The Arts and Culture

Er Ist Wieder Da: The Joke is on You

/41 Comments/in , /by

Look Who's BackIn this humorous film about Hitler’s return to modern-day Berlin, Er ist Wieder Da (English title: Look Who’s Back), Germans are caught on camera saying true things about Germany that are not what our elites want to hear.  And it happens in the current year.   They are so desperate to speak the truth that they are even willing to do so to an actor playing Hitler, Oliver Masucci (Italian and German heritage).  This is remarkable, and it speaks to the desperation of German society.  There must be such an infinite longing when one cannot dare utter the most commonsensical social observation, without reasonable fear of prosecution or at least censorship; and then to proclaim it for a film crew!  It is ironic, and yet also somehow poetic.  One cannot whisper the truth, yet one may broadcast it for millions, so long as they are willing to be cast as the fool in a masque of Cultural Marxism; a fool in the Shakespearean sense, which is to say, one who utters unspeakable truisms to an otherwise intolerant authority.

At times the viewer may cringe, insofar as these civilians are being made fun of, but also the viewer may exalt, in that there is man and frau in Deutschland still capable of rational thought.  Likewise, the character Hitler is capable of speaking to taboo themes in film that would not otherwise be permitted in that diversity-whipped country.   As Gavriel Rosenfield notes in his review of the 2011 bestselling novel on which the film is based, it risks “glamorizing what it means to condemn”: readers can “laugh not merely at Hitler, but also with him.” One may call it artistic license, but in any case, it does make for interesting art. Read more

Nelle Harper Lee, 1926–2016: Minorities Never Lie About Rape

/40 Comments/in , /by

Harper Lee’s death on February 19 drew the international attention one would expect given her status as the Martin Luther King of literature. Her novel To Kill a Mockingbird is annually visited on high schools everywhere with a demand for its reverence equal to the demand for unquestioned veneration of the reverend doctor himself. And yet, the mockingbird cried a complex tune last month, hitting notes not long ago thought to be beyond its range.

As expected, January’s holiday for MLK elicited the sniveling sighs of White supplication. In contrast, February’s eulogies lacked the once-anticipated chorus for Lee’s immediate canonization. The problem last month, of course, was actually the problem of last year with the sinful publication of Lee’s other novel, Go Set a Watchman. In it, Lee revealed that St. Atticus Finch was a segregationist(!)

Progressives and cuckservatives everywhere gasped! But then they remembered they control the narrative. In fact, they invented it. And they can modify it whenever the facts so require. After all, they had been claiming for decades that women never lie about rape while simultaneously Biblicizing a novel in which a woman does in fact lie about rape.

The Mockingbird mainstreamers eventually gathered themselves and saw the error of their initial shock. Unfortunately, Atticus hadn’t been immaculately conceived as they had previously believed. But he still had done right when the faith had been challenged, and if his motives had been mixed, that only demonstrated the nuanced characterization they always claimed to admire in literature. Read more

“The Return of Odysseus” by Michael Walker

/26 Comments/in , , /by

return of odysseusThe Return of Odysseus
by Michael Walker

This is a well-written and highly readable play, and I got through it in a couple of normal working days. It tells the famous Homeric tale of the prolonged absence and final return of the eponymous Greek hero to his home island, and the resulting revenge he exacts on the unruly suitors of his wife, Penelope.

Author Michael Walker is well known in nationalist circles as the editor of Scorpion magazine, a publication which first began the not particularly easy task of introducing the ideas of the European New Right to an English-speaking audience back in the 1990s.

For this reason it a may be difficult to read this play as it should be read, namely as a purely “metapolitical” work, that is one in which the message is an indistinguishable part of the art. Instead, like me, you may feel a tendency to read it politically, and to interpret certain lines as referring to specific contemporary nationalist issues.

But while political consciousness and an awareness of the writer’s sympathies may detract from a perfect metapolitical reading, I have to say I rather enjoyed these “political flashes,” and many here will also enjoy them, I am sure.

For example, in Act Two, Scene Two, Mentor, a member of the Assembly of Ithaca, describes the sorry state that the island kingdom has fallen into since the monarch’s absence:

There is not one palace which is plundered, but the entire land. Ithaca is growing sick while the tapeworms of the market grow fat on a land for which they never fought, which they never tend and never loved. The homeland has almost as many immigrants as natives. No one respects the Ithacan customs. The children are hardened and use the lowest language of the streets. The public coffers are plundered by parasites and aliens. Money is made by distortion and usury. Honest work is badly paid. The richest men are middlemen and speculators. The labourer is poor. (p. 128)

