We are cohabiting with a wounded political-economic system that is pouring legitimacy out of its every vein and with every beat of its heart, spurting incoherency from every artery and its heart is beating very fast as it thrashes around. In this company paranoia is a default option.
Paranoia is a home game for the ultra-right, because that is where they live in the flushest times... it is in the times of the disintegration of the most common and garden variety certainties that their message resonates most dangerously.... times like these. To some extent all of us are vulnerable to that message now. Awareness is our best defense.
In trying to get to the heart of any movement's mentality the art it produces is the most accessible path. Artists exist to reveal just as politicians often exist to conceal. A picture is worth a thousand words: "Socialist Realism" tells you more about the bleak mentality of "Really Existent Socialism" than a hundred "World Peace Conferences" ever could.
Probably the most fertile and creative artist on the American ultra-right is Frank Miller, the author of endless noir comic books, screenplays and films. I would say that you could learn more about the American ultra-right and neocon mind set from even tiny samples of Miller's prolific production than by a wastepaper basket full of articles and policy papers by such neocon icons as William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer or the American Enterprise Institute.
Lets look at a brief sample of what he does.
Lets look at a brief sample of what he does.
Now let us visit him personally and catch his vibe in the following short interview.
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
This brings us to Frank Miller's Occupy Wall Street rant. Here is a juicy bit:
The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.(...) Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy. Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism. And this enemy of mine — not of yours, apparently - must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh - out of your vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle.
I would maintain that if a group of such reasonable, nonviolent protestors like the people who make up OWS: men and women of all ages, and from all walks of life, can so stimulate the juices of a talented crypto-fascist such as Frank Miller, then they are doing something very right; it proves that they are drilling very close to the nerve of the wounded beast I opened this post with.
Summing up: there are few artists of American fascism as talented or as prolific as Frank Miller and to have attracted his attention so powerfully is a victory for America's progressive movement and should be celebrated as such. DS
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