Inglorious Bastards

Once again Quentin Tarantino has managed to produce the impossible: ‘an anti Holocaust film’. The Holocaust film genre can be grasped as a realistic cinematic representation of the ‘Jewish victim’ (innocent and harmless individual) confronted with the ultimate brutal bureaucratic murderous ideology known as Nazism. The genre can be realised as an intense emotional blackmail that aims to depict the history of the 20th century through an empathetic identification with a phantasmic faultless Jewish protagonist. Needless to say, this genre has been rather successful. Whether it is Schindler’s List, The Pianist, Everything is Illuminated, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas or any other Shoah (Hebrew for Holocaust) film, it is always Jewish innocence that faces institutional state terror.

Tarantino manages to resolve the clear discrepancy between the cinematic ‘Jewish innocence’ and the Jewish nationalist ‘murderous reality’. He does it all through a fantasy. In his imaginary setting, the Jew is a revengeful subject. He is an iconic retaliating scalping savage, Biblically-motivate d murderer. In Tarantino’s latest epic, for the first time, the Diaspora Jew resembles his Israeli nephew. Through a cinematic fictional plot, history has become a homogenous continuum in which Jewish past and Israeli present are unified into a relentless expedition of suicidal vengeance. If films indeed resemble the work of the dream and the unconscious, Tarantino’s latest can be grasped as a wake up call; it illuminates something that we insist to suppress and deny.

On the face of it, Inglourious Basterds follows a typical Hollywood WWII film genre. In the film a special unit of Jewish Americans (the Inglourious Basterds) lands in occupied France just to teach the Nazis what Jewish reprisal is all about. They ambush Nazi patrols and then kill their prisoners, exhibiting ultimate brutality, whether it is scalping the dead Nazis or killing the rest by crashing their skulls with a baseball bat. The Basterds would always leave one German alive as a witness of their relentless brutality so he can spread out the news of Jewish terror. With a bayonet, they would carve a Swastika into the survivor's forehead in order to make the Nazi identifiable to all after the war. This is presumably a modern take on the mark of Cain but it is somehow a bunch of ‘inglorious humans’, who take the role of God.

The film’s opening scene takes us to German-occupied France (1941). Col. Hans Landa (Cristoph Waltz) of the Waffen SS a.k.a. the "Jew Hunter," interrogates a French dairy farmer about rumors that he was hiding a Jewish family of local dairy farmers . Col Landa manages to break the French farmer who admits to hiding the Jews underneath the floorboards. Col Landa orders his soldiers to fire into the floorboards, killing all but the teenage Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent), who manages to escape to the woods. (1)

Three years after her escape, Shoshanna reappears in Paris, having assumed a new identity. She also becomes proprietress of a small cinema. The film reaches its climax when Shoshanna, celebrates the opportunity to revenge the death of her family. She commits an heroic suicidal act, burning to death the entire Nazi leadership and high command who happen to gather in her small cinema to watch Goebbels’ latest Nazi propaganda film. While the Nazis burn alive and the theatre is consumed by a blaze, with Shoshanna’s face filling up the screen, laughing satanically, she is informing her Nazi burning crowed, "This is the face of Jewish vengeance." From a Jewish perspective Shoshanna’s suicidal act can be realised in reference to the heroic Biblical Samson who topples the Philistine shrine on himself killing elders, women and children. In Tarantino’s latest, rather than Nazis burning Jews, it is actually the Jew who locks the Nazis behind doors and burns them to death.

Jew Vs Nazi

“Inglourious Basterds just made me smile forever. Quentin Tarantino is righteous and every Jew should write him a thank you note. Here's mine” Sarah Silverman on Twitter.

