#which I would argue is one of the calling cards of fascism

[jusdeknowledge]

Also Gutzon Borglum, the immigrant sculptor who designed and executed Mt. Rushmore, got so America-pilled in the process that he joined the KKK and went on to design the sculptures of confederate generals on Stone Mountain in Georgia, AKA the “confederate Mt. Rushmore”. Stone Mountain is not only famous for also being a sacred site to local tribes which was desecrated as a monument to (ethno)nationalism, but was also a meeting place for the KKK and, iirc, where the “revived” KKK of the 1920’s re-established themself, heralding a new era of re-invigorated race violence in the South.

So yea it’s deeply fascist

[angelfishreveal]

FRANKFURT UPDATE / DISORGANIZED RANT ABOUT TRUTH AND ART AND FASSBINDER

by Camille Clair

I spent the strict quarantine following my arrival in Frankfurt studying German in the mornings, and watching Fassbinder in the evenings. The time between morning and evening was spent...nervously. 

I watched so many Fassbinder films during my quarantine that I began to feel his cabinet of actors were my companions (quarpanions). We were all crying and grinning and swallowing our pills together. 

I am one of those people that believes that pain/discomfort/anxiety is necessary, important, a catalyst. That is one of the reasons I left, have left in the past, will leave again. Sometimes the next best life move involves ripping your heart out! Sometimes it isn’t quite so abrupt, and your heart will sizzle in the pan for months. You may even grow to cherish the sensation because it means you are working toward something. You may recognize your true self in that pain. And in that truth, your mission, which may, or may not be, your art. 

I do believe that, as an artist, you have to be a bit of a masochist. Your life is sustained via chopping yourself into bits, and, if you’re lucky, stowing those bits in the pockets of the wealthy, the devious. And though you may consider yourself an orthodox Marxist, this seems to be the only way to keep the axe swinging. I would never say aloud that I believe suffering produces great art, but I also must admit I understand the desire to drag oneself across shards of glass a la Chris Burden in Through The Night Softly. I relate to the impulse to bear it all. I want to be torn apart! For art. 

I don’t always want this, but fresh out of my Frankfurt quarantine - following a confounding summer in Los Angeles - I want this. I really, truly want to exhaust myself. 

Though Fassbinder himself may have been a bit amoral, he was, at the same time, so undeniably invested in all that is human. Many of Fassbinder’s characters seem to cave inward, unable to stand erect under the weight of the social, the political, the bureaucratic: the simultaneity, and responsibility of it all. Fassbinder’s characters give into their truth, or they parish. No time is wasted on the performance of goodness, because salvation was never in their cards to begin with. 

What I desire and revere most in art is truth. I want my “self” and my “art” to be inseparable, the same. I want my body to vanish in the company of my art. I don’t really want to exist. I repeat variations of a line from Reena Spaulings in my head all day long: Where does my (boyish, jaunty, smooth, freckle-dusted, foxy, stiff, screen-like) body end and a real event begin, for once? I do a little dance in the mirror. I have never been this alone. Some days I feel stiff with sorrow, so I remind myself that I am a character, and the director expects a performance, and then I stretch. 

Walking home in the rain, I envision Margit Carstensen waiting for me in my flat. I am her aloof lover. Or she is mine. I’ll fall through the door with a sigh, she’ll pour me a little glass of schnapps, and we’ll heartfully console one another. I sometimes play The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), which starts Carstensen, in the background while I go about my tasks. I speak my favorite of Petra’s lines back to her as part of my daily Deutsche practice. Maybe by Spring, I’ll have the entirety of her central monologue memorized. I love to fantasize about the spring, it’s become one of my favorite pastimes. It is possible to imagine nearly anything happening in the spring because real life has become so severely abstracted. 

I lament…

What is real? Now? And in hindsight, what was ever real? Is it, or was it, ever recognizable or is it just whatever you put into your head on a given day? I scroll through Contemporary Art Daily on acid and feel confused about what it is I am supposed to want. My eyes linger on words that used to resonate, and it stirs some sort of longing. I want it to be physical, I want to get dirty and injured in the process. I want to be so involved it’s disgusting. But for now, nearly everything I want is impossible. Maybe it's a symptom of the current situation, but I want to be overinvolved. I generally find most performance excruciating, but now I feel I would do anything for an audience. I desire an audience. 

I envy Fassbinder’s overinvolvement. In Beware of a Holy Whore (1971), a film about making a film, Fassbinder seems to play himself. He doesn’t play the director, he plays Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Often fussing around or yelling in the background, it’s unclear exactly what his role is in the production, but as a viewer one is intensely aware of him at all times. Upon first watch, I felt envious. I want to be present in that way, shrieking for the sake of, and within, my art. The ringleader, and also, the eager participant. In the opening scene of Germany in Autumn (1978), Fassbinder, dials a call, and says “Ich bin es Fassbinder” into the receiver. We know of course, who the man on the screen is, though we aren’t immediately sure who we are meant to recognize him as. 

In a 1997 eulogy for ArtForum, Gary Indiana writes, “what can you say about a fat, ugly sadomasochist who terrorized everyone around him, drove his lovers to suicide, drank two bottles of Rémy daily, popped innumerable pills while stuffing himself like a pig and died from an overdose at 37? [Fassbinder was]  a faithful mirror of an uglier world that has grown uglier since his death”. Fassbinder knew truth, and truth is as beautiful and precious, as it is vile. 

My sister, who is 17 and only just got drunk for the first time last week, told me she could never watch The Shining (1980)  knowing how much Shelly Duval was tormented in the making of it. I felt I couldn’t argue with her but I also wanted to argue with her. “So you will never watch what is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time?” 

“No,” she said. 

“Okay,” I said. 

Perhaps we are reaching an age in which you really cannot separate the art from the artist. Maybe it’s never actually been possible. But then again, there are so many things that seem to be art by mistake, and so many artists who die without recognition.

In the eulogy, Indiana goes on to say, “there is nothing you can say about Fassbinder that he hasn’t already said about himself”. This line again brings to mind Fassbinder in Beware of a Holy Whore, berating everyone in the vicinity, utterly repulsed by a multitude of things never made explicitly clear. Fassbinder lying dead in the train station after an overdose in Fox and his Friends (1975). Fassbinder lying dead, with a cigarette between his lips and notes for an upcoming film lying next to him, from an actual overdose. A parallel that reveals art is just as intertwined with death, as it is with life.

I realized this year that many of the artists I respect care a great deal about film, about drama. I have found solace in films, because I am alone nearly all of the time, and I don't know when I will see any of my cherished ones again. I am living vicariously through characters, beginning to think of myself as a character, which is admittedly therapeutic. I am the director. And I chose myself from a lineup of nervous red haired girls. I recognised myself at once, and thus, here I am. 

Some artists, or people!, are overly concerned with their own narrative. It can be irritating, indulgent, abject, but it’s convenient, and it may save your life. Though you’re never really alone you may feel really alone. Allein. Alleine... Sometimes there is nowhere to turn but toward yourself. And, once you begin to think of yourself as a character, you no longer bear the full responsibility of your being. You have been put in place to carry out the artistic vision. So, in a sense, all characters are artists, just as they are products of art. It’s reflexive, and Frankensteinian, in that way. 

Maybe as an experiment, try referring to your dismal flat as “the set”. 

Are you at home? 

I’m on set. 

Complain aloud, but to no one, about the uninspired refreshments. 

Stare longingly at everything. 

There is a misanthropic edge to many of Fassbinder’s films. A bleakness. It is often said that his work is about the fascism at play in interpersonal relationships. The fascism that blooms in all of our hearts.There are instances across Fassbinder’s filmography of, not only an awareness, but a patience, for all that is despicable. Human beings are weak, impressionable, they want to be liked but if it doesn’t work out, they’ll settle for being hated or feared. Often, Fassbinder will have a character do or say something that completely skews, if not, obliterates your previous impression of them. For example, in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Emmi who is, up until this point, mostly redeemable, chooses Hitler’s favorite restaurant to celebrate her and Ali’s wedding, stating upon entry that she has “always wanted to go”.  In the scene that follows, she mispronounces the names of menu items, the server scoffs, and one can't help but feel a bit bad for her. Is her desire to eat at Hitler’s favorite spot purely aspirational, a misguided highbrow charade? Or is she a sympathetic fascist? This is another fault of the character, any character, their world view is often contrived, never holistic. 

Fassbinder is the Postwar German filmmaker - generally considered the “catalyst of the New German Cinema movement”. In his films, World War II is often alluded to / background / partial context / a shadow, but it is never the subject, or the main event. A character’s idiosyncrasies, or disturbances, could be attributed to the wartimes, but often, their faults seem too deeply intertwined with their truths. But of course they’ve always had a tremor, a temper. Many of Fassbinder’s characters have a hard edge, or have suffered immense loss. They are either in, or narrowly escaping, crisis. 

In Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), Franz Bieberkopf, a rampant dilettante, oscillates between political affiliations. When we first meet Bieberkopf, fresh out of prison, he is a bit of an anarchist, sympathizing with soldiers and workers above all. As the series progresses, Bieberkopf is revealed to be immensely impressionable, confused, vindictive. He exhibits symptoms of several political philosophies, albeit meekly. Bieberkopf even briefly wears a Nazi armband, which, when questioned about, he is unable to defend, and from thereon, is never seen wearing it again. Franz Bieberkopf is similar to Tony Soprano in that way. Selfish, gruff, deeply flawed, indubitably human. Tony Soprano bites into a meatball sub and sauce dribbles onto his shirt and you forget, momentarily, that he's a bigot, because he’s the protagonist. And it is the job of the protagonist to represent a spectrum of human strength, and fallibility. It is arguably better, or more redeemable, to be overtly, rather than covertly, self-serving because then at least one is operating in defense of their own truth.

Truth is constructed daily and could easily be mistaken for anything but. Truth is nearly impossible to represent, and harder still to recognize. Truth is a fallacy, and thus, very lonely. Still, it must be guarded, I have been listening to The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as I walk around Frankfurt which, in all honesty, fertilizes the melodrama blooming in my heart. Werther is bitterly alone, consoling himself via drawn out descriptions of his loneliness. “I am proud of my heart alone”, he says, “it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own”. 

I am alone in Frankfurt, but I have my heart.  

[ratherhavetheblues]

FEDERICO FELLINI and TONINI GUERRA: AMARCORD “Where do you put the foundations?”

© 2022 James Clark

As we happily visit the confines of filmmaker, Federico Fellini, we find ourselves in a peculiar distress. Gone were days of bitter arguing about film dialogue with the perverse Antonioni. But, rather, the hospitality of a good friend and remarkable difficulty.

   It is true that both Guerra and Fellini were born I the Italian district of Romagna, in the same year, 1920. They began a lifelong friendship, whereby each of them found a gusto for the arts—Guerra becoming a poet and film writer; Fellini becoming a cartoonist and filmmaker. Only many years would pass before the chums would work on a film together, that being the film here, Amarcord (1973).

   I think the reason of the gulf is not hard to understand. Whereas Guerra would shoot all out the lights in his Antonioni trilogy, and beyond, garnering a reputation for deep, uncanny annoyance to the “normal,” and becoming “questionable” presentation, Fellini (surprisingly close to Antonioni in the area of “alienation”), would, by dint of superior sensibility became a powerhouse of the “new world.” That latter triumph would—”great friend or not”—see Guerra as a dangerous runaway. All the years would carry a dark question which never presents a decisive breakdown. Not only do the artists steadfastly maintain their friendship, but the wives (particularly, Giulietta Masina), sustain many decades understanding.

   However, with all these strengths, there was a striking shortcoming. Guerra’s return to Romagna, after many years living with his Russian wife in a sort of sanctuary from fascist Italy, would be a strange veer. Fellini, himself, never found fascism a menace, emphasizing the strengths of Italian charm. The title, here, Amarcord,  meaning “I remember,” brings to bear two disparate remembering’s. And yet, friendship never fails. What does, however, remarkably fails, for the first time, in interplay, is Guerra having the bizarre idea of developing a garden to reach visitors at a maximum, when only solitude could prevail. The man with perfect pitch, this one time, failed. His error was, of course, a study of generosity. The names, themselves of the “blessed” could have called for a reflection. “The Places of the soul. The World of Tonino Guerra. The Garden of Forgotten Fruit. A wide-spread museum and living place where people meet and exchange views. The true magic that brings to light scenes of the past.”

   While Fellini and Masina never failed to be staunch friends with the cosmopolitans, there remained a deep problem to engage. It might be a matter of Russia, and the complications of the wild card of Tarkovsky films, which was much about Guerra. There, the Russian (uncanny) tone was seen to be a gulf, despite the silence. Fellini’s reticence to bring Guerra to the matters, may be a subtle form of antagonism. Each of them loved the other. As Fellini became a “genius,” and a multi-millionaire, his lovely career would be a subtle form of exclusion. Love is a very volatile gift; and the “happy” group here crashes upon several scenes.

   Guerra’s chance would be a function of Fellini’s sense of such powers that he might actually open his heart to a pariah. Not that his “powers” would seriously make a change. But, as the cartoonist and seductive maven he was, he could invite little outrages easily dismissed.

   The first moment of our saga concerns the first day in spring when the puffballs take to the skies. Miranda, one of our stalwarts here, being a woman with a quite large family, introduces the passionate spring enjoyment. Beyond the small beauties, there would be Guerra’s’ insult concerning the courage of the population. “When the puffballs come, winter is almost gone… When the puffballs soar, the winter is no more!” Then we hear, “I got the best one!” And the Germans, newly arrived. Advantage in the air. (Guerra had spent two years in a German prison.) His study approaches all of that, without touching it directly.

   In that evening, a peppy bonfire would thrill the town, in celebration of the easy days to come. Much furniture would be consumed, in expecting a rich reward from a glorious military victory. The joys of their giddy hopes present noisy currents into a cosmos not about pipe dreams. This flood, though, could elicit emotions beyond their ken. One of a pretty trio of women come to our attention. “It gives me a funny feeling!” one says. We’d like to imagine that “funny feeling” reaches to a blazing crusado.  That one of her friends add, “Yeah, me too, Winter’s dying, and spring is on its way. I feel it all over me, already!” does not attain to the uncanny, the edges of death.

   We’ll pursue that moment from beginning to end, a pursuit amazingly difficult. We’re told that the name of the film, Amarcord, means, “I’ll remember.” For Fellini, all is charming in that account. But Guerra sees the matter in a very different way. Fast friends, yes. But here a remarkable level of hidden hate. The first dimension of Guerra in the lead concerns the remembrance of a major dead weight of childish commitment. Along with the puffballs, another hallmark is “Drifting, drifting, drifting…” Irony on job. (At this juncture, we must include the Guerra priority of beauties in the surroundings, intense and inspiring. Those ignoring such strangeness becoming the lost. Within the hubbub of the of blaze we find, in a dark wall and its ancient patina of bricks, richness in its quiet sophistication. Our poet had brought to bear a similar treasure in his work in the film, Red Desert [1964]. When did Fellini ever notice such riches?)

