Cuba Isn't Club Carib, but a Political Prison Island!

Pajamas: "Forever Fighting Fidel: In Praise of Andy Garcia", by Roger L. Simon

Not all Hollywood stars are knee-jerk “limousine liberals,” “Cadillac communists” or “Penthouse Bolsheviks” (to use a term coined in the Thirties to describe the excessive admiration many chic New Yorkers had for Stalin). And one of those exceptions is Andrés Arturo Garcia Menéndez, known to the world as Andy Garcia.

Of course, Andy – who has been a friend of mine for about ten years – had good reason to wander off the Hollywood liberal reservation. He was born in Cuba in 1956, just before the revolution, to a family opposed to Fidel Castro. They left the country when Andy was five and he has been fighting for his people against the Comandante/Caudillo’s totalitarian rule practically ever since.

When I first met Andy, I was a lefty myself, so we didn’t discuss politics much. We came together over a screenplay I had written called The Gardener, about an illegal alien living in LA, that Garcia wanted to star in. We never found the money, but remained friends, staying in touch often in an attempt to revive the movie that never got made. I also had an interest in things Cuban, having gone to see the seemingly-heroic, at least at the time, Castro speak in Central Park when I was thirteen-years old. Later (1979), I was a delegate to the first festival of the “New” Latin American Cinema in Havana. It was one of my first brushes with communism from the inside and some of my early disaffection with the left (yes, it took a long time for me to divorce myself) must stem from that trip. Cuba was like an island-sized jail to me then and, despite its beauty, I couldn’t have been more eager to leave.

But I maintained my interest in the subject and when I read last week that a demonstration was planned – led by Andy Garcia – in LA’s Echo Park in honor of Cuba’s Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White who fight for the freedom of family members incarcerated by the Castro regime), I phoned Andy to tell him I would like to come for PJTV. Not that it would have mattered. When the cameraman and I arrived at Echo Park on Sunday, we were surrounded by Cuban-Americans eager to tell their stories.

You can see that all on PJTV, but I would like to underscore how politically aware the Cubans at this demonstration were. And how sick they were of Hollywood, especially the love affair many of my colleagues have with Fidel Castro and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. That love affair is reminiscent of the attraction those “Penthouse Bolsheviks” referred to in my opening graph had for Stalin, as in Steven Soderbergh’s endless encomium to Che and Oliver Stone’s semi-sexualized crush on Castro, not to mention on Hugo Chavez.

But those are only obvious examples. This twisted love for totalitarians permeates much of the Hollywood culture. A director friend of mine told me with amusement that while on one of those Eighties cultural exchanges to Cuba, his wife couldn’t resist planting a big kiss on Castro’s cheek when the dictator made a surprise appearance at a reception they were attending. Such stories are typical.

I doubt Soderbergh or Stone or certainly the director’s wife ever spoke with Huber Matos, perhaps the most moving speaker at the Echo Park demonstration. In his nineties now, Matos was one of Fidel’s original comrades in the fight against Batista. (...) Read it all >>>

Footage of the rally in LA against the Castro Bros' island prison >>>

Andy Garcia on IMDb
Garcia's film "The Lost City" (2005)

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New Year's Movie Theater: "The Truth About Communism"

Launched two years ago, on the 90th October Revolution´s Anniversary, this documentary presents the violent rise of the Soviet Empire from the chaos of Revolution to the terror of the Cold War and is charted using remarkable footage of actual events.

Special interest is the subject of the Spanish Revolution. This is the best collection of historical film footage on the topic of World Communism ever assembled. Featuring an introduction from Alexander Kerensky, President of Russia following the Revolution that deposed the Czar Regime and before the Communist took over.

Narrator: Ronald Reagan. Year: 1962



Hat Tip: Veterans for Academic Freedom, who have this to add to their post:

All across America hundreds of Socialist and Communist student clubs and parties exist with the goal of eliminating the Constitution of the United States and bringing about a revolution such as was seen in Soviet Russia.

Years ago Ronald Reagan was a strong opponent of Communism as he saw it for what it was: slavery to the state. In this documentary you will see the dangers of Communism explained by the first President of the U.S.S.R (...) >>>

Remarkable is that the goal of World Communism, according to the theories of Marx and Lenin, was originally believed to be triggered by wars, general mayhem or violent revolution, and pitting one social class against another.

Since it was always hard to agitate the proletariat into rebellion, Leftists sought succor elsewhere and found it with the Fabians and Social Democracy - or incremental Socialism through mob rule (rather like, voting in Sharia Law). Opposing groups also do not have to be social classes per se: these might as well be gender, racial, cultural, ideological or religious groups pitted against whoever is in power.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain - the impenetrable barrier to keep freedom out and the slaves to the 'ethical whole' in (there was a reason for that!) - they approach the matter from another angle yet. Like during the Cold War countries were infiltrated and bored from within, international institutions and the 'narrative' of Greenism form the perfect venues for the launch of yet another power grab. It goes by many names, but the proper one should be Neo Communism (if only, because it blows the cover).

