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The 1927 cinematic epic Metropolis is often described as a ‘German expressionist’ (anti realist) and a ‘science-fiction’ film. Today, as we watch the evaporation of the Covid19 phantasmal saga of viral apocalypse, we will examine whether Metropolis’ plot was truly anti-realist.
Watching the film almost a century after its creation brings up some existential and perplexing thoughts. Is not Metropolis the most timely expression of our current fatigue with corporate culture, our dismay with ‘science’ and ‘technology,’ and our fatigue of our deeply rotten and uniquely ungifted political class? I suggest that back in 1927, the creators of Metropolis understood the current dystopia and its ontological roots better than some of our most venerated contemporary ‘intellectuals.’ Accordingly, I believe that rather than as ‘science fiction,’ ‘an astute prophetic message’ is the best description of this ambitious moment in German cinema.
The film was directed by Fritz Lang and written by his wife,Thea von Harbou, in collaboration with Lang. It is important to note that Lang escaped from Germany in 1933. Lang, it seems, didn’t approve of the Nazi regime: his wife, however, stayed behind. After the war, Thea von Harbou was imprisoned for collaboration with the Nazis. I don’t intend to examine whether Von Harbou was a ‘Nazi’ or not, but I will support the argument that Metropolis was probably the definitive and most prophetic ‘National ist Socialist’ (as opposed to National Socialist) masterpiece.
Metropolis was created in Germany during the era of the Weimar Republic. It is set in a futuristic metropolitan ultra capitalist dystopia that isn’t so removed from the reality of some of our present day Western metropolises. It tells the story of Freder, the son of the oligarch city master (Joh Fredersen), and Maria, an inspirational working class, Christian and saintly character. Together Freder and Maria defeat social injustice and the class divide by means of Herd-Unity. For this unity to occur, a mediator has to come forward to transform the history of social conflicts into a harmonious future. We are exposed to two and a half hours of horror, oppression, slavery, capitalist malevolence and class divide that resolves in the end into reconciliation of an Hegelian ‘end of history’ nature. The cinematic epic exhausts itself when the workers’ leader and Joh Fredersen are shaking hands and accepting their mutual fate and co-dependence. “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart,” is the inter title of the scene, emphasising the ideological and metaphysical motto of the film.
Post WWI Germany was evidently in need of a unifying character who could resolve the class struggle and bond the workers and the capitalists into an integrated organismus sharing an harmonious, unified reality. It would be naïve not to believe that Hitler and his National Socialist party were driven by such a vision. And they weren’t alone. Roosevelt might have been committed to a similar search for such a bond, as was Henry Ford as well as many others.
The film was made in 1925-6 and saw the screen in 1927, during a significant period in terms of German politics and intellectual evolution. In 1927 Martin Heidegger published his monumental Being and Time (Sein und Zeit). Heidegger posited that the history of Western Philosophy is a tale of the forgetting of Being. Heidegger, more than any other philosopher before him, identified the growing detachment that has become intrinsic to modern existence and post enlightenment human landscape.
Another text that was published at that time in Germany that had a far more immediate influence than Heideggers’ philosophical musings was Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925). Though the text is largely described as an ‘anti-Semitic diatribe,’ Mein Kampf wasn’t really a book ‘about Jews,’ though Jews were mentioned occasionally in the text. It was the means by which Hitler, at the time, a veteran corporal and a prisoner, outlined his political ideology and future plan for Germany under his leadership. In that regard, it is interesting to read George Orwell’s 1940 review of the book. Orwell, a voice from the Left, despised Hitler. His review provides an astute critique, yet, he tried to understand the success of Nazism in the light of the total failure of the German working class movement. Not once does Orwell mention Jews or anti-Semitism. In this regard, it is interesting to read George Steiner’s view of Mein Kampf as one of “half a dozen books” published between 1918-27 that resulted from the crisis in German society and culture following its humiliating defeat in WWI. In the introduction to his book about Martin Heidegger, Steiner correctly locates the work of Mein Kampf within the context of its contemporaries such as Ernst Bloch’s The Spirit of Utopia (1918), Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1918), Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption (1921), Karl Barth’s The Epistle to the Romans (1922), and, of course, Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) mentioned above.
While at the time some film critics saw Metropolis as a ‘banal’ communist statement, it was actually an invaluable Nationalist Socialist cinematic revelation as it was critical of both capitalism and communism. By so doing, it expressed the true political spirit and the wishes of many Germans at the time. Like Heidegger and many other German intellectuals who were critical of the enlightenment, the meaning of modern technology and the crude exploitive instrumentalisation of science, Metropolis identified the growing detachment from the Christian and Athenian Western ethos. In a way, the film forecast the nuclear bomb, offered a phantasy of a manmade viral apocalypse, it depicted the reality of concentration camps and even predicted robots dictating the ‘party line’ long before Mark Zuckerberg was born.
Twenty years before Orwell created Emmanuel Goldstein and many decades before George Soros reduced the so-called ‘Left’ into his controlled opposition toy, Lang, together with von Harbou realised that in the eyes of Capitalists and Oligarchs, the fantasy of a ‘proletarian revolution’ is a useful political tool. There is no better means towards total hegemony and oppression than the disasters the masses bring on themselves willingly and even enthusiastically.
