The Dark Right Rises: Christopher Nolan As Fascist Filmmaker?

            By Gregory Hood And Luke Gordon

        

Conservatism’s League of Stupidity

The egalitarian Left isn’t just evil – it’s boring. Unfortunately, the conservative “Right” doesn’t have anything else to offer. It’s not just true of politics – it’s even true of their movie reviews.

The endless reinforcement of egalitarianism throughout the controlled culture means that to a great extent, every “superhero” film has the same plot. An extraordinary character is introduced, a challenge emerges to the liberal assumptions of modernity, and the hero, by humbling himself and accepting his responsibility to his inferiors, saves the day, and preserves the sacred illusion of equality. The unintended result of this kind of culture is that the most interesting, intelligent, and genuinely substantive characters and ideas come from a film’s supposed villains. Leftist commentators often recognize this and have genuinely insightful (or at least accurate) observations to make about a film’s ideological content.

Perhaps the most subversive and overtly right wing movie to be made in many years was The Dark Knight Rises, the triumphant finale to director Christopher Nolan’s epic Batman trilogy. The Left most recognized it for what it was. Noted Lefty policy wonk Matt Yglesias tweeted: “Had a lot of problems with Dark Knight Rises but it was sort of refreshing to see a balls-out insanely rightwing movie.” Andrew O’Hehir at Salon noted:

It’s no exaggeration to say that the “Dark Knight” universe is fascistic (and I’m not name-calling or claiming that Nolan has Nazi sympathies). It’s simply a fact. Nolan’s screenplay (co-written with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, and based on a story developed with David S. Goyer) simply pushes the Batman legend to its logical extreme, as a vision of human history understood as a struggle between superior individual wills, a tale of symbolic heroism and sacrifice set against the hopeless corruption of society. Maybe it’s an oversimplification to say that that’s the purest form of the ideology that was bequeathed from Richard Wagner to Nietzsche to Adolf Hitler, but not by much.

They may not necessarily like fascism, or for that matter, anything that alludes to heroism or greatness, but at least we are talking about the same thing.

Of course, many “movement conservatives” miss the point of the movie entirely, seeing each new cultural phenomenon as another opportunity to bash the “Democrat Party” or give a eulogy about the glories of various purveyors of high fructose corn syrup and why they pay too much in taxes.

Thus, if we didn’t have John Nolte and Ben Shapiro we’d have to make them up. The two writers at the late Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood somehow managed to view Nolan’s climactic film as some sort of love letter to Goldman Sachs. Batman is pictured a capitalist hero presumably sent by the Cato Institute to protect the prosperous citizens of Gotham from the moral relativists of Occupy Wall Street. Comrade Bane is seen as the leader of evil Leftists, who probably also support Islamism, and is nothing but a jealous nihilist who wants to bring about equality.

Shapiro gushes, “The entire film is an ode to traditional capitalism.” He condemns Bane’s “communist-fascist” (?) regime and worries that Bane’s evil “Leftist populism” sounds like Barack Obama. While this is idiotic, it’s about par for the movement, and is still a trite more intelligent than Rush Limbaugh’s charge that Bane was deliberately named to create sinister associations with Mitt Romney’s “Bain Capital.” Just as Barack Obama can simultaneously be a Communist and a Nazi, Bane can be a liberal attack on Republicans and an obvious stand in for President Obama.

Where Ben Shapiro actually achieves a kind of conservative movement perfection is in celebrating that The Dark Knight Rises supposedly condemns green energy for being unprofitable, rips public-private partnerships for furthering Bane’s plan, and is somehow pro-gun. (In a sentence, the “green energy” program works but Bruce Wayne doesn’t want it weaponized and so halts it, the villain achieves his ends through totally private stock market manipulation, and Batman doesn’t let Selina Kyle use guns.) It’s so precisely wrong, reaching Bill Kristol and Dick Morris levels of factual absurdity, that it’s beautiful. It’s this kind of logic that gives us intellectuals who build entire careers explaining how Barack Obama’s Democratic Party is racist against blacks and too pro-white, that Detroit, Camden, East Saint Louis, and Rochesterwere destroyed by white liberals, and that the problem with academia and the media is that they’re anti-Semitic. You almost have to admire it.

Nolte meanwhile is so far off the mark with his review and his responses that it’s difficult to believe he saw the movie. He charges that Bane is simply motivated by jealous nihilism simply because he’s miserable. Also, all of his followers are losers – just like Occupy Wall Street, LOL!

Nolte writes:

“Rises” is a love letter to an imperfect America that in the end always does the right thing. . . . Nolan loves the American people — the wealthy producers who more often than not trickle down their hard-earned winnings, the workaday folks who keep our world turning, a financial system worth saving because it benefits us all, and those everyday warriors who offer their lives for a greater good with every punch of the clock.

And of course, the whole movie was just an excuse by Christopher Nolan to “slap Obama.” Press releases from the Southern Poverty Law Center contain more intellectual subtlety and analytical depth.

Nolte’s review is exhibit A for the case that the Republican id is driven by the feeling of being right, rich, successful, and in charge regardless of what is actually happening. As Bane said before snapping a capitalist pencil neck, “Do you feel in charge?” Nolte and Shapiro, clueless, would say yes.

New York Times token faux-conservative Ross Douthat objected to this reading in a fairly accurate but incomplete analysis. Douthat noted there might be a bit more subtlety to the question of Gotham’s underclass than they are just jerks, but Nolte fired back, doubling down on his, uh, thesis. The bad guys are just “insecure thumbsuckers raging with a sense of entitlement, desperate to justify their own laziness and failure and to flaunt a false sense of superiority through oppression.”

“Tell me about Bane! Why does he wear the mask?”

Where to begin. Perhaps it is best to find some common ground with our misguided and lovably dopey kosher conservative friends. Let’s advance the theory that if we both accept the idea of liberal media bias, it is mildy suspicious that biggest blockbuster of the year would be an “ode to traditional capitalism” and a partisan attack on Barack Obama. While contemporary American conservatism’s conception of the “Right” has devolved into support of charter schools for blacks and opposing evolution because it’s racist, in theory, the Right by definition involves the principled defense of hierarchy. Movie villains that attack egalitarianism, attempt to set themselves up as an authority, or generally have some higher aim besides “chaos” are on the Right, like most of James Bond’s super-villains, Loki from The Avengers, or the Empire in Star Wars.

Therefore, rather than just quoting Republican talking points, it’s useful to look at the character of Bane and see how Big Hollywood’s charges hold up.

Bane the Nihilist 

Bane behind the mask: actor Tom Hardy

First is the idea that Bane is some sort of nihilist. A nihilist is an individual who doesn’t think human existence has objective value or meaning. While Bane could certainly be described as a rather brutal anarcho-primitivist, he certainly does have a belief in actual life versus mere existence. Bane strives for an order worth living in, and ultimately wants justice for all those responsible for the state of society as represented by Gotham.

Bane is motivated to restore the natural balance to the world by putting an end to a decadent society which will inevitably fall. In a sentence: that which is falling must also be pushed. He views Batman as someone who makes things worse by drawing out Gotham’s decline and suffering, which is why he must be eliminated. Many of Bane’s minions lay down their lives on command to accomplish this ideal, indicative that they believe in something beyond their own personal interests. Their lives are forfeited towards a higher goal, not in a wanton manner à la the Joker.

The dialogue spells it out fairly clearly. Bane addresses a henchman as “brother” when he asks him to lay down his life for the mission. “Have we started the fire?” the initiate asks. “Yes,” replies Bane. “The fire rises.” Unlike the capitalists that Bane exploits to acquire the weapons and equipment he needs to take over the city, Bane is not in it for the money. Staring down at a gaping John Dagget, his former accomplice, Bane pronounces, “I’m Gotham’s reckoning, here to end the borrowed time you’ve all been living on. . . . I’m necessary evil.”

Does Bane have a vision of the good beyond just tearing down corruption? Actually he does. Bane possesses a certain reverence for the concept of innocence. In the course of the film it is revealed that Bane was willing to lay down his life to protect the defenseless child Talia. His actions ultimately lead to his own excommunication from the League of Shadows, and a permanent physical impairment. The mask feeds him a painkilling gas that keeps the injuries he sustained at bay. Some of the film’s deleted material shows a more primitive version of Bane’s apparatus and his training in the League of Shadows under Ra’s al Ghul, before he was expelled because Ra’s wanted him away from his daughter. Talia could not forgive her father, until Bruce Wayne murdered him. Only then could Talia and Bane join forces to complete his mission.

This is the heart of Bane’s identity, the transformation from a pain-wracked prisoner into an avatar of Justice. As he defeats Batman in single combat, Bane pronounces, “I am the League of Shadows. I am here to fulfill Ra’s al Ghul’s destiny!” Michael Caine’s Alfred intones, “His speed, his ferocity, his training! I see the power of belief. I see the League of Shadows resurgent.” Say what you will about the tenets of the League of Shadows, Nolte, but at least it’s an ethos.

As we recall from the first film, the League of Shadows is a Traditionalist Order dedicated to fighting crime without restrictions from society’s “indulgence.” Batman is trained by the League, but he turns on them when he is asked to execute a murderer. Incredulous, Ra’s al Ghul asks if Bruce Wayne would prefer a trial by “corrupt bureaucrats.” Wayne has no response. When Wayne is told that the League plans to destroy the festering rot that is Gotham, Wayne kills many of the League’s members and blows up its headquarters. Compared to the League, Wayne/Batman is a liberal.