Reading these words, it is not ancient Ithaca that rises before your mental eye, but modern Britain, or some other “enriched” part of the West. One is almost surprised not to find a reference to Muslim grooming gangs! But, then, a piece of rhetorical eloquence or a classical reference snaps you back to the ancient story world in which this is set, and, from a thinly disguised satire on our diseased modern times, the story assumes once again the elegance of timeless tragedy. Read more

Hollywood Strikes Again Cultural Marxism through the medium of big box-office movies

/62 Comments/in , /by
Los Angeles in 2154 as depicted in Elysium

Los Angeles in 2154 as depicted in Elysium

A review of Elysium (see also “Elysium: An all too real dystopian vision of the future”

It was my misfortune to stumble upon an action movie, that like so many others, did its part in insinuating Cultural Marxist propaganda into the consciousness of young viewers. Despite my disgust, I persisted in watching it because of its blatantly obvious allusions to the issue of illegal immigration. I wanted to see how Hollywood could use a sci-fi flick to convey their “progressive” message on the subject.

The plot was a classic set-up. The rich live in a “gated community”— an opulent space station orbiting the earth—while the global poor, who in this case typically sport Hispanic names (how obvious can it get), are denied access to advanced medical care and the affluent life-style of the rich residing safely above the planet. Those who attempt entry are repelled, and the vehicles they use are identified as “undocumented shuttles,” which in one scene, are ruthlessly destroyed by the order of the head of “Homeland Security.” Again, notice that “undocumented,” the deceitful liberal euphemism for “illegal,” lives on into the middle of the twenty-second century!  I half-expected Hillary Clinton to make a cameo appearance to declare that “No one is illegal!.” The plot is summarized here (see also here):

In the year 2154, two classes of people exist: the very wealthy, who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. The people of Earth are desperate to escape the planet’s crime and poverty, and they critically need the state-of-the-art medical care available on Elysium — but some in Elysium will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve their citizens’ luxurious lifestyle. The only man with the chance bring equality to these worlds is Max (Matt Damon), an ordinary guy in desperate need to get to Elysium. With his life hanging in the balance, he reluctantly takes on a dangerous mission – one that pits him against Elysium’s Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) and her hard-line forces – but if he succeeds, he could save not only his own life, but millions of people on Earth as well.

I wish that Garrett Hardin was alive. I would love him to take this movie’s ridiculous premise apart. Even a simpleton (but alas not a liberal) would understand that “equality” between Elysium and the many, many billions of global poor would do little to elevate the latter’s living standards. There would simply not be enough resources to go around—as is the case on earth today. State-of-the-art medical care could not be affordably dispensed to everyone (as America’s gateway states have discovered !) That would be a fact of life in this dystopian society of 2154 and it is a fact of life now. If “undocumented” intruders or their political allies in office were able to open the floodgates and extend citizenship to everyone— as they are able to do in this movie—as Hardin would put it, “Low standards of living would drive out high standards.” Read more

Frank Auerbach and the transformation of British cultural life by Jewish émigrés

/4 Comments/in , /by
Head of Paula Eyles by Frank Auerbach, 1972

Head of Paula Eyles by Frank Auerbach, 1972

Interesting article in The Spectator by William Cook in the influence of mainly Jewish refugees from Germany who came to the UK in the pre-World War II period and had a transformative effect on British culture (“German Refugees Transformed British Cultural Life — But at a Price“).

Next week Frank Auerbach will be honoured by the British art establishment with a one-man show at Tate Britain. It’s a fitting tribute for an artist who’s widely (and quite rightly) regarded as Britain’s greatest living painter. Yet although Auerbach has spent almost all his life in Britain, what’s striking about his paintings is how Germanic they seem.

I find it difficult to see Auerbach as Germanic, at least not in the sense of what one hopefully would call the German national spirit. This is modernism at its determinedly ugliest, and, as in the UK, it represents an aesthetic that is out of touch with popular tastes.

Auerbach is the featured example of  the “vast wave of Germanic immigration that has transformed British cultural life — mainly for the better, but at a price.” “This wave of immigrants wasn’t just another huddled mass — it was the cultural élite of Central Europe, the best and brightest from every avenue of academia and the arts.” “Although predominantly Jewish, “they were champions of civilised, enlightened values, rather than members of a certain religion, or a certain race.” Read more

On Contemporary Opera and Wagner’s ‘Jewry in Music’

/72 Comments/in , , /by
Kirill Petrenko: “a tiny gnome, a Jewish caricature.”

Kirill Petrenko: “a tiny gnome, a Jewish caricature.”