While this is obviously the most cynical interpretation of democracy and the prospect of a revolution, it is hard not to admit that this sardonic reading is the reality in which we live.
In 2020 it isn’t Trump or the Tory government that oppresses the masses. It isn’t the White House that deletes Youtube videos of doctors and renowned scientists and it isn’t the British police that close the social media accounts of truth seekers. Instead, it is the private technology companies that dictate a tyranny of correctness in the name of so-called ‘community standards.’
And they are not alone. Corbyn was initially seen by some, including myself, as a refreshing development in British politics. However, it took just a few weeks before many of us were devastated to realize that the British Labour Party under his leadership had quickly morphed into one of the most oppressive authoritarian political bodies around.
In Metropolis Lang ridicules the idea of ‘the revolution.’ He points at the banality and the hopelessness of the masses. In the film, the workers follow Maria’s humane Christian message, waiting for a mediating savior that would redeem the entire class, but when Maria returns in the shape of a robot and delivers the complete opposite message, literally calling for war, the masses follow her and rise up against the machine in what seems to be a suicidal act.
In this, Metropolis managed to capture the menace attached to the Left’s empty and impulsive rhetoric as well as the sinister wickedness inherent in capitalism and its insane abuse of the weak.
The Nationalist Socialism that evolved in the early 1900s promoted social equality however, it flatly rejected the idea of world revolution and cosmopolitanism. In his book, Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg produces an interesting account of the evolution of European Fascist thinking. Italian Fascism, in Goldberg’s eyes, advocated equality of the Italian people. Not such an outrageous concept in itself. German National Socialism could be defined, according to Goldberg, as Socialism of German Speaking people. Again, maybe not the ideal Marxist vision of the world, but not necessarily a racist concept as many people of different origins and ethnicities may speak German. Hitlerism, however, pushed for Socialism of one race. This was an extremely problematic concept as it discriminated against peoples based on the accident of birth.
It is common to look at the distinction between Marxism (or the Left) and Nationalist Socialism from the perspective of their attitudes toward cosmopolitanism versus equality or justice within a given geographical or national context. However, my study of Jewish Identity politics and Zionism has led me to a deeper understanding of the crucial distinction between Marxism and Nationalist Socialism.
In his spectacular book, The Founding Myths of Israel, the Jewish history scholar Zeev Sterhell, reveals that the ideology of Nationalist Socialism, deeply suffocated with blood and soil (Blut und Boden) was also at the core of the early Zionist revolution well before Hitler wrote Mein Kampf and certainly before Fritz Lang and his wife were looking for a mediator to bond the ‘head’ and the ‘hands.’
Sternhell notes that the early Zionist movement saw it as a necessity to bond the ‘workers’ and the ‘owners’ into a unified revolutionary force; the nation or the folk. “Nationalist socialism,” Sternhell writes, “taught that all kinds of workers represented national interests; they were the heart of the nation, and their welfare was also the welfare of the nation. Thus, workers standing beside the production line and the owners of the industrial enterprise were equally ‘producers.’”
“Similarly,” Sternhell continues, “nationalist socialism distinguished between the positive’ bourgeois, the producer, and the ‘parasitic’ bourgeois, between ‘productive’ capital and ‘parasitic’ capital, between capital that creates employment and adds to the economic strength of society and speculative capital, capital that enriches only its owners without producing collective wealth.”
The early Zionist project was very successful in recruiting Jewish wealth and the productive bourgeois into the emerging Jewish nationalist project. Zionism, in its early form, thought of the nation as a cultural, historical, and biological unit, or, figuratively, an extended family. Sternhell points out that in Zionism’s early days the individual was regarded as an organic part of the whole, and the whole took precedence over the individual. “To ensure the future of the nation and to protect it against the forces threatening to undermine it, it was necessary to manifest its inner unity and to mobilize all classes against the two great dangers with which the nation is faced in the modern world: liberalism and Marxism in its various forms.”
In a lucid manner Sternhell relates that Zionism in its early form rejected the spirit of enlightenment – the European bourgeoisie philosophy. “In place of bourgeois individualism, nationalist socialism presented the alternative of team spirit and the spirit of comradeship: instead of the artificiality and the degeneracy of the large city, it promoted the naturalness and simplicity of the village. It encouraged a love of one’s native land and its scenery. All these were also the basic values of the labor movement. Socialist Zionism, however, went further than any other national movement when it rejected the life of the Jews in exile. No one attacked Eastern European Jewry more vehemently than the young men from the Polish shtetl who settled in Palestine, and no one depicted traditional Jewish society in darker hues than the pioneers of the first immigration waves.”
In his reading of the early Zionist movement Sternhell comes to the realisation that the Jewish nationalist movement was Nationalist Socialist to its core. Under this concept, Zion, or more accurately, historic Palestine, the so-called ‘promised land’ was the ‘heart’ that unified the revolutionary Jewish ‘minds’ and ‘hands.’