Incredibly, but perhaps not astonishingly, neither Nolte nor Shapiro mention the League of Shadows. It’s like trying to explain the transformation of Bruce Wayne into Batman without mentioning the death of his parents. Most importantly, as we find out (spoilers!) at the end of the film, Bane is not the main villain. The main villain is Talia—Miranda Tate for most of the film—the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul who seeks to complete her father’s mission. The person who rose from the prison pit was not Bane, but Talia, and it is she who is leading the mission to destroy Gotham. In both the first and third films, Batman is not fighting against chaos, or communism, or high tariff rates, or some other bugaboo of the Beltway faux-Right – he’s fighting a Traditionalist Order that wants to destroy the city he loves.

The League’s justice decrees Gotham should die – Batman’s mercy says it should live. Both are fighting for their conception of the good, and willing to die for it. This isn’t nihilism, on either side.

Bane the Economic Socialist

Bane’s attack on the city of Gotham is twofold. First, he attacks the stock market, an action which brings Batman/Bruce Wayne out of retirement. He’s confronted by a stock broker who claims, “This is a stock market – there’s no money for you to steal.” Bane replies, “Really? Then why are you people here?” Bane doesn’t take the money – he uses a program to strip Bruce Wayne from control of Wayne Enterprises so he can seize the arsenal and the energy project to build an atomic bomb.

Of course, this is just a means to an end. When John Dagget protests that his company has not been able to absorb Wayne’s and claims “I’m in charge,” Bane replies calmly, “Do you feel in charge?” Laying his hand lightly on Dagget’s shoulder, Bane shows he knows where power comes from – force. When Dagget mutters that he’s paid Bane a small fortune, Bane replies, “And this gives you power over me?” “Your money, and infrastructure, have been important, until now.” Bane is in service to a cause greater than money – it’s not surprising that American conservatives literally cannot comprehend it as coming from the Traditionalist Right.

The real boss of the League, Talia, brings the message home in lines that are delivered early in the movie, but take on a whole new meaning after her true identity is revealed. Speaking to Dagget about a clean energy program, she says, “But you understand only money, and the power you think it buys.” We think this is just a champagne socialist looking down on the rich who don’t share enough with the poor or spend enough on trendy causes. Actually, the clean energy program is a way to develop a fusion bomb to take control of Gotham, and Talia (who already has control of a vast amount of money) could not care less about Lefty trends. She is also serving the purposes of her father’s Order.

The second main attack is against the football game, with Bane blowing up the field after the National Anthem. Nolte’s take is “Nolan’s love for this country is without qualifiers and symbolized in all its unqualified sincerity in a beautiful young child sweetly singing a complete version of “The Star Spangled Banner” — just before “Occupy” attempts to fulfill its horrific vision of what ‘equality’ really means.” Of course, knowing that Bane actually is part of the League of Shadows, we know there’s a larger agenda here.

Bane isn’t entirely immune to the idea of innocence, as we know how he saved Talia. He even comments while listening to the song, “That’s a lovely, lovely voice.” Then he says, “Let the games begin!” and pushes the button. The League regards the city of Gotham as hopelessly corrupt and evil, and it’s therefore significant that they announce their takeover at a football game – the circus part of bread and circuses. The football game isn’t some glorious manifestation of Americana – it’s a symbol of how pointless and worthless modern life has become. Bane then announces that Gotham is to rise up and “take back their city.” The next day, at Blackgate Prison, Bane destroys the myth of Harvey Dent and calls for revolution against the corrupt, who will be cast out “into the cold world that we know, and endure.” Gotham, says Bane, will be given “to you, the people.”

There’s a heavy tone of irony in that last pronouncement, which goes to the heart of Bane’s plan. Nolan said that much of the plot was based upon Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, which depicts the moral collapse of Revolutionary France. We know Bane is not a nihilist because of his own pronouncements, actions, and membership in the League. However, has he transformed the League into a vanguard fighter for a socialist commune?

While “Big Hollywood” says yes, there’s nothing to suggest that the League of Shadows and its relatively wealthy members and backers (like Talia) are socialists, and they speak consistently of fulfilling, rather than changing, Ra’s Al Ghul’s Traditionalist mission. It’s not that Bane is a socialist – it’s that he’s a Traditionalist who despises capitalism, Revolting Against the Modern World from the Right. American conservatives simply don’t get it, trapped into a simplistic worldview where there is Communism on the Left and Capitalism on the Right.

But how do we know this? How can we be sure that we aren’t, like “Big Hollywood,” just reading into the movie our own ideological prejudices? Well, it’s pretty easy. Bane directly tells us.

Bane the Egalitarian Revolutionary

After “breaking” Batman, Bane takes him to the prison where he lived for years. He tells Bruce Wayne “the truth about despair.” There can be no despair without hope, and just as the prison has an opening at the top to drive prisoners mad with the lust for freedom, so Bane will use hope to create greater despair.

Batman is to be punished because he betrayed the League of Shadows and the cause of true justice. Wayne believed that his “Batman” could be a symbol that lasts beyond him, that anyone could be Batman. As we learned at the end of The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne believes that the people of Gotham are fundamentally good, and that given the choice, they will choose good. Therefore, no matter how bad things get in Gotham, no matter how decadent the elite may be, no matter how much he may personally despise them (even to the point of becoming a recluse), Wayne thinks that which is falling must be propped up. Bane considers this not just mistaken, but despicable. When Batman dismisses the League as a gang of psychopaths, Bane attacks with outraged fury.

Thus, in defeat, Bruce Wayne will be punished by watching Bane torture an entire city. Wayne, after all, lusts for death and release. Bane knows that Wayne’s punishment must be more severe, that he has to be forced to understand the depth of what he sees as Wayne’s evil. Bane will do this by “feeding them [the people of Gotham] hope to poison their souls.” Bruce Wayne will watch the people of the city climb over each other “so they can stay in the sun.” He will force Wayne to watch as the true nature of Gotham City is unleashed. And then, “when you have understood the depth of your failure, and Gotham is ashes, then you have my permission to die.”

Thus, Bane’s proto-Occupy speeches aren’t about propagating the ideology of the League – it’s spiritual poison. He even tells us it’s spiritual poison. His screed about giving Gotham back to the people is done to mock the idealism that Batman places in the populace of the city itself. Bane’s actions are an attempt to fulfill H. L. Mencken’s quip that, “The people get the government they deserve, and they deserve to get it good and hard.”

When left to their own devices, the people of Gotham fail miserably at governing themselves. Without the force of Gotham Police Department, the judicial fangs of the Dent Act, or the confining grip of Arkham Asylum, Gotham quickly falls into disarray. The people of Gotham illustrate that they are nothing more than a mob, who allow psychopaths like Dr. Crane/The Scarecrow judicial power to give people death sentences for pointless reasons. Bane is Gotham’s reckoning, not Gotham’s executioner. Only the people of Gotham can be the architects of their own destruction.

Bane has zero pretentions about the ability of the people to govern themselves. He gives them every opportunity, and they bring their fate on themselves. The ultimate collapse of Gotham is caused by giving the people the false hope that they are capable of governing themselves through his “revolution.” His previous monologue on the worst prison being one with perpetual hope is indicative of this sentiment. He also directly shows Bruce Wayne that his mission in life was a failure. Wayne himself suspects thus, in a dream sequence where the “immortal” Ra’s al Ghul tells him that after all of his sacrifices, the most he could accomplish was a lie and that even he must realize Gotham should be destroyed. Subconsciously, even the Batman knows his mission is futile.

There’s also one critically important fact that puts the beliefs of the League of Shadows and Bane beyond all doubt – this is a suicide mission. The nuclear bomb that Bane forced Dr. Pavel to build is going to go off after a certain time, regardless of what anyone else says about it. Bane will let Gotham destroy itself, force the rest of the world to see it, and then blow it all up anyway. He’ll even sacrifice his life and the life of his men in order to bring about a new beginning on a non-egalitarian foundation. Like Batman, the world will be forced to understand.

American “movement conservatism,” itself a product of the Enlightenment dogma of infinite human perfectibility, can’t cope with this kind of message. Thus, Big Hollywood has to ignore the League of Shadows, ignore Talia, ignore the previous films, and even ignore Bane’s speech telling the audience exactly what he is doing so they can keep on believing “an imperfect America that in the end always does the right thing.” At the Fox News level of cultural analysis, Bane and the League of Shadows develop an intricate, years-long strategy that ends with their own deaths for no other reason than shits and giggles.

The Hero Liberal America Deserves?

Needless to say, Batman/Bruce Wayne does save the day. In a sequence heavy with Traditionalist overtones, Wayne climbs out of the pit, is “reborn” as Batman, and defeats the League of Shadows. However, he can’t go back. Fulfilling Alfred’s wishes for him, he avoids both defeat and death and chooses an anonymous life away from Gotham, away from the society he sacrificed so much to save.

One bit of credit is due the reviewers for comprehending the character arc of Selina Kyle/Catwoman. At the beginning of the film, she claims that she is somehow doing more for the poor than rich philanthropists. She looks forward to the day when “a storm is coming . . . because you’re all going to wonder how you thought you could live so well and leave so little for the rest of us.” When she actually sees the revolution unleashed, she’s disgusted to see how a wealthy family’s home has been transformed into squalor. Kyle understands that egalitarianism does not lead to paradise, but horror.

However, ultimately Kyle’s actions are motivated by her need to escape. Just like Bruce Wayne, she cannot bring herself to live even in a restored Gotham City. At the end of the film, she’s not some happy mama grizzly taking the kids to Mickey D’s after a hockey game – she’s chosen a wealthy exile with Bruce Wayne. Kyle too is an outsider. Unlike Talia, she chose selfish escape over sacrifice for an ideal.

