Leni Riefenstahl .

[reinier_de_vlaam]

Just before the Athens oplympics I saw Leni's reportage about the '36 Olympics. Must say it was just great, and guess what, many of the hyper modern '04 olympic images resembled the work of Leni Riefenstahl. No matter what you think of her, she was a genius as she's the one that invented most modern sport filming techniques.

 

Now back to modern days: Waving flags in the street, crowds cheering their leader that say nothing, pledges in classrooms/sportevents/etc to flags, glorifying leaders, the idea of 'we're the best' or "there is one group of people that are all bad", controlled press, jailing without trails, etc etc...makes you think about something similar, about 60-70 years ago...doesn't it...

[reinier_de_vlaam]

Oh, wow, I forgot 'invasion of a country with fake arguments'

[nesrani]

Randy, first out, I have no respect or disrespect for christians as against any other body of proponents of a nonsensical (and I believe, often viciously harmful) dogma. I used the lower case because - well, just as I would use it for god.

 

Maybe you're right. Maybe white christian males are having a hard time these days. But I don't see the evidence. I see them ruling the world with a firmer hand than ever before in living memory, with most of the rest of the world's population paying the price. A bit of "propaganda" against that would not be harmful, imo.

 

Finally, I don't think your viewpoint should be banned. I wouldn't defend your right to state your opinion to the death, because I'm sure you can take of yourself, but you can say anything you want as far as I'm concerned. I just think it's ludicrous and laughable to suggest that white christian males are under concerted, organised ideological attack. Their dogmas may be, but that has been going on for much longer than just the last few years of Hollywood. These topdown, rigid, anti-human views of the world will eventually wither on the branch, I hope.

[vic_.]

<I>"That is a fantastically stupid remark."</I>

<P>Another Bob, Coming from you, such a statement is to be expected.

<P>All you have to do is look around you, and you will see that in Western Europe people are looking for some higher meaning in their mundane lives, and by putting down other people it makes them feel superior. The "putting down" takes the form of finding intellectual meaning in the works of those who oppressed people they don't really like in the first place. Granted, there might be intellectual meaning in these people, but they do make a show of rubbing it in.

<P>If you look at Germany and Italy, they don't get involved in such potentially offensive material. They have processed what happened, and moved on, and are in a place of higher understanding. Isn't that what becoming evolved is all about?

[constance_cook]

Reinier:

 

Interesting. Your last paragraph applies to almost every country in the world. If you don't believe that, watch their national holidays, check out their anthems and it might surprise you greatly to find out the latitude the police and military in almost all countries have to detain you, possibly without representation or notification to family or friends.

 

Conni

[Robin Smith]

Well, I think Riefenstaal was a great filmmaker and not such a great photographer. I am interested in her and in Hitler and the Holocaust, in fact it is a fascinating period - remember Churchill was pretty well reviled by all until his worries about Nazi Germany came true. Even Stalin the most suspicious of men never suspected that Hitler would invade Russia. Hitler, as loathsome as he was, was a human being and an extraordinary one at that. Of course Riefenstahl was wrong but she seems to me to be on the scale of Nazi evil a rather low figure compared to von Braun or Alfred Krupp who not only pretty well escaped prison (or were incarcerated for only a short time) they were actively promoted by the west and regained both wealth and influence. We need to study this era in an attempt to understand it.

 

I agree that Sereny's book on Speer is exceptionally good and gives a great insight into the workings of the Nazi mind and regime and LR was much less of a mind than Speer. It is easy to be brave now...

[nesrani]

"If you look at Germany and Italy, they don't get involved in such potentially offensive material. They have processed what happened, and moved on, and are in a place of higher understanding. Isn't that what becoming evolved is all about?"

 

Vic, on the assumption that you're not being sarcastic: I don't know much about modern German political life since I left Germany when I was five years old; however, Italy (where I live) is a country in which the political descendants of fascism are currently ruling the roost, and Mussolini's tomb at Predappio (I think? never been there) is a pilgrimage centre. Italian public culture is uniquely non-self-critical - a central, immovable complacency and love of authority is perpetuated by endless diatribes and polemics - a genuinely spectacular society. That's evolution!

