He's a talented guy but definitely a bit off his nut. His politics have always landed in rather strange territory.
Is Oliver Stone losing it, or did he ever have it?
- Thread starter gturner
- Start date
Mel represents the extreme right and Oliver Stone represents the extreme left they couldn't be more different in their views... wait ummm er maybe not.
I find that extremists tend to be more similar than different in terms of their inflexibility and general detachment from anything resembling reality or good sense.
That's a cheap and ignorant shot. Stone is an intelligent, thoughtful and compassionate guy who sometimes lets his mouth run a bit further than his head, whereas Gibson is a vicious bigot.
Stone's personality doesn't always mix well with the selectively obsessive scrutiny of the infotainment media, and as he himself soon after admitted, he was wrong to so sloppily tie today's pro-Israel media dominance to the truths of the Holocaust (which, unlike Gibson, he'd never deny). But he was correct on the numbers, and his core point - that Western culture makes a huge deal of the Holocaust while virtually ignoring the Russian costs of victory - is inarguable. (How many Russian war memorials/diaspora museums/Hollywood films do you see throughout the States?) Anyone who gets hung up on the gaffe without appreciating the important point he was trying to make is frankly skirting the edges of intellectual laziness at best.
And those supporting Stone are missing a crucial point, perhaps the difference between tragedy and evil that sets the Holocaust apart from the war itself.
Hitler killed the Soviet soldiers as part of his invasion of the Soviet Union, which suffered 9 to 11 million military deaths (including 157,000 Soviet soldiers that Stalin had executed by court martial), and the Soviets killed millions of German soldiers (Hitler only executed 11,000 or so of his own soldiers, though he condemned millions of them to die in futile holding actions).
Hitler killed 4.5 to 8 million Soviet civilians, along with a million Soviet Jews, yet the Soviet Unions suffered 12 million or so civilian deaths (Stalin was busy killing them too). He and Stalin also killed about six million Poles, etc.
It was a big, ugly, brutal war and the non-Soviet Allies likewise killed huge numbers of civilians in aerial bombings, shelling, and the general chaos and violence of that war.
But what sets Hitler apart from the usual European megalomaniacs and offensive military leaders like Napoleon, the Kaiser, and others whose European wars killed millions is Hitler's drive to exterminate the Jews from the face of the Earth. The Holocaust wasn't any intrinsic part of the war or some tragic side effect. It stands apart as a coordinated plan to commit mass genocide, exterminating an entire racial and ethnic group no matter their origin, nationality, political views, or loyalty.
Stripped of what makes Hitler and the Nazi regime uniquely evil, as Oliver Stone so desperately wants to do, the Nazis would seem no worse, no more worthy of condemnation, than Napoleon, Churchill, King George III, the Kaiser, or FDR.
That makes Stone not only misguided, but as evil as any Nazi apologist or supporter, which may better explain why he's trying to provide cover for Chavez (whose government runs anti-semitic screeds, screams about 'semitic bankers', and claims the greatest threat to Venezuela is the Jewish financial mafia) and the Iranian regime which almost daily announces the need to exterminate the Jews.
Hitler killed the Soviet soldiers as part of his invasion of the Soviet Union, which suffered 9 to 11 million military deaths (including 157,000 Soviet soldiers that Stalin had executed by court martial), and the Soviets killed millions of German soldiers (Hitler only executed 11,000 or so of his own soldiers, though he condemned millions of them to die in futile holding actions).
Hitler killed 4.5 to 8 million Soviet civilians, along with a million Soviet Jews, yet the Soviet Unions suffered 12 million or so civilian deaths (Stalin was busy killing them too). He and Stalin also killed about six million Poles, etc.
It was a big, ugly, brutal war and the non-Soviet Allies likewise killed huge numbers of civilians in aerial bombings, shelling, and the general chaos and violence of that war.
