity should aspire to climb. Given that it’s easier to slide down than to climb up, Americans have a huge advantage over the French because one doesn’t have to make any cultural effort to be an American of the Proposition Nation. If you’re a Jamaican and come to America and gain citizenship — or even continue to live as an illegal alien or ‘undocumented immigrant’ according to Jewish lawspeak — , you don’t have to make any effort to be American. You, as an Jamaican-American, is just as American as any other kind of American as long as you shake your ass to hip-hop and munch on fried chicken.
As stated earlier, the problem with the French was never their wish to share their culture with others. Who has anything against learning French language, reading French literature, listening to Edith Piaf, eating French cakes, or watching French films? The problem with the French is the radical conceptualization of culture as something entirely divorced from race, people, roots, and history. While it might be workable for a limited number of non-French to arrive in France, adopt French culture, and function and contribute as Frenchmen — and there is something to be said for the vitalizing effect of introducing new blood from time to time — , the idea becomes unworkable when it does away entirely with the reality of France as an ethnic community defined by certain racial and geographical characteristics. What would have been the likelihood of there being France in the first place if that part of Europe had the terrain and climate of equatorial Africa and was inhabited by wild ugabuga jigger-jiving blacks? The notion that you can turn any number of blacks into good Frenchmen is about as looney as the notion that you can turn Japanese into Nigerians. Sure, Japanese can listen to rap music, wear baggy pants, and put on jive-ass attitudes, but there are genuine racial differences that will prevent Japanese from being truly black. For one thing, even Japanese men acting and talking black will not satisfy mudsharks into jungle fever, and even Japanese women who dye their hair blond will not satisfy Negroes and Jews with a blonde fetish. Suppose the native population of Nigeria was removed and replaced by Japanese. Suppose the Japanese newcomers did their best to dress like Nigerians, cook and eat like Nigerians, dance like Nigerians, talk and gesture like Nigerians, and etc. Even with the best of effort, it would not be the same Nigeria. Also, the natural racial tendencies of Japanese would eventually kick in, and in time, the culture will turn more Japanesque even if Japanese continued to dress and eat like Nigerians. After all, black people adopted white Christian culture — and whites even forbade use of drums among blacks to make blacks less funky and wunky — , but in time, what blacks made of Christianity was markedly differently from what whites made of it.
Different racial personalities exist. Though there are all sorts of personalities within every race, the range of personalities and preponderance of certain personalities differ widely from race to race. So, there’s more likely to be people like Al Sharpton amongst the black race than amongst the white race or Japanese people. Also, not all racial personalities can be imitated. If an Asian guy tried to act black, he would generally come across as foolish. Scrawny and thin-voiced Japanese just look ridiculous singing rap music of black thugs.
Due to racial differences and the relation between race and culture, even the culture of France will fade and disappear if the original people of France disappear. Though there is no such thing as a ‘French race’ — and the French people are a mixture of various ethnic groups, especially the Latin and Germanic — , there are far more commonalities among all European groups than between Europeans and black Africans. If we were to replace all Frenchmen with Poles and Russians who were then made to adopt French culture, France may still survive as a culture because there isn’t all that much of a genetic difference between Frogs, Polacks, and Russkies. But if the same experiment were carried out with blacks replacing Frenchmen, you can kiss France goodbye. Indeed, an honest look at the racial realities of France bears this out, but most people remain silent because of the radical universalist cult of France as an ‘idea’. Worse, even the ideal of ‘liberty’ is dead in France as it is no longer legal for a French person to champion the survival of the French people as a genetic fact. If a French person were to say a France with too many blacks would no longer truly be France, he or she would be fined and/or imprisoned. Not only are certain ideas disapproved, they are banned outright in the new order of politically correct thought police. It is a thought crime in Zionist-controlled France for a Frenchman to even want to save and preserve the racial stock that had built and defined France for so many centuries, for the racial stock that had been created through tens of thousands of years of evolution in Europe under Ice Age conditions. All of that will be lost within several decades of massive African immigration, massive politically correct indoctrination, high black and Muslim birthrates, and increased miscegenation between black men and French women. In comparison, Nazi occupation of France wasn’t bad at all. It was bad for Jews, but given what Jews are now doing to France(and America), maybe the Germans weren’t entirely without good reason to hunt down Jews. Just because Jews were horribly treated by Germans(and some French collaborators)doesn’t mean Jews are good people. While Jews living under Nazi occupation were treated horribly, don’t forget that countless Jews living under communist occupation not only collaborated with communist governments but led much of the horrors that led to the mass destruction of Slavic Christian lives and cultural heritages. Jews didn’t suffer because they chose to be saints but because the people in power during Nazi domination hated Jews. But if the roles had been reversed, Jews would have done just the same as indeed they did in the Soviet Union and in Israel. And now that Jews have the power in the US and EU, just look what they have in store for the white race. Worse, Jews have lobotomized and castrated white race to such an extent that the white race is eagerly welcoming