1. The time-compression of a film can give the misleading impression that the bombings and assassinations were daily fare in Germany. One must remember that they were stretched out over ten years (though there were several dizzying bursts, as in May 1972), and “life goes on” just as it does for us in America despite the urban crime that is daily happening all around us. Nevertheless, the events did create a social tension that was felt by everyone (and still is).
2. It does not have time to stop and reflect on the underlying issues.
3. Poetic license has been taken. The gang is shown as sexually libertine, Ensslin shouting “fu@%ing is the same as shooting” to the confused Arab at one point. But gangsterette Brigitte Mohnhaupt, released from prison a couple years ago, has sued the film for defamation for depicting her in a promiscuous situation. So this is a danger of filmmaking that must be kept in mind: what is real and what is extrapolated?

I have had general acquaintance with the story of the Baader-Meinhof gang for at least three decades now.  There are ethical issues and tactical issues, all of which may have continuing relevance as it looks more and more as though our people are going to have to rise up, eventually, and attempt another war of independence sometime in the next generation. And that war will clearly not be lines of clam-diggered musket-shooting gentlemen facing each other.

Here are some striking features about the movement:

• The gang was marked by intense loyalties, so that much of the action was aimed at rescuing captured comrades and/or inducing the government to release them. Usually, the targets were deliberately selected as responsible for the persecution of their comrades, or as willing agents of a system that needed to be destroyed because of its injustice. Thus, a distinction needs to made between this group and terrorists that select victims at random.
• Though ruthlessly violent, quite possibly a majority of the major players were young women.
• Though the movement was self-consciously leftist, it is interesting as being a peculiarly non-jewish and even anti-jewish form of leftism, even while seeing itself as “anti-fascist.” Thus the American jewish press, that is (to say the same thing more briefly), the American press, has been somewhat more negative toward the gang compared to its normally indulgent attitude toward leftist terrorists. By itself this is a reason to take a closer look.
• In addition to some wild-eyed fanatics, the movement included some serious intellectuals, including especially Horst Mahler, who in the meantime has become a full-blown National Socialist. What is interesting is that he does not see his current position as a radical break with his earlier activities. Mahler will be worth while discussing in much greater detail anon.

Some Key Events

Though the Huffman site linked to above should be consulted to get the fuller story, it might be helpful to extract a briefer summary as a preliminary orientation. It will probably aid to scan these events prior to viewing the film, as the events depicted may be confusing without some prior orientation.

To set the context, one needs to recall the student demonstrations during the 1960s on US campuses, which protested the Vietnam War, oppression by right-wing dictatorships, and world hunger. Similar demonstrations took place in Germany, but there, there was in addition a guilt-driven specific reaction to the “fascism” of their parents’ generation, which many thought was continuing under the guise of American-dominated capitalism. In contrast, the American youth movement was to a far greater extent merely hedonistic, since in rebelling against their parents’ generation they were rebelling against a generation they had been taught to regard as “heroic” in its “struggle against fascism” in WW2. Thus the German rebellion was more existential, touching the deep sinews, while the American rebellion was much more egocentric. I will come back to this theme in a future post.

Now, there was a great deal of balderdash in those demonstrations, on either side of the Atlantic, and many were probably instigated and pushed by communist front groups. However, we must recall that there are many different motivations that might lead a young person to show up at a demonstration. There is the hard core, but they are few. For others, it is just something to do. One is part of an “event” that is covered on the news. You get to hang out with friends. There are those that feel sympathy from youthful idealism even if it would not have taken this form spontaneously. There are those that are curious onlookers, who would like to be there, especially if something big might happen. So the presence of a huge crowd does not necessarily mean much. It is the small subset that have true concerns and are not pawns of communist governments that should be of particular interest for us.

In my condensed summary, I will lay particular emphasis on persons and events of international status. Many shootouts, cop-killings, and gang member killings are left out of this account for introductory brevity.

Andreas Baader

1. June 2, 1967:  There is a massive demonstration against the visiting Shah of Iran, in which Benno Ohnesorg, a pacifist that probably was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, is shot by police, quite possibly by accident. It becomes a cause célèbre. The date lives on in memory and is even taken on as a name by a later RAF affiliate.

2. A new “Bonnie and Clyde” dynamic duo emerge from the protest movement, Andreas Baader and girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin. They bomb a department store, and are soon arrested, in early April, 1968.

3. A week later, leftist agitator Rudi Dutschke is gunned down by a citizen in cold blood.

Ulrike Meinhof

The leftist movement pins the entire blame on the Springer Press, and mobs their headquarters. Springer publishes many of the garish tabloids that are read by millions of the working class in Germany. It was considered not only right-wing in orientation, but provocative and scandalous in its approach. The incident was important, among other reasons, because it drew the attention of the brooding, intellectual leftish girl-journalist Ulrike Meinhof.

4. March 1970, the nascent gang is formed, initially under the leadership of lawyer Horst Mahler. Baader has been let out of prison on a technicality but the sentence is reinstated and he is now a fugitive. On April 3, he is apprehended again.

Irene Goergens (l.), Ingrid Schubert (r.)

5. May 14, 1970, the gang pulls off a sensational rescue of Baader. Meinhof, using her reputation as a serious journalist, arranges for an “interview” of Baader for a book to be written. The interview is to be at an off-site Research Institute, and the prison administration is somehow gulled into allowing it. At the Institute, two girl gang members, Irene Goergens and Ingrid Schubert, who had earlier made themselves known to the guard by showing up to use the reading room, “happen” to show up again during the Meinhof interview and, recognizing them, the guard lets them in. A little later Ensslin and another gang member show up at the door with guns, and Goergens and Schubert buzz them in.

