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    Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

    Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

    Pre-empting the inevitable critical response this series will generate from commentators across the political spectrum, Stone has to be admired for the ambitious nature of the project. Is he the right person to film an undertaking such as this? Probably not. Talented film-maker that he is (the previous decade aside) Stone's factual inaccuracies in JFK leave one with the impression that this will serve primarily as a punch to the gut of conservative, Republican America. Normally I'd sympathise with such sentiments but they require meticulous research and a dispassionate, objective view of history which Stone is unlikely to provide.

    I don't for a minute believe that Stone worships or even likes Hitler and Stalin but comments he's made in relation to this new film are going to muddy the waters somewhat

    Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply
    We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good'. [Hitler] is the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect. People in America don't know the connection between WWI and WWII
    I'm reeling with those, for example. Perhaps some of the philosophy graduates here can have a crack at rationalising Stone's words because, while I'd be similarly reluctant to break history into a series of discrete events classified as either Good Things or Bad Things, surely by any criteria that we use, and even allowing for an objective view, Hitler would have to be viewed as evil? (Yes, I understand that Hitler himself would have considered himself a "good" person as he was doing what he believed was right and just but what Stone's saying goes beyong that, surely)

    Stalin has a complete other story. Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any person
    I don't know how one could quantify or determine how any one individual can be said to have fought Hitler's military "more than any other person". In terms of the amount of money spent, the resources expended, the lives lost in pursuit of the objective, then yeah Stalin probably is ahead of (if only slightly) Churchill and Roosevelt on that one - I don't have the figures to hand. He never fought himself, of course, so I'd be more inclined to attribute the credit to the incredible resolve of the Russian military and people without whom Europe would have almost certainly become a fascist tyranny.

    #2
    Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

    Sorry, that's just reminded me of Viz reporting that a farmer in Northumberland found the Nazi war machine under a couple of old fertiliser sacks in his spare barn.

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      #3
      Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

      We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good'. [Hitler] is the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect. People in America don't know the connection between WWI and WWII
      That sort of thing just misses the point and misunderstands history.

      Hitler and his cronies were really bad. Super-duper bad evil mother fuckers. No two ways about it. Delusional and psycho, in some cases as well.

      However, there are always a few super evil mother fuckers around. One of them, I think, works at my old job, for example. But fortunately, most of the time, in stable countries governed by rule of law, people like that rarely spread their evil very far. Maybe they just have a few followers. Maybe a street gang. Bad, but containable.

      But in some situations, the circumstances are just right such that large numbers of people who could otherwise be persuaded to be good, are willing to listen to an evil nutter and go along with his plans. The more desperate and ignorant a populace is, the more persuadable it is.

      So if Hitler had never been born, but everything else was the same - history of anti-Semitism in Europe, economic trouble in Germany following WWI, etc - it's quite likely that some other psychotic fuckhead would have led Germany into fascism. Not 100% sure, but probably. But that doesn't excuse Hilter for being that psychotic fuckhead.

      Does that make sense?

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        #4
        Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

        Reed - aren't you kind of agreeing with Stone there?
        The cause was that "the circumstances are just right" and the effect was "that large numbers of people who could otherwise be persuaded to be good, are willing to listen to an evil nutter and go along with his plans."
        The link between WW1 & WW2. Then adding on that it probably would have happened anyway, taking basically the same deterministic line?

        I take the point that you're judging Hitler as "bad", but then from reading Stone there he would too - just he wouldn't leave it there, he would want more nuance. I think.

        I'm not even sure what I mean. We need someone more used to dealing with logic.

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          #5
          Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

          Sort of, but he says "We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good'. [Hitler] is the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect. People in America don't know the connection between WWI and WWII."