This the price of heroism – the hero cannot be part of the society that he saves. That is why the idea of a superhero can be inherently “fascist” — a superhero is a being of pure will and great power who is held to a different standard so he can impose that will on the larger society. A superhero saves society from itself.

Bruce Wayne comes to this realization reluctantly. After all, the whole point of Batman was that he was supposed to temporary and that the police and government could take over and function normally once things got to a certain point. This doesn’t happen – Robin John Blake is the heir to the title of Batman, having thrown away his own policeman’s badge and faith in the sytem. Like a meat grinder, Gotham will demand more extraordinary men to sacrifice themselves in order to keep functioning. To save the kind of society where everyone is equal, the higher man must allow himself to be consumed as the price of democratic heroism. Democracy can only be saved by people who don’t really believe in democracy.

“Do you finally have the courage to do what is necessary?”

Despite the happy ending of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle palling around in Florence, the ultimate message of the film, and the trilogy, is far too dark for ever-optimistic American conservatives to internalize. Gotham only functions when it is built on lies. Lacking both an aristocracy capable of leading, and a populace capable of being lead, Gotham reverts to brutal authoritarianism in order to bring about order. This is buttressed by noble lies that would make Strauss blush, and the constant sacrifice of higher men.

The nature of the people themselves ultimately never changes. When left to their own devices, the people allow radical psychopaths to run the roost, a reflection of their own fractured existence. At the end Gotham is saved from total destruction, but once again needs the false lie of a higher man’s sacrifice in order to make sense. Bruce Wayne escapes, turns his back on the city, and moves on with his life in a foreign country. Maybe Nolte’s charge of nihilism would more accurately apply to the man in the cowl, as opposed to the one in the mask.

Much like modern America though, Gotham can only make sense for so long before the wheels come undone. What is Nolan really saying then? Is it possible he’s challenging our notions of what we actually are conserving? Gotham is reminiscent of modern America, decadent, soulless, and lacking any social capital. Is there a Gotham still worth saving? An America? That’s Nolan’s real question, and something Batman, like conservatives, omit themselves from ever having to answer.

While it is not surprising that Big Hollywood and movement conservatism don’t “get” the movie, or much of anything else, the reaction speaks volumes about how the Left understands the Right better than the Right understands itself. Conservatives misinterpret the movie because they lack the ability to comprehend anything deeper than corporate profiteering dressed up in platitudes like “free markets” or a “shining city on the hill.” Higher ideas like Traditioanlism or the nature of man, society, and power might as well be a foreign language to the last men pining for the second coming of Ronald Reagan.

Christopher Nolan created a Right-wing film that conservatives are attracted to, but will never truly understand. They can’t explain why they like the movie because that requires a new vocabulary drawn from Tradition and the European New Right. Lacking that, we get paeans to the Caped Crusader’s fight against clean energy. Still, American conservatives instinctually claim anything with sublimated Right-wing tendencies as their own. All politics is downstream of culture, and unfortunately for conservatives, they lost that battle quite some time ago. However, the impulse for an authentic Right is still there, and the real culture war never truly ends.

Nolan films with a hammer. The Dark Knight Rises is a radical traditionalist puncture wound against modernity: not the film we want, but the film we need. Unfortunately, much like Gotham City, the conservative movement and its intellectuals are already too far gone to understand it.

Cutting Edge Cinema Blade Runner

                       By Judson Hammond

                

Blade Runner opened in movie theaters in the summer of 1982 just two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s more heralded E.T., which went on to become the all-time box office moneymaker. Blade Runner, with a $27.5 million budget, took in $27 million at the box office on its first run—hardly a smash—yet it proved its worth in the long run. Almost every science fiction film made since 1982 has been influenced by its production design, photography, and special effects. A new generation of fans has materialized and the film has spawned dozens of Websites on the Internet. 

All well and good, but what is it about Blade Runner that should attract the attention of Instaurationists? I doubt that the film’s enthusiasts are a potential hotbed of new subscribers to the magazine. The connection is that the world of the future portrayed in the film is very close to the dystopian predictions made in this publication.

In Los Angeles, the film has become a cultural touchstone, as the film takes place in that city in the year 2019. When Angelenos speak of a “Blade Runner scenario,” they aren’t referring to the film’s original screenplay. Rather, they mean the reality of life in Los Angeles is getting closer and closer to the dark vision of the film. And an integral part of that vision is the reality of white decline—in more colorful language, “a demotic polyglotism ominous with unresolved hostilities.”[1]

Ridley Scott’s film, Blade Runner, which appeared in 1982 . . . almost ten years later, remained so resonant that it had become a part of everyday speech in Los Angeles. All someone had to do was mention it, and you immediately knew where they stood about the future of the city.[2]

The film is based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a 1968 novel by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The racial angle of the film is absent from the book, which involves a fallout-ridden, post-nuclear-war world where wildlife has vanished and most humans are sterile. The fertile few are eligible to participate in a space colonization program. All colonists are awarded an android to perform slave labor in the “off-world.” The androids are virtually indistinguishable from humans but they have very short lifespans. As long as they perform their appointed tasks, there is no problem. But rogue androids must be “retired.” This is the job of Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford)—android hunter—or a blade runner, as the movie dubs him.

The mise-en-scène shifts the locale from San Francisco and Seattle to Los Angeles, which ushers in the Raymond Chandler 1940s undertones which are not in the book.

Chandler’s famed mystery novels are inextricably connected to Los Angeles—more specifically, the dark side of the palmy, sun-drenched metropolis. This is important because as late as 1976, Chandler biographer Frank MacShane could assert, “Los Angeles is the largest American city that is predominantly Protestant.”[3] Indeed, its WASPy ethos was frequently remarked about by a number of writers. Joan Didion called it ‘‘The West Coast of Iowa.” H. L. Mencken called it “Double-Dubuque.”

Though founded in 1781, Los Angeles remained a backwater until the 20th century, when old stock Americans poured out of the Midwest and settled in the Los Angeles basin. After World War II, hordes of defense plant workers and servicemen, who had been stationed in Southern California, decided to put down roots. Sure, there had long been Japanese, Chinese, blacks and Mexicans—but in modest numbers. As a result, Los Angeles was 80% white in 1960—an enviable status and one that seems almost unbelievable today. By 1980 the city was only 40% white. In 1984, it was estimated that at least 85 languages were spoken by children in the L.A. School District (38 spoken at Hollywood High School alone) and 120,000 students were placed in the category of “limited English proficiency.”[4] It goes without saying that the culture wars have not abated since then.

In Blade Runner, however, it appears that the culture wars are over and the Asians have won. This scenario might have seemed pretty far-fetched in 1982, but not so in 1997, as the global pundits now regularly ponder the fate of Hong Kong, the “emerging economies” of Asia, and the 1.2 billion people (i.e., the world’s largest market) in China.

Asian influence is dominant in Blade Runner, as the Los Angeles cityscape in 2019 is a hodgepodge of neon pictographs, and Asians on bicycles are ubiquitous. The presence of Mayan-like pyramids in the skyline indicates a strong Mexican influence. Forget about English, forget about bilingualism. “Cityspeak,” described as “a mishmash of Japanese, Spanish, German, what have you,” is the language of a Latino cop played by Edward James Olmos, whose flashy clothing is perhaps a nod to the infamous zoot suits worn by Mexicans during the World War II years, when they frequently clashed with servicemen. Curiously in the Los Angeles of the future, Negroes are conspicuous by their total absence—no explanation offered! Most telling of all, blimp-like vehicles sport video advertisements for off-world immigration, “The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure,” which sounds like the sort of boosterism that characterized Southern California in its salad days.

Los Angeles in Blade Runner has little in common with the popular image of the metropolis—no more glitz or glamor. Imagine a petrochemical hell, such as you might see in South Philadelphia, around the Newark Airport, or along vast spans of the Texas Gulf Coast, and you will be close to the Los Angeles of the film. Palm trees are nowhere in evidence. The city’s famed sunshine is blotted out by haze, smog, and rainfall. The “look” of the film can largely be attributed to one Syd Mead, who is given the unusual credit of “Visual Futurist.” The dark vision of Raymond Chandler has become literal:

If you mention Blade Runner here, you are greeted with a smirk. . . . Here the film is seen as darkly prescient of the downside of buzz words like “diversity” and “multiculturalism.” The problem of white flight in Southern California is exactly like Blade Runner. They aren’t moving off-planet, but to Washington or Oregon or Arizona. . . . What I keep hearing is, “It’s getting to be Blade Runner out there.” The bottom line is, with the crime and riots and the dramatic shift in the city’s ethnic balance, the feeling is, “It ain’t science fiction anymore. It’s reality.”[5]

In an Internet essay titled “The Future of Our Discontents,” William Timberman remarks:

For anyone who continues to harbor doubts about the future of American empire, there is something deeply unsettling about the rain-soaked Los Angeles in which Blade Runner is set, something eerily familiar in its crumbling architecture and punked-out Third World inhabitants. I wonder how many people, picking their way through theater parking lots on a warm June evening in 1982, imagined for a moment that they heard thunder in the air behind them, or looked apprehensively for oriental characters on the exit signs as they started their cars and drove away.

Though overtly anti-racist (“skin job” is a racial slur of sorts directed against androids), the film has a covert pro-white theme that does not strike the viewer until the third or fourth viewing—though I’m sure that director Ridley Scott and screenwriters Hampton Fancher and David Peeples would strenuously deny that such was their intent. Blade Runner is not apt to mobilize picket lines à la Birth of a Nation, but pro-white sentiments, albeit subtle, cannot be denied.

