The Mask of Fascism
By wearing the film’s mask, the OWS protesters define themselves precisely. They are a group who misrepresent the world in order to promote what sounds like freedom but would, in truth, be slavery. That some people on Wall Street have behaved abominably is no excuse for their anti-liberty stance, any more than the crimes of the Gambino Mafia family would excuse the answering crimes of the Bonannos. A recent poll by Douglas Schoen shows a large majority of the protesters to be leftists who advocate “wealth redistribution,” i.e., stealing other people’s money so it can be spent on what the robbers want rather than on what those who earned the money want. That this policy has resulted in murder, oppression, poverty, or slow cultural decay every single place it has been tried does nothing to stem the feeling of virtue these people experience as they illegally take over streets, propagate anti-semitism, and attack the wealth of a society that has given them everything they cherish most, from their right to free speech to their computers and iPhones to the corporation-created parks they abuse.
But that such lowlifes have risen up in a time of trouble (a time whose troubles have been so badly exacerbated by the left-wing policies of the current administration) is no surprise. What is more depressing is the support they are receiving not only from this desperate failure of a president and his fellow travelers but from any number of ordinary liberals and Democrats who feel OWS expresses a vital and proper anger against the powers that be. This is nonsense. The fact that Wall Streeters have given more money to Obama than to all the GOP candidates combined should be a dead give-away that the true voice of protest in this country, the true opposition to the current cronyism between Washington, D.C. and Wall Street, is the peaceful, non-racist, liberty-loving Tea Party, which these same liberals despise.
You cannot save the world by lying about it. Rank-and-file liberals who give credence to the self-serving fantasies of the radical mobs occupying Wall Street and elsewhere, may find that the mask of fascism, once put on, can be very difficult to remove.
Well stated, Andrew. Fascism and socialism are the same coinage, afterall.
Many persons equate Nazism, Italian Fascism and socialism (along with aspects of the New Deal in America. I think this is wrong, for it hides the historical rootedness of each form of statism. Some look at these ideologies as bureaucratic collectivism, as specific utopian responses to industrialism and the rise of a sometimes militant industrial working class, hence the theory of “totalitarianism.” But it is especially important to distinguish between Nazism, which was grounded in a pure racial Aryan or Teutonic state, purged of “the Jews,” with Leninist Bolshevism. The Reds paraded themselves as proletarian internationalists and were opposed to racial or national particularism. I think one is on stronger ground to look at the affinities between Italian Fascism and the statist aspects of the New Deal. I tried to look at the tension between democratic republicanism and authoritarian societies here: http://clarespark.com/2011/10/24/turning-points-in-the-ascentdecline-of-the-west/.
Nah Clare, Nazis and Communists are both just opportunistic thugs using tough times to sell people on blaming some other group for their problems, then riding the violence to power. Blame the Jews, blame the Kulaks, now it’s blame the Rich. The Nazi’s had to pick a different target so they could differentiate themselves from the communists. Marketing, you know.
No difference. The rest of us should treat them as exactly what they are: dangerous thugpins and their stooge enforcer mobs.
Both Nazis and Communists of every stripe back the Occupy movement.
Does the #Occupy Movement Speak for You?
The problem is that the USSR DID use these things, anti-semitism in particular.
Fascism is based on private ownership of business and industry, with government control. Marxism/Communism is based on both government ownership and control of business and industry. What we have in our country fits into neither of these categories, but a combination of the two. I believe it’s fair to call it “Obamunism”.
You are correct in your definition, but it is a distinction without meaning, because without control you dont really have ownership. So in both fascism and communism your property is no longer yours, even though in fascism you (the supposed owner of record) can deceive yourself into beleiving it is still yours, just as in communism you can deceive yourself that it is owned by “the common people”, when in reality it is controlled and therefore owned by the gov. The only thing that makes fascism slightly better is if it is overthrown, and capitalism is restored, at least we still know who the original owners of everything are, if they are still alive, so it is easier to restore free market capitalism.
I agree that Obamaism is a blend of the 2 since he mainly controls by regulation, but has also taken an actual gov ownership share in some cases, like tha autos and banks. Democratic western socialism, and US progressives, has always leaned heavily on the fascist regulatory control model, since it is easier to deceive people into beleiving their property is still theirs. After all, even in a real free capitalist society some level of regulation is still necessary, to prevent fraud, or to prevent activity that damages others, like polluting a stream that your neighbors downstream need. It is only when that regulation becomes excessive, as it definitely has under progressives, that your property is no longer yours.
I disagree.
Fraud is the same as stealing or taking by force, because if the victim of fraud had been told the truth they would have not entered into the fraudulant agreement. So fraud has the same legal standing as stealing. In a free society, the government is dedicated to protecting citizens from force and fraud.
Regulations are not the same as laws against stealing and fraud, and they have no place in a free society. Regulations restrict voluntary actions and agreements that can be made between businesses, their employees, and their customers. They assume businessmen are guilty of some arbitrary wrong doing and treats everyone in the regulated industry as perpetrators whether they have been accused of a crime or not. As such, regulations have become America’s Gateway Despotism and together with confiscatory taxes are destroying our economy.
Please analyze closely the conventional wisdom of populus conservatives & liberals alike (e.g., Bill O’Reilly) who propogate these immoral ideas as if they are unquestionable truth.
Obama is set on a road to “give” us Crony Socialism, of a Swedish-Chicago model.
The Communists killed more people than the Nazis did. My source is “The Gulag Archipelago” which I read while working on a History degree.
…..the fact remains, NAZI is derived fron “Nationalist Socialist” are you saying that they misnamed their own movement….?
Freedom will never be secure as long as citizens don’t understand the direction oppression is coming from. Left and Right do not meet around the bend in the spectrum somewhere. Leftism is based on envy; Rightism is based on greed. If you see no difference, a greedy person wants a fleet of Cadillacs; an envious person wants your car. Leftism politicizes every aspect of life; Rightism at the extreme abolishes politics. PC is the current Leftist mode of politicizing everything, and you need no examples. The ur-Leftist dogma is: “the personal is political”. This is why only Leftist regimes are totalitarian, because they want to control even thought, not just behavior. Our Founders in the Constitution were basically Rightists, because what they attempted to do was to rule large large areas of life out of bounds for politics. This is what the provisions stating that “Congress shall make no law…” were doing. The Federal government had no authority to act in many areas of life, no what matter public opinion or election results might be. This is inherently Rightist. I’d say the bedrock difference between Left and Right is the attitude each takes concerning natural, normal human society. The Enlightenment thinkers, in their awesome ignorance, thought that man was a reasoning animal, without instinct or innate behaviors. So Leftists are free to dream up any sort of hyuman society, because they beleive they can modify human behavior by changing the environment. Rightists beleive that human behavior is only plastic within a certain range, and that beyond that range natural society will be disintegrated. Rightists recognize that traditional social organizations are organic creations of the people involved. You cannot outlaw sex, or private property, or religion and maintain a functioning society. That’s why the USSR, Mao’s China, or North Korea end up as inhuman behavior-sinks. Of course, until the early 60s, nobody knew what a behavior-sink was. But Rightists studied history and ethnography and saw the patterns. That’s why Rightists are, diagnostically, supporters of existing social institutions, and Leftists are implacable enemies of them. Every Leftist movement, whether climate-change, income redistribution, militant atheism, or free sex, will be anti-religion, anti-tradition, anti-custom, anti-normal, anti-cultural. Every Rightist movement will support and defend these things against Leftists. That’s why the fascists are always fighting the Left to prevent the destruction of every aspect of the natural society. Franco’s Falange was mostly nothing but a reaction to the Leftist attack on the Catholic Church, traditional art and culture, and Spanish society in general. If you want to distinguish Left from Right, just look at what they think of existing society.
Jacobite, there is no left and right. It is a false construct designed to elevate the “middle”, which is populated by the pretentious “elites” who supposedly know how to better run everyone’s lives. No, there is tyranny or there is liberty. Greed does not drive the non-existent “right”. There is no one greedier than the individual who wants things for nothing, and those who do want free stuff always favor tyranny. Communism-Fascism-Socialism-Environmentalism are all tyrannical movements, led by those who know they are lying to acheive their goals and followed by those who are ignorant of the movement’s ends.
The Author of V for Vendetta made the original comic as a long and decidedly dull screed against Thatcherism (a lot of Brits are still bitter about her fixing the place). Religious Socialism is a hideous perversion of Judeo-Christian social tenants.
I really have to wonder what was going through Marx’s mind when he crafted his ideology
Maybe he was thinking how he could best prevent the emerging concept of individual liberty from freeing the world and spreading the wealth fairly based on each person’s generation of value to others, by instead inventing a new belief system that could replace the old belief systems that had for thousands of years tricked the folks into tolerating and even chearing the centralization of power and wealth in the hands of the few.
Or maybe he was trying to deny that the real world rewards those whose talents and personal drive (i.e., work ethic) create wealth and satisfaction, and whose subsequent achievements benefit the less gifted.
Human beings are created equal in the eyes of God. God gave humankind free will, which does not guarantee equal results.