Gudrun Ensslin

The gang shoots their way out. The movie shows that Meinhof was supposed to stay behind and feign lack of knowledge but at the last minute bolts with them. Whether that detail is “historical fiction” or not, I don’t know. But as a result of this incident, the Springer press dubs the gang “Baader-Meinhof.” Pastor’s Kid and Baader’s girl Ennslin seems to have been the actual feminine force of the gang, and Baader did not become the top leader until a little later, but Springer’s name stuck from that moment on.

6. After the break, the gang goes to Jordan to receive guerrilla training from a Palestinian group. However, the libertine Germans are more than the Arabs can bear, and after two months they are sent packing.

Horst Mahler

7. In September, Mahler organizes the simultaneous robbing of four banks. One is stymied, but three are successful, netting 200,000 DM, and leading to a surge in recruitments, including Jan-Carl Raspe and film student Holger Meins. This is the first in a long string of bank robberies used to finance the outfit.

8. October 8, 1970, a meeting is ambushed by police, leading to the arrest of Mahler and Goergens among others. Andreas Baader, still at large, becomes the head of the gang.

9. July 15, 1971, a couple of gang members bolt from a police roadblock in Hamburg.

Petra Schelm

Shots are fired; gangsterette Petra Schelm, age 20, is dead.

10. September 1, 1971, Horst Herold is made head of the new Budeskriminalamt (BKA), a federal-level investigating unit similar to our FBI, which is established for the first time in Germany, in response to the RAF gang. This man is well-played in the movie by Bruno Ganz, who played Hitler in the film Downfall.

11. Dierk Hoff is recruited in December, and becomes the bomb fabricator. His most infamous invention is a bomb shaped like a large helmet that a woman can wear over her belly to look like she is pregnant to smuggle the bomb into buildings.

Irmgard Moeller

12. Over a 12 day period in May, 1972, the US Army HQ in Frankfurt is bombed by Baader, Ensslin, Meins and Raspe, killing American Lt. Col. Bloomquist; the Augsburg police station is bombed by gangsterettes Moeller and Luther in retaliation for the earlier shooting in that city of one of the gang members; Baader, Meins, and Enssler set off a huge car bomb in Munich; the car of Judge Buddenberg is bombed by Baader, Raspe, and Meins; the Springer Press building in Hamburg is bombed by Meinhof and Stachowiak; the US Supreme Command in Heidelberg is bombed (Moeller and Luther again), killing three Americans.

13. Over a two-week period in June, in three episodes, Baader and Meins, then girlfriend Ensslin (who foolishly let a gun bulge out of her jacket while shopping), and finally Ulrike Meinhof, are all nabbed.

Holger Meins

14. The “Black September” terror attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics takes place, seen by the whole world.

15. On March 3, 1973, Palestinian terrorists kill American diplomats in Khartoum. Among others, they demand the release of the Baader-Meinhof gang, but their demand is not met.

16. November 9, 1973, Meins dies of self-imposed hunger strike. Riots break out as a result, and the next day, Judge Drenkmann is assassinated by the gang.

17. The same month, Meinhof’s suggestion of an interview between Jean Paul Sartre and Andreas Baader actually takes place!

18. Feb. 27, 1975 the CDU (~our “Republican”) candidate Lorentz is kidnapped in Berlin. Five terrorists are released as ransom and given a plane that takes them to Yemen. However, Horst Mahler refuses to be released under these circumstances. Lorentz is released unharmed.

Susanne Albrecht

19. May 21, 1975, the big trial begins in Stuttgart in the newly constructed Stammheim prison courtroom. The courtroom was constructed at a cost of DM 15,000,000. The roof is covered with jagged razor wire to prevent helicopter landings and steel nets to prevent any potential airborne bombs from doing damage, and the entrance has a sophisticated metal detector.

20. May 9, 1976, Meinhof hangs herself in her cell.

21. June 7, 1976, the famous hijacking of an airline from Israel to Idi Amin’s Uganda. A number of the gang are involved. They demand the release of Baader-Meinhof gang as well as others. The Israelis swoop down and kill them.

22. April 7, 1977, the gang murders Attorney General Siegfried Buback in Karlsruhe.

Brigitte Mohnhaupt

23. July 30, 1977, upper-class Susanne Albrecht with Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar “pays a visit” to the home of Jürgen Ponto, a friend of her father’s and chairman of the Dresdner Bank. They gun him down.

24. Sept 5, Hanns-Martin Schleyer, an important industrialist, is kidnapped after no fewer than three bodyguards around him are gunned down.

25. Oct. 13, 1977. In concert with the Schleyer kidnapping, Palestinians hijack a Lufthansa plane to Mogadishu, Somalia, demanding the release of the Baader-Meinhof gang. A German swat team secretly lands there and storms the plane, killing or capturing all the hijackers.

Jan-Carl Raspe

26. As a result of this, the gang leaders throw in the towel. Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe commit suicide in their respective cells. They were in communication with each other by using jerry-rigged radios hooked up to the power lines. A day later, Schleyer is murdered and his body dumped. (Later, Nov. 13,  Ingrid Schubert hangs herself.) On Oct. 27, Baader, Ensslin and Raspe are interred in Stuttgart, with thousands in attendance. The public plot was provided, against public outcry, by order of Mayor Romfred Rommel, son of the great WW2 General.

Thus ended the so-called “German Autumn.” A film (Deutschland im Herbst) was made by the New German Cinema group to document the events, with a leftish spin.

This was the high-water mark. The gang continued for two more decades, but the founding nucleus was gone.

