Zeitgeist

The following is an installment in AltRight's ongoing series “So This Is How It Ends” (STIHIE), which chronicles instances of decadence so advanced that one can only conclude and hope that we are living in a terminal stage of Western civilization.

Rebecca Black should be commended for pushing gurl pop to its inevitable conclusion. No longer will suburban tweens be confused by their favorite star’s poetic lyrics. Indeed, “Friday” makes “Oops I Did It Again” read like the Pound Cantos.  And taking its lead from the “Bed Intruder Song,” “Friday” is auto-tuned in its entirety. Now, budding gurlstars won’t have to worry about actually singing in key or in tune to produce a video with tens of millions of hits.

Rolling Stone suggest “Friday” will leave only devastation in its wake: 

[T]hus Black and Ark Music Factory have made a video that forces its audience to reckon with a particular formula for pop music. It's not as if any of this was ever actually cool, but suddenly it seems as if any legit pop singer goes anywhere near the vibe of "Friday," it will just seem like a joke.

The music of STIHIT was produced by the Los Angeles-based Ark Music Factory. Reading between the lines of its “About” page, one understands that its business model is to get the artist’s parents to finance the music videos in hopes that their daughter might “make it” in an industry known for chewing up and spitting out young coeds. One can imagine the Ark salespitch, "Your daughter is clearly exceptionally talented, and we don't want that to go to waste." 

Ark can even provide you with a Big Black Gansta, who will rap about and cavort around your daughter.

Thought Catalog notes that at one time, “music industry bottom feeders had to seek out the child prodigies and pre-teen crooners they sought to exploit.” Now, the gurls come to them.

And who knows who will be the next Ark gurl to go viral. I’ve got dibs on “CJ Fam.” By the looks of her, she has enough obnoxious badgering power to make herself a star.

The other day, I wrote that it's getting harder and harder to find fictional movie villains that don't violate political correctness and that the only real country left you are allowed to use is North Korea.  I felt a brief pang of conscience after writing that.  "I'm being unfair," I thought.  “After all, the remake of Red Dawn at least has the Chinese as the invading force.”

Once again, I underestimated the amount of stupidity in the world.  Today comes the announcement that for fear of offending foreign consumers, the enemy in Red Dawn has been changed to—wait for it—North Korea.  All of the advance marketing for the movie, which was pretty extensive, is being completely redone. The film—which was already shot—is now being digitally altered. Fictional America is at war with North Korea.  Fictional America has always been at war with North Korea.  There wasn't even any protest from Chinese-Americans or the Chinese government.  They caved unilaterally. 

Of course, this also screws up the story.  A Chinese invasion in America could at least allow movie critics to write things like "the fact that this movie is even made suggests concern within the American subconscious about being displaced as the sole superpower."  Now the movie is just stupid.

At least a Soviet invasion during the 1980’s made some kind of sense. The only explanation here will be Evil. Even more than in the original, I expect the main targets of the invading force will be schools, unoccupied vehicles, unarmed children, and other key military targets.

As an aside, I note here that John Milius, who was the screenwriter for the original Red Dawn, also wrote the backstory for the new video game Homefront.  Homefront allows you to fight in the "Second American Revolution," against the North Koreans that are occupying San Francisco for some reason.  It should be noted that the initial villain in Homefront was also the Chinese but that was changed too.

Alexander Dugin has said that North Korea must be supported because it is standing in opposition to the global American empire.  I agree it must be supported, but for a different reason.  If North Korea falls, we won't have a single actually existing country left we can use as a movie villain.

Anyone who wants to know how we got to the point of all this Diversity nonsense and multicultural madness, and where it came from, should watch this short film called The House I Live In. Starring Frank Sinatra, it came out in 1945, and was created “to oppose anti-Semitism and racial prejudice.” It was awarded both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award in 1946.

