Leni Riefenstahl, R.I.P.

[chip l.]

It has been said that those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It is for that reason some of us turn to politics or what some call "Bush bashing". Many years from now (when history has had a chance to digest the current matters) will the media be vilified for supporting Bush by his "big show" on the aircraft carrier after the "victory" in Iraq? Or the photographer that did the photo of Bush on the phone on Air Force One on 9/11 that is now being sold to "party faithful"? Is it any different today when those that oppose the administrations military policies being called unpatriotic or aiding the terrorists?

 

While the US is not suffering the hyper-inflation of pre-war Germany, there are economic troubles. Recent Department of Labor reports indicate that the job loss of the recession of 2001 and post 9/11 are jobs that are lost for good. Even the 1972 GOP Campaign Book stated very clearly that the US economy had its best economic times when it was in military conflict. It is the Military-Industrial Complex that drives this country. Just look at the no-bid contracts that have been given to companies to rebuild Iraq.

 

Bush just asked for 87 billion dollars to continue the fight against terrorism and to rebuild the countries that we occupied. That works out to over $300 for every man, woman, and child in the US. Or almost $1,200 for every household in the US. The administration says this is needed to ensure our freedom and world peace. In pre-war Germany, the Jews were painted as what wrong with Germany. We now call that propaganda. Back then it was called the administrations position.

 

Today we have people that are trying to write history on the fly. History needs to looked at with the benefit of hindsight and reflection. We have some that are trying to label Ronald Reagan as the greatest president in history. To that end they are naming aircraft carriers, buildings and airports after a man that is not even dead yet.

 

In the passing of Leni Riefenstahl we are forced to look at history again. For some she is a villain, others see her as an opportunist. Yet is not the media of today no better that Leni Riefenstahl? They are opportunists, all for the money. Witness the movie that aired on Sunday, DC 9-11, on CMAX. A positive, strong statement of Bush's leadership during a time of crisis. 20,40, or 60 years from now if history shows that the US government knew of the attack plans for 9/11; how will that film be viewed? Remember that during better times the Japanese were invited as observers to a mock raid on Pearl Harbor.

 

To those that feel that some of us are trying to equate the administrations actions to those of Hitler. No, Bush is no Hitler. And God willing we will never see that type of genocide again. Yet for our country that was founded on the ideals of personal liberty the actions of all branches of the government, the current situation is troubling. History shows us the errors of WWII and the internment of Japanese-Americans. All because of their skin color. Today we have religion as the marker for detainment.

 

I had a friend detained for 7 days, with no access to lawyers, after his return from Pakistan. To this day he has no idea as to what he was detained for. Immigration laws are being used against a select few. All the while at the airports everyday people are being subjected to extreme searches. All in the desire to prevent profiling. Yet we do not apply the immigration laws equally to all minorities, because some represent a powerful voting block.

 

Sorry for the rant. But since some have taken Leni Riefenstahl to task for her "support" of the Nazis through her films, we are no different if we take hook, line and sinker what is fed to us by what ever government we happen to be under.

[stephen_w.]

I'll add my 2-cents. Did LR do good film work? Yes, I like it. Was her politics wrong, in hind sight? Yes. Did she kiss Hitler's ass? Yes, but what does that have to do with her work?

 

Was Hitler a war criminal? Sure, but so was Truman. The two A-bombs dropped on two, previously spared conventional bombing to see the true effect of the A-bombs, was a war crime. And, they used two different types of bombs to see whicn was more effective: uranium bomb on Hiroshima, and a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki.

 

If we wanted the Japanese to surrender, why not drop these bombs just off-shore and downwind of Tokyo?

[Robin Smith]

I think LR was a great filmmaker, no question. We are all so brave now not having to make the choices she was presented with. She did admire Hitler - millions did from all nations - she was investigated by Allied prosecutors at the end of the war, but was found to have no case to answer (or no case that was likely to result in conviction). Bender is too extreme in most things, but he does indeed have a point about Eisenstein. He is quite as culpable as LR and yet none of the stigma of the brutal Bolsevik regime sticks to him. To say that Hitler was a monster is too simple - he produced a regime so monstrous that ordinary people - you and me - would choose to follow him to the death and do unspeakable things and this from a population that was arguably the most educated in Europe. That is the horror and fascination of the Nazi regime. As to the idea that genocide will not happen again I say that it will and has and will continue to do so. All of us are very weak. I think it only right that she was denied further outlets for her work -- that was her punishment and it seemed a fitting one to me.