But what sets Hitler apart from the usual European megalomaniacs and offensive military leaders like Napoleon, the Kaiser, and others whose European wars killed millions is Hitler's drive to exterminate the Jews from the face of the Earth. The Holocaust wasn't any intrinsic part of the war or some tragic side effect. It stands apart as a coordinated plan to commit mass genocide, exterminating an entire racial and ethnic group no matter their origin, nationality, political views, or loyalty.
Stripped of what makes Hitler and the Nazi regime uniquely evil, as Oliver Stone so desperately wants to do, the Nazis would seem no worse, no more worthy of condemnation, than Napoleon, Churchill, King George III, the Kaiser, or FDR.
That makes Stone not only misguided, but as evil as any Nazi apologist or supporter, which may better explain why he's trying to provide cover for Chavez (whose government runs anti-semitic screeds, screams about 'semitic bankers', and claims the greatest threat to Venezuela is the Jewish financial mafia) and the Iranian regime which almost daily announces the need to exterminate the Jews.
Of course. Everyone knows this, Stone included.
Source, please? Because highlighting the Russian sacrifices of WW2 is in no way synonymous with minimizing the crimes of Nazi regime. If there's a case to be made here, we haven't seen it.
Again, I'm going to have to request the source on this. Stone met with Ahmadinejad, yes, but I ran a quick search and couldn't find any substantial quotes on the matter. Feel free to share 'em if you've got 'em.
No, Stone apparently doesn't believe it or he wouldn't have claimed that we focus on the Holocaust simply because the Jooooos control the media.
See my above reply, or ask yourself why talking about Russian casualties in WW-II would cause anyone, anyone at all, to start ranting about Jewish control of the media, Jewish scrutiny of all statements made by anyone, Jewish lobbyists, and, well, Jews hiding behind every rock and tree. Note that the Soviets have focused on Soviet casualties like a steady drumbeat, for decade after decade, without lapsing into crazy rants about Jews.
Maybe one could better explain the lack of huge Hollywood movies about Russian casualties in WW-II from the simple fact that:
Until recently, they had thousands of nuclear weapons pointed this way, threatened to bury us, etc. You know, the whole Cold War thingy - totalitarian communist police states, etc.
Nobody is really itching to see WW-II movies when there are hundreds of them on cable, and Tom Hanks doesn't look Russian.
Again, I'm going to have to request the source on this. Stone met with Ahmadinejad, yes, but I ran a quick search and couldn't find any substantial quotes on the matter. Feel free to share 'em if you've got 'em.
Stone wanted to make a documentary about the Iranian President, just like the one he made about Chavez, Castro, etc.
Do you see a pattern here?
Oliver Stone likes hard core socialism (last week he called for the nationalization of all US oil companies) and hard core socialists like Chavez, Castro, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Like most hard core socialists he doesn't like Jewish capitalists.
Stone helped write Conan the Barbarian which was directed by John Milius(Red Dawn). I'm guessing the stoner parts with the Black Lotus came from Stone. I liked JFK, but when I was watching Nixon I started to think that Stone was really stretching the truth and then I doubted everything in JFK. Stone seems to love all those dictator types like Castro, Chavez, and Ahmadinejad. I didn't expect him to get all warm and fuzzy on Hitler though.
Chavez is the democratically elected leader of Venezuela, not a dictator. A hardcore socialist expropriates capitalist property and Chavez doesn't qualify on that score either.
Chavez has also pronounced the US to be the main threat as I recall, which might be perceived as hostile were it not for the fact the US government openly favored dictatorship in Venezuela. (Do none of you people ever worry how these attitudes will someday play out in this country? Anyone who believes that the alleged official antiSemitic campaigns wouldn't be as well publicized as some of Ahmadinejad's personal remarks has plainly drunk the koolaid being pushed by the fake news sites.
Ahmadinejad is not the dictator of Iran. He was just the man elected in a contest where only those loyal to Supreme Leader Khameini were allowed to run. He is neither in law or in fact the top leader of Iran. He's merely a President, not the voice of God.