Two years after Metropolis, Germany faced a horrendous financial crisis that eventually led to the rise of Nazism. It was the disbelief in the Socialist offering and the reality of hard, merciless capitalism that made Germans believe that Hitler was the Heart, the man who brings herd unity and emancipates the Germans from the sons of the enlightenment namely, ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Marxism.’ Hitler lasted in power for about 12 years. His nationalist devotion was complete, his socialism was pretty selective. His reign of power ended in total global havoc. Zionist nationalist socialism, prevailed for eight decades. It started in the late 19th century and came to an end in 1977 with the electoral defeat of the Israeli Labour Party. The party that dominated the Zionist revolution for most of a century literally vanished last month but it achieved a lot before that happened. It won wars while displaying spectacular Blitzkrieg victories e.g.1967, it founded a Jews- only State as it vowed to do, it ethnically cleansed Palestine of its indigenous people, it enacted the most problematic racist, expansionist and nationalist philosophies and tactics and it easily got away with it.
There is a lesson to learn from Metropolis and also from Labour Zionism: if global capitalism is a total disaster then maybe Herd Unity is the way forward; a repeated search for a human bond that transcends race, gender, class, left, right or any other divisive ideology. The push for equality and compassion is precious and the search for that heart that unites us all into one man is a humane endeavour. Labour Zionism eventually crashed because it wasn’t genuine, it pretended to be humane and universal but was tribal and racist to the bone. Labour Zionism vanished because it was a crude Identitarian precept. It was self-centred, it imploded into its own contradictions. It wasn’t ‘patriotism’ that dismantled Labour Zionism, it was the fact that Zionist patriotism was celebrated at someone else’s expense. This is precisely the danger in ethnic nationalism. I want to believe that this type of manifestation of crude chauvinism can be avoided. To be in the world is to live amongst others, to be and let be.
For the heart to bond the ‘heads’ and the ‘minds’ a universal ethos is needed: a humble acceptance of the human condition is crucial. Maybe this very realisation explains the centrality of Christian symbolism and the church throughout the entire Metropolis movie.
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You discussed it here with the Swede:
Video Link
The existence of nations, the existence of national borders are no longer necessary in the modern world. We could easily do without them.
The only reason they still exist is to discriminate based on the accident of birth.
So. What will you anti-racists do? Will you allow a bit of racism/discrimination? If so, how do you justify this?
If you don’t, you are going to genocide white people (bc let’s be honest, only whites would really open borders so much and have so much immigration) and destroy countless cultures.
What China has now could be called nationalist socialism, and it is a great success. And Christianity is said to be making great progress there.
Then there’s Schmitt.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/
Who needs humble acceptance when you got hostility and arbitrary power? That may be the single most influential strand of prewar thought.
hello Gilad, I am a tremendous admirer if your work. I follow the athens model. What I want to do is prrsent a criticism of Europeans, Europeans seem to overlook. and that is that Europeans have a tendency to hubris. Europeans should be proud of their heritage and history they are the promulgators and and creators of the athens method/philosophy. but they should not see this as justification if european domination of the world, that is very un-athens-like. Gilad you should read some of revilo p. oliver. He is very Athens in his thinking but he has fallen to the trap of racial hubris.
I think european nationalist are not natural allies of zionist. that alliance is of american origin, americans have move european nationalist into zionist arms, just as they have moved afghan, Iraqi and other NATO created refugees into Europe. I believe the alliance between american white nationalist and zionist is natural, because the two believe not in racial pride but in racial supremacy along with having to feel ‘blood pride’ about mixed blood and ‘land pride’ about stolen land.
I wish I didn’t have to say this, but america is a plague on the earth and Putin should use his hypersonic missiles to end it. STRIKE NOW! while the asymmetry in hypersonic missile technology exists. there are many good americans but too few in number to justify not destroying America.
Yep, I published this article ahead of the film festival …
Dazzled but not persuaded.
Comparing National Socialism, no matter how finely sliced and diced, with zionism is an absurdity. Zionists were and are jealous of German culture and the cohesive power Hitler summoned by reinvigorating Germanic – Wagnerian myths: zionists imitate that element of NSDAP, and no wonder: the brain trust, indeed the model-makers for the “Hebrew colonization of Palestine” were German-born, German-educated, German admirers; the project of zionism in Palestine was to recreate Berlin on the Mediterranean.
“Hitlerism, however, pushed for Socialism of one race. This was an extremely problematic concept as it discriminated against peoples based on the accident of birth.”
Belongs on the cutting room floor.
Zionism “discriminates against peoples based on birth lineage.”
Hitlerism sought to unify Germans around a shared culture.
When predominantly Jews in the American occupying force carried out psychological warfare to eradicate Germanness from the German museums, theatre, music, architecture and soul in the post-war years, they did so by removing or destroying German art, theatre, music, etc. and imposing in their place Jewish preferences — the very forms of art, literature that were considered abhorrent to the German spirit. That was and is cultural genocide, not “racial.”
(see Capturing the German Eye, by Cora Sol Goldstein)
Correct … Nationalist Socialism is always a successive model …from Early Zionism to current China … this is the point I was trying to make ..
Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts.
All praise to the group of 17!
