Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts

Monday, June 21, 2010

Andrea Ostrov Letania: Neo-fascist Review of K-19: The Widowmaker (directed by Kathryn Bigelow)


Wolfgang Petersen’s DAS BOOT is justifiably considered the best submarine movie. Though no expert of submarine films, I recall the dramatically effective ENEMY BELOW with Robert Mitchum, which had a suspenseful and ennobling final scene that left a powerful impression on me as a child. Throughout the film, the two sides ruthlessly clash iron against iron, but when confronted face to face, they acknowledge one another’s humanity. It was one of my first introductions to the human condition and to the world of men: how tribes or nations could hate and be at war with one another but also share a mutual respect. It is one of the most stark political paradoxes. Both sides admire the loyalty to cause and nation of the other side, but this loyalty leads both sides to slaughter one another. To the extent that manhood is defined terms of martial spirit, what a man admires most in the other man also leads to their mutual hatred. A boxer hates his opponent but also respects his courage and toughness.

Kathryn Bigelow, better know for trashy genre films such as NEAR DARK, BLUE STEEL, and STRANGE DAYS, decided for some reason to tackle a subject truly worthy of the medium of film. It is one of a handful of excellent movies about the Cold War era. Too bad it failed at the box-office, which only proves that artistic heroism is as often unsung as martial courage like the one we see in the film.
Perhaps, the submarine movie most Americans are familiar with is the horribly cliched, dull, and politically correct HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. When even Sean Connery can’t save the picture, it is in deep trouble.

For some reason, the most famous submarine films tend to be about the Other side--the Germans and the Soviets(or the Japanese in the war movie farce 1941). Other than Germany’s heavy reliance on the submarine in WWII, it could be due to the fact that the submarine is associated with stealth, secrecy, and trickery. For Americans to take pride in their democratic openness and brash confidence, the submarine better suits the temperament and agendas of the secretive and subversive Evil Enemy. So in the film ENEMY BELOW, the battle comes down to US destroyer vs German submarine. That said, all these war movies tend to be ‘fair-minded’ in depiction of the ‘enemy’. In the case of DAS BOOT, that was inevitable since it was made by Germans themselves.
But, ENEMY BELOW, HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, and K-19 were made by Hollywood. In this sense, the enemy submarine takes on a double meaning. On the one hand, it symbolizes the furtive and guileful ways of the enemy. On the other hand, it’s as though the submarine also functions below the radar of official government and ideology; it is subversive against its own Evil Regime or exploited by it(like the underworld Nibelung in German mythology). We almost never see the crew in DAS BOOT as Nazis but as courageous & loyal Germans doing their duty and surviving day by day. Since submarine crews are often sent on near-suicide missions--and since the means of their death is beyond horrifying--, we naturally can’t help but feel some sympathy. Soviet airplanes during WWII were called ‘flying coffins’, and the submarine might as well have been called the ‘underwater coffins’. All manners of death are terrifying in war, but at least death above ground is to die in the world of men. When a submarine fails and sinks to the bottom, it’s like being buried alive. A pilot in a falling airplane still has the option of using the parachute. The claustrophobic crew trapped in a sinking submarine are like rats stuffed inside a can and tossed into a lake. Worse, the pressures of the deep may crush a submarine like a crayfish under a iron boot.
It turns out in THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER that the Soviet submarine is not only a clandestine enemy against the US but a renegade crew seeking to escape the Evil Empire.
In ENEMY BELOW, even after a long bitter battle between the US and the Germans, there is a sense of bond of honor between military men.

K-19 is different from most submarine films for it is a non-war movie(though unfolding at tehe peak of the Cold War). But, its sensibility is very much like that in ENEMY BELOW. Though the Soviets are presented as a committed enemy of the West, there is a recognition of the duty, honor, and sacrifice of their naval men. At times, our close identification with them makes us see them as something like American Russians or Russian Americans.
Especially because the characters speak English--with a little Slavic inflection--and the two main characters are played by Harrison Ford and much Americanized Liam Neeson, it’s easy to forget that we are not watching American soldiers. Indeed, we would hardly notice the difference if K-19 were a movie about Americans(or Germans for that matter). It’s as if soldiering or sailoring ultimately comes down to basic virtues such as unity, loyalty, toughness, skill, and dedication regardless of nation or ideology. When men are pushed to the limit, ideology or nation matters less than sticking-and-struggling-together.
Some members of the White Right might actually admire the idea of an all-white male crew patrolling the seas for the Motherland--as opposed t the US military which has been Negro-ized, feminized, and homosexualized. The US military is where white men must salute cocky black commanders, where white females routinely have mulatto kids with black soldiers, where gays agitate for open homosexuality, where many Hispanics join mainly as a career choice, and where the wars and engagements are handpicked by AIPAC. Some might call this progress, but at the rate it’s going, it spells doom for the West. Maybe, it would be more accurate to say the crew in K-19 are like what the US military used to be before the major changes took place beginning with Harry Truman who integrated the Armed Forces.

Anyway, there are political and cultural factors in K-19 which would be unthinkable or at least less thinkable in the US military, politics, or society-at-large. Though all forms of power are prone to abuse, secrecy, and corruption, such problems were bound to be more serious in totalitarian societies like the USSR. Of course, freedom can lead to abuses of power and corruption unthinkable in authoritarian or totalitarian societies. For example, the mafia did much better under Italian democracy than under Italian Fascism; indeed, it was Mussolini who’d come closest to wiping it out. Also, the filth of crooked lawyers and foul pop culture that inundate capitalist-democratic America was unthinkable in Nazi Germany or Maoist China. There was more petty corruption in South Vietnam than in North Vietnam. There were more brothels in West Germany than in East Germany. So, freedom is no guarantee for a healthy and decent society. However, freedom does allow journalists in the free media and the outraged public speak out against abuses of politicians and corporations. Recently, Toyota got caught up in a major scandal though the number of victims was under fifty, a drop in the bucket give that millions of Toyotas were sold in the US.
In the Soviet Union or Maoist China, on the other hand, thousands of people could die in an industrial accident, but it would go unreported in the government owned-and-controlled news. When 30 million died in China in the late 50s and early 60s as a result of Mao’s crazy Great Leap Forward, not a single newspaper or radio program in China reported it. Even today, most Chinese know little or nothing about it.
In the US, George W. Bush lost respect over Katrina where less than a 1000 died, most of them by no fault of Bush or the government. In China, even after pushing policies that killed 30 million in a few years, Mao came roaring back in the mid 60s to be worshiped as a god by millions of young people. All those people knew NOTHING of what happened in the late 50s because nothing had been reported in the news. It hadn’t been discussed at school either, and their parents dared not discuss it since the slightest whiff of dissent could get one imprisoned or killed. In Nazi Germany, millions of people could be deported and worked to death as slaves. Or they could be shot or gassed like the Jews were. But, none of this went reported in the news. On the outside, it seemed all was healthy, decent, and well in National Socialist Germany, but the actual reality was otherwise. The same kind of mindset prevailed over the USSR. As the government controlled all the media, schools, and whatever else, most people were told day and night that all was great, proud, noble, progressive, and fast-advancing the worker’s paradise. The reality of dangerous working conditions, shoddy goods, official lies and deceit, deteriorating conditions, and so on were all swept under the bear rug. There was even a good deal of self-deception among the top brass as real reality was too grim for anyone to face. (To be sure, the official liberal and neocon line in the US is no less full of BS, with its rosy prognosis that US will become a better and nobler nation due to miscegenation and massive immigration from the Third World. Even so and despite the tremendous might of the liberal media, there is a counter-media both big and small. And liberals must be credited with calling BS on the conservative lies and corruption. And there are some liberals who are capable of seeing and reporting abuses on their own side.)
The problems of the Soviet Union as a whole is reflected in the series of crises that erupt inside the Soviet submarine. K-19 is meant to be like a microcosm of the Soviet Union itself. From the beginning, there is the problem of shoddy workmanship and material. Soviet Union was known more for quantity than quality. Despite some excellent military hardware such as the T-34 tank, Katyusha rockets, AK-47, and MiG fighters, Soviets lagged behind the West when it came to quality and precision. Indeed, AK-47 symbolizes both the strength and weakness of the Soviet military as a whole. The weapon was hardy, all-purpose, easy to mass-manufacture, and quick to master. But, it wasn’t exactly high-tech.
At any rate, a glitch on an AK-47 isn’t exactly the end of the world, and the gun may still fire under most circumstances. It’s quite another matter with a nuclear submarine where if something goes wrong, it’s gonna tear another a**hole in the world. Most of us heard of the cruddiness of Soviet goods such as toilet tissue which was as rough as sandpaper--and for which one had to stand in line for hours to buy--and the television among which 1 out of 5 turned out to be faulty and literally blew up and caught fire. We may laugh at stories like that, but when the attitude, skill, and workmanship that went into making the Soviet TV went towards making something like a nuclear submarine or the nuclear reactor(in Chernobyl), it was no laughing matter. During Stalin’s time, workers had been more mindful if only because they could be accused of sabotage and sent to the gulag or shot in the back of the head. Once the Stalinist system faded and was replaced by the more forgiving and indulgent Khrushchev-ism and Brezhnev-ism, things were bound to get lazier and even more inefficient. If capitalism offers a profit incentive to those providing goods and services(and if shoddy companies are replaced by efficient ones), there weren’t naturally corrective mechanisms within communism(a top-down command system), in which one shirked one’s duties whenever possible as there was little incentive to work harder.
Since one was assured of the basic necessities of life as social ‘rights’ and couldn’t rise much above that, the natural thing was to work as little as possible.

From K-19, we get the sense that the Soviet Union had its share of great scientific minds. It also had leaders committed to the motherland. And, most Soviets may indeed have communist idealists to some degree. It also had many brave men. Also, the USSR didn’t suffer for lack of manpower or natural resources. So, what was missing? Part of the problem was communism itself though perhaps this wasn’t so apparent in the early 60s. After all, Stalin had industrialized the nation in a decade and then used its military might to destroy the seemingly invincible Nazi Germany. Though WWII was catastrophic for many Soviet citizens, it also led to victorious glory and all of Eastern Europe as the satellite of the USSR. With Third World ‘liberation’ movements raging around the world, it didn’t seem foolish to believe in the early 60s that Soviets were on the right side of history. Cuba had fallen to communism in 1959, and many cheered or feared that the same would happen to all of Latin-America, the ‘backyard’ of the United States. Also, it appeared that the Soviets got a head start in the space race, and many observers thought the East Wind was prevailing over the West.

