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|| * -- SPECIAL -- * -- March 21, 1997 -- * -- EDITION -- * ||
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* SPECIAL EDITION *
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_________________________________________________________________
`DON'T CRY FOR ME ... I'M A NAZI!'
HOW MADONNA AND HOLLYWOOD WHITEWASHED EVA PERON'S NAZI PAST
_________________________________________________________________
By Barry Lituchy <bml3778@is2.nyu.edu>
10 March 1997
*
"Don't miss it!" scream the advertisements. It's "one of
the year's ten best." It's the dramatic musical saga of that
great Argentinean heroine Eva Peron, starring Madonna. The
Hollywood film industry and Madonna have resurrected the ghost of
Eva Peron onto fifty foot movie screens around the world in an
effort to present "poor little Evita," as a saintly historical
figure to be adored by all the world.
But wait! Before you shell out your seven or eight bucks
for a ticket, perhaps there are a few things about this movie
that you should know. What these adverts don't mention is that
the repackaging of Eva Peron as a tragic, though lovable, heroine
involves the wholesale cover-up of her and her husband's real
life historical roles as fascist dictators allied with the Nazis
and as providers of sanctuary to some of history's most depraved
mass murderers.
And yet it is one of the most highly acclaimed movies of the
year. Already Hollywood has conferred on it its "Golden Globe"
awards for "Best Picture" and on Madonna for "Best Actress."
(Much to many people's surprise, Evita only received five
relatively minor nominations from the Hollywood establishment for
Academy Awards. Could there actually be someone in Hollywood who
is sensitive to this fascist-friendly propaganda after all?!)
But if this is a movie glorifying a fascist criminal, why
all of the acclaim? Well, there's a whole lot more to this new
cultural phenomenon of glamorizing dead fascists than you might
think. Once again America has done what Hitler and Goebbels
could only have dreamed about: turn a Nazi-loving-Jew-hater into
an international cultural icon to be worshipped by the masses.
One of the details about Evita that the advertisements and
the film itself don't tell you is that Eva Peron and her husband
Juan Peron were personally responsible for helping some of the
most evil mass murderers of all time to escape punishment after
World War II and live comfortably in Argentina. Among the Nazi
murderers that Eva Peron personally helped to flee justice and
live happily ever after in her country were none other than Adolf
Eichmann, Dr. Josef Mengele and Croatian fascist leader Ante
Pavelic.
Dr. Mengele is best known for his twisted medical
""experiments" on Jewish children at Auschwitz. Ante Pavelic was
head of the Croatian fascist state which exterminated the Jews
and Gypsies of Croatia and Bosnia and murdered over one million
Serbian men, women and children. Although it was probably not
true, it was long believed that the Perons were also providing
sanctuary for "Der Fuhrer" himself, Adolf Hitler.
Oh yeah, one of them didn't live so happily ever after.
Adolf Eichmann, once the Nazi SS "Jewish Expert" responsible for
planning the extermination of the Jews, was kidnapped by Israeli
commandos in 1960, smuggled to Israel, tried, convicted and
executed in 1962. Tsk, tsk. Perhaps in her next movie role
Madonna can play the "poor widow" of Adolf Eichmann. Reportedly,
Madonna has insisted that Evita was the role "she was born to
play."
HOLLYWOOD LIES ABOUT GENOCIDE
Not surprisingly the American media has provided no
historical commentary or cautionary counterpoint to the media
hoopla about the film, once again proving the complete moral and
political bankruptcy of the fake "free press" in this country.
However, in Europe the media has been, as usual, far more
forthcoming and critical than here. News stories in the London
newspaper The Observer and in Spain's leading news magazine
Interviu, as well as in a number of left-leaning Argentinean
newspapers and magazines, have exposed the Peron's actual ties to
the Nazi and fascist ratlines after World War II that prevented
these criminals from ever being punished. At the same time,
these articles have exposed the American movie industry for its
callous disregard for historical truth in glorifying these slimy
fascist gangsters.
Of course, it is no secret that the Perons ruled Argentina
as a fascist state from 1943 to 1955. Nor is it news that they
were loyal Axis allies until March of 1945. Juan Peron's fascist
vision for Argentina matured while he served as Argentina's
military attach to Mussolini's fascist government in Italy in the
years before World War II. He came to power in Argentina as
leader of a brutal military coup in 1943 in which he made clear
his imperialist intentions to rule all of South America in a
manner patterned after his hero Adolf Hitler, complete with
concentration camps for leftists and non-White races. Following
a brief power struggle in which he eliminated all rivals, Peron
transformed the fascist state into his personal dictatorship and
imposed a cult of personality on the people which required the
worshipping of himself as "El Lider" and of his new wife, the
radio actress Eva Duarte as "Evita." "Our Lives For Peron!"
was a required public greeting.
After breaking diplomatic relations with Hitler in 1945, the
Peron regime was adopted by the United States government as a
bastion of anti-communism, and soon became the most notorious
safe haven in the world for Nazi war criminals. These fascist
murderers were transported to Argentina with the full knowledge
and support of the United States government and the Catholic
Church in what would later be known as "the Ratlines."