One can’t help but notice that the androids or replicants are all Nordic. One is a bit dorky, but the others are highly attractive. In particular the group’s leader, Rutger Hauer, looks like one of those blond beasts Jews always like to cast as evil Nazis in World War II movies. The implication is that white people emigrating off-planet want their own kind as replicant servants. In real life, white folks hire browns and blacks to perform domestic duties and stoop labor because they work cheap and there’s plenty of them. But suppose you could choose the race of your replicant slave? You’d probably pick the best-looking white model available—exactly what replicant hunter Deckard does! At the end of the film, when he heads for the hills with the radiant replicant named Rachel, it is almost like a return to the Garden of Eden. Like many a contemporary Angeleno, he has abandoned the diabolical City of Angels for a clean, green, prelapsarian environment that looks like the Pacific Northwest. Rachel’s manufacturer[6] says she is “special.” But is she special enough to bear children, to be the new white Eve for Rick Deckard, the new white Adam?

While we wax fundamental, we should also mention the film’s underlying theme: What does it mean to be human? The question is inevitable when human beings are confronted with man-made creatures that are virtually indistinguishable from their own kind. The question, though never specifically verbalized, runs throughout the movie. Ironically it is the replicant leader whose hunger for life at the end of his abbreviated span (“the light that burns twice as brightly burns half as long”) stands in contrast to the soulless, robot-like Asian hordes in the streets. The message is that even a white replicant is more “human” than a nonwhite. In the world of the future, why are all replicants, as far as we can tell, produced from a Northern European template? Is it a realization that people of color are a dime a dozen—if not worthless, at least worth less? Are white people more precious—and therefore more marketable as replicants? We may posit that a corollary theme of the movie is: What does it mean to be white? Spiritually? Emotionally? Intellectually? Romantically? Every which way?

In a homogeneous society, the question need never be asked. In a white majority society with significant numbers of minorities, the question arises and is asked more frequently as the numbers (and types) of minorities mount. Note the tentative attempts at white studies courses in college curricula. Compare and contrast—everyone’s favorite theme topic—must inevitably be applied to races in a multiracial society. The color-blind society is truly a piece of science fiction.

With a nod to Madison Grant, let us hope we don’t have to wait for the passing of the great race, as happens in the elegiac Blade Runner, before we finally have an answer to the question of what it means to be white.

Notes

1. David Rieff, Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World (Orion Books Ltd., London, 1993), p. 133.

2. Ibid.

3. Frank MacShane, The Life of Raymond Chandler (Penguin Books, N.Y., 1978), p. 65.

4. Leslie Stahr, Los Angeles (Gallery Books, N.Y., 1984), p. 34.

5. Sociologist Frederick Lynch, quoted in “Blade Runner Hasn’t Lost a Step,” by Tom Maurstad, Dallas Morning News, June 22, 1997, p. 9C.

6. The Tyrell Corporation is the name of the manufacturer in the film. In the book it is the Rosen Corporation. Make of this change of nomenclature what you will.

Source: Instauration, November 1997, pp. 4–6.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

                   By Christopher Pankhurst

           

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the second movie in the rebooted Planet of the Apes series, establishes this as a superior franchise inviting comparisons with Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.

The movie begins exactly where Rise of the Planet of the Apes left off, with a tracker plotting flights around the globe showing the spread of “simian flu.” An accompanying news montage informs us that ten years have passed since the outbreak began and that almost all humans have been wiped out. The apes, who at the end of Rise had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and founded a new order in the forest, have now established a settled community.

On the other side of the bridge a group of human survivors, who appear to be immune to the virus, have created a makeshift but well-armed fortress. When a small group of these survivors unwittingly trespasses into the ape territory intending to restart a hydroelectric dam, the stage is set for a fascinating examination of how two neighboring, but utterly distinct communities, might relate to each other.

One interesting contrast between the two communities (leaving aside the fact that they are different species) is that the apes are a newly founded, tribal community, based on principles of in-group loyalty and highly hierarchical. The humans are the last remaining remnants, on the point of extinction, and desperately seeking a source of electricity without which they cannot survive. Thus the apes are strong and autonomous whilst the humans are desperate and dependent. Both groups, however, are small communities who cannot afford to sustain significant casualties. This means that both humans and apes are depicted in a defensive mode, and the movie explores different responses to the need for self-defense.

As the action develops, it becomes clear that the majority on both sides are rather belligerent and see attack as the best form of defense. But Caesar, the leader of the apes, develops a relationship of trust with Malcolm, a member of the original human scouting party, and he allows the humans access to the dam. Malcolm similarly advocates for restraint among the humans and it is his influence that convinces Dreyfus, the leader of the human survivors, not to use their considerable weaponry to immediately wipe out all of the apes. This tentative truce is shown to be extremely fragile, and the tension in the movie derives from the inevitable, but unbearable, inevitability of its unfolding.

Caesar’s rival is Koba, an ape whose experience as a subject of vivisection has given him a lifelong and justified antipathy towards humanity. Koba resents Caesar’s alliance with the humans and challenges his position as alpha male. When his challenge is unsuccessful he resorts to more nefarious means and introduces the apes to the humans’ arsenal of weapons. Apes had previously had an abhorrence of guns and living an isolated existence had not needed to consider how to defend themselves against armed outsiders. The irony is that Koba’s high sense of in-group belonging leads him to adopt the superior technology of the out-group humans; by trying to remain ape he becomes more like a human.

I read this as a subtle comment on the impossibility of retaining a separated, traditional community in an age of technology. The apes live a self-contained, balanced, and peaceful existence but unfortunately for them their land happens to contain a resource valued highly by invading Americans. There are many, many humans around the world who would look on the apes’ plight with a great deal of empathy.

In Rise the symbol of the fasces was used to demonstrate the maxim that a single ape is weak but apes together are strong. In Dawn the overt fascist/Roman Imperial imagery has been toned down and distilled into the apes’ central credo: ape not kill ape. This more sanitised message is also in keeping with the apparent moral of the movie, which seems to indicate the truth (platitude) that there are good people in out-groups and bad people in in-groups. But in many ways, this overt moralizing is undercut by the logic of the movie itself.

For one thing, it is not at all clear that the doves on both sides have actually acted to protect their respective communities in the most effective way. Dreyfus’ original impulse was to wipe out all of the apes using the humans’ extensive weaponry. He makes a speech to the survivors, whipping up their antipathy to the apes and appealing to the shared suffering the community has undergone over the preceding years; classic appeals to in-group loyalty. It is Malcolm’s influence that persuades Dreyfus to allow a more peaceful approach. By the end of the movie it’s clear that this approach has led to many human deaths, however inadvertently. Malcolm’s and Caesar’s humanitarian diplomacy might be foregrounded as the most reasonable position to take in the movie, being a more rational and intelligent response to a new threat, but the movie does not pretend that it brings about a peaceful solution. The movie ends with a larger war between ape and human imminent, and Malcolm and Caesar both have to retreat back to their own sides.

Because the movie is so concerned with issues around in-group loyalty it is tempting to read it in a racial context, and I’m sure that some will do so. For me this is not the most interesting way to think about it because the apes and humans mirror each other in so many ways, even to the extent that they can both be seen as multicultural, the humans in an obvious sense and the apes due to the different simian sub-species who have banded together.

For me the most interesting way to read the conflict between man and ape was to see one group as a dying, late civilization, utterly dependent on technology, and the other as a newly emerging culture, reliant on physical strength and hierarchy. Both sides have particular vulnerabilities but there is no doubt which side history favors.

In its depiction of a technologically dependent humanity, decimated by a lethal virus, and struggling to adapt to harsher conditions, Dawn of the Planet of the Apesseems to have taken inspiration from the 1970s British TV series, Survivors. Survivors (which really demands an essay of its own) showed in relentless detail just how much we take the functioning of the modern state and economy for granted. Much of the series showed people coming to terms with how inept they were when there were no shops full of food and other goods. None of us is well equipped to begin from scratch, and Survivors gave an unflattering portrait of our dependency on state and commercial functions. It also managed to question whether its characters’ need to re-establish communities and get society functioning again was actually a desirable goal, or whether, in contrast, the collapse of society was a liberation. Dawn echoes Survivors in many ways, even to the extent that the last series of Survivors ended with a hydroelectric dam being brought back into use.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes has taken the Christopher Nolan approach to blockbuster film making by embedding ambiguity and complexity into its otherwise very entertaining narrative. As the sickly, dying race of humans gives way to the new order of virile ape warriors I look forward to the next installment where, perhaps, the apes will discover their numen.

Leni Riefenstahl's Lost Film: Victory Of Faith (1933)

                         By Andrew Hamilton

              

German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’sTriumph of the Will (1935-German), about the 1934 Nuremberg Party rally, is one of the most famous documentary films ever made. Virtually unknown is her first-ever documentary, a comparable film about the 1933 Party rally, Victory of Faith (Der Sieg des Glaubens) (1933-German). It was lost between 1934, when Hitler ordered all prints destroyed, and the 1990s, when a surviving copy was discovered in Great Britain. 

WWII historian David Irving thinks Victory of Faith is a better film than Triumph of the Will. He writes:

Victory of Faith provides a revealing look at the Nazi movement in the first years of its triumphs. The National Socialist movement still bears the marks of its street-fighter origins; its rituals are often raw, lacking the orchestrated precision and theatrical grandeur we associate with later Nazi stagecraft. Victory of Faith fills a gap in our understanding of the Third Reich, where Hitler and his Party are at a pivotal stage in its early development.

