I'm beggin' ya', Mike. Please don't hold the barking madness of Moonbat Hutton Gibson against Mel. Holocaust deniers are a curious lot. Aside from their mendacity, they live in a little world of interwoven conspiracies and resentments in which everything, and I do mean everything, is the fault of a Hook-Nosed Jewish Bankers' Cabal.

Or the fault of the "Neocons", whatever the decade happens to be. Anyway, Arab anti-Semitism is understandable; they use their moonbattery as justification for the extermination of the Jews of Israel. After all, they need to blame somebody for the chronic failures of their culture. Hutton Gibson has no such excuse. He's just a resentful American anti-Semite who lost all of his old Father Coughlin tapes.

Pretty please? At least he never lied to Mel!*_*

Posted by: section9 at February 20, 2004 04:19 AM

What I'm always amazed at is the "Let's get a quote out the parents" sort of thing. Its really trying to tar Mel Gibson with his father's bile.

I contrast this with the non-story a while ago about Susan Sarandon's mother's conservative views--which I suppose was the "ironic story of the day" piece.

Why does either one matter?

Posted by: eric at February 20, 2004 05:37 AM

The hysterical pitch against Mel Gibson's movie is reaching new standards.

Now, to prove Mel is an Anti-semite, we are going to trot out his 85 year old father and let him act crazy. See? This proves Mel Gibson hates Jews!

Funny, but I don't recall any concern over Mel hating the British when he made Braveheart. I don't remember anyone dragging his father out then. And the very, very evil British king that served as the bad guy in THAT flick was 1000 years younger than anyone involved in the death of Jesus Christ.

It is mainstream to dump on Christianity. It is one of the last acceptable stereotypes. The media will run with it. I'm just disappointed that you consider anything having to do with their smear campaign newsworthy.

I'm not Christian. However, I see this "fling feces at Mel Gibson" thing - following closely on the heels of the media ignoring John Kerry's affair while pounding on Bush's AWOL story - to be nothing more than the media doing what they have gotten their bad name for - inventing the news as they want it and feeding the ignorance of the masses with what they want them to hear.

Posted by: Roark at February 20, 2004 05:45 AM

This is disgraceful: Needlessly humiliate a foolish old man to try to hurt his son. The people doing this should be ashamed. All rational and reasonable people know that the Holocaust occurred. Attacking Hutton Gibson does nothing to sway people on the fence or to convince Holocaust deniers of the error of their ways.

This is just like the attack on Arnold Schwarzenegger: his father was a Nazi, so he must be too! In both cases, it was a despeate attempt by haters to gain political traction against individuals who have never shown a tendency to follow in their parents' footsteps.

Now, as for Mel Gibson hating the British, that's another story. Remember, he also made "The Patriot". . . . (For those with no sense of humor, I'm joking here. I know Kimmitt left in a huff, but you never know who else may be here).

Posted by: Ben at February 20, 2004 07:02 AM

Yeah, I bet Mel's really ticked at his father right now.

Incidently, Hutton's argument about it taking too much petrol to burn so many people has already been scientifically answered. The German's knew their chemistry. It's a crude thing to talk about, so if you are easily offended, skip the next paragraph and just rest assured that Hutton's argument has been debunked.

It's true that burning a single human body can take a lot of gasoline. However, if you are planning on burning a lot of bodies, you can bring the temperature of the ovens up to the point where the bodies themselves become fuel. The body fat, in particular, feeds the fires. The Germans knew this, and this is how they did it without wasting fuel needed for their war effort.

Posted by: Anonymous at February 20, 2004 07:44 AM

I realize that this is slightly off topic, but I highly recommend the movie "Conspiracy," which was made by HBO a few years ago. It was based on the only surviving set of notes from the meeting at which the Holocaust was planned by the Nazis. The camera never leaves the Berlin estate where the meeting was held and never shows a single death, but the true horror of the Holocaust was brought home to me in the way that mass murder was discussed in such coldly mechanical terms. I found it engrossing and thoroughly chilling.