But, the problems of communism were intractable and becoming more obvious by the day. Sure, Stalin had industrialized the country, but at what cost? Stalin turned the USSR into a superpower through use of mass slave labor, mass terror, and mind-numbing propaganda. How long could this go on? How long can any political system keep advancing or survive through extreme inhuman means? People were bound to burn out sooner or later. So, Khrushchev embarked on a communism with a human face, but it soon became apparent that communism and freedom were incompatible. Consider Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in the early 80s, and finally the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain when Gorbachev earnestly tried to reform communism. A system that didn’t allow individual incentive could work through coercion. But, even coercion wasn’t enough as workers under communism worked as a faceless mass. It was difficult to tell who slacked off, who produced this or that shoddy good, and so on.
But, there were deeper cultural problems too. East Germans, even under communism, tended to be more efficient and industrious than their Russian counterparts. It goes without saying that some peoples, especially the Germans, Japanese, and traditional Anglos, took greater pride in workmanship, thoroughness, efficiency, and excellence. And it’s not just a matter of pride but of shame. A German or Japanese would feel shame to be thought of as lazy and sloppy. Pride in workmanship wasn’t just a matter of profit incentive or external pressure but an internal mechanism of self-worth. From a young age, German and Japanese kids were imbued with the notion that dedication to and competence at a certain task are essential virtues. This kind of mentality never really developed among the Russians who preferred to drink vodka, dance on tables, sing boorish songs, and wrestle with bears. Stalin whipped the Russians into shape, but the effect was external than internal. Russians worked hard under Stalin more out of fear of the whip than pride of the heart. Since communism was all about the collective, the Russian-as-individual never developed an individual pride in workmanship. A German blacksmith or a Japanese sword-smith took great pride in his own skills and ability. The Russian way was to just follow orders. Perhaps, this had something to do with the size of Russia. Being members of a vast country with great resources, Russians--especially at the top--never learned to focus their attention on anything. Consider the amount of waste and inefficiency that plagued the Soviet Union--and Russia even now. Russians could take this attitude since they figured there would always be more oil, more iron, more wood, more water, etc in vast Russia. (On the other hand, Anglo-Americans, also blessed with vast lands and resources, proved to be more efficient and conscientious, though it must be said plenty of white Americans at one time shot buffalos and cleared forests as if those things would forever be in abundance. Consider that the bisons, estimated to have been around 20 million in the 18th century, were reduced to a few dozens by the late 19th century.)

Also, every blessing is a curse. The rise of communist Russia must have seemed like a great blessing to all the True Believers within and without the USSR. After WWII, even more so. How could it be that an ideology that came to power only in 1917 came to defeat Nazi Germany, swallow up Eastern Europe, and then even take China in 1949? And, ten yrs later, Cuba went communist, and naturally rest of Latin America seemed ripe for revolution too. On the face of it, communism seemed to have gone from a rising star to the central sun in the galaxy. But with every great promise comes a great ambition, and the Soviet Union began to think in messianic and imperial terms. Though it was economically no match for the US, resurgent Western Europe, and Japan, it wanted to convince the world--and fool itself--that it represented the wave of the future. For good public relations, the Soviets even lavished generous aid to Cuba and North Korea and African countries. Soviets ensured that people in Eastern Europe would live better than people in Russia and other Soviet republics. Russians had to tighten their belts and pour aid and advantages to other countries to persuade the world that its way was the right way. And, if the USSR couldn’t match the West in terms of life style or consumer goods, it sought to compensate with military might, as if show its own people and the world that communist man was ready to defend and spread world revolution.
So, when Reagan increased military spending, thus making US the premier military power without question, Soviet Union had no more cards to play. But, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
K-19 takes place in the early 1960s when the future was uncertain for both sides. Even if the then-experts were well aware of communist countries’ woefully lagging living standards, there was the fear of communists being more dedicated, disciplined, and confident in contrast to Westerners who were growing decadent, easy-going, divisive, and degenerate. When a great military power like the US couldn’t prevail in Vietnam, people began to write off the ‘American empire’. Good or bad, it seemed as if the communists were true believers with the iron will to fight and die for that something. Meanwhile, Westerners and their Third Worlders allies seemed concerned mainly with material comfort, pleasure, or privilege. Psychology does matter in war. Military historians believe that France had sufficient military might in 1940 to fend off the Germans, but the French gave up out of lack of will. The Chinese Nationalists had more men and weapons than the communists during the Chinese Civil War, but the more determined and ruthless communists won. US gave far more military aid to the more populous South Vietnam, but it was no match for the determined North Vietnam. Ragtag communist guerillas in Cuba took over the whole country. In this political climate, it was understandable why many in the West feared communism and the Cold War. It was not so much the fear of communist material power but its psychological/spiritual power. (What anti-communists perhaps failed to notice was that communist spiritual power was only strong in cases where communism served the interests of nationalism. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, revered by many Vietnamese not mainly for his communism as for his patriotism. And, most people initially supported Castro as an anti-Yankee Cuban nationalist than for his stealth-Marxism.)

Be that as it may, K-19 gives us an inside look at the world of Soviet military power and communist camaraderie that at one time gave Americans fits. On the one hand, we do see much that was indeed formidable. K-19 is a mighty submarine seemingly built at breakneck speed. Soviet commanders have iron in their blood and seem ambitious to try out their latest weapon. The submarine’s power to withstand impossible pressures in the deep and then later its slicing through meter-thick layers of frozen ice like knife through butter are indeed astounding and breathtaking. And, the test launch of its missile is a blast. But, what we see among the crew are not zealous and mindless robots but mostly young men with girlfriends or wives back home. And for all their prior training, they seem humanly confused and vulnerable when crises emerge. And despite all the stuff we heard about collective Soviet man, personalities clash onboard.
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But, most jarring of all is the contradiction at the core of Soviet communism. On the one hand, the ideology stresses collectivism, unity, cooperation, and consensus. Yet, with its great ambitions, there is ever greater pressure from within and without to achieve yet another glory to prove its worth to the Soviet people or to the rest of the world. So, even as K-19 is supposed to represent the collective greatness of the Soviet people, the ONLY way to get anything done is to give its commander near dictatorial powers. Harrison Ford’s character is indeed strange. As Captain Alexei Vostrikov, he is tough and dedicated, but also vain and reckless. Every one of his good qualities can lurch into extremes, but nothing would be possible without his extreme qualities.. Soviet Union was too inefficient, technologically crude, and organizationally deficient to produce top-notch wares for immediate deployment. Except in the area of quantity, it couldn’t deliver speedy results of terms of quality.
So, what is K-19 as a piece of machinery? It is a formidable submarine with top-notch advanced technology but with lots of defects which require time for detection and debugging. But, Soviet political ambition require, indeed demand, results right away. Also, the Soviet government was probably less likely to care about the lives of the crewmen since there was no independent media or non-governmental power to blow the whistle when something went awry. Also, the leaders of the Soviet Union probably thought in terms of WWII, Cold War, and sacrifice. A nation that had heroically sacrificed over 20 million lives in the Great Patriotic War was probably not going to lose sleep over a few dozen men in a submarine. This callousness toward lives has long been a fact in Russia and communist nations. For all the talk of workers’ rights, workers came to matter less as human beings since they weren’t regarded as individuals but as a faceless collective ideal working for the future. When an individual is killed, we feel a unique and special person has died. But, when a ‘worker’ or ‘soldier’ dies, we’re dealing with a category of man whose shoes or boots could be filled by someone else. To the extent that ‘the worker’ was seen as a soldier in a world revolution according to communism, the individual came to matter less.

Harrison Ford’s Alexei Vostrikov intially registers powerfully and contradictorily as a strong individual who disregards the individual lives of his men. His mind is so fixed on the mission’s accomplishment--taking the submarine to the polar region and firing a test rocker--, he acts as the ship’s diva. He scares the living daylights of his men but also wins their admiration upon the misson’s success. Vostrikov’s eagerness is mixed bag of complexes. We are told his father was a patriotic hero who was purged and sent to the gulag. A part of him strives for personal glory. Part of him seeks redemption of family’s name. Part of him feels anger at the whole system, and in a sense, his triumph could be seen as a personal victory over the system which he serves. There is something both of hardline commander and the rebel maverick about him. It’s a memorable performance because we are used to seeing Ford in charming boyish roles--Indiana Jones--or dull Boy Scout roles--Jack Ryan--, both unmistakably American. As Alexei Vostrikov, Ford is convincingly non-American even if Russian viewers may disagree. For once, Harrison Ford didn’t just do Harrison Ford. It could well be his best performance since BLADE RUNNER. If not of great depth, the turmoil and intensity are undeniable.

His relationship with Liam Neeson(Capt. Mikhail Polenin) form the dramatic core of the movie, one that is as unstable as the cracked core of the nuclear generator on the submarine. The conflict and tension between the two men aren’t as fundamental as meets the Western eye. Given the extreme and nerve-racking nature of the mission, they have a falling out, with Ford’s Vostrikov willing to bite the bullet and damn the torpedoes while Polenin urges caution and proper procedure. Both viewpoints are valid in their own way. Polenin is a capable and honorable captain who insists on everything going according to plan. He is also a man of certain understanding and tolerance, who maintains a humane atmosphere on the ship. Polenin identifies the main faults not with himself or his crewmen but within the larger system that can build a nuclear submarine but cannot supply the right kinds of fuses and screws. Indeed, the problem that nearly destroys the ship and the entire crew is a simple error. A badly welded part of the nuclear generator cracks and the temperature rises to crisis levels. This part of the movie is most suspenseful and harrowing and executed effectively. If the consequences weren’t so grave, it might even be funny. Just how is it that an elite crew in a massive nuclear submarine of a mighty empire are reduced to ferreting back and forth like amateur auto-mechanics to solder the crack on a nuclear generator? Kathryn Bigelow’s HURT LOCKER is a movie about military men who defuse bombs, so she obviously feels at home with this material.)