Party rallies, which were festive occasions as well as political gatherings, were held between 1923 and 1938, mostly in Nuremberg.

The 5th NSDAP rally, 1933’s “Rally of Victory” (each congress had a theme; this one signified the NS rise to power earlier that year), filmed by Riefenstahl as Victory of Faith, was the first of the monster rallies, with 500,000 attendees.

Over a million Germans attended the following year’s rally, filmed by Riefenstahl as Triumph of the Will. (Hitler, not Riefenstahl, selected the title.) Later rallies were even larger.

The final Nuremberg rally, the 10th, the “Rally of Greater Germany” celebrating the annexation of Austria, was the last.

A planned 1939 “Rally of Peace,” scheduled to begin September 2, 1939, was cancelled after Hitler, in joint agreement with Stalin’s Communists, invaded Poland on September 1. Two weeks later, Western elites’ long-time friend, and soon-to-be affectionate comrade-in-arms again, the Soviet Union, invaded from the East, and the two dictatorships split Poland between them.

Official films of the Nuremberg rallies were made from 1927 on. Leni Riefenstahl’s documentaries of the three rallies between 1933 and 1935 are the most famous. The first was Victory of Faith in 1933. The 1934 rally was the subject of her most celebrated movie, Triumph of the Will. For the 1935 rally she made a short exclusively about the Army, Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces (Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht) (1935-German, 28 mins.).

A non-Riefenstahl short about the 1933 rally can also be seen: Der Deutsche Reichstag zu Nürnberg (1933-German, 5 mins.). It is a silent film (except for a musical score) with German intertitles shot on 16 mm stock. The camera or playback speed is not well-synchronized, so movements appear speeded up and jerky, as with many silent films played back at incorrect speed.

In addition to the official films and newsreels, two sets of official or semi-official books covering the rallies were issued.

The “red books” were published by the NSDAP and contained the proceedings of the congress as well as full texts of every speech given in chronological order.

The “blue books” were published initially by Julius Streicher, Gauleiter of Nuremberg, and later by Hanns Kerrl, not by the party press. These were larger scale books that included the text of speeches and proceedings and photographs. The volume by Streicher commemorating the 1933 rally was Reichstagung in Nürnberg 1933 (Berlin: Vaterländischer Verlag C. A. Weller, 1933).

Collections of Heinrich Hoffman’s photographs were published to commemorate each Party congress as well, along with pamphlets of Hitler’s speeches.

The various publications are today considered collectors’ items.

The Rally of Victory

Victory of Faith is the film record of the 1933 Party rally. Following the Röhm purge several months later, Hitler ordered the film banned, every copy withdrawn and destroyed, because Ernst Röhm figured so prominently in it.

Röhm was the chief of staff of Hitler’s street-fighting, paramilitary brownshirt SA(Sturmabteilung), which by 1933 numbered two million men. He was the second most powerful man in the Party behind Hitler.

According to Wikipedia,

The film Triumph des Willens was produced to replace Victory of Faith and follows a similar script which is evident when one sees both films side by side, for example, the city of Nuremberg scenes—down to the shot of a cat that is included in the city driving sequence in both films. The innovative camera angles and editing that made Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willens such a ground-breaking film are already demonstrated in Der Sieg des Glaubens. Furthermore, Herbert Windt reused much of the musical score for this film in Triumph des Willens.

Windt was one of the leading film score and radio composers of the Third Reich.

The documentary begins slowly, with architectural shots of old Nuremberg buildings, and no people at all. Next we see men constructing wooden bleachers in anticipation of crowds, and the arrival of dignitaries on a train pulled by a swastika-bedecked locomotive. Hitler arrives separately by plane.

The movie gathers momentum as the viewer peers over Hitler’s shoulder as his car moves through Nuremberg’s crowded streets.

The camera shows swastika banners, marching brigades, music, parades, speeches, and enormous masses of people, interspersed with dozens of individual faces of party members, soldiers, SA and SS men, Hitler Youth, and townspeople.

There is no narration.

It is unfortunate that color photography had not yet been perfected by the early 1930s. Both Victory and Triumph would have been marvelously enhanced by its use. One cannot refrain from imagining what such hypothetical color films would have looked like.

One gradually becomes aware that not only the passage of time, and the German language, makes us see the movie differently than contemporaries would have, but that many of the faces of dignitaries instantly recognizable to German viewers in 1933 are completely obscure today.

For example, David Irving mentions that Ernst Röhm’s role in the 1933 rally was second only to Hitler’s, and that he figures prominently in Riefenstahl’s film.

Yet, while I could pick Röhm out in some of the scenes, I became aware as I watched that I was basically unfamiliar with his face.

Again, I did not realize until later that one of the prominently featured speakers was Julius Streicher (Gauleiter of Nuremberg), because I was also unfamiliar with his face, person, and voice—even though, as with Röhm, I know a fair amount about the man. Perhaps this should come as no surprise. The Jewish-owned megasite YouTube even flags a 3-minute compilation of films clips of Streicher as “offensive.”

Such ignorance lessens comprehension of what one is watching, because the vast majority of dignitaries are not explicitly identified. The same is true of many of the organized units one sees massed or marching.

Of course, everyone knows who Hitler is. And I readily recognize familiar figures such as Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, and Heinrich Himmler. Even so, many things undoubtedly went over my head.

As an aside, this is the only film I’ve seen, or remember, where Rudolf Hess speaks. My impression of him otherwise—probably derived from still photographs and the absence of talking film footage—is one of  extreme taciturnity, even though that may not have been the case.

Several selections from Hitler’s speeches are included. In one he speaks of victory after struggle, and aspirations for ethnic unity:

Many of you look back on a fight that has lasted for years. Today we see the result of that fight. The National Socialist Party has become the state. Its leaders today are the leaders of the German Reich who must answer to history. You are answerable before God and history to accomplish through the political education of all Germans that they become one people, one idea, and one expression of a single will.

A laser-like focus on youth, akin to the Left’s, was apparent in his remarks to 65,000 Hitler Youth from every corner of the Reich (another 1 1/2 million members were not present in the arena):

You will be one people bound together as tightly as you are now. As German youth, our only hope—the courage and faith of our people. You, my youth, are the living guarantee, the living future of Germany, not an empty idea, nor empty formalism, an insipid plan. No! You are the blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, spirit of our spirit. You are the continuation of our people.

Joseph Goebbels—like Hitler, a consummate orator—gave a speech on “The Racial Question and World Propaganda” that does not appear in the film, perhaps because he explicitly criticized Jews.

Indeed, none of the excerpts from any of the speeches mention the Jewish question.

Ernst Röhm

SA chief Ernst Röhm was a homosexual, as was the hierarchy of the SA. In 1931, the Münchener Post, a Left-wing newspaper, obtained and published Röhm’s letters to a friend discussing his homosexual affairs. (Jews and the Left are fanatically pro-homosexual, except when homosexuality can be used to discredit ideological, racial, or religious enemies.)

Röhm and the SA also belonged to the extreme Left wing of the NSDAP. After the seizure of power from the Jews, Communists, and conventional socialists in 1933 (the “first revolution”), the SA demanded a “second revolution” to dispossess business and the Army: the nationalization of industry, worker control, confiscation and redistribution of landed estates, and social equality.

Indeed, one suspects that a pointedly egalitarian passage in one Hitler speech—only Röhm is present on the platform with the Führer—may have been tailored to fit his powerful lieutenant’s ideological predilections.

Adolf Hitler and SA leader Ernst Röhm stride together toward the cenotaph during the national party day of the NSDAP, Nuremberg, Germany, September 3, 1933

As part of the second revolution, Röhm and his colleagues envisioned the SA, now over two million strong, as the German army of the future, replacing the Reichswehr and its long-standing professional officer corps with traditions dating back to Frederick the Great. In February 1934, Röhm demanded that the Reichswehr be absorbed into the SA to create a “people’s army” under his leadership.

Adamantly opposed by the Army, Hermann Göring, SS leader Heinrich Himmler, and others, Röhm evidently planned a coup if his demands were not met.

During the purge known as the Night of the Long Knives on June 30, 1934, Röhm was personally arrested by Hitler, and subsequently shot on the orders of Himmler and Göring in his prison cell in Munich. Many other SA leaders were liquidated as well.

Lost Film

As a consequence, Hitler ordered all known copies of Victory of Faith destroyed. It was long believed lost until a single copy was found in storage in Britain in the 1990s. Triumph of the Will, produced the next year, showed the new Nazi hierarchy, with the SS now featured as the Nazis’ premier uniformed paramilitary group, and Röhm replaced by Victor Lutze as the much less powerful new head of the SA.

Mainstream sources state that in April 1934 (i.e., before the Röhm purge in June) Riefenstahl was visiting Great Britain to speak at major universities to discuss her documentary film techniques. During the visit at least one copy of Victory of Faith was made. This copy was rediscovered in the 1990s, after being in storage for more than 60 years, and is the only known surviving print.

However, in a lecture, David Irving, who knew Riefenstahl and discussed Victory of Faithwith her, said that she possessed a copy—the implication being she had retained it for herself.

According to Irving, Victory of Faith is censored in Germany. Presumably, ownership or possession of the DVD would subject citizens to fines, imprisonment, or other criminal penalties.