[todd frederick]

In truth, I never heard of Ms Riefenstahl until yesterday and still have never seen anything she produced.

 

My only point is that we should not base our judgement of one's artistic work on the artist's politics, or religion, or race, or whatever that is unrealated the his/her artistic work. The person's art should be evaluated on it's own merits.

[stephen_w.]

Todd,

 

You've probably seen her work and not known it was from her. Ever watch those Nazi/WW-II documentaries on PBS/TLC/A&E...?

[Alex_Es]

I've been thinking about Reifenstahl's "genius." And here is what I

am starting to see.

 

As a movie actor she appeared in silly romantic gush movies. As a

brilliant ad woman she learned how to turn silly romantic gush into

high art. Her two greatest films, Olympiad and Triuph of the Will,

were adverts. She was a great inovator in using camera angles and

such. She knew how to create dramatic effects. But when you look at

those films they are all gush and technique and have little

substance. The Olympiad was only a sporting event and nothing more.

The Nazis were only Nazis. Their whole program was romantic gush and

only that. When the gush failed and they had to produce something

they went to war. What Riefenstahl was celebrating was something

minor and something utterly mediocre.

 

What are those two films compared to the works of Jean Renior? Her

films were good bad art--high level kitsch if you will--and nothing

more.

 

Riefenstahl's best work might well be her Nubia series. The work is

brilliant in how it advertises the Nubians. They really do come off

as unique and exotic. With Nubia Riefenstahl might have done some

social good in spite of herself. Given the dire case of Africa--AIDS,

drought, Globalism wiping out local economies--it may be that in a

century or less there won't be any Nubians left. She might well have

left an important photographic record of these people.

 

Riefenstahl's Nubia is brilliant in its own way. But it is minor

stuff compared to the work of HCB, Dorthea Lang, Walker Evens,

Sabastiano and other photographers.

 

There is one thing that always struck me about Riefenstahl. This was

her perpetual youthful entusiasms. Riefenstahl of the early gush

romantic movies was the same enthusiast who took up skin diving in

her 70s. There was always lots of enthusiasm--lots of glush--coming

out of Riefenstahl but little substance. Riefenstahl was brilliant

and inventive. She was also amoral and shallow.

[olivier_reichenbach]

1) To liken the Nazi ideals to mere «politics» or «political statement» is a gross understatement.

Nazism is way beyond politics. It prowls from the darkest regions of evil.

 

Do you consider Bin Laden's actions «politics»? Or the Rwanda genocides? Or the Armenian

genocide? Or the regimes of tyrants such as Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, Staline? Or black

segregation in the USA? Or in South Africa? No, I didn't think so.

 

To consider the Aryan race superior to all others, to consider all other races inferior and weaker, to

deliberately plan the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, gays, etc... IS NOT «politics».

 

So, to say that Leni Riefenstahl should not be condemned because of her «politics» is double

rubbish. In these exceptional times, under such a horrendous regime, she should have been

exceptionnally vigilant and courageous. And doubly so as an artist, because artists - and

intellectuals and scientists - are the consience of a nation.

 

2) To exonerate any individual from his/her wrongdoings on the basis that he/she was a great

artist is a dangerously romantic and irresponsible attitude: one, no human being can, and should,

escape the consequences of their actions in their life, be they heroes or villains. Two, the

corollary to that attitude is that the ordinary person who sided with the Nazis would therefore be

MORE guilty than Riefenstahl, because she is considered by some a great filmmaker and

photographer. That's an outregaous point of view.

 

3) To liken the Bush administration's actions in recent months (even though I loathe them) to the

Nazi war and extermination acts again makes for a very insidious, pernicious and perverse

corollary: that the Nazi acts are no worse than Bush's. Don't you see where this kind of argument

leads?

 

Mr Bender, you should be very careful. You're on your way to becoming what is called a

«révisioniste» in France, ie someone who either downplays the sufferings of the Jews during

the Nazi regime (even using your worn down argument that the Gypsies also suffered, which no

Jew refutes, by the way) or even downright denies the very existence of the extermination

camps. It is considered a crime under certain circumstances in France, and justly so.