The strangest part of the movie is when Polenin and Vostrikov patch things up when least expected for reasons which may be a psychological riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
When the generator seems beyond repair and radiation spreads throughout the submarine, Polenin argues that the main priority of the captain is to save the lives of his men. If that means asking Americans--who are hovering nearby like both a vulture and angel--for help, so be it. Out of national pride, political fear, personal vanity, and whatever unfathomable reason, Vostrikov is unwilling to ‘surrender’ to the Americans. He is faced with a moral dilemma from which there is no easy solution. Yes, a captain should care about the lives of his crewmen, but haven’t they all pledged their lives to the glory of the Soviet Union? Isn’t it better to die with honor than hand over the prize and pride of the Soviet military technology over to the enemy? (There is irony here, for this formidable submarine which can smash through polar ice and shoot off missiles is equipped with machine parts that wouldn’t have passed the test in highschool auto shop.) On the other hand, men are flesh and blood, and shouldn’t ideas ultimately serve men than vice versa? The rift between Polenin and Vostrikov seems unbridgeable, and when a commissar and another officer conspire to have Vostrikov put under arrest for risking the lives of the crew, we expect Polenin to play Fletcher Christian to Vostrikov’s Captain Bligh(as in Mutiny on the Bounty). But, surprise surprise, something else happens. Polenin has Vostrikov released while ordering the arrest of the conspirators.
This dramatically crucial part of the film can be blasted as contradictory or hailed as dense irony, and I’m inclined to go with the latter, if only because the conspirators are not vilified for easy moral resolve or consumption on our part. There is no good or bad here but only a sense of rightness and wrongness depending on the codes and temperaments of the men aboard. Though the movie ultimately presents Vostrikov and Polenin as heroic in their own way, what is missing is any objective sense of heroism.
The crucial action surrounding the conspiracy and mutiny and its undoing by Polenin is open to any number of interpretation. We can surmise that the conspirators were acting on principle in their own way. Vostrikov endangered the men of the ship, so naturally it was necessary to put him under arrest and hand over the power to Polenin. The conspirators naturally thought Polenin, who had a falling out with Vostrikov, would be on their side.
But, Polenin saw things differently. Even if he agreed with the goals of the conspirators, he may have suspected their motive was personal fear than Soviet idealism. Or, it could have been a case of solidarity of military men against the ideological police--which had so many officers purged and killed during Stalin’s times. Also, despite or precisely because of the unfortunate bitterness between Vostrikov and Polenin, the attempted mutiny is an opportunity to rekindle the bond of trust and friendship. To the extent that Polenin dared not join the mutiny, Vostrikov owes him one. Good or bad, Polenin is the product of the Soviet system where loyalty is of paramount importance. Thus, his undying loyalty to Vostrikov is both moving and foolish--though as a movie in which Soviet values define the action, we feel more moved than offended. But, there may be other factors for Polenin’s ‘betrayal’ against the ‘traitors’. Earlier, when Vostrikov ordered the submarine to submerge to dangerously deep levels, Polenin had deserted his post and darted off to his room. Though filled with righteous rage, it’s possible that Polenin felt a degree of self-disgust for having acted unprofessionally.
Emotionally parallel to this is the young nuclear generator specialist who, initially out of fear, refused to work on the generator but is then so overcome with shame that he goes out of his way to give his all.
Or, maybe this was Polenin’s way of redeeming Vostrikov. By releasing Vostrikov, Polenin humanizes him through his own humanity. And indeed, Vostrikov becomes more ‘reasonable’ and decides to do what Polenin and the conspirators had wished all along--save the crew by asking for American help.
Or, if we want to be more cynical, perhaps Polenin perhaps realized that his and his family’s long-term future in the Soviet Union depends on upholding the hierarchy within the system. A mutiny on his resume may not look so good. Or, perhaps as a submarine captain, he felt natural affinity with another captain. What we sense is not so much that what Polenin is right or correct, but that HE feels that he is right or correct.

K-19 isn’t as structurally taut and powerful as DAS BOOT, but keep in the German film takes place during wartime. It is a movie about two sides blowing each other up. K-19 is not about two nations in a hot war. The conflict is not so much between US and USSR but within the stomach of the Soviet beast itself. It is also within the hearts of Soviet officers and crewmen who, in their own way, sought HUMAN answers to the problems they faced. Near great movie.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Andrea Ostrov Letania: Neo-fascist Review of DEFIANCE by Edward Zwick(and the New Republic Gang).


A review about Zwick’s DEFIANCE, a morale-boosting and morally bullying film about Jewish partisans fighting for survival against Nazis and their Belarusian collaborators. Zwick’s previous film was BLOOD DIAMOND, which I haven’t seen, but my impression is it blames Western greed for the political bloodshed in Africa. Isn’t it bemusing that Jews, who denounce antisemitic scapegoating for all the ills around the world, are ever so eager to blame the White West for all the poverty and corruption in Africa and the Third World? Jews condemn Blood Libel but they accuse whites with Blood Diamond, which is rather amusing since no ethnic group has been involved in the diamond industry as much as the Jews. Few things in this world are as venal and ugly as Jewish moral narcissism.

I have no idea how faithful DEFIANCE is its source book material. I also know next to nothing about the history of Belarus and Jews who lived there nor about what exactly happened in that part of the world during WWII. I assume like much of Eastern Europe, it became the tragic trampling ground for two giants, namely Nazi Germany and Soviet Union. The fate of people in such areas depended largely on their ethnic or ideological credentials or pure chance. Jews were especially vulnerable in areas controlled by Nazis. Also, social tumult and disorder amidst the war unleashed long suppressed or simmering passions on all sides. Where Nazis prevailed, even gentile locals oppressed by the Nazis took the opportunity to persecute and even kill Jews out of resentment(of greater Jewish success), fear(rise of Jewish numbers and power), or vengeance(over the perceived or real role of Jews in the communism).
No doubt some Ukrainians collaborated with Nazi invaders if only to get at the Jewish communists who’d forced policies(at the behest of Stalin) leading to the Great Famine.
But even in nations that had never come under full-scale communist oppression--France, Hungary, parts of Poland, etc--, many locals took the opportunity amidst the chaos to punish the Jews for whatever reason. They saw an opportunity to finally get rid of an ‘alien’ and ‘parasitic’ race which had dogged them with ‘too much’ wealth, power, radicalism, subversion, etc. Ironically, Jews also served as useful scapegoats for losing and coming under the iron heel of the Germans, and Germans even played on such emotions. The German propaganda message to the defeated French was that France had so ignominiously lost the war because of its decadent miscegenationist policies, and who had been behind such policies? The Jews!
The Germans deviously deflected French anger at the Germans toward the Jews. Since French couldn’t do much about or against German power, they assuaged their loss and humiliation by blaming and going after the Jews. It was as if Germany had been able to grow powerful and dramatically defeat France because it had dealt with its Jewish Problem whereas the French came under its influence, especially during the socialist administration of Jewish prime minister Leon Blum.

All over the world, there are simmering tensions and passions rooted in grievances, resentment, rage, fear, anxiety, vengefulness, and etc. They remain under the radar--mostly in the hearts of individuals or communities--as long there’s sufficient social stability, rule of law, and functional(or effective)statist controls. But in times of crises--natural disasters, economic collapses, sudden demographic shifts(mainly through migration + high birthrates), wars, famine, etc.--the most elemental, animalistic, and/or survivalist passions may burst forth. Recently, we’ve witnessed sectarian horrors in Iraq upon the fall of the Hussein regime. Iraq under Hussein, though miserable and oppressive, had had some semblance of social order--if only due to the iron whip of tyranny. Tito’s brand of communism was ruthless and brutal but maintained social peace in Yugoslavia for nearly half a century. When such controls dissipated and no effective rule of law or economic well-being took their place, Yugoslavia spiraled out of control in a series of ethnic wars. In Burundi and Rwanda, whenever the state faltered and failed to enforce political stability, Hutus and Tutsis ended up massacring one another. As Mexican government and society become less stable stemming from problems of the drug trade, culture of corruption, and erosion of traditional values--which, however unpleasant, had instilled the masses of uneducated people with a sense of place and community--, we are now witnessing horrendous rise of crime, violence, and lunacy in Mexico and in SW areas which have absorbed huge numbers of Mexican illegal. During the Asian financial crisis of 1997, Indonesia experienced a collapse of civil society, and masses of armed Indonesians went about looting, raping, and killing Chinese-Indonesians who got blamed for the whole mess. During the Kanto earthquake in Japan in 1923, thousands of Koreans were killed by angry Japanese mobs looking for a scapegoat.
Currently in the United States and across EU, the most violent and disorderly places are ones dominated by people of African and/or Muslim backgrounds. And Muslims tend to be worse if they originated in Africa. Turks in Germany are less of a danger than African Muslims in France--just as Syrian Jews cause less problem in Israel than Ethiopian Jews do(and white Christians are preferable to black Christians). There are parts of Paris that are so out-of-control that even the police stay away. This may sound odd given that EU is prosperous and even poor immigrant populations from African and Muslim parts of the world are provided with free food, free housing, free clothing, free schooling, free medicine, and free all-the-other-rights-as-defined-by-progressives. It just goes to show that some races are natural or genetic disasters. Blacks are great at sports, singing and dancing, and making soulful speeches, but they are the human version of a hurricane, earthquake, or pestilence.
Of course, all peoples are capable of losing their minds and going crazy. Germans did just that under Nazi rule, which shows that not all violence and madness are the result of breakdown of social order but can be the product of too much social order. Nazis fanned the flames of antisemitism and directed them at the Jewish community at opportune times. Though anti-Jewish passions had already existed and could well have exploded in the absence of state controls, the Nazis cleverly controlled and unleashed them whenever necessary. So, Kristallnacht was both spontaneous and orchestrated. Spontaneous to the extent that there were plenty of Germans who would have gladly attacked Jews. Orchestrated to the extent that the antisemitic fury was allowed expression only with the approval of the state. There was something similar in the Cultural Revolution in China and the Nanking Massacre. In both cases, there were plenty of angry youths eager to vent out their frustrations. In 1966, Mao directed Chinese youths to destroy ‘capitalist roaders’, whereupon tens of millions of Red Guards all across China attacked ‘class enemies’, many of them communists who’d fallen out of favor with Mao. And in the case of the Nanking Massacre, psychologically and physically tormented Japanese soldiers vented their repressed rage on the Chinese, raping, torturing ,and killing tens of thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands in the city of Nanking.
And during the crisis years in the Holy Land of the late 1940s, both Jews and Arabs carried out horrible acts of terror and violence. With no shared or unified rule of authority for both communities, it became a matter of kill or be killed, of animal survival and domination. In the No Man’s Land of the West Bank, such violence continues on a daily basis. And we all know what’s happening to South Africa with the rise of blacks and decline of effective government management and controls.
At any rate, most non-blacks seem capable of maintaining a kind of functional society once they arrive at agreed upon borders, values, principles, and laws. Blacks seem less capable of arriving at large-scaled functional societies, and blacks fortunate to live in such societies--US, UK, France, Portugal, etc--seem hellbent on tearing everything down in a jiveass mofo way.
In the US, following an electricity blackout or the basketball championship victory, when authorities are least able to control the situation, there are likely to be black riots and looting.