Guises of Inge Viett

There was a time when we would have all written this movement off as simple communist evil. The suspicion can scarcely be suppressed, that the gang was helped by and thus collaborated with communist governments — think of the procurement of weapons, the communications gadgets, the forged documents, the ease of international travel, the network of safe houses. (Some [e.g. Susanne Albrecht and Inge Viett] actually escaped to the “German Democratic Republic” and cooperated with the Stasi, being arrested only after the wall came down.) Baader, Ensslin, and Meinhof all abandoned their own children for the “cause.” Moreover, if the depiction of personalities in the film is accurate, Baader and Ensslin were simply crazy self-indulgent fanatics. However, as mentioned above, there is some reason to doubt the uniform accuracy of the film on such points. Above all, Mahler does not write them off completely, so we should not either. And Ulrike Meinhof cannot be written off at all so easily.

Even if someone accepts support from a communist state — and I am not suggesting that this was true of all the gang members by any means –, this doesn’t tell the whole story from a human standpoint. People are not just cardboard characters called “agent of X.” They have a story, that sometimes leads to willingness, for a cause, to embrace death, to inflict death, even to commit suicide. They must be distinguished from worthless people that betray their country for money.

Not just the case of Horst Mahler, but our new insight into the American problem, is cause to reflect on this matter with more nuance than we all would have once. We too think we are facing a regime that is simply going to act according to its nefarious plan and ignore all objections; a regime that is deaf to appeal. Our rulers meet at midnight to pass laws they haven’t read, on weekends and holidays. We are going to have to extract a number of threads carefully. More will need to be said before the right way to think about this arc of recent history can be considered resolved.

The movie can be rented from Netflix or members can watch on-line as one of their freebies.

Warning: there is a lot of violence, occasionally reaching the intensity of the assassination of Sonny in Godfather. There is also some full nudity, but I should qualify that by observing that the nudity, as often is the case in German films, is not particularly erotic and thus does not seem voyeuristic. There is something perfunctory about its presence in German films. (I can just hear the producer talking with his screenwriter: “Hans, Abe just called from Hollywood. If we want them to distribute the film in America, they insist there be at least one sex scene. Do you think you can work it in?”) German nudity has a tradition going back to the barbarian days, when the women goaded their men into realizing the cost of military defeat by baring their bosoms as the men marched into battle. I wonder if the German appropriation of nudity is as a result somewhat different from that of us, as consumers of jewish Hollywood. It may help explain the acceptance of photography even in the street-level press that shocks our Victorian sensibilities, despite the generally exemplary German Sittlichkeit. Nevertheless, fair warning.

1. The first defect of the film is that it is not about anything. It lacks a dramatic crisis or a real point. Nothing resolved, nothing settled, as Patton said. Nor does it even leave us with a good question to ponder. On the other hand, it is too full of extrapolations to function as a good documentary. Thus, it is confused about its own genre. It is not fully a documentary, and not fully dramatic myth. Possibly, this defect could have been remedied by a different approach to the editing — perhaps by showing the end first then telling the rest of the story as flashback. I don’t know: a film expert could help here.

2. In its effort to be “fair,” the authors bend over backwards to develop sympathetic parallelism between Yankee and Confederate. This is done by dredging up Joshua Chamberlain again, just as in Gettysburg (1993). Chamberlain is about the only Yankee anyone can find that was at once interesting and morally compelling — while the Confederacy was veritably bursting at the seams with such characters. But despite being the best Yankee exemplar, Chamberlain was a schoolboyish moralist and robotic soldier, and hardly an equal match to the towering Jackson. Perhaps he could have been lined up with better parity against a Southron whose youth might compensate for his natural cultural superiority, say, Captain Pendleton, or any of a hundred other young officers of the South. But what could Shaara do to create a good compare-and-contrast within rank, given the actual historical stock of characters? Nothing. That is the point. The Confederacy trounces Yankeedom on this score: a different tack is needed.

3. Predictably, far too much time is spent on the slave question. To its credit, the film is honest enough to depict Southern slavery as a loving and Christian domestic arrangement, in which the Negroes (at least, the house servants) were incorporated intimately into family life. But it feels the need to portray the deepest desire of both Jim and Martha to be “freedom” — though apparently not the kind of freedom found in Africa — leading to irrelevant rabbit trails. The film had to do this, to avoid being shouted off the screen by the kikenpress. (But the kikenpress shouted them off the screen anyhow.) At the end of the day, this footage simply adds tedious minutes to an already-too-long film, and for no good purpose.

4. The battle scenes are long yet add little insight into the battle dynamics. Especially Fredericksburg: I suppose the authors wanted the electrifying scenes with the Irish Brigades — and they are indeed good — and thus were forced to add enough time to other facets of the battle to maintain proportion, to avoid conveying the idea that that face-off was what the battle was all about. As a result, it ended up too long.

5. The kind of trivia that is included betrays Shaara’s juvenile method of studying history. It is like a high school term paper in which the boy has to work in every detail culled from books and duly recorded in his stack of note cards. He has obviously combed through the books with an eye for the odd detail. Thus, inevitably, we need repeated exposure to Jackson’s love of lemons. The scene of the enemy soldiers trading ‘baccy and coffee at the river is charming, but what does it add to this story? Same with the beautiful but irrelevant Northern Lights. Jackson was a wooden pedagogue, and did indeed repeat a lesson “word for word” until it took, but again, is this important? He was born to be a hero of his people and humble man of God, not a college pedant. Shaara’s kind of history feeds the water-cooler bore that is filled with “ain’t that something?” little factoids about an historical epoch or personage, but has no insight into the real issue or man.

All of these observations support my belief that the film could have had a good hour cut from its three-and-a-half hour presentation, and would have been the gainer. Think Godfather. Every line, every scene of a great film contributes to the total effect. Less is more.