          He seems to be saying that we can't judge Hitler as "bad" because he was a product of his time. I'm saying that even with all the historical context, we can absolutelyfuckingpositively judge people as being good or bad. That doesn't tell us the whole story nor does it tell us much about how to prevent evil from spreading, but as a judgement of an individual character/psychology, we don't need to fanny around about it. He was an evil motherfucker who deserves to spend eternity with a red hot iron up his ass hole in Hell.

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            #6
            Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

            Yeah, I guess it goes back to "he seems to be saying", and what CV was saying originally about trying to rationalise Stone's words.
            I can't actually tell if Stone's being unbelievably crass and providing an open goal for the patriotically correct brigade or just trying to say "WW2 was more than a cartoon baddy popping up and getting whupped, there's context you should probably know about".

            I'll have to go see the film and find out...

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              #7
              Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

              Yeah. I think most Americans with any kind of decent education know a bit about the context of the rise of the Third Reich. I think he's underestimating that. Unfortunately, a lot of people who ought to know better don't seem to conceive our current troubles as anything more than cartoon baddies that need to get whacked.

              Comment


                #8
                Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                So if Hitler had never been born, but everything else was the same - history of anti-Semitism in Europe, economic trouble in Germany following WWI, etc - it's quite likely that some other psychotic fuckhead would have led Germany into fascism. Not 100% sure, but probably. But that doesn't excuse Hilter for being that psychotic fuckhead.

                Does that make sense?
                Hmm, I'm not sure that's true at all. Nazism relied on him as a negotiator with conservative powers (he strayed from the pure fascist anti-capitalist blueprint long before he found power) for them to gain power. Without him it's very likely the Nazi party wouldn't have got to where they did.

                I'm (slowly) reading The Anatomy of Fascism at the moment. It's a fantastic book which provides a real sense of just how many factors have to come together for fascist to gain power (the analysis of why similar movements all over Europe didn't succeed is particularly good, I think).

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                  #9
                  Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                  It's a bit of a separate issue, in a way: whether a Hitler-like figure would have come to power had Hitler fallen under a bus. Separate, I mean, from the point that I take Stone, in his typically dumbass and counterproductive way, to be making, which is that the way you guard against Hitlers is by avoiding the circumstances that might favour their rise, by getting the politics right.

                  One lesson that the Allies seemed to have learned by the end of WWII is that a conqueror is responsible for the welfare, and the future stability, of the conquered people. This then seemed to be one of many things that the neocons systematically unlearned.

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                    #10
                    Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                    Wyatt, could it not be argued that it wasn't that the Allies felt a responsibility to the conquered people, but that it was to their advantage to ensure their future stability and prosperity?
                    The neo-cons perhaps didn't feel that it was to their advantage to ensure stability etc. in Iraq. Or that strands of them would be more concerned with short-term commercial advantage, and that strands of them, having gotten high on their own supply, thought that the invisible hand would ensure it?

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                      #11
                      Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                      Yes, fair point. I like your last sentence especially...

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                        #12
                        Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                        Well, I have been practising.

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                          #13
                          Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                          Hmm, I'm not sure that's true at all. Nazism relied on him as a negotiator with conservative powers (he strayed from the pure fascist anti-capitalist blueprint long before he found power) for them to gain power. Without him it's very likely the Nazi party wouldn't have got to where they did.

                          I'm (slowly) reading The Anatomy of Fascism at the moment. It's a fantastic book which provides a real sense of just how many factors have to come together for fascist to gain power (the analysis of why similar movements all over Europe didn't succeed is particularly good, I think).
                          Ok, I agree. I don't know that the Nazis would have happened without Hitler. But it might have and, more to the point Hitler wouldn't have happened, as we know him, without all of the other factors going on in the 20s and 30s and all of the centuries of antisemitism and what not. But whether that happened or not, Hitler was an evil motherfucker.

                          Either way, I'm trying to say what Wyatt said. That the key to stopping these sorts of big evil movements isn't to try to whack the next Hitler or even the next Bin Laden, but to combat the things that create a social environment in which guys like that can get a following.