Posted by: Ben at February 20, 2004 08:08 AM

Hutton Gibson's views are a mild curiosity, nothing more. He didn't make the movie, and Mel isn't Hutton Gibson. The rest is just mudslinging on the part of various groups with their various agendas--none of them righteous or worthy to be dignified.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 08:22 AM

David Says: "Hutton Gibson's views are a mild curiosity, nothing more. He didn't make the movie, and Mel isn't Hutton Gibson. The rest is just mudslinging on the part of various groups with their various agendas--none of them righteous or worthy to be dignified."

You mean Jews David, right?

Posted by: EBG at February 20, 2004 08:49 AM

I mean the ADL, and I also mean many of the Liberal and Secular persuasion. So no, I'm not picking on "Jews", but no free passes either.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 08:53 AM

David: mudslinging on the part of various groups with their various agendas

Okay, what's my "agenda"?

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at February 20, 2004 09:12 AM

Not yours necessarily Michael. You're just hopping on the bandwagon for shits and giggles.

But generally, the agenda is anti-christian, anti-traditional values. Hutton is the target because Mel isn't Hutton, and neither is the movie.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 09:41 AM

Just to be clear David, are you suggesting that if Jews are offended by historical Orthodox/conservative Christian canards such as the theme of us as "Christ Killers" or incensed at Holocaust denial we are then advocating an "agenda {that}is anti-christian, anti-traditional values." And this agenda is because some (most?) of us are of a "Liberal and Secular persuasion". Do you believe we are conspiring against Traditional Christians and conservatives?

Posted by: EBG at February 20, 2004 10:01 AM

EBG,

to assume the passion story is about "those Christ killers" is anti-christian. Now, understandable because of Jewish history, to be true. Yet still misguided in today's context. And has the Foxman and the ADL done anything but damage to their cause?

The Leftist secular humanists, on the other hand, are gleefully jumping on the "anti-semitic" bandwagon simply because they hate religion, in particular christianity. They're preying on the fear of Jews to their own secularist advantage.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 10:06 AM

The big beef with movie seems to be:

1) The movie, following the Gospels, shows humanity as being at fault for murdering Christ

2) The setting of the story is in ancient Isreal, and the main character is a Jew, hence all of the humans at the actual event happen to be Jewish (along with Roman) -- but the Gospels make it clear humanity is still guilty.

3) Uneducated, medival peasents once were confused (or duped by corrupt people) into thinking the Jews alone were guilty. Hence the anti-semetism of "passion plays" hundreds of years ago.

4) The Left thinks Americans are stupid peasents with the same mentality of ancient bumkins who hundreds of years ago enjoyed "passion plays."

5) The Left hates Christianity and love to take pop-shots at Christians as racist, intolerent, etc.

6) Mel's father is racist, hence Mel is racist.

7) The movie was not produced by Hollywood, so it it must be slandered to prevent competition with "Confessions of a Teen Age Drama Queen."

Posted by: ex-democrat at February 20, 2004 10:10 AM

The fact that the opinions of celebrities get so much coverage in the news has always annoyed me. The fact that it seems to be expanding to cover the relatives of celebrities just makes me want to bang my head against the screen in frustration.

To be honest I really don't care about this movie much, I'm not planning to see it in the cinema or buy the DVD. I'm not against it, I'm just not that interested in it. I'll probably end up watching it on TV.

What's this about a mudslinging campaign anyway? The only time I heard anything about this film was when that guy got struck by lightning twice, while they were filming the crucifixion scene. Of course, thats here in Britain, I don't know what it was like in the US.

Posted by: sam at February 20, 2004 10:19 AM

It wasn't just the peasantry who belived this, the 'Jews as Christ-Killers' myth was very widespread among all levels of medieval society. A lot of the nobles who launched purges against Jews did so because they seriously believed this. The opportunity for seizure of property and getting rid of creditors was often just a bonus to these people.