[garry edwards]

Let me see now - She supported an evil regime with her work so she was evil?<p>She used a Leica so she was a genius?<p>I don't consider her to be a genius, although as I don't have a Leica I probably don't know what I'm talking about. Certainly she was a competent photographer but competence is far removed from genius.<p>On the moral issue, we must all make our own decisions on what is right or wrong - I've just lost a very major client at a cost of at least £40.000 a year, but have turned down 2 other fairly lucrative jobs. one involved photographing what I consider to be depraved (but entirely legal) sexual conduct and the other was a contract with what I consider to be a scam model agency. My refusal to get involved in either of these projects will change nothing because others will be happy to take my place but I have my own concience to consider. I like to think that if I had had the opportunity to further my own career by supporting a political regime that I considered to be evil then I would have walked away but I cannot judge those who did not.

[michael_bender]

You propagate dirty lies (or, to be precise, propaganda) - and dare to threaten someone who, by virtue of coming from another country, dares to remember how things really were?<br>

And you lump together rhetorically charged "answers" to god knows what participant in the thread and conclude it in a way that suggests that your rants have anything to do with points I expressed?<p>

So if I understand you correctly, you want to stress that:<br>

- Jewish suffering in the War was its central event.<br>

- Other groups did suffer, but the Jewish one is special<br>

- nothing like that ever happened before<br>

- the war is just a background to the Holocaust<br>

- Hitler was a mad irrational human being, and there can be no other explanation<br>

- anyone who attempts not to agree with every point above is a criminal and deserves to be persecuted with any methods available, including heavily illegal<br>

- there are laws in countries like France and Germany that will punish anyone who discussed those events, unless he complies precisely to the points I mentioned above (a true statement, actually).

<p>

And you, crap, tell this to me, a person - as I said earlier - who comes from a country that lost about 25 million and where no family escaped losses (including my own)? And you threaten me for knowing and daring to tell what really happened? And you claim not to disdain the 50 million dead of Europe with your "uniqueness" - or others, like Poles, or Gypsies?? While a member of the most prominent Jewish "remembrance" group (I can be precise about the name) simply refused to speak if a Gypsy is also present and speaking in that memorial WWII event? <p>

 

Actually, disregard everything above. Just tell us, in detail who Kozinski was, and what his "Painted Bird" was about, and which leaders of which watchdog organizations supported him and for how long, just speaking about truth?<p>

[jim_britt1]

A couple of comments: First of all I don't think she was an

"artist." A propaganda master for sure, or at least an innovator.

Her two major films, Triumph of The Will and Olympiad are very

very ponderous. Especially Triumph. Has anyone here ever sat

through it in a theater??? Not in your living room on the tube

where you can pause, get up etc., but in a theater dark? It's a

very different experience, no where near the passion of

Eisenstein and his work where if propaganda was at least

underlying rather than sledge hammer like. Also great

propaganda films were turned out by the US in the Why We Fight

series. Some which were directed by Capra (Oscar for It's A

Great Life)

I think she is an interesting player in that time and place, but will

not be missed nor idolized in her death. She did happen to be in

the right place at the right time, or in the wrong place at the

wrong time. Her work is interesting at most. Her use of the

camera was innovative. Her life however, and her determination

to continue to photograph, dive etc. is pretty amazing. A very

strong woman. Probably why it's hard to see her as a meer

pawn. I think she saw an opportunity and took it.

 

I wish many of the people who contribute to this forum could

forget the polemics and baiting in there comments. All in all this

is a very interesting forum that goes beyond nuts and bolts

photography.

[kevin m.]

"Riefenstahl was brilliant and inventive. She was also amoral and shallow."

 

Nicely put, Alex.

 

If there is a Hell, perhaps a just punishment for her would be to let her shoot Nike ads with unlimited budgets until she figures out there's more to life than just what meets the eye.

[Nowhereman]

>>>My only point is that we should not base our judgement of one's artistic work on

the artist's politics, or religion, or race, or whatever that is unrealated the his/her

artistic work. The person's art should be evaluated on it's own merits.<<<

 

Fair enough when speaking about an artist: yes, Degas was an anti-semite but his art

is wonderful. Riefenstahl is different because her major artistic production were

propaganda films for Hitler and the Nazis. And because they were propaganda films

(not "documentaries" as she insisted on calling them) they must be judged on the

basis of the morality of that regime and of producing propagando for it.