Every personal remark of his that could be understood or misinterpreted as antiSemitic has been widely publicized. Official announcements advocating the extermination of the Jews would not go unnoticed. Anyone listening to the endtimes freaks on TV or seeing their trash on the newsstands would be deafened or blinded. Personally, I think it perfectly bigoted for the government of an Islamic state to condemn a Jewish state, but that sort of thing is to be expected of religious people. It's not the same thing as advocating the extermination of Jews.
Hitler was not a socialist. There was no large scale expropriation of capital under his regime. He was a conservative, popular amongst other conservative regimes and preferred by not so conservative regimes to the Communists. Hitler did not come out of nowhere, he came out of the conservative movement with the assistance of the rich and powerful and foreign governments as well.
Since conservatives have disingenuously played games with numbers to falsely equate Stalin and Hitler, the hypocritical observation that there really isn't anything to compare with the Holocaust takes the cake. Stone was talking about total numbers at that point. Plainly Stone had been influenced, consciously or not, by such conservative apologetics. That's probably also where he picked up notions about Jewish domination of the media.
Stone also wasn't talking just about WWII but modern times when the Israeli state might not even continue without the billions of dollars of aid and the diplomatic and military protection of a state with nuclear weapons and the apparent intention of using them! Somehow the Holocaust is supposed to play a role in contemporary attitudes toward Israel, especially in reference to state policies towards Palestinians it seems.
The kind of people who can omit to notice such elementary facts as above plainly cannot be relied upon to honestly judge how desperate Stone is to do anything; whether he's ranting or just making a passing remark; whether the crazy man is in Hollywood or the mirror, or much of anything.
Is it really possible to confuse this malignant drivel with reality and good sense?
Chavez has also pronounced the US to be the main threat as I recall, which might be perceived as hostile were it not for the fact the US government openly favored dictatorship in Venezuela. (Do none of you people ever worry how these attitudes will someday play out in this country? Anyone who believes that the alleged official antiSemitic campaigns wouldn't be as well publicized as some of Ahmadinejad's personal remarks has plainly drunk the koolaid being pushed by the fake news sites.
Ahmadinejad is not the dictator of Iran. He was just the man elected in a contest where only those loyal to Supreme Leader Khameini were allowed to run. He is neither in law or in fact the top leader of Iran. He's merely a President, not the voice of God.
Every personal remark of his that could be understood or misinterpreted as antiSemitic has been widely publicized. Official announcements advocating the extermination of the Jews would not go unnoticed. Anyone listening to the endtimes freaks on TV or seeing their trash on the newsstands would be deafened or blinded. Personally, I think it perfectly bigoted for the government of an Islamic state to condemn a Jewish state, but that sort of thing is to be expected of religious people. It's not the same thing as advocating the extermination of Jews.Hitler was not a socialist. There was no large scale expropriation of capital under his regime. He was a conservative, popular amongst other conservative regimes and preferred by not so conservative regimes to the Communists. Hitler did not come out of nowhere, he came out of the conservative movement with the assistance of the rich and powerful and foreign governments as well.
Since conservatives have disingenuously played games with numbers to falsely equate Stalin and Hitler, the hypocritical observation that there really isn't anything to compare with the Holocaust takes the cake. Stone was talking about total numbers at that point. Plainly Stone had been influenced, consciously or not, by such conservative apologetics. That's probably also where he picked up notions about Jewish domination of the media.
Stone also wasn't talking just about WWII but modern times when the Israeli state might not even continue without the billions of dollars of aid and the diplomatic and military protection of a state with nuclear weapons and the apparent intention of using them! Somehow the Holocaust is supposed to play a role in contemporary attitudes toward Israel, especially in reference to state policies towards Palestinians it seems.
