The Roman Polanski Case: Once Again, It’s Hollywood vs. America

Over 30 years ago, director Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old girl. The details aren’t pretty. According to the girl’s Grand Jury Testimony, Polanski plied her with enough alcohol and Quaaludes to make her dizzy and disoriented. He then had oral copulation with her, followed by sexual intercourse, and ending with sodomy because he did not want to get her pregnant. In her testimony, the girl made it clear that she went along with Polanski’s advances because of fear.

The girl declined to testify at trial, so Polanski was able to plead guilty to one charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor even though the Grand Jury charged him with rape of a minor, sodomy, rape by use of a drug, and other crimes. He served 42 days in a psychiatric observation facility before fleeing to France. Since 1997, the victim has urged that the charges be dropped, butapparently did so only after receiving a substantial financial settlement.

Polanski’s life as a fugitive has not exactly been a vale of tears. He has directed a number of movies, some with major Hollywood stars. His 2002 Holocaust movie, The Pianist, was widely acclaimed, winning an Oscar for Best Director, among other awards.

New York Daily News caption: “Film director Roman Polanski has lived a comfortable life while on the lam, including a swanky home in France with his wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner.”

Of course, we shouldn’t make too much of the fact that The Pianist received quite a few awards, since making movies about the Holocaust is well-known as the key to Oscar success. On the other hand, making movies like the Passion of Christ brings nothing but opprobrium and charges of anti-Semitism. Why this should be so is one of the great mysteries of life.

Be that as it may, Hollywood is not like the rest of us, and the fault lines are apparent in reaction to Polanski’s recent jailing in Switzerland while awaiting extradition proceedings. An L. A. Times article discusses the gap between the attitudes toward Polanski among Hollywood’s elite and the rest of the country:

From Michael Moore’s politics to on-screen sex and violence, the movie business is constantly being assailed for not sharing the country’s values. Rarely has the morality argument been as rancorous as with the Roman Polanski case.

Hollywood is rallying behind the fugitive filmmaker. Top filmmakers are signing a pro-Polanski petition, Whoopi Goldberg says the director didn’t really commit rape, and Debra Winger complains “the whole art world suffers” in such arrests.

The rest of the nation seems to hold a dramatically different perspective on Polanski’s weekend capture. Even if decades have passed since he fled Los Angeles before his 1978 sentencing, Polanski must be extradited and serve his time, the thinking goes. There’s no excuse for forcing sex on a 13-year-old girl. People who defend him have no principles.

In letters to the editor, comments on Internet blogs and remarks on talk radio and cable news channels, the national sentiment is running overwhelmingly against Polanski — and the industry’s support of the 76-year-old “Pianist” Oscar winner.

The article goes on to suggest that Hollywood’s refusal to condemn Polanski is simply a matter of protecting their own. As evidence, the article notes that even when Mel Gibson  spewed his anti-Jewish rant after being arrested for speeding and drunk driving by a Jewish police officer, no one in Hollywood seemed to care.

Actually, there was quite a bit of negative reaction to Gibson’s comments by the powerful in the movie industry, most notably from Rahm Emmanual’s brother Ari.  While over 100 of the most prominent Hollywood celebrities have signed a letter supporting Polanski, I am not aware of even one Hollywood celebrity who went to bat for Gibson over his anti-Jewish comments.

Moreover, the people who matter in Hollywood (not to mention the ADL and a whole slew of Jewish op-ed writers) were up in arms about Gibson’s Passion. Michael Medved has documented Hollywood’s very negative attitudes toward Christianity (and the traditional family, traditional sexual mores, and patriotism [apart from Israeli patriotism; see below]).

There certainly are norms that  limit what Hollywood celebrities can and can’t do to remain within the good graces of the community. Endorsing  California’s  2008 ballot Proposition 8 that banned same-sex marriage was definitely a bad career move in Hollywood. Opposing same-sex marriage is a career-ender in Hollywood, while supporting a child rapist is a great way to get ahead.