That is a wonderful essay. There is one crick in the spiteful, pro-imperial text of the Bible and that is Christ’s insistence on justice, mercy, and equality. It is a mantle that has been seized by the people and drawn away from those who wrote the gospels. I am convinced per Joseph Atwill that the gospels were conceived by Josephus who witnessed the siege of Jerusalem by Titus Flavius and was later adopted, along with the holy books and artifacts of the Jews, by the Flavian dynasty of Caesar.
It is a wonder that the gospels, which cruelly lampoon Titus’ campaign from Galilee to Jerusalem, where he laid siege to the city and defeated the Messianic movement, leaving not one stone set upon another, gives rise to a culture that thinks itself so pacific and benevolent. The intolerance of Christians has historically been no different from Jewish intolerance. You only get Christian mercy if you accept the dead young man as your Lord, and preferably take a bite of his flesh and a sip of his blood. Jesus is a non-historical, backdated character who heralds the coming of Titus.
Sorry, I wanted to say something nice about Christian culture, and certainly there is a lot of beauty in the history of Christendom, but Christians are purely hypocrites, who deceive themselves about their own Jewishness, while criticizing and attacking the evil religion they usurped. What I really wanted to say is, Christianity, this filthy religion designed by a Jew to deceive other Jews, ultimately held the Holy Roman Empire to its own standard and tore it asunder, as it has proceeded to disrupt the rule of Kings and Presidents to this day, and threatens to abolish all Earthly authority, even as the Zionists struggle to impose it. The Earth has been at war for 2000 years.
‘Comparing National Socialism, no matter how finely sliced and diced, with zionism is an absurdity.’
! In principle, the two ideologies are virtually indistinguishable.
They share a complete commitment to racial nationalism, an uncompromising indifference to the rights of others, an adulation of violence, a compulsive aggressiveness, and a virtually open contempt for law. What would you say divides them?
Lang was half-Jewish although raised as a Catholic. He claimed that Goebbels summoned him to his office to apologise for not being able to show one of his later films (I don’t think there is independent confirmation of this, though). Lang left Germany somewhat later.
Both ideologies certainly have a lot in common…
High class Aryan Germans such as Heidegger with their roots in some fictional world melded of Arminus’ Germania, Rome and Athens and high class Jewish Germans such as Hannah Arendt his dear friend with roots in Athens and Ahasvarus’ wanderings had more in common than they were different. The difficulty for Germans of either stripe was that the Catholic Church offered the way to unity for them, having sorted the “roots” problem millennia ago. But neither side was generally inclined to the solution implicit in the Catholic Church, having preferred to view her as a backward and primitive, not up to the high standards of scholars such as themselves, although it was the Church itself that laid the foundations for the scholarship by which she was damned.
Nazism was stupid and insane. I don’t get the fascination with Hitler and Nazis. It’s shooting your own white foot. Unless that’s the idea, of course. A lot of Nazis were mischlings or at least not “pure Aryans” as it is easy to see just by their ugly faces. Miles Mathis I think wrote about that.
The film is visually amazing but its story and concept are simplistic. Its power is visual and symbolic. But the idea “the heart mediating the hand and the head”, i.e. elites and workers united, is kind of simplistic and silly.
Our good-hearted host Gilad Atzmon, trying to express some deep feelings here, seems yet unable to escape confusion
He seems to wistfully long for a society of strong communitarian fellow-feeling, as exists sometimes where most people share a common ethnic heritage
But yet he seems to wish this can happen, whilst avoiding dealing with the ethnic questions
As if he wishes the sort of trotskyist universalism really would work out to be a nice thing … except that he really knows that it doesn’t work and isn’t so nice when the cultural marxists etc begin pushing it
Dilemmas for a Jewish-heritage individual who isn’t a Zionist?
Like always you were very convincing.
All Jews are unlikable and suffer from tikkun ollam and need to be seperated from mankind.
Interesting talk though.
One more time: in my view, German nationalist socialism was a “complete commitment” to Germanic culture based on the history, language, music, folklore and myths of the Germanic people.” The notion of race is sloppily, mendaciously used.
Consider:
Fervent Jews recite Psalm 137 daily:
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
Music is salvation. For Jews, salvation was impossible unless on their own [desiderated] land where, as Deuteronomy 6 says:
Jews choose to sulk and deny salvific efforts.
Instead, Hebrews – zionists resolve their sense of loss with seething, murderous vengeance –( as Norman Finkelstein has said, “Jews never forgive, Jews never forget; I like that about Jews.”)
Psalm 137 concludes:
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
In complete contrast, Verdi, a contemporary of Wagner, recast the sentiment of the psalm:
Sing for your salvation, don’t sulk:
O harp of the prophetic seers,
why do you hang silent from the willows?
Rekindle the memories within our hearts,
tell us about the time that have gone by
and instead of clinging to vengeance, Verdi concluded his version of Psalm 137 thus: pray for the virtu — manly courage — to endure suffering and rebuild:
let the Lord inspire a concert
That may strengthen us to endure our suffering.
Another key to understanding differences between German NS and zionism is Susannah Heschel’s The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. Heschel is incensed that the broadly supported movement led by Walter Grundmann
Why shouldn’t a people define their own sense of spirituality?