[vic_.]

Another Bob,

 

The world has come a long way in the last 60 years, but still has not reached the end of the journey, and perhaps never will.

 

Back in the early 1940's the British went to their colonies (who were firmly under the British boot), and asked the natives to fight for freedom. Whose freedom? It's laughable. Certainly not for the colonies. One wonders how many natives the British killed over the years. Yet, many fought on the British side. Despite this, the African colonies were not granted their freedom for another 20 years.

 

An ignored story is that many natives were allied with the Nazis. Not because of their ideology, but because it could help them get rid of the yoke of colonialism.

 

Look around you today. Colonies abound. Gibraltar, Malvinas, Hong Kong (till 1997).

 

The jackboot still reigns in many countries, and here we are trying to understand Leni Riefenstahl's brilliance, while ignoring the BS around us.

 

God Save the Queen.

 

PS. Look at China. People are falling over themselves trying to invest there, while their leaders have killed 300,000,000 female infants and foetuses (source: Wall Stree Journal, August 2004).

[nesrani]

Vic - I totally agree with you.

[nesrani]

Sorry - I should have added:

 

Although the example of Gibraltar - as unliakeable a place as it may well be, certainly I didn't enjoy the few days I spent there - as a colony in any but the most limited sense, seems a bit weak. How about Israel as a colonial adventure - to return to the point at which we kicked off?

 

I agree with your view of the British Empire, which was one of the most brutal colonial systems of all time.

[paul t]

Randy, I found your argument fascinating, and rather amusing - for a few

microseconds. <p>

Are you really sugggesting that WCMs are being vilified to the same degree

as Jewish people in 1930s Germany? Because I was recently in Kazimierz,

the district of Kakow which was cleared of every last Jew, who was sent to

Auschwitz, just down the road. Which white Christian US males are being

threatened with that particular fate?<p>

Anyway, what about that Robert Capa? Great photographer, no? But I think

he used a Contax.

[randy_skopar]

Paul, you are responding to something I did not say, so it's hard for me to respond to your response. :-(

 

I'm only comparing the position of white men in America with that of Jews in prewar Germany on two levels: (1) white Christian men are being subjected to the same smears--for political reasons; (2) this propaganda is creating effects. I listed the effects. I didn't say that barbed wire has been ordered for the camps.

 

I hope it is clearer now what I am and am not saying here.

 

But it is dangerous for a free society if the effects I listed are tolerated. Something goes rotten in a society that tolerates, even enforces, contradictions to its basic principles. That is as true now as in earlier centuries.

 

This propaganda also encourages irrational positions. When I point out what Affirmative Action is, compared to what it claims to be, leftists invariably fume, "White men deserve it! Look at slavery, look at Jim Crow!" Or, on the anti-Christian note, "They deserve it! Look at the Inquisition!"

 

You see how irrational this is. They hate the slave owners and the Jim Crow types, but they can't exactly dig them up and punish them, so they agitate to punish the descendants! That's like erecting quotas against the Jews beause they are "Christ killers." Leftists want to punish the Inquisition--retroactively--by blocking the careers of men who are descended from the Inquisitors--in other words, by instituting a new Inquisition. A softer one, but an Inquisition nonetheless. I've not seen my friends burnt at the stake for not going along with PC, but I have seen them fired from their jobs and blocked from further work in their fields. This has been documented. White Christian men have seen their careers destroyed because they wouldn't join in on the parroting of bigotry or the falsehoods of the PC textbooks. Want documentation? I can point you to it.

 

Let me give you an example that does not originate in the academic or business worlds. A friend of mine is a cancer specialist. When he is going over charts at the hospital where he works, he can't think straight because of the din from the radios of some of the minorities in the shared office space. When he once asked that the noise be turned down, he was brought up on charges of racism.

 

Another time, there was a lady under his care who was dying from cancer. She was in agony, so he ordered a morphine drip. The nurses refused to give it. They said the drip had to be authorized by the pain-management committee. The committee was off duty for the weekend, so this dying woman was tortured by terminal cancer for two days and nights before she was given even a drop of painkiller. And members of the pain committee were late for work on Monday, which caused a further delay.

