OT: How Hollywood is rewriting the role of the British and the USA in war (Big)

[Mark IV]

Murx, Somalia was of no vital importance to the US, and the idea that Yugoslavia is some kind of bastion against Russia is really odd (we were fine without it before, and we would really like to leave again). And despite being an imperialist I don't think we belonged (or did much good) either place.

Desert Storm was about oil, but the naked aggression aspect of it was kinda there. I can't think of too many land grabs that blatant, in recent years.

We do apologize for using troops to force the sale of MacDonald's and Coca-cola at gunpoint to third world slave laborers. Maybe we should take a look at that in future marketing plans... but the numbers are up, and that's all that matters to us imperialists.

Have a Marlboro, crack a Bud, relax. Can we interest you in some Infantry Fighting Vehicles while you wait?

[Durruti]

Hakko Ichiu:

'I've been hearing this particlar dodge for over 25 years -- I became politically aware at a very young age.'

Why is calling something by its proper name 'a dodge'? This seems to imply that denying Russia, China etc. were ever 'communist' makes that person a communist sympathiser. In fact I think the opposite is true; in calling those disgusting regimes by their true name we can show how the Marxist-Leninist method was totally flawed in that a bureaucratic, centalised state can never transform into a commune-based stateless society.

MarkIV:

'The former Soviet Union did and China does refer to themselves as "communist". So there is really no debate here.'

Actually Russia called itself the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics. Quite different. 'Communist Government' is actually an oxymoron because when the state 'withers away' you don't have a 'government' anymore. No doubt you could have found some poorly educated resident in the old USSR or China who thought they were living under 'communism' but then you find the poorly educated in every country If I found such a misguided person I'd probably ask them to show me a 'commune' in their country - and then wait for the non-plussed expression.

DrAlimantado:

'I have no problems at all in labelling the former Soviet Union and their allies as communistic states. I do not see any other appropriate label for them.'

How about 'socialist', 'Stalinist' or 'Leninist'? 'Communistic state' is another oxymoron surely? Communism is when the state magically 'withers away' (ha, ha).

[von Lucke]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mark IV:

The former Soviet Union did, and China does, refer to themselves as "communist". So there is really no debate here.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm more than willing to debate you on this until the 2nd Internationale is called home!

Lenin himself said that Socialism (state control of the means of production, distribution, government)is the first intermediary step on the road to Communism (the people control), and that's were he started. After all, it was the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" wasn't it? Just about every country since founded on his "teachings" has done the same --- unfortunately, that's also where they stopped. Thanks to the inherent human tendency toward greedy self-interest, every Socialist state laboring under the Western-supplied title of "Communism" has been a Socialist dictatorship, usually only paying lip-service to the "rules" of Socialism in order to keep the ruling clique in power.

I'll say it again: The true Communist State is as much a myth as the true Democratic state. (The so-called Western Democracies are Republics people!)

Heh! Could we be any closer to having this thread closed?

[Major Tom]

For anyone to sayt that their nation is sitting on some sort of moral high horse over the rest of the world is an endeavour in futility. NO nation can reasonably sit and say that they are innocent. The United States is party to their own genocides (Amerindian Genocide and African Slavery Genocide totalling tens of millions dead). America is an imperialist nation (Remember the Monroe Doctrine?), it interferes in ANY other sovereign nation when it feels its economic or social well being is in threat (real or imaginary).

In theory Communism works, in theory... However, capitalism was almost doomed in the 1930's, and was only saved by the timely introduction of WWII (Contrary to pro-Roosevelt propagandists and New Deal supporters). The militarism and state of war the US was in (1940-1990) was the primary reason for the success of capitalism. I like Communism's fair representation of EVERYONE in society, and I like Capitalism's compatibility with Democracy. However, each one in their own extreme will not work, they both become too corrupt and inneficient (plus pisses off the population too much!).

[guachi]

Capitalism was not "almost doomed" in the 1930s. Not by a long shot. Economies go through ups and downs all the time. Although I am not exactly sure what you mean by "almost doomed" anyway.

Second, having read and analyzed the Communist Manifesto for a comparative economics class, I maintain that communism doesn't even work 'in theory'. The 'theory' part is so bogus that I can't believe anyone even took it remotely serious. The first thing that communism would do if they took over a state shows that (in the industrialized countries countries communism was supposed to apply to) communism is a stupid economic system.