The plot’s pretty simple. Sinatra, playing himself, heads outside for a cigarette break in the middle of a recording session, where he happens upon a gang of about a dozen young boys chasing and cornering another kid, getting ready to pummel him. Sinatra intervenes, asking what the trouble is. The ruffians explain that they want to beat the kid up because they don’t like his religion. One tells Sinatra “he’s a dirty -” but Frank cuts him off before he can finish the sentence.

Frank then has a talk with the boys, and shows them how wrong they are. Does he tell them that, while religion is important, going around beating up people with a different religion is not appropriate behavior? Nah, Frank cuts right to the chase. He tells them:

“Look, fellas, religion makes no difference. Except maybe to a Nazi, or somebody that’s stupid.”

Christians like to complain about “modern day” Hollywood denigrating and downplaying Christianity, while insisting that back in the good old days Hollywood respected Christianity. But even back in 1945 Hollywood was giving Oscars to a movie that says that anyone who thinks Christianity is better than other religions is either a Nazi, or stupid.

Sinatra then goes on to explain that we’re all Americans, no matter what we believe, and “prejudice” and “intolerance” are wrong, because even though we all may not see eye to eye on religion, we’ve got to stick together to fight “the Japs.” And, yes, he says “Japs”, repeatedly. The kids then stare wide eyed as Frank breaks into an expurgated rendition of the title song.

The film is based on the song of the same name, The House I Live In. It’s all about America being a multiracial, multicultural Disneyland. But the songwriter was livid that the movie makers cut the verse that explicitly refers to blacks out of the movie. He even got tossed out of a theater for protesting the excision. But the people that made the movie knew that America wasn’t quite ready for a movie promoting that much Diversity just yet. No matter; they had plenty of time, and now they push not only racial integration, but miscegenation non-stop. And it goes without saying that if they were making the movie today, they would no doubt still leave in the line comparing evangelicals to Nazis for thinking religion is important, but they would take out the stuff about “Japs.”

Nowadays, of course, the message of the movie is considered mainstream. Who doesn’t love “tolerance” and “diversity” these days? But back then, the idea that race and religion were meaningless trivialities was only being pushed by radicals, Jews, and Communists. Forced racial integration was considered to be a Communist plot, largely because it was a Communist plot. And if you think I exaggerate, just consult some history books. Christians and conservatives of today love to pretend as if they’ve always stood for and promoted interracial marriage, integrated schools, integrated churches, Civil Rights laws, etc., and that Martin Luther King was the embodiment of Christian conservatism. But nothing could be further from the truth. Conservative evangelical churches in the era between WW 2 and the 1970s railed against racial integration, and opposed all efforts to mix the races. Probably not five white preachers out of a thousand would’ve conducted an interracial marriage in 1964. Conservatives and Christians weren’t “marching with Dr. King”; the non-blacks marching with MLK were Quakers, liberal apostate “Christians”, commies, beatniks, and, overwhelmingly, Jews. (One of the rare exceptions was Billy Graham, and he certainly didn’t take a prominent position in the Civil Rights crusade, because he knew it would kill his ministry. But he did invite King to pray at a New York City revival, and insisted on integrated seating at all his revival meetings. He was widely denounced by conservative Christians for these actions.) Again, just check the history books if you doubt that modern day shibboleths on race were considered far out, dangerous radicalism by Americans up until quite recently, and that the people pushing such things were generally Communists.

But if you don’t have time to read some history books, just watch the credits for this Academy Award winning movie. It’s like a Who’s Who of Hollywood Communism and radicalism. Sinatra was just their front man.

Let’s start with the man who wrote the lyrics to the song on which the movie is based. In the movie he’s credited as “Lewis Allan”, but don’t pay any attention to that. His real name was Abel Meeropol. He also wrote Strange Fruit, the song about lynching in the South which Billie Holiday made famous, and which TIME magazine called the most important song of the 20th century. Holiday claimed she wrote it in her autobiography, but that was a lie. And who was Abel Meeropol? Our good friend Max Blumenthal tells us that he was “a Jewish school teacher”, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Quite a bit more. Remember Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the nice Jewish couple executed for giving our atomic secrets to the Soviet Union? Well, after they were executed, Abel Meeropol adopted their kids. Was that because he took pity on a couple orphans? Possibly. It might also have to do with the fact that the “Jewish school teacher” was an “ardent Communist” himself. Funny how Blumenthal forgot to mention that little fact…