Related dossiers:

- "The Dialectics"
- "The Case for Neo Communism"
- "Socialist Causes Explained"
- "Transnational Progressivism"
- "The Cold War"
- "Greenism"
- "Communist Crimes on Trial"
- "History Compiled"
- "Horowitz on Alinsky: the Postmodern War on Reality"
- "Atbashian on Commie Agit-Prop and Info War-Fare"

The Remarkable History of "We the Living"

Andrew Leigh on Breitbart's Big Hollywood reviews a remarkable DVD, released just in time for the holiday season.

The question is, what is not extraordinary about "We the Living"? The story itself, written by Russian born American author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982), the prehistory of the original film - shot in Mussolini's Italian Social Republic in 1942 and banned for its critique of collectivism, or the release of the 1986 version or now, the DVD?

"We the Living" is Ayn Rand's first and most personal novel, first published in 1936, a work which is "as near to an autobiography as I will ever write", she's on the record as commenting.

The novel is set against the background of the Russian Revolution. It tells the story of three people who see through the lies of the parallel reality that the Communists had erected, defy the power of the collective state, and demand to live their own lives, pursue their own happiness.

It laid the groundwork for the integrated theory Rand called Objectivism, which may be summed up as the Ethics of Capitalism.

Another work, "Atlas Shrugged" is still inspiring many liberty loving people today. At the bursting of the dot com bubble sales of the book sharply increased. At the height of the subprime mortgage crisis it ranked #33 among Amazon.com's top-selling books.

- "We the Living" (1942) IMDb page
- "We the Living" (1986) IMDb page
- Review on The Atlasphere by Andrew Leigh

Put The Bstds Where They Belong ...

Threadless Tees design by Tom Burns.

Made with "talent, love, and plastisol ink and a chino additive for softness."

Flick Review: "Che"

PJM: "Will the Real Che Guevara Please Stand Up?", by Henry Gomez

In the movie Che, Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro plays an Argentine thrill seeker-cum-murderer who helped turn Cuba into a Stalinist state. That Argentine was Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known as “Che.” The movie is actually two films that total just under four and a half hours. Yet despite those 263 minutes of celluloid, important aspects of Guevara’s personality and deeds are omitted. Things like, you know, the truth.

There’s a bit of poetic justice when a man who indiscriminately killed others in order to impose a system devoid of capitalism is now the world’s greatest t-shirt salesman.

Unfortunately, Guevara is also venerated in Hollywood, thus explaining the reported $60 million cost to make Steven Soderbergh’s bore fest of a hagiography. The cop-out used by Soderbergh and del Toro to justify this marathon of an abomination is that it’s the story of a “complex” historical figure living in “complex” times; his desired ends justified what are normally unjustifiable means. Yet since the film’s opening on December 12, 2008, to date it has recovered a measly $922,347 in the U.S. As such, the movie Che bears one important similarity to the real Che; it’s highly celebrated by some even though it’s a complete failure.

Despite the considerable mythology built up around his image, the real Guevara was a bumbler who never accomplished anything except as Fidel Castro’s wing man and executioner during the Cuban insurrection of the late 50s. Even there, the Castro propaganda machine embellished his greatest “victory.”

Guevara’s lackluster record began as a young man when he enrolled in medical school. Historians can find no concrete evidence of him ever obtaining a degree and he certainly never practiced medicine. One of Guevara’s fellow rebels who fought alongside him told me Guevara only had a cursory knowledge of medicine. When Castro came to power in 1959, Guevara made a fool of himself as Cuba’s “economics minister.” Later, Guevara failed dismally in his attempts to launch insurrections in the Congo and Bolivia, where he ultimately met his demise in 1967. Guevara was also, by all accounts, a lousy husband and father.

Read it all >>>

See the flick's slideshow

Opona: the Collapse of the Iron Curtain

Prague Daily Monitor: "Do It: Remember and experience communist past"

The non-governmental and non-profit organisation Opona (The Curtain) was established last year by a group of various people who came together through the strong urge to commemorate the approaching 20th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The people involved include David Gaydečka, founder of the United Islands of Prague music festival, Marek Vocel, film producer and event organiser and Martin Kotas, a coffee house owner and a well-known activist.

- Caption: Prague 1948 Communist coup -

The majority of the people involved are in their 30s and therefore remember the events and the atmosphere. Nevertheless, they have also come to notice that the younger generation, people who are coming of age now and were therefore born around the time of the revolution or later, often lack basic knowledge about our communist past.

Opona's aim is to celebrate the anniversary, support the active dialogue concerning Europe's communist past and raise awareness about this era, especially among the youngest generation. Besides this, they would like to introduce projects that would help advance human rights in countries where the totalitarian regimes still prevail.

Though the main celebration should take place this year in November, the organisation has already travelled to a number of major European cities, including Bratislava, Budapest, Warsaw, Dresden, Brussels and Prague with a pilot version of their project called The Totalitarian Circus.

- Caption: Prague Spring 1968 -

This included an exhibition entitled Some of Us that follows the lives of a group of people affected by the communist coup in 1948, a fashion show from behind the Iron Curtain and a medley of concerts and performances. The final version of The Totalitarian Circus will travel around 10 major European cities from March to October, stopping at each location for a fortnight.