Note: Communism was really only supposed to apply to industrialized countries. We have never really seen a good application of communist theory because the countries it ahs been nominally attempted in were not industrialized societies but rather peasant societies.

Jason

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Betas available to everyone are just publicity stunts anyways. -FK

[Mark IV]

Durruti and von Lucke: I am well aware of the name of the country.

Now, what did the ruling party call itself (in Russian as well as English)? What was the derivation of "Comintern"?

The rulers of the Soviet Union didn't play word games with THAT word so we shouldn't, either. There were Communist Youth organizations and Communist organizations throughout the Soviet era. Communist workers and soldiers are honored throughout Soviet literature. Looks like a duck, calls itself a duck...

[Renaud]

Folks we need to retire to some internet thread reserved for debates on political philosophy! But hey as long is they don't lock us out what the hell...

quote from recent post:

'Thanks to the inherent human tendency toward greedy self-interest, every Socialist state laboring under the Western-supplied title of "Communism" has been a Socialist dictatorship, usually only paying lip-service to the "rules" of Socialism in order to keep the ruling clique in power.'

I just can't resist this one. Practically every western public school and public or private university teaches this fable. It took me years of study to undo some of the damage done to me by public schooling in this regard. That is, that communism is theoretically sound, but we poor humans are too immoral to accept and faithfully implement its tenets. Every aspect of socialistic/communistic economic and social theory has been painstakingly taken apart and shown to be fallacious as well as immoral. I know I damn near gave a dissertation on this in another wildly off topic thread some months ago.

So, how can a theory which I claim to be illogical nonsense provide the intellectual impetus to propel unnumbered tyrants to power again and again?

Whatever theory of the organization of society is perceived as holding the moral high ground (socialism in this case) is the one men will aspire to, regardless of it's perceived impossibility, inherent evil or destructiveness. This is the reason for the triumphs of Statism in all it's forms in this last century. Men strive to be moral, and if the poison pill of self destruction and abdication of their individual rights is held out to them as the ultimate moral high ground, they will hasten to implement it in practical terms whatever the consequences. Our political philosophers have abdicated their responsibility to civilization by teaching entire generations of statesmen and voters that self-interest is evil, while surrender to the Great God State (as representative of the collective good) is the ultimate benevolent gesture to mankind. This is in direct contradiction to the teachings of classical western civilization, most particularly the philosophy of classical liberalism prevalent the 17th-19th centuries, and the documented principles of the US founding fathers. During this period even Germany, now depicted as always having been the haven and source of teutonic fascism, was more free than most European states (or the USA) are today. This was the time of Goethe, Brahms, Schiller and Beethoven. Of course it was a freedom-by-default, not protected by much in the way of a constitution of bill or rights, but it did exist off-and-on for a brief time. Only in the latter part of the 19th century did State Socialism introduced by Bismark start Germany down the path to self-immolation. Once you concede to a government of powerhungry bureaucrats the management of some part of your property, every other right once held to be inaliable goes up for grabs soon enough... Socialism, explicit and implicit (as western 'mixed' economies), triumphs because people who should know better are disarmed by legions of hoary professors and social theorists promoting it through tens of thousands of scholarly writings assuring us that self-sacrifice and self-abdication is moral and self-interest is immoral. If this is true then unaliable and imprescriptable individual rights can only stand in the way of the State's authorship of our utopia. Once your subjects have internalized this lesson they will happily 'vote' you unlimited power.

Suggested reading: 'The Communist Manifesto' by Karl Marx; 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience' by Henry David Thoreau; 'Liberalism' and 'Omnipotent Government' by Ludwig von Mises. (try amazon.com) I would recommend 'Das Kapital' but it's an imcomprehensible muddle held up as the authoritative exposition of Capitalism, written on the strength of a few years spent by the author clerking in an accounting office.

Ren

[Hakko Ichiu]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Durruti:

Hakko Ichiu:

'I've been hearing this particlar dodge for over 25 years -- I became politically aware at a very young age.'

Why is calling something by its proper name 'a dodge'? This seems to imply that denying Russia, China etc. were ever 'communist' makes that person a communist sympathiser.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It's a dodge for precisely the reasons I stated in the thread which you quote, although you've conveniently snipped the rest of what I wrote. All the various genocidal regimes and murderous movements, call them Marxist-Leninist, Maoist, Shining Path, whatever, have followed the siren call of Communism. Most of the time, the driving force behind these revolutions was the local Communist Party, often aided and abetted by the Comintern. As Mark IV said elsewhere, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck, even if it calls itself Socialist.