   With each disclosure of “drifting,” (and “swirling”) the shabbiness of the populace stands exposed. Before, however, launching the deep concern there, there were in the town of Rimini, Romagna two strange rebels, who present confusion to our reflections. Every town has its prostitutes, but the phenomenon of Volpino is more touched with Futurism than any of the regular haunts. More easily understood, though, is a motorcyclist who mysteriously, occasionally, rips though the town, being a living form of philosophy.

    As far as serious philosophy as it gets, the town’s school is an absolute disaster of refusing to engage early modern life. Many other skids add to the collapse. Confession for the main family here involves the elder boy refusing to take seriously the procedure, due to his priority of squelching his father.  As for commitment, Hollywood movies kindle the madness. Gary Cooper becomes a model for fascist victory. Therefore, a visit from Mussolini creates pandemonium. “Let me touch him,” one of that trio, of shaky care, namely, Gradisca, calls out. They go so far as to put up a wedding of two of the “students, in remembering that lovely day. The extreme, in hope of easy days to come. “This marvelous enthusiasm makes us young and yet old at the same time.” (Old is old.) However, it would have the “young,” because Fascism has rejuvenated our blood with glowing ideals from ancient times…” Another celebrant shouts out, “All I can say is Mussolini’s got two balls this big!” (Here Guerra imports an irony from the film, Red Desert.) Up a stairway, with the supposed educators, capturing the brilliant moment. “Do we not see, in this glorious, sun-filled day, that the Italian sun, forever free, is a driving sign that the heavens are on our side!”

   Another over the top would have the main family slipping in a very different way. During the supposed height of joy, Signor Titto is arrested for being a Communist. His crime brings to him a large container of olive oil, violently driven down his throat. His fascist nephew, living with them, was the means of the punishment. Trying to finesse such a hard hatred was not the way to go. What would be the right move? The rest of our film is all about that. As a little step, let’s see this couple in action, at the dinner table, before the nephew was dumped. With the priority of schooling being exploded, there is a knock on the door to note that last night the boy peed over his balcony at the movie theatre. Before the fireworks began, the vandal, hoping for some credit, told the gathering that the in the movie, “The Americans were trying to penetrate the Camanche territory, but the Indians shot arrows at them… It was a massacre.” Titto’s response, “I’ll massacre you, you little hooligan,” was one thing. But the dad’s subsequent response, continuing in the yard, was the most engaging. “I’ll put you in the hospital!”  (Her wife whispers, “People are watching…” The striking blossoms of the trees are never noticed. No special time to love those blossoms.) With the boy out of sight, the fuming king, asks, “You have to tell me who fathered this piece of shit! I’m my own here! I’ll do as I please! You brought them up wrong.” The wife (being of a couple who eloped with very specific interests) cries out, “I’m going crazy! I’m going mad! I’ll kill the whole lot of you. I’ll put strychnine in your soup. But I’ll kill myself first.” (“Good,” he says.) She has locked herself in the bathroom. A mirror discloses a second possibility. She quietens herself. At the table he falls backwards, upon the floor. (At a last Harrah of easy and pointless conflict, there would be Titto, “If the person who squealed is who I think it was, he better move to another continent, or I’ll eat his guts out! I’ll have his balls for dinner!”

   So much for the puffballs. Now it’s time for others. As a preamble, we’ll appreciate more softness, in its delivery, but only for its uncanny topspin. At the Grand Hotel, a harem arrives to establish a flurry of white dancers. Brief but bright. Also, there, Gradisca encounters curtains with striking interplays.

   Now is the time to find how life can be both hard and lovely. We embark with Titto, his retarded brother, Teo, and the rest of the anxious family, on an afternoon drive, by horse and buggy, in the country to allow the weakened to taste a bit of normality.  First, Teo mentions how fond he is of stones. He does seem to linger with their appearance. Then he pees in his pants. At the destination (a farm and a bite to eat), the attention is slack, and he chooses to climb a big tree, a beautiful tree. (Even more important, Titto tells us, “I’m like that too. I can stare at an egg for hours… wondering how nature makes thing so perfect.” His wife makes short shrift of it, “Because it was God who made nature, not an ignoramus, like you!” His response, “Oh, lay off!” surprisingly indicates the seriousness of this moment for him.) The farce of attempting to bring the shut-in back to land (many stones hitting the marks) finds Teo, frequently howling, “I want a woman!” (The action, here, would be seen—though not appreciated—to stand with the really dazzling walls of the cement barn, worn and brave.) The aftermath is not a farce at all. The rebel had in mind a girl living quite close to that tree. She readily closed the melodrama. The relationship was a case of maturity. Recall that Teo had reached the crown like a cat. Families were one thing. Realities were something else. One of the ambulance crew mentioned, “Getting some fresh air?”

   Back to the mobs and their soft sensations, the next flutter captures the whole town. “It’s thirty stories high, with sixteen smoke stakes! Think what a pirate would do with a ship like that.” (The piratical imperative everywhere. Easy takings, for the land of Mussolini.) All ago, to the shore. A church processions. Guerra’s ironies putting some heat to Fellini! A flotilla to meet the “sensation”! The Rex, the King! (Is there something more than art deco?) Climb aboard the ferries to see the marvel close-up, with hearts pounding! “Today is a very important day for our country, for our fatherland! Blue skies, the sea, the infinite skies…” The wind in the flags! The real deal, but no one notices. Someone asks, “How far out are they!” Irony on the sea. Volpino, on a slack day, sits on a cement slab. She looks on the seas, she looks on the skies. Cut to the deserted town. A dog in the road. A shadow by it. Taking up Titto’s reflections. (On the other extremity, there is the lawyer, telling us that the craft is two and a half times the weight of the Grand Hotel, plus the statue of Augustus. Information no one needs. Similarly, the drone and fink had thought to swim to the fun. His idea, of course, was a poor one. “Holy shit! The water’s really freezing! My nuts have shriveled to a size of two dried beans.” He’d added to the nonsense– “Freestyle!” All not being lost: the sunset…the misty sunset. Titto, again: “Look how many there are. Millions and millions of stars! I wonder how they all stay in place up there… I mean, it’s pretty simple for us [doing construction]. To build a house, we use so many bricks, so much lime. But up there, sweet Jesus! Where, do you put the foundations? They’re not made of confetti, you know…”  Miranda (the wife of Titto), has dropped off to sleep in the little boat. Titto unnerved about that, he calls out, “Are you asleep?” (This twist, in fact, at the supposed thrill, involves the onset of Miranda’s deadly sickness. Her not being onside with Titto’s minority, accounts for the bitterness of their arguments. That they eloped many years ago, also involved ill-will [the funeral being all about Miranda’s family].) “Answer me! Are you cold? Take my jacket. Put it around your shoulders or you’ll start complaining of a chill.”/ “Have we got much longer to wait?”/ Titto replies, “How would I know?” Guerra tells us, beautifully, without a word, “We have a very short time to wait…” The art deco dreamboat comes and goes. Mystery mists the boat. The blind accordionist, believing he had been left out of a heaven, yells out, “Go fuck yourself, all of you!” Gradisca, after the flashy honor in the waters, assembles some friends on her favorite concern. “I was full of hope every time, but it never came to anything. I haven’t given up hope. I want one of those encounters that last a lifetime. I want a family, children, a husband to chat with in the evening over coffee, maybe, and to make love with now and then. But affection is more than love, and I’m so full of affection.” Affection she knows. Love, she doesn’t have a clue. Just listen to her! “But who can I give it to. Who will take it?  Why am I crying? The silly girl’s crying. Because she’s a sensitive girl… Men are all the same…” One more time, for the Rex. “The greatest thing the regime ever built!” A regime is not a real force. A clutter of the pretty. It’s mercifully disposed of in a flash: a thick fog; a white cow; a beautiful church door; a palace, “It’s gorgeous”; “Where are you, my love?” (a long dance in the fog). A “thrilling” all-night car race; Gradisca with a kiss in the dark and lovely blossoms; Titto’s elder boy, being crushed by a woman with gigantic breasts; an unprecedented, surreal snow fall; a little bird sound. (“It’s [the snow], beautiful”; the motorcycle; a peacock in the snow; Don’t take it so hard. Be strong…”)

   The puffballs return, and Gradisca  finds a portal of “affections.” It is the wedding reception we ponder. The bride, who had sustained a near Hollywood stature upon her juvenile followers in the town, has now been seen to be mocked. The adults, though, attempt to understand the drastic change. “We’re really going to miss you.” This reception is as much a challenge to the invited than to the bride. The bride had seemed to be a bridge to the real deal. Now the bridge has collapsed. Another non-invitee, a blind and dumb accordionist, becomes the new real deal. Is there a hope? A certified toast, runs, “Silence is golden, but words are like jewels. May this married couple live as happy as fools! She found her Gary Cooper!… But love is love, all the same… You have fulfilled your dream of love…” The bride pushes away some food. Along the raw table, at the raw field, someone says, “Now it is your happy duty to have many children…. For your family, for the church and for your country.” The striking cigarette shop lady delivers a quiet remark. “Gathered here at the drinking trough, here’s one more toast to send them off.!” The call for a photo. Gradisca, ill at ease. “Give me your mirror!” (What does she see? What does not see?) “Everybody, get behind the bride!” (“Why are you crying?”) “Smile! Stand in the light!”   “I’m not crying anymore.” “Let’s move into the sun with the bride?”  The song of the blind and the dumb uplifts this crisis. A poet makes his bid to brighten the day. “Though the world may be full of things beautiful and dear, of towns even nicer and prettier than here—you’ll have a bath, get up to the day… sit down and play… Long Live Italy!”  The bride cries. The presentation finds that affection is not enough.

   But the ignored musician had a way. His music, like Volpino and the moto-guy, lives to smash though small victories. During the horror of Gradisca’s supposed big day (with a fascist official awaiting at the end of the line), there had been a sort of reckoning with softness, “affection.” It fired up more graphically with one of the high school snots kicking the blind (and alert) one, with dirt. That being the accordionist during his harsh and deep muse, his hard passion, which becomes a target to kill. (Much killing would be just around the corner. Also, wonderfully, there is someone asking, “Where did Titto go?” The answer was that he was able to avoid much of the bride’s embarrassment. His own embarrassment was painful enough.

   As the “party” fails, there are moments to engage. Remember that the musician has a beautiful, faithful dog. Who else out there could say that? Who else was listening? We come down to body language. The bride has to be dragged to the car. “What!” she calls out. “My bouquet! Goodbye! I love you all!” By this time only a few “partiers” have stuck it out. She waves… The bouquet is thrown into the rough. After a pause, a child picks it up.

   This film becomes what few attempt. To me, a great highlight, here, involves Titto, alone, after the funeral, moving crumbs along the kitchen table. His reflections attain to brave steps. But does Guerra fully credit Titto’s struggle? One could maintain that the severity has great poetic fire. But is there a door to open with affection? Here we encounter where there the poet seems to abandon the full story, the steps back, under the auspicious of panache. In many of the moments, of course, his understanding is tremendous. But in this matter, something was amiss. A full scale crisis to engage.

   Our film today comes with a small, bizarre sidebar. It depicts a truck, in the middle of the night, working on a sewer. Guerra is one of the workers. With all the brave pariahs here, there should have been more of love and less of affection. And yet, that turnaround has fertility.

[buffpidgey]

Edward Elric Is a Political Powerhouse And Doesn’t Know It

I said I’d write something about Ed’s political potential. Here, have 2,065 words about Ed’s political potential.

Edward Elric is the youngest State Alchemist, earning his position at age 12, because he is a cheeky little shit. 

Edward Elric makes a name for himself as a competent independent actor, when Roy Mustang sends him on missions.

Edward Elric is a hot political commodity.

It’s a pity he doesn’t give a shit.

There’s a common trope in FMA fanfic where Ed is approached by another military official, wanting Ed to join him. I can’t really remember seeing this happen in canon, but, I do think it is something that could and probably has happened. (Unless there is some kind of military reason this WOULDN’T happen, but I am not aware of something like that, and furthermore, Amestris’ military also functions as a political entity so there would probably be leeway for at least unofficial actions like this)

In those fanfics, Ed always declines the offers. Those military officials don’t know his secret like Roy does, and Ed has no patience for their political posturing.

If he DID though, he would have quite a bit of influence if he wanted it. And while a non-negligible part stems from his undeniable abilities as an alchemist, I would argue much of it comes from his status as something of a Folk Hero.

(Under a cut cuz 2,065 entire words)

The idea of folk heroes is one that’s been played with for a long time- hell, we even have a hero from hundreds of years ago (Robin Hood) who has hung around because that idea is still popular. 

One of the things that go hand in hand with folk heroes is a repressive local regime. With Robin Hood, it was the Sheriff of Nottingham and the usurper king (represented in the Disney version as scrawny lion). In the case of The Man They Call Jayne and the mudders, it was the bosses who worked those folks hard for no pay.

With The Peoples’ Alchemist, it’s... well, technically it’s the entire Amestrian government, but while Ed is a State Alchemist, it’s just corrupt officials. 

ALCHEMISTS IN AMESTRIS

The motto an alchemist is supposed to follow in FMA is: “Alchemist, be thou for the people.” In a largely agrarian society that’s just leaning into the industrial revolution, like Amestris, someone who could easily fix tools, repair buildings, act as a doctor, or even control fire (depending on the alchemist’s skill level and specialty) are all things that could very much provide a huge advantage and security to a community that could support an alchemist.

Which is probably what needs to happen, since you can’t do alchemy without a lot of studying.

So an alchemist who completes that study, is supposed to turn that awesome alchemical power back to the benifit of the community. By running off to the military, that alchemist is basically taking the community’s downpaiment made during that alchemist’s training, and running away with it, while giving the community nothing.

(And this reasoning totally ignores the Spiderman Maxim of: with great power comes great responsibility.)

Then the alchemist goes specifically to the military. Since its ... founding ... Amestris has been run by war hawks, who look for any excuse to start a land-grabbing war. Of course, war is a serious drain on both people and the economy.

Those who AREN’T in a position for war profiteering (basically most of the population) don’t want war. They get coerced into war through various means anyway, and end up losing family over it. So yeah, Amestris may be basically a military dictatorship with a few democratic trappings, but there is a reason that Roy Mustang went into the military to change the country’s politics, and not the parliment.

With great power both politically and martially, the military is gonna start feeling entitled. Especially ranking individuals within the military. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the military structure is really bad at promoting accountability.

So when alchemists go off to this institution and they get caught up in the absolute corruption it’s a double blow to the people, because it’s like watching your community’s nice doctor go off to design bioweapons.

Into this situation, enter Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist.

THE THINGS ED HAS GOING FOR HIM

Edward, as I mentioned briefly in the beginning of this post, has an amazing skill in alchemy, and is a competent individual. The first of these qualities got his foot in the door. The second kept him in his position of State Alchemist. From there, though, this competent alchemist was able to unintentionally forge his reputation of the Peoples’ Alchemist.