It will consist of a mobile circus arena that will offer exhibitions, creative art and multimedia spaces including music and film, which should all serve to remind and warn people against communist totalitarianism. The main part of the Circus will be the Totality Simulator, which will thrust (...) >>>

Pragmatist Olympics in the Terror Hive

Kathy Shaidle has published a damning article on Front Page Magazine, "Beijing: Munich or Berlin" on the state of affairs in communist China, host to the supposedly edifying event of the modern Olympic Games.

While isolating sports from the political context is one thing, and respecting the internal affairs of a sovereign nation another, the tacit acceptance of state terror and brutal oppression - let alone legitimizing it by appointing the perpetrator as an Olympic host - is far more serious. Experts assure us that the Chinese leaders interpret the selection of Beijing as the world's acknowledgement that it accepts the Communist Party (CCP) as the legitimate ruler of China.

It's what you get with the Pragmatist approach to evil ideologies. Pragmatism is one of the many offshoots of the Relativist branch of philosophy. Rejecting objective reality, it has dispensed with ethics, epistemology, as well as reason. Its other central tenet is that each and every idea, religion, or culture is equally valid from its own perspective (except the West's, which are uniquely evil - including this one?).

And so, Havana has become a respectable vacation destination for Europeans, while the press refer to the Castro brothers as misguided idealists - audacious rascals, on a par with the other murderous poster boy, Che.

The last few days, as the world mourned the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the focus of Soviet crimes was on Stalin's atrocities rather than the evil of communist ideology itself. The Nobel Prize winner himself is derogatory referred to as a Nationalist - a direct insult in the Postmodern tranzy frame of reference.

- Caption: black satire by The People's Cube -

Ideas are untouchable, persons are fair game.
Denunciations of China's human rights record - while welcome - are directed at the symptoms (coercing individuals to comply to the will of the collective) instead of the evil system itself (communism).

In this 'morally neutral' atmosphere where the passing of judgment on any one's culture is anathema while pronouncing damnation on your own is mandatory, communist China enjoying the Olympic honours should come as no surprise. Such is the cynical state of the world.

The Epoch Times has published a series of nine columns, called the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party, which represent the most detailed account yet of communist misrule in China, and what the consequences have been for the Chinese people and lovers of liberty throughout the world.

Skip the Bird's Nest opening ceremony on Friday and instead take note of the gruesome history on which the Chinese ideal of Rousseau's Agrarianism is built, a legacy legitimized by Western Postmodern Pragmatism.

Here's a excerpt from Kathy Shaidle's "Beijing: Munich or Berlin" from Front Page Magazine:


"Given the known facts about life in totalitarian Communist China, the choice of Beijing for the 2008 Games makes a mockery of the Olympic Charter, which claims to promote “a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity” and “respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.” This was immediately disproved when the Chinese, blatantly and arrogantly, celebrated their selection as host country with a fireworks display in Tiananmen Square, where thousands of young pro-democracy demonstrators were slaughtered in 1989. Dancers also performed below towering portraits of Mao Tse-tung, who murdered approximately 70 million Chinese in Communism’s name.

- Caption: Beijing 2008 Olympics bill board "One World, One Dream" - which one? -

“If we had known what was already taking place in Germany's camps in 1936 (...) the Olympics would not have taken place in Berlin.

”Ironically, given the number of pro-Tibet protests that marred this year’s Olympic torch relay, the IOC is now considering ending the 72-year-old tradition. But rather than extinguish this appealing custom, the IOC, and the rest of the world, should reevaluate, or at least stick to, its criteria for selecting host countries and be willing to learn from history.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Facing Evil

“Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.” --Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Actually, it started with a lie and the war on existence. The comments section to following article contains some wonderful personal anecdotes ...

BBC: "Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies at 89 "

Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died near Moscow at the age of 89. The author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, who returned to Russia in 1994, died of either a stroke or heart failure.The Nobel laureate (...) (a)fter returning to Russia, (...) wrote several polemics on Russian history and identity. (...) >>>

The Obituary includes video material: "... an old-fashioned moralist who saw the world in black and white" - relativists, being stripped of ethics as a philosophical field, fail to understand that a compromise between good and evil does not exist: a compromise in this case would be a mere 55 million victims of Left and Right totalitarian experiments instead of the full 110 million. Any concession - even the smallest - would still be evil.

"The good has nothing to gain from evil, evil has everything to gain from the good." --Ayn Rand

Bryan Caplan at Econ Blog has an excerpt worth quoting in full:

Econ Blog: "The Best of Solzhenitsyn"

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's passing reminds me of my favorite passage from his writings:

"But let us be generous. We will not shoot them. We will not pour salt water into them, nor bury them in bedbugs, nor bridle them up into a "swan dive," nor keep them on sleepless "stand-up" for a week, nor kick them with jackboots, nor beat them with rubber truncheons, nor squeeze their skulls with iron rings, nor push them into a cell so that they lie atop one another like pieces of baggage - we will not do any of the things they did! But for the sake of our country and our children we have the duty to seek them all out and bring them all to trial! Not to put them on trial so much as their crimes. And to compel each one of them to announce loudly:
"Yes, I was an executioner and a murderer." --The Gulag Archipelago

If you can read this aloud without tearing up, you're made of sterner stuff than me. Alas, three and a half decades after the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, it looks like we'll never see the Russian analog of the Nuremberg trials. (...) >>>

More excerpts of Solzhenitsyn's brilliant work in the comments section >>>

Ode to the Collective: Totalitarian Temples

Art Daily: "Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed at Chicago Architecture Foundation"

‘Startling,’ and ‘idiosyncratic’ describe the architecture in the newest exhibition at the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) 224 S. Michigan Avenue. Free and open daily through October 3, Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed consists of 48 photographs of Modernist buildings that were designed and built behind the iron curtain during the 1970s and 1980s.