If effective social, political, and legal order were to break down in the US, there would be massive violence too, especially now as many peoples of various racial loyalties and ethnic backgrounds are frustrated due to any number of reasons: economic, demographic, social, political, cultural, etc. Blacks are angry that they still have less than others and believe it’s all because of ‘racism’. Conservative middle class and working class whites feel that their economic pie has been taken by the elites--especially the Jews--and that they are being dispossessed and displaced by tides of non-white immigrants, many of them illegal. Hispanics, especially of Mexican origin, believe it is their birth-and-national right to reconquer the SW areas of the US. White liberals fear that Neo-Nazi militias may come out of the woodwork and have been arming themselves to kill evil ‘racist’ whites who refuse to see the light of ‘progressive’ values.
Conservative white males are frustrated at the rise of miscegenation, where increasing numbers of women run off to stronger and studlier Negro males. Nothing affects the psyche as much as conflicts over territory and women. Jews, having amassed enormous power, are now more cocky and chutzpah-istic than ever. Frank Rich cackles with glee that white people cannot take their country back, a fact that should awaken all whites as to the REAL reason why Jews have promoted the cult of diversity. It was mainly to weaken white majority power in order to boost and secure Jewish power. Just as the British played the balance-of-powers or ‘divide-and-rule’ strategy on continental Europe, Jews play the divide-and-rule among the various goy groups in the US. It’s no wonder that so many Jews are Anglophiles. It’s almost as if Jews have become the new global British imperialists. And just as the British saw China as the big obstacle that had to be tamed in the 19th century, today’s globalist Jews also eye China as the one potentially great power that may not cower before nor fall prey to the Jewish art of divide-and-rule.


Anyway, given the simmering or steaming rage under the lid of America’s boiling--than melting--pot, we can expect lots of violence if our current system were to fail. Indeed, some people seem to welcome the breakdown of the order so they could finally go out and do what needs to be done. After all, it is generally during times of chaos, war, or upheavals that great ‘crimes’ or ‘revolutions’ can be carried out. Indeed, the Holocaust would have been far more difficult to pull off without WWII. It would have been near impossible for Jews to drive out Arabs from Palestine if not for the 1948 war. Israelis would not have swallowed West Bank and Gaza without the 1967 war. This may be why so many Zionists are drumming up another major war in the Middle East--especially with Iran.
And 15 million Germans could not have been expelled from Eastern parts of Europe if not for the general chaos prevailing in the immediate aftermath of WWII. In the absence of effective rule of law and with passion for vengeance--some of it going back for centuries--raging amongst Europeans who’d recently been conquered and oppressed by Germans, all that the Allied Forces had to do was give the green light for masses of Eastern Europeans to rise up and brutally drive millions of Germans to the West.
And indeed similar things had happened in the US when whites took law into their own hands to kill and drive out Indians, or when Indians took vengeance on the whites. During the Civil War, there were white riots where many blacks were attacked, tortured, or killed.
And such things could happen today if the social and political order would fall apart. There are lots of white rightist types with lots of guns who are just itching to shoot and kill a whole bunch of Jews, Negroes, and Mexicans over what has happened to their beloved country--and to the West in general. There are cocky blacks with guns who think it’s time for revolution since the ‘faggoty-ass’ white boys own too much wealth and keep black folks down-and-out through the perpetuation of ‘racism’. And there is rising confidence in the Mexican community in the United States; across large areas in the SW, it’s hard tell where Mexico begins or ends. Given the sudden rise of Hispanic numbers and their growing arrogance--plus the fact that public schools(especially ultra-liberal ones in California) teach ‘people of color’ to hate and blame everything on whites--, the once quiet and timid Mexican-American community has grown angry, aggressive, and even vile at times. Millions of illegal Mexicans march in the streets with impunity, demand their ‘rights’, and threaten white Americans with violence unless the demands are met. There are increasing Hispanic attacks on whites, especially in the SW areas. Robert Rodriguez, the director of MACHETE--a violent anti-gringo movie funded by Jewish Hollywood--recently threatened white America with violence over Arizona’s anti-illegal laws.

So, with each passing year, the fuse is getting shorter and shorter. Jews have pushed diversity in the name of playing divide-and-rule, BUT if too much diversity leads to social breakdown among various groups, Jews could end up caught between than standing above violent and angry masses. After all, diversity didn’t save Jews from the mayhem that swept across Europe.
Though WWII was war fought amongst diverse Europeans, Jews got caught and crushed in between like everyone else. Indeed, Jews proportionately suffered more than any other people. So, if Jews think they are so clever by pushing more diversity in the US, things may well backfire, with whites, blacks, and Mexicans not only fighting each other but also attacking any number of Jews they can get their hands on. After all, if there was one thing that most of opposing nations in WWII agreed upon, it was suspicion of and/or hatred toward Jews. Germans and French fought against each other, but neither side cared for the Jews. Though Germans invaded Poland, most Poles didn’t much care that Germans killed a whole lot of Jews. In today’s world, the only people with any kind of sympathy for Jews are white people, whereas neither blacks nor Hispanics feel any guilt or much sympathy for the Jews. With ever intensifying liberal and leftist Jewish policies, even white sympathy for Jews will fade, and there could well be the return of antisemitism or counter-Jewitism. Already in parts of Europe, the rise of Muslim and African populations has meant social breakdown in many areas, which in turn has led to violence against Jews by Muslim and black youths. Jews are getting their just desserts for pushing policies that have wreaked much havoc on the West.

Anyway, just imagine the state of Eastern Europe during WWII. Though Germans and Soviets ruled harshly wherever they went, war and chaos led to fluid and ever shifting conditions in many areas. With breakdown of traditional rules and conventional social controls, individuals could carry out their own pent-up vendettas and agendas. For instance, if Belarusian townsfolk had long resented the Jews, they could use the opportunity to take Jewish property and even kill Jews. What did it matter since the Germans seemed not to mind and even to endorse and enforce such acts. Since Jews faced extermination, they too had little choice but to take the law into their own hands and give as well as they got, and that is the subject of the film DEFIANCE by Edward Zwick.

Though I haven’t seen everything by Zwick, especially the highly touted GLORY--about a bunch of black soldiers fighting for the Union in the Civil War--, I do recall enjoying LAST SAMURAI which, though not a very good movie--it was possibly even a bad movie--, was lots of fun and impressive as a comic book historical epic. Cruise in samurai gear looked smashing, and action scenes were rip-roaring if also ridiculous. It was nothing like the films of Akira Kurosawa, but as Hollywood movies go, still better than most. It wasn’t gold but wasn’t lead either. It was a bronze medal movie, not worth serious thought but okay for serious popcorn munching.
Politically and historically, it peddled a kind of New Age leftist-fascism. The stern, militaristic, and atavistic samurai order was admired as a kind of last spiritual stand against the cancer of Western materialism and industrialism. It was like Mishima-isms watered down for mass teeny bopper consumption. One could ignore or be unaware of the real--oppressive, exploitative, and corrupt--conditions of samurai-controlled Japan, sit back, and romanticize the samurai as East Asian counterparts of the vanished noble American Indians of the popular New Age imagination. It was more sophisticated than 300 but worked on and off similar romanticist motifs of a sacred manly order courageously fighting to the last against the tide of overwhelming threat. I suppose even a questionable cause takes on the noble sheen of a lost cause. So, the once reviled American Indians became romantic figures, even to conservative whites. And there has long been widespread romanticism associated with the defeat of the Confederacy(though it has largely faded with the rise of black politics and power).

It is interesting but not surprising that the liberal Jewish Zwick made a pro-progress movie within the context of the American Civil War but made an anti-progress movie within the context of 19th century Japan. It tell us something about the working of the Jewish mind. When a non-white people are confronted with Western forces or influences(such as the Westernized pro-reform Japanese), the non-whites opposing Westernization or Western power are the good guys no matter how oppressive, corrupt, and exploitative their society may be. But when a white people resist forces of progress in order to maintain their old ‘sacred’ ways, they are low-life rotten scoundrels. Both the reactionary warriors in THE LAST SAMURAI and the Southern whites in GLORY were fighting to preserve their way of life, which was based on extensive slavery or bondage, a caste system, and strict hierarchy. Yet, the liberal Jewish Zwick sympathizes with the anti-Western Japanese against the forces of progress whereas, in the case of GLORY, he clearly sympathizes with the Union which fought to sweep away the Old South. And in both movies, Zwick romanticizes white guys who fight against their own side, a theme also picked up by James Cameron’s AVATAR. Zwick is not a very honest or consistent artist.

Zwick is a graduate of Harvard, so I’m inclined to think he’s a lot smarter than his movies would suggest. He’s smart enough to know that movies are expensive and filmmakers need to stay bankable. He tackles serious subjects but is eager to please the masses. I can’t hold this against him as that’s just how the movie business works 99% of the time.
If Zwick were allowed all the money and the artistic freedom he wanted but could only make a film like THE LAST SAMURAI, then he would indeed be a poor artist. But like most directors, he’s had to navigate between art and business. Most Hollywood directors work as hacks since the studios, in order to maximize profits, follow the golden rule of giving the masses what the want. Given that the largest share of moviegoers are young people suffering from attention deficit order--and weaned on video games, loud music, and the internet--, it’s only natural that superhero comic book movies dominate the screens and box office. And even ‘serious’ films have been calibrated for suspense, thrill, and fast pace than drama, meaning, or sense. In a way, VALKYRIE was LAST SAMURAI set in Nazi Germany, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it was directed by Bryan Singer, the guy who made X-MEN movies.