Denying that doesn't necessarily make one a Communist fellow traveler, one could simply be ignorant of the facts.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>In fact I think the opposite is true; in calling those disgusting regimes by their true name we can show how the Marxist-Leninist method was totally flawed in that a bureaucratic, centalised state can never transform into a commune-based stateless society.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No state can ever "transform into a commune-based stateless society". Various states and movements at various times have tried it, whether for purposes of religious messianism (e.g., John of Leyden and the German Anabaptists), messianic socialism (e.g., the Khmer Rouge), or democratic egalitarianism (French Revolution) and they've always reverted to the Hobbesian state of nature where life is nasty, brutish and short.

------------------

Ethan

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Das also war des Pudels Kern! -- Goethe

[DrAlimantado]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Renaud:

Whatever theory of the organization of society is perceived as holding the moral high ground (socialism in this case) is the one men will aspire to, regardless of it's perceived impossibility, inherent evil or destructiveness. This is the reason for the triumphs of Statism in all it's forms in this last century. Men strive to be moral, and if the poison pill of self destruction and abdication of their individual rights is held out to them as the ultimate moral high ground, they will hasten to implement it in practical terms whatever the consequences. Our political philosophers have abdicated their responsibility to civilization by teaching entire generations of statesmen and voters that self-interest is evil, while surrender to the Great God State (as representative of the collective good) is the ultimate benevolent gesture to mankind. This is in direct contradiction to the teachings of classical western civilization, most particularly the philosophy of classical liberalism prevalent the 17th-19th centuries, and the documented principles of the US founding fathers. During this period even Germany, now depicted as always having been the haven and source of teutonic fascism, was more free than most European states (or the USA) are today. This was the time of Goethe, Brahms, Schiller and Beethoven. Of course it was a freedom-by-default, not protected by much in the way of a constitution of bill or rights, but it did exist off-and-on for a brief time. Only in the latter part of the 19th century did State Socialism introduced by Bismark start Germany down the path to self-immolation. Once you concede to a government of powerhungry bureaucrats the management of some part of your property, every other right once held to be inaliable goes up for grabs soon enough... Socialism, explicit and implicit (as western 'mixed' economies), triumphs because people who should know better are disarmed by legions of hoary professors and social theorists promoting it through tens of thousands of scholarly writings assuring us that self-sacrifice and self-abdication is moral and self-interest is immoral. If this is true then unaliable and imprescriptable individual rights can only stand in the way of the State's authorship of our utopia. Once your subjects have internalized this lesson they will happily 'vote' you unlimited power.

Ren<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

/ Mattias

[Cuchulainn]

Wow guys!

this thread still going 137 posts later...

I didn't know what I started.

Don't know whether to be pleased or apologetic. :0

[LimaCharlie]

Having lived under a 'socialist' government let me offer a perspective.In todays world the word 'communism' and that which it portrays , namly 'dictatorship...is softend by the description of 'socialism' which carries with it a softer sound.

Let me quote a few of the strategy items quoted by Cleon Skousen,Field Director of the American Security Council..from a document he had obtained

a) Do away with loyalty oaths

get control of newspapers

c) Destroy the identity and culture of the nation

d)Break down cultural standards

e)Eliminate prayer and religious expression

from schools

f)Transfer power to government agencies

...written in and around 1960

Communism is a political,philosophical and quasi religious glue that motivates the fanatic ...socialism was intended as an economic strategy to benefit the masses....

the two are in tandem...but we should not be

deceived by the softer sound.....the bitter, strident and compelling horror of communism is never far behind

"The enemy advances..we retreat..the enemy tires we attack'

Mao Tse Tung

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[Durruti]

Hakko Ichiu,

Much as I hate to disagree with someone so 'politically aware at a very young age', what you seem to have conveniently ignored was that the subject of discussion was the nature of the political system in countries such as USSR, China etc (originally raised by von Lucke and myself), not on the existence of various Communist parties or the Communist International and its involvement around the world. Of course there was a Communist Party in control of the USSR. Your point exactly? 'Marxist/Leninists', 'Maoists' etc. never deny they are 'communists' AFAIK.

So we've established the Parties in control of these countries *claim* they wish to move towards 'communism' (not that the bureaucrats would never allow any such thing to happen coz it would mean bye-bye privileges). Commune-ism. So where were the communes?

