Jews and the Film "Inglorious Basterds"

from City Journal

STEFAN KANFER

Memo to the Führer

A report on Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds

25 August 2009


TO: Adolf Hitler

FROM: Julius Streicher

DATELINE: Hell

Mein Führer:

Much excitement to report! The good news is piling up like copies of Der Stürmer in the good old days, when I published caricatures of the International Jew as predator and violator. Remember what we discovered in the 1930s? The secret of the Big Lie was to turn the truth on its head. Well, here we are in the New Millennium, and on the wide screen, the B.L. is more monstrous than ever! The film is entitled Inglourious Basterds (their spelling, not mine). And—are you ready for this?—it’s produced by Harvey and Bob Weinstein!

Earlier this month, before Basterds was screened for a private audience, Harvey W. told his invitees, “Please keep in mind that it’s a fable.” And what a fable it is—a revenge fantasy, actually. The plot is as elemental as a bayonet. A group of six violent American sociopaths, all of them Jewish, are under the command of Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a gentile hillbilly with a scar on his neck and ice in his heart. After D-Day, Raine’s squad is let loose in Europe. There, its members take almost as much delight in scalping Germans as director/writer Quentin Tarantino does in showing the removal of skin and hair. One of the enlisted men, dubbed the “Bear Jew” (Eli Roth), is especially revolting. When a German officer honorably refuses to betray his fellow soldiers, the Bear bludgeons him to death with a baseball bat. The execution is shown in exquisite and sanguinary detail as audiences chortle. It goes without saying that the dirty half-dozen are licensed to kill by whatever means necessary.

Earlier in the film, we see the sophisticated and multilingual SS colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) order the execution of a Jewish family hiding in a French farmhouse. One girl survives because Landa whimsically allows her to run away. That, however, is the extent of German malfeasance. No mention is made of the Holocaust. Dachau? Never heard of it. Auschwitz-Birkenau? Chelmno? Treblinka? Sorry, Herr Tarantino isn’t very good with names. The death of 6 million Jews as a result of forced labor, exposure, brutality, disease, execution? Nicht ein Wort. You, mein Führer, are played by Martin Wuttke, who turns you into a buffoon. The same goes for Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) and most of the other top Nazis.

But Tarantino’s purpose is not to comment on human events. It is to comment on cinematic events, as he did in his previous features Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. Thus the name Aldo Raine suggests that of Aldo Ray, the veteran of many American war films. Thus the soundtrack blares “The Green Leaves of Summer,” the theme song from The Alamo, starring John Wayne. Thus the Jewish escapee, now the owner of a Paris cinema, says in classic Cannes Film Festival style: “We’re French; we respect directors in our country.”

But what Tarantino and his benefactors have done is something far more interesting than mere celluloid scholarship. They have joined the dark side. And we welcome them! Imagine a filmmaker who can trivialize Nazi crimes against humanity, make the Jews the brutal ones, evoke laughs from horror, and create a finale in which the German High Command, from you on down, are locked into a film house. Cinema Paradiso turns into Cinema Inferno when it’s set aflame, thus reversing the image of the death-camp ovens.

As our old enemy Karl Marx observed: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Or as our new colleague Herr Tarantino states proudly: “This ain’t your father’s World War II movie.” Indeed it ain’t, mein Führer. That’s why it’s thriving at the box office. New times demand new directors, new narratives, new history. Nicht wahr?

Yours until the next farce,

J. S.

Stefan Kanfer, a contributing editor of City Journal and a former editor of Time, is the author, most recently, of a biography of Marlon Brando, Somebody.

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/bc0825sk.html

WHO HATES JEWS THE MOST?

It's a toss-up (throw-up) really
　
There are the usual contenders:

Nazis (called "neo" today to differentiate them from the Hitler-gang Nazis)

Mohammedans - specifically, those "true" followers of Mohammed that share his rabid Jew-hatred

Catholics - those that believe that the Jews crucified "their" Lord (albeit he was a Jew, not a Catholic, not Irish, nor Italian, French, Spanish, and not especially an African, if he existed).

Prostestants - except for Evangicals, that is those who believe that all the Jews will return to Israel at the "end of days," when Jesus (the Messiah) returns, etc. By the way, the Mohammedans also have the Jews at the "end of days," hiding behind rocks, and what have you, so that they can be killed.

Let's see, whom did we leave out?

"Nordics," that is, those who believe in Thor, Wotan, the Valkyries, Valhalla, etc., be they from Norway, Sweden, Germany or the United Kingdom

Oh, and then those (not Jews) of the antisemitic Left, the South Africans ("Bishop" Desmond" Tutu), the Hugo Chavez crowd, etc.

Then the "Black Muslims"--Louis Farakhan and the boys in the prisons of that persuasion, and the Afrocentric Christians, such as Jeremiah Wright and the Catholic priest Phleger.

There's more, I'm sure, that I haven't covered, but that's enough to give you a taste--until we get to the Jews who hate Jews. Leftists, Liberals, whatever, but Jews--they can be counted amongst those who hate Jews.

But, to top this all off, let's look at the following:

A Comment from Israpundit's "The Spanish Inquisition and Me"

Marranos versus moriscos:

The muslims (arabs and berbers from Morocco) conquered Spain from+ the christians and ruled it in part for 700 years. The christians fought back stubbornly and finally won back all of Spain.
They conquered a lot of muslims, and a much smaller number of Jews.

The catholic spaniards really hated the Jews. They stole all their property and made them convert or leave (1492). The Jews were hated by both the christians and the muslims, and didn’t have many places to go to. Many rich Spanish Jews chose to convert to catholicism rather than lose all their money. The catholics then instituted the Inquisition, which was directed against Jewish converts, the richer the better.

The muslims were a bigger group. The catholics gave them the same order: convert or leave. The rich muslims had someplace to go to: muslim Morocco or elsewhere in the muslim world. Many poor muslims stayed in Spain and converted to catholicism. They were not persecuted as much by the Inquisition, but nevertheless, after a hundred years, when Spain had lots of South American gold, they expelled the muslim converts (Moriscos), most of whom went to Morocco and converted to islam when they got there.

Segue to today: liberal Spain hates Jews more than ever, even though they have not seen a living Jew in 400 years. They lead the EU in their venom towards Israel (and that’s saying a lot).

On the other hand, as part of the recent financial boom, they invited a million poor muslims from Morocco to come to Spain and pick up christian garbage and work in the christian farms. The muslims now make up 2% of Spain’s population. And as the financial bust has set in, they have lost their menial jobs and are going on welfare.

My Jewish conclusion: Spain sucks.

Comment by Samuel Fistel — August 10, 2009 @ 1:56 am
http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=16190

So? Who hates Jews most? Take your pick, but Spain is right up there with the rest of them. (lw)
　
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APPENDIX

Spanish Jew-hatred extended to those Jews who had converted to Christianity (Catholicism) and their  descendants.  Often for reasons of economic and political jealousy, this hatred by Spaniards for conversos even exceeded that they had for Jews.  See . . .
http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Marano.htm

Israeli Navy vulnerable

.
[quote]

"We are now in a time where a terrorist group like Hezbollah can not only acquire a cruise missile, but also train, launch and hit an Israeli Sa’ar 5 corvette – a capability once possessed by only a handful of militaries. This type of capability (once the purview of the nation-state, now within the reach of many non-state extremist and criminal organizations) . . . "
--ADM J.C. Harvey, Jr.

http://fleetforces.dodlive.mil/
also at
http://blog.usni.org/?p=3883