Film Credits:

Victory of Faith (Der Sieg des Glaubens) (1933-German)

Documentary film of the Nuremberg Party Rally held August 30–September 3, 1933

Produced, directed, written, and edited by Leni Riefenstahl (Screen credit: “Artistic arrangement: Leni Riefenstahl”)

Studio: Propagandaministerium (Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels) and Hauptabteilung Film (Screen credit: “Produced by the national leadership of the N.S.D.A.P. Film Section”)

Distributor: UFA (Screen credit: “Distributed by regional Party film bureaus”)

Cinematographers: Sepp Allgeier, Franz Weihmayr, Walter Frentz, Richard Quaas, Paul Tesch (Screen note: “All the German newsreels made their footage available for this film”)

Music: Herbert Windt

Released: December 1933

Running time: 64 minutes

Language: German with English or Spanish subtitles

Rammstein's "Stripped" & "Links 2-3-4" Videos

                            By Greg Johnson

              

The “Stripped” Video

In 1998, the German hard rock band Rammstein covered “Stripped” (1986), by the English electronic/New Wave band Depeche Mode, for a Depeche Mode tribute album called For the Masses (1998). Later pressings of Rammstein’s second disc Sehnsucht (Longing) include “Stripped” at the end as a “hidden” track, i.e., it is not listed on the cover.

The video for “Stripped” is simply a brilliantly edited montage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, her two-part documentary film on the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin during the Third Reich. The video merely features Greek statues and ruins, attractive athletes, and cheerful spectators. Hitler and the National Socialist flag do not appear. (The American and Japanese flags, among others, do appear, but they simply make the German flag more conspicuous in its absence.)

But such fine points did not matter, and the video provoked an international controversy. In particular, the Anti-Defamation League and various magazine hacks made it known that our Jewish overlords were not amused by images of good-looking, healthy people having fun during the Third Reich, lest people get the wrong idea.

The band, for their part, responded that the video had no political significance whatsoever. They used the Olympia footage simply because of its beauty.

The video and the controversy not only promoted the song, but also contributed to wider interest in Leni Riefenstahl.

http://youtu.be/M4SmZkmLRjQ

In “Stripped,” the singer addresses an object of love or lust: “Let me see you stripped.” Although Rammstein has a reputation for dark and violent music, their version of “Stripped” actually softens the Depeche Mode original, which runs, “Let me see you stripped down to the bone.” Rammstein also omits the line “Let me hear you crying just for me.”

“Stripped” is not merely, or even primarily, a song about sex. It is about a return to nature, which requires the stripping off of artifice, of which clothes are merely one part:

Come with me
Into the trees
We’ll lay on the grass
And let hours pass

Take my hand
Come back to the land
Let’s get away
Just for one day

Let me see you
Stripped

Modern urban life is characterized not just by artifice, but also by pollution, both physical and mental:

Metropolis
Has nothing on this
You’re breathing in fumes
I taste when we kiss

Let me hear you
Make decisions
Without your television
Let me hear you speaking
Just for me

“Stripped” praises nature over artifice, the rural over the urban, leisure over work, fresh air over smog, and thinking for oneself over parroting the propaganda of the television. Although the narrator does want his partner speaking “just for me,” which may not exactly be freedom, but it certainly is a more intimate and natural form of thralldom.

How does the video mesh with the message of the song? In the most literal sense, the video shows beautiful bodies in sculpture and in life, some of them nude. Most of them are Olympic athletes, of course.

The fusion of images and music is brilliant. During the opening electronic drones, we see Greek statues and ruins. Then the Greek discus thrower is replaced by a living athlete (around 0:45). The moment the discus is released, the drums and guitar enter in, followed by images of athletes in explosions of energy. During an electronic bridge (starting at 2:03), we see a vast field of young women swinging gymnastics clubs in perfect synchronization with each other and the music. When the last verse has been sung and the chorus repeats toward an increasingly ecstatic climax (starting at 3:00), we see high divers leaping into the water—and out of it in reverse footage, to delirious effect.

Is there a political message here? At 1:52, when the Olympic flame is kindled, suddenly we see a vast crowd assembled, with close-ups of beautiful, smiling faces. Then we come to the vast field of synchronized women. So we are now in society, but it is a different form of society—not a society of constricting artifice, pollution, and television propaganda. Sports, of course, are based on rules, which are social conventions. But these conventions function in harmony with nature, leading to the development and expression of physical beauty. Moreover, people gather at sporting events to witness and honor human excellence. Athletic competition is peaceful and constructive, leading to the upward development of the race. This is, of course, a description of the Olympic ideal, but one might wonder why one can’t organize a whole society on such principles. That, of course, is a question the ADL does not want you to ask.

Beyond that, the “Stripped” video is indirectly political precisely because of its purely aesthetic, apolitical treatment of Olympia. The “Stripped” video shows Olympia stripped of tendentious post-war commentary. By showing beautiful images from the Third Reich without informing viewers that what they are about to see is “tainted” by association with demonic evil, the video interrupts the dominant cultural narrative, which seeks to justify the post-World War II order: liberal democracy, expressive individualism, global finance capitalism, and multiculturalism. The chief architects and beneficiaries of this order are Jews. And Jewish power rests ultimately on the conditioning Europeans to feel reflexive horror at all forms of European ethnic pride and advocacy by demonizing them as somehow like National Socialism. By giving us a glimpse of a non-demonic Third Reich, the “Stripped” video short-circuits that conditioning.

The “Links 2-3-4” Video

In 2001, Rammstein released their third album, Mutter, which includes a song entitled “Links 2-3-4” (Left 2-3-4, the equivalent of “hup 2-3-4”). The band asserted that the song and its associated video were a response to the accusation of being right wing. In 1999, Oskar Lafontaine of the Social Democratic Party declared that his heart “beats on the left.” (That’s the difference between them and us, apparently.) In 2001, Lafontaine published a column in Bildentitled “Das Herz schläght Links” (The Heart Beats on the Left) opposite a column by a Christian Democratic politician, Peter Gauweiler, entitled “Mein Herz schlägt auf dem rechten Fleck” (My heart beats in the right place).

Rammstein incorporated both phrases—the heart in the right place, the right place being on the left—into “Links 2-3-4” and had the cheek (or tongue-in-cheek) to proclaim it proof of their leftist sympathies. The music is in 4/4 time with the sound of marching jackboots. But the lyrics are simply about the heart:

Kann man Herzen brechen
können Herzen sprechen
kann man Herzen quälen
kann man Herzen stehlen

Can one break hearts?
Can hearts speak?
Can one torment hearts?
Can one steal hearts?

. . .

Sie wollen mein Herz am rechten Fleck
doch seh ich dann nach unten weg
da schlägt es in der linken Brust
der Neider hat es schlecht gewusst

They want my heart in the right place
but I see it down below
It beats in the left breast
the envious don’t know it well

If one chooses to interpret left and right metaphorically (i.e., politically), this is an avowal of leftist sympathy. But one could just interpret it literally, which would make it politically vacuous, since Hitler and Stalin both had hearts in the right place, i.e., on the left. The song, then, is politically ambiguous in a studied way.

As for the video:

http://youtu.be/x5dm7AYZ-tg

The setting is an anthill. Using mixture of live and animated ants, we see scenes from ordinary ant life: ants playing soccer, ants watching soccer on TV, an ant getting a beer from the fridge, ants going to a rave where a DJ plays a Rammstein album, ants pouring into a theater to watch a film of a Rammstein concert.

The film is grainy and black and white. As the movie starts, we see countdown symbols flashed on the screen, including crossed hammers, like the fascist emblem in Pink Floyd’s The Wall, but not unlike Soviet the hammer and sickle either. We see a wheel with pointed teeth, not unlike the cogwheel used by Laibach. We see Rammstein’s version of Laibach’s cross. Till Lindemann wears stage makeup reminiscent of old German Expressionist films. It takes one back to the 30s, the heyday of fascist and communist collectivism.

But the film is a bit of nostalgia, for the overall setting of the video is the present day. Individualists love to use the anthill metaphor to dismiss collectivism. But in fact, with their soccer, beer, and Rammstein consumption, the ants and their anthill represent modern liberal democratic Germany.

Suddenly, the screen is ripped asunder by a huge beetle. Three of them are attacking the anthill. The ants scatter, many are killed, but then they are rallied by a leader ant, who addresses the masses. He raises his feelers in a gesture reminiscent of the Roman salute. The masses raise their feelers in response. Then the ants pour out of the hill, marching in formation. The marching ants take the shape of the Rammstein-Laibach cross. These displays of precision marching were staples of fascist and Communist mass rallies.

Then the ants form three columns and swarm the beetles, overwhelming and killing them. What the ants lack in individual size is compensated for by their numbers. It is collectivism at its finest, the use of organization to create strength through numbers. After the beetles are dead, the leader ant raises his feelers in the ant salute, and the ants celebrate their victory with more precision marching, creating a toothed wheel formation around the dead beetles. As the video ends, we see a dead human hand in the foreground crawling with ants as well. (This is cut off in the video embedded above.) Foreshadowing of things to come? (If I had to venture a guess about the identity of the dead hand, I would say it is the American Occupation regime. But more about Amerika later.)

With some justification, critics of the “Links 2-3-4” video immediately likened the whole thing to Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, her documentary of the NSDAP’s 1934 Nuremberg Party Rally. The ant salutes look like the Roman salute, and Triumph of the Will is the only mass party rally most Westerners have ever seen, even though the Communists continued to elaborate and perfect it for decades after 1945. (The whole genre apparently developed from the half-time shows at American college football games.) During the chorus, one hears a crowd shouting “Hi!” Claire Berlinski even hallucinates a Hitler mustache on Till Lindemann.