In a situation where State Alchemists are seen as dogs of the military at best, and living genocide machines at worst, Ed managed to break through that image to the point where people actually love him enough to flock around him in awe. (Well, flock around Al, who they THINK is Ed)

Garnering that kind of admiration is no mean feat. We know HOW he did that- Ed’s adventure in Youswell laid it out pretty well. The point is, Ed is seriously popular.

Because FMA is Ed’s story, and Ed doesn’t care about politics at all, we never see other government/military officials. Well, we never see one who is genuinely popular with the people. But looking at how dramatic Ed’s reception is, how determined Roy is to change things, and what we know about how Amestris was formed, it’s easy to assume that the average citizen doesn’t have a lot of real say in important things.

What hope the people have in positive political or social change rests in figures who are already in power who act in ways that visibly benefit them. Given the cast of political actors we’ve seen in canon, the only person who is VISIBLY acting on behalf of the people is Ed.

Which means that you could argue that Ed is the single most popular political figure in ALL OF AMESTRIS.

That’s not to say that I do think he IS, just to say that it’s possible. I’m sure there are other do-gooder reformers. They likely are either stuck in dead-end assignments or aren’t as visibly effective.

Either way, Ed is the single most popular State Alchemist, and given that as a State Alchemist, he has a rank equivalent to Major, and even as someone who only knows vague facts about military structure from what she’s found on wikipedia, (A major has the authority to command units up to 300 strong) that is an IMPRESSIVE and IMPORTANT position of authority.

TIME FOR BADLY APPLIED FRENCH HISTORY

When learning about The French Revolution (not the Les Mis one) I learned that French society was divided in three unequal parts, and that the largest population was also the poorest, and also had 100% of the tax burden. I’m pretty sure that’s not how Amestris is, but I will tell you that that fact made a very big impression on little me after growing up listening to (and basically memorizing) the 25th Anniversary Version of Les Miserables the Musical (Mom is a music nerd) where a not insignificant thing that sets off the revolution is the death of Lamarque.

According to the students and the chorus, Lamarque is the only one who “speaks for the people here below”. When this dude dies, the students decide it’s time to topple the government since the ONE GOOD THING about it just died. They ultimately fail to topple the government, but Lamarque made that much of an impact on them.

Ed is NOT Lamarque. His goal isn’t to make things better for The People. And yet, he has so much pull among The People, that he has a rep and a nickname, after less than four years of work. Four years seems like a lot for many people, but in the grand scheme of things, four years from “absolute beginner starting point” to “national figure” is almost unnaturally short. Especially in a world where the newspaper is the main source of news.

In political systems where power is intentionally concentrated at the very top (fascism, dictatorships, monarchies), and the people have very little explicit political power, they are not completely powerLESS.

Their power is ill-defined and even harder to actually access in a specific way, but, being able to gauge the feeling of your citizens is important in remaining in power. Even citizens with only a facsimile of political power still can make their opinions known. And if that opinion turns to ‘those in power have to go’, well, it’s better to not let it get there, right?

POPULARITY AND POLITICS

In the case of Amestris, they have made their opinion of Ed pretty clear. His reputation is no secret to those who pay attention. While gaining a positive reputation is harder than gaining a bad one (the saying is ‘lie down with dogs, rise up with fleas’ not ‘stand in a rose garden and smell of roses’) association with Ed would probably be beneficial for those who wish to play the political game.

Without going out and specifically doing work good deeds, becoming Ed’s commanding officer would mean that you get to take partial credit for everything he does. That’s, like, how commanding officers WORK.

This partial credit for Ed’s very popular corruption-smashing would translate into some pretty sweet political clout, since you are presumed to be a source of popular political action. Popular political actions being easier to implement, even in places where democracy isn’t really a thing.

Of course, that is assuming that Ed doesn’t want to wield his popularity himself.

If Ed wanted to, he could decide that he wants political authority and use the popularity he’s found as a stepping stone to launch himself higher up the ladder than he is already. While his age and political inexperience would hamper him, if he played his cards right, Ed could become a political force equal to the vast majority of the population of Amestris, in addition to the military power he holds by being a State Alchemist.

THE DANGERS OF ALL THIS BUSINESS

Because Ed DOESN’T decide to become the Avatar Of The People’s Will in Amestrian politics, he leaves any handling of his political clout to Roy Mustang. And as I said earlier, that sure does boost Roy’s own political clout.

And I’m sure that Roy appreciates that.

He DOESN’T appreciate having to absorb any negative political blowback whenever Ed unseats someone’s nepotistic pet project. 

There is also the danger of what could possibly happen if Ed were to die in Suspicious Circumstances.

I don’t think that Roy would immediately be assumed to be the one who had Ed “taken care of”. But it would all depend on how Ed died, and the current state of the country when he died.

Assuming Ed died during, say, a year with a good harvest when things were generally quiet, there would likely be some kind of public mourning, but it would probably be akin to when David Bowie died.

If he died very suspiciously during a bad year... things could get ugly. If a people thinks that there is nothing to lose, they will take no prisoners.

In that situation of course, Amestris gets throw into another civil war since the people believe their government killed off the only person who was perceived to be on their side.

Of course, that never happened in canon, but sometimes I think about the bad things that could happen, politically, if something happened to Ed.

Conclusion

Ed’s focus is only on restoring his and Al’s bodies, but his little side trips to help people when he finds assholery has given him a reputation that would immediately catapult him to VIP in Amestrian politics if he so chose.

This reputation, along with Ed’s undeniable skill, is probably pretty useful to Roy Mustang’s own political standing. Roy doesn’t give Ed that long leash just because he feels sorry for the kid. Ed roaming around being The Peoples Alchemist earns HIM political points too

If anything bad ever happened to Ed in any kind of public way, though, the Amestrian people would want SOME kind of vengeance, and depending on the situation, Ed might could probably maybe start a war. Or even a civil war, depending on how he died...

It’s probably one of the reasons the homonculi are so concerned with making sure this particular “human sacrifice” stays safe.

[chewwytwee]

Btw the reason terfs and Nazis still exist on tumblr isn’t just because tumblr has a financial incentive to retain users, it’s also because the communities ability to recognize dog whistles and calling cards is something that’s not possible to get an algorithm to do. Tumblr (and all social media) has to rely on a bulk of their moderation being done automatically by machines, and they’re really bad at picking up subtleties. Trans people are going to be much more open and proud in labeling themselves trans, whereas TERFs and other bigots are the exact opposite! TERFs will sometimes admit to it, but there are plenty of accounts that shinigami eyes (which is community sourced and reviewed) label as transphobic that never ONCE mention TERFs in no uncertain terms. I can tell and you can and shinigami eyes mods can tell that someone saying ‘Women’s spaces are under constant threat by gender ideologs’ is a transphobe, but what in that sentence is explicit transphobia? Well, the terminology isn’t what’s transphobic there, it’s the meaning of the words. Computers cannot do that kind of analysis and interpretation, they simply can’t and TERFs know that. On the other hand, TERFs have it very easy that most trans people will be very easily identifiable as trans. Trans people will put it in their URL in their Bio in their PFP in their posts, and they’re usually pretty specific about being trans. Computers can also absolutely identify the trans flag in your pfp or see ‘Trans’ in your bio and they can easily pick up on that explicit information. TERFs report spamming popular blogs run by trans women and reporting selfies of only transgender women could theoretically lead to a situation where, if tumblr were using its own users reports as data to train its moderation algorithm, there could be a false connection between those fake TERF reports and trans people (this probably isn’t the case, but i think it’s important to recognize that algorithms can and do make these kinds of unwanted false connections, and online hate campaigns know how to avoid AND use that behavior for their own personal gain. It’s a problem software engineers and machine learning experts spend a lot of time working on because it’s so hard to solve.)

If tumblr could remove every TERF from the platform would they? I don’t know, no one really does know. It’s a useless point to argue because it requires so many assumptions about the backend moderation process that’s it’s almost entirely speculation and anecdotes. What I can say is that TERFs and Nazis exist on literally every social media platform irregardless of whether or not the people running those social media want them there. Twitter famously had a hard time getting its content detection to identify between republican politicians and fascists, it’s funny to believe that regular republicans sound so much like fascists that they’re indistinguishable (which is true tbh) but the reality is a lot more boring, fascists try very hard to sound like normal moderate conservatives. Twitter very explicitly didn’t want far right extremism on their site, and yet it still went on to be one of the biggest breeding grounds for extremist hate movements (yes, even before Musk). Content moderation for social media is fucking hard, especially when it comes to dealing with humans, who are really good at finding ways to outsmart computers. Do I think tumblr wants Nazis and transphobes on their site? No, I don’t. Do I think there’s a problem with transphobia and fascism on this site? Abso fucking lutely. These two seemingly contradictory statements make perfect sense once you grasp how difficult it can be to identify and remove hate speech algorithmically, and if you ask me why I think there’s still such a problem with transphobes, that’s why.

Sometimes you see a post that’s just, so off base you feel the need to respond. But it has like 200 notes so it feels way too personal to leave a comment telling them why their entire point isn’t relevant and is in fact really wrong.

[knightofbalance-13]

Your receipts are invalid

https://riproarrude.tumblr.com/post/165081955889/receipts

Now Remember Riproarrude, each time you lie that’s receipt for you!

Let’s see how ours stack up

So, here’s my receipts post for kob featuring his cronies. Really, the big one for all of them is the pedo apologizing bullshit, because, tbh, I haven’t interacted with any of them in a memorable way, so I’d really have to dig through stuff if I wanted to find posts the others have responded to in their own words. For the most part, they just agree with kob and all his shitty opinions and sit in his back pocket whenever he has to pull the “I have minority friends” trap card out. As though minorities can’t also be toxic to each other (see; the current state of the queer community)

And right here we have an example of Riproarrude shooting himself because if minorities can be toxic to each other, then that5 means these people I so-called “used a minority card on” would be toxic. I guess it all depends if I invalidate them or if they try invalidating me or my friends. Spoiler alert: It’s the latter.

Pedophilia Apologizing

First  is about how we think people should just be allowed to ship what they want IE have their own individual opinions and my post specifically is about the flaws in your argument so that’s another for lying.

Score: 0-2

The second is about me debunking your bullshit, rpomoting freedom and you lying again. So 1 for lying.

Score: 0-3

The third is me talking about how people are to blame for hurting people, not fiction. So another 1 for lying.

Score: 0-4

And the final one is all about how censoring fiction won’t work to stop pedophila grooming. So one m,ore for lying.

Score: 0-5

And bonus points: three of the posts are reblogs of the dame post and all have the same points so this is inflating the issue.

Score: 0-8

Almost like you’re willfully misrepresenting the info at hand. And if you don’t believe me: The info is right there: Both in the posts and in my blog for all but one.

These posts are full of kob and co defending the right to ship minors in explicit relationships with adults by saying things like, “They’re older teenagers.” “Anyone that’s affected by it is stupid and/or fragile and it’s ultimately their fault.” “These people don’t actually exist.” They also defend it by trying to bring up other ways that pedophiles groom children as though equating policing the glorification of adult/minor relationships somehow means that the solution to stopping the other bad stuff is going to be exactly the same. They also equate guns to pedo ships, as though guns aren’t tools designed with the sole purpose of killing things.

A. Teenagers are outside the realm of pedophila so that’s one more for lying.

B. If someone walks into an obvious trap, you don’t fall for the trap.

C. Misrepresenting the argument to show that it doesn’t work anyway.

And D. misrepresenting the argument: FICTION is the thing I was using as a comparison as something with no will of it’s own and whose destructive power is just an extension of the person’s.

So that’s now 3 more points for you.

Score: 0-11

Furthermore, they try to discredit anti-pedophiles by calling them fascists, a classic attempt at making the oppressed seem like the oppressor. This is a common theme among this group.

Fascism, secondary definition:

a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control 

IE controlling what people do against their will for the sake of the group. WHich is what they were trying to do.

These posts are all reblogged and agreed with by mageknight, rainbowloli, the original post is made by darkvioletcloud, all of whom continue to defend the ‘right’ to ship explicit relationships between a minor and an adult.

A. No proof except for one.

B.) You’ve shown and misrepresent before so why is this any different.

Yeah thing is: Due to your lying and actions, no one should believe you. As it stands, I’m not at any fault yet and you have eleven examples against you.

Oh: And ‘Age of consent” means their not a minor naymore, which is what you are doing in the first link so that’s another point for misrepresenting.

Score: 0-12

The second part discusses the facts about age of consent in Japan and how OP is just being a biased shit ahead so point for misrepresenting, point for trying to talk over a country about THEIR laws and point for supporting misinformation.

Score: 0-15

And teh third point is actually for making sure the word Pedophila doesn’t become a joke So one for lying and another for trying todevalue a word which in turn affects how people view ACTUAL PEDOPHILA.

Score: 0-17

In these posts, he uses the age of consent to argue that it’s okay to sexualize and have sex with minors. He clings to the use of ephebophilia, defining it as attraction to someone that is going through puberty, something he says is 15-19, and that because they could have knowledge of sex, they’re old enough to consent. He also says that the mind cannot comprehend sex until puberty.

You ignore what Age of consent means, you ignore that I said they can consent but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy and you are trying to pin this on everyone. So three more points.

Score: 0-20

Fun Fact: Girls usually hit puberty about 11 years of age, but can go through it as early as 6 or 7. Boys typically will go start puberty at 9, but can go through it as young as 7.

Yeah...except that I said late stages of puberty and there’s another word for that which IS a different version of pedophila called hebophila. Notice how I said that edhebophila and specifically said 15-19. Yeah, nice try there.

Score: 0-21

He also tries to say that ephebophilia is a better word because it makes people stop and think, which is true, but all it does is mask the true nature of the situation. Sexualization of/wanting to have sex with people that are not yet adults by adults. Equating the age of consent with the age of majority does nothing to change what the reality is.

Yeah...Not what I was arguing and not what you were arguing as age of majority doesn’t cover sex.

Score: 0-22

This link shows I don’t support pedophiles nor do I advocate for anything but the harshest penalties for them.

Score: 0-23

Not only does he continue to use ephebophilia in a bid to further soften the stigma of an adult having sex with a minor, but he defends nazis and homophobes by saying that the words mean less because it’s thrown around on the internet. Sad to say that an adult that wants to have sex with a minor is fucking scum. If we can’t agree on a name for it, then let’s just call it what it is.

Once again, lying about my argument because I was pissed that they DON’T HAVE ENOUGH stigma form the overuse of words, lying about me defending homophobes and nazis and misrepresenting what the age of majority covers which ISN’T SEX.

So four more for you.

Score: 0-27

And his example here, of a 19 year old that’s been dating a sixteen year old is just as bad. Because they would have started dating when they were 14 and 17. So why is a high school junior dating someone in middle school? Also, way to tell a CSA survivor that they’re projecting. Maybe it never occurred to him that I actually know what I’m talking about when I say that a minor is still a minor and an adult is still an adult.

Dunno, Not my argument : My argument was that age differences means jackshit.

And I know you don’t because MAGEKNIGHT14 IS A CSA SURVIVOR. So I’m only following your example. And if you say “But I could have known that”: A. That shows you didn’t do research because Mageknight has said this before in the past and B. How would I know that then? So it’s still a point against you.