At least one of the stock criticisms of the film does not hold up: the elevated diction of several of the characters, they say, is stilted and unrealistic. First, such diction is not surprising from Southrons that were more formal in interaction, well-educated, and lovers and livers of poetry. Some of the speeches would have been thought-through in advance, like the farewell speech of the Fredericksburg mother. Second, even absent that, an elevated diction would be appropriate in a story that though historical is at once also mythic.

As to the lack of coherence that bloated the film, the invention of the DVD means we can do the editing ourselves now. And this leads to pointing out what is wonderful about the film. It is the detached scenes which, hanging by themselves like so many artistically-done family portraits in an album, project great sentiments and great moments of a great people. Here is a list of just some of them:

• Lee’s meeting with Blair, where he turns down the offer of commanding the Union Army
• The long-haired speech at the Virginia Assembly, explaining the circumstance that makes it imperative for the Citizen Army of Virginia to rise up
• Jackson’s Scripture and prayer with his wife after being summoned
• The piano and flag-knitting scene in the home of the Virginia family sending two of their sons into service
• The cry of the Irish brigade
• Lee’s explanation to his adjutants of how the Southron’s motivation differs from that of the Yankee
• The Christmas party in the fine Virginia household
• The Bonnie Blue Flag rendition in outdoor assembly
• The flanking attack at Chancellorsville
• The funeral procession back at VMI

These scenes, and a few others, are powerful. They ratify and deepen our appreciation of the greatness of the Old South, and through her, of what human society is capable of becoming by the grace of God. Despite its many weaknesses, the force of the film does make it clear that Lincoln’s War was a battle waged by pagans and apostates against Christendom.  As in Augustine’s City of God, the story is told concretely, not just as an abstraction. The title is apt: generals serving different gods. Or, as Augustine would put it, the demons, versus the living and true God.

Do acquire this DVD — renting it will not suffice — and regularly cherry-pick it as a rich and nourishing album. With that understanding, I give it a BIx 6.

Okay, movies are the stuff of dreams, right? So forgive me my dream. For the seven people in America that still haven’t seen this great film, let me hasten to explain that the above summary is pretty accurate, except for the changes you would expect when you realize that Hollywood was controlled by the same trans-national tribe that pulled off the Russian Revolution. Thus, hero- and villain-nation are interchanged; replace “Chernov” with “Major Strasser” of the German Reich, and you have the story. (In the event, of course, things panned out the opposite of what I hopefully indicated above. The Soviets triumphed, enslaving East Europe for a half century, decimating the church, and bringing about more than 100 million unjust deaths, according to Solzhenitsyn. And we “allies” — our hands our bloody with that outcome as well!)

Despite the propaganda at its base, only Godfather can contend with this film to be named the greatest of all time. The elements that propel its greatness are the choice of actors (right down to the bit parts), the tremendous dynamic of the romantic triangle, the waste-free dialogue, and not least, the music, especially the engaging jazz piano — now tender, now raucous — faked by Dooley Wilson.

The crisp dialogue is particularly effective with Bogart to pull it off.  Examples:

• Excuse me gentlemen, your business is politics, mine’s running a saloon.
• I came for the waters. (Waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.) I was misinformed.
• (After a gun is pulled on him) go ahead and shoot; you’d be doing me a favor.
• (Yogi-Berra-like: Capt. Renault is) just like any other man, only more so.

Claude Rains as the French pragmatist prefect of police adds humor with lines like “How extravagant you are throwing away women like that. Some day they may be scarce” (15:50) and “round up the usual suspects.”

Little hints of a bygone era can be noted in passing.

• Ilsa asks for the “boy” at the piano (27:30) — he was a “boy” of 47 — and there is an asymmetry of who uses first-name, and who uses “Mister” and “Miss.”  Yet I have never heard leftist film critics demand that such a bigoted film be boycotted: I guess a few put-downs are okay if done in service to the Chosen.
• Another is the confident power of the female. Rather than being so quick to gush “I love you, too,” modern women would do well to study the oldies. Lazlo:  “I love you very much, Ilsa.”  She, laughing: “Your secret will be safe with me.” (59:50) Again, Lazlo: “I love you very much, my dear.” Ilsa: “Yes; yes, I know.” (1:17:30). Sixty years of feminism have weakened, not strengthened the power of women, at least in the realm of love.

Many serious critics suggest that the film is nothing but schlock, clichés. It has drawn the attention of no less a luminary than semiologist Umberto Eco, who suggests “Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology… When all the archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths. Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.” But if these are clichés, maybe the question needs to be inverted — why do certain themes lend themselves to becoming clichés? Is it not the very deepest sinews of life that are most in danger of being trivialized? There are few clichés dealing with personal hygiene, or the need for sleep.

More seriously, the film is laced with dishonesties. The pickpocket explains, “This is the customary round-up spot for refugees, liberals, and of course beautiful girls…” (Thus in one line the meme is planted that conservatives are the persecutors of liberals amongst whom are the beautiful people.)  One of the great scenes — Laszlo striking up La Marseillaise while the Germans are singing Wacht am Rhein — was cribbed right out of Grand Illusion.  There are vicious anti-German slanders, like Carl’s “I have already given him the best [table], knowing he is German and would take it anyway.” Renault: “I told my men to be especially destructive. You know how that impresses Germans.” The producers, who, despite their genetic chutzpah, perhaps felt they were nibbling at the outer limit of credibility, balance those slurs a bit by including among the refugees  a jovial German couple (or at least, German-speaking): “Sweetness, what watch?” “Ten watch.” “Such much?” Thus, the movie is not completely dishonest at the secondary level: you can only push so far. Major Strasser (played by the same Conrad Veidt that did the zombie in Caligari) chuckles amiably when Rick identifies his nationality as “drunkard,” bows graciously to “Mademoiselle Lund,” and follows strict protocol in the police office; whereas my “Major Chernov” would have cut to the chase with a simple bullet to the head. In other words, the jewish-bolshevik way of doing business, if imputed directly to the Germans, would have failed the credibility test for anyone that has actually met a German; so they are shown as relatively decent, sentimental, and law-bound like us, but insinuated to be monsters.