But the members of Rammstein are not Nazis. They are modern Germans. Like the ants in the video and the fans of their music, they like soccer, beer, raves, and Rammstein. Politically speaking, their hearts are on the left. Not the totalitarian left, but the liberal left: the individualist, consumerist left.

But the problem with modern Germans is that this identity is part and parcel with national self-hatred and guilt over the Second World War. Rammstein wishes to restore a “healthy German self-esteem.” They are trying to establish “a natural relationship with their identity.” To do that, they have to teach modern Germans to look at the Third Reich through new eyes. Not to promote Nazism, but to clear the impediment of Nazism to a healthy patriotism.

Thus I do think that Triumph of the Will is intentionally being alluded to. But the message of the video is not a return to Nazi totalitarianism. Instead, the message is that even a modern, individualist, consumerist, leftist society can come under attack. And when it comes under attack, collectivism and its trappings become necessities of survival. All democracies become fascist when they go to war. Thus, even if your heart is on the left, one must make peace with things conventionally associated with the right. (Of course the members of Rammstein, who grew up in East Germany, saw this sort of stuff all the time from their Communist regime.) Rammstein’s keyboardist Christian Lorenz said that “Links 2-3-4” shows how militant and aggressive the left can be.

Mass collectivism is always-already latent in consumer society, particularly in the activities the ants are shown engaged in: sports, raves, and rock concerts. In an interview reported by Berlinski, Richard Kruspe, Rammstein’s lead guitarist, claims that international soccer is the one arena of life where Germans feel comfortable taking their own side. Raves are mass gatherings where music and drugs produce an ecstatic sense of collective consciousness, orchestrated by a DJ/leader. The same thing takes place at rock concerts. As Mick Jagger once said, “Hitler was the first rock star.”

Rammstein is again trying to teach Germans to see their past with new eyes, and to link it organically to their present, so that mass patriotic gatherings no longer automatically connote fascism and the Holocaust.

In another article, I will discuss three more Rammstein videos: “Amerika,” “Ohne Dich,” and “Mein Land.”

To most people, it seems absurd for organizations like the ADL to police rock videos. But we should not be so dismissive. Perhaps they know something we do not. My hypothesis is that Jewish power is stretched very thin. Jews are working at full capacity to contain positive white self-consciousness, and white pride is virtually nil. This means that even a modest jump in white ethnocentrism — even an essentially liberal-democratic form of patriotism, which is what Rammstein seems to represent — might exceed the ability of Jews to control it. Thus they feel they must smother every little spark, lest it ignite a firestorm that might consume them utterly.

Note: Both the “Stripped” and “Links 2-3-4” videos are available on the Rammstein video compilation Lichtspielhaus.

Rammstein

                           By Greg Johnson

   

Generally, I find it impossible to like popular music unless I was exposed to a particular performer or group before I turned 21. A large part of the problem is that my tastes have been “corrupted” by classical music. Having come to appreciate polyphony, complex rhythms, and actual singing, the sounds of drum kits being thwacked in 4/4 time, blues chords, and pop “vocals” literally cause a tightness in my chest. My heart sinks. I feel suffocated by the sheer banality of it. And I generally can’t get past that first impression to find whatever genuine pleasures may be there.

Oddly enough, though, this does not happen with popular music and artists that I liked before I was 21. The best explanation I can venture is that a process of imprinting took place during that impressionable period. So the music I liked then, I still like now. But when younger friends expose me to their music, I often find myself thinking “I would have liked this if I had heard it in college.” Then I start daydreaming about Bach or Palestrina. Sometimes, their enthusiasm has moved me to buy recordings by recent artists (recent to me, that is, e.g., Sigur Rós), only to find that I never play them more than once or twice. Even post-21 discoveries whom I genuinely admire, such as Current 93, Goldfrapp’s Felt Mountain, Antony and the Johnsons, and Joanna Newsom, do not really move me to play them very much.

All these prefatory remarks are necessary to make clear just what a hard sell I am, and thus what a compliment it is, when I say that I am crazy about Rammstein. Rammstein, Laibach, Nirvana, and Der Blutharsch are the short list of artists who have breached my resistance to new music and have permanent spots on my iPod. (Death in Juneis there too, but more for political reasons, e.g., because they’re crypto-Nazis. The music alone would have no appeal to me.)

Rammstein

Rammstein was formed in 1994 in Berlin by six Germans, all of whom were born in East Germany. They created a new genre of rock Neue Deutsche Härte (new German hard rock), which is a fusion of hard rock with elements of techno. German is the primary language for lyrics, although Rammstein have also used English, Russian, French, and Spanish. Rammstein is highly popular around the globe. They have sold more than 16 million albums, and their tours draw huge, enthusiastic crowds. They are even popular in the US, which is especially linguistically insular when it comes to pop music. In spite of their popularity, Rammstein has generally been savaged by rock music critics, particularly in Germany—which can only be a good sign.

Rammstein has released six studio albums since 1995: Herzeleid (Heartache, 1995), Sehnsucht (Longing, 1997), Mutter (Mother, 2001), Reise, Reise (Arise, Arise, 2004), Rosenrot (Rose Red, 2005), and Liebe ist für alle da (Love is There for Everyone, 2009). There are also two live albums, Live aus Berlin (Live from Berlin, 1999) and Völkerball (Dodgeball, 2006), both of which are also available as DVDs. Rammstein has also done many music videos which are available on YouTube. The DVD Lichtspielhaus (Movie Theater, 2003) compiles videos for songs from their first three albums. This month, Rammstein will release a greatest hits collection, Made in Germany, 1995–2011.

The Rammstein Sound

Laibach and their cross

Rammstein’s musical and visual aesthetics were deeply influenced by Laibach. Rammstein vocalist Till Lindemann’s deep, rumbling baritone is reminiscent of Laibach’s Milan Fras, although Lindemann is a better singer. In “Rammlied” on Liebe ist für alle da, Rammstein actually interpolates a few lines from Laibach’s iconic “Geburt einer Nation” (Birth of a Nation), their German version of Queen’s “One Vision,” as an homage to Laibach.

Rammstein’s logo is also based on Laibach’s. Laibach uses a cross in a cogged wheel. Rammstein takes the cross and simply superimposes the letter “R” on it.

   

Rammstein also employs Laibach’s bombastic, “fascistic” sound. Imagine a “Wall of Sound” engineered by Albert Speer. But, again like Laibach, Rammstein’s hard rock is richly textured through the use of techno-elements, synthesizers, strings, accordions, background vocals, sound-effects, whistling, call and response with chanting crowds, and dramatic alterations of tempo and dynamics, etc.

An excellent example of Rammstein’s sound is “Engel” (Angel) from Sehnsucht, in which whistling, synthesizers, and female vocals communicate the ethereal beauty of heaven even as Till Lindemann’s deep voice—siding with the earthy and aggresssive rock guitars, bass, and drums—informs us “Gott weiß ich will kein Engel sein” (God knows I don’t want to be an angel). You can listen and see the lyrics in translation here. You can read the original German lyrics and an English translation here.

You have to be a YouTube member to see the official “Engel” video, with its tribute of Franz von Stuck’s “Sin.” As a general rule, I am not crazy about Rammstein’s videos, because even when they are technically well made and often quite witty (e.g., “Sonne”), they are generally degenerate and often bear little relation to the words of the songs. I will comment at length about Rammstein’s best videos in another article.

Two of my favorite tracks from Mutter are “Sonne” (“Sun”) and “Ich Will” (“I Want”). “Sonne” is a surreal, ominous suryanamaskarwith an apocalyptic feel. Is it a count-down to a nuclear holocaust? “Sonne” is a very hard-edged song, yet it effectively incorporates high female vocals, strings, and dramatic changes of dynamics. You can listen and see the lyrics in translation here. See the droll “Snow White and the Six Dwarves” video here. The lyrics and translation are here.

“Ich Will” seems to explore the needy, controlling, and ultimately insatiable relationship of rock stars and their fans. The crowd gives Lindemann everything he demands, and still he remains frustrated: “Ich versteh euch nicht” (I don’t understand you). “Ich Will” uses strings, synthesizers, high female vocals, call-and-response from a crowd, and stark dynamic and a rhythmic changes to great dramatic effect (song and lyrics in translation [unfortunately the sound quality is bad], lyrics alone).

Again like Laibach, Rammstein’s lyrics are usually highly intelligent and witty, often dealing with unusual and serious themes and employing literary quotes and allusions, word-play, double-entendre, and rhyme schemes mercifully free of pop-music banality. Many of their songs are wry and satirical (although they can also be quite filthy, e.g., “Pussy” from Liebe ist für alle da); others are quite moving.

For instance, one of Rammstein’s most remarkable lyrics is Mutter’s “Spieluhr” (Musicbox). It is pure German Romanticism of the E. T. A. Hoffmann variety (song and lyrics in translation, lyrics alone). Two of the group’s best “art” songs appear on Reise, Reise. The title song (Arise, Arise) deals with the battle of man and the sea, including whale hunting, as well as the battle of man and man, and the battle of man with himself (listen, lyrics). The song “Dali Lama” is based on Goethe’s poem “Der Erlkönig” (The Elf King) (listen, lyrics).

In my opinion, Rammstein’s best album is their fourth, Reise, Reise, with Mutter and Sehnsucht close behind. They are remarkably imaginative and consistently good. I listen to all three albums all the way through—then hit repeat.

The first release, Herzeleid, is indispensible and enormously influential, even though it is somewhat uneven. (I first encountered Rammstein when David Lynch used two songs from Herzeleid, “Rammstein” and “Heirate Mich” [Marry Me] in his Lost Highway soundtrack. Lynch also directed the video for “Rammstein.”)