So, what kind of movie is DEFIANCE? It’s clearly the best by Zwick so far, and though no great work of art, it is respectable enough. It is a straight B movie in writing, directing, acting, editing, sound. Not remarkable nor particularly memorable but certainly worth 2 hours of one’s life. One could certainly do much worse. Much of the film is elemental, which is appropriate given the central theme of the film is survival--finding refuge, building shelter, procuring food, acquiring firearms and learning to use them. It is about a group of people struggling to survive and maintain basic dignity amidst the madness.
Because of the simple storytelling, one may be forgiven for seeing it as an essentially honest and unassuming film paying homage to Jews in Eastern Europe who stood up, stood their ground, and put up a fight. But upon closer scrutiny, that isn’t really so. In many ways, DEFIANCE does betray the subtle ways and means of Jewish DEVIANCE. Despite the rough and hardy exterior, it is a film calculatingly constructed to influence and manipulate our remembrance of history and understanding of current events. It is a film that begs to be deconstructed.

The most obvious purpose of this movie is to show Jews in a different light. We get to see Jews as fighting men, heroes, and tough guys than as helpless victims in so many Holocaust films. Presenting Jews as helpless(and saintly)victims of evil Nazis certainly has its advantages. The world sees Jews as harmless salt-of-the-earth brutalized by sadistic and powerful antisemites. TV series like the HOLOCAUST and movies like SCHINDLER’S LIST gave us this image of the Jews, and Jews became the main objects of sympathy around the world--at least among white Americans, Canadians, and Western Europeans. The problem with this kind of image is (1) it makes Jews look like a bunch of pitiful schmucks--sympathy is good, pity not so much--, and (2) it belies the current image of Jews as supreme power holders in the West and especially in the Middle East, where the mighty IDF continues to beat the crap out of Arabs. If we are supposed to see Jews only as helpless and harmless victims, how are we suppose to square this with the fact that Jews are the most powerful people in the world? How are we supposed to make sense of Jewish military aggression, brutality, and ruthlessness against the various Arab nations and peoples since the founding of Israel? If we are supposed to love Jews because they are the Eternal Victims, what are we supposed to with evidence of Jews as great victors?
That is why a movie like DEFIANCE is very useful to Jews. In a sense, it is less a movie about the past than about the present. Politically, DEFIANCE is essentially a piece of Zionist and Jewish Supremacist propaganda. By showing beleaguered and courageous Jews standing up to and resisting the Nazis--and even being bullied by antisemitic Soviets--, the movie says Jews must (1) be tough and ruthless (2) seek mastery and power (3) rely and trust no one but themselves and (4) stick together. Though the movie is set in Belarus during WWII, it politically serves as a justification for what Jews are doing in the Middle East in the name of Zionism.
In recent times, more people have made comparisons between Zionism and Nazism, calling Israelis ‘racists’, calling for boycotts, making pleas for the plight of the Palestinians, and calling for ‘No More Wars for Israel’.
DEFIANCE defies those charges and serves to remind the world that Israel was founded because Jews had been brutalized and murdered in huge numbers by Jew-hating antisemites. It presents Nazis as the main villains but also implicates Slavic Belarusians as dyed-in-the-wool antisemites who happily collaborated with the Nazis. In other words, Jews have historically been surrounded by super antisemites and plain antisemites. Though the movie does acknowledge the all-important Soviet role in the fight against Nazism, even the Russians are presented mostly in an unpleasant, boorish, and hostile light. In other words, Germans want to kill the Jews, and Russians want to beat them up. Russians aren’t much good to Jews but merely the lesser of two evils, and the implication is that the ONLY factor preventing Russians from acting like Germans is the communist ideology that officially forbids antisemitism--but hatred for Jews cannot be purged from the Russian soul.
And keep in mind many Jews have been pissed about the USSR/Russia ever since it became less hospitable to the Jews with the creation of Israel(which gravitated closer to the US than to the USSR) and the perception of divided or dual loyalties among Jews.

There is another reason why the Russians are not presented in a positive light in the movie, and it has to do with Jewish fear of a possible backlash among Americans, who fought a long war--cold and hot--against communists, and among many Europeans, who’d greatly suffered under the USSR. If the movie presented the Russian communists as wonderful heroes and great friends of the Jews, many Americans--especially white conservative Christians--and Poles(among others) may see it as a dirty Jewish pro-communist film. Jews--even radical leftist ones--have been allergic to accusations of being communist agents, activists, and sympathizers. Even radical leftist Jews who spied for the USSR in the 1940s pretended to be patriotic red-white-and-blue Americans whose main allegiance was to the US Constitution than to the ideas of Marx and Lenin.
In SCHINDLER’S LIST, a Soviet officer arrives only near the end and declares the concentration camp liberated AFTER the Nazis have fled. Soviets are credited for their victory over the Nazis but not for the saving of Jews. (It’s almost as if Schindler did more to save Jews than the USSR did.) Steven Spielberg the devious Jew was trying have it both ways. He was, on the one hand, acknowledging the role the USSR played in the defeat of Nazism, but he was also assuring American audiences that he’s a good American and no fan of Soviet communists--and therefore, we Americans should love him and keep watching his movies. Yet, this is the same dirty Jew who pumped a whole lot of cash into Alinskyite Barack Obama’s campaign along with his fellow filthy Jews whose dream is to see the white race miscegenated out of existence(mainly through black men taking white women from white men pussified by liberal Jewish MSM and academia). Jews have always been devious, playing both sides.

Since Jews gained their greatest success and power in the United States and since they still rely on the good-will of white Americans--among whom conservatives are still a significant political force(though rapidly fading thanks to social and political policies instituted by dirty liberal and leftist Jews)--Jews are not willing to let the cat out of the bag completely. They still feel vulnerable. If Jews show too much deference to the communist Soviet Union’s role in WWII, alarm bells may go off as to where Jewish loyalties really lie. This is all the more important since there was a long Cold War between the US and the USSR and since a good number of Jews came under suspicion for radical, Marxist, or leftist loyalties. The radical left Hall of Fame in post-war America is dominated by many brilliant but filthy and disgusting Jews who’ve secretly harbored hateful and genocidal feelings toward the white race. Of course, the Jewish plan to destroy the white race is not through the gas chambers but through the destruction of white male pride and miscegenation between black males and white females. Many Jews will not be satisfied until every blonde and blue-eyed white person is converted into a mulatto with kinky hair and big lips. Jews have long felt envy toward white beauty and even believe that the cult of white or ‘Aryan’ beauty was the animating force behind the Holocaust--a war waged by beauty on ugliness. So, destroying white beauty is the secular Jewish equivalent of smashing idols in Ancient Hebrew times. Of course, the rich and powerful Jews will find some way to maintain a stable of blonde and blue-eyed bimbos for their own sexual pleasure even in the future when most of the white race will have been mulatto-ized out of existence.

Anyway, Jews have pulled a sneaky one with DEFIANCE. They found a way to say, “We thank you Russians for fighting(and defeating)the Nazis but not enough to endanger our good standing with Americans and some other Europeans.” But Jews feel a same kind of ambivalence with white Americans. Jews, through their perpetual gripes and bitching--most centered around the Holocaust--, always use gratitude as a tool or even a weapon than as a matter of genuine good will. So, Jews will thank the Greatest Generation for fighting in WWII but then bitch and gripe about how, prior to Pearl Harbor, Americans were not willing to send their boys to die in huge numbers to save the Jews. It’s as if goy lives exist only to be expended in the service of Jewish lives. (Did Jewish Americans push for war against the USSR when Stalin was killing millions of Ukrainians? Did Jewish Americans demand that Americans do something to save Cambodians being mass-murdered by the Khmer Rouge? No, Jews want white Americans to get maimed or killed in huge numbers ONLY to save Jewish lives.)
So, when Jews say ‘thank you’, you have to take it with a grain of salt. There’s an element in the Jew that sarcastically means, ‘gee, thanks a lot!’ Jews think they are the best people in the world and no one can comprehend their wisdom or suffering, not even Jesus. Only their God or they themselves know the full extent of this noble and incomparable greatness and suffering, and the main moral duty of rest of humanity is to learn about, admire, and even worship Jewish greatness, Jewish nobility, Jewish humor and wit, Jewish genius, Jewish goodness and saintliness, and Jewish suffering and martyrdom.
Through most of Jewish history, this cult of suffering was mostly in the form of self-pity and self-aggrandizement meant for fellow Jews. Traditional Jews felt such contempt for non-Jews that they believed goyim were not capable of great moral understanding. Therefore, Jews were not much concerned about sympathy from the goy community since goy feelings had no value in the eyes of Jews. Goy feelings were as filthy as goy gods, foods, and customs. Jews certainly wanted good-will from the goy community so as to manipulate and gain favors from it, but Jews didn’t expect nor desire sympathy from people they deemed as filthy and low. Jews sought sympathy from fellow Jews, from their own descendants by the tradition of the Torah and Talmud, and of course, from God. No matter how terrible things got for the Jews, Jews could always pray to God, and He, though the prophets, would tell the Jews what to do to regain His favor and affection. But once Jews became secularized and no longer believed in a divine force, it became more necessary for Jews to gain sympathy from the goy world, but it was slow in coming. If some degree of goy sympathy led to the emancipation of the Jews, the sudden rise of Jewish wealth and success led to much envy, resentment, anxiety, and even fear among the goyim. So, Jews began to worry. Even as emancipated Jews with equal rights, they were targets of distrust, suspicions, and even hatred.
Some Jews came to the conclusion that the problem was tribal or irrational/traditional loyalties, and so the only real solution was a radical policy and program whereby both Jews and various goy tribes would lose their identities and merged into one people. By leading such a movement, radical Jews hoped to create a new world order where no group would be targeted and particularly hated. But communism and other forms of radicalism gave Jews only more bad press--though it also won them many adherents--, and what followed was the rise of many antisemitic movements. And when Jewish-led communism in the Soviet Union came to destroy 50,000 churches, kill priests and nuns left and right, send millions to forced labor camps, and create massive famines, there could be no great love for the Jews.
Jews bitch, gripe, and ask why the world didn’t do much to save the Jews from the rising danger of Nazism in the 1930s, but we don’t have to look far for the answers. Prior to WWII and the Holocaust, the greatest crimes of the 20th century had been committed by communist Jews. Many conservatives and even liberals throughout Europe and the United States were well aware of what Jewish radicals had wrought in Eastern Europe. And though the Right won the Spanish Civil War, many heard of the great crimes committed by radical leftists among whom Jews were prominent as leading figures. The so-called Abraham Lincoln Brigade was essentially an American Jewish brigade. When horrors were raging in the USSR, most American Jews didn’t care about the victims and indeed cheered for the mass murder of Russian Christians and Ukrainians. Even to this day, there are many dirty Jews writing for THE NATION, TIKKUN, DISSENT, and THE NEW REPUBLIC who have fond feelings for the early Soviet era. Jews began to have doubts about the Soviet Union ONLY WHEN Stalin began to target the top leadership and, as a result, some powerful Jews got victimized. When Stalin had killed far many more people--mostly peasants--through his forced collectivization policies--with enthusiastic support of the Soviet Jews--, there was VIRTUALLY NO protest from the American Jewish community. In other words, a million dead Ukrainians counted for less than a single dead Jewish member of the Politburo. To most Jews around the world, Stalin wasn’t such a bad guy when he killed millions of Christian Slavs but he was a terrible awful and horrible guy when he killed some Soviet officials who happened to be Jewish. This is the devious way in which dirty Jews think and act.
And also keep in mind that DEFIANCE(which was made in collaboration with dirty Zionist Jews at The New Republic who also support Elena Kagan the hideously ugly and thoroughly corrupt radical Jewess who wants to take away our freedom of speech and declare an essay such as this as a ‘hate crime’; New Republic or Jew Republic is for affirmative action AGAINST whites but isn’t troubled in the least by the vastly disproportionate power and positions held by Jews across the institutions of power) lacks the larger historical perspective, especially the fact that many Jews were involved in communism. There’s a scene where we learn that a Jewish partisan fighter has been humiliated and beaten to the merriment of boorish Russians, and the viewer is led to believe that your average Jew living under Soviet rule was under constant harassment when, IN FACT, many of the most powerful, privileged, and prestigious members of the communist system were Jews. Jews joined and enjoyed the Soviet communist system more than any other group, at least until things began to change after the creation of Israel when Russians rightfully began to suspect dual loyalties among Jews--just as more Americans are finding out about the true nature of Jewish power and influence in the US. (But if Russians were able to take back their nation from Jewish control, it will be much more difficult for Americans to do so since US is an individualist meritocracy where the smartest rise to the top and maintain their elitist power and advantage through social networking, and no people have been as good as this as the Jews. Also, US is a nation of laws--or lawyers--, and Jews have come to nearly completely dominate that area. Anyway, Jews were supremely powerful in the USSR, and among the most brutal, ruthless, and murderous communists were Jews. So, it is disingenuous to show only Russian bullying of Jews when far more Russians died at the hands of radical Jews. Indeed, some of the low-level Russian bullying of Jews may have been a reaction to the fact that so many Russians had to bow down to higher ranking Jews. Since they had to kiss Jewish ass of higher rank, they may have found some satisfaction by kicking an odd Jew of lower rank. There is an ever-so-slight indication of this as the leader of the Soviet partisans seems to be a kind of closet-Jew himself.) Since Jews were so powerful in communist movements--both inside and outside the USSR--, there was a lot of anger at them from the local community, especially if you and your people had been crushed by communist forces. Some of the areas invaded by the Nazis had formerly been under communist rule, and there was a good chance that the locals had to eke out an existence under cruel Jewish communist rule--and it’s also very possible that the local Jews had eagerly collaborated with the Soviets. So, the local collaboration with the Nazis have to seen within this context. It doesn’t morally justify the brutal treatment or mass murder of ALL Jews, but the fact is vengeful emotions simmered and raged on all sides.