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                            #14
                            Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                            I don't know if most of the people in the states would have really covered much about the causes of WWII as they relate to WWI. The second world war is covered in school extensively, but little attention is given to the first.
                            I think they blend together for most people here and there is a general wash of 'Germans are bad.'
                            Who caused the first world war? Even though I don't think you could lay that on the doorstep of the Germans, I would bet most Americans would say so.
                            It wasn't just that the Allies didn't take responsibility for Germany after the first world war, its that they made every effort to punish them for losing. It was an almost concious effort to humiliate them by forcing them to pay reparations and limiting the size of the military. In that environment, they were perfectly setting the stage for Hitler or someone like him. Doesn't make him any less evil, but it does lay the blame for his rise on our doorsteps, which would come as a surprise to, in my opinion, the majority of Americans.

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                              #15
                              Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                              Or that strands of them would be more concerned with short-term commercial advantage, and that strands of them, having gotten high on their own supply, thought that the invisible hand would ensure it?
                              High on their own supply-side, you could say. I crack me up.

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                                #16
                                Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                                NWA always advised against that.

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                                  #17
                                  Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                                  I don't know if most of the people in the states would have really covered much about the causes of WWII as they relate to WWI. The second world war is covered in school extensively, but little attention is given to the first.
                                  Any American that paid the slightest bit of attention in high school history class should at least have some vague recollection of the Nazi's arising out of the Weimar situation.


                                  But of course, a lot of American schools are like this.


                                  And the history of anti-Semitism leading up to the holocaust is not well known at all and of course our Abandonment of the Jews isn't widely talked about. I read that book in my class on the Holocaust my senior year at college, taught by this guy, who, BTW, was a bench warmer for UCLA basketball in the 1960s.

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                                    #18
                                    Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                                    I don't actually have any recollection of learning about WWII in high school, whether because my memory is bad or because we never got to it (classes often seemed to end before we had 'got to' certain subjects, because of poor curriculum planning). Whether or not WWII was one of the subjects we never properly got to, because we'd spent too long on the Reconstruction and the Great Depression (in my day it was American history and almost no European history), I'd be surprised if the word 'Weimar' was ever uttered in the classroom.

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                                      #19
                                      Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                                      More likely, it was raced through in around two weeks because we had to get to the Civil Rights and Gandhi and Vietnam before the clock ran out. It was very much history at 39,000 feet, at my high school.

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                                        #20
                                        Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                                        I think the point is more that the first war itself is less understood in the U.S. than it could be; less 'Nazis product of Weimar', more 'inter-bellum a long armistice'. (My gf's recollection of history lessons was that they stopped around the Civil War - anything more recent was too controversial; she has a U.S. masters-level education and knows bugger-all about the first war. Which almost seems the opposite of the British system which at times seems to be more Nazi studies than anything else. Oh, and War Poets.) Mind you, if mddawg is right and most Americans would say that Germany 'caused the first world war', then I guess they're doing alright running on intuition; insofar as it is a meaningful statement, it is certainly Wilhelmine Germany that is the state bearing most responsibility for starting that particular war.

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                                          #21
                                          Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                                          Agreed. Though you can't exactly accuse Britain or France of having handled the situation smartly.

                                          I don't want to come across a tit (oh please, missus) but I remember being struck when Inca, I think it was, who seems to me a properly smart cookie, hadn't heard of Passchendaele. That certainly suggested a difference of historical emphasis "over there".

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                                            #22
                                            Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                                            I would say you'd find the odd American who knows Ypres, but almost nobody who knows Passchendaele, for whatever reason.

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                                              #23
                                              Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                                              Maybe because Ypres is an easier, and more amusing, word to learn.

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                                                #24
                                                Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                                                I don't know whether that's an intentional illumination or not, but either way it's brilliant.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Oliver Stone's Secret History Of America

                                                  I don't know what you mean by intentional illumination.

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