One may wonder, how it is that a Jewish producer affiliated with Israel and Zionism is standing behind such a film that portrays the Jews in such a horrifying light. The answer is actually very simple. Zionists love to see themselves as revengeful and merciless. In Israel, Samson who is nothing less than a genocidal murderer is regarded as an eternal hero. He even managed to get an IDF battalion called after him. It is not a secret that the fantasy of retribution is deeply imbued within the Zionist psyche and Israeli politics. “Never Again” is there to suggest to Israelis that Jews will never again be sent as lambs to the slaughter. What it means in practice is that Jews will fight back and hit as hard as they can. Reprisal is a key element in the understanding of Israeli conduct. As much as the film depicts a horrifying image of the revengeful Jew, Jews and Zionists happen to support the film and even love it.

But Tarantino doesn’t stop there. He also offers a harsh criticism of Jewish identity by drawing a comparison between the Jewish and Nazi protagonists.

Unlike the single dimensional vengeance ridden Jewish protagonists (the Inglourious Basterds and Shoshanna), Tarantino’s Nazis are mostly complex and multi dimensional.

To start with they present a duality and even a contradiction between individuality and the collective role. While the Jewish protagonists present a conviction that unified the personal and the tribal into retribution, Col. Landa, the SS ‘Jew Hunter’ actually bounces between hedonism and Nazi murderous subservience. Col Landa is also a very well mannered Austrian, cultured, charming man. And yet, within seconds he could turn into a monstrous beast. He interprets his behavior in terms of productivity; he is ‘doing his job’. At the end of the day, he is a detective and his task is to locate Jews in their hiding places. Col. Landa is even willing to admit that he is good at it because he is capable of ‘thinking like a Jew’: he can predict how people who ‘lack dignity’ may behave. Unlike the Jewish protagonists who can’t speak any foreign language, Col. Landa is immersed in Western culture. He speaks fluent English, French and Italian in addition to his native German. Unlike the Jewish protagonists who are focused on nothing but revenge, Landa eventually betrays the 3rd Reich just to bring an end to the war and have peace in Europe. Needless to mention that he also manages to secure his future in the same breath, negotiating it with a ‘top brass’ American.

Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), is another example of Nazi multi dimensional identity. Zoller is a young German Wehrmacht war hero starring in Joseph Goebbels’ newest Propaganda film. In spite of Zoller being a decorated killing machine, he is far from being proud of it. He had done it in self-defense. His real affection is cinema. It is in the cinema where he meets Shoshanna and fall in love with her, unaware of her heritage or her revenge plan. While Zoller can easily alienate himself from his role as a Nazi hero soldier or even a killing machine, Shoshanna is not ready to even consider the possibility. She is set to fulfill her mission. She will eventually shoot him in the back and kill the Nazi leadership. 

Rough guide to Tarantino’s Symbolism

Symbolism and History- as mentioned before During the film, the inglourious Basterds carve swastikas on German soldiers who are allowed to survive their ordeal.

It is not exactly a secret that the history of WWII is far from being widely accessible or freely discussed. Rather than trying to elaborate on the meaning of history and historical dynamic, we are subject to an increasing saturation of symbolism and even legislation that suggests what views are allowed to be held and what aren’t. ‘Terror’, ‘Nazis’ and ‘Fascism’ are obviously ‘the baddies’. ‘Democracy’ and ‘Freedom’ are the ‘goodies’. Tarantino is here to offer a harsh criticism of the above. Carving people’s forehead with symbols (Swastikas) is a form of hegemony maintenance. As it seems, we are just powerful enough to dictate ‘a truth’. If we were instead interested in the meaning of our history, we may be able to stop the English Speaking Empire from repeating its Dresden crime in Hiroshima, Vietnam, Iraq and Gaza.

The Golem- At a certain stage, the Nazi high command is convinced that "The Bear Jew", a ‘baseball bat’-swinging Nazi hunter’ is in fact, a vengeful Golem, summoned by an angry rabbi. In the Jewish legend, Golem is a creature made of clay and brought to life by magical incantations. In the film, “The Bear Jew” is actually Staff Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), second in command of the Basterds. The reference to Golem is rather significant. As it seems, even the Nazis cannot believe that a human can turn out to be so brutal towards another fellow human being. However, the Symbolism may even be greater. The Golem has the Hebrew word ‘truth’ carved on its forehead. For the Inglourious Basterds the notion of truth is the ‘truth’ they manage to impose on others by carving Swastikas on their foreheads.