A map of the building locations is also included in the exhibition. French photographer Frederic Chaubin documented the structures during a five-year period. The exhibition was originally produced by the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. (...) >>>

CCCP: During the course of his travels in the former Soviet Union, French photographer Frederic Chaubin documented an extensive collection of startling architectural artifacts built during the last two decades of the Cold War. The exhibition is a compendium of film stills, drawings, magazine articles, and historical timelines that maps out the complex genealogy of this overlooked but compelling chapter in the history of 20th century design. (...) >>>

Resist Commie Prop, Support Indy!

... with a pro human record like the Russian Communist Party's, who wouldn't feel deeply offended at Hollywood's creative license? Everything else aside (!) thanks to their successful agitprop everyone has forgotten they had been secretly wheeling and dealing with their Hegelian brother party - the National Socialists - until Hitler betrayed them. Only then did they come to the Allied side ...

"The 1922 anti-Versailles Rapallo Treaty between the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union against the Western Allies is hardly ever remembered, let alone its secret addendum allowing Germany to train their military in Soviet territory. ["(...) the Soviet Union [was] crawling with German engineers, instructing Soviet generals on the uses of poison gas and the intricacies of tank warfare (...)", Tom Reiss, "The Orientalist", Random House, 2006, p. 187]

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 is today a buried public secret. It remained in effect until 1941 when Hitler in Operation Barbarossa invaded the Soviet Union. The treaty foresaw in another secret protocol that divided Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. All were subsequently invaded, or forced to cede territory to Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union. Stalin joined the Allies against Nazism only on 1941 after Hitler treacherously turned his back on his former conspiracy partner. Since then 'Fascist' is the pejorative designation of choice for all opponents of 'progress'".
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Yahoo!News: "Indiana Jones Makes Russian Communists See Red"

Russian Communist Party members condemned the new "Indiana Jones" film on Friday as crude, anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history and called for it to be banned from Russian screens. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" stars Harrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers.

"What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame," said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg.

The comments were made at a local Communist party meeting and posted on its Internet site www.kplo.ru. The film, the fourth in the hugely successful Indiana Jones series, went on release in Russian cinemas on Thursday. Russian media said it was being shown on 808 screens, the widest ever release for a Hollywood movie.

In past episodes Indiana Jones has escaped from Nazi soldiers, an Egyptian snake pit, a Bedouin swordsman and a child-enslaving Indian demigod.

"Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country," said another party member, Andrei Gindos.

Though the ranks of the once all-powerful Communist Party have dwindled since Soviet times, its members see themselves as the defenders of the achievements of the old Soviet Union.

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones outright to prevent "ideological sabotage."

"Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957," St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.

"They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war."

"It's rubbish ... In 1957 the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?"

Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia's Culture Ministry to ban the film for its "anti-Soviet propaganda." (...) >>>

- Filed on Articles in "History Compiled" -

Resist Commie Prop, Support Indy! - now updated with historical perspective

... with a pro human record like the Russian Communist Party's, who wouldn't feel deeply offended by the Hollywood creative license? Everything else aside (!) thanks to their successful agitprop everyone has forgotten they had been secretly wheeling and dealing with their Hegelian brother party - the National Socialists - until well into WWII when Hitler betrayed them. Only then did they come to the Allied side ...

"The 1922 anti-Versailles Rapallo Treaty between the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union against the Western Allies is hardly ever remembered, let alone its secret addendum allowing Germany to train their military in Soviet territory. ["(...) the Soviet Union [was] crawling with German engineers, instructing Soviet generals on the uses of poison gas and the intricacies of tank warfare (...)", Tom Reiss, "The Orientalist", Random House, 2006, p. 187]

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 is today a buried public secret. It remained in effect until 1941 when Hitler in Operation Barbarossa invaded the Soviet Union. The treaty foresaw in another secret protocol that divided Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. All were subsequently invaded, or forced to cede territory to Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union. Stalin joined the Allies against Nazism only on 1941 after Hitler treacherously turned his back on his former conspiracy partner. Since then 'Fascist' is the pejorative designation of choice for all opponents of 'progress'".
______________________________________________________________

Yahoo!News: "Indiana Jones Makes Russian Communists See Red"

Russian Communist Party members condemned the new "Indiana Jones" film on Friday as crude, anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history and called for it to be banned from Russian screens. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" stars Harrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers.

"What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame," said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg.