Score: 0-29

Two are against myself and I never tried to get anyone to do that themselves and the third one shows a person who is in neither of the two posts and this was all from a year ago in which I do not stand by it anymore. So three more for misrepresentation.

Score: 0-32

ALl three of those prove nothing. SO another three for misrepresentation.

Score: 0-35

Here’s the proof of kob trying to bait people into telling him to kill himself. This is one of his alt accounts, of which we can confirm 5, commenting on posts with things like, “Death to KOB.” and “Should just shoot himself.” Then equating a single person being a dick to an entire group of totally unrelated people, as though every single person that used the rwde tag decided to suicide bait him.  Also, ignoring the fact that the person was told off.

Except...THGAT’S NOT WHO I MEAN WHEN I SAY I GET SUICIDE BAITED.

This is the link i always use (https://knightofbalance-13.tumblr.com/post/160154442725/httpdudebladetumblrcompost160140162256sokum) which shows a person suicide baiting me and in fact, being ENCOURAGED to do it. By someone who CAN’T be me. So anotehr open for lying.

Score: 0-36

Arguing with himself, using the f-slur and implying mk is his boyfriend as an insult.

An insult that the rwde tag used all the fucking time.

“Confirming the creation of the rwbyfan18 blog and that mageknight was in on the whole thing, so just as guilty.”

And shows that wasn’t my intent.

Other alt accounts. Further numbers are password protected soooo… Maybe more?

Which proves nothing.

Anti-Trans/Anti-Queer Posts

These posts tear down a trans headcanon because kob didn’t like the tone of the OP. Then he said that people that come up with trans headcanons are living a lie and depressing and hurting themselves. Then he outright says they can’t have those headcanons because they’ll attack the creators if it doesn’t happen.

A Misrepresenting my arguments: Op was literally asking people to do it to piss cis peopel off.

B. Because I think that depending your worth on fiction is depressing as hell and you really need to have more self esteem.

C. Pretending I don’t use that argument of “people are looking too deeply into shit” isn;t something I use for eveyrthing.

And D. Okay, I’ll take that: It was paranoid of me. That’s still my first point and your 39th.

Score: 1-39

This post I’ll alos answer for but the poster at the end WAS getting angry that I was critcizing the headcanon. SAO that’s still a point against you as well.

Score 2-40

And teh third post has been noted by trans people that it ISN’T offensive for all trans people so any point for misrepresenting teh facts. I could do one for thinking all tarns people think the same but there’s nopm actual proof of that.

Score: 2-41

The third link is just stating how life works and agrees with the fact that LGBT and minorities had to fight for equality but that’s how things turn out and you can’t do anything but struggle for it. So one for lying, one for misrepresenting and one for slander.

Score: 2-44

This is just a joke and had no malice so one for misrepresenting again.

2-45

This one I only found a screenshot for, but he refers to a trans woman as a “wo-man”, implying that she’s not actually a woman or that she’s a fake woman.

A. No proof that the otehr poster is trans.

B. Mis representing What I am saying as that was a mockery of feminists saying “Mansplianing” or crap like that.

C. Not giving a link to prove the point and providing false evidence;

Score: 2-48

And the post outright shows me excluding LGBT people who aren’t being assholes and begins with an apology.

Score: 2-49

Said person also says that a trans person MUST be offended by it and treats all trans people as a collective or speaks over any trans people that have a differing opinion

Score: 2-50

In which I speka out against someone who is trying to exclude people’s friends for their sex IE: a form of phobia in teh same vein as “homophopbia”

Score: 2-51

And said joke i8s a play on words, is taken out of context and makes people out to be South Park.

Score:2-52

Outright LYING and you do nothing to shw0o how that’s a bad thing

2-54

Defending Nazis

First link has me not defending any Nazis and showing what most people think.

Score: 2-56

This post here is taking a man who orchestrated the mass murder of 12 million Jews and saying, “Everyone has the capacity for good and evil.” A post like this is terrible because humanizing someone like that means that you soften the blow of the atrocities they committed by putting it on the same level as other ‘bad people’. This is not something that is morally gray, this is not something to be looked back on and say, ”Well, the man who did it was human, just like you and me.” This is a warning, because people like Hitler do not deserve to have ‘both sides’ looked at. There should be no one rational who can sympathize with the monster. Defending it by saying that those who disagree can’t “see the complexities in the world” is just another way to soften the actions of a mass murderer.

A. My post outright contradicts that by saying that what he did was wrong.

B. I never said he was morally grey

C. You msirepresent again “This person was like and me so we better keep a close eye on what we do unless we start acting like him.”

D. That WAS my warning, you just took my post out of ocntext/

and E. I wasn’t showing sym,pathy: I was showing paranoia about humanity.

so that’s another 5 points. nAnd that’s being generous.

Score: 2-61

In this post here he defends not punching nazis which, sure, maybe you don’t feel like it’s ethical to punch people. However, he says that maybe nazis aren’t really nazis because the word gets thrown around a lot on the internet. He also says that, ““We should fight the Nazis” translate into the real world as “We should attack anyone we don’t like/who disagrees with us.” AKA FAICISM”. That’s word for word there, folks.

Which is the result of throwing the word “Nazi” around to mean “person I don’t like” which I say in the post. And All I said was :”Just because gets called a nazi doesn’t make them one.”

Score 2-63

Then there’s the exchange where the OP says, “Oh no! That person is waving a flag that incites ethnic cleansing.” To which kob replies, “Oh no, that person doesn’t automatically confirm my political bias.” As though people waving a nazi flag don’t advocate for ethnic cleansing. Then he defends their right to spread their violent message by invoking Freedom of Speech. At the bottom, he straight up defends neo-nazis, saying things like, “Some might have been tricked into it.”. It’s truly amazing.

A. That shit happens: It’s called “brain washing” and “peer pressure.”

B. No, I was aying taht’s whta people mean when they call a persona a Nazi. Amoing other things.

C. I invoke the maxim of Voltaire: “ I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It “ And I never said peopel can’t call out actual Nazis with proof and logic.

And D. There’s no link. Check ouyt the post if you disagree.

Score: 2-67

This post is about the UN telling America that it should curb some of it’s freedom of speech in order to protect against a nazi threat. Kob is against that, of course, because nazis should be allowed to have a platform to spew a violent rhetoric and call for ethnic cleansing.

A. manipulative language. B. Misrepresenting my stance (In that i believe Freedom of Speech can NEVER be comprimised.)

And C. I siad no such thing.

Score: 2-70

Here he is comparing BLM to a fictional terrorist group. Ft some shade thrown at the Black Panthers. The top link, by the way, has many alt right sites as his sources.

And yet people compare teh WHite Fang to the Civil Rights movement. And you provide no proof of those sources being alt-right.

Score: 2-73

Defending stereotype humor, despite the fact that stereotypes are incredibly harmful and continuing to enforce that kind of humor normalizes bigotry. He says not to get upset over off color jokes, that if you don’t find it funny, that it’s not meant for you. Off color jokes aren’t meant for rational people, they’re meant for bigots

A.) Misrepresenting my arguments as the first post si about how offensive humor MOCKS stereotypes and the second instanceis all about how jokes aren’t taken seriously. Also, teh first instance enforces stereotypes as well: Just against peopel assumed to be “oppressors). So two for hypocrisy as well.

Score: 2-77

Here’s some posts saying/implying that racism is morally gray. The back and forth with Delvin is particularly enlightening.

First post is about a bias source and shows that I consider a lot of things when judging morality and the second is showing that both sides can be wrong that I don’t even say. so three here: two for misrepresenting and anotehr for using an obviously biased source.

Score: 2-80

This whole thing. Equating the OP with Jim Crow laws

A. the whole thing is not about segregation and B. OP was demanding that white people don’t talk about black characters. So two for misrepresenting again.

Score: 2-82

Bonus Terrible Posts:

Wanna bet he break 100?

I’m not linking mageknight directly because he has a shitty autoplay blog, but here he is using an ableist slur

That’s a meme. Also: Delvin outright admitts he wa strolling which you treated as bad when I “supposedly” did it

Score: 2-83

Here’s ulastar using an autistic screeching meme, very ableist

SEE...You’re talking over me. Because I”M AUTISTIC. So that mena not only are you equating all autsitic people to Pepe which is ableist, misrepresenting Ula, being a hypocrite AND talking over autistic people.

. That’s four points.

Score: 2-87

Here’s a post where kob and co bullied a user off tumblr and then blamed the user for taking it to heart.

Who had called Mageknit14,a CSA victim, a pedophile, was called out on nit and tried playing victim. SO 1 for misrepresentiung, oen for lying, one for hypocrisy and one for talking over someone.

http://mageknight14.tumblr.com/post/157677488173/agentcarolinainthemorning-mageknight14

http://mageknight14.tumblr.com/post/157678532448/epsilon-beta-mageknight14-epsilon-beta

Score: 2-91

Have yourself some sexism.

A. Joke

B.OP was being sexist herself so one more for hypocrisy.

C. Yeah, said person had attacked my friend so hypocrist there again.

Score: 2-96

No arguments, just hypocrisy and misrepresentation.

Score:2-99

Misrepresenting the joke, ignoring the image that shows Feminist Frequency being ungrateful and implying that being against MODREN feminism is ba which is not an argument.

Score:2-101

More anti-feminism

And more misrepresenting the argument as this is criticism against MODERN feminism and acts like it doesn’t have a massive bias against men.

So, there’s a great big chunk of stuff about how shitty and awful kob and his friends, but mostly kob, are. Like I said, I really don’t interact with the others too much, but pedophilia is my volcano button and every damn one of them agreed that it’s okay. You know, so long as they’re at least 15.

...YEAH, Not all of them did, we argued that being above 15 years of age is just NOT pedophile.

But you wanna know something: He said these receipts were against all of my friends, not just me. so another point for lying.

Score: 2-102

I honestly haven’t even gotten to everything, either. I haven’t interacted with kob lately, although I do still see him on my dash, which is why I’m finally putting this post up. I have all of his cronies blocked, I have all of the alts blocked that I know about. Honestly, not having to deal with people like this is pretty freeing. It was one thing to argue about the plotline of a cartoon, it’s a whole other things when they start reblogging gun propaganda and anti islamic posts featuring uncensored photos of hangings and death(which I’m not going to link because it’s gross, but tl;dr it’s about how the Middle East is anti lgbt).

Lying and misrepresenting the argument about guns that just says everyone should have guns since3w peopel who would hurt someone with a gun wouldn’t give a shit about laws. Also, lyi9ng and no proof about teh anti-islamic point. So four more point5s.

Score: 2-106

All that being said, I’d like to once again urge anyone who sees him to block him. If we work together, we can cut the head off this snake.

And just how fucked do you think you are when you realize that what you thought was a snake was actually a HYDRA that you’ve pissed off. Because all you’ve done is given me a 106 examples of why you aren’t trustworthy. And this is MINIMUM: If I counted the number of times you were for censoring people’s opinions, the number of times you displayed sexism and the amount of times you give examples that don’t apply to everyone you accuse.

So next time, maybe try looking the mirror instead of giving me more proof of your guiltiness.

[skeletoes]

Disclaimer: I am not fully discussing the Mueller Report, but I have read it. If you would like a PDF copy of it, you can find it on the DOJ website, or you can comment and I’ll send it to you. 

I’ve been screeching about Fascism & the United States Government for months now. I’m not the only one, although a lot more people are now also alarmed recently. In my opinion, our government, under the Trump Administration, is straddling the fence between our distinctive form of Democracy and Fascism.

Of course there is the uptick in hate-rhetoric and general nazis, but that’s not entirely what I’m screaming about today.

I’m referring directly to President Donald Trump and his administration.

As I’m sure you all know, the Mueller Report was released yesterday. I quickly obtained the searchable PDF version from friends (the one on the DOJ website is NOT a searchable version) and sat down with coffee, a notebook and a pen and started reading. 8 hours later I got through 4/5 of it. Yes, it’s that huge.

Inside of it, is tons of information in each volume, which there are two. The first volume covered Russia influencing our election and the idea that Trump committed conspiracy. They did NOT find evidence that Trump committed conspiracy, but there were several others whom they looked into, from the top of the food chain to the bottom. Donald Trump Junior was not charged because he purely didn’t understand or was ignorant of what he was doing and was involved in. (I had a good chuckle at that, he was essentially too stupid to be charged!) Most importantly it detailed just how far Russia went to infiltrate our elections.

Volume two covered obstruction by the President, and cited 10 examples which were then followed with how they did or did not qualify to the legal requirements of obstruction. It was damning. However, the special counsel did NOT make a judgement and left it open to congress and the AG. Posted below is a photo of the conclusion (I did not take it, but am posting this as I’m refusing to open that damn report again today) where you can clearly see that the report does NOT exonerate him.

Either way. The report has been released (granted it is SEVERELY redacted in parts) to both the public and congress, and outside of Trump’s base people are horrified. The report lists 10 examples or “keys” that if nothing else show Trump attempting to cover up, lie, or misconstrue information as well as trying to get Robert Mueller removed from the investigation and to close the investigation.

Which if you didn’t know, is shady.. as fuck.

People are outraged (and frankly they’re not all “libtards”.. it’s pretty far across the board) and an article of impeachment as been introduced into the House.

Now that that’s stated, (and don’t argue, I’ll just send you a copy of the report) here’s why I’m especially alarmed today.

Since the investigation concluded and we were made aware of it back in March, Trump has been parroting “NO COLLUSION – TOTAL EXONERATION!!”. Almost a full month of the same crap. Which whatever, is essentially what AG Barr had stated in his original presser, and then again yesterday morning before he released the report. (I do want to go ahead and point out that he’s NOT supposed to be acting in Trump’s best interest, but the country’s. Yet, he came out and attempted to spin it in favor of Trump, which people are still dissecting and disproving.)

However, once the report got released, and not only painted Trump, his family and his administration in a very bad light, but stated he was NOT exonerated by the report, Trump has gone into a rage. One that I consider very scary.

(Also, screenshotting Trump is HIGHLY annoying as he still hasn’t figured out how to create a thread on twitter after all these years.)

The last tweet, with the highlighted part, is what I’m concerned about. He has spouted this kind of rhetoric before, and his supporters cherish it (they’re still suggesting hanging anyone who was part of this investigation on Reddit, Twitter & Facebook). However, he has actually used the word “justice” in regards to all of this, purely because his administration was put under the microscope, and he came out slightly dirty.

We cannot label investigators “dangerous” yet. Do you know why?  We are lucky enough to still have a working government. We are lucky enough that when the suspicion of corruption/conspiracy came up (complete with enough proof to get the S.C. looking into it) our government actually INVESTIGATED. That’s more than a lot of governments around the world, and we should embrace what little we get out of ours. The Special Council did exactly what it was supposed to do, and proudly. Many people forget that Mueller is a card-carrying Republican, ex-director, and veteran, yet a lesser version of him could have potentially swept all of this under the rug. Mueller works for the law and for us. Which is something that Trump seems to miss, the government does not work for HIM. (<- See Mueller report: Trump states that the next AG should protect him. Barr comes into the picture.)