The Sabbath Goy- 1st Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), the commander of the Basterds is an American Goy who has nothing to do with Judaism or Jewishness. He is a thick accented, vengeance-driven officer from Tennessee. It may raise some questions why it is that Tarantino had let a cowboy Goy command the Jewish Basterds. It may be possible that Tarantino is trying to suggest that Lieutenant Raine is just an outlet (or ‘a mercenary proxy’) for Jewish reprisal. As devastating as it may sound, his relationships with his Jewish subordinates may resemble the relationships between Bush and his Neocon warmongers. It is hard to decide whether Lieutenant Raine is subject to judification or whether it is him, being a blood thirsty savage capitalizing on Jewish vengeance. One thing is rather clear, according to Tarantino’s cinematic imagery, the combination of America and Jews is far from being a healthy humanist adventure.

The Film and the Dream

Rather than looking at the content of a dream, it may as well be possible to imagine the dream looking at us as its ‘content of reality’. As it happens, in the dream, it is usually us and our so called psychic reality that is being watched and even scrutinized. The interpretation of dreams is, in most cases, based on the assumption that in the dream, some involuntary waves of thoughts are there to throw light on the kernel of our being. It is there to bring to our attention those things we suppress and deny. This idea brings to mind Slavoj Zizek’s return to the 1960’s slogan that ‘reality is there for those who cannot face the dream’.

The film resembles the role of the dream. As much as we tend to believe ourselves to be the viewers, from time to time, it is actually us who are being watched. Tarantino’s latest is a classic example. It is there to elevate consciousness to the realm of thoughts we insist to avoid. It raises questions that are regarded as taboo. It provides us with an opportunity to glance at ourselves from the perspective of the unconscious. Through the fantasy it draws our reality. As in the dream, Inglourious Basterds displaces and reshapes events without any commitment to any historical truth, it is not committed to well accepted facts either. It doesn’t follow any recognized narrative, yet, it provides meaning. The success of the film may be due to its ability to communicate with some pre symbolic reality (The Lacanian Real . It strips us of our symbolism and symbolic order. As a work of art it leads us closer to Being. Through violence it touches our ethical kernel and hopefully awakens our craving for kindness. For the first time we transcend beyond the discrepancy we impose on ourselves for turning a blind eye to the origin of Zionist and the barbarism and war mongering on a global scale. Through the fantasy we manage to look at evil in the eye and this is exactly where Tarantino ends his film. In the final scene the Camera takes the role of Lieutenant Raine’s eyes (a point of view shot). We basically watch Lieutenant Raine sadistically cut with his bayonet onto Col Landa’s forehead. In cinematic language, we basically watch with horror as Lieutenant Raine carves us all with Swastikas.

Unconsciousness, according to Lacan, is the discourse of the other. It is that painful truth one tries to conceal from the other while knowing that this concealing may be impossible. From a Jewish perspective, Inglourious Basterds should have been realised as the nightmare of a bad dream coming true. It is almost impossible to deny that Tarantino is out there shouting ‘The Emperor is Naked’: he is neither a victim nor an innocent. The fact that many Jews fail to see it and instead, end up praising the film, may stand as another disturbing indication that Zionist collective identity has managed to detach itself from any recognized notion of humanist reality. As sad as this may sound, it explains world Jewry’s institutional support of Israel. It may also explain why Zionists as a collective failed to internalize the meaning of the Shoa. Instead of searching for grace in themselves, Zionists keep engaging themselves in Nazi hunting and carving others with different labels and symbols.

For too many years, Zionist lobbies around the world have managed to dismantle any criticism of Israel. They have managed to turn the history of WWII into an internal Jewish restricted research zone. They have managed to transform our knowledge of the past into a symbolic exchange, but they somehow failed to silence the dream. This is where Tarantino comes into play. Through the fantasy he manages to tell us what our reality is all about.