The kind of people who can omit to notice such elementary facts as above plainly cannot be relied upon to honestly judge how desperate Stone is to do anything; whether he's ranting or just making a passing remark; whether the crazy man is in Hollywood or the mirror, or much of anything.
Is it really possible to confuse this malignant drivel with reality and good sense?
So expropriating banks, car dealerships, grocery stores, food distribution businesses, farms, oil rigs, and oil refineries doesn't count? Have you not followed anything going on in Venezuela?
Again.
Hitler was a wild-eyed socialist. He did write books and speeches, you know. His party was even named the National Socialist Workers Party. They named it that because they advocated Nationalism and Socialism. Nationalism was their foreign policy and socialism was their domestic party. Would you like me to provide endless passages from Nazi party leaders who kept reiterating this essential truth about national socialism? This is easy because the leaders clarified and clarified the point for any Germans who were confused.
Hitler himself maintained that the first step in becoming a Nazi is to learn Marxism, which laid out the fundamentals, and if you like I can provide endless speeches were he details the path Germany must take on the long road towards "true" socialism. Similarly, Mussolini's only jobs prior to taking power were communist agitator/propagandist, communist union organizer, and editor of Italy's socialist party newspaper, Populo d'Italia.
This commonality exists because both Nazism and Fascism developed as extensions and revisions to Marxist theories combining elements of anarchism, syndicalism, and new insights into the importance of dynamic leadership and national mythology, a long process that began in the 1890's and continues to this day in Venezuela.
As for no expropriating capitalist property, what do you think happened to all those Jewish holdings (Even Marx said the greatest obstacle to achieving true socialism was eliminating the last vestiges of Jewishness)?
What do you think happened to any factory owner who didn't cooperate with the Nazi Party?
Why did the only serious internal opposition to Hitler come from the old, landed, aristocratic upper class, culminating in an assassination and coup attempt?
That's not entirely true. Mussolini was the editor of Italy's socialist newspaper, Avanti! before being expelled from the party for his interventionist positions about WWI. He then founded the newspaper Popolo d'Italia, that later became the mouthpiece of the Italian fascist party.
Reality is grossly over-rated.
Good catch.
I sometimes get them confused.
Oddly enough, I personally think Mussolini was a sociopath but doubt Hitler was, based on their biographies.
Mussolini was thrown out of multiple schools for violent behavior, including stabbing a classmate (apparently for no real reason) and randomly punching a girl in the hallway. The rest of his life seems to consist of doing things to advance himself or flatter himself, and he had a long string of girlfriends (including several Jewish ones). He seemed to hold no strong personal or political beliefs other than that he should be in charge and that whatever political thought just crossed his brain was a brilliant innovation and the mark of true genius, especially if it upset his enemies and detractors, who should all be beaten with sticks and thrown in jail, if not assassinated.
Hitler, as far as I can tell, was not prone to personal violence during his childhood and wasn't constantly in trouble with authorities, etc. I think he was just a cold-hearted bastard enthralled with a very evil set of ideas, philosophies, and mythologies that we all became familiar with. (Well, some people still seem to be blissfully ignorant of actual Nazi party propaganda and beliefs. I guess they thought tens of millions of Germans, Austrians, and other working class people just wanted to wear snazzy uniforms and fancy boots.)
No prob, I just corrected it for correctness' sake. Being Italian, reading that Il Popolo d'Italia was a socialist newspaper is like an American reading that Fox News is a communist, hippie-loving news channel.
I think we already had this discussion, and I kind of agree with you. What you wrote about Mussolini is correct: he was indeed a violent and egocentric man, without any allegiance except for himself. I'm not sure I would classify him as a "sociopath", tho: he was prone to violence but didn't seem to enjoy it for violence' sake, just as a mean to achieve his goals, and even felt regret that he had to use it "for the good of the people" (i.e. for his own good). Also, most documents show that he truly cared about his family (and even about a few of his mistresses), something that I think a true sociopath would be incapable of. He surely had a histrionic, narcissistic personality, but I'm not sure about complete sociopathy. Well, in any instance, I'm not a psychologist, so what do I know.