The centralization of power and wealth in the hands of the few, is the very definition of Marxism/Communism/Socialism/Fascism, TL, as evidenced by the reality of the application of those isms in the real world.
lol. Yes, let’s replace Western Civilization with all of it’s faults with what exactly? Communism? So you have to crack a few hundred million eggs and torture and suppress a few hundred million more to get there. Islam? Which Islamic nation would you suggest we model after to keep the power out of the hands of a few? What model are you referring to?
Tell us, oh wise one! What is your plan for civilization beyond a bunch of filthy “anarchist” hippies occupying parks and demanding that other people to to work and turn the money over to those who don’t. Or is that what passes for brilliance among today’s over and undereducated?
Amazing how those “tricked folks” ultimately ended up with computers, air conditioners, cars, TVs, meat on the table, while those who spread “the wealth fairly based on each person’s generation of value to others” ended up poor, starving, many in Siberia and finally disintegrated. Utopia is exactly what it means – “no place”. By the way, your use of the word “folks”….. is an attempt to be folksy?
What was going through Marx’s mind? Possibly a lot of absinthe and ways on how to sponge off his fool of a friend and co-author of their manifesto, Engels.
The guy was a bloated tick, who only wanted more blood.
Interesting but rarely noted point on Marx and Engels. Marx was 30 and Engels was 28 when they published “The Communist Manifesto”. We always picture them as grey-bearded men which normally signifies a measure of wisdom borne out of experience. The reality was they had no more life experience then the average OWS groupie. The mindless drivel of a couple of immature idiots produced the most murderous religion ever known to humanity.
Reading the Communist Manifesto is an education.
When I read it, I would have sworn it was the result of some late night dorm room nonsense.
Basically, they declare it their right to have free rent, food, and even female companionship. Most importantly, they make the claim to free political power.
I’ve always wondered why I didn’t care for V for Vendetta. I now realize that it easily could have been produced, as is, as propaganda against England by any of the slave states of the last century. Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia would have loved it.
Marxism is a regression to the economic organization of pre literate hunter-gatherer groups: no private property, no money, no markets of exchange.
Despaxious,
Just curious but, what makes you think that communism, socialism, capitalism or, any other “ism” is a religion? All of the “isms” are socio-economic systems. The socialism espoused in the Communist Manifesto was the “First Step” toward true communism. Lenin stepped in and “Politicized” Marx’s socialism and created the “Proletariat” [Dictatorship] to hold political power “In the name of the Workers”. The problem then for the Marxist-Leninist social, political, “Communist” economic system was the pesky free will of the workers which begat the Bolsheviks as a political party and, the Russian Revolution. Out with the Romanovs, in with the Bolsheviks and the peasants! Shouldn’t everyone be downtrodden together? It was the dawn of “Management by murder”. I agree with you that the communists under Lenin’s Soviet regime (Did you mean”Régime” instead of “Religion”?) murdered many millions to achieve their goals of nationalization of the ownership of all. Since their weren’t as many “Classless Workers” left after the revolution they were one step further toward their vision of a socialist, utopian society where production of all, equals the needs of all [All that were left]. So, I could go on about freedom, capitalism, free will, autonomy, entrepreneurship, religion and, the many blessings that we have as Americans. I could go on about the OWS crews spreading out all over the country side but, I haven’t figured out exactly what they want. But, there is one more thing I can say with absolute certainty: God Bless America!
A P.S. to Andrew Klavan: Your social commentary is unlike any other, food for thought. Thanks!
Communism, socialism, facism, and Islamism are religions because they all have reference texts which reveal acceptable beliefs, argue from authority (and think it a virtue), and require magic to work.
Of course since there is no magic, they don’t really work in a measurable way. Their ideology is in fact, a lie. The purpose of the reference books is to permit people to pretend confidence in their lies, to permit them to act. If they act in accordance with their religions, without assurance of success, their ‘holy books’ promise success, as a form of reward for the miracle of believing the impossible.
I believe in evidence. If you don’t have evidence, then you don’t get to force me. You may convince me, but if I am not convinced, you have no right to coerce.
“I really have to wonder what was going through Marx’s mind when he crafted his ideology.”
By 1848 feudalism was dieing. A new masters and servants social system was needed.
Exactly. Nicely put.
Yes. Marxism in all of its variations (communism, socialism, fascism) is merely industrial age feudalism.
I could be wrong, but I thought Marx was the son of a rich industrialist. This was just the rebellion of a spoiled brat. Sure enough, it appeals to other spoiled brats.
The thing about real morality is that it is hard. The faux morality allows you to feel virtuous without any real effort. You pay lip service to a cause, spout the usual drivel, and you are virtuous. It doesn’t require that you restrain your most base instincts. It is just the ticket for spoiled brats.
No, but Engels was.
Wasn’t Karl Marx’s uncle Lion Philips, a banker. Lion’s grandsons founded Royal Philips, which became Global Philips, the big electronics (among other things) firm. Seems everybody in the family succeeded at capitalism – except Karl the loser.
Actually he was barred from Family enterprises. His Ability at managing the trade was far from stellar and his constant wining for more money, without any desire for input finally did him in. He did not earn any money for living, but was capable to con his friend Engels, to pay for his (and his extended family) living. He passed himself as a “Thinker”. The rest is well known to everyone.
Malignant envy…the same emotion in the heart of every Marxist.
According to historian Paul Johnson, Marxism is the extension of anti-semitism extended to a class. Marx was a pseudo-economist, actually an apocolyptic poet. It’s all in Paul Johnson’s excellent book, Intellectuals.
Marx’s Dad converted the family to Christianity when he was young, presumably to get ahead materially. Marx is the archtypical self-hater.
Oh, and Johnson also pointed out that both Marx and Hitler were noted for their great sense of humor.
According to historian Paul Johnson, Marxism is the extension of anti-semitism to a class. (It’s in his excellent book, “Intellectuals”.)
Marx’s Dad converted the family to Christianity when Marx was young, presumably to get ahead. Marx is the archtypical self-hater.
According to Johnson, he was a fake economist – actually an apocolyptic dreamer and poet. Oh, and his success is partially explained – as was Hitler’s – by his great sense of humor. Really. Anything can be turned for good or evil. Ask Bill Maher.
Sorry. Thought the orignal comments were lost.
Excellent article. The police here in London made one activist at the copycat ‘Occupy the Stock Exchange’ protest remove his V for V Guy Fawkes mask, to reveal the face of everyone’s favourite narcissist – Julian Assange. The disruption caused by London’s answer to OWS has just succeeded in closing St Paul’s Cathedral to visitors – the last people to achieve that were the Nazis.
I remember going to see V for Vendetta with a die-hard liberal friend and I had to walk out during the scene in which the gay character, played by the unctuous Stephen Fry, shows off his banned copy the Koran. As you point out, this is in fact a total inversion of reality. This dreadful film is a companion piece to Alfonso Cuaron’s appalling Children of Men, a dystopia-fest that imagines a London where refugees are housed in cages next to every bus stop.
It’s hard to believe the comic book artists, moviemakers and protesters don’t realize that Guy Fawkes was trying to assassinate the king and blow up the House of Lords so that a Catholic monarch could be put on the throne on England. I bet the protesters would get a kick out of that.
All they share is a desire for destruction.
Not to mention that the movie-version mask is a copyrighted image of Time Warner. Every dopey protester and hacker-wannabe who puts it on is feeding one of the largest media corporate machines in the world.
The whole thing is a complete inversion of history, but none of these twits knows a damned thing about history.
While I agree with some of your critcisms of the OWS movement, I have to heartily disagree with your interpretation of V for Vendetta. V for Vendetta is not a direct criticism of Christianity in public life. Although the main characters in government use faith as a tool for manipulation, it’s not the focal point of the film. V’s criticism (and the author’s) of the government is that it used fear and propaganda to manipulate the population of Britain into throwing away the freedom it claimed to be protecting. The government (which was manipulated into existence) was inherently un-free. The film shows through the destruction of the Old Bailey and Parliament, the corruption of the state-owned media and the church officials, and the revelation that the terrorist attack that brought the ruling party to power was faked that their entire system came to be based on a lie.
More Your words “The film’s central gay character extols the beauty of the Koran, the followers of which would endorse his murder—yet he is murdered by Christians who, in life, might condemn his practices but would also preach his loving acceptance as a fellow sinner.” Are blatantly innaccurate … I can’t speak for Muslim treatment of gays but it’s pretty clear that that administration (which claimed to be Christian) was not very accepting … The entire point is that by suppressing dissent and freedom, you breed corruption. The ruling party corrupted Christianity to maintain power. They corrupted law and justice.
V character does torture and bomb but he resorts to violence only after it becomes clear that violence is necessary. He uses the torture of Evie to teach her not to fear because if you don’t fear, you can’t be controlled. That’s the whole point of the film. To truly be free, we must overcome (not be ruled by) our fear.