Despite the tapestry of tricks and the fundamental lie the story is based on, this film must still rank as a great, and I give it a BIx 10. We can perhaps gain a perspective, that truths at one level can be conveyed even by arrant lies at another. Of course, it is also just plain fun to watch, and without a dull moment. At the end of the day, that is the main thing for entertainment, no?

The cloak-and-dagger of the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” charge against Iraq is treated, but the major premise is left untouched, namely: suppose (contrary to fact) that Saddam Hussein did have “WMD’s”. So what? Many countries “have WMD’s,” most notably the USA; and what WMD’s Iraq ever did have were supplied by the US. This is yet another example of the importance of unpacking both the major and minor premises that usually lie buried and disguised in modern political rhetoric. Mastering this skill is the single most important thing needed to unmask the designs of our rulers, who have put the minds of our people into a virtual stupor through the endless sports and media broadcasts.

The biggest lacuna of the movie, however, is the elephant in the living room that is completely ignored: the jewish influence in all this. The buddhist jew  Oliver Stone acts as though there were no neo-cons shilling for a foreign policy devoted to Israel forever: Wolfowitz is present but largely silent; AIPAC is absent; the chattering Kristol and Krauthammer and cronies are completely absent.  As if W’s regime was actually all about oil! He supplies “documentation” that oil was the motive in a file included on the DVD, but a scan of this documentation shows that it does not support his thesis at all: it is simply other journalists making the same allegation, or arguments for why oil should be a concern.

It is thus the double switcheroo. Jews coerce America into a war against jews’ enemies. The right wing falls into line, and by making war the only non-negotiable in debate, is neutralized on every issue except war. Then, other jews “expose” the lies and injustice involved in the war, leading to a regime change in which the jewish communists take over the domestic control (while continuing the wars as well).

The genius of the hebishkeitsreich over the last 30 years has been in polarizing Americans between the Republican Party — shill for jewish foreign-policy goals, and the Democratic Party — shill for jewish domestic communism.  We fight over whether to favor the one or the other, and completely miss how both sides serve the interests of our traditional tribal enemies. The nattering heads get us into heated arguments as to whether Iraq has WMD’s, and after a while it seems beyond debate that, at least if they do, we are justified in attacking them.  At length, we are justified in attacking even if, as Major Strassor said, “the reasons are a little vague.”  So it is that the “rulers behind the throne” trick us. You would think conservatives would finally learn. One would have thought good Catholic boy and neo-con pawn, former Penna. Senator Santorum would have learned from his defeat in the anti-war backlash. But no. He has not. Has anyone, once the deal with Mephistopheles is made?

All of this is not to mention the 9-11 itself, which is taken at face value throughout the film. I see the fingerprint of Mossad, with US acquiescence, etched clearly on the events of 9-11. Jew Stone, who in any context not favorable to jews sees a conspiracy behind every bush,  apparently sees nothing odd about 19 skinny Arab boys that overpowered strong US pilots at close quarters, killed them — not one attack going amiss –, gained control of the airliners, and then held their wrists steady while plowing their vehicles headlong into obstacles. Try doing that on your bicycle, at slow speed. Then, imagine that this is your first time on a bike.

The sinister Cheney is well-played by Richard Jew Dreyfus — another bit of chutzpah if there ever was one! Laura (Elizabeth Banks) comes across as quite a babe. The ever-venerable James Cromwell does HW and the unflappable Scott Glenn does Donald Rumsfeld.  Josh Brolin does a nice job in the title role.

Not surprisingly, my sympathy for the W was actually increased by the movie. If you fill in the lines between the dots according to reality rather than Stone’s propaganda, the W actually starts to look less like a tyrant and more a hapless ignorant dupe.  He comes across as a man whose weaknesses were played like a fiddle as he was washed away to sea by forces that he may have been completely unaware of.  This movie is meant to be a post-mortem, but it may actually, willy-nilly, be an instrument of W’s rehabilitation.

To understand the function of the title concept as well as what they do with it, it is necessary to recall the function of the Blonde as a cultural symbol. Fortunately, the dishonest “dumb blonde” stereotype is punctured by the film itself in a shopping scene. Instead, the Blonde here functions as the character-type of someone that is not only smart, but open, benevolent, happy, gregarious, honest, polite, hard-working — in short, everything that is to admire about the Aryan (except the here-absent spirituality and reserve). But those very qualities lead to vulnerability when surrounded by hostile forces. It is interesting that German blauäugig, literally “blue-eyed,” has the figurative meaning naive, gullible. The “dumb blonde” taunt of swarthy competitors is, ganz typisch, accepted and appropriated by Blondes with naive happiness: “Yes, we are dumb, but we have more fun!” they gush, never suspecting in their open-hearted way that they are actually also smarter than their envious oppressors.

Oh yes, the plot. Let’s see… pretty Hollywood sorority-girl (Reese Witherspoon) is dumped by boyfriend (Matthew Davis) before he heads off to Harvard Law. To win him back she studies up and goes there herself. At first rejected by all as a silly bimbette, she hunkers down and becomes the class star. She then spurns the former boyfriend and dates someone else.

The pivot of destiny is worth giving a little discussion to, as it shows good (in the form of trustworthiness) providentially triumphing over evil. The stage for Elle’s ascendancy is set by the insidious intentions of one of the professors, whose unclean motivation leads to putting Elle on a criminal defense team. It “just happens” that the defendant Brooke (Ali Larter) is another sorority gal of Elle’s. She will confide only to Elle (and the reason tricks a chuckle). The confidence leads to breakthroughs that serve her well, leading to a reversal of honor with the Lawyer like that of Haman and Mordechai.

