As Time Goes By
With just days before the freely elected orange Himler assumes the most powerful office on earth to disassemble the world order from inside, the Camino a Ítaca takes a look back at how eight decades of anti-Nazi propaganda on the silver screen have proven to be no match for the masses of disinformation fed to all through their tiny screens. What was once bad is now good and what was once evil is now accepted. The hundreds of thousands who lost their lives fighting these extreme righ-wing ideals now sleep uneasily as the very real threat of fascism returns. This time not by violence and force, but mire insidiously by fake news and misinformation. Click over to read the published versions both in Spanish in the HOY and in English in the SUR in English. (castellano abajo)
I’m starting to suspect
that everything that comes out of Hollywood isn’t quite real. I’ve been there on
many occasions, seen the white letters up on the hillside and tripped over the
junkies on Hollywood and Vine. So, I know that the place in fact exists. It’s
what it has produced that I am no longer certain of.
I’m picturing Gregory Peck
and Anthony Quinn climbing the cliffs of Navarone. Or maybe something lighter
when Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson make a Luftwaffe colonel’s life impossibly
complicated as they try to escape.
We don’t even have to
reach so far back to find more films on the same theme. We’ve seen Stephen
Spielberg direct Liam Neeson in a most harrowing film about a terrible list and
Tom Hanks searching for Private Ryan. Or perhaps more recently, Christoph
Waltz’s unparalleled quiet, yet menacing depiction of pure raw evil. One that
might even approach the heinous malevolence of someone like Reinhard
Heydrich in Tarantino’s inglourious
remake.
For eighty years Hollywood
has churned out constant reminders of the monumental struggle that took place
in the 30s and 40s. All are, in their own fashion, depictions of a time when
things were remarkably black and white. The false Hollywood narrative of cowboys
and indians temporarily replaced by something more easily digestible. On one
side we had people fighting for supposed freedom and democracy. While on the
other, supporters of authoritarian regimes who had no compunction about sending
millions of people who didn’t fit into their mold to their deaths in purpose-built
extermination camps from Fuerteventura to Rivesaltes to Birkenau. Hitler,
Mussolini and Hirohito’s defeat and the subsequent freeing of the concentration
camps have flooded our screens ever since.
In Spain however it would
take another 40 years. Franco was never toppled He died peacefully in bed with
his death marking the beginning of the end to perhaps Europe’s longest
dictatorships. At last, the good guys had beaten the baddies and fascism seemed
to have finally been put to rest.
But then something happened. It came back.
Four years ago the world
watched a violent mob try overturn a free and fair election. Nazi flags were
seen flying in the Capitol building of a country that lost 400,000 plus lives
fighting the very ideology invading its legislative core. Worse yet, the coup
attempt’s leader, Donald Trump, has now been reelected. In Italy, an open
supporter of Mussolini now runs the country. At the same time, in the cradles of
the most atrocious crimes of the 20th century, Germany has seen a
surge in support for the far right, while in Austria Nazi supporters may form a
government.
In Spain, young people
blithely sing fascist songs on school outings while more and more women look
back fondly on a dark period when they had next to no rights. Regime apologists
now sit in all levels of government and in attempts to whitewash the past, the
traditional right has joined them in attempts to repeal laws reminding us of past
horrors.
In a world where Mayor
Stasser has become the good guy and Rick Blaine the bad, you no longer need
dystopian movies, just pay attention. Please Sam,
don’t play it again.