Posted by: sam at February 20, 2004 10:29 AM

I haven't seen the movie and am, therefore, witholding judgment as well. But from what I've read, I probably couldn't catch the historical inaccuracies even if I tried.

I'm not one of those people who screams bloody murder every time a flick comes out that's critical of the Church...or Christ, even. Dogma was a freakin' hilarious movie with some really good points on faith...I never understood the big stink over it because they never claimed to be making a historically acurate film. It was a comedy for pete's sake. I guess The Last Temptation of Christ elicited the same response. Don't know much about that movie so I'm not gonna say much there. There is a difference with Gibson's The Passion, though.

Mel Gibson is claiming historical accuracy. If you're gonna go that route and make a more serious film then it IS extremely important to get it right and to follow through on what you promised. Alot of experts are saying he didn't, and in dangerously anti-semitic ways. That's a charge I think ought to be taken VERY seriously, not dismissed out of hand. Anti-semitism is rabid in many (maybe even most) places in the world; Western Europe is a cesspool anymore. To say there's not a problem when it's safer to be Jewish in Israel than in France is to be kidding yourself. It's real. It never went away. It still needs to be fought.

To anyone soooo entirely certain of the absense of anti-semitism in Gibson's movie, I suggest you go and do a little research on it first. The New Republic has published some pretty scathing reports against the film and the New Republic is incredibly trustworthy. You guys might want to go and dig up some of the research on their website...

tnr.com

I'm not saying that the New Republic is right and I'm not saying that Gibson may not be getting a raw deal. I dunno, really. I'm just saying don't take charges of anti-semitism lightly just because alot of folks are overreacting about his father. That's all.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 10:30 AM

David: the agenda is anti-christian, anti-traditional values.

You're promoting anti-Semitism as a "traditional value." Might want to re-think that one.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at February 20, 2004 10:38 AM

And to whoever said "the Left hates Christianity", let me just say that I for one hate those who generalize like that on both sides of the aisle.

Those who "hate Christianity" on the Left are a small minority on the Far-Far-Far-Left just as those who hate black people on the Right are a small minority on the Far-Far-Far-Right. There is no "the left" or "the right" in which everyone dogmaticly believes everything exactly the same. To say otherwise is to dumb down the debate and to slap Christian liberals such as Martin Luther King in the face.

Don't be an asshole. Grow up. I never called you Hitler. Don't call me anti-Christian.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 10:41 AM

Well said, Michael.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 10:42 AM

You're promoting anti-Semitism as a "traditional value." Might want to re-think that one.

You're promoting circular reasoning. Think that one through.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 10:49 AM

And to whoever said "the Left hates Christianity", let me just say that I for one hate those who generalize like that on both sides of the aisle.

Generalizations notwithstanding, the Left's hatred of christianity is as certain as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

Also, to be more specific about agendas, the Left is using The Passion to chip away at the emerging but tenous alliance between conservatives christians and jews.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 10:52 AM

To say otherwise is to dumb down the debate and to slap Christian liberals such as Martin Luther King in the face.

MLKs theology was orthodox, so I would hardly put him in the Leftist camp.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 10:54 AM

David: the Left's hatred of christianity is as certain as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

Oh, give it a rest. I expose anti-Semitism, and you change the subject to this.

There are no Christian haters on this thread, just as there were no George Galloway apologists two days ago.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at February 20, 2004 10:58 AM

There are no Christian haters on this thread

I didn't say there was. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 11:08 AM

David it sounds like your argument is that if one disagrees with any conservative Christian on an issue the they are anti-Christian. If a Jew disagrees with any Christian interpretation he is anti-Christian. Can Christian conservatives ever be anti-semitic or do you believe that is just an anti-Christian question?