Unfortunately, lots of evil threads must also be listed. “The Bible” is Cosmopolitan magazine. Elle identifies both herself and her dog-idol as “Gemini.” And as is now inevitable, the judge is, of course, a judgette, and a two-fer at that: a Negress. At the trial dénouement (1:27) is a triplet of crying out God’s name in public, which for material girls seems to be something as casual as coughing. The most important thing is “to have faith in yourself” (1:30). Numerous obscenities are planted as acceptable girl talk.

Sometimes the obscenity has a deeply subversive and demoralizing effect. Brooke’s husband was 36 years older than she, supplying a sheaf of motives for her to have killed him, as the lawyer points out. But she “loved” him, Brooke says, and would not have killed him. But why does she love him? Because he is [obscenity deleted] physically well-endowed. So she wouldn’t have killed him. So much for love. So much for “in sickness and in health.”

Barth is supposed to have said that there is only one story — that every story is a retelling of Christ.  But enter Hollywood: the “happy ending” for Elle is the repudiation of what her blauäugig character-type represents. In this story, there is no possibility of redemption or forgiveness: all is now power-grab and vengeance. I am not suggesting that revenge tales are necessarily evil. The Dirty Harry episode Sudden Impact is, I think, an excellent tale of vengeance. The desire for vengeance reflects something of the justice of God, even if we are not to take it into our own hands. There is something amiss, however, in the vengeance of this story. It is interlaced with selfish feminism, girl-manipulation, and race betrayal. The WASP male Warner is dumped viciously and the audience is encouraged to join the lynching with these words: “Vivian [also] dumped Warner. She and Elle are now best friends. Warner graduated without honors, without a girlfriend and without any job offers.” Her reason for dumping Warner –  to dedicate herself to becoming a law partner by age 30 –  is at least as ridiculous as his had been in dumping her. Feminist symmetry is imposed, without hope of redemption.

Simply cutting off men completely would be unappealing to young women, so they set her up with a more supportive and politically plugged-in “hunk” (Luke Wilson), who (the omniscient narrative informs us) is going to propose tonight. His name is Emmett — which sounds similar to the word put on the forehead of the golem to bring it to life and impose power against the goyim. At any rate, the film is clearly a telling of the jewish counterfeit story of godless power-seeking, profanity, and revenge. Who needs the golem any more? Sneering and cackling, we are a jewish nation now. Blonde shicksa, after converting to the degraded ways of her new controllers, is held out as their prize even as her masculine counterpart is dispossessed.

Legally Blonde 2: Red White and Blonde (2003)

If the first was evil in the standard Hollywood-jewish way, this one ups the ante even farther but without even so much compensation as a slightly interesting main idea.

There are additional insults. Right at the beginning, the meme is implanted for beautiful shikse that, if they are not one of the few chosen for the law profession, they  should not shun such outlets as becoming a Playmate. Homosexual memes are laced throughout. The closest Elle comes to prayer in the entire sequence is when she stands in the Lincoln Temple and addresses his statue. (God’s name is indeed continually invoked, but casually, vainly.) The Congressional interns perform a nigger-dance. Elle takes the wheel as they drive from the wedding. The only honest moment in the whole film is that she does not wear white at her wedding.

You will be embarrassed to have wasted even five minutes with this one.

Kikenbrüder Coen

Just as with Woody Allen in his late-period Deconstructing Harry, the true character of the writer/director Coen-brother team is becoming crystal clear. As jews consolidate their hegemony over every aspect of American life, they gain the confidence of self-revelation. Here is an implausible story of impossible characters that are obviously written for the actors (rather than actors being sought to fulfill a pre-existing literary role). In the HBO kikencomedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, actors appear under their own names: the final barrier between fiction and reality is broken down, the guild of actors becoming an end in itself, a world unto itself, as if they were the real world and the audience the corp of pretenders. (And that’s exactly what we have become!) It aims at complete role-reversal, in service to the even more ultimate end of confusion and mockery. Clownish faces for whom nothing is sacred. Brad Pitt appears here as a motiveless and soulless misfit, with no credibility beyond the chuckles one would get from classmates in improv class responding to the mincing and jerking of a spontaneous shtick of narcissism. So too the twitchy mannerisms of Frances McDormand: obviously these are actors that love each other — if the dialectic of mutual- and self-admiration can be called love — and are having quite a fun time watching each other act silly.  Their faces become leering masks of abandoned humanity for whom everything is a joke. Nothing whatsoever matters. Betrayal of the secrets of one’s country is funny, frolicsome; even the “enemy” agent (Olek Krupa) gets quite a chuckle out of it. (And if we can smile at the antics of a woman trying to betray her country in exchange for cosmetic surgery, a fortiori we should be able to wink at jews that betray our country for love of Israel. ) Loveless, nay passionless copulation, for which the frozen face of nude Frances serves as an apt eternal symbol. A sex machine too obscene to describe is meant to add to the hilarity halfway through.  Our Savior’s name is dragged repeatedly through the mud with the F-word.

Jewish fucking kikes! People that create sewage like this, that at once blasphemes God and degrades humanity, are worthy only of nooses and gas chambers. But in our society, they become wealthy.

The anti-theonomists used to taunt that we would re-establish execution for blasphemy. That was supposed to be a prima facie reductio of the theonomic position, as if the mere concept is self-refuting. And many theonomists showed their deep capitulation to the current age by rushing to argue that theonomy does not mean executing blasphemers. But a film like this makes it intuitively clear that if there is one crime that should be punished by the sword of the state, just one, it is blasphemy. That is the fulcrum upon which the entire safety of the nation pivots. Let it be that the technicality of the theonomic thesis is wrong. But these nation-wreckers have got to go. Let the petty ax-murderers go free, in comparison. Christian antinomians, if they express any concern at all, think they can “love” them into the kingdom; and they keep their silent and impotent “loving” going while their nation is destroyed by predators, the people degraded and demoralized, the name of their God made poison, and finally the image of their own bodies being carted off to disappear made funny as well.