Your intention seems to trade on the McCarthy-era bugbear use of the word. Central-state Socialism is certainly no 'soft-soap' description as far as I'm concerned. If ignorance prevents this being recognised as the real threat then it will all too readily slip in through the back door. McCarthyite sloganizing was a great mistake in that it seemed to positively encourage ignorance of the real evil that is Centralised Socialism by attacking something that didn't even exist. These days its widely condemned as the 'Witch-hunt' era. If McCarthy had had the brains to attack the appalling system in the USSR in an intelligent, informed manner he would have had far more lasting results. It would be have been easy to trash their system even on their own terms. In other words he really should have 'called a duck a duck'.

Why is it I keep thinking we are all essentially agreeing with each-other in what we think of regimes like the USSR??

BTW, I know a duck called Donald...

[Mark IV]

"Communist"-as-term debate milestones:

Hakkio: "I'm not talking about communist vs. capitalist, but rather that almost any other country ...I probably should have picked a non-Communist country ".

von Lucke: "I'd like to point out there has yet to be practicable government based on Marxist theory enacted on this planet, and that the use of the term 'Communist' when describing a Military/Socialist dictatorship is also incorrect."

Durruti: "It always amazes me how many people use the term 'Communist' without the slightest idea of what it means. Also that none of the state-socialist regimes in Russia, China etc. ever claimed to have achieved Communism."

Hakkio's meaning was abundantly clear to any reader. There is reasonable consensus among informed people on what constitutes a "communist" country, or a "communist" bloc of nations, in the spirit in which it was intended. A non-democratic regime ruled by a party which calls itself "Communist" may be reasonably construed as a "communist country".

The rest is a semantic flanking maneuver. Communist utopias don't and won't exist. We still know who he meant.

[von Lucke]

Whut we have he-ah is, a failure tah cuh-mmunicate...

Everybody agrees that the "Evil Empire" and it's minions were... well... evil. The argument seems to be over the semantics of what to call the governing infrastructure of said Empire.

Yah, sure, there was a Comintern: It disbanded in 1956 when even the most die-hard revolutionary finally admitted Communism didn't -- and wasn't likely to -- exist. And there is still a Communist Party: Very popular among disaffected Bohemians everywhere I'm told.

The ruling party of the USA is currently the Democrats. By your reasoning, that would seem to indicate that we live in a Democracy. Yet when was the last time every member of the USA voted on an issue of national policy? Have they ever? No --- because this is a Republic, where we elect a sub-class of citizens to rule over us and vote on policy for us.

In the same vein, just because the ruling party in the USSR (and China, N. Korea, Viet-Nam, etc.) calls itself Communist, does not make it so! As has already been pointed out, true communism is almost anarchy, it's so non-government-like. Hardly suited to empire building, evil or otherwise.

Sometimes if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck --- it's a goose!

[This message has been edited by von Lucke (edited 06-12-2000).]

[Seanachai]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Cuchulainn:

Wow guys!

this thread still going 137 posts later...

I didn't know what I started.

Don't know whether to be pleased or apologetic. :0<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

"McCormack and Richar Tauber are singing by the bed

there's a glass of punch below your feet, and an angel at your head

there's devils on each side of you, with bottles in their hands

you need one more drop of poison, and you'll dream of foreign lands..."

"Sick Bed of Cuchulainn"

the Pogues

Hmmm, from the 'demonization' of England in film, to 'Workers of the World, Unite', to 'Better Dead than Red!" I have no particular interest in 'defending' anything, but I feel like making at least these observations: It is easier to attack another political system, than it is to defend your own. It is easier to denigrate other nationalities, than it is to justify your own. It is easier to belittle the 'foreigner', than it is to accept him as your own. What is intriguing about this board is the courtesy (sometimes strained), and reasonableness (sometimes also strained) with which people debate each other here. Strangely, though, the main thing that comes through is that almost all the people I've seen debating here would basically hold any social or political system up to the same yardstick of values. I doubt the most ardent Capitilist loving, Democracy espousing, Imperialist apologizer on this board would advocate or condone with anything like a clear conscience the torture of a Latin American Trade Unionist, the brutilization of peasants in the name of 'counter-insurgency', nor the assassination of opposition members in the name of 'anti-communism'. Nor do I think the most committed Communist/Socialist/Maoist activist here would feel anything short of horror for the mass murder of 'counter-revolutionary' minorities, the imprisonment of journalists, or the execution of political 'dissidents'. Those who would debate the rights and wrongs of politics have more in common than those who would eradicate those who would ask such questions. And for those who are willing to say nothing and look the other way when those they support do wrong, well, to paraphrase a great man: who will bear witness and speak for them, when their time comes?

