"...a key paradox of Communism is that it retards progress. Under it, China smelled Taiwan’s and Singapore’s exhaust. North Korea is decades behind South Korea. Guided by Pol Pot, Cambodians marched into the Stone Age... State monopolies stunt collective and individual growth. How can they not? Worse, government tyranny degrades individuals, when not killing them, by the millions. Still, Communism seduces, because it’s 'progressive'."
Communism is both radical and conservative in spirit, hardly surprising as it's a deeply moralistic ideology that developed in reaction to the revolutionary upheavals of capitalism. Remember that Karl Marx himself recognized capitalism as the most transformative system developed by mankind. It was most extreme and 'radical' in changing all forms of human relations and interactions. It destroyed entire communities and created new ones. It changed the way people thought and felt about values and their place in the world. Such breakneck pace led to much that was useful and good but also much that was alienating and soulless. Marx recognized that capitalism's power was such that the genie could not be put back in the bottle. There was no going back. All that communists could do was wait for contradictions of capitalism to finally come to a head and unleash a revolution whereby workers would take over the means of production led by the dictatorship of communist moralists and intellectuals. This vision was radical, yet it was also conservative in that Marx hoped for a stable future where things wouldn't change so drastically. In the communist future, human needs would not be sacrificed at the altar of profits and growth. Communists would inherit the means of production and wealth created by capitalism(and could only have been created by it) but, once in charge, they would regulate the pace of historical change so that society would serve the masses of workers than insatiable bourgeois greed for more profits. Thus, even though further 'progress' may be stunted in such a communist order, people would come before profits. The social order wouldn't be upset just so some capitalists could make more money. Such emphasis on stability and balance was, in key aspects, conservative.
Still, Marx's vision of communism depended on historical processes made possible by capitalism. Thus, Marxism is less anti-capitalist than post-capitalist. Marx didn't argue that communism is the way to build an economy. He conceded nothing beats capitalism in wealth creation, technological innovation, urbanization, and emergence of mass consciousness. But he believed capitalism to be too ruthless and rootless for the good of the masses. Also, the bourgeois notion of individualism was illusory because only a handful of oligarchs controlled the key means of information and communication. And only a small number of people could really enjoy leisure and the arts. There was the bigger problem of rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And these contradictions would eventually lead to mass uprisings that made communist revolution inevitable... or so Marx prophesied.
One problem of communism in the 20th century was it mostly impacted societies that hadn't undergone the capitalist-industrial revolution. (As it turned out, established capitalism proved to be endlessly adaptive in meeting mass demands, distracting the masses with bread & circuses, and/or buying off the radicals with sinecures in the system.) The few exceptions were East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and to some extent Hungary. Unsurprisingly, communism was least bloody in those nations(though far from bloodless). But in nations where communism had to be used as a building tool for industry, it was bound to be bloody, not least because of pressures from capitalist/imperialist nations. After all, Russian communism was encircled by capitalist powers that, at one time, even sent troops into Russia(as US and its allies are today in Syria) to nip the revolution in the bud. So, there was a sense that unless Russia quickly built up industry, it would be destroyed. What it took capitalist nations a century to develop had to be done in a decade or two, and this led to the use of mass coercion and even state slavery. Russian Communism, far from inheriting the bitter but bountiful fruits of capitalism, would have to grow the industrial tree. It was even truer of China that, in the first half of the 20th century, made Tsarist Russia look like a modern nation. Also, endless civil strife and Japanese invasion destroyed what little industrial economy had been developed under the KMT. (And so, the current Chinese government argues, though rather disingenuously, that it must allow some degree of capitalism to develop the kind of modern economy that allows for a true transition to a communist economy.)
As for Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, they are not entirely useful models of capitalist success because their growth depended so much on being part of the US empire. (Also, US capitalism could be far more generous than European capitalism because America has the best land and resources in the world. US empire needn't be as extractive of other parts of the world as the European imperialist economies did.) Had the US denied Japan and the 'Asian tigers' market access to American consumers, how far could their economies have grown? (While South Korea has often been compared with North Korea, what would happen to its economy if the US and its allies applied the kind of economic pressure faced by the northern half?) Even as their economies grew, they became ever more dependent on US whims and thus became political puppets of America; they have zero sovereignty, whereas Asian nations that developed from a communist foundation, like China and Vietnam, are relatively more sovereign.
In the case of Asia, the appeal of communism had partly to do with moralism and social justice(owing to their Confucian past) but also to its promise of anti-imperialism. Though Chinese Communists rejected Confucianism, their ideal vision was to a large extent a refurbishment of the Old Way. Confucius believed a good society should be governed by philosopher kings and a wise scholar-class; he also regarded peasants as the salt of the earth, a people of virtue. He had nothing but disdain for the merchant-business class as parasitic. Asian communism essentially replaced the scholar-class with revolutionary elites and replaced the peasants with the proletariat(though Mao made a big deal of peasants as a revolutionary force; Gandhi also favored the peasants).
But moreover, many Asians were attracted to communism because Russia declared itself a friend of non-white peoples under European imperialism-colonialism. Also, before the new US-dominated order of post-WWII era, capitalism was almost synonymous with imperialism in most of the world. The system was rigged so that industry would be centered in the European metropole while the Third World would be used mainly for raw materials and basic manpower. Because Chinese and Vietnamese communists came to political consciousness in the first half of the 20th century when capitalism was rigged in favor of the West, they tended to see US-led capitalism of the post-war era in the same way, i.e. US capitalists would continue to do what the Europeans did. They failed to realize that US capitalism allowed for all nations to participate in world markets and develop their own industries. But then, US played it both ways to confuse the matter. At certain times, the US sided with the Third World against the Europeans, as in the Suez Crisis. But at other times, US pulled off coups, as in Guatemala and Iran, that forestalled any lurch toward 'socialism'. In the case of Vietnam, US aided the French against the Viet Minh after World War II, convincing the Vietnamese communist-patriots that the Americans were a case of 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss'.
It's debatable to what extent the Cold War had a humanizing or dehumanizing effect on US foreign policy. Did the Soviet-Communist Threat make the US kinder and more generous to the Third World to win hearts and minds? Or, did the US dig in its heels and support loathsome regimes just to contain communism? Probably both depending on the place and setting. One thing for sure, the ebbing of communist threat in the 1980s made the US less knee-jerk supportive of dictatorial regimes in Asia and Latin America. But then, following the total demise of the USSR, the US empire grew more arrogant and aggressive, especially against the Middle East at the behest of Jewish Power. And the 'new cold war' is entirely the doing of the Jewish-run US. (This suggests that the rise of Jewish Supremacist Power than the fall of communism was mainly to blame for the rising obnoxiousness of US foreign policy. If not for Jewish domination, would there have been all these wars in the Middle East and North Africa? Would there have been a 'new cold war' with Russia or all this anti-Russia hysteria?)
Oddly enough, it's arguable that the societies that most closely resembled Karl Marx's vision of the communist future were post-war US and Western Europe. While they retained capitalist economic systems, the government played a powerful role to level the playing fields and to restrain runaway 'greed'. It's no wonder that Noam Chomsky thinks that US from 50s to 60s was the golden age where wealth distribution was most egalitarian. High taxation(at over 90%) and powerful labor unions(and limited immigration) meant that capitalists couldn't act like Jeff Bezos, Koch Brothers, and Tim Cook(the Crook). This New Deal America and Marshall Plan Europe took pains to spread the wealth around. Capitalism remained and continued to operate on the basis of profits, but through taxation and the power of collective bargaining by big labor, there was a burgeoning middle class that became the majorities in US and Europe. Of course, Karl Marx envisioned a total collapse of capitalism, and Marxists scoffed at the notion of 'social democracy' as a craven compromise with capitalists; Marxists felt the same way about fascism. Still, the postwar order was quasi-Marxist-lite in that the vast pools of workers were allowed to share in the fruits of capitalism like never before. Among Western European nations, Labour-led UK came closest to Marxism when big labor attained unprecedented power and when big industries were nationalized.
Now, even if a communist order were to inherit the wealth of fallen capitalism, it is doubtful it would function well for long. Just imagine the city hall running all the industries. Imagine New York city hall running all the hotels, restaurants, apartments, factories, shops, and etc., and it's obvious why things would run slowly if at all. It'd be a bureaucratic nightmare. This is why even communist nations experimented with some degree of privatization and small business to provide incentives to people to work harder and be more productive. Now, some Marxists condemned bureaucratized communism and argued for something closer to voluntary-anarchism made up of local communities working closely together along democratic lines. Israeli Kibbutz works along these lines, but still, people feel most free when they can run businesses or look for jobs on their own.
"government tyranny degrades individuals"
It can but not necessarily. Tyranny can also save individuals as humans are pretty self-degrading. Can tyranny degrade a population? Sure, we are witnessing it now in the West with the Deep State oligarchy pushing all sorts of degeneracy such as globo-homo, trashy feminism, Afro-mania, Jewish egotism, mainstreaming of pornography, and the like. In the past, decadence was a matter of freedom in a liberal democracy. Today, it's mandatory as all of us are forced to bake cakes for 'gay wedding', refer to a man with a wig as a 'she', pretend blacks are angels when too many are thugs, celebrate 'slut pride' as 'empowerment', and honor Jews as all-knowing & all-wise when so many of them are insipid a-holes like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
Besides, true liberal democracy is dead in the West where the so-called 'free press' works hand in glove with the deep state and encourages censorship in media monopoly and internet platforms. Today's 'liberals' are elitist scolds who work for Zionists and the Deep State than defend the rights of free speech and free assembly. Just ask BDS supporters how 'liberal democracy' works in the West. Under the new system, decadence and degeneracy are not merely individual choices but the official value system of the Empire of Judea. Today, most politicians in cities are COMPELLED to march in 'gay pride' parades.
The current system gives the lie to the notion of individualism. While capitalist systems were more individualist than communist ones, the current rulers of West fear genuine individualism. Prior to the rise of the internet, nearly all of information and discussion were dominated by a handful of corporations and elite institutions. Internet gave rise to true individualism, for good or bad. So, what did the Power do? The Power rigged the game so that a handful of oligarchs, mostly Jews, would gain platform monopoly and shut down individual voices that deviated from the official dogma. Jewish Power also used financial power to make it nearly impossible for dissidents to make any money. Jewish Power made McCarthyism look like kid-stuff by using whatever means to have any dissident fired and blacklisted from jobs. So much for individualism. For a time, the internet offered a hope for true individualism in thought, ideas, and exchange of information, but Jewish Power gained dominance as gate-keepers of news, search algorithms, and money. While dissidents are not shot in the back of the head or dragged off to gulags and there are alt-tech sites, the fact of the matter is that most voices are irrelevant or inconsequential without access to the main square of debate and discussion.
Most damaging is that all this censorship goes under the label 'liberalism' when it is directly opposed to the very spirit of liberalism. But labels matter, and as long as Jewish-Tribal illiberalism goes under the name of 'liberalism', so many people will be fooled into believing, "I support PC and censorship, and that makes me 'liberal'." What operates in the West is a kind of selective tyranny. It allows and even encourages total unfettered freedom in certain areas — foul language, anti-white hatred, tattoos & piercings, green/purple hair, globo-homo-tranny trashiness, black thuggery, white self-loathing, horny for Zion, video game violence, alcohol & drugs, sacrilege against Christianity, etc. — while suppressing the kind of freedom, no matter how soft-spoken or genteel, that dares to speak the truth about Jewish Power, black crime, deep state corruption, homo decadence, and tranny lunacy. Antifa can burn down police stations and BLM can riot and loot, but Jared Taylor cannot use Paypal and Stefan Molyneux can't have a channel on Youtube.