 

Now, listen carefully, please. When my friend filed a protest over the refusal of the nurses, the administration rebuked him for creating racial tension! It seems the nurses who refused the morpine drip were black.

 

When my friend felt that the public should know about this, he wrote a journal article about it. Subsequently, he was was called in and told that his advancement in that hospital was over, and that further insubordination would bring "personnel action."

 

This is all very quiet, nothing dramatic, no camps or stakes or dogs. But people are being ruined.

 

What is alarming is that Americans have begun to nurture policies and messages that are contradictory to our body of law and values. We claim to be past all discrimination--indeed, we beat our chests about it--but we accept government-enforced policies that send white men to the back of some very important lines. We also tolerate openly bigoted messages about white Christian men in our political life, textbooks, and entertainments.

 

Let me pose this to you. Under present conditions, you do not know if the minority doctor in your neighborhood is truly, even greatly qualified, or a quota clown. Because you don't know, you decide to go to a white male. You know damn well if HE got into medical school, he had great scores. And you know damn well there were no quotas mandating how many white man HAD to be graduated. And so you go to this white-male doctor, perhaps bypassing an excellent physician. Or perhaps saving your life from a charlatan. You don't know which. Thus Affirmative Action hurts everyone, even its supporters and beneficiaries.

 

And do you think we are not all hurt by the encouragement of bigotry against white Christian men? Do you not know that the target of the bigotry may change in time? Are you willing to risk hampering if not blocking the contributions of the very people--white men--who have been responsible for 99.44% of the advances in medicine, government, and technology?

 

The Jewish position in all this is tortured. Jewish people recall what was said about them in prewar Germany, and they know the slurs are still repeated in many parts of the world. And many Jewish intellectuals have spoken out against what is being propagated by Hollywood, in the schools, and in the universities. And they are revolted by the idea of hiring on quotas instead of on the merits. They've been there, faced that. And yet, they find themselves on the political left where the bigotry and quotas are generated. What should they do? And what should they do when the Left waxes anti-Christian? Should they join in? Or should they defend Christianity? These are painful choices.

 

None of this is supposed to be mentioned or discussed, and I fully expect to be hounded off the site as others have been. But at least I've brought it to your attention before the ax falls.

 

 

[Robin Smith]

Irrelevant to photography, but Vic's talk of colonies I find interesting. Did not Spain cede Gibraltar in perpetuity to Britain in 1715? What about Ceuta and Melilla? Was not HK returned to China in 1997 as specified in the original "unequal treaty"? What exactly IS a nation and how are its borders decided? Are not most of "the colonies" you talk about Western creations anyway? In which case why do their inhabitants really care about their "nations"? A classic case of this is Iraq, of course, a nation only created in 1922 or thereabouts and certainly not a nation forged in struggle or by a natural race or ethnic grouping in contrast to say Iran which is indeed an ancient geographical entity. What about India itself? Is it not true that the British actually "made" India anyway? The British only had the most brutal Empire because they were masters at the colonial game and had the biggest one. I reckon of the Europeans, the Belgians and Germans, for example, were much worse and I am not even talking of the Japanese in China and Korea..and Taiwan etc. etc.

 

It's all so complicated....

[paul t]

Randy, I appreciate that you have posed what in your view is a reasoned

argument. In mine it isn't. for instance, I have no problem in being treated by

an African American doctor. I don't assume he has inferior qualifications, or is

inferior in any way. The term quota clown is offensive to me. <p>

I did pen a few more paragraphs, but this is not the place. I shall leave it there.

[vic_.]

As a quota clown, please allow me to add my $0.02

 

The biggest breakthrough in US medicine, indeed in medicine anywhere, is the increase in female physicians. (This goes for attorneys as well.) For a long time, women have been kept out of the top jobs in medicine, and it is refreshing to see this change.

 

Being a quota clown is not any easy act, as one has to constantly prove that one has made it so far based on one's own merits and not on a quota system. However, it keeps one on one's toes, and is not a heavy cross to bear.