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After witnessing exceptional bravery from his Celtic mercenaries, Alexander the Great called them to him and asked if there was anything they feared. They told him nothing, except that the sky might fall on their heads.

[Cuchulainn]

Well said Seanachai

[Durruti]

OK, I'd like to throw in the towel here and agree with MarkIV and others that in the end that this is just a question of semantics and its fine to use consensus terms. No hard feelings guys?

I also agree the communal system probably has little chance of acceptance but I must admit that in some ways I kind of regret this - hence sensitivity over the way the word 'communism' is sometimes lambasted. I honestly think there have been a few brave attempts to try this way of living (bypassing state socialism) though most have ended in defeat. The Israeli kibbutzim is one that has been more successful. As well as others mentioned previously by Hakko there were the communes established in parts of the Ukraine during the Russian Civil War by Nestor Makhno, destroyed, ironically, not by the White Army, but by the Red. Also the autonomous collectives formed in portions of Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Again it wasn't Franco's fascists that wiped them out but Stalin's henchmen in the Spanish Communist Party controlled Republican govt. Pretty harmless movements really but someone thought they were a threat. No, I'm no fan of Communist Parties.

Cheers guys...

[nijis]

Theory and ideology be damned.

I have lived for eight years in a military dictatorship with socialist pretensions (admittedly a US-backed one), witnessed the ceaseless violence and humiliation inflicted by the security forces and police upon working class kids here, many of whom are my friends, and I feel confident in stating that there is no substitute for constitutional democracy. Get that first, and worry about who owns the means of production later.

[This message has been edited by nijis (edited 06-14-2000).]

[nijis]

Durruti, have you ever lived in a commune? It's a lot of fun, but in my experience you always have to revert to Robert's Rules of Order, that old constitutional liberal manifesto, for the tricky stuff.

[Murx]

I think capitalism & communism wouldn't matter if everyone follows Immanuel Kants 1. directive (is that the right term ?).

But as someone stated above it doesn't seem that mankinds nature will ever allow this.

murx

(somewhat mourning on all of this)

[argie]

What 1. directive? Resistance is futile?

Ariel

[von Lucke]

AAAGGGHHHH!!!!

The Topic That Will Not Die!

[Murx]

argie, from Your former post I can see that this is just a joke and You are not saying You don't know Immanuel Kant

murx

[Cuchulainn]

Mel Gibson - the facist???

This just in by a New York Post writer on Salon.com.

Title: The Nazis, er, the Redcoats are coming!

Subtitled: The savage soldiers in "The Patriot" act more like the Waffen SS than actual English troops. Does "The Patriot" have an ulterior motive?

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By Jonathan Foreman

July 3, 2000 | The week before "The Patriot" opened in the United States, the British press lit up with furious headlines. "Truth is first casualty in Hollywood's War," read one in the Daily Telegraph. Another story, about the historical model for Mel Gibson's character was titled, "The Secret Shame of Mel's New Hero." The accompanying articles complained that the new Revolutionary War epic portrays British redcoats as "bloodthirsty and unprincipled stormtroopers" and "bloodthirsty child-killers."

The prizewinning historian and biographer Andrew Roberts called the film "racist" in the Daily Express, and pointed out that it was only the latest in a series of films like "Titanic," "Michael Collins" and "The Jungle Book" remake that have depicted the British as "treacherous, cowardly, evil [and] sadistic." Roberts had a theory: "With their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their historical guilt onto someone else."

I can only imagine how much angrier Fleet Street's pundits will be after they have actually seen the movie. "The Patriot" will not open in England until August, but when it does, Brits will see a supposedly authentic historical epic that radically rewrites the known history of the Revolutionary War. It does so by casting George III's redcoats as cartoonish paragons of evil who commit one monstrous -- but wholly invented -- atrocity after another. In one scene, the most harrowing of the film, redcoats round up a village of screaming women and children and old men, lock them in a church and set the whole chapel on fire. If you didn't know anything about the Revolution, you might actually believe the British army in North America was made up of astonishingly cruel, even demonic, sadists who really did do this kind of thing -- as if they were the 18th century equivalent of the Nazi SS. Yet no action of the sort ever happened during the war for independence, but an eerily identical war crime -- one of the most notorious atrocities of World War II -- was carried out by the Nazis in France in 1944.

