fascinating fascism
It has been a long time since I read Susan Sontag's great essay on Leni Riefenstahl and the fascination with fascism that lingers in the West. I will have to dig it out again. I need a refreshing course. History is beginning to repeat itself.
Last night I stumbled upon what I first assumed was a History Channel documentary on the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi Germany, one of those ones they do in that gaudy Technicolor finish. There were loud, boisterous, fanatical and nationalist crowds chanting mantras and combining to execute perfect rhythmic gestures. There was loud, nationalistic music, and fly-overs by military airplanes. Soldiers marched pre-game, and were deified like heroes of Ancient Greece. Even the crowd and side-lines were top-heavy with men and women in military uniform. The commentary was unified with one, mantra like message; ‘Support the troops!’
I was, of course, wrong, and I was actually watching coverage of the NFL last night. A sport, a pastime and an entertainment, completely and utterly hijacked by all branches of the military.
Here’s the problem. Not so long ago, before ‘Glasnost’, before Mikhail Gorbachev and the fall of the Soviet Empire, we all scoffed in unison at the blatant and clumsy Russian deification of their massive armed forces. Those massive pro-communist forces, socialist murals and posters may have looked magnificent, but to us in the West they were a symbol of an oppressed peoples, misled by their leaders. Those of us in Europe in the 1980s in particular recall the massed ranks of Soviet military making up most of the attendance at their soccer team’s games in European competition. A little bit before that, the far greater evil of Nazi Germany practically wrote the book on integrating sporting activities and Nationalist propaganda. We have all seen the footage, the massive, throbbing crowds chanting and roaring in unison, Nazi flags everywhere you looked.
Why is the United States following that path so readily, so easily, and so completely without question?
Where better to recruit these children, youths and young adults than the sports websites and events of the games and teams they love?
Obviously, no one is going to skip and hop down to the recruitment agency after watching the Omaha beach landings in Saving private Ryan. However, stick a few busty cheerleaders in front of them, and get a few NFL\MLB\NBA players to shake the current incumbent military personnel’s hands while giving them a well-meaning hug, and the watching youth of America are probably considerably more likely to sign away their lives on the dotted line, right?
Is this really the path we should be going down, a path well worn by the media of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia?
That’s the type of society we want to emulate?
http://www.irishcentral.com/story/sport/from-the-bleachers/sports-in-the-united-states-now-a-major-part-of-us-military-propaganda-a-few-thoughts-178927521.html#axzz2CPpC0xDf
All four of Riefenstahl's commissioned Nazi films—whether about Party congresses, the Wehrmacht, or athletes—celebrate the rebirth of the body and of community, mediated through the worship of an irresistible leader. They follow directly from the films of Fanck in which she starred and her own The Blue Light. The Alpine fictions are tales of longing for high places, of the challenge and ordeal of the elemental, the primitive; they are about the vertigo before power, symbolized by the majesty and beauty of mountains. The Nazi films are epics of achieved community, in which everyday reality is transcended through ecstatic self-control and submission; they are about the triumph of power. And The Last of the Nuba, an elegy for the soon-to-be extinguished beauty and mystic powers of primitives whom Riefenstahl calls "her adopted people," is the third in her triptych of fascist visuals.
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/SontagFascinFascism75.htm
Last night I stumbled upon what I first assumed was a History Channel documentary on the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi Germany, one of those ones they do in that gaudy Technicolor finish. There were loud, boisterous, fanatical and nationalist crowds chanting mantras and combining to execute perfect rhythmic gestures. There was loud, nationalistic music, and fly-overs by military airplanes. Soldiers marched pre-game, and were deified like heroes of Ancient Greece. Even the crowd and side-lines were top-heavy with men and women in military uniform. The commentary was unified with one, mantra like message; ‘Support the troops!’
I was, of course, wrong, and I was actually watching coverage of the NFL last night. A sport, a pastime and an entertainment, completely and utterly hijacked by all branches of the military.
Here’s the problem. Not so long ago, before ‘Glasnost’, before Mikhail Gorbachev and the fall of the Soviet Empire, we all scoffed in unison at the blatant and clumsy Russian deification of their massive armed forces. Those massive pro-communist forces, socialist murals and posters may have looked magnificent, but to us in the West they were a symbol of an oppressed peoples, misled by their leaders. Those of us in Europe in the 1980s in particular recall the massed ranks of Soviet military making up most of the attendance at their soccer team’s games in European competition. A little bit before that, the far greater evil of Nazi Germany practically wrote the book on integrating sporting activities and Nationalist propaganda. We have all seen the footage, the massive, throbbing crowds chanting and roaring in unison, Nazi flags everywhere you looked.
Why is the United States following that path so readily, so easily, and so completely without question?
Where better to recruit these children, youths and young adults than the sports websites and events of the games and teams they love?
Obviously, no one is going to skip and hop down to the recruitment agency after watching the Omaha beach landings in Saving private Ryan. However, stick a few busty cheerleaders in front of them, and get a few NFL\MLB\NBA players to shake the current incumbent military personnel’s hands while giving them a well-meaning hug, and the watching youth of America are probably considerably more likely to sign away their lives on the dotted line, right?
Is this really the path we should be going down, a path well worn by the media of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia?
That’s the type of society we want to emulate?
http://www.irishcentral.com/story/sport/from-the-bleachers/sports-in-the-united-states-now-a-major-part-of-us-military-propaganda-a-few-thoughts-178927521.html#axzz2CPpC0xDf
All four of Riefenstahl's commissioned Nazi films—whether about Party congresses, the Wehrmacht, or athletes—celebrate the rebirth of the body and of community, mediated through the worship of an irresistible leader. They follow directly from the films of Fanck in which she starred and her own The Blue Light. The Alpine fictions are tales of longing for high places, of the challenge and ordeal of the elemental, the primitive; they are about the vertigo before power, symbolized by the majesty and beauty of mountains. The Nazi films are epics of achieved community, in which everyday reality is transcended through ecstatic self-control and submission; they are about the triumph of power. And The Last of the Nuba, an elegy for the soon-to-be extinguished beauty and mystic powers of primitives whom Riefenstahl calls "her adopted people," is the third in her triptych of fascist visuals.
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/SontagFascinFascism75.htm
posted by Satish Sharma at
15:44
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