Because certain expressions and actions are given free rein while others are censored or penalized on account of them being 'hate speech'(therefore not legitimate as expressions of freedom), the current West fools itself(and many around the world) that it is indeed free. Imagine an order where a white woman has the choice of having sex with a black man or not having sex with him. Such would be genuinely liberal. But suppose the New Order says she MUST have sex with him because to reject him would be 'racist' and 'hateful'. In other words, she no longer has choice and must accept even interracial rape while the very notion of saying 'no' to sex with a black man becomes 'hateful'. This is what has happened with the Homo issue. When the West was closer to the liberal ideal, one could choose to be homo or to support homo interests. But it was not compulsory. But then, 'gay wedding' was forced on all the nation, and all businesses must bake 'gay wedding' cakes. And politicians must march in 'pride' parades and praise homos to high heaven, just like all politicians MUST praise Jews and Israel. It's not a matter of choice. As such, the current West is really a rape victim of Jews, homos, and blacks. It cannot say NO, not even to illegal immigration-invasion. No matter what Jews, homos, and blacks demand, we must grovel and give. We don't have a choice. Jews want billions more in aid to Israel? It has to be given. Homos want the entire month of June as their month to take over cities and prance around? Roll out the pink carpet. And what is truly disgusting is that the great majority of Americans, even so-called 'conservatives', are fine with this or even impassioned about it. So much for individualism. If people in the West are indeed individuals, why are they so sheep-like and so easily swayed hither-thither? How did a nation that was mostly anti-'gay marriage' become pro-'gay marriage' in such short a time? How truly degrading.
Communist tyranny for the most part could be brutal, repressive, exasperating, torturous, and even murderous, but it wasn't generally degrading. It was like theocratic tyranny. In this, Godless communism had something in common with Christian tyranny and Islamic tyranny(the kind one finds in Saudi Arabia and Iran). It was intensely moralistic and placed great emphasis on basic virtues. It had little tolerance for decadence, degeneracy, deviance, and etc. It emphasized one's duty to society, social justice, and the basic necessities of man. It extolled human virtues. The problem is we are not angels, and we don't want to be scolded all day and night. It's like even most hardcore Christians don't want to live in a theocratic order and be preached endlessly. Even most Muslims don't want to live under Islamic tyranny. And the Middle Ages in Europe was a rather gloomy period under the power of the Church. And Catholic Spain under Franco was hardly a fun place. And some find the Neo-Christianism of today's Russia to be inching toward repression.
However, all such are not degrading. They may be stultifying and boring — like what kids feel sitting in churches when they really want to go outside and play — , but they are not degrading. Today, UK that allows the 'freedom' of LGBT parades is degrading whereas the 'authoritarian' Russia that forbids such is not degrading. Today, 'free' Japan is a far more degrading place than repressive China that does NOT allow pornography, approve of globo-homo, or encourage green hair/tattoos/piercings on the national airwaves. South Korea and Taiwan under military dictatorships in the past were far less degrading than their current incarnations of globo-homo, K-pop degeneracy, hedonism, materialism, and etc. Like Shane said of the gun, freedom is only as good as the people who use it. 60s Counterculture proved how freedom can be used to degrade an entire population with indulgence in sex, drugs, and youth culture. And all those white working class folks who died of opioid overdose wallowed in self-degradation of substance-abuse. Terrible use of freedom. Of course, the rotten ruling elites didn't care. (If white goyim sold drugs that killed off innumerable Jews, the media would have been outraged, but goyim are mere sheeple to Jews who run the media. Whether white goyim or Arab goyim, they are expendable in service to Jewish profits and power.) Russia under globalist 'liberal democratic' rule during the Boris Yeltsin years was one of the most depraved and degrading places on Earth. Some would argue that Vladimir Putin hasn't been 'tyrannical' enough in asserting Russian values and Russia's place in the world. 'Free' Weimar Germany was far more degrading than dictatorial National Socialist Germany, at least until Hitler's pathology went into high gear and set off crazy wars.
Now, there were certain cases of communism that were indeed degrading for two reasons: Cult of Personality and the Politics of Hysterics. Cult of Personality, whether of Stalin, Mao, Kim Il-Sung, Ceausescu, and etc. is always degrading because it demands that people look up to some person as god-like. If people must worship, let it be God, gods, or some holy stuff. When people look up to a person as an infallible godlike figure, right or left, it can only be degrading. This is why the MLK and Mandela cults are also harmful. It's one thing to say that those men achieved great things, but it's quite another to elevate them to near-godhood. It's of a childish mentality.
And then, there is the Politics of Hysterics, with the Cultural Revolution in China being the most obvious case. Same goes for religious fervor. Christians and Muslims were most dangerous when they got into the mode of inquisition, crusade, or jihad. 'With God on ouqr side', they felt they could do no wrong; whatever terror or evil they committed was in the name of God. Same has been true of communism. While communist systems generally favored stability and order, they could turn rabid at times and unleash purges and mass hysteria like the one that rocked China in the late 60s, leading to mass destruction of peoples and property. Such hysteria can only be degrading because insane passions override any potential for reason and equilibrium.
But such lunacies are not limited to communism or theocracies. In Jewish-ruled West, we've witnessed the hysteria of cultural degeneracy. In some ways, it's more disgusting than communist and theocratic extremes because, whereas communism and religions have moralism as foundations, decadence/degeneracy is inherently immoral or, at best, amoral; therefore, to turn an immorality or amorality into the highest moral passion is ludicrous. It's really a form of secular satanism. (Decadence has value as a freedom, not a virtue. In a free society, people should be allowed a degree of decadence and vice, as people are somewhere between animal and angel. Decadence is to be tolerated, not extolled. Besides, creativity flows partly from the darker and subversive side of man. If communism failed because it demanded people be angels, the current global order is failing because it mandates people be animals whose main passions are tattoos, piercings, porn, rap, globo-homo, Negro-worship. It's like the dynamics of truth and lies. Ideally, we should prefer the truth over lies. And yet, it's a tall order to expect society to be built entirely on the truth. People naturally lie all the time. Also, even if everyone were committed to the truth, no one can know the whole truth, and everyone has blinders on, no matter how sincere he or she may be in devotion to the truth. As such, a society that is wholly committed to the truth and nothing but the truth would be a bad one. Communism was such an order that insisted that the dialectical materialism of Marxism-Leninism was the scientific truth, and there could be no other. Many communists were wholly sincere in their beliefs, but such purist radicalization of Truth led to a reign of fear because anyone accused of spreading lies or falsehood, usually 'bourgeois' in nature, could be destroyed. But as history has shown, no man, no matter how intelligent-wise-or-visionary, could figure it all out and know all the truth. Karl Marx was not the last prophet who finally revealed the eternal truth no matter how much his acolytes were convinced of it. But it doesn't have to be communism. Any order that claims the monopoly of truth, even with utmost sincerity, is bound to go bad because it's pure moral hubris for any person or order to know everything. So, modern democracy came up with a system that is dedicated to seeking the truth but also tolerates 'lies' and 'falsehoods'. Part of the reason for tolerance is the acceptance of human nature as flawed — lying comes naturally to people, and everyone does it — , but the other reason is the 'lie' could turn out to be the truth while the official or conventional 'truth' could turn out to be the lie or falsehood. Many 'conspiracy theories' have proved to be true, while many conventional narratives have proved to be false. But, the West is no longer that kind of system, one that generally favors the truth but has room for lies. The current West is for favoring and even forcing the Lie while suppressing the truth. Unlike early communists who sincerely believed in the truth of Marxism, the current Jewish ruling elites don't believe anything they push. They surely know a man with a wig is NOT a 'woman'. They surely know that Jews were not guiltless through history, i.e. Jews were as often villains as victims. They knew Russia Collusion narrative was total baloney. They said Covid-19 is going to kill us all, but it suddenly didn't matter for the rioters, looters, and 'peaceful protesters'. They surely know BLM is based on an utter lie; why else did they reduce crime in New York with stop-and-frisk policies? In other words, the current Jewish Power is actively pushing what they know to be total lies. Not only are they pushing the BS but they are cramming it down our throats and ramming it up our arse. It's beyond mind-f***ing; it's more like mind-rape or mental-nakba as people are FORCED to swallow the BS... or else. And since truth, backed by honesty and courage, will mention that the Emperor wears no clothes, it must be actively suppressed. If a system that, in total commitment to the truth, forbids lies is bad enough, imagine a system that forbids truth in total commitment to the lie; alas, that is the state of the current West. People are now being 'canceled' left and right for having expressed a view, no matter how truthful, that stands in the way of what the Jewish elites know to be the Big Lie. If even systems devoted to the truth end up as an empire of lies, as were the cases with theocracies and communism, just imagine the future of a system that is fundamentally built on lies. This is why 'gay marriage' was so dangerous to civilization. It destroyed the truth of the most basic and meaningful bio-social-moral institution with the lie that homosexuality has equal value with real sexuality, i.e. homo-fecal-penetration among men and tranny-penis-cutting-and-fake-vagina-attainment are the biological equivalents of the process that produces life and perpetuates the species. But then, that lie was the product of another big lie, the cult of moral perfection of Jews built on the Holocaust Narrative that spread the lie that, just because Jews suffered horribly in WWII, they were cleansed of all sins for all their past, present, and future behavior.)
Among communist regimes, the Cambodian and North Korean stand out. Khmer Rouge was more like a Jim Jones Cult. It took the ruralism of Mao and Gandhi and pushed it to the limit. North Korea was ruled more like a dynasty, and the father-to-son transition of power was more in keeping with the Chiang Kai-Shek's son taking power in Taiwan and Lee Kuan Yew's son taking the helm in Singapore. Also, their anti-intellectualism went beyond anything seen in other communist nations with the possible exceptions of China during the Cultural Revolution and Stalinist Albania. Cambodian and North Korean communisms were extreme opposites of one another. Khmer Rouge had no use for industry and relied purely on peasantry in the countryside. Also, its rule relied on quasi-anarchic gangs of brainwashed youths who roamed around to torture and kill anyone deemed heretical or tainted. It was a system of terror but decentralized. In contrast, North Korea emphasized heavy industry and total top-down control, a communist Sparta minus the style. Khmer Rouge-ism was inspired by Maoism at its zaniest(Great Leap and Cultural Revolution), whereas North Korean system was based on Stalinism and traditional Oriental Despotism. Still, even most communist nations loathed the Cambodian case; the Chinese supported it only to contain Vietnamese influence. And North Korea was so brainlessly Stalinist even after De-Stalinization in Russia that it became a running joke in Warsaw Pact nations. Also, even though irony wasn't much appreciated in communism, the Iron Curtain nations weren't without a sense of humor as a coping mechanism against authorities. In contrast, the more earnest and obedient mass mentality of North Koreans made for a more childlike and stupid trust in authority and the cult of personality of the Great Leader. As ruthless as Stalin was, he wasn't without intellect and culture, and there were cultural achievements in the USSR. Mao, though sometimes crazy, was a genuine visionary with a powerful sense of destiny. North Vietnamese leaders, though committed to a brutal ideology, were men of intelligence and talent. In contrast, Khmer Rouge guys were just nuts, and Kim Il-Sung was a third-rate hack with full-blown megalomania. In contrast, most Iron Curtain rulers were second-rate hacks with middling egotism; they had their own little cults of personality but within limits, and they had no intention nor the means to transfer power to their own children. (Oddly enough, the communist savagery of the Khmer Rouge was exposed by another communist nation, Vietnam. Generally, even as communist nations were at loggerheads with one another, they didn’t expose each other’s atrocities. Red China didn’t spill much ink about Soviet mass killings, and Soviets didn’t make too much fuss about mass deaths in China. But when Vietnam took over Cambodia, they made sure to expose the horrible crimes of the Khmer Rouge. It was a useful way to justify the invasion and to shame China as an enabler of this most loathsome regime. Even as the US acknowledged the evil of the Khmer Rouge, the CIA worked with China in the 80s to aid Khmer Rouge remnants in Thailand to ‘resist’ the Vietnamese occupiers. A total shi*fest.)