In fact, it is glaringly obvious that Hollywood’s attitudes reflect its Jewish sensibilities. A recent example is the reaction to attempts to boycott an Israeli film at the Toronto International Film Festival. The protestors described Israel as an “apartheid regime” and dismissed the work of the filmmakers as “Israeli propaganda.” A long list of the Hollywood best and brightest signed a petition in opposition to the protest — “a who’s who of Hollywood’s elite with a cast that runs from the executive suites to the sound stages and cuts across generations.” Evena Jewish writer in the L.A. Times couldn’t help but notice the ethnic angle in this rally-around-Israel response:

In today’s Hollywood, signs of Jewish ethnic pride are everywhere. Judd Apatow’s recent “Funny People” was populated with a host of openly Jewish comic characters, as is the new Coen brothers film, “A Serious Man,” a drama … that is, in part, about a troubled Jewish man who looks to his rabbi for guidance. And, of course, one of the biggest hit films of the summer was Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” which features as its heroes a scrum of tough-talking, baseball-bat wielding, Nazi-scalp-taking World War II-era Jewish soldiers.

So when trying to come up with a theory for why Hollywood would stand alone in supporting Polanski, a good bet is to suggest that Hollywood’s stance reflects its Jewish identity.

A clue to understanding Hollywood’s views on Polanski comes from a well-known sociological study comparing the attitudes of the Hollywood elite to the attitudes held by the general public and  by traditional (non-Jewish) elites of pre-1960s White America (i.e., leaders in politics, business, and the military, as well as Protestant and Catholic religious figures). The largest difference between Hollywood and the other groups was on “expressive individualism.” Expressive individualism taps ideas of sexual liberation (including approval of homosexuality and same-sex marriage), moral relativism, and a disdain for (Christian) religious institutions. The movie elite is also more tolerant of unusual or deviant lifestyles and of minority religions and ethnic groups.

In short, the attitudes of Hollywood reflect the left/liberal cultural attitudes of the wider Jewish community — attitudes that are hostile to the traditional people and culture of America and the West. Whatever else one might say about him, Polanski is Exhibit A for the category of unusual or deviant lifestyle. Polanski’s behavior is exactly the sort of thing that Hollywood would see not as moral turpitude, but as reflecting a cutting-edge, unconventional lifestyle choice of a creative, talented person.

As I elaborated elsewhere, the Jewish intellectual movements that came to dominance in the US after WWII abandoned their Marxist roots in favor of promoting radical individualism among non-Jews. They did this not because of their allegiance to the ideals of the Enlightenment, but as a useful tool for ending anti-Semitism and preventing mass movements of the right.

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One aspect of radical individualism was lack of racial identity for Whites. For the Frankfurt School, the ideal non-Jew was someone who was completely detached from all ingroups, including his race, his Christian religious affiliation, and even his family.

Indeed, a White person with a sense of ethnic pride was analyzed as suffering from a psychiatric disorder — a diagnosis that was not applied to any other race or ethnic group. Polanski can thus exemplify expressive individualism while at the same time demonstrating his Jewish identity by making a Holocaust movie.  For non-Jews, expressive individualism means not identifying with your race or ethnic group.

Another aspect of radical individualism is disinhibited sexuality. Psychoanalysis was especially important as an intellectual tool to undermine the traditional American sexual mores deeply embedded in the Christian religious tradition of American culture.

The deviant, perverted sexuality of Polanski fits well with expressive individualism, although it is doubtless a rather extreme version. On the other hand, the responsibilities of monogamous marriage, family, and parenting do not fit this cultural profile. Nevertheless, expressive individualism is a cultural pattern that has influenced a sizeable portion of the White population. It may not have been disastrous if America had remained 90% White. But with mass immigration of millions of non-Whites, many with high fertility, it is certainly speeding up the decline of White America. The centrality and legitimacy of expressive individualism in the contemporary culture of the West are an important components of the culture of Western suicide.

Expressive individualists basically want to express themselves with their own carefully cultivated, unique personal qualities. They advocate minimal controls on individual behavior, especially on sexuality. Expressive individualists prize creativity and the unconventional — a central aspect of the 1960s counterculture. At a relatively tame level, they want consumer goods that reflect their taste and individuality: They express their personality with their choices in cars, clothes, and music — Stuff White People Like, such as Vespa motorcycles, non-White cultural icons, and expensive camping equipment. (My take.)