OK, so we’ve seen that the lyricist for the song which inspired the movie was some strange fruit, indeed. What about others? Well, Earl Robinson wrote the music for the song. You remember Earl Robinson, right? He was one of the notorious Hollywood Ten, who were blacklisted for refusing to tell Congress whether or not they had ever been members of the Communist Party. Of course, every single one of the Hollywood Ten either was or had been a member of the Communist Party. Most still were. Robinson also wrote the music for other songs, like Ballad For Americans, an anthem all about how race and religion don’t matter. It was performed at the Communist Party national convention of 1940. (They also played it the GOP convention that year, which oughta tell you something.) Robinson also wrote Black and White, a celebration of the Brown vs. Board of Education travesty of jurisprudence. You’ve probably heard a watered down version of Black and White – Three Dog Night had a #1 hit with their less blatantly political form of the song in 1972.

OK, so the guy who wrote the words to the song that inspired the movie was an America hating Communist. And the guy who wrote the music was another Communist. Anyone else? Well, there’s also the guy who wrote the screenplay for the movie. His name was Albert Maltz, surprise, surprise, and he, too, “was a man on the rise both inside and outside of the Communist Party.”

Yes, The House I Live In, and its message, was a Communist production through and through. And make no mistake. The message of the movie wasn’t that people shouldn’t go around beating up Jews. We have no problem with that message; we oppose violence against anyone. But that wasn’t the message of the movie. The message was that religion and race are meaningless trivialities, and anyone who disagrees is either “a Nazi” or “stupid.”

In 1945, that was a radical Communist idea. Now, it’s a mainstream view parroted by nearly everyone.

The BBC reports today that the producer of the United Kingdom’s TV drama, Midsomer Murders

has been suspended after saying the drama “wouldn’t work” if there was racial diversity in the show.

Brian True-May, who co-created the series, told the Radio Times the long-running drama was a “last bastion of Englishness” and should stay that way.

Production company All3Media told the BBC Mr True-May had been suspended pending an internal investigation.

ITV said it was “shocked and appalled” by the producer’s comments.

“We are in urgent discussions with All3Media...who have informed us that they have launched an immediate investigation into the matter,” a spokesman added.

I cannot help but feel amusement at the thought that Englishness—imagine that!—is shocking and appalling to one of the country’s main television networks—something meriting “urgent [top-level] discussions”. Urgent discussions!

Quick! Englishness has been identified! Undiluted in a television drama! We must eradicate it! Fire everyone involved! Apologise, on our knees! Investigate, thoroughly! Get right down to the molecular level. And either cancel the show or re-cast it in its entirety. Never mind the show’s setting. Never mind demography in rural England (that will have to change anyway). Never mind the audience—7 million English folk. They do not count; their money is no good. They are, after all… English… Racist, bigoted, backward, tea-swilling, scone-munching, English-speaking, English scum.

The BBC report continues,

Mr True-May told the magazine: "We are a cosmopolitan society in this country, but if you watch Midsomer you wouldn't think so.

"I've never been picked up on that, but quite honestly I wouldn't want to change it," he said.

Of his all-white portrayal of rural life in Britain's murder capital he said: "Maybe I'm not politically correct."

The programme—which has run for 14 series—appealed to a "certain audience", he said.

Mr True-May added: "We just don't have ethnic minorities involved. Because it wouldn't be the English village with them. It just wouldn't work."

Asked why "Englishness" could not include other races who are well represented in modern society, he said: "Well, it should do, and maybe I'm not politically correct.

"I'm trying to make something that appeals to a certain audience, which seems to succeed. And I don't want to change it."

Well, evidently, Mr. True-May failed to realise who it is that puts food on his plate. Reality is irrelevant; he is a producer, and it is therefore his job to produce an acceptable version of reality, not to depict it. Even a five-year-old knows that.