Aftermath of the Khmer Rouge madness
Ceausescu and Kim Il-Sung
Those on the 'right' have condemned the recent 'woke' mobs, BLM thugs, and antifa lunatics as 'communists' and the like, and there is certainly some similarity between their nuttery and radical excesses under communism, especially during the Cultural Revolution in China. But when it comes to iconoclasm, Christians and Muslims have been no slouches either. So many pagan temples were ground to dust by Christian mobs. Later, Catholics and Protestants went about slaughtering one another. Even now, Muslim extremists, aided by cynical US and Israel, destroy ancient temples and monuments all over Iraq and Syria. Also, the sheer lack of resistance to the current rampage in the West shows that capitalism has done its part in turning the masses into amnesiac zombies who've lost any meaningful connection to the past and feel no outrage in the destruction. And arguably, worse than physical destruction of churches is the spiritual desecration of them with globo-homo and BLM symbols. Do god and jesus serve homo degeneracy or worship black megalomania as the highest form of holiness?
At the very least, communism emphasized social justice for the masses, the workers who produced things and did real work. Also, communism didn't favor one group over another. While most communism was nationalist, it didn't say one nation of people was better than another nation of people. It was willing to put the past behind and let communist nations move forward together as a brotherhood of peoples. In other words, Russians were not good simply because they were Russian. Or Germans were not bad simply because they were German. This is in total contrast to what now prevails in the West with identity-idolatry, or 'identolatry', especially of Jews, blacks, and homos. According to PC, Jews-blacks-homos are good, even holy, simply because they're Jews, blacks, and homos. It's not a matter of content of their character or validity of their actions; they are simply good because of their identities. So, we must support and praise Jews no matter what they do to Palestinians, what they do in the Middle East or around the world. Jews know best and are the best no matter what they do because of who they ARE. And look at the BLM madness. Blacks kill each other and other races. Blacks are top thugs and criminals. But blackness is to be eternally identified with what happened to Emmitt Till and in the Civil Rights Movement. So, never mind that blacks can do good things or bad things. Never mind that injustice can be done to blacks but blacks can also do injustice onto others. Never mind all that and just fixate on blackness as eternally tied to the Civil Rights Movement and 'We Shall Overcome'. So, if blacks don't want to pay at Starbucks, they must be extolled as angels. If blacks pull off one Hate Hoax after another, it's always a 'teachable moment'. If blacks cause all sorts of problems in schools and get suspended, we have the likes of Obama and others lecturing us that it's due to 'systemic racism'. As for homos, never mind that many of them serve in the Deep State and work as goons for CIA and Zion to spread wars all over the world. Never mind HIV crisis was the result of disgusting out-of-control 'gay' behavior. It doesn't matter what Homos do. They are to be celebrated and cheered simply for what they ARE. According to PC, Jews-blacks-homos are great simply for what they ARE. They can never do wrong; indeed they are right even when they're wrong. PC says most non-whites(minus blacks) are to be judged by what they DO. So, if they do good, they're good while doing good, and if they do bad, they're bad while doing bad. As for whites, they are bad simply for what they ARE. It doesn't matter how much good they do because they ARE intrinsically bad, and therefore no amount of good done by whites can absolve them of their 'original sin' of black slavery and 'eternal sin' of the Holocaust. (But even this formulation of white sin is based on identity-idolatry. Why was American slavery worse? Because Northern Europeans enslaved BLACKS. And why was the Shoah worse? Because JEWS were killed. In other words, some victims are more equal than others.)
At the very least, communism didn't play such games with identity-idolatry. While recognizing Nazi-German crimes, it didn't turn Jews into Eternal Saints. Neither did communism condemn Germans as Forever-Villains who must atone til the end of time for what happened in WWII. As long as Germans were willing to work together with other nations, they could have their national pride. Also, the emphasis was on workers and basic virtues. Communism had nothing to do with globo-homo decadence, tattoos-piercings & other forms of degeneracy, skanky slut-pride, Afro-jiver neo-savagery, promotion of unfettered narcissism, mindless youth culture, and the like, all of which are the staple of Antifa, BLM, Western Feminism, LGBTQ nonsense, and etc. Antifa is more 'gayday' than Mayday. So-called Portland 'communists' are dominated by trannies with ties to rich capitalist oligarchs who did everything to undermine working class consciousness. Besides, the current BLM and Antifa violence got the green-light go-ahead from Jewish oligarch-capitalists who decided to stick it to Trump and White America.
In the two videos below, can anyone find anything remotely associated with Antifa anarchy, slut pride, 'gay' vanity, anti-white vitriol, mindless identity-idolatry of Jews-blacks-homos, and the Great Replacement? Notice East German nationalism was perfectly acceptable as long as Germans acknowledged the humanity of other nations. Also, communist feminism wasn't anti-male. It merely said women deserve same basic rights and could serve as labor force. It was about men and women having equal dignity, not about nasty Jewish bitches and lesbians spreading anti-male hatred for narrow agendas: Jewish bitches tell white bitches to hate white men, and lesbian bitches tell women that they should prefer carpet-munching to real sex with men.
As much as I detest communism, all of Europe would now be better off if it had come under Soviet rule after WWII. It's no accident that men like Viktor Orban emerged in former-communist Hungary. Now, to an extent, their patriotism is a reaction against the memory of communism(and Soviet domination), but it is just as much an extension of what had been socially conservative and nationalist under communism. Indeed, the future of Poland seems grim because the younger generation has been so 'pozzed' by Western capitalism. Many young Poles put their people & nation behind globalist priorities of appeasing Jews, celebrating homos, worshiping Negroes, and welcoming Great Replacement in the name of Diversity. They want to go the way of the Irish who now welcome the Great Replacement and Afro-Colonization of White Wombs. (Likewise, even though communism put China and Vietnam economically behind Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, which nations are now more independent and hopeful in the next 50 yrs? Japan, SK, and Taiwan are utterly decadent and demographically doomed; politically and ideologically, they are total whores of globo-homo US. Incredibly enough, as miserable as North Korea is, it may survive as a people/culture in the next 50 yrs while South Korea, along with Taiwan, becomes an Asian Ireland.) Ideally, a healthy traditionalism and conservatism should serve as balance against liberalism and progress. But the pace of change under capitalism has been such that the past has been left behind in the dust. For most people in the West and East, Pop Culture is the only culture left. How ironic then that communism, though a radical ideology, served as a substitute-conservatism against the tireless change wrought by capitalism that produces so many fashions that relegate tradition to a distant memory, if that.
"...there’s a small double portrait of Tito and Ceau?escu, the Romanian Communist dictator. Thanks to Jewish brainwashing, only right-wing despots are condemned, while genocidal Commie leaders are lionized as great leaders of 'the people.' Communism bred, challenged and inspired Fascism... As for Tito, he’s often depicted as not so bad, but any man who runs a country for nearly three decades without an election is clearly a dictator."
Josip Broz Tito and Nicolae Ceausescu were not good guys and certainly not nice guys. But they have to be seen in context. Romania was a key ally of Nazi Germany in World War II and paid dearly for it. Naturally, the Soviets installed their communist puppet. Still, Ceausescu was able to forge a rather independent course for Romania. In 1968, he refused to join with other Warsaw Pact nations in the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and he was wooed by the West as an independent kind of communist leader. His regime was rotten to the core, but some Romanians look back with certain fondness because their nation has benefited little since the fall of communism. In certain respects, things have gotten worse. (As bad as Ceausescu was, he was no worse than the creeps who run the Western Deep State. Of course, the difference was he had more power to imprison and kill people. Still, in terms of moral character, was he worse than George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, the Clintons, Sheldon Adelson, the Zionist creeps at NYT & CNN, the goons at CIA & FBI, the scum that run Wall Street? Ceaucescu's wife was an idiot, but so is Michelle Obama the phony. And even though Western elites cannot do to their own people what communist regimes did, they sure have no qualms about killing countless people abroad. Look at Iraq and Syria. But in a way, even Ceausescu wasn't as evil and verminous as the current cuck-leaders of the West who push for Great Replacement against their own peoples. In my book, 'Mama Merkel' is worse. Emmanuel Macron who calls for the Africanization of France is immeasurably more evil. Justin Trudeau is a bigger joke. Boris Johnson who completed Brexit but welcomes endless immigration-invasion of UK by Africans and Muslims is many times worse.)
Communists came to power in Yugoslavia because the fascist Croats during World War II, as stooges of Nazi Germans, carried out all manner of atrocities, especially against Serbs. Naturally, under the circumstances, the pride of resistance fell to those on the Far Left. In contrast, as the Polish Right had rejected any alliance with Germany, it constituted the main resistance against both Germans and Soviets following the invasion in 1939. Tito is a strange case because he initially criticized Stalin for being too soft. Soviets condemned his 'adventurism', and to save himself from Soviet pressure(and possible invasion), he turned anti-Stalinist. Thus, Yugoslavian neutrality during the Cold War was mostly accidental. Still, the reason why some still have a soft spot for Tito is due to what happened AFTER communism. While the diverse makeup of Yugoslavia was always volatile, the US poured gasoline on the fire and ignited a 'civil war' to draw most of the newly formed republics to the West while isolating and destroying Serbia that remained close to Russia. Given the horrors that ensued and economic problems since, it's understandable why some look back to the relative stability of the Tito years.
While it's true that Jewish Power generally goes easier on leftist than rightist rulers, it's more a case of "Is it good for Jews?" Saudi Arabia could be deemed ultra-right as a theocratic state, but it's been protected by the Jewish-run media, more or less. Meanwhile, Assad of Syria has been far more liberal and modern but much condemned as a 'butcher' because Israel hate him as ally of Iran. Current Jewish Power hates the leftist rulers of Venezuela because of their ties with Russia and Iran. Meanwhile, Jewish Power works cozily with quasi-Nazi types in Ukraine. If Adolf Hitler had been kind to Jews, Jews would probably not hate him so much even if he had killed bushels of Slavs and Gypsies. Jews don't seem to be virulently anti-Mussolini because, for most of Fascist Italian rule, Il Duce was friendly with Jews and had many Jews in the regime; also, Jews tend to identify more with swarthy Italians. There are few Jews who still defend Stalin. Jews hated Stalin as the guy who purged Leon Trotsky and other Jewish Bolsheviks. Then, because of Stalin's defeat of Nazi Germany, he was much appreciated by Jews once again, but when Stalin and later Soviet leaders sided with Arabs against Israel, the World Jewry increasingly became anti-Stalin and anti-Soviet in general. From the 70s onward, Soviet regime was kinder to Russia nationalists than to Jewish Liberals. While Russian nationalists were ideologically rightist, they could at least be relied upon to be patriotic; in contrast, Jewish Liberals, though more on the left, were seen as untrustworthy cosmopolitans whose true loyalty was with the Global Tribe.