 

What Alex says is true: she was shallow and produced kitsch, but with great technical

skill. Although she was technically innovative -- camera angles and using a film

camera that moved on a track -- her work was still shallow, and the Nubian pictures

would not have made her name without the propaganda films.

[Allen Herbert]

Well, well, well, the usual pseudo intellectual nonsense which colours reality and twists the truth into an unrecognisable form.

 

All of us inherently know right from wrong. Murder, and mass murder are easily recognised as wrong. This young lady wanted to be rich and famous, ignoring her sense of morality, was very easy, The suffering and murder of others,well,was the suffering and murder of others. Of course, she did not know about it, and of course, she was not performing the act. A very familiar cry. How many of us would be any different under the same circumstances? The lessons of history tell us, very few.

 

The magnitude of the mass murder perpetuated on millions is beyond human conception.. I try to see it as a little family, nobodies really, just going about their daily lives. The shout of the indignant husband, the screams of the wife and children. Then the beatings, and the sobbing, and the begging for mercy. The separation of the family, and the crying and emotional torture. Then the stripping of all dignity, the physical and emotional torture, and finally the murder. All because they belonged to the wrong group, and needed to be murdered for the greater good, according to the current regime.

 

Of course the regime is always fully supported by those who, well for want of a better words � turn a blind eye�

 

Of course this young lady has lived to a ripe old age, and has had a very enjoyable life. Unfortunately the nobody family, well they are just were the nobody family.

[michael_bender]

"The shout of the indignant husband, the screams of the wife and children. Then the beatings, and the sobbing, and the begging for mercy. The separation of the family, and the crying and emotional torture. Then the stripping of all dignity, the physical and emotional torture, and finally the murder. All because they belonged to the wrong group, and needed to be murdered for the greater good, according to the current regime. "<br>

---------------------<p>

Alex, I cannot agree more. Those words repeat one of the reports from today's Iraq practically verbatim. I admire your high moral stance so much.<br> Just cannot agree what we should do next - will it be shooting all FOX owners, managers, announcers, and correspondents? Hanging NYTimes stuff? No, not radical enough. Probably, a stronger method is needed. What about cancelling newspaper subscriptions and smashing all TV sets in the house?

[Allen Herbert]

Michael, i don't really think the Americans/British are such enthusiastic mass murders as the displaced Iraq regime. You really don't believe that either.

[michael_bender]

(a) evil is a matter of degree. How many more side A kills determines how saintly side B is - not that side B does not kill at all, but just a comparison<br>

(b) "you do not belive that either" - but I cannot help believing:<br>

- incarceration for indefinite periods of time without any indictment<br>

- 1 litre of ware per person per day in Iraq desert heat<br>

- prohibition to wash clothes as part of punishment<br>

- torture by sense deprivation (hood on the head) added to by forcing the inmate to remain in the same painful pose for tens of hours (e.g. in one story the inmate's legs/knees swelled incredibly, he could not movefor a long time afterwords)<br>

- killings of prisoners; beatings of prisoners<br>

- that in Guantanamo over 30 inmates attempted suicide<br>

- thousands, thousands of invisible to your ilk on your TV sets of civilian iraqis blown to pieces, shot at checkpoints, dying in the streets after being "accidentally" shot because your war criminals do not let members of family come over and take the wounded, dying in hospitals because there are no medicines to help them, even when help would be possible etc.<p>

 

And all this did not happen before. And if one thinks WHY these crimes happen, then comparisons with the most odious regimes are not tenuous at all

[michael_bender]

water, afterwards etc.

[olivier_reichenbach]

My, my, my, Bender, what did you have for breakfast?

 

As usual, judging on intent.

 

Stop putting words in my mouth, will you?

 

My comments were responses to several different posts. Only the last paragraph was a direct

response to you.

 

As for THREATENING YOU, I fail to see where and how? Can you read? If you can, would

you please quote my precise threats?

[Alex_Es]

Look, I don't think it is morally correct to shoot people like Leni

Riefenstahl after the fact, after they are rendered harmless. Just

don't honor them. Don't pretend that art with a capital A is above

politics and that artists are demigods above common morality.