The BBC’s report offers the all-important piece of data that ought to have been addressed years ago:

A study in 2006 found the programme to be “strikingly unpopular” with viewers from ethnic minorities.

Of course, while this may appear to argue against the viability of strategies for racial integration, since it appears to betray some difficulty among ethnic minorities identifying with Englishness, the problem is easy to solve: just eliminate the English. Mr. True-May ought to have thought of it. But he refused. How did a man like this last so long undetected in the industry?

Some good points are made:

However Ash Atalla, producer of sitcoms The Office and the IT crowd, said it was a “generational thing”, where people of a certain age liked to believe that "Englishness" was all-white.

“Midsomer Murders is not for someone like me. I'm too young and I find the show rather dull,” he said.

Exactly. White is old and boring; dark is young and exciting. Midsomer Murders may have 7 million viewers, but they are unimportant. Who listens to a bunch of old coots? Old coots like the ones that live in those awful English villages, without a single Black face in sight? In time, thankfully, they will die out, as Tim Wise aptly pointed out in America, so the show may as well embrace the rainbow utopia of human brotherhood now, and start the bulldozer on that last bastion of Englishness. Flatten it now, concrete it over, so that the progressive tower of tomorrow may rise.

Judiciously, Atalla points out

“We have to be careful about seeking out something that offends us and then complaining. I would not want the viewers of Midsomer Murders complaining about something I liked.”

Yes. No need to overplay one’s hand. We would not want these pale-faced English villagers to start noticing things about the diverse metropolitan class.

At least there are some right-thinking citizens involved in the show:

Actor Jason Hughes, who has played the programme’s DS Jones, said he had pondered why Midsomer continued to have no ethnic minorities.

“I've wondered that myself and I don’t know,” he said.

“This isn’t an urban drama and it isn’t about multiculturalism. That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for multiculturalism in the show. But that’s really not up to me to decide.

“I don’t think that we would all suddenly go, ‘a black gardener in Midsomer? You can't have that’. I think we'd all go, ‘great, fantastic’.”

Now there is someone who gets it (or who at least wants to keep his job). It is about race, not about reality or acting ability. We will no doubt see the problem corrected in the next seasons of the show, and everyone will finally be able to relax and celebrate.

“Marines battle aliens in Los Angeles” cried the Washington Examiner Friday morning.  As I hadn’t had my coffee yet, as I stepped on the Metro, I briefly thought to myself that there had been a military coup during the night.  Unfortunately, it’s just a movie, and these aliens come from outer space.

As what used to be our country continues its decline into a barely controlled confederation of hostile ethnic fiefdoms, it is harder to make movies and games about villains that invade America without offending the hyphenated Americans that already invaded in real life.  The only possibilities left are Nazis, zombies, Nazi zombies, North Koreans, and space aliens.  (And also, I suppose, Nazi space aliens.) As in Independence Day, the aliens in Battle have come to take our resources and kill us all, so we don’t have to do any soul searching or make any clumsy attempts to humanize the enemy.  The aliens are a gooey machine-biological hybrid, and look like a slimy cross between Terminators and the robots from the crappy Star Wars prequels.  With their unmanned drones and their cybernetic suits that look like they came out of DARPA, the battle scenes seem like a fairly accurate representation of the United States military today fighting the United States military of 20 years in the future.

Yet despite the futuristic alien weaponry and modern, diverse cast that seemingly stepped out of a college admissions brochure, watching Battle: Los Angeles, is like stepping back in time.  As the American military in real life is transformed into a socially conscious welfare office for the Third World, the American military in the movies can return to its preferred role of waging war against wholly unsympathetic enemies. Aaron Eckhart, whose square jawed soap-opera looks normally conceal flawed characters, like Harvey Dent or Nick Naylor, here channels John Wayne’s Sgt. Stryker from Sands of Iwo Jima.  Eckhart perfectly represents the ideal Marine NCO, exactly the type of blue-eyed fighting man that the U.S. military is trying to drum out of the service to make room for more Alvin Greenes.  In this movie, the gay sensitivity training, nation building missions, racial gangs, and political correctness that characterize the modern military simply doesn’t exist.