what is being done to them. In this sense, Nazi Germans, scummy as they were, were more honest: they killed Jews out of hatred and said so. In contrast, Jewish communists in the Soviet Union and Jewish cabal in the US would have the white goyim believe that all the radical changes are GOOD for them. So, the destruction of 50,000 Russian churches was really good for Russians, and the loss of majority status for the white race is supposedly wonderful for white Americans — and dumb white Americans agree because they’ve been led to think ‘diversity’ is more important than white interests, power, and survival. And Jews have bought guys like Bill Clinton who gladly sell out his own race to win favors from the globalist cabal. A Jewish girl may have sucked his cock, but Clinton gives rimjobs to the Jewish cabal. The West has reached a point where there should be no confusion as to who are destroying the white race that created and once defined the glory, beauty, magnificence, and the meaning of the West. All honest and awakened white people need to UNAMBIGUOUSLY understand that Jews — at least 85% of them — and blacks are their real enemies, indeed enemies far more deadly than Nazism and communism. Nazism, had it succeeded, would have been horrible for Jews and Slavs, but it still wouldn’t have led to the demise of the white race and the West. Communism, though murderous and brutal — and despite its radical universalist ideology — in the end proved to be fiercely nationalist and culturally conservative in many ways. In the long run, it would have been better for Western Europe if it’d come under Soviet occupation than under American domination. There are two reasons for this: Western Europe under communist rule would not have opened its borders to all those disgusting Africans and nutjob Muslims. Western Europe would have racially and even culturally remained intact. Also, under the iron fist of communism, the European Left would have lost its moral and ideological luster in the eyes of the vast majority of people. It was because Western Europe came under American domination that so many Western Europeans entertained the fantasy of noble communism. But if Western Europeans had a taste of Soviet communism — as the people of Eastern Bloc nations had done — , there would have a rude awakening that radical leftist tyranny could be just as brutal or even more brutal than Fascist or Nazi tyranny. France under Soviet rule might have been better for Jews, but it would have been far worse for most Frenchmen than Nazi rule was. Having to live under communist rule, the elite intellectuals of Western Europe would have turned ‘rightist’ and come to value the survival of their race/culture/nation. But living under the gentle and tolerant protection of Americans, Western Europeans grew spoiled and bitched and whined all they wanted about neo-imperialism and evils of ‘fascism’ and did their best to undermine all notions of national preservation and pride. Looking back, Americans should not have liberated Western Europe and should have allowed all of it to fall under Soviet rule. But that didn’t happen, and so Western Europeans, in remembering only the tyranny of the far-right Nazis, came to believe that true evil is on the Right and not on the Left. (Eastern Europeans who remember the dark days of communism beg to differ, but their narratives are not conveyed by the Western media that are controlled by hideous Jews.) Another advantage of communist rule would have been the element of ‘antisemitism’, which, though always made out to be a bad thing, has often been a good and justifiable defense mechanism given the duplicitous nature of the Jew. Though early communism had been controlled by Jews, gentiles eventually took over the levers of power in communism. As communism favored mediocrity and unity over brilliance and individuality, Stalin’s boys were bound to win out over Trotsky’s kids. This is why Jews eventually came to loathe communism; Jews started out strong in the USSR but eventually had to bow down to the gentile-dominated bureaucratic machinery much like the Daley Machine that ran Chicago from the 50s to the 70s. And even though energetic Jews did much of the work in communist nations, the gentiles, using the egalitarian excuse of socialist principles, leeched off Jewish work and productivity. For Jews to really gain wealth and power and keep them, they needed a system of individualism and capitalism protected by rule of law. This may sound odd since so many Jews are on the Left and profess to be ‘socialist’, but what Jews today call ‘socialism’ has nothing to do with communism. Neo-socialism that Jews subscribe to says (1) Jews should control big government through which they control all of us (2) Jews should use bread-and-circuses to make us dependent on big government (3) Jews should tax white gentiles of Main Street in the interests of Jewish power and to bail out Jewish Wall Street (4) Jews should make blacks and browns resentful of ‘white privilege’ while Jews themselves pose as compassionate allies of the ‘downtrodden’ and ‘disenfranchised’ when, in fact, Jews are the most powerful and privileged people in the West. And though Jews needed the protection of Rule of Law in their rise to power, once they gained power over the Law, they play fast and loose to determine what should be legal and what shouldn’t be legal. So, Jews are trying to illegalize certain forms of free speech as ‘hate speech’ while legalizing illegal aliens as ‘undocumented immigrants’. ‘Hate speech’ is, of course, essentially any speech that speaks truth to Jewish power. And if Jews can help it, all an illegal alien has to do is be ‘documented’ in order to be an American citizen. This is the way of the Jews, a vile and hideous two-faced bunch of serpents.
Anyway, when I say there should be NO MORE AMBIGUITY about what is ailing the West, I’m referring to a book review by Ian Buruma on Christopher Hitchen’s memoir HITCH-22. In the review, Buruma writes:
Hitchens seems to be perfectly well aware of this. He writes in his concluding chapter:
“The usual duty of the ‘intellectual’ is to argue for complexity and to insist that phenomena in the world of ideas should not be sloganized or reduced to easily repeated formulae. But there is another responsibility, to say that some things are simple and ought not to be obfuscated….”