Ideally, rather than Liberal Democracy or communism, fascism should have dominated Europe. But, World War II happened. The good thing about fascism was it synthesized tradition with modernity and capitalism with socialism. And it infused them all with nationalism. But what it lacked was a strong sense of humanism, and this deficiency led to racial nihilism among Germans and hubris among Italians, and that led to problems that ignited World War II. If Hitler and Mussolini had been wiser like Kemal Ataturk and avoided war, it's likely that both the Liberal West and Communist East would have moved closer to the fascist model. Liberalism was too rootless while communism was too monomanical. But hubris led to war, and fascism got a bad name. Still, everything that works today is sub-fascist, a combination of nationalism with a useful blend of capitalism & socialism and tradition & modernity. Putin's Russia and Xi's China resemble this model. Iran too survives despite sanctions because of the fascist element. And the positive aspects of Israel(apart from the hubristic mode of Greater Israel and warmongering) owe to the fundamentally fascistic formulation of Zionism. https://www.bitchute.com/video/p3zUMUyBSHo/
The Jewish Angle in THE GRADUATE has been much discussed. But whatever its implications and meanings, there's no denying the brilliance with which Mike Nichols made the movie, something that eluded him in later works... though CATCH-22 has its moments and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE is pretty compelling as an arty take on the Sexual Revolution. So, the talent has to be discussed in relation to the film's impact. THE GRADUATE would likely have failed with critics and audience in lesser hands, whatever its message. It's like almost no one talks about GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER or just about anything by Stanley Kramer. Though Nichols ultimately didn't turn out to be a great director, he made one great movie, THE GRADUATE, much like Ridley Scott surpassed his limitations one time with BLADE RUNNER. Likewise, other key works by Jewish directors of the period must be considered(even in criticism) with an appreciation of their power as artists, wits, dramatists, expressionists. Even if there is a Jewish angle to THE GRADUATE and other works by Jewish artists, there is much more than mere ethnic propaganda. Stanley Kubrick made 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Roman Polanski made ROSEMARY'S BABY. Stuart Rosenberg made COOL HAND LUKE. Arthur Penn made BONNIE & CLYDE. Arthur Schlesinger made MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Richard Brooks made IN COLD BLOOD. Earlier in the decade, Blake Edwards made BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. Though Sidney Lumet would come to greatness in the 70s and 80s, he was emerging as a force as well. (Norman Jewison, who made IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, isn't Jewish despite the name.)
Now, not all the above-listed directors attained greatness. Rosenberg made one great movie, COOL HAND LUKE, but was mostly a journeyman director. But for whatever reason, it was the Jews(and then some Italian-Americans) who were most adept at hitching onto the new sensibility and conceiving new possibilities for Hollywood. Of course, many new or newer talents were not Jewish. Sam Peckinpah, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, and the like. But Jewish film-makers were among the key figures in the development of New Hollywood. They were bolder, hungrier, more curious, more radical, more hip to trends. They were also among the most admiring of the great European directors(most of whom were not Jewish) and some Japanese ones. Their impact on cinema was somewhat akin to Bob Dylan's on Rock Music, though it's arguable that the only Jewish film-maker to match the cultural significance of Dylan was Stanley Kubrick who struck a chord with both critics and the audience. To be sure, cinephilia of the Film Generation was somewhat different from the attitudes of Youth Culture. Whereas Rock fans had close to zero interest in pre-Rock music and foreign music — though Folk Rockers were more reverent of the past and other cultures — , Film Culture was about remembrance and international curiosity. So, the seminal film critics of the 60s didn't just discuss the latest trends and hottest hits but wrote extensively about foreign cinema and classic Hollywood. College kids who had no interest in music prior to Rock might nevertheless look up to Howard Hawks and Orson Welles as cultural heroes and icons.
Still, despite the respect accorded to the Old Hollywood greats by Andrew Sarris, Peter Bogdanovich, and their acolytes, the fact is the culture was changing fast. So, while even young cinephiles might marvel at a John Ford Western or Frank Capra comedy, they no longer believed movies could or should be made that way. There was a new spirit in the air, and Jewish film-makers were among the first to run with it. And yet, the Europeans and Japanese had been ahead of American Cinema in personal expression and experimentation. In a way, the new batch of Jewish film-makers had a greater affinity for non-Jewish-controlled foreign cinema and were rebelling against the Hollywood System controlled by old-fashioned Jewish executives and careerists. And they had their chance because the Old Studio system was either dead or moribund, just barely hanging on, as the result of Hollywood's loss of theater monopoly and the rise of TV.
One can socially critique movies like COOL HAND LUKE, THE GRADUATE, BONNIE AND CLYDE, and many others as hostile and subversive, and there is certainly a Jewish angle to this. Still, the real power and effectiveness of these works owes to their artistry, brilliance, and deeper implications than their apparent message, be it blatant or esoteric. It's like Shakespeare's HENRY V is more than a 'nationalist' piece of propaganda. Also, they were refreshing because there is a bit of anarchist in each of us that roots for the oddball, eccentric, maverick, outsider, or underdog. (The audience rooted for Sylvester Stallone in ROCKY because whites had become underdogs in boxing.) And the similar strains could be found in European and Japanese movies that were, if anything, even bolder in thumbing their noses at the established order and social norms. Nagisa Oshima, Shohei Imamura, and Hiroshi Teshigahara were not Jewish. Neither were European directors like Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Bo Widenberg, Fassbinder, Gillo Pontecorvo, and etc. So, in some ways, the Jewish American directors were following in the leads of European and Japanese cultural pioneers and enfants terribles, though one could argue that modern radicalism anywhere in the world was inspired in part by Jewish Influence.
At any rate, Jewish Power of Propaganda cannot be understood apart from the talent and visions that go far beyond whatever the original 'political' intent may have been. In some ways, David Mamet is an unpleasant Jewish chauvinist, yet he is also artist and thinker enough to raise questions and face truths that challenge his ethnic biases. (In contrast, Aaron Sorkin is a mere propagandist-hack, albeit a talented one.) Sergei Eisenstein's propaganda films are crude as message but works of genius as experimental formalism. ROSEMARY'S BABY would likely have been a third-rate movie in the hands of someone other than Polanski, just like JAWS would have been one more dumb monster movie if not for Steven Spielberg. (Polanski and other Eastern European directors are a special case. Whereas most of the great Western European directors were non-Jewish, many of the Iron Curtain's 'new wave' directors, especially in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, were Jewish. Though the White Right generally sees Jews as radical leftists, many of these Hungarian and Czech 'new wave' Jewish film-makers were problematic to communist authorities for their espousal of individualism, irreverence, satire, and/or something approaching libertarianism. Most were liberal than leftist, highly problematic as communism regarded liberalism as a bourgeois conceit. And even if not pro-capitalist, they leaned more towards social democracy than communism. Polanski detested communism, and Milos Forman, the Czech Jew in exile, found great success in Hollywood with ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, which would be very un-PC today, and AMADEUS, a work that is, at once, subversive of authority and defensive of genius as natural hierarchy.) Talent goes a long way, and whatever ideological agendas or ethnic biases may have shaped the works of Jewish directors, the top Jewish talents were not only born with natural intelligence but grew up with a genuine appreciation of arts/culture. As such, Mike Nichols' main objective was to make a popular but personal art film inspired by the cinema of Europe. (Nichols was especially impressed with Fellini's 8 1/2. THE GRADUATE also has nods to Michelangelo Antonioni and Francois Truffaut.) But if some American directors miserably failed at making Art Films— THE SWIMMER had all the elements to be a great piece of personal film-making but suffered from strained uneven direction, and Lumet's PAWNBROKER is an embarrassing assemblage of obvious homages to European Art House — , others found their own stride, and THE GRADUATE may be the most significant work in this spirit. At first glance, it seemed a Hollywood movie riffing on European Art film mannerisms, and yet, it was so genuinely American and Hollywood. Moreover, Nichols, unlike Lumet before him, totally made the work his own. Instead of imitation, he drew inspiration and found his own beat and rhythm. As such, while THE GRADUATE may resemble a work like BLOW-UP by Antonioni, it has a uniqueness all its own. Also, the great appeal of movies like THE GRADUATE and MIDNIGHT COWBOY owed to American Jews being less hung up with intellectual conceits. As much as they admired European cinema, they also loved humor, effect, and fun. Increasingly with European Cinema, there developed the purist notion that true art cannot be much fun or rely on time-tested conventions. Also, theory began to dominate practice. For instance, Pier Paolo Pasolini began his film career with lively works with expressive actors, but along the way, he got this idea that actors shouldn't act dramatically. Godard's films got increasingly self-conscious. Ingmar Bergman's films grew colder. Now, an artist who really knows what he's doing can make it work, as in the case of Robert Bresson. But too many aspiring auteurs in Europe became allergic to doing anything that might violate the monastic or radical mission of cinema as art or commitment.
In contrast, Nichols had far fewer such hang-ups. So, even as he drew certain ideas from European cinema, he was mindful to lots of humor along with the songs of Simon and Garfunkel, whatever worked. Such use of songs might have aeen deemed as cheating or relying more on non-cinematic expressions than on the pure possibilities of cinema. But the use of songs did wonders for THE GRADUATE, just like the use of classical music added another dimension to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. So, Nichols and others like him had the best of both worlds: The new language of Art Cinema as personal expression but also the eagerness to please and win over the audience with timeless tricks of entertainment. And that is why THE GRADUATE, like HAROLD AND MAUDE, works on so many levels. It is seriously committed to cinema as art but also shameless in presenting a good show. New Hollywood was closer in spirit to Serious Rock — Later Beatles, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, CCR — than Modernist Music that took out all the fun from music.
So much of PC mentality is reductionist in evaluating works for their 'toxicity' level, e.g. 'racism', 'misogyny', 'sexism', 'homophobia', 'antisemitism', and etc. It's too bad that this tendency exists on the Right as well. Now, it's fair game to notice socially or politically problematic ideas and messages in any work, but the question still remains, why do certain works, regardless of their moral or political content, have such power and influence on the audience? And here, we have to address the matter of talent, brilliance, originality, and/or genius. While THE GRADUATE isn't the work of a genius, it is a brilliant piece of film-making, one where everything clicked together. (It both supports and subverts the cult of the 'auteur' as its miracle couldn't have been possible without Mike Nichols' guiding hand but also depended so much on the chemistry among the assembled cast and crew.) And also a poetic one, even if it amounts to pop-poeticism, like the songs of Simon and Garfunkel. Likewise, THE GODFATHER movies would likely have been nothing special and soon forgotten but for the understanding, knowledge, and skills brought to it by Francis Ford Coppola. There's no point to condemning or praising an entire work because of its said politics.
Turman bought the rights to the book for $1,000 and sent it unsolicited to Jewish director Mike Nichols (born Mikhail Peschkowsky) who signed on to the project. Turman’s search for financing led him to Jewish film mogul Joseph E. Levine—“the schlockmeister of the world”—who put up $3 million... Nichols assigned Jewish screenwriter Buck Henry (born Henry Zuckerman)... Songs by the Jewish duo Simon and Garfunkel were used for the soundtrack. Given the many Jews involved in the film’s production, it’s hardly surprising that Jewish sensibilities and ideological fixations pervade the final product.
But Jewish finance and Jewish producers had long been a dominant force in Hollywood. Also, Jewish writers had been embedded in Hollywood since its inception. And many music composers were Jewish. So, THE GRADUATE is hardly different from works of Classic Hollywood in the preponderance of Jewish money and talent.
In the hands of director Mike Nichols, however, the story became a scathing critique of bourgeois WASP American culture and the oppressive burden it purportedly imposed on young Americans. Nichols employs two recurrent visual metaphors to symbolize this oppressive culture: black-and-white stripes and water.
Many people saw the movie that way, but I'm not sure Nichols meant it that way. When pressed about Elaine and Benjamin by a young female fan of the movie, he answered that they'd probably end up just like their parents. Also, even though there is gentle mockery of upper middle class life, it's hardly hateful. (If anything, even as the audience is glibly laughing at the 'shallow' people in the movie, they are attracted to displays of affluence and the good life, also true of works like LA DOLCE VITA and LA NOTTE. Would THE GRADUATE have been as successful if it were about a working class guy living in a tenement? MARTY with Ernest Borgnine proved to be more or less a one-off thing.)