The comments were made at a local Communist party meeting and posted on its Internet site www.kplo.ru. The film, the fourth in the hugely successful Indiana Jones series, went on release in Russian cinemas on Thursday. Russian media said it was being shown on 808 screens, the widest ever release for a Hollywood movie.

In past episodes Indiana Jones has escaped from Nazi soldiers, an Egyptian snake pit, a Bedouin swordsman and a child-enslaving Indian demigod.

"Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country," said another party member, Andrei Gindos.

Though the ranks of the once all-powerful Communist Party have dwindled since Soviet times, its members see themselves as the defenders of the achievements of the old Soviet Union.

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones outright to prevent "ideological sabotage."

"Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957," St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.

"They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war."

"It's rubbish ... In 1957 the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?"

Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia's Culture Ministry to ban the film for its "anti-Soviet propaganda." (...) >>>

The Injustice of Revisionism

At times it is simply unbelievable where totalitarian criminals and their spin-doctors can get away with! We did some posts recently on deontology: the field of ethics dealing with good-intent-bad-results-never-mind, the Left's permanent get-out-of-jail card.

Below we have another example. Watch the heading: it is gotspe! No one has the advantage of ignorance these days, or it must be due to the dumbing-down that passes for liberal education since roughly 1965.

The trick is reframing. Not only must we live with the false Left and Right dichotomy (which should read Left and Right Socialism), also they managed to emerge from history as the 'good guys'. This is done by inserting small snippets of text into articles such as the present:

"[they] ... founded the group at the beginning of the twenties after experiencing the horrors of war and revolution." They were the self-same people who were responsible for 'the horrors of war and revolution,' so that their vision of the collective may be build on its ashes. Instead the suggestion is dropped that these sons of peace were the actual victims of the opponent's wars!

It is unimaginable there would be such an exhib on Adolf Hitler's artistic efforts. Picture the outrage! And rightly so. Yet the crimes as a result of the central 'philosopher' of the Cologne exhibit are ongoing to this day!

Here we also have a splendid example of the Postmodern literal use of the metaphor. An entire blog dedicated to 'art as a weapon' (since 1990).

The picture is a work by Franz-Wilhelm Seiwert. Who knows what triggered his outrage of Chicago in 1887 is kindly requested to enlighten us. The Encyclopedia of Chicago surely has no idea! It cannot have been anything as bad as the Russian gulags, or the Great Leap Forward, or Cambodia's killing fields, to name but a few instances. A humane world for all, indeed ...!


Art Daily: "A Humane World for All: The Rhinelandish Artist Group the Cologne Progressives 1920-33

Thinking of the Cologne carnival and Karl Marx doesn´t come into mind immediately. Rhinelandish life style and Marx´s philosophy by Marx don´t have much in common. But the [German] philosopher published a paper in Cologne and the artists which are now on exhibition at the Museum Ludwig were both Marxists and followers of carnival.

"Progressive Cologne 1920-33. Seiwert – Hoerle – Arntz“ presents paintings and prints created by three of the most important representatives of the Cologne Progressives. Their pictures have an exceptional position in German art between World War I and II. The painters Franz W. Seiwert and Heinrich Hoerle and the printer Gerd Arntz founded the group at the beginning of the twenties after experiencing the horrors of war and revolution.

They dedicated their art to the fight for a better society. Painting was for them a "weapon". Art and politics were very closely related. The Progressives´ realism didn´t portray the world at its surface but exposed its inner structures and mechanism. With reduced forms the Progressives give a constructed view of the world and their main theme is the working class. Although rooted in expressionism the pictures don´t depict man in general but the individual as a concrete social subject. After being persecuted by the national socialists the Cologne Progressives fell (...) >>>

Corporal Hitler's Master of Ceremonies

Sir Winston S. Churchill in his Nobel Prize winning "Memoirs of the Second World War" touches briefly on one of the most colourful people of the interbellum. Without context or further identification - we'll fill that in later - he mentions meeting one Putzi Hanfstaengl during the summer of 1932 while on a research trip for the purposes of his book "Life of Marlborough".

"At the Regina Hotel a gentleman introduced himself (...) and spoke a great deal about "the Fueher", with whom he appeared to be intimate. As he seemed to be a talkative fellow, speaking excellent English, I asked him to dine. (...) After dinner he went to the piano and played and sang many tunes and songs in such a remarkable style (...) He was a great entertainer (...) He said I ought to meet him (the Fuehrer), and that nothing would be easier to arrange. Herr Hitler came every day to the hotel about five o'clock, and would be very glad to see me."

Churchill is giving an account of his considerations, in the process giving us a lesson in patriotism, chivalry, and realism. It just goes to show how 'politically correct' we've all become! We'll come back to the subject later in the post.

"I had no national prejudices against Hitler at the time. I knew little of his doctrine or record and nothing of his character. I admire men who stand up for their country in defeat, even though I am on the other side. He had a perfect right to be a patriotic German if he chose. I always wanted England, Germany and France to be friends."

Then Churchill happened to pass a few adverse remarks, questioning Herr Hitler's "so violent views about the Jews," and the arrangement was stopped short from the German side. "This was the last I saw of 'Putzi' (...) Thus Hitler lost the only chance of seeing me."