For Jews, Serbs, Russians and other peoples whose loved ones
were murdered by the millions, the Perons can be remembered in
only one way -- as the best friends and protectors of Nazism and
genocide in the Western Hemisphere. But for Argentineans too,
the Perons are remembered for a bloody legacy. The Perons'
dictatorship was one of a long line of fascist military regimes
in Argentina which committed innumerable atrocities and which
laid the foundation for the long night of bloodletting and terror
in the 1970's and early 1980's when an entire generation of young
Argentinean leftists and labor leaders were butchered by the tens
of thousands in a mass murder unparalleled even in South
America's bloody recent past. Yes, this is the "heroic" Peron
legacy that Hollywood is honoring! This is the role Madonna says
"she was born to play!"
But new and still more disturbing information about the
Perons' is now being discovered following the release of
declassified U.S. intelligence reports from the CIA as well as
previously secret Argentinean government documents acquired by
the World Jewish Congress here in New York and researchers in
Buenos Aires. According to The Observer story of November 3,
1996 some of the new information obtained through these
investigations reveal that Eva Peron herself personally led a
committee established by her husband to actively secure the safe
passage of thousands of Nazi and other fascist war criminals to
Argentina in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in Nazi
gold, cash, jewels and art plundered from their victims. The
article notes that declassified CIA documents name Eva Peron as
the person in charge of this lucrative smuggling operation. The
Observer points to other documents which trace Eva Peron's
handling of the massive fortune she acquired as the savior of
Nazi and Ustahi murderers. No wonder the current Hollywood film
refers to her as a saint -- for the defeated mass murdering
fascists with nowhere to run after the war she truly was just
that.
In 1947 Eva Peron embarked on a well publicized tour of
Europe. However, it is now known that the real purpose of that
tour was to enable her to personally meet with Swiss bank
directors in Geneva, Berne, Neuchatel and Lucerne to set up the
accounts in which the hundreds of millions of dollars of Nazi
loot was deposited. The ironic aspect of this is that the U.S.
media has reported part of this story -- millions of dollars are
still in those accounts and belong to the victims of the
Holocaust. But what has not been reported is that much of that
sits in the accounts of the Eva Peron Foundation, the foundation
established with the loot of the Peron estate. Furthermore, the
new documents suggest that the total number of Nazis, Ustashi and
other wartime fascists given sanctuary in Argentina by Juan and
Eva Peron was 15,000, not several hundred as was previously
thought. According to The Observer, all of this information has
been confirmed by Elan Steinberg, the Director of the World
Jewish Congress in New York. But apparently the U.S. media does
not wish to report news that may interfere with the money making
operations of the U.S. movie industry. They will no doubt begin
to report it only after the film has completed its box office
run.
DESPERATELY SEEKING `GOOD NAZIS'
Movies that turn Nazi-loving-Jew-haters like Eva Peron into
heroes must be boycotted. What is needed right now is a campaign
to alert people to what Evita really stood for and perhaps a
little grass roots counter-advertising or warning labels in
public places.
But where are all of those "human rights activists" now to
help lead the boycott? Where is the Soros Foundation and
Helsinki Watch and Amnesty International and the whole cabal of
human rights fakers? Can't seem to find them protesting when a
film glorifying Nazis is being shown and the truth about it is
being suppressed, can you? They're much too busy trying to put
pressure on the governments of Serbia, Cuba, Iraq, China and
everywhere else where U.S. "interests" are at stake. But you can
be sure that stopping the revival of fascist propaganda is not
one of those interests.
Incredibly, Evita is not the only major new movie playing in
theaters right now that glamorizes, romanticizes and whitewashes
a former fascist as its leading character. Another new film that
has recently opened called "The English Patient" portrays in a
highly distorted manner the wartime experiences of an Hungarian
aristocrat and Nazi officer who served with Nazi Intelligence and
Rommel's army in North Africa during World War II. But in the
movie this Nazi is portrayed as an heroic, romantic character who
becomes a victim of the war as he falls in love with an English
woman and who helps the Nazis only as a way to be with his lover.
In real life, Count Laszlo Almasy was not only a wealthy, fascist
aristocrat who was actually homosexual, but he was also a violent
racist who was determined to expand Germany's racial empire to
the Middle East and North Africa. He won the German Cross for
his service and even wrote a Nazi propaganda tract glorifying
Rommel in 1943.
Shall the reader be surprised at this point when he or she
reads that this epic Nazi saga too has been praised to the sky?
Time Magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the
Washington Post, along with many others in the American cultural
establishment have all declared "The English Patient" to be "the
best film of the year." It won the "Best Picture" award (for a
drama) at the Golden Globes, and has been nominated for 12
Academy Awards. Curiously, a single article partially exposing
the lies concocted by this film (and the novel by Michael
Ondaatje on which it was based) was published in the New York
Times on December 17, 1996. In it Jane Perlez quotes several
angry Hungarian anti-fascists attacking both the film and the
novel as "amoral and ahistorical ... trivializing the
significance of the choices men like Almasy made." A mild rebuke
for such an outrage, but duly noted. However, amid all the
clamor hailing the movie as "the best film of the year," such
faint criticism passes unheard, a mere curiosity -- indeed, as it
was intended. Oh, but if the film were about Serbian
nationalism, then surely we would see an article every day in the
New York Times, and sixteen human rights groups taking action.