He is right. Standing up to Nazism or Stalinism was the only decent thing to do in the last century. There are turning points in history when there can be no ambiguity: 1939 was such a year, and for Communists perhaps 1956. The question is how Hitchens came to the conviction that 2001 was such a time. The mass murder perpetrated in Lower Manhattan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist gang must be strongly condemned. Nor do I have a quarrel with the claim that Saddam Hussein’s “state machine was modeled on the precedents of both National Socialism and Stalinism, to say nothing of Al Capone.” But the idea that September 11 was anything like 1939, when Hitler’s armies were about to sweep across Europe, is fanciful.
Never mind the silly notion that 1956(!) was when there should have been no more moral ambiguity about communism — what about the mass killings that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1930s? Buruma makes an interesting point that there are certain times in history when the stakes are so high that decent people must take sides than equivocate about moral ambiguities. So, even though the West was far from perfect, the evils of Nazism(and later communism) were such that it was the duty of all good people to unite and fight against them. I can understand and sympathize with this, and I don’t wish to make excuses for National Socialism or Communism. And my earlier point that things might have turned out better for the West had Nazism or Communism prevailed still doesn’t mean that either ideology was any good. A bad thing can be better than a worse thing, but a bad thing is still a bad thing.
And make no mistakes about it. For most of the 20th century, democratic capitalism was immeasurably better, more humane, and more sane than totalitarian communism and cultist Nazism. But who would have thought that the proud France of De Gaulle would turn into the gutless PC nation it is today whose policy is national and racial suicide? Who would have thought, at the end of WWII, that US would become the property of Zionist globalists, a nation where white men are castrated and ‘faggotized’ dorks and where white women are jungle-feverized mudsharks, a nation where some disgusting punkass son of a mudshark and African Marxist is president with the financial and media support of hideous Jews, a nation whose open borders and low birthrates among whites are leading to all-out Brazilization when one of the saving graces of North America — as opposed to poor and backward Latin America — had been the preservation of the majority white race? True, all things being equal, democratic liberal capitalism should be the ‘end of history’ — as Francis Fukuyama meant it — , but Jews just couldn’t leave it alone. They had to gain power over whites, and once they gained the power, they had to secure their power for a 1000 Yr Jewreich by creating conditions where whites would never again be able to challenge Jewish domination and hegemony. This is why Jews came to favor multiculturalism over melting-pot-ism. If all goyim were to melt into an identity called ‘American’ — as white ethnics were melting into Anglo-Americanism — , then the gentile masses of AMERICANS might challenge the Jewish elite. But if Americans become hyphenated along multi-culti-lines, then Jews can play one side against other sides for all eternity. If any melting is to be done, it’s racial, especially with white women surrendering to blacks. Not only does a mulatto child lose his white identity but his racial confusion makes him useful to Jews. Notice that Jews have favored mulattos or light-skinned Negroes like Obama, Holder, Jarrett, Malcolm Gladwell, John McWhorter, etc. Mulattos are neither white nor truly black, and just like Jews, they can play to both sides. Though Jews erect walls — called ‘fences’ — all over the Occupied Territories, Jews are eager to tear down every fence or wall, physical and psychological, that demarcates what is white and what isn’t white. So, Jews not only favor mulattos over whites but bi-sexuals and gays over real sexuals, aka heterosexuals. If normal-sexual people are clearly distinct from one another as male and female, there’s a lot of fuzzy border area among homos and bisexuals, and that is the slippery kind of identity that Jews wanna promote to undermine all sense of what is true and false, what is normal and abnormal. And so, American kids are now being taught that two men buggering one another is as sexually valid as a man and woman having sex. So, a male sexual organ pumping a fecal hole of another man is healthy and ‘normal’ too. It’s one thing to say homos are born with homo tendencies and should be allowed to do their ‘gay’ stuff, but Jews are not stopping there. Jews have used their control of the media to brainwash lots of impressionable young people that the greatest moral issue of our time is whether ass-buggery between men should be the basis of marriage. That is the way of the Jew, and if neocons can help it, GOP will be for ‘gay marriage’ too since most white politicians are merely whores of moneymen who control big business, big finance, and big media, and indeed, most of those things are controlled by Jews.
Anyway, what may have been true in 1939(the unambiguous need to stand up to Nazism) and in 1956(the unambiguous need to stand up to Soviet tyranny) is also true today. Today, all decent and honest white people must wake up to the FACT that Jews are promoting a policy of mass democide of the white race in Europe and America. Whites must also wake up to the fact that Negroes are a vile, disgusting, powerfully-built, and aggressive race of savages that evolved in hot Africa; white people need to understand that, physically and culturally, large numbers of blacks spell death for the West. Civilization doesn’t rest on — nor is it advanced by — gorilla-like muscles, rhino dicks, talent for dunking basketballs, and funky ass-shaking boogie-woogie. True, Negroes can be fun in sports and music — and maybe some white sluts just need humongous Negro dicks to produce orgasms in their over-stretched pooters — , but the Negro muscle power that white people cheer for in sports is the same force that is beating up, bullying, intimidating, pussifying, and destroying white male pride and power in the streets, schools, workplaces, and public places of America. And when the men of a race lose pride and power, they lose their women too, which is why so many white women are running off to have kids with Negroes. The new social trends isn’t about racial equality or going beyond race but about black race kicking the white race’s ass. It’s about black racial and sexual superiority over whites in a society where blacks are promoted as the uber-stud race while whites are now openly mocked and ridiculed as the dweeb race. In the past, Jews would have been afraid to run such anti-white tropes — in fear of white rage and reaction — , but such images and messages are now all over the media because Jews smell the blood of white demise. To paraphrase Tim Wise the hideous anti-white Jew, “tick tock, tick tock, it’s only a matter of time before the spine of white power is broken forever.”