This month marks the 165th anniversary of the publication of Richard Wagner’s landmark essay ‘Das Judenthum in der Musik.’ Almost right on cue the opera scene, particularly in Berlin, has recently played host to a series of episodes that would have the Old Sorcerer spinning in his grave. Back in June Kirill Petrenko, a Siberian-born Jewish conductor, was appointed as music director to the Berlin Philharmonic beginning September 2018. Petrenko was no-one’s first choice. His name apparently came into the reckoning only after 124 orchestra members split down the middle in an all-day election on May 11, half of them voting for the German favourite Christian Thielemann and the other half for the young Latvian, Andris Nelsons. By nightfall, the players were steeped in conflict, forcing leaders to seek a third, compromise candidate. Petrenko, 43, in his second year as music director at Bavarian State Opera, privately signalled his disinterest in the job. However, when called with the election result, he accepted with ‘euphoria and joy’. As a result, he will be the first Jewish chief conductor of the Philharmonic.

Rather predictably, Petrenko’s appointment has been greeted with enthusiasm by Jewish critics and commentators eager to indulge in the usual effort to promote their co-ethnics as geniuses. In my 2013 analysis of the Spinoza cult, I pointed out that

a recurring theme here at TOO has been the monitoring of ethnic networking in efforts to establish Jewish figures in positions of scientific, academic, artistic or cultural pre-eminence. Erudite studies by several writers, particularly Kevin Macdonald (a major theme of The Culture of Critique) and Brenton Sanderson, have shed light on individual cases (e.g., Boas, Freud, Trotsky, Rothko, Mahler) as well as the more generic processes involved in these efforts (e.g., promotion in the elite media and the academic world). Typically these efforts can be said to begin with the veneration by a group of Jews of a Jewish intellectual or artist, and is followed by the creation of an authoritarian cult-like aura around his or her personality. The process reaches its completion, in some cases after the death of the guru figure, in an aggressive Jewish marketing effort to convince society at large that this figure, together with his or her ideas, is or was of national or international—if not cosmic—significance. It is predominantly by this process that the notion of “Jewish Genius” is perpetuated.

More specifically relevant to the Petrenko case, in 2011 TOO’s Brenton Sanderson wrote ‘Why Mahler? Norman Lebrecht and the Construction of Jewish Genius.’ The piece explored the efforts of Jewish critic and author Norman Lebrecht to transform Mahler’s image “from that of a relatively minor figure in the history of classical music at mid-Twentieth Century, into the cultural icon of today.” Sanderson, commenting on Lebrecht’s Why Mahler?, writes that

The focus here is on alerting us to fact of Mahler’s towering genius, and how this genius was inextricably bound up with his identity as a Jew. Overlaying this, as ever, is the lachrymose vision of Mahler the saintly Jewish victim of gentile injustice. Lebrecht’s new book is another reminder of how Jewish intellectuals have used their privileged status as self-appointed gatekeepers of Western culture to advance their group interests through the way they conceptualize the respective artistic achievements of Jews and Europeans.

Given Sanderson’s comprehensive treatment of Lebrecht and his motivations, and the wider context of Jewish ethnic networking, I was unsurprised to see Lebrecht emerge as one of Petrenko’s earliest and most gushing admirers in the aftermath of the diminutive Jew’s election. According to Lebrecht, Petrenko is a “profound and experienced Wagnerian,” who “spares nothing in his musical passions and gives both musicians and audience the feeling that the music could not be performed in any other way.” Lebrecht assures us that Petrenko is “a genuine maestro.” Read more

Cleon Peterson’s Dystopian (Anti-White?) Future

/33 Comments/in , /by

CLEON_DETAIL

cleon_peterson004

“Glory”

It’s well known that the art world has been a fiefdom of the left for over a century, so finding art that speaks to the issues facing White America seems unlikely at best. It’s obvious enough that Cleon Peterson‘s paintings depict a world of savage violence and depravity:

Artslant 

In Cleon Peterson’s End of Days, … Peterson’s world of depravity does not simply crash and burn: it reverses polarity, inherited not by the meek but by the vengeful and merciless. Whatever days have ended, they have been succeeded by a new age of barbarism, with clear winners and losers. The triumphant take no trophies, apart from the occasional severed head, but the defeated have clearly lost more than their viscera – they have lost all semblance of control, dignity, strength and, most of all, hope.

But not all is lost, nor is it over. If that sounds like the good news, well, it’s not. The scenes of brutality are depicted in medias res, after the first blows were struck, in most cases not quite lethally. As the victims live to suffer, their tormenters seem to revel in that persistence. In fact, the tormenters, which Peterson calls the “shadows,” appear to derive their strength from their subversion.  …

Many of those scenes have featured characters with physical appearances largely undifferentiated from one another, suggesting a classless unsympathetic society, yet in this new body of work Peterson incorporates “shadow” figures and a new dichotomous order. There are haves and have-nots, but amid the havoc it’s hard to decide who’s who.

Cleon Peterson

Cleon Peterson

Read more