|
|
|
|
On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
 Posted - 01/10/2010 : 13:18:42
|
Oliver Stone suggests Hitler is 'easy scapegoat'
Oliver Stone, the controversial film director, is facing another backlash after suggesting that Hitler was made an "easy scapegoat" by history. |
see link
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/6962475/Oliver-Stone-suggests-Hitler-is-easy-scapegoat.html
To me this sounds a bit wrong somehow. Hitler is not a scapegoat, since we hold him directly responsible for the actions he is know to have carried out and the policies that he is known to have initiated during his political career. What Stone appears to be attempting to do is get inside Hitler's mind and explain the how Hitler rationalised these motives, and also to explain why he had sufficient support from the German people to follow through with them. If someone has any kind of justification, that still does not mean that they are carrying the sins of others, or taking undue blame, which is the definition of a scapegoat.
But then on the other hand, was a "Hitler" inevitable? Does Stone seek to make the German people, humiliated by the defeat of The Great War, bitter about the treaty of Versaille and desperate from depression and hyperinflation, into the villains, crying out for a dynamic and revolutionary nationalistic leader? Does Hitler, powerful as he was, only deserve diminished responsibility for what occurred in the name of Nazi Germany?
|
 |
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2010 : 14:23:08 [Permalink]
|
The conditions in Germany following WW-1 did indeed make it all but inevitable for a charismatic and well-spoken leader to gain power, although not necessarily a Hitler.
Hitler's life & times are as well documented as anyone's and he makes a fascinating study. How many people can you think of that went from a homeless ne'er-do-well in Vienna to leading a country that all but turned the world inside out?
I think I'd like to see this flick, provided it's not merely apologetics.
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
|
 |
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2010 : 22:26:33 [Permalink]
|
OFFC.....
The text of the Telegraph article states:| "Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect," he said. |
It appears to me that Stone is taking a position that there were a number of factors leading up to the establishment of the Third Reich and Hitler was the more or less inevitable result of the concatenation of these factors. The German electorate certainly did not strongly oppose the emergence and arrogation of power by Hitler and the Nazi party.
Stone is saying that responsibility for Hitler and the Nazi mentality largely belongs to the people of Germany at that juncture in history. There was no significant opposition to Hitler's takeover, he did not seize power by military takeover, but rather by legal or quasi-legal political manipulation.
There is a bit of a parallel in the recent (and ongoing) attempts at power reversal in the US by fascists like Cheney, the Teabaggers, and propagandists such as Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, who daily rip whole pages out of Joesph Goebbels's book of "The Big Lie".
Fascism dies hard, and there is more than a little of it in the mentality of the Corporate ruling class worldwide. |
|
|
|
Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2010 : 02:45:09 [Permalink]
|
There is a bit of a parallel in the recent (and ongoing) attempts at power reversal in the US by fascists like Cheney, the Teabaggers, and propagandists such as Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, who daily rip whole pages out of Joesph Goebbels's book of "The Big Lie".
|
Remember that Goebbels studied American propaganda. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Olver Stone's new documentaries.