Thomas Jefferson did much the same thing: in comparing the moral principles of “the philosophers, Jews, and Jesus,” Jefferson wrote:
Further, Jefferson cut away portions of the New Testament that did not speak to his commitment to the morals of Jesus:
Maimonides taught this of Abraham:
That is, Abraham considered his thoughts on what is true to be true for all persons; considered other versions of what is true and worthy of worship to be “stupid,” and even held the right to destroy the ideas of truth and the elements of worship of other people.
Consistent with H Sacher’s statement in 1919, The Zionist movement dates from A.D. 70, the year of the destruction of the Temple and the Jewish State.” In that situation, Rome granted every group the right to worship according to their customs, and also to abide by the rules of the larger community; that, Jews refused to do. They rebelled and were eventually vanquished.
Similarly, German Nationalist Socialism did not demand that Jews think, believe, worship as, i.e. the Christian movement led by Walter Grundmann did; rather, they insisted on their right to worship and maintain their cultural values without interference from Abrahamics— as represented by Susannah Heschel — on their own land. Insofar as Jews were unwilling to cease their interference with German preferences, they were welcome to leave.
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I’ve run out of time to address all of your assertions, Colin Wright, but in general, state here that you’ve merely made assertions, not arguments.
Yes I always get a laugh out of the examples of Aryan manhood in the Nazi leadership : Hitler a regular fop sporting the style of those years, Goebbels who looked like a runt hawking bets at the races and Herr Himmler , with his weak chin and glasses. For sure these fellows would pass as Apollo or Dionysus in ancient Greece.
Gilad – the eternal jewer – only wants his right to travel everywhere and jew as he seems fit.
‘The Earth has been at war for 2000 years’
thanks in no small part to the religion of the Apiru and their so-called god of Abraham. This foul creed, together with its endlessly fissiparous and warring offspring, are truly a curse upon the world.
Was it Akhenaten, exiled from Egypt, who called himself Moses, who united the Apiru?
Comparing apples to oranges.
National Socialism (NS) is more complicated than the Hollywood caricature most people are familiar with.
It was an extension of the rebellion against French rule and culture in German states that had been absorbed by Napoleon. This gave rise to Volksgeist, literally folk ghost but more accurately folk or national spirit, based on the philosophy of Johann Herder.
Zionism is essentially the product of Jews and converts to Judaism failing to assimilate into host societies plus blowback from nefarious activities like Roma or Gypsies.
‘Nazism was stupid and insane. I don’t get the fascination with Hitler and Nazis. It’s shooting your own white foot. Unless that’s the idea, of course. A lot of Nazis were mischlings or at least not “pure Aryans” as it is easy to see just by their ugly faces. Miles Mathis I think wrote about that….’
You’re critiquing the cartoon you’ve been told is Nazism.
Ever wonder why so many observing it at the time thought there was a lot to be said for it?
‘… There is a lesson to learn from Metropolis and also from Labour Zionism: if global capitalism is a total disaster then maybe Herd Unity is the way forward; a repeated search for a human bond that transcends race, gender, class, left, right or any other divisive ideology. The push for equality and compassion is precious and the search for that heart that unites us all into one man is a humane endeavour…’
This is perhaps an attractive notion — but I don’t think it will work.
The problem is, ultimately, that ‘I like coffee and maybe three other people,’ to quote the tee-shirt.
There is ones self, of course, with whom we (hopefully) get along reasonably well. Then there are spouses, children, parents, and kinfolk, whom we at least (kind of) understand and maybe even find congenial.
Friends, co-workers, people of our class, of our ethnicity, of our nation…
The further one moves away, the weaker and more fraught the understanding, sympathy, and common identity becomes. You may wish you could bond with a Shan tribesman from the hills of Burma — but I’m skeptical you’d really find much you could rely on.
No, we’re not all going to sit down and sing kumbayah. It doesn’t work. Sticking with your own kind may not fulfill all your dreams — but it works a hell of a lot better.
Indeed, the difficulty of that for Jews, and the unsatisfactory nature of the solutions they have found to that difficulty (the shetl, Israel) might be a fruitful topic for consideration.
Did you ever think that it was the Jews that wrote these stories that make themselves look so bad? I mean who would write such a story where they are the teachers pet, get free things, and commit mass murder, create jealousy and fail miserably at every test, disappointing their divine deity?
Suffice to say that Jews would agree with many of your conclusions. Jews like Maimonides, and Rashi found all the events that are in the OT, completely baffling and confusing as well as the deity in it. They tried to make sense of it. If it wasn’t for the prophets no one would understand anything. The entire Mt. Sinai experience sounds like an extraterrestrial. Then you read normal stuff like they did a census at Mt. Sinai. A shekel for an adult and a half for a child and you think well that sounds rational..
You have an unhealthy obsession all things Jews are bad, cutting and pasting text and saying look at these nut jobs, so obvious who could like these evil doers. Well they wrote the copy. Doesn’t that ever give you pause?
Verdi wrote the corrective.
That gives me joy, courage, hope. Virtu.
Video Link
O, mia patria, sì bella e perduta!
O, membranza, sì cara e fatal!