A tendency toward expressive individualism is part of the individualist strain in traditional American culture. But it was a marginal phenomenon — confined to areas like Greenwich Village and the art world.  When I was growing up, expressive individualism was certainly not part of the culture of the schools and churches in small-town Anglo-German Midwestern America.

Expressive individualism became an integral part of the counterculture of the 1960s — especially the hippie component of the 1960s counterculture. At that point, as Eric P. Kaufmann points out, it became ingrained in American mass culture, spreading from the intellectuals to the better-educated people in the mass media, the universities and the government. My view is that this movement of expressive individualism to the center of American culture was brought about by the Jewish intellectual movements that I describe in Culture of Critique—particularly psychoanalysis and the Frankfurt School (and their allies among the New York Intellectuals and their propagandists in the organized Jewish community and the media). At their core, these movements are hostile to the traditional Christian culture of America, its sexual mores, its ethnic pride, and even the idea that White people have a right or a legitimate interest in maintaining its status as a political majority. These movements rationalized and promoted this strand of individualist American culture at the highest level of intellectual discourse.

And because Hollywood fundamentally reflects Jewish attitudes on culture, it is not at all surprising that it would defend someone like Polanski whose behavior can only be described as reflecting the exact opposite of the traditional culture of America.

Another telling example that reflects the Jewish promotion of expressive individualism among non-Jews can be seen in Dr. Lasha Darkmoon’s recent TOO articles on Jewish influence in the art world. She notes the predominance of wealthy Jews among art collectors, critics, and gallery owners. While retaining their own ethnic identity, they promote exactly the type of non-Jew prized by the Frankfurt School authors of The Authoritarian Personality: An expressive individualist with no allegiance to his race, his family, the Christian religion, or the traditional culture of the West.

The result is that an extreme expressive individualist, such as British artist Damien Hirst, can earn hundreds of millions of dollars by constructing works of art such as a glass case with maggots and flies feeding on a rotting cow’s head. Or a shark suspended in formaldehyde. A recent show by Hirst sold for almost $200 million.

Hirst is entirely the creation of wealthy Jewish art collector Charles Saatchi who was deeply impressed by Hirst’s maggot-infested cow’s head and lavishly promoted him for the next ten years. Hirst has behaved as the prototypical expressive individualist, including drug and alcohol abuse, and violent and outrageous personal behavior:

Hirst has admitted serious drug and alcohol problems during a ten year period from the early 1990s [at a time when he was being promoted by Saatchi]: “I started taking cocaine and drink … I turned into a babbling fucking wreck.” During this time he was renowned for his wild behavior, and extrovert acts [we psychologists call it disinhibited psychopathy], including, for example, putting a cigarette in the end of his penis in front of journalists. He was an habitué of the high profile Groucho Club in Soho, London, and was banned on occasion for his behavior.

Charles Saatchi’s Creation, Damien Hirst: Promote the Worst Gentiles

An artist wrote the following email to Dr. Darkmoon:

It was with great interest that I read your insightful and well-researched article regarding the art world. I have long been aware of the Jewish role that brought us to this lamentable state. I am a painter and photographer working in a neo-classical style and couldn’t even get arrested at a gallery in the major art markets. I take encouragement however from the fact that there are other wonderful painters carrying on the great tradition and when the dust of postmodernism settles they will be properly recognized.

Such recognition will only come with a complete change at the highest levels of culture production. It is encouraging that the great majority of Americans  find Polanski’s behavior repulsive and believe that he should suffer a legal penalty. Similar attitudes are held by an overwhelming majority in France where we see the same gap between the cultural elite and the the rest of the people.

Nevertheless, despite the healthy instincts of most White people, it is quite clear that the heights of culture production in Europe and America are controlled by people who absolutely reject anything resembling the traditional culture of the West. And that is a disaster for our people.

Kevin MacDonald is editor of The Occidental Observer and a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach. Email him.