As Mueller clearly states throughout his report, his service is to the rule of law and that is not something we need to deem dangerous or “sick”. In fact, even remotely applying the word “Treason” to a legitimate investigation, one that fought for our country and it’s citizens, making sure that nobody “is above the law”, is deranged. That is exactly the opposite of what the president should be parroting.

He should be using his ridiculous Twitter Platform and his rambling speeches at events to champion our justice system, instead he makes comments about how “This should never happen again”.

What Donald Trump is proposing, and has proposed in the past is that our government and citizens should NOT be allowed to investigate a sitting president or his administration. That essentially gives full rule allowing a government to descend into dictatorship. If a government and it’s head of government is allowed to do whatever they please without the threat of an investigation, our country is doomed.

United States citizens need to remember it is our right to investigate our government. They work for us, not the other way around. We are lucky enough to still have a government that will turn its eyes inward to police itself. (Of course my friends, our government still has its MANY issues.. but today is about holding on to what little we have.)

To have a sitting president threaten anyone who investigates him, or speaks against him, with the full weight of his office behind him, is a heavy foot into fascism.

To have him call anyone who speaks out against him, or reports information that is not favorable to him, treasonous is a heavy foot into fascism. 

We need to wake up America, we’re getting closer and closer to a place we won’t be able to come back from, and nobody seems to care.

Early 2019: The Political Climate & Creeping Towards Fascism Disclaimer: I am not fully discussing the Mueller Report, but I have read it. If you would like a PDF copy of it, you can find it on the DOJ website, or you can comment and I'll send it to you. 

[chiseler]

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL FOR WAYWARD GIRLS

Putting "acceptable" limits on depravity in the name of compromise and "reality" is how fascism eventually triumphs. Or so said Professor Yvonne De Carlo of 'Miss Yvonne's Academy for Wayward Hussies' also known as 'The Frankfurt School' --  a place of higher learning for delinquent, pregnant scholars. "Your new president is merely proof that the depraved nature of power is given license by tolerating all but its excesses" said Professor De Carlo as she powdered her ample cleavage in full view of the astonished, pinafore-clad undergrads gathered for her lecture on the 'Dialectic of Fascism and French Manicures Made Easy-Peasy'.

"You want to know what brought Trump to power? Hint: It wasn't a sudden, inexplicable, sewage-strewn wave of raw hatred poised to strike down public schools, libraries and national parks at the behest of a braying, stupid mob of "privileged" former factory workers. It wasn't merely insanity wrought by decades of institutional neglect or unchecked greed -- although that was a big part of it. It was *nice* people willing to accept certain 'realities' to ensure their place at the proverbial table remained a pristine space of individually apportioned, locally sourced food; a place where rhetorical restraint replaced actual political solutions to any given problem.

You chose 'safe' over actual justice -- meaning someone else's kid will take a police bullet to the chest so that we can all read heavily redacted versions of Mark Twain in the peace and comfort of a colorful ball pit of higher learning like our own Frankfurt School, which I should mention was only made possible by a generous corporate donation from a multi-national purveyor of processed pork by-products with vaguely German origins. At the end of it, you'll all be awarded a certificate declaring you free from venereal diseases, and the skills necessary to lower live poultry into a vat of ammonia in a subsidiary facility owned by our trustees. At your age, I was performing burlesque numbers on the mean streets of my Canadian homeland at the behest of my stage mother. But I'll tell you all about that later in the term when we cover 'Hoochie-Coochie Cave Dancing of the Early Ottoman Empire - as Explained by a scantily-clad Miss Yvonne Waving a Jewel-Encrusted Saber'. Consider that your 'trigger warning'. Now let's proceed:

It was enough that we embraced Caitlyn Jenner and applauded Meryl Streep giving the phone book version of the Gettysburg Address to her wealthy patrons -- I could give a better soliloquy while swallowing a sword and balancing a cobra on my head, but I digress . . . It was enough to sprout a 'dad boner' over Pussy Riot to declare ourselves -- "punk rock", even as we devised ways to make earth's human and animal life redundant during brainstorming meetings that took place in an indoor ergonomic playground that served wheat grass martinis on tap. My dear friend Frederick Marcuse who took me under his bosom . . . or was that the other way around . . . argued that the technocratic efficiency of advanced, industrial societies had rendered it 'one-dimensional', and as such, resistant to all critiques of it. Our "aversion to introspection" according to Adorno -- another generous benefactor to the Frankfurt School -- renders left-opposition to Trump little more than an elite-led, sour grape authoritarianism that is unable to contemplate its own role in a paradigmatic shift towards a more 'unprincipled' and unpredictable variety of global aggression. If you don't believe him, just ask a white feminist how writing 'rape culture' on her boobs in sharpie will 'shame the patriarchy', and this will give you some idea about why I start every afternoon coughing up a ball of mentholated phlegm into my cornflakes.

Let me tell you what brought us to this precise moment of imminent planetary collapse: It was "nice" people with library cards and rescue pets accepting the kind of compromises that result in bulldozing homes in the occupied territories of Palestine, imprisoning whistle blowers, putting indigenous land everywhere under threat, and even sodomizing a half dead Pan-African leader while he lay dying in a drainpipe.  

It's the 'realists' who sign off on nearly $40 billion in military 'aid' to Israel so that it can build more settlements in defiance of International law, and the similarly counterproductive reasoning that blames Russian hackers for the DNC's corrupt maneuvering to install its preferred Wall Street-friendly candidate in defiance of roughly half the voting population. The same folks who cry foul the loudest when an asshole takes his rightful place on the golden, Imperial throne after they have spent years polishing it for him, and expanding its powers to flush away civil liberties and environmental protections. Now all of a sudden that reclining, ermine-trimmed commode in the Oval Office is a "hot seat". Back in the day when I was bumping and grinding on the Paramount lot for chump change, Charlton would grab me by the pussy and . . . well, never mind that now. Let's just say that my jungle cat put up a fierce resistance that left a permanent scar on his manhood and not a single scratch on my lady mandibles.  Not sure where any of this is going, but anyhoo . . .

It's the 'nice' -- meaning the technocratically-minded gatekeepers of the 'left', who perform the linguistic feats necessary to justify, say, the involuntary sacrifice of dozens of dead Bedouin wedding celebrants in Yemen to maintain cordial relations with a despotic petrostate that helps prop up a neighboring Apartheid regime equally ill-disposed towards its benefactor. 'This is why we can't have nice things like brutalist revolving restaurants atop Manhattan office towers', they will remind you. Ingrates like you always second-guessing the stuff we do to prevent maniacs from seizing power here at home'. The nice among us, whom we used to call 'Good Germans', prefer that you don't bring 'false equivalency' into reasoned discussion about state-sponsored murder, and focus on the positive . . . like . . . um . . . 'At least under Trump, my sad face selfies will have all the political urgency of Guernica'.  

It's the "nice" that refused to hold Obama's feet to the fire, giving him carte blanche to capitulate wholly to the more clamorous and opportunistic voices of his inner circle without ever troubling his conscience. The guy was so cool he could grant clemency to Chelsea Manning AND bomb a failed state into further oblivion all in the same week. "Nice" folks would never venture into the treacherous waters of condemning or even criticizing your country's first black president for reasons entirely to do with the sort of career-minded, self-preservation that says "Bummer about Leonard Peltier, but Michelle Obama sure rawked that Zac Posen dress on the cover of Vogue!"

When someone *reaches across the aisle*, it's usually to grasp at the last straws of power allotted to them by whichever democratically elected fascist regime happens to control Congress. Or it's a hands-y director trying to cop a feel on a red-eye flight from LA. Yes, Otto Preminger, I'm talking to YOU!

To make a long-winded lecture only as long as it takes to dry one's nails after the second coat of Revlon's 'Dead Roses on a Dusky Tomb': Trump didn't win in spite of your 'reasoned' acceptance of the outgoing president's expanded powers, but because you were willing to rationalize its unsavory aspects long enough to ensure its unchecked and unbridled form reached its inevitable conclusion".

Professor De Carlo then flounced out of the lecture hall with the scent of Shalimar, and two or three shirtless Cabana boys trailing behind her discarded veils. "I'm off to powder my you know what. Class -- and I mean the particular one that conflates legal weed smoking with political resistance - dismissed"!

by Jennifer Matsui

[democratsunited-blog]

The Switch That Never Happened: How the South Really Went GOP

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=6973

The Switch That Never Happened: How the South Really Went GOP

This article is adapted from Dinesh D’Souza’s new book Death of a Nation, out July 31 from St. Martin’s Press. His movie of the same title opens nationwide on Friday, August 3.

An interesting phenomenon in politics is the flip flop. What would cause a politician who takes a stand on an issue to reverse himself and take precisely the opposite stand on the same issue? Even more interesting is the about face or volte face. The volte face goes beyond the flip flop because it represents a total and usually lasting shift of course, as when Reagan abandoned the Democratic Party and became a Republican.

More interesting even than the volte face is when a whole group or party makes this shift. Perhaps the most dramatic example in our lifetime is when the Soviet Communist Party in 1991 abolished itself. It’s one thing for an individual to undergo a wrenching conversion but what would cause a whole party to reverse itself in that way? Could it be a transformation of the collective conscience, or a new perception of group interests, or what?

Our exploration of the subject is deepened by a new possibility introduced by Winston Churchill, who in one of his essays takes up the subject of consistency in politics. Himself accused on more than one occasion of reversing himself and taking inconsistent positions on issues, Churchill defends himself by invoking the apparent volte face, the change of tactics that is not a change of goals or values.

Churchill writes, “A statesman in contact with the moving current of events and anxious to keep the ship on an even keel and steer a steady course may lean all his weight now on one side and now on the other. His arguments in each case, when contrasted, can be shown to be not only very different in character but contradictory in spirit and opposite in direction. Yet his object will throughout have remained the same . . . We cannot call this inconsistency. In fact, it can be claimed to be the truest consistency. The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing circumstances is to change with them while preserving the same dominating purpose.”

Keeping this in mind, let’s examine a series of critical transformations or switches in American politics over the past few decades. Why did blacks, who were once uniformly Republican, become as they are now almost uniformly Democratic? Why did the South, once the “solid South” of the Democratic Party, become the base of the Republican Party? No understanding of current politics is possible without answering these questions.

Progressives have put forward their answer, which is now conventional wisdom, trumpeted in the media and commonly invoked as if it were too obvious to require any proof. Even some Republicans believe it, as evidenced by RNC chairman Ken Mehlman going before the NAACP in 2005 and apologizing for the racist history of the Republican Party. In 2010, the first black chairman of the RNC, Michael Steele, conceded the GOP’s supposed Southern Strategy had “alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South.”

You know you’ve got a powerful ideological indictment when even its targets are willing to make a confession. And what is this indictment? Its essence can be expressed in a few key propositions. The parties switched platforms, at least on the race issue. This big switch was brought about in the late 1960s by the GOP, which under the leadership of Richard Nixon employed an infamous “Southern strategy” based on an appeal to racism and white supremacy.

The racist wing of the Democratic Party—the so-called Dixiecrats—responded by switching allegiances and becoming Republicans. Meanwhile, the Democrats under Lyndon Johnson pushed through the signature civil rights laws. So the Democrats, once the party of racism, became the party of civil rights, and the GOP, once the party of Lincoln and emancipation, became the new home of bigotry and white supremacy.

There is no limit to the number of articles chanting this progressive tune. “The Southern Strategy was the original tune that made Donald Trump possible,” Jeet Heer writes in the New Republic. Heer contends that while the GOP has relied for decades on “coded appeals to racism,” or what Heer terms “winking racism,” Trump with his overt racism is the party’s “true heir, the beneficiary of the policies the party has pursued for more than half a century.”

“Reagan, Trump and the Devil Down South” is the title of a 2016 article in the left-wing The Guardian which faults the GOP with making a “deal with the devil.” Yes, it’s the Southern Strategy all over again. “Goldwater discovered it; Nixon refined it; and Reagan perfected it into the darkest of modern political dark arts.” While these Republicans preferred “dog whistle” appeals to racism, “Trump blows it out” and “that’s why the base loves it—he feels their rage.”

And from The Atlantic we get the headline, “How Trump Remixed the Republican Southern Strategy.” Here the author Robert Jones blames the Southern Strategy on “the speeches of Richard Nixon . . . who polished George Wallace’s overtly racist appeals for mainstream use in the Republican campaign playbook.” Jones, too, says Trump has upped the ante. “In a demonstration of how successful the old strategy was, he’s discarded the dog whistle in favor of a bullhorn.”

And again—just to highlight the omnipresence of this stuff—we have Salon informing us that “the idea that today’s Democratic Party is the party of militant white supremacy is profoundly wrong.” Why? You see, there was a Southern Strategy and a big switch. “White southern Democrats were explicit about their racism, and it’s no mystery that they left the party.” These people then “joined a Republican Party waiting with open arms.”

There is a considerable body of progressive scholarly literature behind this rhetoric. This includes Earl and Merle Black’s The Rise of Southern Republicans and Dan Carter’s From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution. These are the progressive architects of the narrative of the Southern Strategy and the big switch. Most recently, historian Kevin Kruse’s study White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism invokes the Southern Strategy and the big switch to make the case that white supremacy is now a core doctrine of the Republican Right.

What dividends this explanation pays for progressive Democrats! In effect,  it erases most of their history and gives them a Get Out of Jail Free Card. Democrats have never publicly admitted their role over nearly two centuries of being the party of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, racial terrorism, the Ku Klux Klan, and also fascism and Nazism. Yet when pushed up against the wall with the mountain of evidence I provide in my book, how can they deny it?

They cannot deny it. Therefore, their ultimate fallback—their only fallback—is to insist that they changed. The bad guys became the good guys. The biggest payoff for them is the corollary to this. Supposedly the Republicans also changed, in the opposite direction. The good guys became the bad guys. So now the Democratic Left not only gets to accuse Trump, conservatives, and Republicans of being the party of racism; they also get to take their own history of white supremacy—with all its horrid images of slavery, lynching and concentration camps—and foist it on the political Right.

But is it true? Or is the whole doctrine of the Southern strategy and the big switch yet another piece of progressive humbug? Let us see.

Did the Parties Switch Platforms? Let’s begin with a critical question: Did the two parties switch platforms? In other words, is the GOP still the party of Lincoln or, as progressives insist, would Lincoln today be a Democrat? On the face of it, the notion of a complete party swap seems unlikely. Did the cops really become robbers and the robbers become cops? It’s possible, I suppose. We can test this claim by examining the core philosophy of Lincoln, the first Republican president, and then seeing whether it is still the core philosophy of the Republican Party today.

On multiple occasions, Lincoln defined slavery in this way: “You work; I’ll eat.” In his Chicago speech of July 10, 1858, Lincoln put it slightly differently, “You toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it.” In its essence, Lincoln said, slavery gave men the right to “wring their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.” As historian Allen Guelzo pointed out in my interview with him for the movie, for Lincoln the most appalling feature of slavery was that it was a form of theft, theft of a man’s labor.