Just as the Free West was not perfect in 1939 or in 1956 but had to stand up to the threat posed by aggressive Nazism and tyrannical communism, white people today(though far from perfect) must realize that they are at a historical crossroads where they can decide to survive as a people and culture OR surrender and die in the NWO controlled by vile Jews and overrun with vicious blacks. Jews won’t have to worry about black violence since they’re smart, rich, and tribally connected; they can afford to live in safe neighborhoods and integrate only with token clean-cut Negroes. While Jews enact policies to make haute parts of cities like NY and Chicago more white and safe through gentric cleansing — demographic removal of dangerous elements through gentrification and rising property values — , white middle class and working class folks in the suburbs and small towns will have to bear the brunt of Negro fury through programs like Section 8 Housing. Because Nazi invasion or Soviet tyranny came with tanks, it was easy to see what the danger was about. In contrast, many people remain blind to the threats posed by Jews and blacks because we still seem to be living in free democracies. But there is more than one way to take over a society. A wolf or bear may attack your body — like Nazis and Soviets attacked and swallowed other nations — , but viruses operate differently. Viruses can slip inside you and totally mess you up from the inside, but because of the invisible nature of viral colonization and invasion, we don’t really know what really happened. Jews act like viruses, and this is why so many white people have been fooled and remain fooled. (Viruses also act like they are part of the body they infiltrate. So, even though the viruses mess up the body, the body thinks viruses are part of itself. Similarly, though the Jewish virus is messing up the white race, most white people now think Jewish interests are synonymous with white interests and vice versa. Though Jews push stuff like ‘gay marriage’ and massive illegal immigration, gungho patriotic white conservatives are willing to fight Wars for Israel as if serving Jewish interests is the same as serving white interests. This is made all the worse by the role played by Jewish ‘conservatives’. While some Jews are genuine conservatives and on the side of white folks/Western civilization, Jewish conservatives — whether genuine or neocon — give white conservatives the false hope that the majority of Jews could be won over the white conservative side. If 100% of Jews were liberal and anti-white, white folks would wake up to the nature of Jewish power. But as long as Jewish conservatives play a virus-like role, white conservatives dare not even criticize liberal Jews out of fear of offending their conservative Jewish friends. And in most cases, even conservative Jews are Jews first and conservatives second. They are more likely to be offended by white conservatives attacking liberal Jews than by liberal Jews attacking white conservatives. If a white conservative pointed out the fact that Jews are playing a key role in the subversion of white America, the Jewish conservative will defend the Jewish community and accuse the white conservative of ‘antisemitic McCarthyism’. Just consider what the neocons did to people like Pat Buchanan. They are Jews first, conservatives second.) Though Hitler went crazy and too far in blaming Jews for everything, every honest person should acknowledge that Jews have played a PROFOUND role in the decline of white power and white racial preservation. To deny this is to deny reality, to deny the truth, to deny the ongoing Eurocaust.