As much as the Inglourious Basterds, Shoshanna and the Israelis (who gathered on the hills around Gaza to watch their army spreading death) gain some pleasure out of vengeance, it is possible that through two and half hours of therapy led by Tarantino we may, after all, learn to enjoy our symptoms and say it loudly: Enough is Enough. No more Old Testament vengeance and barbarism. We want grace and mercy instead.

_________

1.    Re dairy farmer, already then and there, Tarantino manages in a very subtle manner to set the template for his fictional fantasy to come. It would be impossible for me to argue that there were NO Jewish dairy farmers operating in occupied France at the time. However, it is certainly true that dairy farming wasn’t exactly a stereotypical Jewish occupation. We also learn at this very scene the names of the children of the Jewish family are Shoshanna and Amos. Again, this may seem to be a minor detail. But in fact it is rather crucial. Amos is not at all a Jewish Diaspora name. It is actually a biblical name.

Originally published on: http://www.counterp unch.org/ atzmon09182009. html

(2) http://www.toqonlin e.com/2009/ 08/inglourious- basterds/

Inglourious Basterds
by Trevor Lynch

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds [sic, sic] has been hyped as World War II action movie-cum-sadistic gorefest. In reality, it is a self-indulgent snorefest. I thought I would need a gin and tonic before I went in, but it turns out what I needed was a cup of coffee. Yes, there is some gore and sadism, but frankly I found myself hoping for more of it. Anything, really, to relieve the sheer boredom.

This is Quentin Tarantino's worst movie, and that is saying a lot, given how bad Kill Bill, vol. I is. Pulp Fiction was Tarantino's Citizen Kane, and it has been The Magnificent Ambersons ever since. If you find this review entertaining, let me assure you that it is far more entertaining than the movie itself. Nothing here should be interpreted as encouragement for you to waste your time and money on this preposterous and dull film.

Inglourious Basterds is about a team of American terrorists, consisting of seven Jews led by a gentile, Aldo "the Apache" Raine (played by Brad Pitt), who hails from Tennessee and claims to be part American Indian. The character is clearly based on Tarantino himself, since he too has an Italian name, hails from Tennessee, and claims to be part Cherokee. The mission of the Basterds is to terrify the Nazis by killing them in the most sadistic manner possible and mutilating their corpses. The dead are scalped. The survivors have swastikas carved in their foreheads.

Holocaust narratives are filled with tales of thousands of Jews herded to their doom by relative handfuls of Germans and their collaborators. Although this sheep-like behavior seems rather unlike the hyper-aggressive and unruly Jews of my acquaintance, most people accept it at face value and then wonder: What was wrong with these people? Why didn't they fight back?

Tarantino has asked the same question, and Inglourious Basterds is his answer.  During WW II, the Jews needed the leadership of someone like Aldo the Apache, a mostly white man with a bit of red savage mixed in, just like the people who have churned out six million holocaust flicks need to take direction from Quentin Tarantino. With Tarantino in charge, the war would have had a very different end, and Inglourious Basterds shows us how.

Should Jews be insulted by this premise? Of course they should. But the movie itself is far more insulting still. Indeed, this is probably the most anti-Semitic movie ever released by Hollywood. Tarantino's Jewish characters are one-dimensional, inhuman monsters. The Jewish Basterds are all as ugly as Der Sturmer cartoons. They have virtually no lines in the entire movie. All they do is skulk around, waiting for Aldo the Apache's commands to murder and torture Germans.

The most prominent of the Basterds is played by Eli Roth, just another degenerate Jewish director of repulsive horror films. Roth plays the "Bear Jew", who beats Germans to death with a baseball bat. He is the funniest thing in the entire movie, with his pouting, prissy mouth, drag queen makeup, and shiny brilliantined coiffure. Roth's large, hairy body (anybody can take steroids) looks menacing until one hears his high, hysteria-edged voice. There was laughter in the audience every time this castrated gorilla opened his mouth on screen.