Benjamin's woes have less to do with social oppression than loss of youth. He's worried about the future, i.e. it has arrived, he's living in it, so it no longer exists for him. This is a universal problem faced by people all over the world. When you're young, the future is always something in the distant horizon. It's always a day ahead, like the song from ANNIE. Or consider how Scarlett in GONE WITH THE WIND always assures herself that 'tomorrow will be another day'. This procrastination about the future loomed larger among the boomer generation as more of them grew up in affluence, could attend college, and followed their bliss, that was as long as one was young and still at work or play. But school eventually ends, and one must be an adult with responsibilities and burdens. So, even though the movie is based on Charles Webb's novel, its spirit also flows from CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger. Braddock is not a victim of social oppression, that is made clear. His parents provided him with everything. He has a nice big room all to himself. He could attend the college of his choice far from home. His graduation gift is a fancy sports car. And as the movie makes clear, his parents pretty much allow him to do as he pleases. At one time, his father expresses displeasure with Ben's taking it easy, but he doesn't do much about it. Also, Mr. Robinson's advice to Ben is that he should sow some wild oats and have the time of his life(without realizing it would lead to an affair with his wife). Later, when his mother asks him what he does all night long and his answer isn't forthcoming, she just walks away and leaves him alone; she's a very understanding, even permissive, parent.
Ben also has no problem with job prospects. 'Plastics', he can make lots of money working for corporations. Or, he can continue with his education, especially as he got a scholarship. So, what is bothering him? His youth is over and thrill is gone. Whether work or more school, he feels his youth slipped by. It went from looking-forward-to-life to life-itself. He's going through what might be called the Beginning-Age Crisis, the crisis that befalls someone who realizes his youth is definitely over and his first chapter as an adult begins. He doesn't want to be like his parents or their friends, but it's not because he hates them. It's because it means just working, making money, and then growing old and retiring. Such is life, and there is no escape, and it's something everyone must accept at some moment, but Ben simply isn't ready yet to make the transition. (Perhaps, he feels especially cheated because his youth passed him by without him even having gotten laid or fallen in love or done something truly exciting.) And in the 1960s when youth itself became an identity in its own right, the boomers developed this notion of Forever-Young. They said stuff like "Don't trust anyone over thirty" without realizing they themselves would be over 30 sooner than later. So, Ben's problems are essentially personal and psychological(and generational) than social or cultural. The problem is not lack of freedom but too much freedom that he came to associate with youth. Finally, with graduation, he will have less freedom as a full-time worker who just grows older and becomes just another suburban man. Granted, there is a certain irony in his transition from student to full adulthood. On the one hand, he has more freedom after graduation. He doesn't have to attend classes anymore. He's his own man and can do whatever he wants. And yet, it's a freedom of responsibility, a kind of drag and burden. In contrast, while as a student he was more under the control of institutions and his parents who paid his tuition, he wasn't responsible for himself. As a son and student, his sole responsibility was to attend school and get good grades. He was taken care of, and furthermore, he could focus on knowledge and learning than on mundane matters of life. And he could always look to the future as something special. But the day finally arrived, and it just proved to be another day, and all the days following that day will turn him into just another suburban man. His life will be comfortable and affluent but not particularly meaningful, as only a tiny handful of people actually get to pursue their dreams.
The water metaphor is less about societal weight on Ben's shoulders than about Ben's emotional state of melancholy and confusion. In a way, the watery depth is more a solace than a prison. Notice how he keeps running back to his bed room from the graduation party full of admiring friends of his parents. These people are full of affection and praise for Ben. Hardly oppressive, but he finds the situation insufferable because they all remind him of what he will be in two or three decades. So, he would rather be in his room staring into the aquarium. Thus, he feels comfortably numb. The fish, like the ducks in THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, may stand for a more ideal existence. Unlike Holden Caulfield who doesn't know what to make of his life, the ducks naturally know to fly south for winter. The fish in the aquarium need not worry about anything as the tank is cleaned by humans and as they're regularly fed. Having graduated, Ben is out of the fish tank of childhood for good and in the river of adulthood. Later when we see Ben having a good time with his affair with Mrs. Robinson, we see him floating on the water glinting with sunlight. There's the memorable moment with the rain, but I think it was more for effect and mood than symbolism. It also foreshadows his desperate race against time later in the movie. Of course, as he sweats up a storm, he's his own rain-maker.
A special thing about THE GRADUATE is it finds a special beauty in the melancholy. In a way, Ben wants to break out or break on through to the other side, but the meaning is in the struggle, not in the victory. He studied hard all his young life to be a top student and graduated with honors, but it seems hollow once it's behind him. Same with his 'second graduation' with Elaine as trophy wrested from the church wedding. His greatest desire is to win her heart and make her his. It becomes an all-consuming passion and obsession... but once he has Elaine with him in the bus at the end, he begins to feel somewhat empty again. The dream is always sad, even a bit depressing, because its realization seems so elusive, even impossible. The dreamer hopes the dream will become reality, but per chance it does, the result is always bound to be anticlimactic. So, Ben is caught in a psychological trap. A neurotic-romantic, he's given to aching for what's beyond his reach. And yet, upon attaining his dream, he realizes that he was truly happy when he was in yearning. It's like hunger calls for satiation but, once satisfied, soon fades in pleasure.
Once he gets it, he realizes it's just one more trophy and life goes on. It's like the scene in BLOW-UP where a bunch of guys tussle over a broken guitar neck, but it is tossed aside soon after it's taken by one guy. It's the curse of a dream coming true. It just becomes more of mundane reality and loses its luster as future vision.
In a way, Ben's problem isn't all that different from the personal crisis of the young man in BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. War was hell, and he dreamed of returning home alive in one piece. But as a civilian, he's just another Joe, just another guy working 9 to 5 to make ends meet. As horrific as war was, he was a hero and felt more alive precisely because death was everywhere. But back in the States, where life is everywhere and so humdrum, he feels empty. And when he sees the many bombers rusting in the airfield waiting to be scrapped for metal, he senses another kind of death. End of war means life, but the airfield looks like a graveyard of heroism. Feeling alive isn't the same thing as life. There can be lots of life but no sense of being alive, feeling alive. In contrast, one could feel most alive around death. While Ben hardly had to worry about death, the experience of growing up and graduating from school to school was a kind of adventure of mind and spirit. Every year meant he was rising another level, growing into adulthood. But once an adult, there is growing older but no more growing up. It's like once peak height is reached, there is advancement in years but not in inches(except around the waistline).
Ben's situation in the final part of the movie is like David and Goliath. It’s the same reason we root for Tony Montana who defies the chief kingpin in SCARFACE and takes on all-comers. Ben is the scrappy fellow who pursues his dream come what may and runs off with the girl. But what he does isn’t normal. It’s not normal to expect a relationship with a girl whose mother you had sex with. It’s not normal or very honorable to come between a woman and her prospective groom. The scene where he informs his parents about the marriage says it all. They assume Elaine and Ben came to an agreement, but Ben says he decided on his own and that Elaine doesn’t even like him. And unbeknownst to his parents, there is the problem of Mr. and Mrs. Robinson. (We are not sure when exactly Mr. Robinson found out about the affair.) Ben's father says his plan is half-baked, and Ben says, no, it’s completely baked. And it is. The normal and honorable thing would be for a guy to accept the reality of the girl being betrothed to another. The proper thing is to walk away, but Ben just won’t. To be sure, he decides to call it quits after Mr. McClusky(Norman Fell as landlord) threatens him with eviction, but then, Elaine tells him not to leave until he has a definite plan. And then, Ben is back to his crazy dreamer self.
Things can never be normal with Ben and Elaine even if they do eventually get married. After all, she made her wedding vow and is legally wed to Carl Smith. So, she must go through the whole legal rigamarole of filing for divorce. And if Ben and Elaine were to tie the knot to make it official, they will still be estranged from their parents, especially the Robinsons. Ben’s father can’t be too happy either as his partner in the law firm is none other than Mr. Robinson. In time, Ben and Elaine as married couple will likely end up like their parents, but their lives can never be normal due to strained situations with their parents(and perhaps the scandal of the wedding crash).
That said, THE GRADUATE had an almost universal appeal because it was as sentimental as it was cynical. It was like the Beatles and SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, an album beloved not only by youths but older people and even highbrow types. It was a Rock album pandering to Summer of Love and Youth Culture, but it was also arty and even a bit old-fashioned, with tunes like “When I’m Sixty Four” and “She’s Leaving Home”, a song that is rebellious in message but traditional in delivery. (A HARD DAY’S NIGHT was also a winner with both young and older audiences.) Young people regarded Ben as a rebel-hero who says hell to ‘plastics’, experiments in free love, seeks authenticity, and takes action to realize his dreams. And yet, even non-radical or non-experimental boomers could relate to him because he initially comes across as something of a square and stuff-shirt, someone who focused more on books than all the groovy things happening around the period. Charles Webb's novel came out before Counterculture happened, whereas the movie was made in its midst. The scenario feels all the more alienating for that reason. It's like an early 60s mindset time-traveled to the latter-60s. Now, one might say that those were just a few years, but SO MUCH happened between 1963 and 1967. That sudden sense of change was the subject of FUTURE SHOCK by Alvin Toffler. If Ben were graduating from high school in the movie, he might be ecstatic. Alas, he graduated from college and officially became an adult just when the culture of youth was taking off to new dimensions. He's too young to identify with his parents generation but just old enough to feel out of sync with the youth culture. Thus, he feels alienated from old and young. And yet, he feels attracted to Mrs. Robinson who, though twice his age, seems defiant of growing older by making up her own rules. And part of the reason he may feel such attraction to Elaine is she's still in school and therefore symbolizes the youth that has passed him by, at least in official capacity. Ben was following the track of being an Organization Man than a Creative Soul. Or, at the very least, he's like an Early Beatle with suit-and-tie who suddenly finds himself transported to the Age of Aquarius. For older or more traditional audiences, it was a story about a guy who initially finds escapism with easy sex with an older woman but then falls in true love and wants commitment and marriage. As for the ending, it can be seen as a rebellion against social norms(as how many people crash weddings?) or confirmation of true love, the classic fairy-tale of a hero saving a damsel from distress.
Now, why would Elaine be attracted to Ben when Carl Smith is taller and more handsome(and has good prospects as a doctor)? Ben has personality. Also, Elaine has a soft side and feels for others. Carl Smith is so sure of himself whereas there is a passive/aggressive boyish side to Ben that needs mothering. So, her maternal instincts kick into gear in the presence of Ben. (She is actually more mother-like than Mrs. Robinson who seems bitter that her youth was cut short by pregnancy and marriage.) Also, Ben is a funny guy, and humor goes a long way. Furthermore, love isn’t only about sexual attraction but the feeling of being appreciated. A person can fall in love with the love shown him/her by the other. For Carl Smith, Elaine may be a good catch but not the only one. If she slips from his grasp, he will likely find another good catch. But for Ben, Elaine is the ONLY ONE, and she senses the depth of his passion for her.