My post listing some of the lies and absurdities in gturner's posts was aimed at showing what kind of malicious nonsense some will blindly accept, while smugly agreeing that it's Stone who's the extremist. Anyone who thinks that has no clue about reality, nor much sense of what constitutes reason. That said, the poster had the impudence to respond.
Second question first, yes, indeed. Chavez won free and fair elections and accepted elections that went against him. Claiming he is a dictator is either grossly ignorant or a deliberate lie. No one should take the word of someone who pretends otherwise.
Next, twisting language to make expropriation the same as eminent domain, seizure of assets in bankruptcy, seizure of property as fines, or even nationalization is not a legitimate argument. There are people who like to imagine they are liberals who've managed to convince themselves they are liberals while rejecting all state interventions against private property but this is an extreme right wing principle. Chavez's governments actions are well within democratic norms, albeit the more popular kind, like the Popular Fronts or the New Deals, etc.
The name of the party was the National German Workers Socialist Party. In the wreckage of the Kaiser's Reich, it was the Socialists who had the prestige adhering to a long time opposition to the murderous fools who plunged Germany into ruin in the first world war. Later, it was the capitalists who plunged the world into the great depression. Hitler made false claims about being socialist to curry popularity. No doubt it is hard to accept that one of your spiritual predecessors could be so spineless as to claim to be a socialist. Console yourself that he was the greatest of the antiCommunists, whose struggle against Bolshevism has inspired your movement long past his day. Other people might not be so shocked to hear that Hitler was a big fat liar.
For the question, note that the US government expropriated the land holdings of the American Indians. By your crude distortions, that makes the US government socialist from the beginning. (By the way, that fact does annihilate every fool claiming historically conservatism is about small government!) The expropriation of slave property by your standard is a Leninist nightmare! To top it all off, the implicit suggestion that this is even significant sort tacitly assumes that the "Jews" had extensive banking, industrial, real estate and communications properties in the first place.
As for the parenthesis, the typical conservative tactic of misrepresentation is entirely unnecessary. The majority will obediently hate Marx and everything alleged to be connected to him, just because. You do not need to distort the literal meaning, or to note that it was from an early period when Marx was still more a critical Hegelian, or that it was not a position held by the mature Marx when he was a working politician.
Bad things I'm sure. But when the Nazis tamed the labor unions or imported slave labor or handed massive contracts for rearmament or killed off their rowdy populist types, the Nazis were cooperating with the factory owners. There wasn't any great opposition between business and the Nazis, which is another proof of how ridiculous the lies about Hitler being a socialist are.
When the Communists fought the Nazis in the streets, that was far more serious opposition than anything those pathetic snobs ever did. Later, hundreds and thousands of Communists and Social Democrat oppositionists thown into concentration camps, to the approval of conservatives everywhere. You merely rule this out because you approve, like your political grandfathers, of Hitler's suppression of a democracy contaminated by a Left.
Anyone who thinks that has no clue about reality, nor much sense of what constitutes reason. That said, the poster had the impudence to respond.Second question first, yes, indeed. Chavez won free and fair elections and accepted elections that went against him. Claiming he is a dictator is either grossly ignorant or a deliberate lie. No one should take the word of someone who pretends otherwise.
Next, twisting language to make expropriation the same as eminent domain, seizure of assets in bankruptcy, seizure of property as fines, or even nationalization is not a legitimate argument. There are people who like to imagine they are liberals who've managed to convince themselves they are liberals while rejecting all state interventions against private property but this is an extreme right wing principle. Chavez's governments actions are well within democratic norms, albeit the more popular kind, like the Popular Fronts or the New Deals, etc.
Again.