The final scene in which all the people come to watch Parliament blow up wearing V mask’s doesn’t symbolize “a world in which all people will come together as one to support acts of terrorism against free institutions. This united people even end up wearing the signature mask that will remove from them every trace of individuality” because the institutions aren’t free (as I pointed out earlier). Also the crowd removes the masks revealing free individuals. This symbolizes that everyone is a fighter for freedom. V gives people the courage to stand up. The people stand up and remove their government. This is the ultimate expression of the idea that government’s should fear their people, People shouldn’t fear their government’s. In that sense, it is perfectly in line with our own revolution. When the government no longer served/represented the needs of the people, we Americans threw it off and created a new one. V becomes a symbol of freedom (which includes even the freedom to be what we don’t like … not just what we do.)
Oh thanks for the clarification. So, besides the original deconstruction we need to add that a good deal of truther nonsense is involved as well? Alrightee then.
“I can’t speak for Muslim treatment of gays…”
If only some technology existed, through which we could search for news stories around the world, in order to gather information.
Wow, if that existed it would be common knowledge how Iran handles gays, Muhammad’s crimes would common knowledge and the repeated failure of socialism in the 20th century would be common knowledge too.
Ah, give me a couple of days. I’ll come up with something…
Al gore
All valid points. However, I wonder why the author and the filmmakers felt the need to make them. I don’t think they were providing us with a generic cautionary tale about the evils that can happen *IF* we allow government to do this or that. They weren’t depicting some hypothetical fascistic, racist, homophobic, repressive society of the future. They were presenting, in exaggerated form, their actual view of life in Thatcher’s Britain and Bush’s U.S.A.
Maybe the author and the filmmakers have solid, democratic political ideals – I don’t know enough about them to say. But they absolutely lack a sense of political reality. They don’t seem to be able to distinguish between things that bother them and things that constitute an imminent threat to Our Way of Life. A couple of conservatives elected PM or President are not going to turn their countries into police states. A society that’s concerned about a new, foreign religion that seems to have it in for them is not the same as a society that’s burning holy books and killing anyone who reads them. Ok, COULD it happen? Yeah, in a comic book. WILL it happen? No. What will happen will surprise everyone.
“A couple of conservatives elected PM or President are not going to turn their countries into police states. A society that’s concerned about a new, foreign religion that seems to have it in for them is not the same as a society that’s burning holy books and killing anyone who reads them. Ok, COULD it happen? Yeah, in a comic book. WILL it happen? No. What will happen will surprise everyone.”
I have to disagree. When things like this happen in real life, the writing tends to be rather clearly on the wall … it’s just that people don’t want to see it. Germany didn’t just wake up one day and realize that the Nazi’s had exterminated 6+ million people in their backyard. The Nazi’s built up fear and hatred over years and years. When they started removing Jews of their businesses, Germans cheered. We could all see the way things were going … The same fear and intolerance and stereotyping that allowed Nazi Germany to exterminate the Jews allowed our government to put Japanese Americans, and Germans and Italians in lesser numbers, in internment camps. It’s what allowed Hutus to kill Tutsis in Rwanda. These same things are real and they COULD happen … which is why good dystopian fiction resonates with readers.
While I’ve read the V for Vendetta graphic novel a few times, I’ve still not seen the movie. Didn’t realize that the Wachowskis and/or the other filmmakers decided to throw a heavy-handed religious angle in as well as it’s actually not a significant part of the original. It’s been a few years (well, quite a few) since I last read it, but the only thing that comes to mind is that Jews may have been lumped in with that society’s undesirables. The actual identity of who was sent to the concentration camps was less important to the story than that there were camps at all. Why V was put in a camp was never explicitly stated, although there’s no lack of fan theories.
The politics of the original are a bit muddled. In the story, Thatcher lost the 1983 election and Labour was in power when the fit hit the shan. (In reality it was a huge win for the Conservative party) Moore wrote the usurping Norsefire party as an obvious parallel to the National Front. It seemed to me to be not so much for pure politics as, along with the camps, simply to make V more of a sympathetic character; a political iconoclast standing for the individual against terrible oppression rather than just a murdering terrorist.
While Moore wasn’t a new author at the time, he’d mainly just done fairly short stories for a few smaller British comic publishers. V was about the first long (12 issue) self-contained story arc that he wrote and it shows. Especially in the later issues with the clumsy pacing and meandering side stories. Mostly, I think he wanted V to represent an idealized anarchist, with mask and lack of defined background mainly to portray that anyone can fill the role of an agent of change. The book’s government represented the evils of an oppressive central authority rather than political orientation. Moore himself claims to be an anarchist, but it might be worth taking that claim with a grain of salt.
Again though, it was a relatively early work and more than a little muddled. V for Vendetta didn’t really become well known in the comics community until years later when Moore and Dave Gibbons created Watchmen. Following the success of that, much of Moore’s earlier work was rereleased to ride the dime. Unfortunately not all of it was quite up to Watchmen standards. (Then again, few comics ever were)
An “idealized anarchist?” Well, gee, that’s a great idea.
For a good laugh, read the Wiki page on Moore; his socio-political ignorance is amazing.
Andew Klaven was pointing out how this work of fiction had its facts all wrong, and you rebutt by treating the movie (did I mention it was fiction) as a step-by-step account of an actual historical event. That’s nonsense.
Also, with regard to Islam’s view of homosexuality: In the US and Europe, the latest celebrity “Coming Out” party is largely treated with a collective yawn, while the celeb acts as though he’s accomplished some amazing feat of heroism. In the islamic world, such an act would be met with certain arrest and pronouncement of death. As Lars Walker alluded to, this is not hard to find if you just pull your head out of Fantasyland for a moment.
It seems as if some of the wealthier Muslim countries are also interested in finding a cure for homosexuality.
Islam has a cure for homosexual. It has two sides:
(1) Kill the homosexual. Problem solved.
(2) The homosexual agrees to become a jihadist, and eventually dies. Problem solved.
I will note that Yassar Arafat, born in Egypt, was given a choice, and chose door number two.
“Andew Klaven was pointing out how this work of fiction had its facts all wrong, and you rebutt by treating the movie (did I mention it was fiction) as a step-by-step account of an actual historical event. That’s nonsense. ”
I wasn’t aware that I was treating it as real … I’m very aware that it’s fiction. And I was merely discussing the plot of the movie (which is a first hand account of a fictional series of events.)
And to this discussion of Islam and homosexuality … I find the argument rather moot. Stephen Fry’s character isn’t Muslim. But he keeps the Koran because he appreciates it as an object. He finds the poetry and calligraphy beautiful. How that religion would have treated him as a gay man is irrelevant because he doesn’t live in a Muslim country and he isn’t Muslim.
“I can’t speak for Muslim treatment of gays..” Right. But you can imagine a total acceptance of lies and tyranny by a Christian populace that would allow their rights to be hijacked as long as they are hijacked by an alleged Christian leader. If that were the case, Obama would be wildly popular. He is, afterall, an alleged Christian.
““I can’t speak for Muslim treatment of gays..” Right. But you can imagine a total acceptance of lies and tyranny by a Christian populace that would allow their rights to be hijacked as long as they are hijacked by an alleged Christian leader.”
That comment was meant to show my lack of knowledge in that area (which isn’t a central point to the film …or to the point I was attempting to make).
But I would like to leave you with a little food for thought: Both Germany and Rwanda were (and still are) majority Christian nations prior to their genocides.
“V character does torture and bomb but he resorts to violence only after it becomes clear that violence is necessary.”
Oh, WELL then. All is forgiven.
“V for Vendetta is not a direct criticism of Christianity in public life. Although the main characters in government use faith as a tool for manipulation, it’s not the focal point of the film. V’s criticism (and the author’s) of the government is that it used fear and propaganda to manipulate the population of Britain into throwing away the freedom it claimed to be protecting.”
So… in order to illustrate the British government’s discarding centuries-old freedoms in favor of a rule by fear, the author cast around for some handy ideology that could be turned to that end, and – eureka! Christianity. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to use fundamentalist Islam, given the, you know, course of history and all? Or, if the author wanted to avoid such an inflammatory position (not a bad idea, given that the followers of radical Islam have been known to knife people in the street for unflattering artistic portrayals of what they perceive to be their faith), why not create something new? Science fiction writing has a long tradition of creating artificial cults, for instance.
Far be it from us, of course, to deny the author’s right to shape his story however he wanted. If he (meaning the screenwriter, in this case, if Christianity wasn’t a big focus of the original graphic novel) wanted to paint Christianity in this light and Islam in, well, another light, okay then. But we have to try to glean the artist’s intent from his content, and how he treats it.
I never thought I’d disagree when someone pointed out an obvious incident of Christian-bashing, but here I am. In VforV, Moore set out to portray a British government that had fallen into totalitarianism, much in the way that Germany’s Weimar Republic voted in Adolf Hitler and fell to Nazism. Nazi Germany persecuted all kinds of people: Jews, gays, gypsies, pacifists, socialists, dissenting Christians, etc. Totalitarian governments persecute everyone who doesn’t fit their conception of the Good Citizen–sometimes because they consider the persecuted people to be real threats, but just as often because, by uniting the majority against a feared or disliked minority, they consolidate power.