And it’s also what happened between them at the night club. Ben was acting like a total ass but later confesses that he went against his nature due to parental pressure. Of course, that’s not really true as the real reason he tried to sabotage the date was because Mrs. Robinson had forbidden him to date her daughter. Anyway, something clicked in that moment. Elaine is a physically a fully blossomed woman, but there is still something of the little girl inside. You can tell she hasn’t yet lost her innocence, and she lives in something like a paper doll world. Ben realizes how much he hurt her, and he does everything to make amends and this creates a special bond between them. With the kiss, Elaine goes from weeping girl to a real woman, and Ben goes from a confused adult without direction to a man who finally understands what gives his life meaning: Elaine as his true love. (At the same time, there is a quality of puppy love.) With Mrs. Robinson, he was toyed with and used, and he used her in turn. It was just about sex and to stave off boredom. An escapism from life. But with Elaine, there is no guile and gamesmanship. He feels natural in her presence. His plan was for a short date where he’d act the jerk, make Elaine dislike him, take her home, and be done with it. But Elaine’s reaction in the night club is more that of a vulnerable girl than an angry bitch. He sees a side of her he never expected, and in turn, he feels born-again when he tries to console Elaine. It's as if he's finally found his true self and no longer feels so alienated. Thus, the problem was less social alienation than auto-alienation. It suggests that an individual is only half-a-person, therefore a person can only be complete when he meets one's soulmate. It lends a mythic overtone to the movie — Greek mythology says Zeus separated men and women from their embrace, therefore life is about men and women trying to reconnect with their lost mates. Much has been made of the Christian and Jewish angle of the story, but perhaps the main appeal is closer to Greek mythology and Western fairy tales. Earlier in the decade, there was a hit French movie called BLACK ORPHEUS, the telling of the Greek myth with black actors. THE GRADUATE is like the Jewish Perseus. At any rate, it was this ‘subversive’ and multi-faceted blend of cynicism and sentimentality that made THE GRADUATE so special. But the same could be said of THE GODFATHER, which is both a heart-warming family story and a cold & ruthless gangster tale.
The perennial theme of Jewish alienation from a WASP-dominated mainstream American society played an important role in how the character of Benjamin Braddock—and the entire film—were conceived by Nichols—though this only became fully apparent to him after the film had been made.
But it works in the movie because even the character in the novel is alienated. Indeed, many leading characters in novels and movies are outsiders, eccentrics, oddballs, or mavericks. We find such characters more interesting. Even Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan is alienated from the System he works for. John Wayne's character in THE SEARCHERS is something of a misfit, at odds not only with Indians but with fellow whites. Marlon Brando and James Dean became famous as malcontents. Orson Welles said he cast homosexual Anthony Perkins because his closeted neurosis might add something to the character of Joseph K. in THE TRIAL, and it seems Nichols had something similar in mind in having a Jewish character play Ben. I think it works better than it would have with Robert Redford, though a younger Paul Newman, as half-Jew and half-Aryan, might have been even better. Redford, though a capable actor, was rather colorless and inexpressive. The movie wouldn't have been half-as-funny with Redford as Benjamin. Dustin Hoffman was an actor of limited range but fantastic at his best. His Ratso Rizzo in MIDNIGHT COWBOY is genius-acting.
Also, Hoffman-as-Ben has an ambiguous presence in the movie, making it all the more interesting. He's both Jewish and Wasp. Boy and man. Awkward and aggressive. Timid and bold. Calculating and chaotic. The Jew/Wasp tensions within the character intensifiy the contradictions within Benjamin who is both eager and afraid to be free. Hoffman is short but physically fit. Topless, he does have the physique of a long-distance track star. Also, while not handsome, the young Hoffman is rather attractive from certain angles. There is also something of the 'cute' quality that Ringo had. And then, there's the timing and intelligence in his acting, something truly rare in cinema as most actors aren't known for brains.
Ben’s scream in the church is so reminiscent of Rod Steiger’s wailing at the end of THE PAWNBROKER. As for Wasps trapped in the church, that has nothing on the ending of DIRTY DOZEN where Nazi officers are barricaded in the basement and roasted alive with gasoline and grenades. That is one cynical movie. Nazis are so evil they deserve to be slaughtered like animals. But American heroes are a bunch of crooks, criminals, thugs, and psychos. It’s like an insane hashing of BRIDGE ON RIVER KWAI and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Truly a dirty movie.
Nichols cast Hoffman, “despite the fact that he was virtually unknown and looked nothing like the leading man described in the script, which called for a tall, blond track star, not a short, Jewish guy with a schnoz for the ages.”
But in the end, we must judge by results, and I think the success of THE GRADUATE is inseparable from Hoffman's shell game of drama and humor. While an actor like Redford or Ryan O'Neal might have been closer in looks to the character in the novel, Hoffman had that blend of straight man and clown that made the role so different and unique. Also, the final part of the movie when Ben is speeding back and forth from LA and Berkeley has something of the silent comedies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, the tales of underdogs who overcome all obstacles to end up with the girl. Robert Redford running off with the girl would seem less amazing and outrageous than Dustin Hoffman doing so. Buster Keaton was a short guy but one who out-maneuvered the competition and usually came out ahead. Same goes for Harold Lloyd, and especially as Nichols came from comedy background, he was looking for the most comic as well as dramatic actor, and he hit gold with Hoffman.
Now, take Jack Nicholson in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. The character in the novel is much stronger, a tough Irishman who takes on three Negroes in the shower and beats them all up. Nicholson's McMurphy is smaller and weaker and no match for the Negroes, but it's a masterly performance, and he came to own that role. Many, indeed most, movies deviate from the novel or the original screenplay, but at the end of the day, the only question that matters is "Does it work"? Hoffman made it work. But then, Victor Mature played Samson and Charlton Heston played Moses, and they made it work, at least as entertainment.
Hoffman’s anti-heroic character gave the green light for Hollywood to promote “the ethnic Jewish matinee idol and youth icon in the forms of George Segal, Elliot Gould, Richard Benjamin, Charles Grodin, and Gene Wilder.”[9] These Jewish romantic leads were invariably paired onscreen with beautiful non-Jewish actresses like Marsha Mason, Candice Bergen, and (in the case of Dustin Hoffman) blondes like Mia Farrow, Faye Dunaway, Susan George, and Meryl Streep.
It's been said that THE GRADUATE changed the rules of who can be a star in Hollywood, but this is a gross exaggeration. Hollywood always had lots of room for Jewish, ethnic, different, ugly, short, and weird actors, even among Wasps. Alan Ladd was a short guy. Humphrey Bogart, though Wasp, looked ethnic and could have passed for Italian, Greek, Spaniard, or Jew. But he was a big star. Short and funny-looking Mickey Rooney was one of the biggest stars of the 40s. James Cagney was no looker but a tremendous star. The Jewish Paul Muni was in many prestigious roles. Peter Lorre and Edward G. Robinson, both Jewish, became world famous. Short actors were nothing special in Hollywood. Many actors, if not downright short, were hardly tall. James Dean was 5'7. Marlon Brando was 5'9, not exactly short but far from tall. It could be that shorter men gravitate to acting because they have to be more expressive to gain the kind of attention that taller men usually get. How tall is Tom Cruise? Long before Dustin Hoffman became a household name, Frank Sinatra was a big movie star. He was only 5'7, had pocked face, and was Italian. And movie stardom was often less about looks than the hook. Certain actors and actresses, even if not handsome or pretty, had a certain screen presence, an allure. Take Charles Bronson who could even be said to be ugly. But he had a great movie face. Same was true of Telly Savalis and Anthony Quinn. Tony Curtis the Jew played a Norseman in THE VIKINGS and did a pretty good job.
As for George Segal, Elliot Gould, Richard Benjamin, Charles Grodin, and Gene Wilder, they usually starred in lesser or more 'independent' productions. Among the new batch of Jewish actors, the only one whose success matched that of Hoffman in the 70s and 80s was maybe Gene Hackman(though Henry Winkler hit pay dirt as the Fonz on HAPPY DAYS, but that was TV). Richard Dreyfus seemed to be on the up and up but soon faded. Of course, one could count Harrison Ford as Jewish, or half-Jewish. Woody Allen might qualify but he was appreciated more as 'auteur' than actor. (Correction. Gene Hackman doesn't seem to be Jewish.)
Hoffman won the role over Charles Grodin, another Jewish actor who was no model of conventional WASP good looks.
Grodin, though no heartthrob, had a certain goofy charm. And unlike in THE GRADUATE where everything is 'crypto', THE HEARTBREAK KID is very much a public airing of the Jewish Male obsession with the 'shikse'. It is in satirical than romantic mode(as in the case of THE GRADUATE) and, as such, cinematically less interesting but even more revealing of the Jewish sensibility. Hilarious stuff.
Such overt anti-Christian imagery jarred with the film’s first audiences—but was only the start of Hollywood’s disparagement of Christianity, and seems tame by today’s standards.
Maybe Jews are doing white people a favor by bashing Christianity, a religion that originated from renegade Jews. In a way, what is more 'crypto-Jewish' than Christianity? Though Christ is often depicted in Western Art as an Aryan-looking fellow, He was actually Jewish and probably looked more like Norman Finkelstein or Noam Chomsky. And speaking of neurosis, how about the story of a Man who claimed to be the Son of God and got Himself killed over it? Western Civilization is founded on Jewish Neurosis. So, even though Hoffman the Jew plays a Wasp in THE GRADUATE, white people over the eons have been worshiping a Jew with a big nose in the image of European whites. And look at the sculpture of David by Michelangelo. I'm thinking that David, being Jewish, looked more like Jerry Seinfeld or Sean Penn, but the statue resembles something out of Greco-Roman mythology.
At any rate, when will whites find their own covenant with the ultimate power of the universe? As long as whites keep with Christianity, it means they are forever beholden to the imagination and vision of Jews. Also, Christianity, if followed to the letter, is a death cult as we are now seeing in the West. If Christian West was powerful in the past, it was because it heeded only about 1/4 of Jesus' teachings. Go beyond that, and you end up dead. And if you don't, you get blamed for hypocrisy, preaching 'turn the other cheek' while using violence to conquer and control the world. Christianity has been a great religion, but it is now dead. It's very sad in a way, but it means the white race must finally GRADUATE toward a new consciousness with prophets of its own that can meditate on the ultimate power and receive the covenant that has meaning to whites and whites alone.
By the way, thing in the church happens so fast that it hardly registers as an anti-Christian screed. And, whatever the significance of Ben wielding the cross as a weapon, it is funny as hell, and as the characters in THE WILD BUNCH say, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” The outrage element is part of the fun. A little irreverence never hurt anyone.
Also, just look at the church. Its design is so Californian, so modernist and soulless. It looks like a bleached shell devoid of spiritual meaning. A church as status-symbol of the affluent and modern. So, it’s less a Christian ceremony than a matter of custom. They get married in a church because it’s just what people do. And who are among the attendees? None other than Mrs. Robinson, hardly a virtuous character. And there’s Mr. Robinson who pressured his daughter into marrying Carl Smith out of his seething rage at Ben. We don’t know much about Smith the ‘make-out king’, but he doesn’t seem the spiritual type. So, even without Ben’s presence, the wedding is just an empty show, a ritual devoid of spiritual or even much moral meaning. Elaine is getting married to console her father. Her heart is really with Ben.
Ben’s wielding the cross as a weapon could be seen as a desecration of Christianity, but it could also mean he’s the christ-like figure for true love. He’s willing to sacrifice everything, even sanity and limb, for the girl he loves.
The problem with clinging to Christianity in our age is it no longer provides the answers. As such, people need to seek out new visions and find new directions. It’s like a horse. It is highly useful when strong and hardy. But what use is a dead horse? Christianity is now a dead horse. In Europe, it’s totally dead. They say America is still religious, but no one gets fired or blacklisted for insulting God, Jesus, or Paul. But you may be fired and blacklisted even at a so-called ‘conservative’ Christian institution if you criticize Fentanyl Floyd or Jewish promotion of globo-homo. For many Christians, even those on the ‘right’, the highest holies are Jews, Negroes, and Homos. Indeed, many churches would have us believe that god and jesus serve Jews, homos, and blacks than anything else.
Christianity has become a suicide pact. If Christianity still had martial spirit, it would be in much better shape. In the past, Christianity served the West well in the form of 'hypochristianity'. Christianity had to be hypocritical in order to survive and expand. The teachings of Jesus, such as ‘turn the other cheek’ and ‘meek shall inherit the earth’, don't do much for worldly power. Jesus urged people to give away all their wealth, live in righteous poverty, and meditate on spiritual matters. But people who act that way end up dead or oppressed. If they believe in Heaven, they may expect something better in the afterlife. But most people are attached to the real world, and power is about money, weapons, hierarchy, and violence. So, the Christian West at its peak preached one thing but practiced something other. Now, the West wasn’t purely hypocritical and much of its values & practices derived from Christian morality. Still, the kindly side of the West relied on the hard side that kept and expanded power by ruthless means.