These same conservative antinomians think they find the refuge of fellow-spirits in the right wing of the kikenpresse held down, for example, by Michael Medved. Medved gushes about the “goofy plot,” its “cast working at the top of its form,” characters that are “surprisingly believable” and “almost endearing” in a plot that is “intriguing and sometimes hilarious.” The blasphemy matter does not even register in Medved’s mind. Our Christian conservatives bob their heads solemnly at Medved’s nattering chatter, thinking they are part of a broad coalition that will someday, somehow prevail to incrementally “restore standards.”

No. The kikenblasphemy will end when full-metal jacket meets skull, when the word goes out, “spread your blasphemy and sleep with the fishes.”

The antinomian conservatives are commonly flag-waving hawks when it comes to meeting physical enemies by force. There was no talk of “loving the Japanese” into submission, nor any other real or imagined physical foe since then. But for some reason, they think the termites that will wreck the spirit of their nation from inside the borders can be loved into the kingdom.

Execution for blasphemy is actually an inescapable concept. The fact that these destroyers mock our Savior’s name with impunity while Ernst Zundel is seized by US agents and exported to prison for blasphemy against the Holy Myth of the Chosen People indicates what is happening. Soon, Bible-faithful preachers will also be thrown into prison, and those that kill them not prosecuted. (But many that think they are faithful are actually fully reprocessed and platonically reconstructed dupes of the new kikentheocracy. I know this by bitter personal experience.)

As Steve Schlissel pointed out with brilliant insight, the name and honor of a society’s god is always unmockable. Our deposed God, the only God that is, is mocked, and professing Christians chuckle right along.

The basic story is well known, but the detail about the “Valkyrie” plan which was in place for imposing martial law under certain circumstances, and how this was exploited by the plotters as the mechanism to gain control, is perhaps not.  Kenneth Branaugh has a role and in general, the acting is strong.  A moment when a teletype girl reads that the Führer is dead and begins to weep is affecting. The core group of Hitler, Goebbels (well-done by Harvey Friedman), Himmler and Keitel are rather too subdued it seems to me; but it is a relief at least to see Hitler portrayed not as a screeching maniac, but as he actually was, rather soft-spoken and charming. It may be that meetings of the inner circle became taciturn as the enormity of the threat sank in by mid-1944, but intuitively I think not so much.

The movie takes it as a given that Hitler was “bad for Germany.” It is thus another in the new genre of WW2 movies exemplified earlier by Untergang (Downfall) and Sophie Scholl that treats Germany as another victim of Hitler rather than a nation of evil people. Certainly, this is a big step forward from an ethical standpoint. However, Hitler is still presupposed (even if not so depicted) as the Charlie Chaplin-created cartoon-character villain which in reality he certainly was not.

Before listing some real weaknesses of the movie, I would like to discuss one aspect that is often mentioned as a weakness, namely, the performance in English without much effort at “German accent.”

Having actors speak in English, but with a German accent, is fundamentally a device to help the English-speaking viewer identify who the Germans are without actually using German. One must remember that Germans do not sound to each other like they have German accents any more than Americans sound like they have an “American accent” to each other. So the artifact of imposing an artificial accent is misleading at one level. It makes the diction of one group of people seem stilted, acty. There is really no reason to do it other than to aid in identification, and it should be seen as the equivalent of having one group wear white hats and the other black hats. Here, since all the players are Germans, there is no reason for one group to wear white hats and the other to wear black hats. Thus, if the decision is made to render the dialogue in English rather than German with subtitles, it seems like in this case the decision to let the diction be the natural dialect of each actor is a sound one. It gives a naturalness which reflects reality, and which the artificial accent would distort. If anything, the actors could have been directed to strive for a certain uniformity in diction — say, the King’s English. However, within Germany are several distinct accents, so maybe even the non-uniformity of English accent amongst the actors is not a bad thing.

As real weaknesses I would highlight these instead:

The pacing loses steam about halfway through. I started to look at my time-piece after an hour and a half. A good 15 or 30 minutes could have been excised. Like poetry, movies should be lean and suggestive, not excessively detailed. Let Godfather I be the model.

Carice van Houten

Part of the problem may be getting distracted with rabbit trails. Suspense and romance is injected by supplying Stauffenberg with a beautiful family with the ominous hint that their lives would be in grave danger because of the plot. In the event, Frau von Stauffenberg lived 60 more years and passed away peacefully a couple years ago. (But I would like to see more of the lovely Carice van Houten that played her part in this film.)

Interesting is the detail of General Olbricht (Bill Nighy) wanting to delay setting Valkyrie into motion until the death of Hitler could be confirmed, in that he is over-ruled by his subordinates (Cruise and Christian Berkel) yet his instincts prove correct in the long run.  The idea that one violation of chain-of-command set in motion a subsequent one which ended up destroying the conspiracy could have been developed more clearly as a tragic and possibly insightful theme.

The most important lack is the absence of philosophical rumination.  Being led by “lower magistrates,” the coup meets one of Calvin’s criteria for lawful rebellion, but the material justification must still be explained. At least one of the conspirators, Gen. Fromm (Tom Wilkinson), if he really was a conspirator, is shown as motivated by opportunism and envy alone. Precious little is given here except a brief journal entry read out loud at the start of the film, but this is more meant to trigger our well-trained reflexes than actually give an argument.  Moreover, would not the biblical principle call for some kind of public declaration of protest and demand for change prior to setting a plan of assassination in motion?