At the same time, where possible, totalitarian leaders will seek to gain the imprimatur of religion–as the many Islamic states do in the Middle East.
Given the time and place of the story (near-future England), Moore’s pallet of choices was limited. England already has an established church, The Church of England. Muslims are a distinct minority in the British Isles. With the “present day” as a starting point, it makes sense that, nearly two decades after the fascistic subversion of the British Government, England’s leaders would have put corrupt figureheads and mouthpieces in charge of the established church. It also makes sense that they would have villified Muslims just as the Nazis scapegoated Jews, making them the Other.
There is only enough room in a novel for a narrow picture of the world it represents, and this is doubly true for a graphic novel. Anyone wishing to widen the picture could, with history as his model, picture real Christians smuggling gays and other “public-enemies” out of Great Britain, passing along pamphlets through their congregations, even engaging in brutally supressed (and covered up, since the government controlled the media) protests.
But that would have been a different story.
“Wouldn’t it have made more sense to use fundamentalist Islam, given the, you know, course of history and all?”
Had his graphic novel been set in Turkey, or any other majority Muslim nation, then yes, that would make sense.
Part of dystopian fiction is the creation of a world enough like ours to resonate with the reader. This makes the wrongness of that world all the more terrifying …
Your ‘brain’ is mallieable enough to believe anything.
Thank you Mallie for a reasoned counterpoint. This article and its comments remind me it’s not just the Left who are able to perceive a pet issue where it may or may not exist, then whip themselves into a frenzy over it.
The image of the mask from the movie is owned by Time-Warner. I wonder if the protesters are aware of the irony…
These people are a joke. We’ll know when the real Revolution comes, if it comes. It won’t be adolescent wannabe-hippies dirtying up the park – it will be serious men and women, many of them our friends and co-workers, possibly carrying guns. No mixed messages from them. They’ll know exactly what they want and exactly how they’re going to get it. The OWS cadre of freaks will act as their useful idiots. I hope it never comes to that.
Carrying guns… and ropes. New ropes, if feeling merciful. Do not forget the ropes.
V for Vendetta is not Fascism. Rather, it is the work of Alan Moore and the film-makers, who embrace “the revolt of the elites” who want a new Middle-Ages hereditary rule of trans-national elites.
Like most of everything else in arts and entertainment since 1968, the elites have judged the people, cultures, traditions, values, and freedoms of the Western peoples and found them worthy of extermination. In favor of “drowning” places like the US and Britain in mass waves of non-White immigration, constant attacks on the culture, religion, values, and particularly the people, White working and middle class, as worthy of extermination so a more “enlightened” group of trans-national, trans-cultural, “morally superior” rulers can rule by decree and absolute power absolutely … forever.
The Wildstorm (now DC) comic book “the Authority” (comprised of mostly gay, or drug addict, or genetically altered characters) did much the same by staging a coup and putting most of Middle and Working class White America in concentration camps.
That’s not Fascism, which seeks ultra-nationalism and absorption of every bit of society into a ruling, national party. What Moore and others want is not Mussolini, or Franco. They want something OLDER.
Medieval Hereditary, trans-national rule, or a Roman emperorship. A Charlegmagne, or a Caesar even. They want a global empire, an end to local nations, cultures, religions. Why the hell would the KORAN be included in something about Britain? The Koran and muslims belong in Britain the way the Anglican Church and White Britons belong ruling over say, Egypt. Moore and others want to simply obliterate every nation, culture, society, and people of the WEst in an attempt to construct a monstrous, non-Western, pseudo Roman Emperorship or Multicultural Charlemagne, with themselves as court officials.
Fascism, socialism, communism, etc, ARE throwbacks–the earliest form of government above a tribal chief was the priest-king, ruling with a cadre of priests (i.e. intellectuals) to do his bidding. Cult of personality + the revolutionary vanguard = priest-king + priests of Marduk (or Amon, etc).
The claim that any of the Marxist and Jacobin offshoots are new is just a way to sell something very old. There hasn’t been a single new idea out of that crowd, for all their pretenses. Hammurabi implemented all their ideas nearly four thousand years ago and failed just as miserably as Castro or Pol Pot.
“..trans-national rule..”
What do you think the Panzers were for? They where the delivery system for Hitlers form of fascism.
It is a despicable apologia for murderous violence against free institutions, and presents a pitifully unrealistic rationalization for some of the most oppressive ideas currently in vogue.
Er, what? It’s a revolt against an explicitly fascist authoritarian state modeled overtly on Nazi Germany in the movie.
Yes, but while the fascist authoritarian state portrayed in the movie is fictional, the Old Bailey and Parliament are not. Their destruction at the hands of uniformly-clad throngs of people in masks is a chilling image with definite fascist overtones.
That the filmmakers rationalized it, with a portrayal of a society clearly based on their opinions of current society, doesn’t make it any better.
Thanks for the clarification.
er, what? Moore, like every good brainwashed statist-in-hippie-clothing, begins with the classic juvenile moral relativity fallacy of suggesting a Thatcher is Hitler, or in his better effort the Watchmen, a Reagan is no better than a Gorbie. We know in reality, evidenced by certain countries’ (and economic systems)fences keeping people in, while others’ fences keeping people out, this is a fantasy (albeit a tragic one).
Too bad there are no masks for Stalin or Lenin. I think that would be way more appropriate for the animals protesting on Wall Street. Everything they are protesting for, everything, has been tried and failed in the Soviet Union. And none of it turned out well. It is appalling that a political system that has been proved time and again to be a failure is trying to make a comeback on, of all places, Wall Street, the Mecca of capitalism. This is an insult to our country and Mayor Bloomberg has been a weak-kneed idiot for letting it go on as long as he has. This will only end in violence, just like the riots in London did a few months ago. As usual, no good ever comes of communism, and no good will ever come of these protests.
Masks of Lenin & Stalin…business opportunity! If I had a rapid-prototyping system I would crank out some Che and Lenin masks and see if I could get any of the OWS folks to wear them on camera.
Gotta know they would want to, but some of their slightly more media-savvy folks would shut it down pretty quickly. Can’t tell the truth until after the revolution, kids.
Loved the article, as always, Andrew; However, I don’t think these people are trying “to save the world by lieing about it.” What I see are a bunch of malcontents out for themselves or their cause. Take Geraldo’s interview yesterday of a former welder who’s only desire is to get paid $50,000 a year that will provide his family with their needs and he will go away. He is not concerned about working for it – or where the money would come from.
Or the students who raked up $50,000 in debt on useless degrees like Political Science and believe their dubious accomplishment is an entitlement that he/she should not have to pay for.
Or the Socialist, Communist, Muslim organizations that want to drag the wealthy into the streets and kill them unless they give up their wealth.
In all the cities that they occupy, they live in filth and parade it around, proud of it. They disrupt everyone’s ability to earn a living while they communicate on their Iphones. They have no intent or desire to save the world. They are the essence of the Beatles song “Me, Me, Me, Mine.”
“Or the Socialist, Communist, Muslim organizations that want to drag the wealthy into the streets and kill them unless they give up their wealth.”
After which surrender, they would kill them anyway.
Always keep in mind, these are groups whose dogmas make no room in their perfect worlds for anyone not exactly like them.
If they would ever succeed in exterminating the rest of us, they would instantly turn on each other in a mutual destruction attempt to become the sole surviving “power bloc”.
Then of course there are the “deep-ecologists”, Neo-Luddites, anarchists (the actual crowd who first adopted Guy Fawkes as their idol*), and nihilists, who basically want to erase humanity from the face of the earth, period.
(*Exactly why is a good question- Fawkes was a hired hand, paid by Robert Catesby for his knowledge of how to use gunpowder to blow things up. Hardly a model of “unchained free will”.)
I used to ask “progressive” types, “If your ‘movement’ is so humanitarian, egalitarian, freedom-loving, compassionate, etc., etc., how come you attract all the kill-crazy, death-to-civilization types?”
I stopped when it became obvious that they had no answer.
clear ether
eon
You shouldn’t have stopped. A question that they cannot answer, or which they respond to with wailing and gnashing of teeth, are the most important questions to ask.
Ironically V for Vendetta actually gives ITSELF the lie! Watch the scene at the beginning where the heroine reads sobby letters from two lesbians being persecuted and is tortured and maltreated by a mysterious person.
SPOILER ALERT (not that this movie needed more spoilage)
The mysterious person has been V all along, the prison is a stage covered in props. Our ‘hero’ literally brainwashed a person into later helping him to bomb and murder people.
But they were all bad…right?
No, that’s not at all what that letter said.
Valerie wrote that letter while she was imprisoned and used as a lab rat in the concentration camp run by the state. She was the woman behind door number 4 (IV), she passed the note through a hole in the wall to the prisoner behind door number 5 (V). They were all captured by the state. V destroys the entry in the doctor’s diary that describes who V was before his imprisonment. The people V murders are those directly responsible for the camp itself, that was his “vendetta” all along.