The fifth release, Rosenrot, is the band’s only misstep. It would be good if by any other band, but it sounds like an inferior group’s imitation of a Rammstein album. The sixth album, Liebe ist für alle da, is a return to form, but it still does not rival the first four releases. The greatest hits compilation, Made in Germany: 1995–2011, compiles the band’s best singles, but many of the band’s best songs were never released as singles.

My recommendation is just to buy Reise, Reise, Mutter, and Sehnsucht. But be warned: if you buy one Rammstein disc, you will eventually buy all the rest.

The Nazi Question

Till Lindemann

The members of Rammstein generally refuse to talk about politics. They will abruptly terminate interviews that broach the subject. But as soon as their first album was released, it was widely assumed by both fans and journalists, that the six members of Rammstein, born and raised in the German Democratic Republic, are somehow German Nationalists, and not just nationalists, but National Socialists.

It is just the sound of the music: Rammstein’s music is unmistakably German, and unapologetically, aggressively, proudly so. Somehow people just know that if there were Rock and Roll in the Third Reich, it would sound like Rammstein. The impression is reinforced by the Arno Breker physiques of lead singer Till Lindemann and lead guitarist Richard Z. Kruspe and the elemental masculinity of Lindemann’s stage antics and deep baritone voice.

Richard Kruspe

Even Kruspe’s marriage to Jewish model Caron Bernstein (in a Jewish ceremony, no less, and with Kruspe taking the name Kruspe-Bernstein) did not quell rumors that Rammstein’s members are crypto-Nazis. (The marriage ended after five years, and without children, thank goodness.) Nor has the Weimar-like decadence of many of the band’s songs, concerts, and videos put a dent in the idea that they hanker for a Boy Scout dictatorship. Nor has the fact that the band is managed by a handicapped black man dispelled the idea that they are racists who would euthanize cripples.

A lot of this finger-pointing is just unhinged Jewish neurosis and ethnic hatred, such as the priceless Rammstein chapter, “Black Market Nationalism: I Hate,” in neocon hack Claire Berlinski’s Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007).

Neurotics are trouble because they can’t really deal with reality. Reality merely serves to remind the neurotic of something else, something of greater personal importance, to which he reacts instead. Unfortunately, this means that he seldom acts appropriately toward the reality before him. For instance, a child who has been bullied will often react as if he is being bullied, even when he is not—simply because somebody or something reminds him of a bully.

 

With neurotic Jews like Claire Berlinski, all roads lead to Auschwitz. Literally everything reminds her of the holocaust. Six blue-eyed German men form a rock group, and Claire Berlinski thinks the Einsatzgruppen are back: “For example, the cover art of their debut album, Herzeleid, resembles to no small degree a Nazi propaganda poster, the six shirtless band members—enormous, muscular, iron-jawed—looming into the camera lens in what appears to be an archetypal celebration of the Master Race.”

The actual cover, of course, does not look Nazi at all. Frankly, it looks rather schwul. But of course, the members of Rammstein would have attracted no negative comment for showing off their ripped physiques if they actually were gay. Manliness is only a threat if coupled with fertility. (The members of Rammstein are intensely private individuals, but all of them are straight and most of them have children.)

Another example of hysteria, picked at random (since howlers can be found on every page):

This is martial music. Without the music, the lyrics might be misinterpreted as expressions of adolescent angst. But these are grown men performing: they are in their late thirties and early forties. Separated from the music, the power of the lyrics is severely diluted. Try reading them again, this time nurturing a vivid image of Stuka dive bombers swiftly obliterating the Polish Air Force while eight motorized and six Panzer divisions slice through Poland. Imagine the Wehrmacht marching through Warsaw as German tanks steamroller Brest-Litovsk and Storm Troopers [here her fugue sucks in Star Wars] slam shut the escape routes across the Vistula. Envision women and children streaming terrified into the roads, attempting to flee the unrelenting, indiscriminate German bombing. Then you can skip the music. You’ll already have something of a feel for it.

This hate-crazed harpy can puke out prose like this by the bucket. And Rammstein’s critics are legion.

“Healthy German Self-Esteem”

But although the Nazi label is absurd, Rammstein is not just implicitly nationalistic. They are openly so, both artistically and politically. But not all German nationalism is National Socialism. Judging from their songs, videos, and stage shows, Rammstein’s German nationalism seems to embrace the Second Reich, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and even East Germany in a single vision: militant, macho, clean-cut, and kinky. Rammstein’s nationalism seems to have an element of Pim Fortuyn’s brand of Dutch nationalism, which takes pride in certain liberal and progressive attitudes condemned as decadent by the far Right. (It did not save Fortuyn from the Nazi smear either.) Or, to use an example closer to home, the Right wing of the American mainstream is both patriotic and politically correct, just burbling with love for Negroes and Jews. But that does not stop leftists from shrieking “Nazi!” either.

Lead guitarist Kruspe is quite frank about the Germanic nature of Rammstein’s musical aesthetic:

Our music is German, and that’s what comes through. . . . We are simply trying to make the music that we are able to make. The classical music, the music of our ancestors, is passed down in a certain way. We have a feeling for it. American music, black music, we don’t know how to do that—.

Keyboardist Christian Lorenz interjected, “We have no soul [in the Negro sense of the word].” To which Kruspe added:

And we know how to play on the beat. We know how to make it straight, how to make it even. . . . We like it heavy, bombastic, romantic. Like the direction Wagner takes. . . . We’re the only ones who do it the way Germans should. The others try to imitate the English and the Americans. We’re almost too German for Germany. . . . The Germans are a bit ashamed of their nationality. They’ve had a disturbed relationship to it since the Second World War. We’re trying to establish a natural relationship to our identity.

Guitarist Paul Landers adds “Our music is about the revival of a healthy German self-esteem.” Landers also says:

The Germans definitely have a problem. Before, it was Deutschland über alles—Germany above everything. And now Germany is now below everything. Rock bottom. Our problem is that we actually think Germany is pretty good. But almost nobody thinks that. Everybody’s very embarrassed to be German, and there’s no German identity. Our aim is to help Germany not to be overly patriotic like the Americans, but to be patriotic, and not be ashamed. . . . In my opinion there’s a certain type of character that Germans have . . . there’s something that Germans have, that no other nationality has. It would be a shame if that disappeared.

(These quotes are from chapter 8 of Berlinski’s Menace in Europe.)

After analyzing Rammstein’s lyrics and interviewing members of the band, Berlinski concludes that they are “basically quite stupid” but grants that they can turn a clever phrase. Some books just review themselves!

Loose Ends

Rammstein is a German nationalist group insofar as their music is self-consciously and proudly German. Moreover, although, as far as I know, the band members have not taken positions on immigration and other political controversies, they do have a genuine political or metapolitical agenda, which is to overthrow Germany’s post-World War II culture of self-loathing and restore a healthy and natural patriotism.

This agenda puts Rammstein on a collision course with Germany’s American Occupation regime, and with Jewish power world-wide, which is founded on moral extortion. If you object to Jewish behavior, then Jews immediately change the subject to the Holocaust, because during the Holocaust, Jews were a blameless victim people unjustly persecuted by diabolical Nazis, who are then likened to the present-day critics and opponents of the Jews, including you, dear reader, should you get out of line. That usually does the trick. But they’ll ease up on you if you grant them a moral blank check to exploit the rest of the human race until the sun goes supernova.

This whole swindle is premised on establishing a mindless, conditioned horror and revulsion towards any form of European ethnic pride and self-assertion. Whenever Jews see proud Europeans, they think of the Holocaust, and they are determined that you think of it too. Thus Jews are terrified when they see Germans who have not internalized Jewish anti-German hatred. A Germany that is not demoralized, a Germany that can say “no,” could be the beginning of the end of NATO, the EU, American power, and Jewish hegemony in Europe.

The last frame, a kind of Edvard Munch "Scream" in the face of existential horror, is how Jews, using the holocaust as a weapon, wish to condition whites to react to any criticisms of the tribe, no matter how well-founded.

This is why Rammstein gets such bad press. Groups like the Anti-Defamation League fear that any little loose end might unravel the whole fabric of Jewish control, which is why they seemingly overreact to every little challenge to their worldview. Till Lindemann just has to roll his “r”s  and Abe Foxman starts schwitzing. That’s why Jews try to keep groups like Rammstein obscure. Believe me, if the right journalist or record producer had seen Rammstein coming, Lindemann and Kruspe would be washing cars and waiting tables in Berlin today. But they slipped through and got too big, too fast, to simply disappear.

I used to think that Jews were paranoid. But now I am not so sure. Despite their enormous power and wealth, they are very few and they are spread very thin. Their ethnocentrism is turned up to eleven. Their ethnic advocacy groups are working at 110%. Their power is as wide as the world, but it is only as deep—and ephemeral—as the dew. Most whites, by contrast, either have no ethnic self-consciousness or they hate themselves. We have almost no ethnic advocacy groups, and the ones we do have tend to be small and marginalized.

This sounds bleak, but there is an upside. It implies that whites have enormous potential for growth in ethnocentrism and ethnic advocacy, but Jews do not. Thus only a small move toward realizing our potential may be enough to disrupt Jewish ability to contain it. And when the containment is breached, events can cascade out of control, and big changes can happen very quickly.

This is why whites should be as zealous at promoting every little thing that destabilizes Jewish power as Jews are at stamping them out. They know the potential power of one small voice, like Emma West. It is time that we learn that lesson too.