Jews would have us believe there are only two moral options: Nazi paranoia and evil on one side AND Holocaustianity and moral redemption for the West on the other side. In other words, the white man can only be a vicious murderer or a virtuous suicidal-ist, with nothing in between. This is, of course, bunk. It’s like Nazis saying you can only be a virtuous murderer or a vile suicidal-ist. One didn’t need to be a crazy Nazi in order to be a good German patriot, and one doesn’t need to be a insane Holocaust-worshiping kisser of Jewish ass in order to be a good white person. Many white people may well be aware of the dangers facing them as the result of Jews and Negroes but fear the consequences of resisting current trends because doing so might lead to a ‘race war’, but choosing not to act in fear of violence would be like Neville Chamberlain’s inaction when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. (This isn’t to say Chamberlain should have declared war on Germany there and then. What he shouldn’t have done is foolishly believe that a man like Hitler would ever listen to reason or act in good faith. A lot of Jews are a bunch of Schitlers. Just because Hitler killed Jews doesn’t mean Jews are not like Hitler. Indeed, Hitler probably hated Jews because he understood them so well; he himself had a certain vileness and deviousness that animated his character. Though Hitler repressed this inner-knowledge, his hatred of Jews was, to an extent, an expression of his hatred of self. As much as he tried to put himself forth as a noble and dignified ‘Aryan’, he was a repulsively devious and cunning skunk weasel. What the likes of Netanhayu are doing today isn’t any different from what Hitler did in the late 30s and 40s. There is an ideological side to Hitlerism but one doesn’t have to share the Hitlerian views on politics and race to be Hitlerian in personality, and a whole bunch of Jews do have Hitlerian personalities in their cunning and ruthless hunger for total control and contempt for others.) Violence is a part of history, and it took a lot of violence to destroy ‘radical evil’ in WWII. Entire German cities were bombed, and Japan was bombed even worse. And think of the nearly one million Germans who lost their lives in the massive expulsions from Poland and Sudetenland. Think of the millions of German women raped by barbarous Soviet soldiers. But do you hear Jews saying we shouldn’t have fought the Nazis because too many innocent Germans suffered as a result? Do you hear any liberal saying we shouldn’t have fought Japan because we ended up killing too many Japanese civilians, including over a million women and children? Do you hear Madeline Albright saying she regrets the policy of sanctions against Iraq — similar to Stalin and Kaganovich’s attempt to starve the Ukrainians into submission — that may have led to the deaths of 100,000s of Iraqi women and children? Do you hear Jews weeping about the 1000+ Palestinian dead in Gaza when Israel decided to retaliate against Gazan bottle rocket attacks? Gazan missiles killed maybe one Jew, and so Jews figured they should kill 1000s of Palestinians to send a message. No, Jews have no qualms about killing as many people as possible to get what they want. We need to think just like Jews in our fight against Jews. We need to be just as ruthless and cunning as Jews in order to purge ourselves against the Jewish virus. Of course, it’s much more difficult to rid oneself of a viral infection than pick up a gun and fire at a bear or wolf, but at the very least, white folks need to understand that they are no longer in control of their body politic, which has been thoroughly taken over by the Jewish virus.
Anyway, we shouldn’t laugh too loudly at the French for their pretensions of Great Power since both white American gentiles and most French are really on the same boat. Both peoples lost control of the steering wheels that fell into the hands of globalist Jews. We may row the boat, but we don’t control the rudder. We are really little more than galley slaves who are being led to a destination chosen by Jews who hold the compass, control the rudder, and raise the sails depending on the winds that they favor. We may think we are still in power because we exert so much energy in rowing the ship, but galley slaves rowing the ship have about as much power as cows plowing the fields. (There are two kinds of power. Just as brains guide the bones and muscles, Jewish minds guide the white gentile body. White gentiles in the police and military feel so powerful because they got lots of guns, but they must follow policies and laws determined by Jews; they really have no power, or no independent power. The horse is bigger and stronger than pigs in ANIMAL FARM, but it’s the smart pigs that use the power of the horse. Jews understand the psychology of power, i.e. they know that people who FEEL the power think they HAVE the power when, in fact, their dimwit power is really being harnessed and used by their clever masters. As long as Jews give us Hollywood movies where tough white guys act strong and mighty, dumb white Americans will think they got the power. But did the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger really have much power in Hollywood? No, he was just an ‘Aryan’ puppet doll of Hollywood Jewish weasels with the real power. Who had the real power in THE GODFATHER? Don Corleone or Luca Brasi the big dumb lug? Who had the real power in RAGING BULL? Jake LaMotta or the Mafia chieftains who fixed the fights?)
In a way, the French vs. American animosity is something of a joke since the real enemy of both peoples are the Jews. Though France and Germany had been at loggerheads for much of the 19th century and 20th century, even that problem could easily have been resolved. A unified Germany didn’t really want much from France. Though Bismarck took bits and pieces of French territory, he didn’t want Germany to conquer or rule over France. And Germany didn’t want to fight against France in WWI; Germans had no choice because the French insisted on a meaningless alliance with Russia and hoped WWI would offer them an opportunity to wreak vengeance on the Germans. And France could have sat out of WWII simply by not declaring war on Germany when Hitler invaded Poland. While Hitler was wrong to attack Poland, neither Britain nor France should have declared war on Germany, especially when they didn’t declare war on the USSR that took the other half of Poland. The fact that Germans were generally benign to most Frenchmen during the Occupation proves that Germans felt no particular ill will toward the French. And in rooting out Jews, the Nazis thought they were doing the French a favor — and though it makes me sick to say this, given the fact of how Jews have been acting in America and Europe in the postwar era, should it have been any surprise that antisemitism was so widespread all around Europe? Though Nazis were wrong to carry out mass killings of Jews, they were not necessarily wrong to think that Europe would be better off without the Jewish virus. And before liberals yammer about how the French had collaborated with the Nazis, they should be reminded of the countless Jews who collaborated with communist oppressors in the mass killing of countless Slavic Christians. Many more Christian Churches were destroyed by radical Jews than synagogues were destroyed by far right Europeans. Besides, suppose Nazis were not antisemitic but only anti-Polish and anti-gypsy. Suppose the Holocaust had been about wiping out Poles and gypsies. Does anyone think European or American Jews would have done anything to save Poles or gypsies? Jews risking their own lives to save ‘dumb Polacks’ or ‘dirty Gypsies’? If Nazis had offered Jews a fat slice of the pie in the new order, a whole bunch of Jews would have taken the offer. After all, the practice of slavery among Jews was quite widespread in the American South. And Jews had no problem about settling in America that had been created by violently pushing Indians from their ancestral lands. Doesn’t that make Jews accessories and collaborators of Anglo-American ‘genocidalists’ of the Red Man? And consider the deafening silence among Jews both in the US and EU about what’s been happening to the Palestinians. No, Jews have no right to act holier-than-thou. Though only a sicko would deny the horrors that befell the Jews in the Holocaust, only a retardo would conclude that just because Nazis persecuted and killed many Jews, it means Jews are automatically all a bunch of saints. Too many Jews are like Woody Allen, Sarah Silverman, Howard Stern, Jerry Springer, Barbara Boxer, Steven Spielberg, Tim Wise, James Toback, and other snide, sniveling, and snaky manipulators of truth and power.
