America’s Nazi Aspirations

This is another in an ongoing series of blogs devoted to the shitstorm being brewed up in the United States by the current administration, which has most of the country and much of the world shaking its collective head. These are very troubling times in America. What’s happening needs to be documented by as many people as possible in as many ways as possible. Which is my way of explaining why I keep writing about it ….

I can’t say I’m a huge fan of movie director Quentin Tarantino, although I think he’s a smart and talented guy. He made a couple of very good and groundbreaking movies in the 1990s, became a hot commodity, and then embraced the twin passions of brainless cinematic violence and alternate versions of history that put him more in the category of commercial hack than artistic visionary.

An example is his 2009 release Inglourious Basterds, a World War II period piece set in 1941 and starring Brad Pitt. The plot centers on a U.S. Army unit of Jewish-American soldiers enlisted to kill high-ranking Nazis in occupied France. (Spoiler alert) It culminates in the assassination of Adolph Hitler in a Paris cinema long before the führer has a chance to inflict more ruin on the world.

That, of course, never happened. Hitler didn’t die until 1945, in Munich, by his own hand, after the Allied forces had invaded Germany and it became obvious that his dream of Nazi world domination would not happen. But by then the damage had already been done – in ways the world still deals with to this very day.

I’m sure plenty of audience members cheered Hitler’s death while watching Inglourious Basterds. I doubt those cheers did much to appease people who survived the nonfiction version of Hitler’s brutality.

Inglourious Basterds does have at least one brilliant element, however – the performance of Austro-German actor Christoph Waltz as Standartenführer Hans Landa, an Austrian SS officer. It’s really one of the great movie performances ever.

Landa is cruel and ruthless. But he doesn’t come off as a typical Hollywood Nazi/villain/caricature. In Waltz’s hands, he’s a charming, cultured, multilingual and good-humored guy who enjoys the finer things in life. You could imagine having drinks with Hans, sharing laughs, talking about opera or soccer – all the way up until the moment his henchman march you to a death camp.

I have a feeling this version of the Nazi villain is closer to the truth than the standard stereotype. Hitler’s regime might have been among the most murderous in history, but its leadership included a great many educated and cultured people. In other circumstances, they might have been successful business executives, lawyers, educators, doctors, scientists, whatever.

But history plays its own hand. And today, those World War II Nazis are viewed as the very embodiment of evil by all but the sickest of minds.

America is having its own Nazi moment right now – and trust me when I tell you that it pains me to write that. I never imagined I would ever have to write it. I’m not even sure I trust that what I’m seeing is really happening.

But it sure seems like the current administration has borrowed heavily from the Nazi playbook in its quest to spread tyranny both at home and abroad.

The difference is, the American version of that playbook is not led by smart people. It’s being led by arrogant and unsavvy assholes. And I’ll just leave it at that.

Whether this is a good or bad thing, I guess we’ll find out later.

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Not too long ago I came across a YouTube clip that did an excellent job of documenting why Waltz’s performance was so great. The explanation comes from author Simon Sinek, who recounts an appearance Christoph Waltz had on a talk show.

As Sinek tells it, the talk show host asked Waltz how he was able to play evil so effectively in his role as Hans Landa. Waltz was confused by the question. So the host elaborated, telling Waltz that he was so good in the role, and then asking where he sourced the ability to play evil.

At which point Waltz looked at the host and said, “[Hans Landa] wasn’t evil.”

This was a very insightful answer. Because as Sinek noted, Waltz understood that “no one thinks they’re evil. Everyone thinks they’re on the side of good.”

That’s a perfect assessment of Waltz’s performance – and also a perfect assessment of Nazi Germany, and the Nazi-aspirant movement going on in America.

Truly, nobody thinks they’re evil — even as they’re doing the most evil shit you can imagine. Instead, they think the people they are doing evil things to are the evil ones.

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I don’t want to rehash all the evil things the current U.S. regime is doing. Read some of the blogs I’ve written over the last year. Or just google it.

But here are a few recent examples:

• America’s “immigration control” police force – which is really nothing more than a gang of masked thugs, populated in part by convicted criminals – is occupying and terrorizing U.S. cities that do not support the regime leader, in much the same way that Nazi Germany’s Gestapo terrorized its people.
• That same police force shot and killed a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three during a protest in Minnesota, then immediately lied about the reason for the murder.
• That same police force allegedly murdered a Cuban immigrant at a detention facility in Texas and immediately lied about the circumstances surrounding the murder.
• That same police force apprehended a man in New Jersey, was told by the man that his 6-year-old daughter was alone in a nearby apartment, ignored the man’s pleas to help the daughter, then allowed the girl to go wandering the frigid streets, alone, crying because she couldn’t find her Dad.
• That same police force “apprehended” a 5-year-old boy in his driveway, ignored pleas by others neighbors to let them take care of the boy, and instead used the boy as “bait” in an anti-immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

Now, I hate to use the word “evil.” But if the shoe fits….

Some of these things are truly evil. They’re cruel and inhumane acts, cowardly, unnecessary. They serve no purpose beyond imposing state-sanctioned power over political opponents, all to advance a racist agenda.

And the sad thing is, they pale in comparison to the other evil acts being perpetrated around the world. Only a few people have died in America (so far). Thousands and thousands have died elsewhere, this very year, this very week, all because otherwise normal people turn a blind eye to cruelty and injustice — or simply condone it, support it, revel in it.

That’s the real tragedy. That, I have no answer for.

Image: Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa; a woman being physically assaulted by anti-immigration thugs in the USA; a 1939 rally of the American Nazi Party at Madison Square Garden in New York City.