Too shallow to realize that he was playing a monstrous buffoon, Roth really got into the role, praising Inglourious Basterds as "kosher porn" (is there any other kind?). He really gets off on fantasies of killing Nazis: "It's almost a deep sexual satisfaction of wanting to beat Nazis to death, an orgasmic feeling. My character gets to beat Nazis to death. That's something I could watch all day. My parents are very strong about Holocaust education." They sound like lovely people, and I am sure they are really proud of what a successful boy Eli turned out to be.

Other Jews were equally smitten: Tarantino’s producer, Lawrence Bender,  told Tarantino, "As your producing partner, I thank you, and as a member of the Jewish tribe, I thank you, motherfucker, because this movie is a fucking Jewish wet dream." Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the film's executive producers, also reportedly enjoyed the film's theme of Jewish revenge.

Tarantino also reported received uniformly positive reactions from his Jewish friends: "The Jewish males that I've known since I've been writing the film and telling them about it, they've just been, 'Man, I can't fucking wait for this fucking movie!’" he told me. "And they tell their dads, and they're like, 'I want to see that movie!'."

If all these Jews have no objection to their tribe being portrayed as one-dimensional vengeful sadists, who am I to complain? Perhaps the shoe fits.

The most prominent Jewish character in the movie is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Shoshanna (played by Mélanie Laurent), the daughter of a Jewish dairy farmer (that got the first laugh of the movie). Her family is massacred in 1941 by the SS, and somehow she turns up a few years later with an assumed French identity running a movie theater in Paris with her Negro lover. When her theater is chosen to premiere a new German movie in the presence of Hitler, Goebbels, Goring, Borman, and other leading Nazis, she plans to bolt the doors and burn the place down as an act of revenge.

Shoshana is a character of reptilian inhumanity. A young German, Frederick Zoeller (played by Daniel Brühl) is obviously smitten with her. A film enthusiast, he tries to strike up a conversation about movies. The contrast could not be clearer. He is warm, sincere, and polite. He sees her as a fellow human being and a fellow film-enthusiast.

She sees him only as a racial enemy. She takes no interest in him until she discovers that he is both a film star and a war hero, which she thinks she can use to her advantage. (He does not reveal these things to her initially, for he does not merely wish to impress her, but to befriend her.)
bruhl

Her only flash of human emotion comes at the end of a scene in which she meets the SS man, Standartenführer Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who murdered her family, but it just heightens the impression that she is a cold-blooded master of deception and intrigue.

Shoshanna's inhumanity is heightened by comparison to Uma Thurman's revenge-driven character "The Bride" in the Kill Bill movies. The difference is not just a matter of who played the role (although Tarantino decided that as well) but of how the actresses were directed.

Hans Landa claims that he is effective at hunting Jews because he knows how they think. The meaning of this is made clear at the end of the film, when he turns out to be a traitor.

The Allies do not come off much better than the Jews. Aldo the Apache is the only American. He is a loud-mouthed, sadistic, duplicitous jackass with a hillbilly accent. Brad Pitt plays him for laughs, and he is genuinely funny. There are three Britons: the handsome German Michael Fassbender as film-critic Lt. Archie Hicox, Mike Myers as General Ed Fenech, and the wreck of Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill. The first two come off as effete wankers, and Churchill might as well be Jabba the Hutt.

All of this is in strong contrast to the portrayal of the Germans, even the German traitors. First of all, they are mostly quite good-looking and sexy. (As Jew Mark Steyn pointed out, nobody fantasizes about being tied up and raped by a liberal democrat.) Second, they are dignified, charming, and polite with strangers; warm, playful, and fun-loving among friends. Even though the Germans are supposed to be the bad guys, they are the only people in the film with whom most white people can readily identify themselves. This means that white audiences can only feel revulsion at the sadistic Jews who murder them.

Hitler, of course, is portrayed as a monster. He first appears wearing a cape, which is appropriate, since he is played as nothing more than a comic book villain. (Martin Wuttke is surely the ugliest Hitler ever.)