Arpa d’or dei fatidici vati,
perché muta dal salice pendi?
I do not speak Italian, but I am sure they are nice words. Thanks
Zionism (more precisely Judaism) is absolutely obsessive about “who is a jew” and who isn’t, and institutes tests (including blood tests) which would likely embarrass the average National Socialist. “Racial Nationalism” is part of this, but this phrase more accurately describes the Germans (with their emphasis on Blood and Soil) than it does the Jews, who are obsessive on this matter wherever they are; and whenever, in all of human history. Has being provisioned with a nominal ‘homeland’ changed the Jews fundamentally? Or has it just clarified a few things about them for interested observers.
Wrong. I’ve read quite a lot about Nazism. Contemporary accounts, and not by Jewish authors. Lots of Nazi material as well. I’m not impressed.
I suppose I get why there are so many Nazi fetishists, it had some style and visual flair, and Leni Riefenstahl’s films are masterpieces, but it is also easy to see why the enterprise was doomed from the start.
If Germans had been more subtle, and smarter, and less arrogant, it might have worked. But it would have been too much to expect that from them.
Also, I’m sorry, but I lived in Germany and know many Germans and I am aware of both their qualities and their defects.
“By one of those eternal contrasts which redress the balance of things, the romance peoples, who excel in the practical matters of life, care nothing for the philosophy of it; while the Germans, who know very little about the practice of life, are masters of its theory.” (Amiel)
“The German admires form, but he has no genius for it. He is the opposite of the Greek; he has critical instinct, aspiration, and desire, but no serene command of beauty. The south, more artistic, more self-satisfied, more capable of execution, rests idly in the sense of its own power to achieve. On one side you have ideas, on the other side, talent. The realm of Germany is beyond the clouds; that of the southern peoples is on this earth. The Germanic race thinks and feels; the southerners feel and express; the Anglo-Saxons will and do. To know, to feel, to act, there you have the trio of Germany, Italy, England. France formulates, speaks, decides, and laughs. Thought, talent, will, speech; or, in other words science, art, action, proselytism. So the parts of the quartet are assigned.” (Amiel)
That’s why Anglos win every time. They are better at doing, at the practical side of things. They can be the greatest son-of-bitches and still convince you they are all about “fair play”.
The whole Mt Sinai story is a post-facto priestly fantasy. Its purpose is to show that the Covenant with Yahweh, ie the contract with the Lord which is the foundation of Judaism, was made with all the people of the Chosen down to the last woman and child, not just their priestly representatives. Thus also all the washing and cleansing etc to ensure that all the correct ritual necessities had been carried out. Otherwise it might be said by Jewish nitpickers that the contract was not kosher.
That the Exodus is largely a fantasy can easily be seen from the radically differing descriptions of the Ark of the Covenant. One is the imaginary over-the-top gold one with the cherubs on top with the magic powers. The other is possibly more like the real thing, a plain wooden box knocked up by Moses, (Deuteronomy 10:1-5) (assuming an actual covenant type event occurred at all).
Erin is a tiny little people and country beside all these world-shaking movements, but Irish bit of revolutionary slogans was simply “Sinn Fein”, which translates as “Ourselves Alone”. That is, the Irish racism was a reaction to hundreds of years of invasion and foreign colonialism. Or as I believe GK Chesterton, an Englishman, put it, “Better a bad government of your own than a good government of someone else’s.”
It’s also important to understanding the acceptance of Nazism in Germany to know that the German people had seen, right next door in Hungary, the Communist Bela Kun massacre thousands of Hungarians for the crime of not accepting Kun’s version of Communism fast enough. So it was clear to most Germans that Communism was NOT the way to go.
My two favourite thinkers were hosted at the festival- the Jew and Dr.Jones – both universalists in a menagerie of ethnic nationalists. Hell of a deal and well done in the bargain.
This video brings back memories of the lead up to the war in Iraq in 2003, when Israel and it’s tail (America) were preparing to unleash hell on the poor souls of the middle east. This rendition of VA PENSIERO by Zucchero & Sinead O Connor (1999) would bring me to tears of despair for the children of that wretched peace of earth.
Video Link
What complete idiocy. The Jews represent the polar opposite of not only Nazi culture but also western culture. The Jews are degenerate liars the likes of which the world has never seen and it is an explicit part of their ‘ideology’. That’s the difference in a nutshell, to have it fully explained in great detail get a copy of ‘You Gentiles’ by Maurice Samuel …. from google books ..
??? The Zionist movement has been central to Judaism from the time of Abraham:
It really got rolling several generations later …. around 1000 BC ? …..
Fine. Those fantasies and stories spawned three religions over thousands of years. Tamed the world, and the Jews have been practicing the story of passover non stop for 2700 years. Not arguing with you facts are facts.
And to me nothing in the universe makes sense (why are we here) so it is just another fantasy on top of the pile. Does not change the outcome of life one bit.
What does change the outcome of life is the endless wars based on those fantasies, now taking place in the middle east with millions of dead Arabs in the last 30 or so years, from GW I on and continuing, and always threatening to get much worse. Jews have no regard for anything but their own fantasies.