Hitler was a wild-eyed socialist. He did write books and speeches, you know. His party was even named the National Socialist Workers Party. They named it that because they advocated Nationalism and Socialism. Nationalism was their foreign policy and socialism was their domestic party. Would you like me to provide endless passages from Nazi party leaders who kept reiterating this essential truth about national socialism?
The name of the party was the National German Workers Socialist Party. In the wreckage of the Kaiser's Reich, it was the Socialists who had the prestige adhering to a long time opposition to the murderous fools who plunged Germany into ruin in the first world war. Later, it was the capitalists who plunged the world into the great depression. Hitler made false claims about being socialist to curry popularity. No doubt it is hard to accept that one of your spiritual predecessors could be so spineless as to claim to be a socialist. Console yourself that he was the greatest of the antiCommunists, whose struggle against Bolshevism has inspired your movement long past his day. Other people might not be so shocked to hear that Hitler was a big fat liar.
For the question, note that the US government expropriated the land holdings of the American Indians. By your crude distortions, that makes the US government socialist from the beginning. (By the way, that fact does annihilate every fool claiming historically conservatism is about small government!) The expropriation of slave property by your standard is a Leninist nightmare! To top it all off, the implicit suggestion that this is even significant sort tacitly assumes that the "Jews" had extensive banking, industrial, real estate and communications properties in the first place.
As for the parenthesis, the typical conservative tactic of misrepresentation is entirely unnecessary. The majority will obediently hate Marx and everything alleged to be connected to him, just because. You do not need to distort the literal meaning, or to note that it was from an early period when Marx was still more a critical Hegelian, or that it was not a position held by the mature Marx when he was a working politician.
Bad things I'm sure. But when the Nazis tamed the labor unions or imported slave labor or handed massive contracts for rearmament or killed off their rowdy populist types, the Nazis were cooperating with the factory owners. There wasn't any great opposition between business and the Nazis, which is another proof of how ridiculous the lies about Hitler being a socialist are.
When the Communists fought the Nazis in the streets, that was far more serious opposition than anything those pathetic snobs ever did. Later, hundreds and thousands of Communists and Social Democrat oppositionists thown into concentration camps, to the approval of conservatives everywhere. You merely rule this out because you approve, like your political grandfathers, of Hitler's suppression of a democracy contaminated by a Left.
I agree with Stone about how society at large ignores the large amount of Russians that died during the war. It seems to me he was making a good point but ended up going too far.
I think Western society as a whole considers genocides somehow much worse than conventional warfare. But then, we barely pay attention to the Armenian genocide or any genocide that happens to non-white people, so I don't know.
I think Western society as a whole considers genocides somehow much worse than conventional warfare. But then, we barely pay attention to the Armenian genocide or any genocide that happens to non-white people, so I don't know.
The point about the Holocaust is that is was the systematic attempt of eradicating an ethnic group. Concentration camps were assembly-line factories of death, and that's no exaggeration. It's the purpose that makes it so horrible, not the death count.
I also don't get Stone's criticism against the media. I don't know how they handle things in your country, but usually it's education first, and media's influence second. So if you don't learn anything about WWII in school, it's not the media's problem. It's actually no news that in the war more people died than in the camps. It's no news that Hitler (or any dictator) is just the product of his time and had supporters everywhere. At least it should be no news, friggin' 65 years after the war ended.
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Stone should stick to movies where he's better at telling a story than delving into politics and ethnic bashing where he just comes off as another Hitler apologist type who has bought into a twisted logic that you can blame a single ethnicity/country/group of people for some tragedy.
Has Stone lost it? Definitely. He barely had it at one point. I liked movies like Platoon or even JFK, the fictional account that it was but that's going on 20 years since I can think of something he did I liked. Alexander being an exception.
Has Stone lost it? Definitely. He barely had it at one point. I liked movies like Platoon or even JFK, the fictional account that it was but that's going on 20 years since I can think of something he did I liked. Alexander being an exception.