Putzi Hanfstaengl resurfaces in another literary master piece. The joy of one of the best books I have come across in years could easily have been spoiled by the politically correct activities of the Dutch publishers who, for reasons best known to themselves, are marketing the book to an audience of multicultis, describing the protagonist as pleading for 'the multicultural society' and 'diversity'. This is a ludicrous notion in the context of the interbellum. Perhaps such a philistine approach to marketing has occurred in other countries as well. The English language 2006 Random House Trade Edition I know for a fact to have escaped the addition of 'narrarives'.

"The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss is not a piece of cheap propaganda for activists to exploit for their own purposes. It is a thoroughly and uniquely researched work that accounts hitherto less known historical and personal facts. It is well written, and chronicles a fascinating and remarkable story, encompassing four empires, three continents, three religions, two revolutions and two world wars. I have already written about it on earlier occasions, in "History Class: of agit-prop, revolution and terror!".

An episode during the early period of the advancing Nazi party, touches the surreal and the absurd in a truly hilarious manner. Reiss describes Putzi - "little squirt" in Bavarian dialect - as Hitler's Harvard educated Press Secretary, creative cheerleader and organiser of Hitler's Flying Circus ......

"the fastest political tour in history, using trains, planes and automobiles to shuttle the führer around the country (...) a three-engine Lufthansa D 2001 and three long, black Mercedes saloons (...) raced together across Germany, with Hitler in the lead car, the top down, a leather flight helmet keeping his hair in place. (...) Hitler thrived on the crazy hours and the speed of it all. It was a political blitzkrieg. But the real how was in the air, when the candidate would descend on German cities (...). The sympathetic German papers took to calling these the Freedom Flights, and they contributed mightily to the growing myth of Hitler as Germany's 'dashing' savior - its redeeming angel from the skies, descending on all parts if the fatherland. (...)."

Churchill must have caught Hanfstaegnl in 1932 during one of the Flying Circus' political road tours. Unbeknownst to Churchill the entertainer's full name was Ernst Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, "mother a Sedgwick from the old New England family. (Two of his grandfathers had been Civil War generals; one of them, a German immigrant 48er, was a pallbearer at Abraham Lincoln's funeral.) (...) His father was one of the most prominent men in Munich in the late nineteenth century, and the Hanfstaengls had visitors such as Mark Twain, Richard Strauss, and Fridtjof Nanson, the famous arctic explorer and passport inventor, to their lavish villa. How on earth had this white-shoe boy gotten involved with a bunch of lower class, anti-Semite beer-hall politicians?"

"Putzi was the Nazi movement's only Harvard man. Though a figure of fun among the hard-core Nazis - Putzi played 'Sam' to Hitler's Bogart, entertaining him at the end of the day with his piano playing - he was instrumental in making Nazism salonfähig (...) Hitler used Hanfstaengl's affable nature and white-shoe pedigree to forge many of his important links to German and American rich people (...) Putzi was the connection to old American, British and German families."

In 1922 Putzi talks to a young American military attaché in Germany, Captain Truman-Smith, because "all the revolutionary nonsense down in Bavaria had the embassy concerned". "Putzi wrote in his 1957 memoir 'Unheard Witness' how Truman-Smith provides him with a Press ticket to a meeting with "the most remarkable fellow I've ever come across", Adolf Hitler. Truman-Smith requests him to have a look and report back. He heard Hitler speak at the Kindlkeller about Kemal Ataturk and the example of Mussolini, and ... joined the movement."

An inventive cheerleader for the Harvard football team, Putzi transferred that position to Hitler's Nazi entourage. (...) According to Putzi's memoir, he and Hitler were together at the house of the Nazi's semiofficial photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, in Munich at the time:

I started playing some of the football marches I had picked up at Harvard. I explained to Hitler all the business about cheerleaders and marches, counter-marches and deliberate whipping up of hysterical enthusiasm. I told him about the thousands of spectators being made to roar Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, rah, rah, rah!" in unison and of the hypnotic effect of this sort of thing. I played him some of the Sousa marches and then my own Falarah [Putzi's contribution to the Harvard cheerleading repertoire], to show how it could be done by adapting German tunes, and gave them all that boyant beat so characteristic of American brass-band music. I had Hitler fairly shouting with enthusiasm. "That is it, Hanfstaengl, that is what we need for the movement, marvelous, and he pranced up and down the room like a drum majorette.

After that he had the SA band practicing the same thing. I even wrote a dozen marches or so myself over the course of the years, including the one that was played by the brown-shirt columns as they marched through the Brandenburger Tor on the day he took over power (...) that is the origin of it and I suppose I must take my share of the blame."

That summer (of 1932) saw daily gun battles between Nazis and Communists on the streets of Berlin. Christopher Isherwood, living in Berlin at the time, thought there was something false and ritualistic about the street fighting, as though both parties were in it mainly for publicity purposes."

(...) There was no doubt that both sides (...) had an interest in breaking down public order and scaring everyone away from the center parties (...) a second round of national elections proved the extremists' violence making strategies effective: both Nazis and Communists gained at the expense of moderate parties (...)."

