Zionists: Vengeance, Barbarism and Tarantino's Inglourious
Basterds
Writers Articles And Opinions
22 September 2009
By
Gilad Atzmon
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-motivated 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: E
nough 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.
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