It strikes me that gays would ‘appreciate’ Islam over Christianity. They have read that sex with males not sporting a beard is legal. So, it is natural for them to think about ‘someday’ as being their day.
Also, Islam keeps women out of sight.
“The same supposedly enlightened character also rhapsodizes on the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, whose sado-masochistic photos of leather-clad men could easily have illustrated the sexual imaginations of the brownshirts who facilitated Hitler’s rise to power.”
I was struck by that. Nicky and I have just started reading the Pink Swastika – I had no idea that many of the leaders of the SS were sado-masochistic homosexuals determined to recreate the Hellenic ideal of male superiority and that the Nazi’s persecution of gays was actually an internecine war between the uber-masculine Hellenists and the effete (think Cabaret) gays.
You still have no idea since that book is as fake as “The Road To Stalingrad.”
Nice detective work.
Really? Can you point me to some additional reading material?
Cheers,
Google “Ernst Rohm” and/or “Sturmabteilung”. Also “Night of the Long Knives”.
Rohm was a practicing homosexual, who stuffed the upper ranks of the SA with like-minded gents. Hitler had to get rid of Rohm & Co. to ensure continued support from the largely Prussian upper echelon of the army, who took a dim view of such goings-on. Hence, the purge; getting rid of the likes of Gregor Strasser and other more “proletarian” socialists in the party’s ranks was just a bonus, in his estimation.
The ascendancy of the SS over the SA had as much to do with keeping the German Army Staff happy as it did with ensuring Hitler’s control over the Nazi party.
Most histories of the Nazis cover this affair, from William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” on down. “Night of the Long Knives” by Nikolai Tolstoy (from the old Ballantine Illustrated History of the Violent Century series), and “The Order of the Death’s Head”, a history of the SS by Heinz Hohne, probably do so in the greatest detail.
cheers
eon
“Rohm was a practicing homosexual, who stuffed the upper ranks of the SA with like-minded gents. Hitler had to get rid of Rohm & Co. to ensure continued support from the largely Prussian upper echelon of the army, who took a dim view of such goings-on. Hence, the purge; getting rid of the likes of Gregor Strasser and other more “proletarian” socialists in the party’s ranks was just a bonus, in his estimation.”
The Army didn’t give a damn about Rohm’s sex life. What they did care about was his plan to replace the Army with the SA – with Rohm as commander.
Homosexuality, like the economic system of Marx (no money, no markets, no privatge property) are a symptom of the regressive forces that are gaining a stranglehold on the “Land of the Free”. A high level discussion of these and other relavent matters can be found in Spengler’s “The Decline of the West”, Vol II.
Bank of America’s subsidiaries shifted over 75 Trillion ( yes Trillion ) in defaulting derivatives to main banks books. The last 22 Trillion moved on October 22nd, a Friday so it was buried in weekend news cycles.
This means as of 3 days ago, US taxpayers are now lenders and collateral to banking system for 75 Trillion in Bad bets Merrill Lynch made the last 7-8 years. This is with bank of America alone, the total is approximately 240 Trillion shifted in the last year, with another 180 Trillion still to be moved.
This is start of next and final wave of banking defaults, which most banks and financial systems will not survive.
The OWC may have started out as college kids, but when average citizens uncover the truth about their Banks and governments and what they have been doing the last 25 years manipulating Global banking systems…. we will see mom and pop armed with guns at these events.
Get out of retail Banking system ( BofA, Wells Fargo, Etc, etc) and find a reputable true private Bank and move your assets there.
True Private Banking is a separate system and will not collapse with retail systems.
” V ” is a movie of the fear and willingness of masses to surrender rights and freedoms to create illusions of security. History is full of examples when masses blindly follow their leaders over a cliff, as we have been doing the last 25 years.
It is supposed to make us critically analyze and challenge what leadership of a Nation is telling their citizens. Had we been doing this we would not be in the present situation.
Here’s my problem with what you say about the banks: they have done everything with the complicity and encouragement of the U.S. government. If they did not have the support of the U.S. government and if the things they were doing were not legal (or at least illegal acts quickly brushed under the carpet by the Feds) the lawbreakers WOULD be led out in chains and jailed. We have an openly corporatist political system and with each administration it grows worse, partially because the executive branch is no longer encumbered by the checks and balances of our constitution. With every new legislation pumped out by the administration we are closer to having a sham constitution, if we’re not already there. Our executive and his unelected czars and regulatory bodies are swooping in to finish off what little freedoms we have left. The OWS people are living in cloud cuckoo-land if they believe that socialism/communism is anything more than a plot to concentrate as much power and money as possible in as few hands as possible. It’s what people like George Soros, Jay Rockafeller and Robert Halper live for.
I am one of those occupiers, and I do not believe socialism or communism is the answer to any of our problems. There are socialists participating in OWS, but that’s more a statement about how much socialists like jumping on bandwagons than the character of OWS itself. I believe the experiment of “trickle down economics” has catastrophically failed, but that doesn’t mean I think capitalism has.
I would like to personally urge each and every one of you to share your ideas of a better America and a better world with your local occupy movement. General Assemblies are open to everyone, and anyone can present their ideas to the group and participate in the voting process. If you think OWS is too leftist, show up and help balance it. I think most of us can agree that Washington no longer works.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. When has “trickle down economics” been the system in the US?
Besides what Anastasia said above, I have to add that the Dodd-Frank Act legislation recently passed by the Obama administration to reform the financial system will not reform it. Or didn’t you know? Why point fingers at Wall Street when you should be pointing fingers at government, specifically this present administration. And, were you aware that without the housing bubble that was created by the government there would not have been a financial crises nor the creation of those “defaulting derivatives” you have against banking?
“….the total is approximately 240 Trillion shifted in the last year, with another 180 Trillion still to be moved.”
You are dreaming, unless you are saying that $1 was “shifted” 240 trillion times between Banks A and B or C and D, etc. The entire world GDP was ‘only’ $63-$65 trillion in 2010 as well as in 2007.
Derivatives are devilishly tricky to value, and they pretty much always have two sides, one in the money and one out. Do you only value the one in the money, or do you value the potential losses in the side currently out? The value of the contract is dependent on (derived from) the value of other things, and the biggest bets against the mortgage system have already been cashed in. The real problem will be foreign-exchange derivatives if the Euro blows up, it’s possible to defuse that particular derivative bomb by coordinating the decline of assets so the net difference isn’t particularly significant and nobody ever actually pays the full value of any derivative contract.
Those contracts have an end date, we may have to wait a decade or more for the fuses to burn out short of the full charge but the one thing that’s good about the derivative issue is that it’s essentially a mutual firing squad. Given the relatively few entities doing big derivative contracts, it’s unlikely that there will be one or even a few “winners” — if the derivatives blow in a destabilizing event then everybody is everybody else’s counter-party and if everybody goes broke then nobody can pay anybody anything and the derivative contracts essentially disappear. The fact that the notional value of derivatives is several multiples of world GDP is due in part to financial organizations ending up taking both sides of every derivative contract, through reinsurance or other ways of spreading risk around. It is the financial version of Mutual Assured Destruction.
Pretty-boy Republican Senator from Massachusetts Scott Brown voted FOR the Dodd-Frank Act.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit, and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Kipling
“Some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been wearing the Guy Fawkes mask from the film V for Vendetta. I think this is appropriate.”
My exact thought when I saw the avatar alongside the title of your piece, Andrew. Life is a political-fantasy movie to these children (old & young alike). And, as was the case in the late 60′s–early 70′s, the ideology is largely a fashion statement among the clueless, embarrassingly shallow followers. Same as it ever was: “Oooh, my hair’s getting good in the back” (to quote my favorite Zappa line). These children are sad little tools. And, unfortunately, the leftist elites manipulating them pose a serious threat to us all. Seriously. One wants to simply laugh at them, of course — especially whenever a cop smacks one of them in the chops — or whenever one of them comes before the camera to tell us what he/she *really* thinks (which is always worth a good belly laugh). But the times are ominous. And it’s not like the Vietnam Cold War years. It’s eerier than that. It’s more like what my parents and grandparents (I’m 57) must have been feeling in 1938-41. War is on the horizon. It has only begun to touch us. A very different war from what we have seen before. But it will be global, and the chief victims and targets will almost entirely be workaday civilians.
Curiously thats a funny feeling ive been having for about 4 years now.But unlike others, i will not succumb to fear.Acknowledgement yes, but to think clearly, one cannot run around like a chicken with its head cut off.
On topic, i liked the movie V for Vendetta.Unlike the Occupy movement however i know the difference between reality and a hit piece on political movements/fantasy.In the end however its about people who wish to enslave and those who wish to remain free.Freedom once lost is almost impossible to get back without bloodshed.Syria,Libya, Yemen, etc are areas that have never known real freedom of speech, freedom of the press or human rights.
Eyes wide open.
Now that OWS has highlighted the lack of resolve of America’s officials, the next thing you’ll see will be shanty towns/squatter lands spring up done by illegal aliens.