There’s a recent French film called FAREWELL — aka L’AFFAIRE FAREWELL — that deals with France’s involvement in Cold War politics, and it says something about how far France had fallen as a great power. But if we think back on the postwar era, it wasn’t only the French that lost great power status but also the American Wasps. If anything, Russians have more power than French and white Americans do. America is many times richer and more powerful than Russia, but white Americans no longer call the shots whereas Russians still do(as the result of Putin taking power from the Jewish oligarchy, which is why international Jews hate Putin with such venom. Putin may be an autocrat, but he represents the hope that the majority population of nation can wrest control from international Jews in the service of his own people and culture). The Reagan Era was the last time when it could be said White Americans were sort of in control of their nation. Though neocons were making inroads into the Republican Party and though demographics of America was changing drastically, consider the great landslide victories by Reagan. He even swept California and a whole bunch of other states that are now considered permanently lost to the Democrats. Though Jews controlled the media back then and could make or break politicians — and Reagan was very servile to Jewish interests — , this was still a time when White America could still be said to be the most powerful component of America. It was a time when Jews still feared White America and were careful not to rock the boat too much. Jewish media catered mostly to white sensibilities and preferences, pop culture(and Jewish-dominated porn) didn’t promote interracism, even the most powerful Jews paid token respect to white power, and etc. Even if Jews had the means to gain total control in the 80s, they were as yet unwilling to make the move. It was the with the rise of rap music, the film JUNGLE FEVER, and other forms of interracism — and the sheer lack of resistance among whites(even to the L.A. Riots) — , and radical boomer takeover of academia via political correctness that Jews finally decided that they could take over America totally and completely in the early 90s, especially with the presidency of Billy Boy Clinton, a total ass-kisser of Jews and gays. Soon after the Cold War, with the rapidly changing demographics and meteoric rise of Jewish power in new Wall Street, Las Vegas, Silicon Valley, new media, PC academia, and government — and with total takeover of GOP by neocons — , America essentially became Jewish-owned-and-controlled. And with EU also coming under political correctness and the ideology of multi-culturalism(favored by global Jews), Europe also became part of the Jewish Empire, especially Jewish control of world finance grew by leaps and bounds. So, who won the Cold War? Not the Europeans, not the Americans, and not Russians. Jews won it. During the 90s, Russia seemed like a vast vassal state run by globalist Jews. The drunken and buffoonish Boris Yeltsin was just a frontman of Jews. To be sure, Yeltsin had initially made his name as a courageous fighter for freedom and reform, and that cannot be taken from him; there was an element of heroism and bigness about him. But like too many Russians, he was a boor, drunkard, and clown with a peasant mentality; he couldn’t control himself and lost his way, and so he came under the control of his Zionist handlers. In a way, he was to Russian Jewish oligarchs what George W. Bush was to Jewish neocon chieftains in the 2000s. Why did George H.W. Bush weep in one of his speeches? He worried about his dumbass son being controlled and used like a mop by hideous Jews, but of course, he couldn’t say anything about it since the new religion of America is to worship Jews. Though father Bush was ostensibly referring to his other son, Jeb Bush, he clearly had dumbass Dubya on his mind.
Though we often talk of France vs America when it comes to culture and national egos, much of anti-French-ism among Americans and much of anti-Americanism among the French are really hidden forms of anti-Jewishism. France has been known for its radical leftism, but who were many of the ring-leaders of leftist radicalism in France going back to the 19th century? Jews. The French, in turn, have hated American ‘cultural imperialism’ coming from Hollywood and its pop music industry, but which group has control over those industries in America? Jews. And why do the French really hate American-style capitalism? Because much of it is Jewish-controlled global finance capitalism and Hollywood. And what do the French hate most about American foreign policy? Because it is controlled by global Zionism that keeps hatching new Wars for Israel in the Middle East. Why did Obama and Sarkozy get along so famously? Though Obama is considered a liberal and Sarkozy a conservative, both are really Zionist or Zionist-controlled a**holes whose policies are in sync with Jewish global finance capitalism and the Zionist agenda of Wars for Israel. Just look how both of them ganged up on Gaddafi. I do not say this in defense of Gadfly, a stupid shi*head who deserved to be driven out of power, but simply to point out why current American policy and French policy are in accordance with the agenda of globalist Jews who seek to cause as much havoc as possible among Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East.