Lincoln went on to argue that for centuries monarchs and aristocrats had stolen the labor of working people through a variety of mechanisms, from confiscatory taxation to outright confiscation. Lincoln insisted that notwithstanding its lofty rationalizations, the Democratic slave plantation was based on this ancient principle of thievery. “No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king . . . or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”

Lincoln contrasted slavery with the Republican principle, which is that the hand that makes the corn has the right to put the corn into its own mouth. In Lincoln’s words, “As each man has one mouth to be fed, and one pair of hands to furnish food, it was probably intended that that particular pair of hands should feed that particular mouth.” The social philosophy underlying this is that “every man can make himself” and “the man who labored for another last year, this year labors for himself, and next year he will hire others to labor for him.”

Lincoln calls this the free labor system, by which he means the free market system. It operates on self-improvement, as Lincoln’s own story illustrates. “I am not ashamed to confess that twenty five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails at work on a flat-boat.” The free labor system, in Lincoln’s words, “gives hope to all and energy and progress and improvement of condition to all.”

Naturally, Lincoln says, people want to keep what they earn. “Even the ant who has toiled and dragged a crumb to his nest,” he says, “will furiously defend the fruit of his labor against whatever robber assails him.” And while the temptation to envious confiscation is inevitable, Lincoln told a delegation of workingmen during the Civil War, “Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself.”

Failure to succeed, Lincoln said, is “not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly or singular misfortune.” As political scientist Harry Jaffa interprets Lincoln’s words, “The brain surgeon and the street sweeper may have very unequal rewards for their work. Yet each has the same right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hand has earned. The brain surgeon has no more right to take the street sweeper’s wages than the street sweeper to take the brain surgeon’s.”

Why not? Because for Lincoln such schemes of confiscation are a restoration of the slavery principle where “some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.” Lincoln added, “This is wrong and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of good government.”

Lincoln’s philosophy can be seen in its practical implementation when his own stepbrother, age 37, wrote him to ask for a small loan to settle a debt. Lincoln responded, “Your request for eighty dollars, I do not think best, to comply with now.” Lincoln reminded him this was not the first time he was being importuned for money; they had been down that road before. The problem, as he put it, is that the man was “an idler. You do not very much dislike to work; but you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it.”

Here’s what Lincoln proposed: “You shall go to work, tooth and nails, for somebody who will give you money for it.” Lincoln added an incentive. “If you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month . . . Now if you will do this, you will soon be out of debt, and what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again.”

It should be obvious from this that Lincoln’s basic ideology that people have a right to the fruits of their labor, and that government, if it gets involved at all, should merely provide idlers and indigents with the means to become self-supporting, is even today the basic ideology of Republicans. And it is equally clear that the confiscatory principle “You work, I eat” is even today the basic ideology of Democrats. The entire welfare state, from the New Deal through the Great Society to contemporary Democratic schemes, are all rooted in the same plantation philosophy of legally-sanctioned theft that Lincoln identified more than a century and a half ago.

Why Blacks Became Democrats Now we turn to a second question: why did blacks become Democrats? They were once at home in the Republican Party. As Frederick Douglass put it, “The Republican Party is the deck; all else is the sea.” How different things are now. After the Civil War nine out of 10 blacks voted Republican; now nine out of 10 blacks votes Democratic. So something happened to cause blacks to switch their allegiance. But what?

For progressives, the huge backing of blacks for the Democratic Party proves that the Democratic Party is the party of racial enlightenment and black interests. As for the GOP, it follows by the same reasoning that it must be the party opposed to blacks. As Jamelle Bouie put it in the Daily Beast, “If the GOP is so supportive of African Americans, then why have blacks abandoned the party in droves?”

Here I give the surprising answer to that question. The data show that blacks did not switch from the Republicans to the Democrats in the 1960s. They did not do it because of civil rights. Rather, a majority of blacks became Democrats in the 1930s. This was at a time when the Democratic Party was manifestly the party of segregation and the Ku Klux Klan. FDR, who got less than one-third of the black vote in 1932, got 75 percent of the black vote in 1936.

Why would blacks leave the party of emancipation and resistance to segregation and lynching and join the party of bigotry and white supremacy? The depressing answer is that blacks did it in exchange for the crumbs that they got from FDR’s New Deal. We have seen earlier how FDR designed the New Deal to exclude African-Americans and preserve Jim Crow. How delighted and amused FDR must have been to see blacks coming over to his camp even as his administration worked closely with racist Democrats to screw them over.

It should be noted, in mitigation of this horrible decision on the part of African Americans—and it was a horrible decision—that conditions for blacks during the Great Depression were almost inconceivably bad. Historian Ira Katznelson points out that median black family income was around $500 a month, which means most blacks lived at subsistence level without electricity, hot water, refrigeration, adequate plumbing or gas for cooking. “Under these circumstances,” Katznelson writes, New Deal benefits “limited though they were” and “however discriminatory” still offered some relief and solace to a “desperate population.”

So FDR bought off the African American vote at a bargain-basement price in the 1930s. Yet this secured the Democrats a decisive, but not unanimous, black vote. Democrats had around 75 percent, and they remained in that range from the 1930s through the 1960s. Then LBJ consciously directed a large portion of his Great Society benefits to blacks, and bought off another big chunk of the black vote for the Democratic Party.

Since LBJ, blacks have voted for Democrats in the 90 percent range. This second generation of blacks in overwhelming numbers gave their electoral consent to becoming part of LBJ’s Democratic plantation. Note that this generation of African-Americans did this by abandoning the party that had stood up for them for more than a century and joining the one that had enslaved them, lynched them, installed systems of discrimination against them, and was even then the main source of resistance to the enactment of their civil rights.

In my view, the political decision to become part of the Democratic plantation has proven to be disastrous for blacks, although not necessarily for the black overseer class that administers the Democratic plantation. However this may be, the timing and motivation of the black switch is a decisive refutation of the progressive lie that blacks wisely left the Republican Party because they recognized it as the party of white supremacy, and joined the Democratic Party because they knew it had become the party of civil rights. That wasn’t the perception; neither was it the reality.

The Myth of the Southern Strategy Now we turn to Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the reasons for the other switch: the switch of the South from being the political base of the Democratic Party to now being that of the GOP. Here the progressive narrative is that Nixon was convinced by his malevolent advisers—notably Kevin Phillips, author of the bible of the Southern Strategy—to make a racist appeal to the Deep South, winning over Dixiecrats and segregationists to the GOP and firmly establishing the Republican Party as the part of white supremacy, a mantle that has now been inherited by Trump.

The first problem with this Southern Strategy tale is that progressives have never been able to provide a single example of an explicitly racist pitch by Richard Nixon at any time in his long career. One might expect that a racist appeal to Deep South racists would actually have to be made and to be understood as such. Yet quite evidently none was.

The two biggest issues in the 1968 campaign were the war in Vietnam and, closely related, the antiwar movement in the United States. Nixon campaigned on a strong anti-Communist, law-and-order platform. While embracing the welfare state—Nixon was no conservative on domestic issues—he also railed against what he termed the “excesses of bleeding heart liberalism.” Some progressives contend that while not explicitly racist, Nixon’s campaign themes reflected a covert or hidden racism. Nixon was supposedly sending “coded” messages to Deep South racists, speaking as if through a political “dog whistle.”

Now I have to say I consider this “dog whistle” argument to be somewhat strange. Is it really plausible that Deep South bigots, like dogs, have some kind of a heightened awareness of racial messages—messages that are somehow indecipherable to the rest of the country? Not really. Even so, let’s consider the possibility. I concede of course that most public policy issues, from taxes to crime to welfare, are entangled with race. A tax cut, for instance, will have a disproportionate impact on some groups as compared to other groups.

Precisely for this reason, however, it’s incumbent on progressives to have some basis of distinguishing “dog whistle” tactics from ordinary political appeals. Yet never have I seen anyone make this distinction. Progressive rhetoric almost inevitably assumes that Nixon is speaking in racial code. How can this be established, however, without looking at Nixon’s intention or, absent knowledge of his intention, of the particular context in which Nixon said what he did? Context, in other words, is critical here.

Consider Nixon’s famous law and order platform which is routinely treated as a racist dog whistle. Now a call for law and order is not inherently racist, and this theme from Nixon resonated not merely in the South but throughout the country. It should be noted that Nixon’s law and order argument was directly not merely at black rioters but also at mostly white violent antiwar protesters. Nixon condemned the Black Panthers but also the Weather Underground, led by a man whom I’ve subsequently debated, Bill Ayers, and his wife Bernardine Dohrn. Last time I checked, both of them were white.

What of Nixon’s supporters? Were they stereotypical segregationist bigots? The left-wing historian Kevin Kruse thinks so. Kruse portrays as racist the phenomenon of “white flight,” which refers to middle-class whites moving out of the crime-ridden inner cities to move to the suburbs. Kruse terms this the politics of “suburban secession,” a deliberate invocation of the Confederacy itself, as if whites were “seceding” from the cities and establishing their own white nation in the suburbs.

Yet Kruse conveniently omits the equivalent phenomenon of “black flight,” which refers to middle-class blacks doing the same thing as soon as they acquired the means to move to safer neighborhoods. Witness today the prosperous black suburbs of Washington D.C., heavily populated with both whites and blacks who got out of the city. Does it make any sense to call all these people bigots? No. Wouldn’t Kruse himself do the same thing for the safety of his family? Of course he would.

Kruse’s portrait of Nixon’s base of white middle-class Republicans as a reincarnation of the old South racists is contradicted by Norman Mailer, who reported on the Republican Convention in Miami Beach in 1968. He found “a parade of wives and children and men who owned hardware stores or were druggists, or first teller in the bank, proprietor of a haberdashery or principal of a small-town high school, local lawyer, retired doctor, a widow on a tidy income, her minister and fellow-delegate, minor executives from minor corporations, men who owned their farms.”

As Mailer recognized, this was not a rally of Ku Klux Klansmen of the type that attended, say, the Democratic Convention of 1924. In fact, this was not a Southern-dominated group at all. Most of the attendees were from the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West. This was Nixon’s “silent majority,” the ordinary Americans whom Nixon said worked hard and played by the rules and didn’t complain or set fire to anything and, precisely for this reason, had been ignored and even reviled by the Democratic Party.

Nixon had an excellent record on civil rights. Unlike Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Nixon supported it. He also supported the Voting Rights Act the following year. When Nixon was elected in 1968, nearly 70 percent of African-American children attended all-black schools. When he left, in 1974, that figure was down to 8 percent.

Tom Wicker, the progressive columnist for the New York Times, gave his appraisal of Nixon’s desegregation efforts. “There’s no doubt about it—the Nixon administration accomplished more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the 16 previous years or probably since. There’s no doubt either that it was Richard Nixon personally who conceived, orchestrated and led the administration’s desegregation effort . . . .That effort resulted in probably the outstanding domestic achievement of his administration.”

The Nixon Administration went even further, putting into effect the nation’s first affirmative action program. Dubbed the Philadelphia Plan, it imposed racial goals and timetables on the building trade unions first in Philadelphia and then throughout the country. Basically, Nixon moved to kick in the closed union door and to force racist Democratic unions to admit blacks. The progressive legal scholar Neal Devins admits that Nixon’s Philadelphia Plan is “the genesis of affirmative action in government contracting and arguably all federal affirmative action programs.”

Let’s pause to consider: Would a man who is seeking to build an electoral base of white supremacists in the Deep South actually promote the first program that actually discriminates in favor of blacks? Once again, progressives here go into their familiar hemming and hawing mode. Historian Howard Gillette is typical in that he insists Nixon only did this as a “wedge issue,” to break up the New Deal coalition that included both African-Americans and racist white unions.

But even if Nixon’s objectives were purely strategic, one would have expected him to break up this coalition by courting the white unions. Instead, he courts black workers. He could hardly have expected his forcing of white unions to hire blacks to have endeared him to the supposed racist constituency that had just elected him. Nixon’s resolute backing of affirmative action alone makes nonsense of the progressive view that his electoral base was made up of Deep South bigots.

Learning from Goldwater’s Mistake Moreover, Nixon lost the Deep South. Goldwater won five Deep South states in 1964, the only states he carried other than his native Arizona. Not that Goldwater was a racist—he was a founding member of the Arizona NAACP and had pushed to integrate the Arizona National Guard and the Phoenix public schools. He had supported the Civil Rights Act of 1957 which established a Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, as well as another civil rights bill in 1960.

Goldwater objected to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on libertarian grounds; he did not believe the federal government was constitutionally authorized to regulate discrimination in the private sector. Sadly, Goldwater’s principled stand was misunderstood by many African-Americans, who saw Goldwater as a racist and his party, the GOP, as the party of racism.

These sensitivities on the part of blacks were, of course, understandable. Unfortunately for the GOP they cost the party dearly. Previously, Martin Luther King, Jr., had maintained his independence from both parties; now he joined the Democratic camp. And Goldwater paid not only with a disastrous election loss but also with the loss of his reputation: the characterization of Goldwater as a racist, although false, has endured as a staple among today’s progressives.

Even so, Nixon learned from Goldwater’s mistake. This point is made with unmistakable clarity in Kevin Phillips’ The Emerging Republican Majority, published in 1969. A recent article in the Huffington Post makes the standard progressive claim that Phillips “helped construct” Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Historian Dan Carter calls him its “nuts and bolts architect.” Yet Phillips says that Nixon obviously could not have read the book prior to the 1968 campaign. What Phillips set forth was not a recipe for Nixon’s success but a post-facto explanation for how Nixon had succeeded.

Phillips argued that Nixon understood that he could never win a majority by appealing to the Deep South. He had just seen Goldwater win the Deep South and lose the rest of the country in considerable part because of his position on the Civil Rights Act. We should remember that in 1968 the Republican base was in the Northeast, the Midwest, and some parts of the West. Nixon was not foolish enough to endanger this entire base while seeking merely to add a handful of rural Deep South states.

What Nixon did, according to Phillips, is appeal to the Sun Belt, “a new conservative entity stretching from Florida across Texas to California.” The Sun Belt reflected a modernizing economy grounded in defense, manufacturing, technology, and services and was—and still is—the fastest growing part of the country. Phillips argued that whoever wins the Sun Belt wins the presidency. Notice that the Sun Belt encompasses much of the South but stretches from coast to coast and includes non-Southern states like Arizona and Nixon’s home state of California.

In the South itself, Nixon targeted the urban population of the Outer or Peripheral South. Nixon was not after the Deep South states of Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina or Alabama; he barely campaigned in those states. Rather, he was after the Peripheral South states of Florida, Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, the latter four of which Phillips calls “the four most reluctant Confederate states.” And within these states, Nixon’s campaign focused on cities: Tampa, Atlanta, Dallas, Little Rock, Norfolk, Raleigh, Nashville.

As Phillips put it, Nixon recognized that these voters represented the urban and suburban face of a changing South. Many were transplants from the North who came South in search of jobs and opportunity. Nixon appealed to these Peripheral South voters not on the basis of race but rather on the basis of Republican policies of entrepreneurial capitalism and economic success. In other words, he went after the Peripheral South’s nonracist, upwardly mobile voters, leaving the Deep South racists to the Democratic Party. And sure enough, in 1968 Nixon won Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida in the Peripheral South and the entire Deep South went to the racist Dixiecrat George Wallace.