 

There was a major problem in literary circles concerning Ezra Pound

after WWII. He had been a Fascist propagandist is Italy. He

actually did radio broadcasts. With an exaggerated American accent

he would say things like, "We are going to get you Jews." Unlike

Riefenstahl he did produce major work other than romantic gush movies

and political propaganda. So he presented a real moral problem.

Finally, the problem was dodged by the US authorities: He was

declared insane and put into St. Elizebeth's. After a while he was

allowed to return to Italy where he lived out his life, silent about

his political past and probably unrepentent. Pound's involvement

with Fascism had more to do with personal conviction rather than mere

opportunism. He was a greater artist than Riefenstahl could ever be,

yet the question of honoring him with anything was always

problematic. Irving Howel wrote an article on that once and

concluded that Pound should be honored for the good literary work

that he did--but not yet.

 

Riefenstahl's case is more simple because she was really a morally

simple craftsperson. Olympiad and Triumph of the Will are brilliant

as Nazi propaganda and that they can somehow today transcend the

subject matter is remarkable. But as creative art their premises are

shallow. Riefenstahl's Nazi period is best approached in studies of

Nazi propaganda. The Nazis used film and--importantly--animation to

sell themselves. They were pioneers in using media for propaganda.

Riefenstahl was at the top of these propagandists and not as morally

bad as a number of them. I do not recall anything overtly

antisemitic in her work--though I may be wrong.

 

The primary tool of the Nazis was patriotic romantic gush and that

suited Riefenstahl's mentality. Unfortunately you cannot sustain a

reasonable society on patriotic gush alone (as we are seeing with the

Iraq quagmire) and a reasonable artistic career.

 

Riefanstahl got off on Hitler. It may have been more of an erotic

thrill more than anything poltical. Hitler put on good shows and

she, a lover of good shows, loved his shows. To say she didn't know

and that the Germans didn't know what Hitler was doing to the Jews is

spurious. Lots of nice ordinary Germans took part in Kristalnacht

and thought that smashing Jewish shops and beating up their owners

was their patriotic duty. Violence and hatred of this sort was not

Riefenstahl's forte to her credit. She loved spectacles, handsome

guys marching around and making cool speeches, and chose to ignore

their consequences.

 

Riefenstahl embraced the Nubians, I think, with the same girlish

enthusiasm that she embraced Hitler. I doubt she really knew very

much about them but she got off on them.

 

There is a photograph of her with a tall Nubian guy. She is an old

lady (60 or so) with a camera and he is young and naked. This was a

full frontal shot. You wonder--you have to wonder--how much her

sexual proclivities influenced her artistic tastes and her loyalties.

The naked Nubians with their well-toned bodies take us back in a way

to the opening of Olympiad and the naked guy carrying the flame.

 

Riefenstahl was a passionate Leica enthusiast. In one interview she

said that they only cameras she ever used were Leicas. Leicas and

only Leicas. Somehow the same girlish enthusiasm.

 

A few other film makers were mentioned here and I'd like to say a few

words about them.

 

D.W. Griffiths's Birth of a Nation is a strange case in the man's

collected work. He was a socially committed film maker and Left in

how he appoached social injustice. He was apparently quite ashamed

of Birth of a Nation after he realized exactly what it had started

(the KKK got the idea of burning crosses from the film) and tried to

make up for it with the film Intolerance. I've never seen this film

and it is not well known. Griffiths was in the end an outsider in

Hollywood and died poor (as I recall).

 

Serge Eisenstein is overrated, I think. There is way too much

melodrama and silly sentimentality in even his best films that

violates the principles of good art and history. But he reminds me

more of Charles Dickens than Leni Riefenstahl. Their morality cannot

really be compared. Eisenstein was a real Bolshevik and took the

ideals of social equality professed by the Bolsheviks seriously. You

see it in his films. He is at his absolute best when filming the

dramas of masses of people. In Battleship Potenkin the scenes with

the poor sailor "killed because of rotten meat" are Victorian

melodrama. But take the scenes on the steps in Odessa. It's another

matter. He shows innocent people dying close up. You see that its

not just a faceless mass being slaughtered--as you have in war and

cowboy n' Indians movies--but real people. The brilliant scene of

the baby carriage careening down the steps says more about the sheer

injustice of the Czarist regime (and by extention any regime that

slaughters its own people) than a warehouse of poltical tracts ever

could. Eistenstein, whatever his faults, is in a different catagory

from Riefenstahl.