After the elections of November 1932 "even the pretense of fighting between the Nazis and Communists was dropped. It was time to deliver the coup de grâce to the bourgeois center - the German democracy (...) Communists and Nazis stood arm in arm, one shouting 'Red Front,' the other 'Heil Hitler!" (...) rows of low-rent housing hung with alternating rows of fluttering swastika and hammer-and-sickle flags."

We forget the methods and purposes of terrorism and violence at our peril. Here's the news from Athens a few weekens ago.

- More excerpts from "The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss on the history of the two Socialist movements in future postings.

The German Revolution

The present is a review of an episode in "The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss, a thoroughly and uniquely researched work that recounts hitherto less known historical and personal facts. Set during the interbellum, it chronicles a fascinating and remarkable story, encompassing four empires, three continents, three religions, two revolutions and two world wars. Earlier posts were "History Class: of agit-prop, revolution and terror!"

xox

On Monday, 11th November 1918, delegates from the new Social Democratic government of Germany officially signed the armistice, ending Germany's part in the Great War 1914-1918. The Kaiser moved to comfortable exile in The Netherlands.

But mob rule reigned Germany. Leftist leader Emil Eichhorn, self-appointed chief of the People's Revolutionary Berlin Police Department - personally freed 650 prisoners from police headquarters at the head of a mob. Others seized newspaper offices, government buildings, stores, and telegraph offices.

The demobilising army agreed not to oppose the government, in exchange for a free hand in quelling the revolutionary unrest. The government took the responsibility and the blame for the humiliating surrender, while simultaneously delegating political power - the state's monopoly of force - to Rightist officers.

As the army demobilised in Berlin, all moral constraint melted away. Here's an account of artist George Grosz: "The city was dark, cold and full of rumours. The streets were wild ravines haunted by murderers and cocaine peddlers ... People denied all knowledge but whispered about secret manoeuvres by the Black Reichswehr or a newly formed Red Army." Bursts of machine-gun fire and hand-grenade explosions were common. Grosz: "Inhabitants (...) went up on the roof to shoot pigeons and people. Their sense of proportion (...) got misplaced."

Three hundred people perished each day from influenza alone. Demobilised soldiers started selling their weapons on the streets. Those who held on to their arms followed their unit commanders into Mafia-style, loosely connected militias, known as the Freikorps (Free Corps), a proto type of the later Waffen SS, but originally consisting of volunteers in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813-1815.

It was more than just the Red menace which motivated the Freikorps, their originators being the ancestors of all guerilla fighters and revolutionary insurgents of the next century. An even earlier connection identified them with the Teutonic Knights. They were anxious to proof themselves worthy of the medieval battles in the East against Poles and Tartars.

The Western powers restricted the German military, but motivated by fear of the Soviet revolutionary threat, refrained from disarming and restraining the Freikorps. In 1919 the Freikorps spontaneously and without orders moved against Poland, Lithuania and Latvia - the same countries the Nazis re-invaded in 1941.

Despite their symbolism and ancestry the Freikorps did not succeed in turning the tide of the Whites against the Reds and descended on a city in chaos, armed to the teeth, wreaking havoc on the new republic.

The revolutionary neighbourhoods were attacked without restraint. The front was brought to civilian society. This maintained the fantasy that the war had not really ended. Unarmed civilians had become the enemy. It "was a lesson in local brutality and cold-bloodedness that prepared many of them for work as storm troopers or concentration-camp guards in the years to come."

A footnote provides an important psycho-pathological context: "Many returning soldiers, no matter their political disposition, would display signs of sociopathy. Homicides and rapes became commonplace in postwar Berlin, brutal acts committed by men with no previous criminal record (...)"

"The panic evoked in Germany by the fate of Russia drove so deep into the psyche of ordinary Germans that they could not see that the forces of the new Right were equally hostile to bourgeois values like law, order and moral restraint. The Freikorps ethic, every bit as revolutionary as that of the Bolsheviks, masqueraded behind a false aura of conservatism and pacification.

Real conservatives believed in the value of traditions, but the Freikorps believed exactly the opposite - for them, the Great War had proved that the morality and social structure of peacetime were corrupt and meaningless. The politics behind the war had been a fraud, but the fighting had been real, and in this reality, the 'New Man' of the Right-wing revolution was born."

Author of 'Storm of Steel' and 'Battle As Inner Experience' Ernst Jünger hailed the 'storm soldier': "the coming of a whole new race, smart, strong and filled with will, to save Europe from its liberal delusions". "For this New Man, as for the Red revolutionaries, the legal and moral foundations of society were mere bourgeois squeamishness. At the front, only the fundamental values of bravery, ruthlessness, and camaraderie mattered - and the fundamental precept of Freikorps ideology: all society is the front."

The more the Freikorps suppressed the revolution, the faster it spread. Bolshevik cells and councils (Soviets) sprang up in towns and cities across Germany. The Munich Soviet was led by a former mental patient who wrote threatening letters to the Pope and declared war on Switzerland for failing to provide a shipment of locomotives.