Goebbels, although he is portrayed as somewhat arrogant (like a film director, perhaps), comes off overall as warm, sincere, playful, and even a bit lovable(!). Tarantino has obviously immersed himself in German films of the era, and it is clear that he has some admiration for what Goebbels accomplished. (In a scene set in England, it is stated as plain fact that Jews run Hollywood, and Goebbels is given credit for giving them a run for their money.)

The true star of the film is Christoph Waltz, whose portrayal of Hans Landa is absolutely riveting. He is such a magnificent character that Tarantino had to turn him into a traitor in the end, otherwise he would be the true hero of the film as well.

The other star is Daniel Brühl who Frederick Zoeller, the young war hero who becomes smitten with Shoshanna. His character is the most likable and most tragic of the film.

Now let's examine the climax of the movie. I have no qualms about giving it away, since I don't want any of you to see it anyway. Shoshanna hosts the premiere. Hitler and all the top Nazis come to the theater. She splices her face into the fourth reel of the film. Once the fourth reel is playing, her Negro lover bars the doors to the theater. Suddenly, Shoshanna's face appears on the screen: "This is the face of Jewish vengeance!" she screams, while the Negro sets the building on fire. The kindling he uses are movies printed on highly flammable nitrite film.

Meanwhile, two of the Jewish Basterds (including the preposterous Eli Roth), who have infiltrated the theater without knowing of Shoshanna's plot, run amok with machine guns, killing Hitler and Goebbels and other Nazis. The theater then explodes. Everybody dies, Jews and Germans alike. Götterdämmerung.

The climax of Inglourious Basterds is obviously based on the Oscar night massacre in neo-Nazi Harold Covington's novel The Brigade. If you don't believe me, read the novel for yourself.

The symbolism and the message could not be clearer: Jews use movies and movie theaters as tools to destroy their enemies. And since the white people in the audience can most readily identify with the Germans, the message gets through: the Jewish movie business is a tool of hatred and vengeance directed against all white people.

Why would Quentin Tarantino make a movie about World War II in which Germans are portrayed as attractive human beings, Americans are portrayed as sadistic buffoons, Englishmen are portrayed as effete wankers, and Jews are portrayed as cold-blooded, inhuman mass murderers?

Why would Quentin Tarantino borrow plot elements from neo-Nazi Harold Covington's The Brigade  to craft a climax for his movie? Why would he use that climax to expose the true anti-white agenda of Hollywood?

Is Quentin Tarantino a Nazi-sympathizer?

Of course not. Nothing could be further from the truth. Quentin Tarantino is simply a nihilist with an unfailing instinct for finding and desecrating anything sacred. In Pulp Fiction -- his one great movie, and his most sincere -- Tarantino showed a profound grasp of the spiritual meaning of the duel to the death over honor, symbolized by the Samurai sword. In Kill Bill, vol. I, he made a giant joke of it.

In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has taken the one truly sacred myth in modern Jew-dominated America -- especially in modern Hollywood -- namely WW II and the holocaust, and he has desecrated it by inverting all of its core value judgments and reversing its stereotypes. In the process, he has exposed the true anti-white agenda of Hollywood. Why? Just because he can.

The fact that Quentin Tarantino could desecrate the holocaust, expose Hollywood's agenda, and sell it back to Hollywood's Jews is a testament to his twisted genius and their shallowness and moral imbecility.

I wish Inglourious Basterds were a better movie, since I think that many white people would benefit from seeing it. Yes, the explicit message is that it is good for Jews and their hillbilly dupes to sadistically murder Germans (and any other enemies of the Jews, for that matter). But the largely white audience with which I saw the film did not seem terribly comfortable with this message.

Yes, they found Brad Pitt funny. He really was funny. But the sadism directed at Germans did not amuse. In the last scene of the film, where Aldo the Apache graphically carves a swastika in the forehead of Hans Landa and pronounces it "my masterpiece" -- pathetically enough, this is probably Tarantino's view of the film -- there was no laughter.

For the subliminal message was coming through loud and clear: we are all Germans now, and every time we turn our eyes to a movie screen we are seeing the face of Jewish vengeance.