‘“The German admires form, but he has no genius for it. He is the opposite of the Greek; he has critical instinct, aspiration, and desire, but no serene command of beauty…’
Hence Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Wagner…
‘That the Exodus is largely a fantasy can easily be seen from the radically differing descriptions of the Ark of the Covenant. One is the imaginary over-the-top gold one with the cherubs on top with the magic powers. The other is possibly more like the real thing, a plain wooden box knocked up by Moses, (Deuteronomy 10:1-5) (assuming an actual covenant type event occurred at all).’
Anything recounted in the Bible supposedly happening before about 800 BC can be taken to be pure invention.
The archeological record and other sources never corroborates any of it; it frequently flatly contradicts it.
If I started telling you about my career as an American Civil War flying ace, how long would it take you to become suspicious?
Faroese not Swede.
No need to be pessimistic. The bible has many good bits. I particularly like the image of the two trees in the Garden of Eden. It’s a very beautiful symbol and whoever came up with it was a genius. One is the Tree of Eternal Life, the other is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. You can’t have the first without the second. The rest of the book is an instruction on good and evil. You make sense of it however you can, that’s our task in life.
The motif of the twins is embedded throughout the bible, supernaturally so in my opinion. The priesthood who wrote it were not aware of it so it is not a deliberate invention. Moses has his brother Aaron, Jacob his Esau, Jesus his Paul, and so on. In the beginning Cain has brother Abel and in the end are the mysterious Two Witnesses.
Yes the older in time the story gets the more fantastical it becomes, so this is a giveaway that it’s imaginary. However the priesthood of Yahweh were a tenacious lot so I personally consider that some sort of supernatural events were at the bottom of it.
The situation is similar with early Christianity. The tenaciousness of the early Christians I believe resulted from the fact that many witnessed supernatural events. Not only was Jesus a miracle working prophet*, many people apparently witnessed his various appearances after death, some of the apostles and early Christians supposedly also had such abilities.
Moses is the Jewish version of Jesus, a miracle working prophet who is effectively the founder of the religion. Sigmund Freud proposed that what became the Judaic religion originally came out of the failed cult of Akhenaten. Perhaps Moses, a miracle worker and believer in the Akhenatic religion, inspired a few thousand followers to escape the purge and end up in the promised land. Whereupon the Akhenatic religion of their descendants quickly grafted on elements of the local El pantheon and disappeared, eventually turning itself into the religion of the Old Testament.
The priesthood, who are the real creators of the religion (similar to the Rabbis of today) generated a glorified fake history by a series of retro-fittings. Thus, for example, after the discovery of the fake book in the Temple by good king Josiah, the resulting Passover festival probably was the first such actual festival in history. The ‘twelve tribes’ already existent in Canaan were told that their ancestors actually escaped from Egypt when in fact they had always come from Canaan, etc etc. Did a covenant event actually happen? I follow the theory that this event occurred in Petra, which bizarrely enough has been recently revealed to also be the original site of Mecca.
Of course, as even the priesthood will tell you, the real religion is the story of the miracle working prophets. This is another example of twins motif: the prophet and the priest, priest and king, the two columns at the front of the Temple etc.
*In the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain, he is shown flanked by Elijah and Moses, the two greatest prophets of the Old Testament. I take this to mean that God is showing Jesus that, although the Kingdom of Heaven was not coming as he had hoped, he was still up there with the best.
Also the jerrycan, a masterpiece. The Luger pistol another one. I expect that a lot of German industrialists would say that they have some idea of form, since their products sell like hotcakes. A lot of Greeks are hot for Mercedes, BMW, Porsche etc.
Well, obviously it’s an exaggeration, but with a good deal of truth. Of course the Germans were the best in classical music (which is sort of related to mathematics, so it’s not surprising). And they had some great painters too, Bosch, Cranach, etc.
Anyway, my point had nothing to do with art, but with the fact that they are idealists who don’t have so much flexibility, and so are not so good at the more practical side of things. No swing, no savoir faire, too rigid.
Also, with the fact that Nazi Germany was a failed experiment that basically sucked for all who were not German, and even for some Germans too. I don’t like authoritarian regimes. I’m not German. I don’t even care so much about Germans. I can believe very well that in the Nazi era they killed children, old ladies, dogs and anyone they didn’t like. Well, maybe not dogs. They love dogs. Even Hitler loved dogs.
The Tiger I grows on me with the passage of time. Also, the Ju-88.
Kathe Kollwitz is pretty good as well. And Klimt, and Egon Schiele, when he stays away from his own genitalia. Leni Riefenstahl, of course. Some Nazi posters are good, although I think their attempts at more formal art fall flat.
‘… Also, with the fact that Nazi Germany was a failed experiment that basically sucked for all who were not German, and even for some Germans too. I don’t like authoritarian regimes. I’m not German. I don’t even care so much about Germans. I can believe very well that in the Nazi era they killed children, old ladies, dogs and anyone they didn’t like. Well, maybe not dogs. They love dogs. Even Hitler loved dogs.’
I realize this is mildly offensive, but to be completely frank, I suspect you’re just worried you might wind up not unreservedly condemning Nazi Germany if you let yourself consider it with an open mind.