[Robin Smith]

Also, Randy, surely even quota clowns have to pass the medical exams and there is no affirmative action in force for these - there may be for acceptance to med sch. but certainly not for passing the exams. I agree with Vic on this point I have to say, and as a white male I certainly think it a little ridiculous to say that I am persecuted.

[andrew_somerset1]

Gosh, Randy, those are impressive stories. But seeing as not a single claim you make can be verified, you're just going to have to forgive my skepticism.

 

I'm interested as well in the following question:

"Are you willing to risk hampering if not blocking the contributions of the very people--white men--who have been responsible for 99.44% of the advances in medicine, government, and technology?"

 

Most of the people responsible for 99.44% of the advances in medicine, government, and technology are dead or retired. Those advances are, after all, in the past. Are you suggesting that these accomplishments are related to some heritable trait exclusive to white men, and that therefore by blocking the future advancement (and here I suspend disbelief) of other white men, we are preventing future accomplishments?

 

Maybe you'd like to turn that particular rock back over -- I'm not certain many people will be impressed with what's crawling around beneath it.

[vic_.]

<I>"Are you suggesting that these accomplishments are related to some heritable trait exclusive to white men, and that therefore by blocking the future advancement (and here I suspend disbelief) of other white men, we are preventing future accomplishments?"</I>

<P>Perhaps this is what Leni Riefenstahl was ASKED TO PORTRAY in her films.

[andrew_somerset1]

Actually, Randy, you are right on one point. Fascist rhetoric is not something we can comfortably ignore. Unfortunately, you're looking for it in the wrong place and using the wrong criteria.

 

You should be looking for an ideology of strength that preaches the inherent superiority of a given group and decries the notion of equality, stressing the superior group's energy, destiny, and ability to change the world for the better. It carries strong nationalist, militarist and religious overtones and expresses disdain for intellectualism. Usually the "superior" group is portrayed as unjustly repressed and needing to rise from the ashes to fulfil its destiny.

 

The word "fascist" is much misused by pointy-haired anarchists, and that's unfortunate. It's been lowered to the status of a rote insult, which prevents us from accurately identifying it. WWII didn't defeat it; it has been with us all along. If you look around a bit you'll be sure to find it.

 

To keep this on-topic, look at LR's work through that filter and you'll see why I have difficulty believing that she was not a true believer.

[randy_skopar]

<<Also, Randy, surely even quota clowns have to pass the medical exams and there is no affirmative action in force for these - there may be for acceptance to med sch. but certainly not for passing the exams.>>

 

Robert Bork, in his "Slouching to Gomorrah," describes how the curriculum and exam regimen at Harvard Medical School was watered down to make it possible for more minorities to get their degrees. There have been similar cases discussed, yes with documentation, also in a journal called "Academic Questions." Medical schools are cutting standards to avoid government lawsuits.

 

You see, the medical schools face quotas not only in admissions but also in graduation. They HAVE to graduate a certain number of minority students.

 

And don't forget what happened to the black student who was admitted to medical school instead of Mr. Bakke, triggering a Supreme Court decision. This black man must have developed a sense of entitlement about his medical privileges, because after he left medical school he soon killed a patient. He signed up for a three-day course in liposuction technique and only showed up for one of the days. Nonetheless, no one stopped him from doing liposuctions and he began doing them for extra money. He made a series of mistakes that killed a patient.

 

The oncologist mentioned in my above post is Dr. Albert Braverman, of Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY. Albert has published an account of the morphine-drip story in a medical journal within the last decade; he related the other story to me personally.

[randy_skopar]

<<I have no problem in being treated by an African American doctor. I don't assume he has inferior qualifications, or is inferior in any way.>>

 

That is an emotional response, not one based on the facts. The facts: your black doctor may be a world-beater, or he may be a charlatan. YOu just don't know! If medical schools are forced to admit and graduate by quota, then you do not know which minorities won on the merits and which won on the quotas.

 

This is the other edge of Affirmative Action. It cuts one way by using quotas instead of merit, and it cuts another way by drawing a question mark all over the diploma of every minority M.D.

 

Remember, when standards are lowered at Harvard so that more minorities can be graduated, then EVERYONE at Harvard gets a weaker education. If there were such a thing as a three-edged sword, this is the third edge.