In fact, the entire movie is simply a recruitment ad for the military.  Every soldier, Maine, and airman is skilled, brave, and noble, selflessly sacrificing themselves to rescue trapped American civilians.  All the war clichés are here, from the green lieutenant facing his first combat action to the fiancé who just wants to get home to his sweetheart (who, because this is 2011, is named “Shanice.”)  Even the civilians somehow manage to be useful.  Los Angelinos look gratefully to the Marines as their liberators, apparently reversing their stance from the last time the USMC set foot in LA, when they were rioting and shooting at them.

Reading Jonathan Franzen's latest best selling novel, Freedom, brought to mind Chesterton's introduction to The Everlasting Man: Like all the stories I never wrote, it was by far the best one I'd ever written.

Freedom might have been a good book if Franzen had never written it. I read it wondering when the writing was going to go deeper than the desires of average people with too much freedom. It never did and it is not worth reading.

The initial reviews gave the book as much praise as any I have ever read. But I doubt it will be remembered as the timeless period piece Franzen aimed to write. I doubt it will outlast Sam Tanenhaus’s enthusiasms (see his NYT review, 8/29/2010).

The upshot of Deconstructionism has perhaps been to mislead too many writers that particular realities of the real world do not matter. If a text cannot convey a single perspective, but rather a complicated bundle of perspectives outside even the author’s purview, as Deconstructionism holds, then an author who thinks too much about theory can wind up saying nothing because he knows he might be saying anything. Interpretations can be gleaned even from a false picture, which is a reason for writers to be less diligent in depicting real things as they are.

Moreover, the particulars of a story come from the author’s intentions, and nothing matters less to Deconstructionists than the author’s intentions. To tell an author that his intentions do not matter to the meaning of the text is close to saying that understanding the particulars of the story does not matter. It is a short step from there into a realm of unreality, where the reality that is depicted in the text is not held accountable to the reality we live in when it comes to important particulars.

Deconstructionism appears to hinder Franzen especially because he does not really live in the real world to begin with. He had a privileged upbringing, which is apparently all it takes these days to be a great writer, because he’s never had another job and he obviously does not like people. A literary theory prone to overlook minor unrealities in search of many-sided interpretations can easily lead an author to depict fantastic portrayals, particularly if he already lives with a below-average connection to major realities, such as human nature.

Franzen certainly does not get human nature when it comes to the particular natures of men and women. Some of his characters are embarrassing inversions. A housewife has a midlife crisis and writes an extremely sarcastic account of her life. She eventually elopes with her husband’s best friend—realistic enough—but the best friend is ridiculous, a sometimes musician and a serial monogamist who sulks in self pity and never stops dressing like a narcisstic teenager.

Franzen tried to write a book about the way we are now, and in broad outline the book does accurately depict how far we are from bourgeoisie domestic tranquility. Everyone in the book is excruciatingly selfish until the husband and wife are almost dead, and that seems to be the point of Freedom; and Franzen’s only point about freedom: It is mostly miserable.

Parts of the book must come unreconstructed out of Franzen’s own psyche, which is that of a smart, socially awkward loner. To make that connection is the cardinal sin of Deconstructionism, which again is its downside: It is of no use to think about a text if the author has no real experience with the sort of context he creates through his writing. A book about people is likely to be no good from a non-genius who avoids their presence in real life.

In the sick society we live in today, individuals who don’t like people think about ordinary things people do in strange ways, or think too much about strange things strange people do with ordinary things. Freedom and Franzen's last novel, The Corrections, contain scat scenes that well describe poop. Writing is about making choices, and Franzen thinks about poop enough to choose writing about it profusely. If the point is that poop is a very real part of ours lives every day, perhaps that should militate against describing it in every book.

In interviews, Franzen has talked about interpretations of his book like a Deconstructionist, as if he's not responsible for what it means, which is tactful for someone who writes a lot about poop.