As a film critic for the New York Post, I found "The Patriot" well made and often exciting. But I also found it disturbing in a way that many weaker, dumber films are not. It's not just that it willfully distorts history in a manner that goes way beyond the traditional poetic license employed by Hollywood, it's the strange, primitive politics that seem to underlie that distortion.

"The Patriot" is a movie that doesn't "get" patriotism -- in either a modern or the 18th century sense of the word. The only memorable, explicit political sentiment voiced comes when Gibson's character makes the rather Tory comment that he sees no advantage in replacing the tyranny of one man 3,000 miles away for the tyranny of 3,000 men, one mile away. The deliberate lacuna demonstrates a total lack of understanding of, or even a kind of hostility to, the patriotic politics that motivated the founding fathers.

You could actually argue without too much exaggeration that "The Patriot" is as fascist a film (and I use the term in its literal sense, not as a synonym for "bad") as anything made in decades. It's even more fascist than "Fight Club," that ode to violence, barely repressed homoeroticism and the rejection of consumer capitalism.

"The Patriot" presents a deeply sentimental cult of the family, casts unusually Aryan-looking heroes and avoids any democratic or political context in its portrayal of the Revolutionary War. Instead of such context, it offers a story in which the desire for blood vengeance -- for a son shot by a British officer -- turns Gibson's character into a "patriot." Meanwhile, the imagery piles up:

In one scene towheaded preteens are armed by their father and turned into the equivalent of the Werwolf boy-soldiers that the Third Reich was thought to have recruited from the Hitler Youth to carry out guerrilla attacks against the invading Allies.

In the film's most exciting sequence, Gibson is provoked by the foreigner into becoming one of those bloodied, ax-wielding forest supermen so beloved in Nazi folk-iconography: an 18-century equivalent of the Goth leader Arminius (aka Hermann the German) who annihilated two Roman Legions in the Teutoburger Forest.

The black population of South Carolina -- where the film is set -- is basically depicted as happy loyal slaves, or equally happy (and unlikely) freedmen.

But the most disturbing thing about "The Patriot" is not just that German director Roland Emmerich (director of the jingoistic "Independence Day") and his screenwriter Robert Rodat (who was criticized for excluding British and other Allied soldiers from his script for "Saving Private Ryan") depict British troops as committing savage atrocities, but that those atrocities bear such a close resemblance to war crimes carried out by German troops -- particularly the SS in World War II. It's hard not to wonder if the filmmakers have some kind of subconscious agenda.

In one scene in "The Patriot," the British regulars murder wounded American POWs. In another, they order the execution of an American soldier captured in uniform. Both were common occurrences on the Eastern Front of World War II, but such war crimes by regular troops "never happened" in the Revolutionary War, says American Heritage magazine editor Richard Snow. (Of course, irregular militias, terrorist bands allied to both sides and Indian proxies did do some very nasty things.) And, sure, spies and traitors, such as Nathan Hale (American) and Major John Andre (British), were hanged. But regular troops on both sides observed the law of war that distinctions should be made between the former categories and uniformed combatants. "['The Patriot'] is inventing a context of atrocities when what really happened was much more interesting," he says.

Snow says he understands the outrage in the British press. "I think that [they] should be upset. I would be pretty sore if I saw a British production of Shaw's 'Devil's Disciple' and it had Americans bayonetting the wounded after the Battle of Bennington."

The most outrageous of "The Patriot's" many faults is the way Emmerich and Rodat show the British troops committing a war crime that closely resembles one of the most notorious Nazi war crimes of World War II -- the massacre of 642 people (including 205 children) in the French village of Oradour sur Glane on June 10, 1944. The film mimics the horrible event with clear accuracy and turns it into just another atrocity committed by redcoats in 1780.

At Oradour, the Waffen SS "Das Reich" division punished local resistance activity by first shooting all the men and boys. Then they rounded up the women and children, locked them in the town church and set it afire. (You can see Oradour today exactly as it was just after the Nazis carried out the ghastly mass-murder -- the French have left it to remain an empty memorial.)