Anyway, in the film FAREWELL, the French — from its President to a low-level functionary(engineer) who becomes embroiled in an espionage operation — think they’ve come upon a great secret that will show the Americans that the French(even with a Socialist government) are still major and crucial players in the great power game. The French hand over the secrets to the Americans in a grand gesture, not as a junior partner but as an equal player. The French feel full of themselves about the trump card they hold, as if the fate of the Cold War depends on them: France isn’t just a pebble caught between big rocks but a big rock itself. But in the end, the French discover that their secret contact in the Soviet Union was unwittingly doing more harm and undermining a far more important operation overseen by Americans. Thus, France was just a midget getting in the way of Americans in their game against the Russians. If the leaders of France felt big about themselves for a while, the functionary believes himself to be morally more involved, only to discover that his Russian contact, despite his noble intentions, had only endangered the lives of others contacts working with Americans behind the Iron Curtain. It’s not only disillusioning but humiliating. In the end, Americans hold all the cards, and the French, holding a useless Joker, had been playing a fool’s game. Furthermore, the functionary had told his superiors before he got involved in the operation that he’d prefer to be stationed in N.Y. than in Moscow. Even with all their anti-American attitudes and resentments, the French would rather be in America than anywhere else because the power, wealth, influence, and action are in America. Just like Godard hated America but was enthralled with American popular culture, the functionary in FAREWELL is typical of Frenchmen filled with resentment toward America but who wants to be in America. There’s an element of this in the French film L’APPARTEMENT by Gilles Mimouni. There is the sense of New France as part of the global order. The hero had just returned from NY and is about to take a business trip to Japan. The movie begins with an English-language song. But then, slowly and step-by-step, in terms of style, texture, mood, and color palette, the film draws us into a romantic dream-vision of traditional France. We hardly see any Negroes or foreigners. Much of the film takes place in parts and places of Paris that signify the cultural moods of the 40s, 50s, or 60s. There’s also an element of amber-hue nostalgia in the look of the film. It’s as if the character Max(Vincent Cassel), in trying to find his lost lover Lisa(Monica Belluci)is taking a trip back to an older France of romance and mystery.
Though in some ways, France had been politically more radical than Britain, it has also been more nostalgic. For better or worse, the left and the right in France have been more impassioned. In the modern era, the French Right has taken on radical aspects of the Left, and the French Left has taken on nostalgic aspects of the Right. Because of the French insistence on the primacy of Style, greater nostalgia for the past was only natural. (British nostalgia tends to be more staid and restrained — and often socially critical — , as in MASTERPIECE THEATER productions. If it indulges in genuine nostalgia, it tends to be humble in character, as in ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL.) So, even if the French in the past had acted radically or revolutionarily, the events had a greater likelihood of becoming objects of nostalgia. One remembers mad romances with greater intensity than one remembers sober affairs. Good or bad, mad romances with lots of flair and flamboyance are more memorable. Historians are far more likely to rhapsodize about the French Revolution than the Glorious Revolution of Britain.
Thus, even the French Left came to be defined by a heavy dose of nostalgia for the great Revolution(no matter how bloody it may have been) and the great Napoleon(despite or precisely because of his outsized egomania). What mattered was that the French had done it with style and flair, even if the Revolution had come to a bad end. In contrast, the British have been less into style, and therefore, their actions and deeds left fewer scent markers for nostalgia. Compare French cinema of the late 50s and 60s with their British counterparts. Both industries underwent profound changes. The French produced the New Wave and gave the world artists like Alain Resnais. And the British produced the Angry Young Man cinema. Yet, why do we remember French cinema with greater fondness while few ‘cinephiles’ today discuss films like THE LONELINESS OF A LONG DISTANCE RUNNER, SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING, and other Kitchen Sink Dramas? It’s because the British, in their greater sobriety and attention to empirical detail, focused on the gritty details of life. In a way, the Kitchen Sink genre revived the tradition of Charles Dickens but without the narrative momentum and sentimentality. The world of Dickens’ characters may often be a lousy place, but the storytelling is vivid and keeps us engaged; life never feels drab and pointless in Dickensville.
In contrast, the Kitchen Sink Drama seemed to say that life is lousy, society is lousy, and there’s nothing to be done about it except feel bitter and sulk. Despite all the anger, a sense of stasis dominates the Angry Young Man films. Kitchen Sink Drama may have felt fresh at the time because official culture of Britain — especially in theatre and cinema — had been for so long defined by good taste, bourgeois manners, dry wit, irony, and so on. The official face of Britain seemed to be spiffy, Noel-Coward-ish, and Terry-Rattigan-ish. Robert Bolt and David Lean also worked within the conventions of good taste, ‘intelligence’, and sober respectability. In contrast, the Kitchen Sinkers showed the underbelly of British society filled with loathing, anger, despair, disgust, nastiness, putridness, and stark cynicism(as opposed to refined irony and sophisticated sarcasm). And yet, the glum staleness of Kitchen Sink films was not something people wanted to look at for long. In contrast, consider how movie lovers still fondly recall films like 400 BLOWS, BREATHLESS, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, MY LIFE TO LIVE, JULES AND JIM, and many more. 400 BLOWS is, in some ways, a stark social drama about a kid raised in a working class family in Paris(and thus shares certain characteristics of Kitchen Sink dramas), but it’s also poetic and lyrical. It’s a drab world, but it is Paris after all, and the kid is a dreamer. In contrast, everything about Kitchen Sink films is hard and grimy; it’s like most Brits are born into lower classes and stuck there, but worse, even if they could work their way up the class ladder, it’s not worth it since everything in the world is phony. Most Kitchen Sink Dramas are about unpleasant young drunken British louts acting bloody shupid.