Thank goodness it's just about Nazism!
It seems strange now, but once upon a time Americans were
taught that the Nazis were the bad guys. It's not that hard to
remember a time in the 1960's and 70's when the evils of German
militarism and fascism appeared as often in movies, books and TV
shows as anti-Soviet propaganda. But not any more. More and
more we find articles and books about "the Good Germans" who,
although they were Nazis, managed to save a few Jews here and
there (e.g. Oskar Schindler) or who fought Hitler (usually after
it was clear that he was losing the war). It seems that nowadays
killing six million Jews and tens of millions of Serbs, Russians,
Gypsies and other peoples deemed racially inferior by White
Protestants and Catholics was not such a bad thing, judging by
contemporary cultural standards in the USA and in Britain too.
The New York Times even ran an op-ed piece not too long ago
complaining that it's time to stop making Germans feel guilty
about their past genocidal orgies and allow them to indulge a
little in some good old fashioned nationalist rapture. Let
Deutschland be Deutschland ("uber alles" we presume)!
But what accounts for this developing cultural trend in
which Nazis and other fascists from World War II are increasingly
being represented in our culture in sympathetic and even heroic
ways? Why is American culture desperately searching for "good
Nazis?"
There are several very serious political and historical
reasons underlying this international cultural trend of
reinventing and romanticizing the Nazi and fascist past. First of
all, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism has meant
that the American ruling class no longer needs to fear that its
open patronage of fascism and racism will turn American workers
into communists. Without a world communist movement to compete
with, the American and British capitalist ruling class can revert
to their old ways, pre-1939. Historically, those ways ran
parallel to those of the German capitalist ruling class, the
ruling class that butchered our parents, our grandparents and our
relatives by the millions.
The other reasons follow directly from the destruction of
the Soviet Union: the New World Order, in which America is now
the world's only superpower and its closest military and
political ally is Germany. The reunification of Germany in the
wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union has transformed Germany
into the imperialist superpower it once was prior to its defeat
in World War II. As America's number one ally in the New World
Order it is absolutely necessary from the point of view of
America's ruling class to rewrite history and prettify, glorify
and whitewash Germany's criminal imperialist past as a superpower
from 1870 to 1945. In the process all friends of fascist Germany
will also henceforth be recast as being "not so bad" as we once
thought they were. Thus, it should be no surprise that we are
taught that Croatian and Bosnian Muslim nationalism is on our
side and must be defended at all costs -- despite the fact these
are the same movements that historically murdered the Jews, the
Gypsies and the Eastern Orthodox peoples of the Balkans in the
name of racial and religious purity.
Moreover, German imperialism shall now be presented as not
nearly so bad as we once thought, in order so that we may bring
you the American voter and viewer "the New Germany" -- America's
number one military and imperialist ally and partner in future
wars. Last year for the first time since its forces wore the
swastika, German aircraft and army units launched military
assaults outside their own borders. It went with barely a
passing mention in the American media. In a few years, or
perhaps even months, the U.S. will ask to make Germany a
permanent member of the UN Security Council. A brain-dead
American public appears ready to accept this and much more.
Unfortunately, The English Patient is proving to be both a
critical and a box office success in this country. Evita, on the
other hand, according to some reviews is turning out to be a
flop, a big yawn, a real dog of a movie. Many critics also are
comparing it unfavorably with the stage productions of the 1980's
and the performances of Patti LuPone. At least we can take some
consolation from this, for it means that paying seven or eight
bucks for trash like Evita is not only morally wrong, it's a
stupid waste of money as well for the average movie-goer.
And after all there is no shortage of movies out there to go
and see. So, why should we pay to go and see fascists portrayed
as romantic heroes? Or perhaps the question should be phrased in
a different way: why should we not pay and not go to see Evita?
The answer is simple. Commercially supporting movies like
Evita gives a green light to movie producers to make similar
decisions about how racist and fascist historical figures are to
be portrayed. Americans understand only two things: money and
power. Empty seats in the theater mean that Hollywood producers
are more likely to think twice about excreting Nazi crap like
this next time. And while it is true that we cannot stop
American culture from expressing and romanticizing its fascist
and racist ideological tendencies short of a revolution, we
nevertheless can slow it down by organizing campaigns against
pro-fascist cultural events like this one. While Hollywood's
embrace of fascist heroes is part of a subtle trend in
contemporary culture, we must not be subtle in our response to
the rewriting of history and the repackaging of fascists as all-
American heroes. We must boycott Evita!
So, when it comes to Evita, tell a friend: "don't cry for
Evita, don't pay for it, and just don't go."
* * * * *
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