There was one major case of British regulars burning a town during the Revolution. It was Groton, Conn., and the troops were under the command of Benedict Arnold. But the houses they burned were empty. Yet in "The Patriot" fictional British dragoons do exactly the same as the real life SS did at Oradour. They lock scores of civilians, most of them women and children, into a church and set it afire. According to both historian Thomas Fleming and Snow, no such incident took place during the Revolution. As Snow says, "Of course it never happened -- if it had do you think Americans would have forgotten it? It could have kept us out of World War I."

By transposing Oradour to South Carolina, and making 18th century Britons the first moderns to commit this particular war crime, Emmerich and Rodat -- unwittingly or not -- have done something unpleasantly akin to Holocaust revisionism. They have made a film that will have the effect of inoculating audiences against the unique historical horror of Oradour -- and implicitly rehabilitating the Nazis while making the British seem as evil as history's worst monsters.

Of course, Emmerich and Rodat would probably counter that they're just trying to show how nasty war can be. But the fact remains that in the real Revolutionary War the regular armies of neither side behaved in this way -- even in South Carolina in 1780 -- and only the Brits are shown committing unprovoked acts of bestial cruelty.

So it's no wonder that the British press sees this film as a kind of blood libel against the British people. To understand the import, just imagine a hugely successful foreign film (French, British, Chinese) about the Vietnam War that depicted Americans using thousands of Vietnamese children for medical and scientific experiments.

If the Nazis had won the war in Europe, and their propaganda ministry had decided to make a film about the American Revolution, "The Patriot" is exactly the movie you could expect to see -- minus the computer-generated effects, of course. (Doubters should take a look at Goebbels' pre-Pearl Harbor efforts at inflaming isolationist Anglophobia.)

It's just as well for Sony-Columbia that Emmerich, Rodat and Gibson didn't make a film that painted the French, the Chinese or even the Arabs into ur-SS war criminals. If they had there would probably be official government protests, popular demonstrations and boycotts. But they have still told a big lie about the war that brought the United States into existence, one that feeds an even greater lie about the war and the enemy the U.S. and Britain fought half a century ago. It's a shameful way to make money.

And it's particularly insidious when a film that goes to such lengths to avoid anachronism in Revolutionary period clothing, weaponry and battle tactics takes such license with the nature of the war. In the past, Hollywood has played with historical details in order to make a narrative more compelling or the look of a film more appealing. But it has been an unwritten rule of the American film industry that you try to hew vaguely to the generally accepted account of how things were in the past.

It's hard to define, but there is clearly a point where dramatic and poetic license shade into something much more sinister. If you made a film in which the slave trade was shown as two-sided with Africans shown as raiding Europe for slaves to bring to America, or one in which Jews were shown provoking pogroms by drinking the blood of gentile children, you would have passed that point, even if such films were exciting, well acted and starred Gibson.

I don't blame Gibson so much; he's only an actor and it's no surprise when actors either willfully or ignorantly overlook historical accuracy for a good role. (Especially when they receive $25 million for their trouble, as Gibson did for "The Patriot.") But I'd like to introduce Emmerich and Rodat to the families of those massacred at Oradour.

salon.com | July 3, 2000

About the writer - Jonathan Foreman is a staff writer for the New York Post.

[von Lucke]

Cuchulainn: And yr point is...what?

Actually, when the "Tarleton" character first arrives on screen, and starts issuing orders (with an o-so-nasty curl to his lip) for prisoners to be shot and houses to be burned, my own comment was, "Jeez, he might as well be wearing a black uniform covered in swastikas!" After that, my girlfriend had to keep poking me in the ribs because I would burst out laughing whenever the "Evil Redcoat" pulled another atrocity...

OK, so "Bloody" Banastre Tarleton didn't get the nickname "The Butcher" for handing out bouquets of daiseys to the Continentals: He got them for riding down surrendering soldiers ("No Quarter!" was his motto), and conducting a scorched earth campaign in South Carolina that would have made Sherman proud... But he did not slaughter helpless civilians. Oh, and another very important point: Tarleton's command --- the "British Legion" --- was made up of Tory Militia from NY and Penn. That's right folks, all that carnage was committed by Americans, on Americans! Wonder why that never made it into the film? And don't even get me started on their version of the Battle of the Cowpens...

This is yet another trashing of history by the Hollywood Entertainment Steamroller, and one which, I'm sure, our friends across the water are going to be very unhappy with.