Though the films offers a more or less straightforward and simple narrative, one will notice details whose purpose is to manipulate the audience’s perceptions and emotions. Though it is a very pro-Jewish and Judeo-centric movie, it goes for a degree of sophistication by not presenting totally good Jews vs totally evil enemies of Jews. Some people might mistake this for irony and ambiguity, but it is really something else. It was carefully calculated in order to seem ‘fair-minded’ and more like ‘art’ than ‘propaganda’. Genuine irony and ambiguity key us into the elusive complexities of history, humanity, and psychology, but mere calculation only indicates tricks hidden up the sleeves.
The same kind of calculation prevailed in films like SCHINDLER’S LIST, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, THE PIANIST, and MUNICH. In all these films, the Nazis or Muslim terrorists were not presented as subhuman monsters but as humans who’d devoted their lives to evil or amoral violence.
This is dramatically and ‘intellectually’ more effective than a pure b/w depiction of morality, at least among more mature audiences who watch (more)serious films. If DEFIANCE had shown totally good Jews being attacked by totally evil antisemites, audience might have resented being manipulated like stupid children. So, even the antisemites and Nazi collaborators in DEFIANCE have some human, if not redeeming, qualities. And we also see some ‘bad behavior’ among the Jews.
But if viewed carefully, the means of calculation are rather obvious. Most of the Jewish violence is shown as a response to initial violence on the other side. For example, when Tuvia Bielski(Daniel Craig) goes to avenge his family, he doesn’t immediately shoot the Belarusian collaborator but hesitates as the man pleads for his life. He ONLY shoots after one of the men in the room pulls his pistol first. It’s almost as if Tuvia lives by the code of the Western gunman and draws only when the other guy draws first. In other words, he’s not a cold-blooded murderer but merely a man reacting to events. For all I know, Tuvia may well have been a courageous and noble man, but I’ll bet he killed collaborators with furious rage and without hesitation.

Later, the Bielskis rob a Belarusian milkman, but they only take half his supplies. I have no way of verifying what really happened, but I have a feeling that the screenwriters and Zwick had the Bielskis take only half the milk--and spare the milkman’s life--to make them appear conscientious. My guess is that in the extreme situations the Bielskis operated in, they probably carried out far more ruthless raids in order to keep their community of Jewish hide-outs alive. The film would have been truly remarkable if it dwelt on all such realities instead of carefully weighing and balancing whatever the Jewish partisans might have done.
Anyway, the milkman later guides a bunch of Belarusian soldiers--under the command of the Nazis--to hunt down the Jews, which is an underhanded way of saying that Jewish ruthlessness is necessary since Jewish compassion/decency/fair play is not reciprocated by the other side. There was something like this in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Though Tom Hanks’ character was not Jewish, he was clearly meant to be Spielberg’s alter ego. At one point, he spares the life of a Nazi soldier... who later rejoins with his men and kills him. The message: Jews try to be nice and compassionate but are never repaid for their goodwill by evil goyim. And in MUNICH, the Jewish violence is always shown to be IN RESPONSE to Palestinian violence and carried out CONSCIENTIOUSLY, as when the Mossad is ever so careful not to halt the explosion when children are around. (People of South Lebanon and Gaza would disagree.) One of the Jewish agents beds down with a good looking European shikse, but she turns out to be an agent of the PLO and kills him, which leads to a rather obscene killing of her at the hands of the Jews--she is killed and then stripped naked. Spielberg is admitting to Jewish violence and brutality but also rationalizing and justifying it as necessary or understandable retaliation against anti-Jewish violence. (Needless to say, there was NOTHING in MUNICH about how the state of Israel was created in the first place. You’ll just have to swallow the Zionist line that harmless and innocent Jews were forced out of Europe by evil Europeans and therefore had no choice but to head to the Holy Land and then had no choice but to fight and prevail over the crazy Arabs who were determined to attack the Jews and carry out yet another Holocaust. There is no mention of Jewish role in communism and leftist radicalism which made so many Europeans hate them, and there is no mention of the fact that Jews gained access and control of the Holy Land with the backing, however reluctant, of great imperialist powers such as Britain, USSR, and the US.)
The movie also shows Jewish partisans carrying out ruthless deeds(like shooting captured a German soldiers point blank) and vengeful deeds(like Jewish men and women lynching another German prisoner in a scene that pays homage to a similar scene in SEVEN SAMURAI, a film to which Zwick, like so many others, have turned for inspiration), but we never get to know the Germans well enough nor is the violence depicted compellingly enough to jar or disturb us. Granted, this is fair enough since most movies tend to be sympathetic to one side. After all, we don’t get to know much about the butchered Turks in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA nor do we care much for the fallen bandits or bad guys in SEVEN SAMURAI. And DEFIANCE should at least be credited with showing that Jews are capable of carrying out brutal and cold-hearted deeds(even if justifiable under the circumstances). Also, some of the Jewish fighters are not necessarily saintly victims struggling against evil but rough & tough men forged and vitalized by rural upbringing and livelihood. (This too is a nod to the Zionist ideology since one of its early principles was for Jews to develop a sense of rootedness, ruggedness, manliness, and toughness associated with resilient and down-to-earth farming communities. To an extent, Jews were trying to escape or defy the stereotype of the Jew as a bookish, cosmopolitan, rootless, and physically cowardly weakling. Zionists were trying to be Tough Jews fighting for the Turf. In the film, urban Jews find refuge under the leadership of the rugged and rural Bielski brothers, and the implication is that Jews around the world should not rely only on urban lifestyles and privilege. When things get bad, they must know how to lead rather than just manage, fight and kill rather just buy and own. Indeed, one of the reasons why Leon Trotsky came to be revered by so many Jews was that he wasn’t just famous as an intellectual but also was one of the founders and leaders of the Red Army which won the Russian Civil War against the whites. Though official historiography saw the war as between the Reds and the Whites, many Jews saw it also as a war between Jewish survival--as most Jews sided or sympathized with the Reds--and antisemitic Russian Nationalist forces. Therefore, the victory of the Red Army led by Leon Trotsky filled many Jews with what was essentially Jewish as well as ideological pride.)