But such kind of hypocrisy is no longer tenable, especially as Jews gained power in the West and never lose sleep pointing out all the hypocrisies of the West. This shame has been internalized by most whites. This has led to whites either rejecting Christianity or trying to practice a Christianity that is closer to the spirit of Jesus’s teachings… which can only serve as a death/suicide cult. Worse, there are so many idiots or opportunists who seek to use the church as a club for other agendas, often satanic in nature, like globo-homo and worship of savage Negro as Magic Negro. And of course, many non-religious and anti-religious people are possessed of a zealotry derived from puritanical strains of Christianity. If the church in our times is an empty shell devoid of spiritual passion, post-Christian passion of radicals is like fanaticism without a meaningful vessel. Shell without flesh and flesh without shell are, of course, both doomed. Form without content and content without form are both ultimately useless. Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, is dead as a useful and virile creed. When the Vatican has Pope Francis as top leader, what does that say? What is Mainline church in the US but promotion of globo-homo and Magic Negro? What is Evangelicalism but about More Wars for ‘Muh Israel’? There is the Orthodox Church, but it has no meaning to most Greeks who are secular. And in Russia, it is a museum culture than a living one despite all the new cathedrals built.
In the first scene of the film, Benjamin rides to the left on an airport conveyor belt as everyone else accedes to the airport’s public announcement system’s request to “Please stay to the right.”
I think 'stay on the right' in that moment meant stay to the right on the conveyor belt or in walkways, which is conventional rule in all places. It's like people usually walk on the right side no matter which way they're going.
In One Dimensional Man, he argued that advanced industrial societies like the United States repress their populations by creating false needs via mass advertising, industrial management, and modes of thought which resulted in a “one dimensional” universe of thought and behavior which stifled people’s capacity for critical thought and oppositional behavior.
Even if we disagree with Herbert Marcuse's solutions, was he wrong in his critique of consumer-capitalism? Look all around today, and corporate-consumer-capitalism is a big part of the problem. The rise of Pop Culture as Main Culture has led to the one-dimensional idiot. And we need critical thought and oppositional thought more than ever.
In the end, the real problem of whites was not 'authoritarianism' but complacency. Post-war boom made white people lower their guard and care mostly about the good life. They became passionless with crass materialism. The boomer generation rebelled against such complacency with utopian dreams and commitment to authenticity, but they too came under the power of materialism as their main inspirations came from pop music and TV. Like Peter Fonda said in EASY RIDER, 'We blew it'. If the Greatest Generation drowned in alcohol, the boomers failed to find nirvana in pot smoke, which is now just more big business.
Reich claimed the role of traditional “repressive” Western sexual morality was “to produce acquiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation, are adjusted to the authoritarian order.” Marcuse agreed with Reich that the “liberation of sexuality and the creation of non-hierarchical democratic structures in the family, workplace and society at large would create personalities resistant to fascism.”
There is obviously some truth to their claims. Any form of repression, sexual or otherwise, is to create a more stable order of unity and consensus. And it is true that 'sexual liberation' will undermine fascism as each boy and girl will be more into hedonism and self-gratification than suppressing one's individual desires for the good of the whole, the volk. If German youths in the 1930s had mostly been into sex, drugs, and rock & roll, would they have paid any heed to Hitler? And same could be said for youths under communism, which is why communist nations did all they could to suppress individualism as expressions of capitalism.
More interesting is why Marcuse and others blamed capitalism for the repression when it was obviously the forces of capitalism that were leading to the triumph of hedonism, 'sexual liberation', individualism, and youth culture of impatience. Maybe, it was difficult to immediately abandon the ideology, Marxism, that had shaped them for so long. Consciously or subconsciously, maybe the Frankfurt School was seeking to serve as the bridge that would allow the left to go from communism to capitalism as the more useful ideology.
The Frankfurters were right that 'sexual liberation' would be bad for fascism. But they overlooked how 'sexual liberation' would lead to the rise of new barbarism. After all, sexual politics is hardly egalitarian as alpha males usually win and as women prefer winners over losers. Some women seek out long-term winners who gain success in professions, but other women seek out short-term winners: the thugs, studs, and athletes. So, instead of resulting in the peaceful eternal summer of love where everyone is happy with good vibes, it has led to the rise of demented heavy metal culture, rap culture, pornification of even kiddie culture, and countless displays of narcissism & vanity, indeed as if everyone is a diva, his or her own 'hitler'. Fascism represses and channels virile barbarian energies in the service of civilization whereas the raw barbarian energies of 'sexual liberation' has led to the degradation of family and society, resulting in lots of violence and stupidity. Black African savages demonstrated that sexual licentiousness is no immunity to ultra-violence. Being sexually far less inhibited, blacks were generally unable to repress their wilder energies for the development of civilization, but they were murderous just the same. And the European barbarians long long ago were less hung up about sexual morality(before the coming of Christianity and its stricter ethos), but did that prevent them from rampaging other communities and raping and pillaging, i.e. acting like Alex and his droogs in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE? Indeed, people like Marcuse seem blind to the fact that National Socialism gained in popularity precisely because Jews pushed the most demented kind of anti-values in the Weimar Period, leading to a new barbarism. Degenerate personality leads to social chaos, which leads to people demanding an authoritarian personality to clean up the mess.
Frankfurt School was right to critique capitalism-consumerism and its mind-numbing and conformist influences, but its proposed solutions were useless because people like Herbert Marcuse were not honest, not least with themselves. Marcuse wailed against fascism, but he meant goy fascism. As he was pro-Zionist, he was for Jewish fascism. This is a key truth about Jews. They are so virulently anti-fascist precisely because they want fascism only for themselves. It is through fascism that both the right wing and left wing of a people can unite into a combined force. Fascism serves as the bridge and bond between left and right. Don’t make them fight one another but work together. This was the basis for National Socialism and Zionism. Where both ultimately failed morally is they went from nationalism to imperialism. Just like Jews hated Christianity and Islam for passing the secrets of the Jewish God to goyim, they hate fascism because it allows goyim to develop the kind of power specialized by Jews. Leo Strauss was a ‘rightist’ while Herbert Marcuse was a ‘leftist’. But what did they have in common? They were proudly Jewish and Zionist. For all their ideological discourse, identity came first. Zionism was created by Jewish socialists and Jewish capitalists working together. So, even as whites should give credit where it’s due — Frankfurters made useful criticism of capitalism and consumerism — , they must forge their own answers and solutions to problems, one that prioritizes the needs of whites. Jews are often interesting in their critique but useless in their proposed solutions, at least for goyim, as the utmost priority of Jews is to maximize Jewish power, not to make goyim more powerful. Frankfurt School is like a doctor that diagnoses the disease but advises the wrong cure.
In a way, much of modern form of Jewish Alienation derived from acceptance by White Society. Jews were both ragging Wasps for not being sufficiently accepting of Jews AND fretting too much assimilation may lead to loss of Jewish identity.
So, even as Jews felt alienated from Wasps, they also felt increasing alienation from their own roots. The more they became modern and Western, the less they felt traditionally bound to Jewishness. It’s one reason why Jews cooked up ersatz-form of being Jewish, such as being fixated on the Holocaust or celebrating Globo-Homo. Barbra Streisand’s YENTL is both celebratory and critical of Jewish Tradition, and it features a woman posing as a man to be accepted into the world of Rabbis. Around the same time, Blake Edwards made VICTOR/VICTORIA and soon after, there was TOOTSIE where Hoffman plays a ‘woman’. And Woody Allen made ZELIG. Paradoxically, Allen’s film seems to imply that the thing that Jews most fear as being harmful to Jewishness, which is assimilation, is also what most defines Jewishness. In other words, Jews have developed remarkably adaptive strategies of assimilation. And yet, even as Jews morph and blend into goy societies, at the end of the day, they revert back to Jewishness; they don’t really transform into the other. It’s like an octopus can take on all sorts of shapes but returns to being an octopus. But if an octopus is so fluid and flexible in its shape and structure, is there a core structure to octopus-ness? Or is the essence of the octopus to have no definite form? It’s no wonder Jews are so into trans-business where there can be infinite number of ‘genders’. It’s like sexual Houdini-ism. ZELIG is almost like a satire of an intellectual Nazi movie about Jews.
More Notes:
Plenty of white goy novelists had written about vices. Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books are about lost souls who indulge in all sorts of dubious behavior. SUN ALSO RISES is more ‘degenerate’ than THE GRADUATE, book or movie. THE GREAT GATSBY is a deeply disturbing novel, about both wasps and Jews. The anti-Semite Celine pioneered a new kind of writing, and his stories were filled with people of questionable character, to say the least.
Also, Jews at the time were making fun of themselves. Don Rickles roasted everyone. Woody Allen loved to crack jokes about Jews(as well as goyim). Mel Brooks made THE PRODUCERS in 1967. It mocks everyone, especially homos.
And if anyone subverted conventions of the movie Western(which owed a lot to Jewish Hollywood), it was the Catholic Italian Sergio Leone.
One notable advantage of Jews in arts & letters for the longest time was they had to grit their teeth and tolerate and even accept things they didn’t like. In other words, they couldn’t keep kosher in dealing with the wider world. There were too many goyim, and they were too goyish and too Christian and too powerful, as well as often anti-Jewish and willing to express such feelings. And yet, this made Jews stronger in a way. It may be that losers can’t be choosers, but those who are forced to choose everything can take ideas from all sides and can grow in empathy. Jews couldn’t cancel Celine, and so, he wrote and came to be a major influence on Jewish authors such as Philip Roth. Jews couldn’t cancel Richard Wagner(except in Israel), and so many Jewish composers drew inspiration from him. Jews couldn’t cancel Christianity, so they wrote some of the best Christmas songs. So, even as Jews felt resentment, they drew ideas and inspirations from the other side. They had no choice, but this made them stronger. If a vegan is forced to eat meat, he may resent it but he will grow stronger with extra protein. If anything, he will grow weaker if he has the power to ban meat and stops eating meat. Because Christians and whites could either ignore or suppress Jews in the past, they could keep only with what they liked. In contrast, because Jews had to deal with goy culture that was all around them, they came to learn a trick or two from what they didn’t like. Kubrick used Richard Strauss in 2001, but suppose Strauss had been canceled and banned because he worked in Nazi Germany.
In a way, it could be Jewish cultural power could now be waning precisely because they’ve gained the power to shut down things they don’t like. So, many interesting talents and thinkers are canceled and blacklisted. Jews may feel safer and more secure as the result, but they’re also creating a culture where everything must be Jew-friendly and suck up to Jews. We now live in a world when Jews can cancel people like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, TS Eliot, Richard Wagner, Celine, Gore Vidal, Knut Hamsun, and many others for their antisemitism, real or imagined(or exaggerated). By suppressing lively goy cuture, Jews have less inspirations to draw from the goy world. Indeed, just look at American Conservatism once it canceled people like Joseph Sobran. As the new rule revolved around ‘Is it good for Jews?’, conservatism turned into all-out cuckservatism.