[ellis_vener_photography]

Mr. Bender,<P>No one that I know doubts the heroic sacrifices made by the Russian

(in the all encompassing and --from a strictly cultural sense-- incorrect) peoples

made in the fight against Nazism and against Lenin & Stalin & the other Soviet thugs.

Your people suffered deeply in ways that most in the West will never be able to

understand.<P>But you continually distort what others say in a ways that are easily

disproved. This line of observations leads me to

conclude that you simply don't like Jews. Is this the case?

[john dorfman]

It's interesting to compare Riefenstahl's pictures of the Nuba with those made by George Rodger in 1949 and published in book form as "Village of the Nuba" (reprint available from Phaidon Press). Rodger, who died recently and was one of the founding members of Magnum, was a wonderfully sensitive photographer and writer who portrayed the Nuba people with understanding and modesty. Riefenstahl's photos, not surprisingly, seem to fetishize the tribesmen and reduce them to beautiful bodies.

 

According to Peter Hamilton's preface to the reprint of "Village of the Nubas," Riefenstahl saw some of Rodger's photos in the National Geographic and got in touch with him, "asking him to divulge the location of the tribe, and offering him a thousand dollars for an introduction to the wrestler [the subject of Rodger's most famous image from the series]. He wrote back, 'Knowing your background and mine I don't really think we have much to communicate.'"

[michael_bender]

I live among the Jews, all people I know around me are Jews with very few

exceptions, including my (girl)friends etc.<br>

What I dislike is the Jewish extremists in the same way I dislike Black

Panthers or white supremacicts or Russian nationalists. And I regret to say,

some things you said place you in the more extreme part of the spectrum.

<p>

A couple of examples.<br>

One: you advocated that Schwartzenegger's paying humiliating homage to

representatives of a very dishonest Jewish extremist organization "to get

educated" about his father's past is appropriate and beneficial for a

politician. Beneficial it may be, if he wants support from it and by paying

homage recognizes its influence in politics. Two: you started a thread

titled "L.R. a nazi groupie etc" and consistently expressed raw hatred in

it.

<p>

Of course, extremism does not like to be called extremism, and a lot of

propaganda is extended to represent it as "mainstream". Well, let's look.

<p>

A Polish Jew-"survivor" writes a book about a small child that is left alone

in the War and stays shortly in a number of Polish peasant houses before

experiencing mind-numbing brutality at their hands and being driven out -

episodes repeat the pattern, violence increases: somewhere he is thrown in a

river, somewhere else he has to hang to (whatever) while dogs are jumping

below trying to reach him etc. I read a long time ago and do not remember

all.<br>

This story is widely taken as a thinly-disguised autobiography of the writer

himself (which he kind of confirms), becomes a bestseller, and he turns into

a celebrity and symbol for the Holocaust industry.<br>

The book is everywhere. Jewish organizations include it in the reading

lists, schoolchildren are givewn assignments on the book, its inclusion in

school curricula is discussed.<br>

It comes out later that the book is complete fiction - in the original

and far from glorious sense: the punk with his whole family was hidden by

Polish peasants he later reviled, and that his father later informed to the

communist authorities on the people who saved his life. Again, writing from

memory, so do not hold me to every detail, but the gist is as I said.<br>

You'd think that the man is finished - but no! One of the most prominent

leaders of extremist Shoa-profiteering organizations continues to support

him, saying that, well, auto-biographical claim is untrue, but in essense it

IS the book on the Holocaust, it has spiritual truth in it. (do not remember

if it was the functionary of the same place where Schwarzenegger came for

political blessing or not, but they are on the same level of prominence, I

have the precise details if needed).<br>

 

The punk (Kozinski) lives on; it becomes obvious from his later books that

he's obsessed with violence in a psychiatric sense. Some years later his

instability leads to suicide. (He actually expressed regret about his hoax

shortly before death.) <p>

 

What comes to light in marvellously distinct relief in this ignominous episode

is the self-appointed Holocaust pushers. "No business is like Shoa business"

is another well-known phrase from another such activist, plainly outlining

the cynicism. I already mentioned a refusal to speak in a WWII (no, Holocaust,

they never say WWII) event if a Gypsy would also be speaking. You'd think that

was the end of this person's career? Think twice. One of the spritual shepherds

is too young to have much to do with the War. Can he claim to be a survivor?