There is a 1980s Soviet film called COME AND SEE by Elem Klimov about partisan resistance against the Nazis which is more memorable, powerful, and personal than the well-crafted but very conventional DEFIANCE, but I thought Klimov’s film was a bit too much--crude, hysterical, and even pretentious--at times, especially in its depiction of the evil Nazis. I’m sure the Nazis did everything shown in the movie--and even worse as cinema can convey only so much--, but in some scenes they were little more than cartoon characters dehumanized to the point of ridiculousness. At such moments, COME AND SEE went from Art Film to ridiculous agit-prop; consider the image of the sociopathic Nazi whore tart munching on a lobster while Russian villagers trapped in a barn are massacred by crazy frat-boy Nazis. Nazi evil would have been conveyed much more effectively without our noses rubbed in it. (Same problem plagues PASSION OF THE CHRIST, which is Too Much at times.) Using such visceral tact, it was as though Klimov regarded the audience as too stupid to understand the truth unless we were bitch-slapped silly with it every which way and loose. But of course, when the truth is thus caricatured, it takes on the odor of shameless manipulation. COME AND SEE is a memorable and important if not ultimately great film and should be sought out by any cineaste or student of history, but Klimov’s Oliver-Stone-like tendency toward propagandistic sensationalism got the better of him. DEFIANCE, though a lesser work, does better with its more straightforward violence. Some of the scenes in COME AND SEE--as in PLATOON--may be powerful but they also have the feel of stylistic and moral grandstanding. It’s like overripe propaganda posters or paintings where every square inch screams with shameless, near pornographic, meaning. In COME AND SEE, Nazis are not only evil but E-V-I-L, and it’s as though every bird in the tree and ant in the grass agree as well. In PLATOON, the scene where Willem Dafoe dies is more poster-art than poetics; he isn’t just a fallen soldier or a victim but a martyr, the Jesus of Vietnam War turned into operatics.
SCHINDLER’S LIST presented harrowing violence with just the right balance of precision and horror, but Spielberg just couldn’t resist going ripe on the audience with the grandly sentimental speech by Oskar Schindler and then the insufferably sanctimonious procession by real-life survivors past his tomb. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN’S worst moments were the weepy ones where the old man crumples before the grave stones, when Hanks bawls like a baby, or when the old man Ryan asks his wife in a sickeningly sweet voice, “Have I been a good man?”, which to the Jewish mind pretty much means, “Have I been a good dog playing fetch to Jewish power all my life and am I eager for my sons to be mentally castrated and am I hopeful that may daughters will turn into mudsharks having children with black males?” You see, to the Jewish mind, the only kinds of good goyim are people like Oscar Schindler who sacrificed everything to help the Jews, or like the American GI’s who died by the 100,000s in order to defeat the Jews’ biggest enemy. (So, how did the Jews repay the good decent white Americans who sacrificed so many lives and limbs to save the Jews from crazy Hitler? Jews like Steven Spielberg and Edward Zwick--and many others like them--gave us open borders, the gay agenda and looming specter of ‘gay marriage’, the rise of anti-white black power, the rape and murder of whites in South Africa, radical feminism, neo-Marxism, political correctness, ‘hate speech laws’ to forbid criticism of Jewish elite power, Wall Street control of the economy, miscegenationist interracism where white men are reduced to pussyboys while white women run off with Negro studs, leftist education and indoctrination which fill white boys & girls with guilt and self-loathing while filling non-whites with vicious and murderous hatred of whites, and so forth and so on. Of course, not all Jews are like this. Only 90% of them.)
MUNICH also finally couldn’t resist a scene that was too much. If most of the violence had been masterfully orchestrated, the flashback of Israeli athletes getting mowed down by Arab terrorists--saved for the last scene to be seared into our memories--is done in hyper-tragic slow-motion and spliced with images of the Jewish protagonist desperately fuc*ing his wife. Thus, Spielberg makes a cheesy overstatement about the interconnection between Jewish passion for life and Jewish rage over death. Jews are such a tragic people that they have the Holocaust--past and future--on their minds even when they are screwing in bed. It is one of the most self-pitying, self-aggrandizing, and self-inflated scenes in cinema.

There are other manipulative, specious, or disingenuous things in DEFIANCE. Like so many positive movies about Jews, the hero is played by a good-looking non-Jew, or what might be called an ‘Aryan Jew’. Just as Charlton Heston the Aryan-looking white goy played Moses, we have Daniel Craig of 007 playing one of the Bielskis. Of course, there is no single Jewish physical trait, especially since the Jews of Europe gradually mixed with gentiles and took on European traits. Thus, there are even blonde Jews, though even they--Barbra Streisand and Sarah Jessica Parker--tend to retain Jewish traits, in a very horrible way. There are some Jews whose mix of the Semitic and European has produced very attractive features, the most famous perhaps being Paul Newman. At any rate and for whatever reason, many noble or likable Jewish characters have been played by non-Jews, some who don’t look Jewish at all. Think of Montgomery Clift in YOUNG LIONS and Aidan Quinn in AVALON. It could be because Jews prefer non-Jewish ‘Aryan’ looks and want to see Jews presented in a favorable light--just as many Asian films prefer Western-looking actors like Chow Yun Fat over the more ‘chinky’ looking ones. This is rather ironic since Jews have been telling us of the evils of ‘racism’ and the dangers of judging people by appearance. Well, it seems Jews feel that the world will think more favorably of them if they were depicted in ways that didn’t look too Jewish or Jewish at all. And given that so many non-Jewish whites have been brainwashed to revere and suck up to Jews, they probably find it a great honor to play Jewish characters.
If Aidan Quinn in AVALON didn’t look Jewish at all, this isn’t necessarily true of Daniel Craig. Though good looking in a manly sort of way, he doesn’t have the classic Aryan features. His face does have a certain rough or alien quality about it, so it doesn’t seem far-fetched that there could have been Jews who looked like him. Indeed, I’ve noticed from observing many Russia immigrants of Jewish origin that a some of them cannot readily be identified as Jews by appearance alone. There are some Jews who have retained a good deal of the Semitic features while others became, more or less, Europeanized. Liev Schreiber, who plays the brother of Daniel Craig’s character, looks more Jewish and for all I know, may indeed be Jewish. But I can understand why he was given the secondary role. Though manly and impressive in his own way--we can believe him getting the best of the fight with his brother in one scene--, it’s not the kind of ‘Aryan’ looks that gets top billing or wins most affection from the audience. Among the lesser cast of characters, there are some who look very Jewish(in the stereotypical way) and even one who resembles Trotsky. Having someone with such looks in the starring role would have undermined elements of romantic heroism(which we’ve come to associate more with hardy ‘Aryan’ looks; Aryan-looking Paul Newman works so much better for EXODUS than Woody Allen or Groucho Marx would have) and also have diminished the universal appeal of the film as one that is not only about Jewish survival but for justice for mankind itself. Since Jews are mainly targeting non-Jewish audiences with this film and trying to make them identify with Jews, it is crucial that the Jews in DEFIANCE don’t come across as TOO Jewish. Similarly, I heard that JOY LUCK CLUB removed much of the more Chinese-sy details in the novel and cast rather Western-looking Asian actors in order to appeal to the wider white American audience. Personally, I prefer things to be more authentic. If I want Chinese food, I want the real kind than the generic stuff that comes packaged as La Choy products. And I’d prefer a movie about the Bielskis made by Belarusians or Eastern European Jews than by Hollywood. But we can’t have everything, and DEFIANCE is far from a disgrace it could have been in even lesser hands. And possibly because the subject is dear to Zwick, who himself is Jewish, he probably gave it greater care and attention than other works such as the totally disgraceful LEGEND OF THE FALLS.

As if to demonstrate that the makers of the film are not blindly zealous Judeo-centrists, there is even a scene where some nasty Jews bully other Jews and hog scarce foodstuff for themselves, whereupon Daniel Craig’s character shoots him dead. Whether such thing really happened or not, it feels like a calculated attempt to feign evenhandedness, as if to say the movie isn’t into “I’m a Proud Jew, Right or Wrong.” In other words, the movie not only wants us to sympathize with Jews for their plight, admire them for their courage, but approve of them for their fairmindedness. Incidentally, this particularly nasty Jew is blonde and Nordic-looking than Semitic looking. It visually suggests that if a Jew is indeed nasty and brutish, the traits must have come from the European side of the bloodline.

DEFIANCE is a pretty good movie, and even though it is a story about Eastern European Jews during WWII and an apology for Zionism in the Middle East, it is not without relevance to white nationalists. For if the White Right needs anything, it is this very spirit of defiance or a goy version of chutzpah. Governor Jan Brewer showed it in spades when she signed into the law the bill on illegal immigration. And when American and European cities are overrun by radical, venal, globalist, leftist, and even alien(generally Jewish)elites and when the state controlled by NWO elites is coming to take away your guns, rights, property, and freedoms, there is no choice but to stand up and DEFY the expanding powers of the elites, the state, and even the state-controlled military that may well take its order from the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who have been bought, sold, and controlled by the likes of Wall Street gang, Harvard and Hollywood cabal, Hollywood gangsters, and MSM thugs.
Though the changes and processes are gradual, Western Civilization and white people are facing a dire challenge that may lead to their extinction as a unique race, culture, and people. The most powerful agents behind this transformation and assault are the liberal and leftist Jews--and their well-trained and indoctrinated dim-wit goy sockpuppets whether they be white, Hispanic, Asian, or black.
It’s too bad that there aren’t white filmmakers who can make a movie like DEFIANCE about the challenges faced by the West and white people. John Milius made such a film with RED DAWN in the mid 1980s, but it was fantasy, offering up a scenario where US was invaded by the Soviets. In reality, the real invaders of the US have gained power through the academia, media, entertainment, law and government, and hightech; and the main animating forces behind this change have been the liberal Jews. (I heard of a remake of RED DAWN with the Chinese invaders, but notice how the liberal Jews of Hollywood are trying to divert mounting patriotic white American rage and passion away from themselves toward Yellow Peril. This is how Jews play the game: divide and conquer. Though China has been on the rise, it poses no real threat to American national security. Besides, the main reason why Chinese overtook the US as a manufacturing power is because of the globalist system pushed by Jews who sought to maximize their profits by coordinating cheapest labor--China--with the biggest markets--the US. But Jews would have us believe that China rose to great power status all on its own and forget about the role played by globalist Jews in steering US economic policy toward greater interdependence with the Chinese. By directing white--and black--Americans to focus on the Chinese threat, Jews hope that Americans will pay less attention to Jewish power, influence, and agenda. After all, while Jews fan white fears of a Chinese invasion, they are doing everything to encourage more illegal Mexican invasion of the US. Indeed, a movie is coming out soon--directed by Robert Rodriguez and funded by venal Hollywood Jews--called MACHETE that calls for Mexican and Mexican-American war on ‘racist’ gringos. Jews want white Americans to fixate on the fantasy of looming Chinese invasion while completely ignoring the ongoing invasion of America by non-white immigrants from all over the world, especially the illegal ones from Mexico.)