Maybe Jews realize the dangers of this development on some level. In the past when Jews were surrounded by plenty of goy culture and expressions that weren’t always Jew-friendly, they learned to adapt, learn, draw inspiration, and be vigilant. But in a Jew-power world that has made everything so kosher-friendly and Jew-secure, not only will Jews have less ideas to draw from the goy world(as Jew-friendly hacks are favored over controversial talent) but Jewish kids may grow up nonchalant, apathetic, and lazy. Why should the young ones worry when every goy is always praising Jews and when Jews can easily cancel anyone deemed ‘antisemitic'(or even ‘homophobic’ or whatever)? Jews will become like spoiled princeling brats. That may be why Jewish Power exaggerates the ‘antisemitic’ threat just when goyim are more slavish to Jews than ever. It could be that Jewish Power is nervous that Jewish young may become slack and take things for granted in an overly kosherized world. So, tell them there are nazis lurking everywhere because… uh… anyone Jews don’t like is a ‘nazi’. The more Jews gain nazi-like power for themselves, the more nazis they see everywhere.
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Ethnic actors were a big thing in Beach Party movies.
Frankie Avalon. And brunette Annette Funicello the cutie surrounded by blondes.
Lovely moment:
And a decade after THE GRADUATE, there was the musical GREASE where ‘greaseball’ Travolta hook up with blonde Olivia Newton-John.
Two kinds of youth movies: Ones made in the moment and ones that dwell on nostalgia or autobiography.
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, THE GRADUATE, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, BREAKING AWAY, and RISKY BUSINESS reflect the times in which they were made.
In contrast, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, FOUR FRIENDS, DAZED AND CONFUSED, and C.R.A.Z.Y revive bygone eras. The latter films have less chance of becoming dated because they were made after the fact with more perspective.
And then, there are movies made in the moment but reflecting an earlier era. Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS is set in the 70s, but he drew inspiration from his youth in the late 50s and 60s. As such, the character of Charlie seems somewhat obsessed with moral hangups of an earlier era. Something similar is afoot in SOCIAL NETWORK. Aaron Sorkin projected his generation’s Jewish neurosis onto Zuckerberg, a creature of the 2000s whose world was very different.
A precursor of THE GRADUATE was A MAN AND A WOMAN. It used the stylistics of the French New Wave in service of pop romantic fantasy, and it was a hit and won awards. But Lelouch’s technical mastery was questionable and he resorted to too many musical montages and visual trickery to compensate for weak plot and characterization. There is a lot for film-makers to learn from THE GRADUATE but not so much from MAN AND WOMAN, which only works in short bursts as proto-music-videos. Still, what a nostalgic journey to a France that is now lost to Diversity.
Another film that might have inspired Nichols may be IL SORPASSO(THE EASY LIFE), especially in its use of music.
While some white guys may not want to see blonde girls with Jews or Italians, it’s much worse now as the blondies are with the Negroes.
But then, white men pioneered this race-mixing business. They impregnated the browns of South America. They got black women pregnant in the South. There was the legend of Pocohontas. And plenty of white soldiers overseas had affairs or sex with women in Asia and South Pacific. There was SAYONARA before THE GRADUATE. Marlon Brando had a strange fetish for brown women.. and Robert DeNiro only seems to go for blacks. And James Bond got it on with women of all races.
Jewish Hoffman played a Wasp in THE GRADUATE, and David Lean chose Egyptian Omar Sharif to play a Russian in DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Sharif also played Genghis Khan, and so did John Wayne. Brando as Okinawan in TEA HOUSE OF AUGUST MOON was funny as hell, but Rooney as Japanese in BREAKFAST was even funnier. Anthony Quinn as Greek in ZORBA really did work.
Italians often got Anglo or Northern European actors to play Italians. They were into dubbing.
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THE GRADUATE has great film-making. As different as DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and THE GRADUATE are, they clicked with the audience. LOVE STORY also had memorable music(pretty good schlock), but the film-making was only adequate/good, nothing more. In contrast, THE GRADUATE really is a visual and rhythmic marvel with Nichols throwing so many tricks out of the left field and without being too showy about it. (Both DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and THE GRADUATE are about discovery and struggle of True Love amidst familial concerns, personal commitment, ideological struggles, and power manipulation. Zhivago truly loves Lara but is married to a nice girl. Lara truly loves Zhivago but is also married. She married her first boyfriend quickly as escape from the tormented affair with an older man. But if Zhivago ultimately doesn’t get Lara and had everyone weeping in the theater, Ben does get Elaine.)
I agree the Simon and Garfunkel songs are great. Minus the music, the movie would seen more satirical, sardonic, and biting. It’s the music that softens the edges and provides a romantic mood, sentimental shading.
When the image and sound really click together, it makes no sense to discuss them apart. It’s like the alchemy of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann, Hiroshi Teshigahara and Toru Takemitsu. Nichols and Simon hit it off like Ben and Elaine. Nichols and Simon clicked not so much because they saw eye-to-eye but because the music served as counterpoint as much as padding. “Sounds of Silence”, “Scarborough Fair”, and “April Comes She Will” add something missing in Nichols' comic-cynical style. The song with which the two sensibilities finally converge is “Mrs. Robinson”, a tongue-in-cheek rendition of Middle Class Americana comparable to Rolling Stone’s “Mother’s Little Helper”.
I can understand why many people are put off by Hoffman’s presence or personality, but it is brilliant acting. Also, his voice, being both throaty and nasal, perfectly convey’s Ben state of mind and stage in life. He’s both man surging with testosterone and boy who wants to run back home. And, his deadpan demeanor mixed with shaky nerves is for the ages. With Anne Bancroft, he’s like a shy dog being played by an experienced feline. It’s both cartoony enough for laughs and human enough for tension.
Genuine mood is really hard to do. There are cheap ways to create mood with filters and lighting, but Nichols sustains a consistent mood throughout the film, through light and dark scenes.
And the camerawork is purposeful and edgy, making it both classic and radical. It seems perfectly perched between the rule-book and burn-the-book. The tricks of timing Nichols honed in comedy and sense of staging he got from theater did wonders. Welles also specialized in Audio Entertainment(radio) and theater before entering cinema. Nichols borrowed various styles but matched them seamlessly. The hand-held camera is reminiscent of Cassavates and Godard but pieced subliminally with other styles.
And he went for unconventional perspectives. For instance, when Ben is walking to the right through the guests at the graduation party to head for the stairs, the camera faces away from the stairway leading opposite to Ben's direction. As such, Nichols has to ‘awkwardly’ jerk the camera leftward to show the stairway except it’s done so deftly that this breaking of rules seems natural than false or gratuitous.
Later, when Ben and Elaine are running from the church, can anyone think of a better way to show the bus than by tilting the camera from top to bottom, creating an impression of a bus dropped from the sky, manna from heaven? And the cut from a telephoto shot of Ben and Elaine running from the church that grows blurry to a long shot conveys the sudden shifts in mood and momentum in that charged instant. Nichols was so attuned to every moment, something generally missing in Old Hollywood and even most European cinema, albeit exceptions like JULES AND JIM, a work that is both classic and experimental.
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TIGER MAKES OUT, also released in 1967, was Hoffman’s first film. A small role. He shows up at 5:20 in the video below. The movie seems a more raw expression of Jewish hang-ups.
PRESIDENT’S ANALYST, also a 1967 movie, pushed the satirical tone of THE GRADUATE to the hilt. THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST was prescient about the future of technology and mankind. Big Tech taking over everything.
It was both written and directed by Theodore Flicker, Jewish. As such, it is a more personal work than THE GRADUATE. The Liberal father is the guy who played Ben’s father. (He also played a Liberal parent in TWO FOR THE ROAD, another 1967 movie that was hip to new trends. Written by Frederic Raphael, a Jew with massive chip on his shoulder.)
Robert Redford did take on a romantic comedy role in another 1967 movie BAREFOOT IN THE PARK. 1967 was quite a year.
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Some other interesting ethno-swapping.
The TV movie GETTING MARRIED has an ending not unlike that of THE GRADUATE. In it, Richard Thomas plays an Italian-American.
In BREAKING AWAY, some guy in Indiana pretends to be an Italian-American, as if that will make him appear more romantic and exotic to an All-American Girl. Oddly enough, its snobby Waspy character was actually played by Jewish Hart Bochner. And Robert Redford was one of the leading contenders for the role of Michael Corleone.
Maybe the most vicious and disturbing scene about Wasp-Ethnic tension is the wedding scene in FOUR FRIENDS, written by the guy who wrote BREAKING AWAY and directed by Arthur Penn of BONNIE & CLYDE fame.
THE GRADUATE seems to draw certain strains from THE GREAT GATSBY via CATCHER IN THE RYE. Later, when movies like BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY came around, they seem to be riffing GATSBY and GRADUATE, both of which have come to shape American cultural consciousness and love and class. (Michael J. Fox, another shorty, like Davey Jones of THE MONKEES, which also had half-Italian Mickey Dolenz who looked racially so ambiguous. I wonder if Charles Webb was influenced by Kingsley Amis’ LUCKY JIM.)
Despite THE GRADUATE looking very mod, I wonder if young people today can relate to technological limitations of the period. If the story were to take place today, Ben would be looking on the internet to find information about where Elaine is getting married than driving back and forth between L.A. and Berkeley. And the dial-up phone at the gas station, what an ancient artifact. They still had those back then. Now, even poor people have handy cellphones, even ‘smart phones’, something unimaginable even to billionaires in the 80s, even the 90s. Many young people could relate to BOURNE movies because the guy was so ‘wired’ techno-psychologically. Very tech-savvy young man outwitting all the institutions that made him what he is.
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Too many people ignore everything but the plot and characters. They respond as if they’re reading some second-rate novel. It’s like judging a song by its meaning. Most songs are trite or banal in what they have to 'say'. It’s the same old story about love, heartache, and etc. Beatles' “Yesterday” offers no greater meaning about love or sadness than a million other songs. Then, why is it special? The words, even if banal, are just right. And the melody and delivery create a unique mood. (Same goes for John Lennon's “Norwegian Wood” and Brian Wilsons' “God Only Knows”.) So, we don’t listen to a song mainly for meaning but feeling and mood. Take “Drive” by the Cars and “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. In terms of meaning, we’ve heard countless songs about broken hearts and romantic obsession. But the style and expressions of those songs are so original and overwhelming that they make conventional or ‘tired’ themes exciting and edgy again. Take the song “Brandy” by Looking Glass, a one-hit-wonder band. The story it tells is one found in a thousand dime store novels, but the melody is infectious, the rhythm soulful, and the performance inspired. As such, it is a one-of-a-kind song, as is “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot.
The fact that some people just see the themes or spot-the-Jew in THE GRADUATE means they are cine-illiterate. It’s like reading poetry as if it is prose and focusing mainly on meaning. Anyone can make pizza. The basic ingredients are well-known. In basic ingredients, great pizzas are 95% like all the other pizzas, even frozen ones, but they have something extra, subtle but crucial that differentiates greatness from mere goodness or acceptableness. TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA has many of the elements of countless other action movies, but why does it tower over the rest? William Friedkin was on fire, got hold of promising material and fine talent, and everything just clicked. Same goes for MIDNIGHT RUN. Everything came together beautifully.
Nichols got just the right ingredients, and the preparation, timing, and delivery were near-flawless in the balance of comedy, drama, romance, and near-tragedy. It made a difference upon release because it was the bridge between Art Film and Hollywood, between Old and Young, and between Sunlight and Rain. There’s a scene in THE WILD BUNCH where the Gorch brothers look across the river at Mexico and says, “It looks like more of Texas as far as I’m concerned”, and Angel says, “Ah, you have no eyes.” Many people have no eyes. For the blind, there is no difference between Orson Welles' tremendous MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and the lame one directed by Alfonso Arau. After all, they tell the same story with the same characters. But comparing those two movies illustrates what a difference a directorial vision can make.
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Anne Bancroft looks like Maria Callas, lending a classic greco motif to the story. Oedipus had sex with his mother, and there is a sub-oedipal underpinning to THE GRADUATE. THE GRADUATE is like an experiment of what-if Greek comedy was blended with Greek tragedy.