They will take over public land, get in the media, ask for plumbing and electricity and won’t budge. The officials will do nothing. Public housing will be built on the spot on my dime. There is no saying no to anyone if they have the right politics except for innocent lone photographers shooting a mall who will be harassed by police because the photog is not in a group.
Illegal immigration is destroying this country because the more that come in the more it assures no candidate can be elected who opposes it. In that scenario, it is the faceless peons of Latin America who have ganged up, overwhelmed our institutions and there is no one or nothing to turn them away. V for Vendetta illustrates how institutions can be overwhelmed by a mob – in the real world, it is happening to America.
Thanks for the heads up, Andrew. Probably wasn’t going to see it anyway, but now I know to avoid the plague that it is.
I wonder how many of the fools wearing the Guy Fawkes masks are aware that the original Guy Fawkes was a Catholic fanatic who signed up to fight for the Spanish invasion of Protestant and progressive Holland? Don’t they understand the goal of the Gunpowder plot was to pave the way for an absolutist theocratic monarchy under a Catholic King?
Fawkes is anathema to anybody who believes in freedom and democracy.
Actually, as stated above, Fawkes was a mercenary. He was a professional soldier who worked purely for pay. The actual “fanatic” in the bunch was Robert aka “Robin” Catesby, a Catholic landowner who wanted King James I out of the way because he had failed to lift the restrictions on Catholics imposed by Henry VIII and continued by Elizabeth I. While James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots (beheaded at Elizabeth’s orders in 1587 after being involved in a plot against the Crown), and was married to a Catholic convert, he was a Protestant convert himself who viewed the Roman church with suspicion.
Catesby intended to “remove” King, Queen, Parliament and all at one stroke. Exactly what he expected to do next, he apparently never got around to figuring out, nor did any of the other six men in his circle of plotters. Fawkes was not one of the six. He simply took Catesby’s orders, and money, and put 36 100-pound barrels of gunpowder under the Parliament building. He was in the process of trying to light the fuze when he was apprehended.
Source;
Kelly, Jack. Gunpowder; Alchemy, Bombards, & Pyrotechnics- The History of the Explosive that Changed the World. New York; Basic Books, 2004. Chapter 8, “No One Reasons”, pp.125-129.
cheers
eon
Thank you for the clarification, Eon. Fawkes then was a cynical mercenary, working for Catholic fanatics. The plot was still intended to install a Catholic theocracy in England, although how exactly that was to be achieved was vague.
In any event, the use of Fawkes’ image by todays anarchists & leftist protesters is absurd.
You make some good points about the movie, but there are a couple of points you miss. First Alan Moore completely and utterly divorced himself from the movie (and after seeing it, I understand.) Second, the message found in the graphic novel is far deeper and more complex than the simplistic treatment in the movie. It actually takes place after a full-scale nuclear exchange and is one of the few countries left intact afterward. Fascism descends to give everyone ‘security’–which includes persecution and camps. Did Alan throw a few jabs at conservatives in there? Sure, but the message behind it is the individual versus the state and several pro-libertarian messages. A perfect story? No, but damn good.
The dems embrace of OWS types is symptomatic of their political evolution possibly about to go into an end time tailspin in which they crash and burn—in the next election—and the sun comes out again after four years of the Obama winter. Of course, I’m just projecting; the dems will realize their mistake of mistakes—I mean Obama—and try to toss him into the political dumpster as soon as they can. In the meantime their happy face front of solidarity with O continues to be delicious.
“When given a choice, the Left always chooses the path of violence”, Paul Johnson in “Modern Times”
“You can’t save the world by lying about.”
Okay. But you can gain power, exercise your hatred, and punish your enemies by lying: look at 20th century Europe. The goal isn’t saving the world; it’s remaking it. OWS’s goal is not to save the world; they haven’t the good will or good natures to do so. The goal is to end democracy, as the similar anti-democratic rebellions in German and Russia in the 20th century, and put the better sort in charge: themselves.
It may be worth mentioning that Alan Moore disavowed the film adaptation of his “graphic novel”…
Yes, the leaders – such as they are – of the Occupy movement are a bunch of statists of all sorts. But the rank and file are expressing a sincere angst and frustration about a system which has been maintained by both Republican and Democratic elites. Can the Tea Party and Occupy join hands against the forces that want to use them to maintain their own power in the status quo? Read more at http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=238463192876087
As usual, you get to the reality of what is going on in the world an in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Lately I’ve been reading “The American Mind in the Mid-Nineteenth Century” by Irving Bartlet. In the section on Nathaniel Hawthorne the author makes some points that sound like he could be trying to tell The Occupy Wall Street movement and us something. Here it is…
Hawthorne differed with the Transcendentalists not only in matters of religion and personal salvation, but also on social reform. His sketch “Earth’s Holocaust” describes a great bonfire on the Western parairies fed by reformers who want to get rid of all the outmoded rubbish cluttering up modern democratic society. First to go into the blaze are the trappings of aristrocracy, followed in close order by royal robes and crowns, all the weapons of the world, wine and tobacco, the gallows, deeds of property, marriage certificates, political constitutions, and finally the Holy Bible. “The inhabitants of the earth had grown too enlightened to define their faith within a form of words, or to limit the spiritual by any analogy to our material existance. Truths which the heavens trembled at were now but a fable of the worlds infancy.” At the end of the tale the narrator concludes that the reformers had burned up the world without reaching the source of human misery. “The heart, the heart, – there was the little boundless sphere wherein existed the original wrong of which the crime and misery of this outward world were merely types. Purify that inward sphere and the many shapes of evil that haunt the outward, and which now seem almost our only realities, will turn to shadowy phantoms and vanish of their own accord…”
You cannot save the world by lying about it.
But the point is that they don’t want to “save the world”. It is the metaphor they use but those financing the whole business and pulling the strings want to trash what we know of as the world.
Grouping together the thinking from Marx through Alinsky, Piven and the financiers of the Masketeers and analysing their actions we can come to the conclusion that they want anarchy to set them on the road to power.
V for Vendetta isn’t the point of the OWS masks. Rather, it is one degree removed from why those masks are used. They’re a symbol of Anonymous. The original main point of the Anonymous masks was concealing one’s identity from Scientology, which is known for unfairly screwing with people that oppose it. The secondary point was not taking credit for one’s actions.
The primary point of wearing a mask is to hide your face because you’re ashamed of what you’re doing or too chicken to accept the consequences.
For what it is worth, Guy Fawkes is largely thought of these days as “the only man to enter Parliament with honest intentions” – i.e, to blow it up.
As such, his popularity as a symbol is largely a manifestation of disgust with the political system, which is just as bad over here as with you chaps over there.
Thank you, Andrew, for putting into words (and well, done, too) what I have always felt about this film. It is, after all, a movie based on a comic book. The legion of adolescent nascent leftists eat this stuff up. Like the OWS crowd, they’re angry because… well, just because, and the immature mind tends to look towards violence and coercion as a solution. They don’t even know it’s fascism ’cause, hey man, those people who own property and have nice houses and families and go to church, like, they’re the fascists, man.
FYI – The Guy Fawkes mask is one of the ways that some members of Anonymous identify themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)
In that context, the mask originally derived less from V for Vendetta, and more from the Epic Fail Guy meme. http://ohinternet.com/Epic_Fail_Guy
Which is also appropriate.
What exactly is “beautiful” about the Koran? I can’t imagine that anyone involved in V for Vendetta has ever read the Koran in English, much less Arabic.
Anyone?
How many of you folks actually watched the movie?
The movie I saw by that name was about freedom vs tyranny. It was anti-big government and anti-fascist.
The comments here seem to support tyranny over freedom. Most of the comments here seem to support fascism over liberty. (Fascism defined as the ‘marriage’ of government and business)
That’s what the Bolsheviks said too.
Fascism was not the “marriage” of government and business. More like government kidnapping business and keeping it as a sex slave.
That supposed Mussolini quote about a union of state and “corporate” power, doesn’t translate from the Italian the way you think it does.
Well, I haven’t watched or read Harry Potter either. Simplistic, childish answers to complex, real world situations whether containing magical or naively political elements shouldn’t appeal to adults and if they are merely ephemeral distractions from the world, at best, should remain that. Muggle, me.
Given that you clearly have no idea what fascism is, your opinion may be suitably filed in the plonk-bucket.
Ah, Bonesteel — proclaimed (by himself) to be the world’s only completely non-ideological person, as I recall.
Still full of yourself, I see.
Why are these people so quick to destroy what so many have perished to protect and create?
That’s nuts.
Didn’t someone say Modern Liberalism is a mental disorder?
OWS survives on general public sufferance at the mercy of Mayor Bloomberg and his friends. Make no mistake he wants a ‘Arab Spring’ here this fall.
What they do not fathom is that the very values they mock, are what allows their continued survival, that of course, and the fact that they really don’t count for anything. In other times and places their efforts could only make them targets and their Watership Down would turn into a rabbit drive.