Regardless of what Franzen intends by describing poop, his point the story does not impact on the larger point I would make. That a novel with scenes special because of their dilating on poop has become so popular is itself a striking symptom of decay. We apparently like it when authors paint bright pictures of shit. What kind of people look for bright pictures of shit?

Children, and sick adults.

"Are Whites racially oppressed?" is the political question that's a little too "real" to be taken seriously. In the mainstream media, it can only be gestured at ironically by liberal journalists—who are then scolded for "legitimizing" hate and irrational fantasies. James Edwards, on the other hand, is someone who asks this question—and answers it in the affirmative—a regular basis. James joined me to discuss America's dispossessed majority on NPItv this Thursday and requested that I come on his program tonight to further delve into this explosive topic. I hope you listen in at 8PM Central.  

A film made as recently as 1993 may not yet perhaps be called a classic, but Les Visiteurs, the highest-gross­ing French-made film ever made, is at least a classic in the making.

Les Visiteurs was co-written by director Jean-Marie Poire and Christian Clavier. The action starts in the France of 1123. A French knight, Godefroy de Papincourt, the Comte de Montmirail (played by “Jean Reno” who is incidentally a Spaniard, Don Juan Moreno y Jederique Jimenez, and a friend of Nicolas Sarkozy—perhaps a hint of where his political sympathies may lie) saves the French king in battle. He is rewarded by being granted the hand in marriage of the beautiful Lady Frénégonde (Valérie Lemercier). But he is drugged by a witch, and accidentally shoots his fiancée’s father—after which, understandably enough, she declines to marry him. In desperation, he consults a sorcerer, who says he can send de Papincourt back in time to stop the fatal arrow. But the sorcerer makes a mistake, and instead sends the knight and his squire, Jacquasse (played by Clavier) forward into the 20^th century.

This signals a rapid-fire series of vulgar, vastly amusing incidents with cars, fast-food “restaurants,” telephones, toilets, toothpaste, cling-film, and light fittings—all of which prove that the French have as much of a genius for slapstick as for Molièresque wit. One reviewer described the film justly as “a lunatic blend of Time Bandits, Tati and Benny Hill.”

Accompanying the visual jokes, there are frantic encounters with mod­ern French people—a black postman (who is set upon immediately as a suspected Moor), clerics, policemen, the incompetent sorcerer’s descendant and both Montmirail’s and Jacquasse’s own heirs. Understandably regarded as a dangerous madman by all the people he encounters (except, even­tually, by his present-day relative, Béatrice de Montmirail, also played by Valérie Lemercier), The Comte is des­perate to escape from what he sees as an ugly and diminished future. He is also outraged to discover that the fam­ily castle is now a luxury hotel owned by Jacquard, a superficially gentrified descendant of Jacquasse (also played by Clavier).

I’ve been a U2 fan since the 1980s. But one thing that has continually bothered me over the years, as I am sure it has a considerable number of my fellow fans, is Bono’s extracurricular urge to be seen as some sort of Messiah figure, especially as his moral compass is about as accurate as a sundial in a coalmine.

Over the years, this has not only led him to pen some naïve and cringeworthy lyrics, but, in the latest case, has seen him flirt with the genocidal ideology of Marxist ANC extremists, who, egged on by the anti-White racism implicit in the international Marxist movement, believe in butchering all Whites in South Africa.

During a recent interview Bono suggested that ANC chants like “Kill the Boer” and “Bring Me My Machine Gun” had a legitimate place in South African culture, demonstrating gross naïvety or something worse.

Unlike many rock songs that invoke violent and bloodthirsty imagery merely for effect, “Kill the Boer” is taken very seriously by those who sing and hear it, being a clear call to butcher innocent civilians, and has been repeatedly acted on. It has played a leading role in a smouldering culture of genocide against White farmers and their families, which has seen well over 3,500 of them butchered and often savagely mutilated since the start of what can best be called the Neo-Racist South African State.