What happened to all those racist Dixiecrats that, according to the progressive narrative, all picked up their tents and moved from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party? Actually, they exist only in the progressive imagination. This is the world not as it is but as progressives wish it to be. Of all the Dixiecrats who broke away from the Democratic Party in 1948, of all the bigots and segregationists who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I count just two—one in the Senate and one in the House—who switched from Democrat to Republican.

In the Senate, that solitary figure was Strom Thurmond. In the House, Albert Watson. The constellation of racist Dixiecrats includes Senators William Murray, Thomas P. Gore, Spessard Holland, Sam Ervin, Russell Long, Robert Byrd, Richard Russell, Olin Johnston, Lister Hill, John C. Stennis, John Sparkman, John McClellan, James Eastland, Herman Talmadge, Herbert Walters, Harry F. Byrd, George Smathers, Everett Jordan, Allen Ellender, A. Willis Robertson, Al Gore Sr., William Fulbright, Herbert Walters, W. Kerr Scott, and Marion Price Daniels.

The list of Dixiecrat governors includes William H. Murray, Frank Dixon, Fielding Wright, and Benjamin Laney. I don’t have space to include the list of Dixiecrat congressmen and other officials. Suffice to say it is a long list. And from this entire list we count only two defections. Thus the progressive conventional wisdom that the racist Dixiecrats became Republicans is exposed as a big lie.

The Dixiecrats remained in the Democratic Party for years, in some cases decades. Not once did the Democrats repudiate them or attempt to push them out. Segregationists like Richard Russell and William Fulbright were lionized in their party throughout their lifetimes, as of course was Robert Byrd, who died in 2010 and was eulogized by leading Democrats and the progressive media.

How the South Became Republican We still have one final mystery to clear up. If it wasn’t because of white supremacy, how did the South—not just the Upper or Peripheral South, but also the Deep South—finally end up in the Republican camp? This question is taken up in political scientists Byron Shafer and Richard Johnston’s important study, The End of Southern Exceptionalism. This work, relatively unknown and with an admittedly strange title, provides a decisive refutation of the whole progressive theory of the Southern Strategy and the big switch.

The key to Shafer and Johnston’s approach is to ask when the South moved into the GOP camp, and which voters actually moved from Democratic to Republican. Shafer and Johnston show, first, that the South began its political shift in the Eisenhower era. Eisenhower, who won five Peripheral South states in 1956, was the first Republican to break the lock that the FDR Democrats had established in the South. Obviously, this early shift preceded the civil rights movement and cannot be attributed to it.

Shafer and Johnston, like Kevin Phillips, contend that after the postwar economic boom of the late 1940s and 1950s, the increasingly industrial “new South” was very receptive to the free market philosophy of the Republican Party. Thus Shafer and Johnston introduce class as a rival explanation to race for why the South became Republican. In the 1960s, however, they cannot ignore the race factor. Shafer and Johnson’s ingenuity is to find a way to test the two explanations—race and class—against each other, in order to figure out which one is more important.

Shafer and Johnston do this by dividing the South into two camps, the first made up of the wealthier, more industrial, more racially integrated South—this is the New South—and the second made up of the rural, agricultural, racially homogeneous South; this is the Old South that provided the historical base of the Democratic Party. Shafer and Johnson sensibly posit that if white Southerners are becoming Republican because of hostility to blacks, one would expect the Old South to move over first.

But, in fact, Shafer and Johnson find, through a detailed examination of the demographic data, this is not the case. The wealthier, more industrial, more integrated New South moves first into the Republican Party. This happens in the 1950s and 1960s. By contrast, the rural, agricultural, racially homogenous Old South resists this movement. In other words, during the civil rights period, the least racist white Southerners become Republicans and the most racist white Southerners stay recalcitrantly in the Democratic Party.

Eventually, the Old South also transitions into the GOP camp. But this is not until the late 1970s and through the 1980s, in response to the Reaganite appeal to free-market capitalism, patriotism, pro-life, school prayer, family values. These economic and social issues were far more central to Reagan’s message than race, and they struck a chord beyond—no less than within—the South. In 1980, Reagan lost just six states; in 1984 he lost only Walter Mondale’s home state of Minnesota. Obviously, Reagan didn’t need a specific Southern Strategy; he had an American strategy that proved wildly successful.

Reagan’s success, however, was made possible by the sharp leftward move by the Democratic Party starting with the nomination of George McGovern in 1972 and continuing through the 1970s. This swing to the left, especially on social and cultural issues like school prayer, pornography, recreational drugs and abortion, receives virtually no mention by progressive scholars because it disrupts their thesis that the trend in the South to the GOP was motivated primarily by race.

As far as congressional House and Senate seats are concerned, the South didn’t become solidly Republican until 1994. Again, this was due to the Newt Gingrich agenda that closely mirrored the Reagan agenda. Leftist historian Kevin Kruse lists the Gingrich agenda—reducing taxes, ending the “marriage penalty,” and more generally reducing the size of government—and then darkly implies that “this sort of appeal” also had a hidden racial component. But everyone who voted for the Contract for America, and one suspects, Kruse also, knows that this is not the case. Small-government conservatism is not racism.

Finally, we can figure out the meaning of the title of Shafer and Johnston’s book. We are at “the end of Southern exceptionalism” because the South is no longer the racist preserve of the Democratic Party. The South has now become like the rest of the country. Southerners are Republican for the same reason that other Americans are Republican. And black Southerners vote Democratic for the same reason that blacks everywhere else vote Democratic. For whites no less than blacks, economic issues are predominant, foreign policy and social issues count too, and race has relatively little to do with it.

We can sum up by drawing two lines in the South, the line of racism and the line of Republican affiliation. When we draw these lines we see that they run in opposite directions. Survey data show that racism declines dramatically throughout the second half of the 20th century, and precisely during this period the South moves steadily into the GOP camp. Thus as the South becomes less racist, it becomes more Republican. The progressive narrative is in ruins.

Photo credit: Bettmann/CORBIS/Bettmann Archive

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Hyperallergic: A German Filmmaker Who Captured the Poetics of Labor and the Legacy of Fascism

A Vision of Resistance: Peter Nestler, all images courtesy Deutsche Kinemathek. Still from Mülheim (Ruhr) (1964)

Known among a notable and notably small circle of filmmakers and cinephiles — most of them in Germany and Sweden — the wider film world is slowly getting its first look at Peter Nestler, a meticulous, poetic documentary filmmaker of time and its everyday echoes.

In his native Germany, Nestler has been celebrated by the likes of Jean-Marie Straub, Harun Farocki, and Hartmut Bitomsky, but neither their acclaim nor the increasing distinction of his work in documentary cinema — nuanced, yet exacting observations of politics, labor, oppression, and fascism that set him apart from his contemporaries not only in Germany, but much of the documentary scene of the post-war period — was previously enough to get his films much play, certainly not the sort he is currently enjoying.

Tate Modern presented the first major retrospective in the English-speaking world of Nestler’s work in November 2012, late recognition for the director, then 75. Now at age 80, The Film Society of Lincoln Center is continuing the gift-giving joy, presenting A Vision of Resistance: Peter Nestler, the first large retrospective dedicated to the filmmaker to be shown in the U.S., and Nestler himself is slated to be in person at a number of the screenings.

After 50 years and 60 films into his career, Nestler is just now enjoying a turn of very modest fame.

For a time, however, it was possible to think that Nestler was falling towards greater and greater obscurity, which was rather ironic for an artist whose films endeavor to redress the oversights of history, bringing the overlooked realities of oppression and place to greater notice. Nestler filmed his subjects so they may be seen, heard, known, and perhaps then changed — an approach Bitomsky has described as “finden, zeigen, halten” (finding, showing, holding). This practice of seeking and sharing stories, often focused on labor conditions, struggle, and historical wrongs, earned him a fair number of unfavorable critics, alongside the better known, favorable ones. From Greece (1965), which Nestler self-financed, was assailed with guffaws and brickbats for its perceived overly left-wing politics. One local paper called it a “communist botch-work.”

The film was effectively the end of any reliable German source of funding, and Nestler relocated to Sweden where he created works for SVT, the country’s public television broadcaster, while independently producing films on the side. But even there, Nestler came upon a limit. Får de komma igen? (1971), a film about neo-fascism in Germany and Austria, was suppressed by SVT, the subject of neo-fascism then being a thorny topic in Sweden. In an interview from 2012, Nester indicated “It [Får de komma igen?] was taken out [of the program] one day before the broadcast, because by then the board of directors had seen the film. It was a burning point that the social democracy had let the neo-fascism grow.”

If you’ve never heard of his name or his films, then, it’s far from your fault. (In this country, another impediment is competition for his name. Google “Peter Nestler” and the first and more frequent results you’ll receive are links to his internet doppelgänger: an accomplished jump rope artist.)

Still from Am Siel (1962)

With nine programs (22 films) scheduled across five days, A Vision of Resistance is a packed, make-up-for-lost-time series. Though for the most part organized by subject and theme, the opening program starts things off with two of the filmmaker’s earliest films: Am Siel (1962) and Essays/Aufsätze (1963). From the beginning, Nestler already had a strong sense of the subjects and themes he would go on to explore for the next 50 years, as well as the formal directions he would take to explore them.

A documentary of a small village on the coast, Am Siel is narrated by an old dike (voiced by Robert Wolfgang Schnell), the sentient floodgate wondering, assuming, and thinking aloud about the land, sounding like a nostalgic, bitter, even post-modern waterway. Early on in the film the sluice reflects: “I don’t know whether the village liked being filmed.” Essays follows a group of children from a small village, revealing the accounts of their day at school as told by the children themselves. While occasionally acting as narrator in his films, Nestler often turns over the role of talking head to the people in the films, letting those in front of the camera speak for themselves. Showing signs of the observational generosity and formalist structures he would employ in much of his later works, these early films are tremendously assured, rigorous starts for the then 20-something, self-described “poor as church rats” filmmaker.

Made the year after Essays, Mülheim (Ruhr) (1964) is a short, but great leap ahead, displaying a keener grasp of rhythm, time, and movement that would become signatures of Nestler’s later films — particularly demonstrated when he would cut between still and moving images. A wordless tour of the titular west German city of less than 200,000, it is a symphony of a small city, flickering through signs of looming industrialization to alight on moments of workaday beauty: a young girl dancing with fantastic abandon in a street; building interiors peopled with card players and folks drinking beer; smokestacks loitering in the background of cityscape views.

When Jean-Marie Straub wrote about this 14-minute documentary film, he turned to one of most celebrated filmmakers of his time for a point of comparison, pronouncing it Mizoguchiesque (i.e. comparable to Kenji Mizoguchi). In Straub’s mind, Mülheim (Ruhr) had less to do with the direct cinema revolution going on in documentary filmmaking in North America or Jean Rouch’s cinéma vérité and more with to do with the style and perspectives of narrative cinema. While not disagreeing with Straub, a different Japanese filmmaker came to mind when I first saw Mülheim (Ruhr): Yasujirō Ozu.

Still from In the Ruhr Region (1967)

In short, Nestler has a way of cinematically charging his films, drawing attention to textures, rhymes, boundaries, distances, and history — in particular the stuff of quotidian life that gets ignored or has been stifled and stilled. Some of this charge comes from his rhythmic and sometimes wryly coded editing style. In Ödenwaldstetten (1964) a shot of tractor is followed by one of a horse and carriage;  in a town whose whole Jewish community was destroyed, a faded Jewish name written on a building is followed by a shot of a man sweeping the streets. Some of it comes from the way Nesler will peer at the outside of a building in one shot and enter it in another — places and times are readily accessible realms in Nestler’s film worlds. And some of it simply comes from his commitment to see and show. Nestler himself has commented on his predilection to not let things simply be:

I tried to find the shortest way for me to show the most important aspects: to perceive, to recognize and to decide with others, this should be changed or that should be preserved or not be overlooked.

Other programs in the series include his “biographies of objects,” short studies on the art of various crafts (e.g. glass making); Up the Danube (1969), a celebrated short he created with his close collaborator and wife, Zsóka Nestler, and Pachamama – Our Land (1995), a feature length film on Ecuador’s indigenous communities.

Still from Pachamama – Our Land (1995)

Remaining constant across these five represented decades of moviemaking is Nestler’s interest in labor, in struggle and resistance, in what is valued and what is discarded. Nestler, though, is focused on more than just seeing the world for what it is, and on more than preserving some part of it with his camera. The past is never far removed from the present in the reframed worlds of Nestler’s films.

His concern with history and the past is, in part, why fascism abounds in his films. He has hunted down traces of fascism for decades since first making Am Siel. Its village, he discovered, featured a war monument adorned with a medal awarded by Nazis. He later found traces of it in his own family, in his Swedish grandfather, Count Eric von Rosen, whose life — and eventual support of Nazi Germany — he profiles in Death and Devil (2009). It’s not for our future’s sake, his films argue, that we should know our history, it’s for a deep-rooted view of the past. Obviously a political filmmaker, Nestler is also a moral one.

A Vision of Resistance: Peter Nestler screens from June 24 to 28 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (165 W. 65th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan).

The post A German Filmmaker Who Captured the Poetics of Labor and the Legacy of Fascism appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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Day 13 (1/31): “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” #PRESIDENTBANNON

Featuring: -Yesterday, In Trumpland- The Resistance Report- Weekend Actions-

-YESTERDAY, IN TRUMPLAND-

FEATURE: Making Sense of the Last 72 Hours and Why It’s So Significant

In the last 72 Hours we have had a massive attempt to consolidate power and test “our country’s willingness to capitulate to a fascist regime.” (Follow Link to Read Original Jake Fuentes Article)

An irresponsible Muslim ban that intentionally included green card holders (aka permanent residents of the US) to cause chaos.

The Department of Homeland Security defies orders from Federal Judges and the Whitehouse is silent. They essentially crossed their arms and said, “Make Me!”

 The Immediate Firing of the Acting Attorney General last night when she stood up for the constitution and told the DOJ to not defend the law because she deemed it unconstitutional

The National Security Council Shake up, which puts Steve ‘Neo-Nazi’ Bannon in cabinet level position usually reserved for Generals, without confirmation and almost ensures Trump never has to hear suggestions he wouldn’t like.

The gutting of the State Department to block opposition of these moves as it relates to diplomacy. (Previous reports said the State Department was resigning in waves… turns out it was a purge).

Trump has also demoted the Acting Director if Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE).

From all of this, the Trump administration is clearly pushing the boundaries of our government’s system of checks and balances (which they have no regard for) and testing how far they can push things legally and get away with them.

 So is the Muslim ban just NBD?

