Taking liberties with history

[Guest]

Last night on UK tv the movie Downfall was shown. It wasn't a bad account at portraying Hitler's last days in the bunker from someone who was there.

At least, for exmple, it showed Hitler as a hypocritical animal rights nut (he later poisoned his dogs) who was virulently anti smoking. That was apparently a surprise to many people. HOWEVER....it chose to depict Himmler as criticsing the Fuhrer for that to make "drama". Actually Himmler too had animal rights and health fascism at the centre of his ideology too, as I have mentioned before here.

 

Not to make too much of a point about that again; just to show how real history gets forgotten in the public consciousness and replaced with common fallacy: that Hitler was the sole architect of Nazi germany is a mistake. But in dumbed down popular culture, all those things are forgotten and people are shocked and don't belive you when you mention Nazi smoking and foxhunting bans.

The reason being is that the intricasies of nazi ideology, while at the core of what happened, are deemed "too complex" for the demograph. In other words, our lowest common denominator.

 

Drama is therefore chosen above historical accuracy, and things get forgotten. So better to portray one nut than a society riddled with evil petit bourgeois ideology and prejudice based on "moral virtue".

 

 

So what now, do you ask, is he going to go on about. Well....this:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/arts/television/09knee.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

 

Quite frankly I think this is appalling. It may turn out to be a reasonable movie....but it's the moviemakers low opinion of the public that gets me.

 

Everyone has read "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" haven't they? Well maybe some of our generation have; but the next will now only know it from a movie which takes huge liberties with history.

[LordTheNightKnight]

I do know that Nazi Germany was largely a committee thing.

 

BTW, I don't think it's the mentioning of them being anti hunting and smoking that's the disbelief. It's the way you present them as guilt by association. If you want to dispute them, there are better ways than by using Naziism. You ever heard of Godwin's Law?

[Guest]

Yes I have and appropriate that Godwin is an anglo saxon name lol! So he would say that wouldn't he?

 

Most comparisons with Nazis are as you say are erroneous. Calling a policeman, a forum mod, etc a Nazi means nothing I agree.

 

But Britain at the moment has many many parallels with the early days of the third reich. Blair talked of Britain being the greatest nation on earth today. He is a socialist. Nationalist, and socialist. hmmmmm.

 

Seriously, the point is this:

The comparison IS apt.

It is NOT me who makes it but MANY mainstream British history academics.

 

What makes it apt to today?

Well that Nazi Germany was not the product of an insane mind, or purely by process of committee (though you are correct, they didn't institutionalise Hitler's agenda but their own...Hitler was just the figurehead).

It was the realisation of the establishment of the morality of the petit bourgeois. As arguably, is Marxism, socialism and any other ism you care to mention.

 

The point I am making is NOT that Tony Blair is a nazi. The point I am making is that both Blair and Hitler were just figureheads for a social revolution. A social revolution in which the morality of the small urban middle classes; bureaucrats, teachers, doctors, accountants, solicitors etc etc. permeate society as they take power from the "old" guard. In that is the whole history of the twentieth century and all its horrors, aswell as the society that exists in the UK today. Brown takes over the helm and talks of a New World Order ffs. And with that process, comes utter contempt for the morality of the upper classes, a desre to seize and destroy their power base, build powerful global industries with a conscience (volk mean anything to you?) and a conviction that the working classes need to be nannied. And THAT is what is apt. The fact that much of the moralty of this was born in post war California is also disturbing.

 

Take sealing for instance. Now people who are anti it aren't Nazis, but the conviction that they are morally above those that do is based on the belief they are more enlightened, morally just, and THEREFORE actions they may take to stop it are justified. And it is THIS which I am comparing. What is the possible justification of thinking killing seals is wrong? Who says?*

 

Nazi Germany as a society believed they were very moral...not immoral. And it is THAT position which can drive societies to commit dreadful evil in the name of a utopian society with high moral standards. And THAT is what is all around us at the moment . And when you have a structure in society that does not tolerate dissent, and criminalises large sectors of society for indulging in immoral practices (but only immoral to urban petit bourgeois and its "luvvie" cultural vanguard of ignoramii), and develops a bureaucracy which puts their ideology in place with a "computer says no" against the individual, removes a huge amount of civil rights, ignores established British constitutional law, plans to bark orders at us from tanoi, talks of eugenics to avoid future crime, and exports its morality against small nations and aboriginal peoples, the attitude across the board it is one that we should worry about. But it doesn't end there. The use of crass heavy handed propaganda is also similar. Take for example the milions of pounds spent on the National Health Service campaign vilifying smokers; showing and describing toxic chemicals wafting like snakes up the noses of non smokers including children.*2 Whatever you may think, this incites irrational hatred against a minority group. Then there is the climate of fear caused by fear of terrorism, fear of security risk online, fear of pedeophilia, fear of global warming etc Result? The government terrify people into allowing them to do wahtever they want. As someone said, Orwells' 1984 was a warning, not a blueprint Mr Blair. But Brown, described as a Stalinist by even his close circle, could be infinitely worse.