I mean, it’s all very well if you let yourself go and wind up at the end of the day deciding it really was worse than liver with onions — but what if that’s not your conclusion?
Then you’re a…a…well, I won’t even say.
But I don’t “unreservedly” condemn it. I’m not “worried” about anything. The Nazis are not coming back, thankfully. Despite all the Antifa scaremongering about “Neonazis”, it’s all a clown show.
As revolutionary regimes go, it was better than early communism in Russia, I’ll grant you that. I guess it was positive for the average German at the time. I just don’t admire it. I don’t like it. I don’t like its authoritarian mentality. I don’t like its aesthetics. I don’t even like Germans as a people very much. Are you German? It’s strange to see anglos fan of Nazi Germany. I’m not a Nazi fetishists like many here. Deal with it!
The corona virus spectacle is such a low brow modern mass man theatre of herd unity, I guess modern mass man has a need for big drama in his petty over-regulated life. Then, engaging in a drama of fear where he-together regulates everything and himself even more is exactly the kind of theatre, sentimental group play he prefers. Primary unsophisticated emotions like fear as the basis, combined with incestuous group sentimentality, ‘stay safe’. The scenery of the collective theatre can be seen on the streets and shopping malls. The scenery of the drama is played out on locations which are mass man’s favorite, and through occupations which are his favourite, locations and occupations where he normally finds relief of boredom, where he fill his stomach and where he shops are now bizarrely theatrically empty. His favourite hobby, moving horizontally in his car, is temporarily renounced, in exchange for a collective group play, a group soap opera.
All this on a global scale, typical of modern mass man, played out on the only level of unity that herd is ever capable of, on the basis of basic instincts, primitive mass emotionalism, and soggy sentimentality.
It is the best theatre modern mass man can make, unsophisticated basic emotions, group heroism by means of a temporary renouncing of the usual obsessive activities, socializing, eating, shopping, and even the activity, according to mass man and his demagogic leaders, the most holy of all, work, and a terrain the most holy of all ‘the economy’. Renouncing such pleasures and obsessions of boredom, symptomatic of his condition, and playing this out on his favourite terrains and activities is the best of heroism this degenerated being is capable of, the best of what he is allowed in his condition of self chosen slavery. Even the choreography of social distancing is typically his, characterized by uniformity in spirit and movement, the dance which he plays with his choreography, other than producing chaos and destruction, the best he is capable of, while wearing masks of uniformity, acting it out on his mass man consumerist-work-slave stage. His choreography written and ordained by modern oracles, the modern priest class of experts.
The elevated subject of the drama: The Herd is Endangered.
The object of the heroism: Protection of the Herd.
Come and see the play, now playing in the Theatre of the Media, the favourite theatres of the herd.
Modern man, this spiritually degenerated hyper-regulated animal is more and more in need for such mass theatre and collective play, and elites are very eager to provide him with the foundational narratives.
not to mention the success that even Atzmon enjoys in training people to think of themselves as a “herd” — dumb, easily led cows.
By amplifying the concept, Atzmon’s “I’m no longer a Jew” mask comes off even as his co-ethnics observe with smug satisfaction how members of the herd enforce wearing the ritual mark of the dumb beast among their own fellows.
‘But I don’t “unreservedly” condemn it. I’m not “worried” about anything. The Nazis are not coming back, thankfully. Despite all the Antifa scaremongering about “Neonazis”, it’s all a clown show.
As revolutionary regimes go, it was better than early communism in Russia, I’ll grant you that. I guess it was positive for the average German at the time. I just don’t admire it. I don’t like it. I don’t like its authoritarian mentality. I don’t like its aesthetics. I don’t even like Germans as a people very much. Are you German? It’s strange to see anglos fan of Nazi Germany. I’m not a Nazi fetishists like many here. Deal with it!’
Alright then. However, I do like Germans — as does my wife, who is from El Salvador. I’m not particularly German myself, either. Sort of general Northwest and North-central European. In just about every respect, I’d rank Germans among my top choices, if not necessarily number one in all categories.
I think one of the interesting things about admiration of Nazi Germany is that the typical reasons for liking it now tend to be very different from the typical reasons for liking it then.
Speaking at least for myself, the reasons for liking it now fall into two categories. First off, there was its staggering military proficiency. It’s fashionable to ‘debunk’ this fact — but it remains a fact. Hey: everybody likes the star athlete.
Secondly, Nazi Germany was so politically incorrect. If you want to really thumb your nose at current mores, screw getting a Confederate battle flag. Fly the Swastika. That’ll say it — if you actually want to say it. I really get off on pointing out to people that the Nazis were against smoking. That causes a short circuit, alright.
But back then, the weight of gravity was entirely different. The great social dilemma was how to deal with the class conflict. The Red terror, bloody in tooth and claw, was a real threat. On the other hand, few really wanted heartless capitalists driving the workers back into their tenements and forcing them to labor endlessly in hopeless penury. There had to be some way of resolving the class war to everyone’s satisfaction — but what was it?
Nazism seemed to offer a way out — seemed to have succeeded — and that was most of the appeal then.
And not only a robot, but a lifelike android at that. Truly, this film was far ahead of its time.