In April 1919 the Bolshevik triumvirate led by Lenin associates made an attempt to launch Red Terror. Bourgeois and local aristocrats (every locale was supposed to have one, in the absence of which the village headmaster was supposed to volunteer) were jailed, property was confiscated, opposition presses smashed and schools shut down - "though this was not a real Red Terror but more of Red Terror manqué. But in the event of insufficient ruthlessness on the part of the German Left, the German Right was only too happy to fill the void."

The Freikorps attacked Munich as if it were a foreign city. The Reds held the town for three days, at the end of which more than a thousand were shot, including seminary students.

The next year saw a coup by Dr Kapp and General Ludendorf. According to an anecdote Corporal Hitler came too late to join it. The ousted Social Democratic government being unable to turn out the Freikorps against the Freikorps, called for a general strike. This succeeded, sending the putschists fleeing to Sweden, upon which the Spartacists raised a 80,000 strong 'Red Army of the Ruhr' in order to seize the mining and heavy industry in that area. The reinstated Social Democratic government retaliated by setting the Freikorps loose on Berlin. The Reds in the Ruhr were crushed.

"Finally, the major disturbances ended, though street battles and small uprisings continued to break out in towns across the fatherland. In the spring of 1921" as the protagonist of "The Orientalist" crossed the border into Germany, the country had fallen into uneasy quiet ...

- More excerpts from Tom Reiss' "The Orientalist" on the history of the two Socialist movements in next posts.

- Up next: Both Sir Winston S. Churchill in "Memoirs of the Second World War" and Tom Reiss' in "The Orientalist" touch on one of the most colourful people of the interbellum, Hitler's Master of Ceremonies.

Cuba Has No Jailed Dissidents

Art Daily: "¡CUBA! - A Voyage through This Island's Art and History, from 1868 to Today"

Organized and presented by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from January 31 to June 8, 2008, ¡Cuba! Art and History from 1868 to Today, which brings together some 400 works of art, will be the first exhibition to showcase the art of this Caribbean island, which Christopher Columbus described as “the most beautiful land eyes have ever seen.”

Thanks to the involvement of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Fototeca de Cuba, and the collaboration of many collectors and museums in the United States, including the MoMA, this exhibition will draw a broad panorama of Cuban art and history.(...) >>>

Philips' Communist Recommendation

Christie's in London has the small, but fine art collection of the late Dr. Anton Philips (1874-1951) on auction.

Christie's "About" section on the relevant website yields an eulogy about the entrepreneur, containing a typical example of the double standards that are common in the false dichotomy in dealing with the two Counter-Enlightenment twin ideologies, National Socialism and Communism.

Whereas Soviet propaganda took care that Nazi collaboration eternally constitutes a stain on corporate history, soliciting and associating with Communists comes as a recommendation. Consider the following excerpt:

"(...) Anton Philips ranked amongst the foremost entrepreneurs of the 20th century. Trained as a banker in Amsterdam and London, at the age of twenty he joined the small company his brother Gerard and his father Frederik had founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Anton was responsible for the commercial side of the enterprise and built a network of industrial customers in western Europe.

Anton travelled to Russia at the turn of the century. (...) a Russian anecdote serves as a perfect example for both his perseverance and creativity. In 1922, two decades after his first visit to Moscow, Anton tried to win over Lenin himself by presenting him with a framed picture of his elderly home in the Dutch town of Zaltbommel. In the accompanying note Anton pointed out that Karl Marx, his great-uncle from paternal side, had completed several chapters of Das Kapital enjoying the hospitality of the Philips family. Vladimir Iljitsj declined, saying that the nephew had apparently either not read or understood his uncle's writings."

Image: Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), Portrait of a woman with long hair

The collection is great though ... the "Two studies of a young man" by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) is a true gem! The accompanying video comes highly recommended ... by us!

Update:

Art Daily: "New Record for Sir Peter Paul Rubens Oil Sketch at Auction at $7.7 Million at Christie's"

Christie’s evening auction of Important Old Master and British Pictures including Works from the Collection of Anton Philips realised a total of £18,802,200 / $38,021,808 / €26,041,047. The top lot was Two studies of a young man, a little-known work by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), which realised £3,828,500 / $7,741,993 / €5,302,473, the highest ever price for a Rubens oil sketch at auction.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens’ (1577-1640) Two studies of a young man was painted between 1615 and 1617. The panel (46.5 x 65.5 cm.) is a study for Balthasar in The Adoration of the Magi at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and shows a Levantine head, pictured en face and en profil respectively. The sitter is unkown but judging by his tanned skin, plain shirt and leather hat, it is thought that he could have been a contract labourer building the extension of the artist’s house in the Wappen, Antwerp.

The picture was rediscovered in 1934 when Mr Douglas Lewis of Merton Park, near Wimbledon, brought it to Christie’s having acquired the work in a box of paintings at a local West Country auction. The picture was recognised as a Rubens and was offered at Christie’s on 23 November 1934 where it sold for £1,560. It was acquired soon afterwards by Anton Philips who displayed it as a central work of his private collection at his house Villa de Laak. The picture left this sanctuary on very few occasions, and was exhibited at The Museés Royaux des Beaux Arts in 1937 and the landmark Rubens oil sketch exhibition at The Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1953. >>>