A second ethical question calling for some elucidation is whether, given that the goal of killing Hitler were justified, it could further be justified to (a) kill the entire staff present at the meeting along with him, while (b) the bomber saves his own sorry skin by slinking out before the blast. Stauffenberg himself was a regular member of the staff meetings; how did he know that other staff members were not secret “good guys” like himself? Is that not murder? I can see reaching the point of saying, “the whole group is going to have to be sacrificed,” provided he included himself in that group; especially, when one considers that his ongoing presence could very well have guaranteed success, since instead of sliding the briefcase under the table, he could have held it on top of the table or even carried it while positioning himself as closely to Hitler as possible.

Yet another important ethical discussion would center on the oath which Wehrmacht soldiers took to Hitler. The movie broaches this aspect at the very beginning and it resurfaces from time to time, but there is little wrestling with it as an ethical problem. Under what conditions, if any, can an oath be abandoned? Can one really lay claim to another Calvinist principle of the unlawful oath in this instance? And if so, would not then the manful thing be to announce the renunciation in as public a manner as it was originally taken? There is something jesuitical in all this: I have more initial sympathy with the soldiers that stuck to their oath to the end than those that violated it without giving very much of a reason that would have been understood in 1944.

Layered over these questions is the tragic fact that the Allies would not have negotiated anyhow. At issue for the Allies was not A. Hitler, but rather Stalin’s desire to consume Europe, and Britain’s and America’s culpable compliance with that agenda to further their own provincial goals. Germany was facing a consortium of bloody men bent on her annihilation, no matter what she would do. You want to scream at these poor desperate Germans, “which part of ‘unconditional surrender’ do you not understand? Do you have any comprehension of the character of your enemies?” Hitler did, of course.

Indeed, this reflection suggests one way the movie could have been made great. It could have taken the tack “what if the plot had succeeded?” and played it out — shown the Allies continuing to stonewall while continuing to turn the German cities into heaps of stone; shown the Soviets marching through Europe and converting, not just part of Germany but all of it into a large Stalinist camp; and so forth. That would have been a moral reflection worth pondering deeply.

HIx 1.

The Matewan incident was a smaller-scale yet still bloody skirmish in the war. The town is quite close to the point where Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia come together. Find it on google maps, and be sure to study the satellite view as well. The incident is interesting in that the the police chief Sid Hatfield took the side of the miners. Adding further interest, he was related to the Hatfields of the famous family feud of half a century earlier.

The movie is rather transparently a communist spin on the events. The leering faces of the company men are almost cliché. Various fictional characters are meant to add spice. The implied internationalism of the proletariat uniting is the movie-maker’s vision, not reality.

Nevertheless, the basic sequence of events is apparently historical. The movie can be watched to gain a preliminary intuition of this very important period in the history of our people. The story of how faceless eastern capitalists wrested control of this beautiful land from the mountain dwellers is merely one instance in the manner of oppression of our people that continues to this day. Understanding how the dynamic works is going to be one necessary means to equipping us for the struggle for our renewal as a free people.

A fascinating narrative of this chapter in our history is given by a man going by the moniker of “Old Man” on Stormfront radio. Believe it or not, the drama opens with the Hatfield-McCoy feud of 1878-89. Old Man explodes some of the popular myths surrounding that situation, culminating in a “now you know the rest of the story” conclusion that sets the stage for the story of the mining companies that follows. It continues with a provocative discussion of the opportunistic betrayal by local elites interested in their own profit without concern for the folk, and the role churches have played. (There is even an interesting digression on the role of predestinarian “primitive” vs “evangelistic” Baptists.) After that, finish the story by downloading episodes 7, 8, 11, and 12 at Old Man’s archive.

I hope to do a great deal more research into this matter and report back; but I don’t know of a better place to get an overview and whet your appetite for more than Old Man’s interesting and thought-provoking series.

Despite its tendentious and misleading spin — a leftist view that ultimately distracts from understanding the true nature of our enemy, which is reduced to comic book caricature — the movie boasts several strong performances, headed by Chris Cooper as the union organizer.

It is spoiled by typical Hollywood touches such as Harris urinating right in front of Kruger at their first meeting, and a blaspheming nephew. Screenwriters Christopher Wilkinson and mystic atheist Stephen J. Rivele, who earlier joined forces for Nixon, are apparently not jewish, but their preoccupation with bowels, bladder, and blasphemy makes one realize that the Hollywood contagion can be caught by goyim.

Apparently running out of fresh ideas, they steal

• imagery of nunnery — Sound of Music
• joke about dogs on hind legs — directly from Dr Johnson
• general tone — Amadeus

Rent it only if you are in the mood for some great music. The music, of course, almost redeems an otherwise terrible screenplay. Diane Kruger shines through as a true German girl. I would like to see more of her. It’s a shame she has to put up with all this wretched hebishness to make a living.

For me, it tries too hard to be funny and hardly ever is. Only once, near the end, in a twist that I won’t spoil, did they trick a good laugh out of me.

However, I recommend it as an introduction to the hebishkeitsreich. This movie — every actor, every line, every gesture, every accent – the talking with mouth full, the gruff rudeness, the ceaseless kvetching, the disparaging, looking-down-nose attitude to others, the gleam in the eye whenever money is mentioned, the pseudonyms, the nepotism, and above all, the casual, perpetual, incurable blasphemy — and all in the context of self-conscious humor, making light of everything — is, quite simply, as hebish as it gets. For beginners at decoding the jew, start by reading this introduction, then rent and watch this movie.

The old men are played by George Burns (né Nathan Birnbaum) and Walter Matthau. F. Murray Abraham of later Amadeus fame plays the mechanic under the car.