So, if there is something to be learned from DEFIANCE, it is that we need to learn to defy and fight back too. If we need to be ruthless and heartless in the name of our survival(as with the Jews in DEFIANCE), then let it be so. In one scene in the movie, Liev Schreiber--as Daniel Craig’s brother--coldly executes captured Germans by shooting them in the backs of their heads. The film doesn’t condemn such acts because the Jews were fighting a vicious war for their own survival, and I fully understand. During extreme times, extreme actions are necessary, and one can’t afford to be too soft in the heart and head. Jews know this only too well when it comes to protecting and preserving Israel from its enemies. And American Jews are vicious, ruthless, cunning, and determined in their effort to dispossess and miscegenate the white race out of existence as soon as possible, either out of revenge against all whites for the Holocaust, the conviction that Jews can only be safe I nation without a racial majority--so Jews can play divide-and-rule among many groups--, or out of some demented radical utopian idealism that it is the destiny of the great, smart, and moral Jews to turn the entire world into NWO and achieve the real End of History.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Sorry, Political Apology Doesn't Work Like Personal Apology.


In life it's often necessary to apologize because every individual commits wrongs. Sometimes, it's accidental, neglectful, or mean-spirited, but in any case, we wouldn't be human without conscience, and conscience requires that we owe up to our faults and apologize to family members, friends, co-workers, or anyone we may have wronged.

But, apology in the political sphere is another thing. I don't mean individual politicians apologizing for their misdeeds, which is perfectly understandable and necessary. What I mean is politicians or so-called leaders apologizing for the entire nation, people, culture, heritage, or etc.

This isn't to say that a nation-at-large or a certain community can't go bat-crazy and commit acts of evil. There have been too many instances of such throughout history.

The problem arises when we fall into the habit of thinking collectively or eternal-istically when it comes to the goodness or evil of a people. Yet another problem is an entire people can never be wholly innocent nor guilty. Were all Japanese to blame for what happened in WWII? What about people who opposed the regime? What about people thought they were on the right side of history and that their nation was doing good(based on available news and info)? What about newborn babies? And what about later generations? How do they share in the guilt of what their forbears may have done? Is a son guilty of a murder committed by his father? And what gives any politician or leader the right to speak for the entire nation, people, or community?

Though all nations have a moral and intellectual obligation to remember and know their histories, no nation can be said to be forever guilty or innocent. The meaning of apology breaks down when it grows more collective. If you cheat, lie, steal, rape, or kill, YOU need to apologize for your crime. Why should the blame apply to your relatives or your friends? Why should they share your guilt?

Suppose one argues that every individual is the social product of people who may have influenced him; thus, his parents are guilty for bad upbringing or his friends are guilty for corrosive peer pressure. But, maybe not. Children of nice parents also turn out bad. If it's meaningless to blame the entire family or friends for the wrongdoer's misdeeds or crimes, does it make sense to blame the whole village or town, the entire city, let alone the nation? Why not just blame all of mankind? If all Germans--past and future--are guilty for the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis in the 1940s, then why not blame all of humanity? After all, Nazis were humans. Since humans did it, all humans should be blamed, including the Jews.

There's no doubt that many Germans took part in the crimes of Nazism in the 30s and40s, but h the sad fact of masses mindlessly following the great leader--good or bad--has been commonplace throughout human history. At any rate, it's something that happened at a certain time and place. All that future Germans should do is to remember their history honestly. The idea of an eternally guilty Germans is ridiculous.

People also need to know that political or social evil has generally been a matter of which side has more power, an ever-shifting reality. There are no permanent winners or losers in history. Any well-meaning or morally pompous group or nation that fills itself with collective guilt--and dumps it onto future generations--over what they or their ancestors may have done in the political or macro-social sphere is only asking for trouble. Romans committed violence against the Germanic barbarians, but it wasn't long before the Germanic barbarians had the upperhand.

What good would collective moral guilt among Romans have achieved when Germanic barbarians were sacking Rome, raping and killing left and right? Ex-victims were the then-victors as Rome fell and burned.

Many people think Japan should apologize to China for WWII, but China is now a fast rising power while Japan is a fading one--without much in the way of political independence. China today isn't what it was in the 1930s or 1940s. Japan has also greatly changed. This isn't to say that Japanese should not take an honest look at Japanese war-mongering in WWII. But, if Japanese go for a collective POLITICAL APOLOGY, it will disadvantage all future generations of Japanese vis-a-vis the Chinese. True, many Japanese took part in the brutal conquest of China in WWII, but that was then and this is now and the future is the future. Why should all future generations of Chinese feel morally superior to all future generations of Japanese due to what happened during a decade of the 20th century? I can understand individual Japanese soldiers who served in WWII apologizing to Chinese victims. But, why should all future generations of Japanese be burdened with this? It makes no sense, and worst of all, it is politically fatal and suicidal for Japanese political and national interests in the future. Whenever tensions arise between Japan and China in the future, Chinese can point to ETERNAL Japanese evil admitted by collective/political apology made by the representatives of the Japanese people.

I don't endorse the Japanese Far-Right which denies the war-time atrocities or tries to justify Japanese brutality as a noble crusade to save Asia from Western Imperialism, which is a lot of crock. The Japanese Far-Right is indeed made up of moral equivalents of Holocaust Deniers or Jews who suppress Jewish role in communism. But, most Japanese today are not members of the Far-Right. They are not evil people. Why must they be burdened with eternal national guilt for terrible events during a part of the 20th century? If so, I suppose Mongols should forever apologize for the exploits of Genghis Khan. I suppose Greeks should still be apologizing to Hindus for Alexander the Great's war-mongering.

Take a look at South Africa in the present day. Black thugs now rule the country and commit horrible crimes. They are poised to pull off what Mugabe did in Zimbabwe. Black savages roam about looking for white men to butcher and white women to rape(and butcher).

But, the world seems to ignore all this because they've morally eternalized the memory of Apartheid. One can make an argument that Apartheid was wrong, but that was a time when whites had power over blacks. That is no longer the reality of South Africa.

Again, nothing is eternal in politics. There are no permanent winners or losers, no permanent conquerors or permanently vanquished. At one time, Asiatic peoples swept through Russia and oppressed white Russians. Later, Russian gained great power and conquered all of Asian Siberia. At one time Greeks conquered what is modern-day Turkey. But, Ottomans later conquered and ruled over the Greeks. Muslims once ruled over Jews in the Holy Land; today, Jews brutally rule over the Muslims and Arab Christians. Whites once ruled over blacks all over Africa. Most whites left Africa in the 60s and 70s, though a large number remained in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Zimbabwe eventually turned to black rule, and most whites were driven out. And whites no longer hold political and military power in South Africa. Today, whites live under black oppression.

Consider that at one time, Muslims--the Moghuls--ruled over Hindu India. There was a Hindu resurgence under British rule, and India came to be mostly Hindu-dominated.

For many centuries, Tutsis ruled over Hutus in what are now Rwanda and Burundi. But, with the arrival of Europeans, Hutus gained power over the Tutsis. In the 90s, the Hutus, who had long been the victim of Tutsis, carried out massive genocide against the Tutsis. And, then the Tutsi army conquered Rwanda and now it is again ruled by a Tutsi elite. So tell me, which side owes which side an eternal poltical apology? Should Tutsis politically and collectively apologize for all eternity for having oppressed Hutus in the past? Or should Hutus apologize eternally to the Tutsis for the horrible genocide of the 90s?

This is why political apologies are meaningless. An individual apologizes for a specific act he committed at a fixed moment in time. If you steal, you apologize for the theft and for nothing else. And no one is guilty but you. This kind of apology is specific, clear-cut, rational, and makes sense. But, collective guilt or national apology--or political apology--makes little or no sense. (But, given the deterministic models that came to dominate social sciences since the 19th century, we believe less and less in free will and more and more in collective guilt and collective redemption. Morality is less individualist and more statist. Entire peoples are blamed, and only the all-powerful state, in the name of social good for all people, is seen as the solution.)

Just look at Germany since WWII. It's as if all Germans forever should feel the burden of guilt. Worse, all of German history has been smeared and simplified as a long sick process culminating in the Holocaust. Consequentially, Germans are not only apologizing for the Holocaust but for all of Germany and all of Germanness. Indeed, being German has become a sinful.

Germans were right to take a hard honest look at their history. That is to be lauded. Japanese, in contrast, have generally been dishonest and neglectful about what happened in WWII. But, Germans have done more than take an honest look. They've done to themselves what Nazi Germans did to the Jews during the 1930s and 1940s. The Nazis came up with the notion of the ETERNAL JEW, always evil, always venal, always up-to-no-good no matter the place or time.

Now, we have the ETERNAL GERMAN as a consequence of POLITICAL GUILT or NATIONAL APOLOGY on the part of Germans. Germans have become like the character in THE SHINING--film by Stanley Kubrick. The character of Jack Torrance is forever condemned to live the life of a murderer in one incarnation after another. He is forever guilty. He can never be free of this cycle of evil. He is always the murderer of his wife and children. This is how Germans have internalized the guilt of WWII.

As we look at what's happening in South Africa, we need to ask the same question. Does it make sense to blame forever and ever the whites of that country? They no longer have the power. They are being raped and murdered. Also, can we say that whites were truly evil while blacks were truly noble in the past? Or, was it more the case that whites had more power than blacks? Since whites had more power, they used it to their advantage over blacks. But now that black have more power, they are using it against whites. Politics has been and always will be mostly about power.

This isn't to say there's no morality in politics. Indeed, there is plenty. Civilized peoples practice a more moralistic form of politics. They don't believe might is right or that people with power should exploit the weak.

But, there seems to be a lot of dumb liberals who go beyond political morality and have embraced a kind of spiritual eternalistic politics where certain peoples are eternally guilty or wicked while others are eternally noble and wonderful. Because of Western domination starting from the 16th century, many white liberals think that white domination is a given, a constant, a permanent reality. They see whites as forever powerful and forever ruling over everyone else. Given this mindset, they believe whites need to feel all the burden of morality, guilt, and conscience for all eternity. These idiots obviously have a very limited understanding of history. And for all their professed interest in non-Western cultures, they know next to nothing about all the brutality and wickedness that have existed in the non-Western world. The West was never worse. It only grew more powerful, thus gaining greater leverage over other peoples. 'White evil' was less moral and spiritual than political and materialistic. If other peoples had gained greater power, they would have done the same thing--build larger empires.

Anyway, white power is slipping, especially with the rise of Asia. Worse, the West is becoming inundated with waves upon waves of Third Worlders who have lots of babies. In Europe and America, blacks go around beating up whites. In the US, the so-called victim-Jews now constitute the most powerful and richest elite the world has ever seen.

Given the shifting nature of politics and power, does it make sense for whites to hold onto an ETERNAL GUILT or keep making POLITICAL APOLOGIES? No!
-- A. F.