Well, there is a wish, there is a way: he does, he just qualifies it: he is a

SPIRITUAL survivor. Well, what else is here to say?

<p>

Vicious propaganda pushed by this industry is rammed into the heads of all

goyim, I outlined the major points above in my reply to Reisenbach:<br>

- Jewish suffering in the War was its central event.<br>

- Other groups did suffer, but the Jewish one is special<br>

- nothing like that ever happened before<br>

- the war is just a background to the Holocaust<br>

- Hitler was a mad irrational human being, and there can be no other

explanation<br>

- anyone who attempts not to agree with every point above is a criminal and

deserves to be persecuted with any methods available, (including heavily

illegal as the past events demonstrate)<p>

 

This is what I hate. Extremism and lies. And the more hateful it is because

these people dance on the bones of their own dead for political and

financial profit <br>

This now came to the level, when some prominent Jews speak against it. For

example, a leading Jewish historian of WWII in Germany called for

moderation in and not (ab)using the Holocaust. <br>

And as to the ordinary Jews - well, they work, they are told about how much

they are in danger as a people, now more than ever, and money are collected

from them by the persons that purport to speak for all.

<br>

Well, actual Jews I know - middle-class professionals - cannot watch the movies

with the Holocaust lies. They just say "Holocaust" every second word

everywhere is too much, it should stop.<br>

But that obviously is not what is in the plans of the extremists.

The benefits are too great.

<p>

That is what you affiliated yourself with, Vener, believing that you are

entitled to self-righteousness as a Jew, and so somehow you are a "spiritual"

inheritor of the WWII suffering.<br>

And that is the reason I react with such immediate irritation on

"it's about mad Hitler- suffering Jews - and how we, the USA, came and won it"

representation of the WWII.

<p>

A lie.

 

[ellis_vener_photography]

For someone who hates lies, you sure spout a lot of them. i never advocated anything

about Arnold Schwartznegger, I just reported what I read. <P><I>- Jewish suffering

in the War was its central event.</I> You are the only person I have ever heard or

read, who has made that claim.<P><I>

- Other groups did suffer, but the Jewish one is special.</I>Well to the Jews it is. If

you think a memorial should be made forthe Russians who died, why don't you

organize it? No one is stopping you.<P><I>

- nothing like that ever happened before</I><P>Once again, you are the only

person making that patently false claim, and I think, only so you can knock it

down.<P><I>

- the war is just a background to the Holocaust</I><P>Once again only you are

saying that.<P><I>

- Hitler was a mad irrational human being, and there can be no other explanation.

</I><P>Well what explanation do you offer?<P><I>

- anyone who attempts not to agree with every point above is a criminal and

deserves to be persecuted with any methods available, (including heavily illegal as the

past events demonstrate)</I><P>I just can't think of any rational answer to that

Michael; obviously you must run in very different circles than I do. Just what is it

about the Jews that you fear so much? If Jews really ran the world , do you really think

six million would have died at Hitler's hands?

[todd frederick]

I think this debate has gone far beyond what any rational person would consider a reasonable discussion.

 

I simply do not understand why we can't view the work of an artist (in any field) and evaluate the quality of that art on it's own merits without allowing politics, religion, gender, sexual issues, or whatever, to influence our conclusions.

 

The paintings of Michaelangelo in the Sistine Chapel were doctored to clothe his subjects. I believe that these images have now been restored to their original naked state as he intended.

 

I love the murals of Diego Rivera, even with his communist bias.

 

I personally don't enjoy the operas of Wagner, but Hitler did, and it influenced his politics. Does that make the music of Wagner any less creative?

 

Do we reject someone's art because he/she is Jewish, black, communist, nazi, a woman, fascist, republican, Buddhist.....?

 

I think that is the issue here: Do we allow our personal predjuices influence our appreciation of an artistic endeavour?

 

I simply think these issues must be separated.

[Karim Ghantous]

Oliver: "Do you consider Bin Laden's actions «politics»? Or the Rwanda genocides? Or the Armenian genocide? Or the regimes of tyrants such as Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, Staline? Or black segregation in the USA? Or in South Africa? No, I didn't think so."

 

I think so. And?

 

"To consider the Aryan race superior to all others, to consider all other races inferior and weaker, to deliberately plan the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, gays, etc... IS NOT «politics»."

 

It is. It's a policy by an organised government written into law.