[randy_skopar]

<<Most of the people responsible for 99.44% of the advances in medicine, government, and technology are dead or retired. Those advances are, after all, in the past. Are you suggesting that these accomplishments are related to some heritable trait exclusive to white men, and that therefore by blocking the future advancement (and here I suspend disbelief) of other white men, we are preventing future accomplishments?>>

 

If you think about it, if we are going to punish or reward people based on their ancestors, then white men should be simultaneously punished for the Jim Crows and rewarded for the scientists. So Affirmative Action cancels itself out. Also, if we award Affirmative Action favors based on whose ancestors were "oppressed," then everyone in the world qualifies. I'm confident that every person in the world is descended from slaves: slavery was that common in the ancient world, and it cut across ethnic lines.

 

See my point? Affirmative Action is passed out to hold political coalitions in line, not to create some kind of "social justice." It has become a racial spoils system with injustice as its necessary condition and lower standards as its guaranteed outcome.

 

Anyway, the question of inherited intelligence and such traits as the ability to delay gratification have been addressed in a vast body of work. Surely you don't expect me to summarize all that massive debate, unless, of course, you are baiting me.

 

Even ignoring the scientific work, don't you think it would be foolish to block the descendants of the very people, so small in number, who have contributed such a disproportionate amount to our longer lives and comfort? Don't you believe in playing odds?

 

Is the man who invented air conditioning more likely to have children with scientific talent than a man who has never done anything in the scientific area? Again, you cannot predict with total accuracy, but the odds favor the children of the tinkerer.

 

Could we block and marginalize white men and still get Fermi, Beethoven, Tolstoy, Lister, and Salk? There's no way to know. But would you run the risk of losing these people in order to have employment assigned by quotas instead of merit? Is the value of what you might get worth the value of what you might lose? Is a spoils system so valuable to you that you would be willing to risk the loss of cures for disease and inventions that make life better for us? Are you willing to block talent for the sake of block-votes? Well, some politicians are.

[andrew_somerset1]

So if I understand your argument (and I use the word loosely), it is foolish of us to hold back a group that has proven its ability to change the world for the better. Members of this group have shown greater scientific curiosity, creative energy, etc., and because these traits are genetic, if they are left unfettered, the state of humanity will improve. Is that it?

[nesrani]

"Even ignoring the scientific work, don't you think it would be foolish to block the descendants of the very people, so small in number, who have contributed such a disproportionate amount to our longer lives and comfort? Don't you believe in playing odds?"

 

It would be worth remembering what these advances came out of: the industrial revolution. As I understand it, the industrial revolution itself was largely only economically possible because of the colonial system and the slave trade - for instance, India was apparently on the verge of its own industrial revolution until the British quashed it in order to foster its own industries, particularly the cotton weaving manufacturies. Again, I am not an expert, but Bengal, for so many years a synonym for famine and poverty, was a flourishing agricultural area before the British instituted a rapacious tax regime which destroyed its vast population of small farmers and replaced them with large landholders whose interests coincided with those of the imperial tax collectors. During the second world war the British kept supplies of rice grown in Bengal away from the local people in order to assure a supply to the British troops in Burma, thus precipitating the Great Bengal Famine - several million dead.

 

No doubt this is very simplistic, and I make absolutely no claim to being a historian, but I believe that the position of economic superiority which enabled the small number of whites to make the advances you note was rather the outcome of a repressive colonial system than some unspecifiable genetic endownment coming to the fore in fair competition with the rest of the world. And Christianity provided a great deal of the ideological justification for the rape of other countries' resources which made this possible.

[boris_chan1]

Randy, I feel your pain. Who couldn't be moved by your

descriptions of discrimination against the white Christian male

in modern America? If anybody doubts the very real effects of this

vile anti-male, anti-white, anti-Christian bigotry look no further

than George W Bush. We can only wonder how far this humble

genius of a man would have got in life without the madness of a

politically correct establishment thwarting his every move and

aspiration. Shame on people like Another Bob who are blind to

this blight on our society. Let's all stand shoulder to shoulder

with Randy and light that cross for Jesus.

 

God bless America...........