RE Watchmen: the entire graphic novel (aside from Rorschach) is a liberal wetdream. Every character (aside from Rorschach) is a two-dimensional liberal analog from another wetdream story. The only remotely anti-authoritarian, free-system-loving, personal responsibility keeping character in the novel is, you guessed it, Rorschach. He is portrayed as being this way only because of how paranoid and deranged he is. Almost everything he’s done is shown in a negative light, and by the end of the novel, the writer seems to cast that everything he does represents all of the most horrible and primitive traits of a human, instead of the best ones.
The biggest issue with this assessment is that, in almost every case, he’s right in his assessments of the world around him. Jon, the uberliberal messiah that has none of that icky personal interests, emotion, or attachment to cloud his judgment of humanity, turns out to be the real villain, and Rorschach always knew he was a dick. The moral message is that “the ends justify the means, as long as you’re trying to create an uberliberal utopia final solution.”
“… Jon, the uberliberal messiah … turns out to be the real villain …”
You mean Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt).
At the end, R’s hero turns to be an unreconstructed John Bircher – thus making a joke of the character.
I don’t see that the OWS types are particularly fascist. They’re communists, even if they won’t admit it. The defining difference (as manifest in the two major and coherent historical forms, Italian Fascism and German National Socialism) is that the fascists have a strong nationalist (or, in the German variant, a “race mythos”) component, whereas the communists follow Marx and Trotsky in being devoted to worldwide revolution and subsequent international communist paradise. The American left since, say, 1968, has been accused of many things, but nationalism (or its more homey variant, patriotism) ain’t one of them.
The depressing aspect is their numbers. They are the hapless, hopeless, never-do-wells who become part of revolutions and sometimes turn ugly and dangerous. I can visualize Obama up half the night scheming as to how he could use them more effectively. Yes, Wall Street has needed correction and controls for a long time but this rabble and its rousers wouldn’t begin to understand what-why-how. If one could only dispatch huge garbage trucks to cart off all this human garbage and dump it somewhere in the Middle East where it would fit better.
Here’s Alan Moore’s response after reading the script. He refused to see the movie.
“ [The movie] has been “turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country… It’s a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives — which is not what the comic V for Vendetta was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about England.[12] ”
Questionable article by a believer in the biggest lie in the world—Christianity. How can a relative intelligent people continue to believe in a myth that is only matched by the tale of Zeus.
Questionable post by a believer in the biggest annoyance of the internet—Trolling. How can a relative intelligent people continue to tolerate a troll that is only matched by the tale of 3 billy goats Gruff.
Lets play Atheism or Aspergers!
June for $500, from the comment above can you tell the difference?
Neither aspergers nor atheism — assholism.
“How can a relative [sic] intelligent people…..”
Apparently, many “relative[ly] intelligent” scientists believe in the Big Bang Theory, that out of nothing came something the size of a pinpoint, containing all the mass of the universe…..and then BANG…..and here we are.
Here’s the thing about the origins of the Guy Fawkes mask bit, that commentators, and most mask wearers nowadays, don’t know.
Back in 2006, stick-figure comics depicting a character who is bound to fail at everything he does, started to appear on that nexus of everything unwholesome, 4chan.org. The Character soon became known as “Epic Fail Guy.”
In the fall of 2006, a thread was posted in which “Epic Fail Guy” found a Guy Fawkes mask similar to the one in the movie V for Vendetta in a garbage bin. From this point onward, many more Epic Fail Guy threads would appear on 4chan depicting him both with and without the Guy Fawkes mask. EFG wore the mask because the real Guy Fawkes was an Epic Failure at his reactionary task. As time went on, Epic Fail Guy began to appear almost exclusively wearing the mask.
Anonymous’s preference for the mask grew directly from this meme, and Anonymous started wearing the Epic Fail Guy mask IRL during their Scientology protests; equating EFG with Scientology as examples of epic failures.
The hipster left, infatuated with protests and “internet culture”, misinterpreted Anonymous’s mask wearing as straight emulation of scenes from V for Vendetta, rather than a convoluted in-joke; and it snowballed downhill from there.
Isn’t it an odd thing that the slogan used by Obama,(YES WE CAN) played backwards is, (Thank you satan). So for all those who have gone to any speech by Obama have been used to worship satan and you didn’t even know it. Check it out on the net, it’s out there. It also shows how evil this Administration is.
“I have not read the graphic novel on which the movie is based and make no comment on it, ”
Excellent caveat, as the comic was less about “people power” or mass movements than the movie was. The viewpoint was more anarchist in the comic.
In the comic, the character of V put the people on notice as part of the problem as well as the government. That their consent, or acquiencence makes the ills of government possible.
The chapter that illustrates this best is the one in which V, having commondeered the state TV network, broadcasts his message, “A Vocational Viewpoint,” in which he discredits the very invention of govermnent as a mistake.
V acts not as a liberator, but as a deconstructor. He acts to destroy the government, plunging England into chaos by design. It is V’s hope that people rebuild society without government. But that is left an open question at the end of the book.
This has very little to do with anything that #OWS seems to be about. In fact, #OWS seems to be creating their own internal government. V certainly would not approve.
In some ways, V is a bizarre cousin of John Galt. Galt and friends withdraw themselves from society, to let itself collapse. V, being less about economics, and more about individual rights of all those run over by the will (or indifference) of the masses, not just the producers. Therefore, V takes a more pro-active approach towards the deconstruction of society, and leaves its reconstruction as an exercise for the people themselves.
June 1, 2011 – 8:07 P.M. Homeland Security testing mind-reading terrorist ‘pre-crime’ detectors
http://blogs.computerworld.com/18388/homeland_security_testing_mind_reading_terrorist_pre_crime_detectors#disqus_thread
^^^ What Shawn L. said.
Missed so far in all the comments: I think the reason why the movie differed so much from the graphic novel was that the graphic novel (written in the early ’80s) was Alan Moore’s nightmare of what would happen due to Reagan’s foreign policy. The UK has turned Fascist because the world is in chaos, following the nuclear war triggered by Reagan placing missiles in Europe.
Not only was Moore completely wrong about a war breaking out, it would now appear that Reagan’s actions triggered the peaceful demise of the USSR. Who’da thunk?
The movie couldn’t start out referencing a nuclear war that never happened, so the scriptwriters changed the premise to such a point that even Moore couldn’t buy it.
In other words: both the graphic novel and the movie script turn out to be epic fail.
Amazing, that the long march of the Left through the institutions finally was complete with the comics. Ironically, the only “counters” were anarchists like Moore – not much of a counter. This goes back quite a bit now.
Ever read the original Dark Night series? The conclusion seems pretty close to fascist. Or, for that matter, Batman can torture people, as long as he doesn’t pick up a gun – a parley of the orginal policy (possibly due to the old Comics Code) – into left-wing politics.
V is a movie that at it’s core has a libertarian mindset of “Don’t Tread on Me”. It is wrapped in a typical Hollywood box of illogical liberal examples as mentioned in this article and yes the bad guys in the movie are fundamentalist religious people. The original graphic novel did not have most of the liberal set pieces and barely emphasized the religious aspect of the tyrannical government. It was mainly anti-Thatcher which is not uncommon for British comic book authors (cool “hip” artists never like the conservative stick in the mud).
The spirit of the V character is what most people who like it care about, which is to stand up and fight against tyrannical oppression. In the age of oligarchs that now control both parties, we have a government that refuses to represent the people, and have come full circle to a place the founding fathers tried to protect us from falling into. That is why OWS and the Tea Party and the idea behind the V character are resonating amongst the frustrated masses. This is a full blown populist movement of angry citizens who want to end business as usual and set things right.
Any “populist movement” that contains words like “Occupy” will invariably evolve into using words like “jail”, “enslave”, then “kill”. There are too many in the OWS “movement” who would replace our government with communism. And we all know how well that turned out for the hundreds of millions murdered and jailed.
Populist movements often act like a herd of cats heading in every possible direction. OWS is just a chunk that has been indoctrinated by the leftest academics in control of our educational system to think the ultimate utopian society is communist. This especially appeals to their desire to dismiss their six figure debt for paying to be indoctrinated. That being said, this current populist movement in America is much larger than OWS and is charging about looking for change and targets of opportunity to distribute the pain and suffering back onto the idiot leaders that have gotten us into this mess. This is going to continue and the group of leaders that gets serious about abandoning business as usual and satisfying this growing sentiment will crush the current placeholders. This has happened several times in American history and is why we have seen entire political parties, like the Whigs, wiped out in a few elections because they didn’t “get” it.
I had no idea what the movie or graphic novel were about, except what little I saw in the trailers, which told me nothing about Islam or Christianity. I know that I had no desire whatsoever to see it, because my “rationality sense” was tingling. I’m glad I passed on it.
They do not care about saving the world. They want to take it over. All they care about is power. Fithian is a psychopath who is driven by hate. She is a social misfit who was ridiculted here whole life and now has a vendetta agaiainst socieity.
Radiacal politics gives an outlet for her mental disorder. The would kill as many people as it takes. By herself she is pathetic. If they take over the levers of social order– they are dangerous.