Posted by: EBG at February 20, 2004 11:11 AM

EBG,

I've been able to distinguish between the motives of the Jews in this matter, and those of the Leftists secularists. The target is the same, the motives are different.

One is driven by fear, the other by a loathing, of christianity. One is understandable given history, the other is not. Either way, they are both anti-christian in their effect.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 11:25 AM

David: I didn't say there was.

Then let's not assume that non-Christians concerned about rising anti-Semitism are on an anti-Christian jihad or are trying to destroy "traditional values."

the Left is using The Passion to chip away at the emerging but tenous alliance between conservatives christians and jews.

Who is doing this? Me? Grant McEntire? The New Republic magazine? Meryl Yourish? The writers of the articles that Meryl Yourish linked to? I'll bet you don't even know the names of the people who wrote those articles, let alone their religious or political views.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at February 20, 2004 11:31 AM

Grant: It should be self-evident that I was generalizing in my analysis. So why did you decide to take it personally?

Posted by: ex-democrat at February 20, 2004 11:38 AM

David...

Okay, what I think you're really trying to say is that ALL LEFTISTS HATE CHRISTIANITY. That's a whole hell of alot different than saying THE LEFT HATES CHRISTIANITY.

Liberals are on the Left by virtue of the fact they're the moderately left-of-center wing of the liberal democratic establishment and all things left of center (even if marginally) constitute "the Left". I'm a liberal. I don't hate Christianity. The same can be said for Totten, though he would probably deny the "liberal" tag anymore these days (because he's mistaking Dem policy for liberal principle), and he doesn't hate Christianity either.

Unless you're actually trying to say "every one in the world left of center, if even by only a little bit, hates Christianity" try and make the distinction between liberal and leftist next time, won't you, because they're two COMPLETELY different things. Otherwise you kinda sound like a fool.

We're not all Marxist Communist Revolutionaries, you know.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 11:40 AM

Personally I find this all very amusing. It is JUST A MOVIE people.

If people find meaning in, either sinister or noble, it is a reflection of the THEIR OWN BELIEFS as much as Gibsons.

(....having flashbacks to the "Tolkien/Peter Jackson is Racist" threads that came out during the Return of the King).

Posted by: ex-democrat at February 20, 2004 11:43 AM

"It should be self-evident that I was generalizing in my analysis. So why did you decide to take it personally?"...

Because by attacking a generalization you're attacking me. And because I think overgeneralization is stupid and dangerous.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 11:43 AM

PS...

David, I doubt you're a stupid guy. I'm just asking you not to act that way.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 11:45 AM

Grant: Again, why are you taking it personally? I'll state my case again, edited. The Left in general hates Christianity, but this does not include Grant. Happy?

Posted by: ex-democrat at February 20, 2004 11:51 AM

David,

You said, "I've been able to distinguish between the motives of the Jews in this matter, and those of the Leftists secularists. The target is the same, the motives are different.

One is driven by fear, the other by a loathing, of christianity. One is understandable given history, the other is not. Either way, they are both anti-christian in their effect."

If "Either way, they are both anti-christian in their effect." Then is a Christian who supports positions most Jews view as against their best interests "effectively" an anti-Semite even if he doesn't "hate" Jews? Do you believe that a Jew can be both a liberal and religious or is this an oxymoron to your way of thinking?

Posted by: EBG at February 20, 2004 11:51 AM

And, yes, Michael that WAS INDEED a jab at your denouncing liberalism. You're a liberal of the independent thinking and non-dogmatic variety.

If people can make a distinction between "pro-war liberals" and "anti-war liberals", there can obviously be a fundamental disagreement on policy between liberals without there necessarily being a fundamental disagreement on principle.

I think affirmative action is anti-liberal. I oppose affirmative action on explicitly LIBERAL grounds as a denial of equal opportunity (a liberal aim of government intervention). And, I think going to war with Iraq was as liberal a notion as can be. I supported it for the sake of the Iraqi people.