No, it is still a big deal because there is a good chance that it is unconstitutional, the Whitehouse never consulted Congress or appropriate lawyers before enacting the EO, it keeps us less safe by angering our allies, and is now propaganda for ISIS who are currently hailing Trump’s EO as a 

victory by exposing that the US has declared war with Islam. BUT, despite all of this, if you take a step back, it’s not their end game. They want to see if they can just go over the heads of the Judicial branch and get away with it, AND they want to have the appearance of looking reasonable when they eventually back off of 20% of it, when, in reality, they will get 100% of what they wanted in the first place. It’s like when you ask your parents for an insanely ridiculous car for your 16th birthday, knowing the car you want is also ridiculous but not as absurd as the first, so that after they shut down your first request doesn’t seem so extreme after all and you get what you want? That is what it seems like they are attempting to do and it’s a classic business negotiating tactic.

Also it’s worth noting is that Rex Tillerson, Nominee for secretary of state, was surprised and upset that he was not included in the drafting of this legislation… he also opposed several of Trump’s key stances during his confirmation hearing… coincidence?

Is Trump the One Thinking of All This?

Maybe and Maybe not. It seems that the brain child around this whole strategy is this sinister Bannon character who has been plotting this for a long ass time! In fact, he is quoted to have said “I’m a Leninist… Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” The establishment to him includes republicans and democrats. It’s been circulating that Bannon is using Trump to push this agenda to destroy the state and his unprecedented rise to power and known fascist views corroborate this theory. This has sparked the hashtags #STOPPresidentBannon, #PresidentBannon, and #ImpeachPresidentBannon to start trending rightfully putting this guy in the spotlight as a direct threat to the rights of the American people.

 So How Do WE Stop This?

Some may disagree, but it is OUR take that everyone has a role to play in stopping this consolidation of powers and attempt to flirt with fascism and destroy American ideals. And this must be a bi-partisan effort:

The People & The Art of The Protest. People are showing up and showing out in masses almost organically now in opposition of this hostile takeover of our government. Protests are great for showing unity and rejecting what is happening and sending a message through the media to others and the world that this is not what America Stands for (Not to mentioning pissing off Trump because you cannot be the populist president without being popular). But protests can’t just become the new Brunch, where you show-up, get your fill, feel satisfied/ drunk on the feeling of sticking it to the man, and then go home. The importance of protesting is to get the attention of YOUR elected officials, like we did with Chuck Schumer in NY and pressuring them to bend to the will of the constituents. You do think by visiting your elected officials at their offices, their houses, with phone calls, faxes, emails, letters!. The Indivisible Guide explains this method! So keep resisting.

The Press. The Press MUST go deeper and stay on stories like the NSC shake-up or what happened with the Gutting of the state department instead of the obvious stories that are low handing fruit. Don’t just stay on the surface and ask the tough questions! Don’t allow for conflating facts and pivots, expose them for what they are doing! Keep on Russia and the larger story of the Kermlin’s continued influential role in our government. Keep on The Fact that Trump is still profiting from Foreign governments because he has not divested his assets and we need to see his tax returns. Don’t let up, don’t get distracted! Also Stop airing Spicer on TV and Stop bringing on Kellyann Conway for itnervies, they are a distraction. If you choose to do that, air them with a delay to put up the actual facts while they LIE. And DO NOT air the State of the Union addresses Live whenever that is.

Our System of Checks and Balances. It is obvious to see that our system of checks and balances is failing us now. And there are many reasons for it. You have a dictator in office who will metaphorically chop off the head of fire anyone that opposes him in the executive, a gross abuse of executive orders that are being signed straight into law without consulting any member of the legislative branch (thanks Obama for that one… he wasn’t perfect let’s be clear), a covert staffers on the Hill who are circumventing the norms to most likely garner favor with whoever is coming in next, and a Congress with 2 spineless heads in Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell who would rather see a collapse in the American system of government than let go of their political hard-ons of being able to pass anything they want with a GOP controlled government. SHAME!

Legislative Branch Needs to Be United! Cannot express the importance that this must be a Bi-Partisan effort! The democrats seem to be finally uniting to help block this legislation by introducing new legislation, starting with the mass boycott of the inauguration, and continuing to Resist by filibustering the Supreme Court pick whoever that may be. And I would argue they skip the State of the Union as well. Thanks to a lot of pressure, the resistance movement has made on a grassroots level. But we will need Republicans to join in and set their excitement of being in power aside, easier said than done, and stand up and fight for us! There have already been some GOP members that have started to break with the President, but we need more.

 Updates on Refugee Ban

 Yes, even as of 8:30pm last night, border officers were still not complying with the Federal Judge’s Stay. However, another WOMAN (hey girl hey!), Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, courageously stepped in and ordered the DOJ to not defend this EO As it is unconstitutional. Which SURPRISED Trump and almost immediately he moved to FIRE Ms. Yates on the grounds that she decided to defend the constitution instead of listen to what he says to do and hire someone else who would do what he said. If you are thinking that is effed up, you would not be incorrect in your judgment. Senate Dems have said they will call for an investigation into those persons who did not comply with the federal judge’s orders. It is important to know that Ms. Yates is a holdover from the Obama administration where she was the deputy Attorney General, however she was confirmed with bipartisan support.

 Jeff Sessions, the nominee for the Attorney General of the US is the one who is intended to fill that vacancy. So on a phone call Sunday night w/ Moveon.org, they emphasized that they, along with the ACLU, and members of congress would be asking for additional time to re-question Sessions on his stance on the ban before voting since this role is key to establishing whether or not the DOJ will defend the ban and more of Trump’s horrible executive orders! TBD on what Happens.

 Important FACTS to know if you’re going to get in Facebook/ family arguments.

It takes 2 YEARS for ANY Refugee to be vetted and granted entry into the United States. It is actually our most intensive screening process.

The Whitehouse is now trying to blame Obama for their major FAIL as they say the list of 7 countries were initially his idea! However, they are not even close to being the same!

“Terrorism by Muslims makes up one-third of 1 percent of all murders in the US.” And none of the countries on this ban have had people that have killed Americans on US soil. Also, “you are more likely to be killed by your own clothes than by an immigrant terrorist.” SHAME

Rudy Giuliani unknowingly confirmed suspicions that this was a disguised Muslim ban because he just couldn’t help himself.

 Again, we can all agree we want to keep our country safe. But we WILL NOT abandon our American Values and what this country stands for!

 OTHER HAPPENINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

 Fox News’s initial reports of the heinous massacre that occurred in Quebec misidentified the suspect as Moroccan when in fact he was a MALE WHITE SUPREMICIST and Trump enthusiast who killed 6 Muslims and injured 9 in a mosque! They have still not taken this False Reporting from their website. The Whitehouse even tried to cite the shooting as a reason for the ban… against Muslim and Refugees… #SpicerFacts. The suspect has now been charged with 6 counts of manslaughter. Which makes you wonder, with all this talk of National Security,  who is really a bigger threat to your safety?

 Trump signed an EO meant to help small (and frankly large) business by easing the amount of federal regulations they have to comply with. The EO basically states that for every new regulation, 2 other regulations must be removed. And that’s basically it. So one might say this will totally help, especially struggling small businesses! Others will logically think, this is just going to create multipart regulations. But, as with most that has happened thus far, logic need not apply. This is in line with his campaign promise to cut back on regulations for businesses.

The Department of Interior is the latest on a growing list of departments that have been gagged by this administration according to, SURPRISE, another leaked memo. This includes the Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park, Ocean Energy Management, INDIAN AFFAIRS, and others. We are, I’m sure, moments away from following their rogue twitter account… any second now.

Reports have surfaced that Trump will be bringing VP Mike Pence’s unconstitutional religious freedom act to the federal level, by “[rolling] back and nullifying President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive orders which protect employees from anti-LGBT workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors” because of “religious” reasons aka legalizing homophobia. Wow are all those “Gays for Trump” and Deploraball attendees excited now?! This is just another reason why someone like Jeff Sessions cannot be the Attorney General. Dems must continue to hold strong and filibuster Trump’s Supreme Court Pick! However, the GOP could easily evoke the ‘nuclear option’ and kill that idea real quick.

Russia has arrested its top cyber security expert on grounds of treason for providing the US intel about the election hacking. YES remember the hacking! Russia is still not off the hook. They also found an ex-KGB chief murdered in the back seat of a car. This is SUPER SHADY because he was linked to the MI6 officer that compiled that infamous dossier that might actually end up being true. Maxine Waters (Rep. D- CA) announced on Twitter that Dems would be making a statement pertaining to Russia this AM, so TBD on that. I know what you’re thinking, this is turning into the worst TV drama of all time, but unfortunately, unlike The saga of Nick Vail on The Bachelor, this is REAL LIFE!

With a heavy heavy heart, I’m sad to tell you there were 2 American casualties in the Al Qaeda raid in Yemen on Sunday. One was a Navy Seal who was a SEAL Team 6 member and the other an 8-year old American Girl. It seems like the first major military advance by the president was a hot mess… and with Bannon on the National Security Council as a principal things might get even more dicey. Our soldiers lives are not a political game. Steve Bannon must be stopped!

 - RESISTANCE REPORT- THE RESISTANCE IS REAL, LIVE, AND GROWING! JOIN THE FIGHT!

- Steve Mnuchin Finance Chairman: Committee Vote TODAY! Devos Vote TODAY! SESSIONS Vote TODAY! Keep calling or FAXING if you cannot get through! Schumer and Gillbrand are now united in opposing all! Let’s get others going!!!

- Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, courageously stepped in and ordered the DOJ not to defend the EO and the DHS to comply with the Federal Stay. She was aptly fired by Trump quickly thereafter. Cannot express how worrisome it is when folks are going to be fired for 1) upholding the law and 2) for disagreeing with the president. It’s. About. To. Go. Down! #RESIST

- Democratic Members of Congress took the floor to express their outrage and commitment to work to overturn Trump’s #MuslimBan in Congress and urge their fellow Republicans to join them. They also are contemplating to filibuster the hell out of what every Supreme Court Justice Nominee Trump puts forth. However, they are still debating if this is the best move in the long run. I will be a Chuck Schumer’s office at lunch today to let him know how I feel about that.

- An internal memo from the gutted state department has confirmed their opposition to the Ban. And Obama finally speaks out in support for The Resistance! Looks like everyone is joining the “opposition party” these days because defending American Values is the cool thing to do!

- Washington Stand UP! First state to formally sue Trump over the immigration order #MuslimBan.

- Other corporations quickly denounce Trump Ban including Ford, Coke, and Goldman Sachs among others.

- Google announces it will donate $4M to support organizations dedicated to refugees and their employees celebrated by having their own rally against Trump’s immigration ban.

- The Koch Brothers (who are largely responsible for the messy boots presidency that is DJT and funding the GOP H8 regime) came out against the ban.

- People are starting to delete their Uber App because their CEO was one of the first to jump on the MAGA train and complete took advantage of the NYC taxi strike… Not Cool Uber. (I deleted my account). Didn’t stop him from attempting to clap back though by snitching on other companies on the same advisory board as him. Didn’t really work though because the people are #woke. Can’t wait to jump into a LYFT or try JUNO.

- Also we’re up to 16 on the GOP side not supporting the ban! this is a list of all members of Congress and their responses to the #Muslim ban! Memorize this, and never forget!

- The Boy Scouts open membership to Transgender Children. If kids can get it, like wtf is wrong with adults?

- No Tweet is safe! It seems that a 2011 Tweet from Trump Hotels has been resurrected, and the responses from people are hilarious!

- The “expert” Trump is using to confirm his voter ban, since his golfing buddy story didn’t work out, is actually registered to vote in 3 different states! I mean you can’t make this up people.

- Looking ahead for 2018, the shady AF republican Gerrymandering (or redistricting) is getting crushed in the courts RN. This is a HUGE victory because it essentially will not let the GOP rig the voting districts in their favor. There are 33 Senate seats and all 435 seats in the house are up for grabs. So Mark your calendars for Nov. 8, 2018!

- London and Scotland are Resisting as well protesting this ridiculousness in solidarity with US! We are not alone! British Parliament went HAM on Trump yesterday in the cheekiest fashion, and 1 million Brits signed a petition to not allow Trump to some for a state visit.

 - ACTIONS- AS A CONSTIUENT YOU HOLD ALL THE POWER!

ACTIONS FOR TODAY (3 INSANELY IMPORTANT THINGS GOING ON THIS WEEK)! CALL, FAX, GO TO SENATOR’S OFFICES! Find you Senator’s Contact INFO HERE. Find a local protest event HERE. Find FAX numbers HERE.

COMMITTEE VOTES TODAY (1/31)

1) Steve Mnuchin Finance Chairman: Committee Vote in the evening for Finance Chairman. Government Goldman Sachs exec whose company is accused of illegally foreclosing on homeowners. This guy is scummier than scum and totally is the SWAMP!

2) Jeff ‘too racist to be an Alabama Fed Judge’ Sessions committee vote is TUESDAY 1/31 at 10AM! ANYONE Dem or Republican who votes yes for this guy deserves to be on your SHIT LIST FOR LIFE. Never forget who thought this was ok. ASK FOR A DELAY! HE wrote some of the language in the Muslim Ban!

3) Betsy ‘Guns should be in Schools to fight Grizzlies’ Devos- Department of Education. She is the 1st person to be nominated who has NEVER attended a Public School, taught at a public school, or had a child attend a public school. Yet she wants to be in charge of them… to destroy them. She has a failed track record of implementing charter schools in Detroit. And Because Grizzlies was a serious answer! She is unfit to serve.

4) Tom ‘healthcare is not a human right’ Price Department of Health and Human Services. He wants to gut the ACA.

 SENATE FLOOR VOTE TOMORROW (2/1)

5) REX TILLERSON FULL SENATE FLOOR VOTE… remember Marco ‘pump fake’ Rubio caved during the committee vote so now it goes to the floor. He is SUPER chummy with Russia and is CEO of Exxon Mobil (conflicts of interests much?).  ASK FOR A DELAY! Need to question his stance on ban!

 COMING UP

- Andrew Puzder- Department of Labor: Hates the Department of Labor, yet wants to run it… to DESTROY IT.

- Rick Perry- Department of Energy: Vowed he wanted to get rid of it, was nominated for it, had no idea what it did, acknowledges he’ll have a learning curve, but still wants it… hmmmm this position involved looking after our Nukes… hmmm. *Palm to face*

 UPCOMING DEMONSTRATIONS & TRAININGS- Join Events in Links

NYC- Cick Here for a Full LIST for NYC events

1/31 (TUE) 12:30pm-1:30pm Rally to Stop Trump’s #SwampCabinet @ Chuck Schumer’s Office. 780 3rd Avenue

1/31 (TUE) 6pm- What The F*^k Chuck Rally- Grand Army Plaza in BK

1/31 (TUE) 6pm-8pm Women’s March: Write In and Postcard mailing, Dream Baby downtown

1/31 (TUE) 7pm-8:30pm Rise & Resist Meeting 208 W 13th Street

 Washington DC

1/29 (SUN) 10am: Oppose Betsy DeVos! Columbus Circle, Washington DC

4/15 (SAT): Tax Day Rally to demand Trump turn over his Taxes. Everywhere. Link will show you where your local march is

4/29 (SUN): People’s Climate March

5/6 (SAT) 10am-5pm: The Immigrant’s March on Washington

6/11 (SUN) 10am-6pm: National Pride March