She would like to create a crisis and then offer to impose order with her and her band of lunatics at the top. Our values prevent us from taking her out in the woods and feeding her to the coyotes.
I dont think you could have missed the point of the comic or movie any harder if you tried.
Interesting. Now I know why I didn’t care for that movie.
To the author of this article; Read a book and not just the graphic novel mentioned in your diatribe. Learn some history. Then get online and have something to say. You are entitled to your opinions, but you should at least make yourself aware of the real history behind the images and concepts you are so disgruntled by. Feel free to come back at this comment with any amount of responses you like, I won’t be checking back in as I have said what I feel is needed. I am sure, based on what I just read, that you and many others like you will have plenty to say. Frankly I don’t care, all I need to know about your views I just read, and from where I am sitting, you are ignorant.
Try not using ad hominem arguments in your ranting if you don’t want to receive similar responses. This is clearly a targeted piece of propagandist nonsense which would be much more effective if you really had any idea what you are talking about regarding non-christian cultures and if you were able to see that many so called Christians are out committing acts of violence and hatred in much the same way that some so called Muslims are violating the teachings of their professed religion.
Christianity is NOT the basis of free societies, in fact the spread of Christianity to much of the world was done through coercion and violence.
Try learning some actual history and what the actual significance of the events and people you are railing against is before you spread more ignorance
You still cannot deny that free societies all emerged in Christian nations, and pretty much all non-christian nations were not free. The only exceptions to this were some asian contries like Japan and Korea, but in those cases it was mainly because of US occupation and influence. I think Christianity is partly the cause of that. because of some unique doctrinal differences, like:
1. Christianity, especially the new testemanent, does not sanction violence against non-beleivers, and in fact advocates that you love your enemies and turn the other cheek, and say that those who live by violence will die by it, and does not sanction spreading the religion by violence. Mind you the old testament does sanction violence against non-beleivers, but in Christianity the non-violent new testament has precedence. You are correct that many Christian societies committed violence, but it was their own decision, not supported by scripture, and that violence was often opposed by religious leaders.
2. Islam by contrast, does sanction violence against non-beleivers, and supports the spread of the religion by conquest, and this is in the actual scriptures, including the later ones with more precedence, not just peoples attitudes. It also mixes religion and state in a way that christianity does not, leading to theocracies, or dictators who are also religious prophets, and explicitely suppports gov discrimination against non-beleivers. Why do leftists always raise the spector of Christian theocracies, when there have been none (older christian nations that were oppressive were not theocracies, but socialist dictatorships, monarchies or empires), and ignore the fact that there have always been muslim theocracies, and there are Muslim theocracies TODAY.
3. Other religions, like Hinduism or Buddhism, also generally do not support violence, and are therefore much better than Islam, although their caste system is a severe impediment to equality before the law, an essencial ingredient to free market capitalism, and democracy. By contrast, Christianity always supported equality of individuals before God, regardless of birth, which helped lead to the concept of equality before the law.
“You still cannot deny that free societies all emerged in Christian nations, and pretty much all non-christian nations were not free.”
But is this because these nations are Christian or because they have economic advantages and longer histories of civilizations, free spread of ideas, and civil society? The USA is not free because it is Christian (although that doesn’t hurt), it’s free because we made it free.
“2. Islam by contrast, does sanction violence against non-beleivers, and supports the spread of the religion by conquest, and this is in the actual scriptures, including the later ones with more precedence, not just peoples attitudes.”
The Koran does not, in fact. The Koran clearly states on several occasions that if your enemies don’t use violence against you, you shouldn’t use it against them. It does makes several references to “killing the polytheists” but that’s not a general command (when taken within it’s historical context). The “later ones” to which you refer are the product of men and can be reversed … the Koran is not (to believers) but even it can be reinterpreted. The point is that Islam need not be inherently violent.
“It also mixes religion and state in a way that christianity does not, leading to theocracies, or dictators who are also religious prophets, and explicitely suppports gov discrimination against non-beleivers. Why do leftists always raise the spector of Christian theocracies, when there have been none (older christian nations that were oppressive were not theocracies, but socialist dictatorships, monarchies or empires), and ignore the fact that there have always been muslim theocracies, and there are Muslim theocracies TODAY.”
Early Islam had the same separation of religious authority and civil authority that early Christianity had. The separation of church and state is a very modern ideal that originated in the West and is still hotly contested … Christianity had it’s reformation … and Islam will have it’s as well. Furthermore, there have not always been Muslim theocracies … the first one was Iran. Muslim kings and sultans ruled their territories in the same way that Christians did. With the support of religious authorities. A theocracy is not the incorporation of religion into law and governance but the rule of religious institutions. and there has been at least one Christian theocracy. The pope ruled much of Italy and still controls governance of Vatican City (technically a theocracy).
Oh, god, not another “religion of peace” nut.
All this singing and dancing aside, one must admit that those marks are rather stylish – probably the best thing these OWS turkeys have going for them.
D’oh! “Masks”, not “marks”.
The necessity for an “edit” button is apparent.
I wrote about this film on page 350 of my book “Serket’s Movies” and made this observation: “It is ironic when certain people claim to oppose authoritarian rule and then either encourage or ignore their elected officials as they gradually take our rights away. There are better ways of encouraging freedom than through the use of domestic violence and terror.”
Also, the real 1605 plot was in reaction to systematic discrimination against Catholics.
Andrew – thank you for such a great analysis of the OWS protestors. Gerald Meunier, author of political thriller, ROGUE PATRIOT.
I have to admit that I kind of liked Vendetta when I saw it, because I liked the idea of resisting a corrupt gov, and that the main character was cultured and valued reason. But I agree that the standard hollywood cliche of the oppressive gov being Christian fundamentalist, and oppressing Muslims and homosexuals, was offputting and highly unrealistic. In reality, any oppressive gov today would be far more likely to be either socialist or Muslim fundamentalist. I also agree that basing the resistamce on terrorist tactics was also bad.
I can’t take it anymore. Whenever people with limited intellect run amok and criticize literature or theater from within their own admittedly limited perspective, terrible things occur.
Who cares the religion?
That wasn’t the point of the movie.
The Government USED religion and FEAR to manipulate the populace.
To sieze power.
Really, you call what V did terrorism against free institutions?
THERE WAS NO FREEDOM.
He was striking back against a regime that had stripped people of their freedoms.
That you would call it a free institution tells me where you lie on your ideological spectrum.
Apparently you have no issue with fascists, as long as they promote your particular ideology.
YOu wanted them to promote a different religion and then you can fight that.
Government and religion should not mix.
Governments should be afraid of their people, the people SHOULD NOT fear their government.
That this many people find it okay for a government to run people like slaves frightens me.
That the idea of banning books and music and art that someone finds morally reprehensible doesn’t meet with universal scorn and derision is disgusting.
When we fear freedom more than we fear being controlled, we will end up with the government we deserve.
And when there is no redress to our greivances because our government has become a fascist, socialist, or communist state with no repercussions for their actions…then what avenue is left but resistance.
Better restistence than becoming cattle.
Every true american should adore this movie…
IT’s about the triumph of individual will over government oligarchy.
NOT mob rule.
I agree with you that the real point of the movie was resistance to tyranny. But I agree with the author that choosing Christian fundamentalism as the typical example of tyranny was a tired unrealistic hollywood cliche, and it would have made the movie much more realistic if they had chosen a real example of a likely tyranny, either Muslim fundamentalism, or socialist/communist/fascist (and no, Christian fundamentalists are NOT fascists, or at least no more fascist than ordinary people, real fascists worship the state and the folk, not God.). By making their tyranny a christian fundamentalist tyranny they confused their message, from the laudable one of resistance to tyranny, into an anti christian screed.
A further point on the movie terrorism. I agree that violent resistance is fully justified, including assasination of regime leaders, a tactic that is often called terrorism. My deviding line on when legidimate resistance crosses into terrorism is the targets. Regime leaders, military, and police are legit targets for a resistance movement. But ordinary civilians are not. By that standard, the hero of the movie was not a real terrorist, since while using some terrorist tactics, like assisination and blowing up buildings, he never actualy harmed any innocent people. Also by that definition, Muslim terrorists, and the IRA, are indeed real terrorists, when their attacks harm ordinary civilians.
I have yet to study any one political system or economic system and find one where there are no “have’s & have not’s”. In short, there will always be have’s & have not’s. The difference is, will all inbetween be governed by an elite wealthy & powerful few, or will they have at least ‘some’ representation in the political process & will they retain a modicum of private property rights, along with those other rights America’s constitution states are theirs, by divine or natural law?
Another big consideration is whether a have not, through hard work and luck, can become a have. Oligarchic tyrannies usually have barriers to entry, and trade restrictions, that bar ordinary people from starting a large enterprise that can then allow them to work their way into the elite, unless they have political connections. Free market capitalism is the only system that does not bar ordinary people from becomming rich, even if it is still not easy, and requires a lot of work, and usually some luck.
The Victims of Greenpeace Exposed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBb_tm76NiY&feature=player_embedded#!
Scratch a democrat….find a fascist
See J. Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” for the details.