 

 

 

Anyway what do you think about the Wounded Knee movie?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*And when the same people are happy to kill millions of bullocks less than ten days old (whitcoat seal pup age) to have cheaper milk it just smacks of vile hypocrisy. Or their option is soya milk which has driven Jaguar to the brink of extinction.

 

*2 Now regardless of what you may beleve, the claims against passive smoking have been proven wrong,

by organisations like the BMA's own evidence. Result? The advertising has been taken off the air and investigated by the ASA. BUT millions of pounds of government vested interest may ride roughshod over due democratic watchdog process. We shall see. Meanwhile, the UK has one of the worst survival rates for cancer in Europe btw.

Edited May 11, 2007 by Guest

[Worker 11811]

Nazi Germany as a society believed they were very moral...not immoral. And it is THAT position which can drive societies to commit dreadful evil in the name of a utopian society with high moral standards.

 

The one scene that was burned into my mind from that movie (I was the operator and I had to watch it three times) was the one where Himmler's wife (mistress?) poisoned her own children with cyanide rather than see them live in a world without the privilege and wealth that life as a high ranking member of the Third Reich afforded her.

 

How could anybody THINK like that?!

It's SICK!

[Worker 11811]

Correction: It was Goebbels. Not Himmler.

Sorry, I got my historical figures crossed up.

 

From Wikipedia:

 

At 8 p.m. on the evening of 1 May, Goebbels arranged for an SS doctor, Helmut Kunz, to kill his six children by injecting them with morphine and then, when they were unconscious, crushing an ampule of cyanide in each of their mouths. According to Kunz's testimony, he gave the children morphine injections but it was Magda Goebbels and Stumpfegger, Hitler's personal doctor, who then administered the cyanide.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Defeat_and_death

 

(**WARNING** Graphic photo of dead body on this page.)

[Guest]

Yes interesting.

And aslo mindset of reigious cult mass suicides, and even AR affirmation that an animal is better off not existing than being used, even for a pet, by man. It is a God complex.

[LordTheNightKnight]

Yes interesting.

And aslo mindset of reigious cult mass suicides, and even PETA affirmation that an animal is better off not existing than being used, even for a pet, by man. It is a God complex.

 

Fixed. You mentioning a PETA-specific line with AR in general makes you no better than them, no matter how much you deny that is what you are doing.

 

And what makes you think PETA members even believe that in general, when they have shown themselves to be attention whores? Just because they shout it, doesn't mean they really think it. They just may want to get their way, whatever it is.

 

Please tell me you wouldn't support a pro-fur or smoking group that was just as militant.

[Guest]

What part of neutering neutering and more neutering don't you get Lord?

Is it the neutering bit? If they could....and by groups like them and IFAW bribing political parties to do so could easily reach this position.........they would forcibly remove every domestic animal and neuter it or even destroy it. We could reach that position within a few short years if we do not stop it now. I had a glimpse of how easy it would be for a governmet to do this during foot and mouth, where masked men in white suits came around the farms within exclusion zones and seized not just farmers livestock but domestic pets such as lambs and goats and killed them clumsily often in front of crying children and screaming women. I will NEVER forget that; I hope you never have to see it. Some...not all; some did it with compassion....of the people who did this were scum; no better than concentration camp guard mentality some of them. And I will never forget the pyres of burning caracasses...and PETA were smug about it. PETA...not the whole AR movement; some of whom campaigned for alternatives. You cannot envisage the horror of it; talk about the "infected".

 

It is ridiculous to even envisage a militant force pushing smoking or fur wearing or foxhunting on others. That is absurd. Would make a good story though lol!

 

 

But seriously, these perfectly legal activities enjoyed by millions of people have been vilified, attacked and outlawed. That is persecution of a minorities, and propaganda is used to justify the positions, as are rather more hadrdline aggressive violent and even terrorist tactics. PETA support the ALF for example.

 

Defending these minorities is NOT as bad as attacking the rights of others.

Attacking the attackers and oppressors with reasoned argument isn't either. I don't see fur wearers going round throwing red paint on people who wear synthetics.

Personally I abhor battery farming but I do not go around assaulting people buying frozen chickens or KFC; I wouldn't even criticise them.....morality is personal. ONLY when one is so convinced that they are morally correct that ANY means is justified do they become fascists.

Violent assault, disruption (fashion shows, hunts) or a government directly overuling constitutional Law to enforce their beliefs has exactly the mindset of the fascist. Might is Right.

 

As I keep telling you; it is NOT just me telling you this...it is objective and intelligent academics and historians.