There are plenty of jerks in French New Waves films, but there’s a certain grace, style, and whimsy about them — even the home-invading louts in Godard’s A BAND OF OUTSIDERS. But you just wanna punch the sourpuss punks in THE LONELINESS OF A LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER and SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING. And I found myself grinding my teeth through LOOK BACK IN ANGER.
The air of fragrance in French culture had a way of enticing the French with a sense of nostalgia — and you don’t have to be French to fall under its spell — , but the brick-and-cement nature of British life rendered its nostalgia more prosaic than poetic.
Of course, there is the Britain of English gardens and tea and crumpets, but it’s always been something that existed in its own world than one shared by all the Britains. Consider how café society was such a big part of France. You didn’t have to be of the Fine Class to share in this culture. Café culture was visible everywhere, in big cities and small towns. You could be a young guy without a job but sit down at an outside table at a café, drink some coffee, read some magazines, hear some intellectual conversation, and feel part of French culture. Even if you didn’t amount to much, you felt as a member of the French national/cultural club.
In contrast, the fine life in Britain tended to be more cloistered. English ladies drank tea inside shops meant only for Fine Folks or within walled English gardens of their estates. Open cafes of the kind prevalent in France didn’t exist in Britain. And so, there was less blending of the classes. In time, as the masses gained greater recognition and power, they came to disregard Fine English Living as something for the reactionary snobs. In contrast, even a Marxist radical in France felt an affinity for fine French living as French culture has been spread more ‘liberally’ through stuff like cafés and the like. And something like the French Can Can had appeal to both high brow French and low brow French. The feeling for French Culture among regular French folks can be seen in a movie like AMELIE. Though the Revolution had killed lots of aristocrats, the aristocratic culture had rubbed off on all Frenchmen to some extent. Style was a universal facet of life for the French, left and right alike. And even Godard, after his stint as a Maoist nut, reverted to meditating on the culture of France.
We just don’t find the same kind of involvement with British Culture among the British masses — and perhaps not even among the British elites anymore. Because high French culture had been shared with the French public to a greater extent, the cultural elites of France don’t feel apologetic about being highly cultured. Also, high culture in France, since the Revolution, had often been associated with progress and radicalism. In contrast, high culture in Britain had essentially been a snobby upper class or bourgeois class thing. (There was respectable middle class culture, but the British middle class lacked for confidence and usually deferred to and imitated their social superiors. Oddly enough, the British middle class was both highly imitative of and sturdily resistant to the ways of the upper classes. Due to rigid hierarchies, the middle classes naturally looked to the elites and wanted to be like them and be liked by them. But the English middle class culture was also defined by modesty, simplicity, and thriftiness, and so it was considered bad taste for middle class folks to try TOO HARD to be fancy beyond their means and status. Perhaps the prevailing virtues of modesty and thriftiness that defined New England life owed to many American colonials having originated from the British middle class. In values, attitude, and manners, it disdained both the crudity of the lower classes and fancifulness of the upper ones.) And so, the British elites are less proud of their cultural traditions, and it’s no wonder why the opening ceremony of the London Olympics did so much to snub traditional British culture while highlighting new Britain as a land of socialism, jigger-jiverism/interracism, political correctness, and multi-culturalism. Given the truly stunning levels of achievements of British history and culture, one would think the Brits would be more nationalistic and invested in preserving their incomparable heritage and history. Instead, a people that had once been so great have become among the silliest, trashiest, and most amnesiac in the world. This could be due to the lack of fragrance and style in British culture. Brits were once masters of manners(once associated with proper manhood), but manners are not longer such a big deal in mass democratic societies, especially one that happens to be crazy about wild Negro music and attitudes. British were also known for the sobriety and empiricism, but sobriety is old hat and accumulation of facts and details don’t translate into nostalgia. After all, one doesn’t remember a great love by recounting the number of hair he or she may have had on his/her head but by the Impression he or she made in terms of beauty and style. The French understood the style of impression whereas the British didn’t. It’s like the taste of French food lingers long after you had it whereas fish-and-chips, though filling, is over once it goes down your throat. French were more into wine whereas the Brits were into beer, especially warm beer. And French were into coffee while Brits were into tea, which is hardly aromatic. French films like L’APPARTEMENT and AMELIE are nostalgic of an older France whereas a British film like AN EDUCATION is nostalgic of a British girl in the 60s looking to Paris as the center of all the wonderful and colorful things(as opposed to drab England with its stiff upper-lip and uptight people, though one must say, what the Emma Thompson character said about Jews was pretty hilarious — and true).
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