See? It's not that hard. Have your underlying principles and beliefs really changed since 9/11? You were pro-war then, too, and you still thought of yourself as a liberal. Just think about it.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 11:57 AM

David: One is driven by fear, the other by a loathing, of christianity. One is understandable given history, the other is not. Either way, they are both anti-christian in their effect.

Does it not even occur to you that opposition to anti-Semitism is the actual motive?

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at February 20, 2004 11:59 AM

The left in general hates Christianity but not me?! I'm a liberal. I'M ON THE LEFT!!!

I can't think of a single liberal who hates Christianity! My father is an unabashed liberal and he's a freaking Christian minister!!!

It scares me, David, that you can't seem to make the distinction between liberal and leftist. You paint a strawman of the Left to rival Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and then knock it down as if you've proved something in the process. I can't help but take that personally, on principle alone. You're thought process is the same as most of the "Bush=Hitler" crowd.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 12:03 PM

Grant: Have your underlying principles and beliefs really changed since 9/11?

No, not at all. But I have moved to some limbo place between the two political parties. And when I say I'm no longer a liberal, what I really mean is that I'm no longer a partisan Democrat, since that's what most people think of when they hear the word "liberal."

If most Democrats were like you I would never have wanted to leave in the first place.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at February 20, 2004 12:04 PM

Does it not even occur to you that opposition to anti-Semitism is the actual motive?

I'm not questioning your motives Michael. My comments were directed at certain groups with other motives, and they are the ones who have driven this frenzy.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 12:05 PM

The Left in general hates Christianity, but this does not include Grant. Happy?

Fair enough. But oh, we arrive on the Michael Totten blog and this simple concept is supposed to be controversial? Unfair? Wrong?

Give me a break. Call me a fool, level at me your sarcasm, but there's no controversy here other than that in your own mind.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 12:10 PM

I think all we're asking is that you define your "certain groups" next time, David, as to not accuse half the country of anti-semitism.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 12:10 PM

It scares me, David, that you can't seem to make the distinction between liberal and leftist.

I've never even mentioned the word 'Liberal'--I said the Left. So perhaps this is a case of thou protesting too much?

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 12:11 PM

"If most Democrats were like you I would never have wanted to leave in the first place"...

That's a hell of a compliment, man. Thanks. And there is such a thing as an "independent Democrat", you know. Same goes for the Republicans (Andrew Sullivan comes to mind) as well.

And on that note, I'm going to lunch. If anyone accuses me of anti-semitism or putting babies on spikes (cheesy Eddie Izzard reference) while I'm gone, there'll be hell to pay. ;)

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 12:16 PM

What crybabies here! I make an analysis that there are those on the Left who despise Christianity and might have a idealogical agenda regarding this movie and I personally insult half the country! How terrible of me!!!

I personally applogize to every leftist everywhere who ever lived for my personal attack.

I was going to add that there are those on the Right who are defending this movie on idealogical grounds alone, but then I would offend every Rightist! So much for debate.

Posted by: ex-democrat at February 20, 2004 12:18 PM

Ugggggh...

Our protestations were in response to an original comment of someone else's saying "The Left Hates Christianity" among other things.

Democrats are on the Left. We're a 50/50 nation. When someone accuses "The Left" of "Hating Christianity" and being anti-semitic, that's a charge being leveled at all those left-of-center: Democrats, Left-Leaning Independents, all of us. That is accusing half the 50/50 nation of anti-semitism, is it not? Seems so to me.

And I'm f***ing going to lunch, now!!!!! Arg!

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 12:25 PM

Grant: It may come as a shock, but there are conservative right-wing Democrats as well as left-wing liberal Republicans. How dare you misrepresent them by labeling them Right/Left! I am so offended! ;)

Posted by: ex-democrat at February 20, 2004 12:34 PM

Back on topic, this shares a lot of resemblence to the charge that JRR Tolkien and/or Peter Jackson were racist because they portreyed Orcs as "looking like fill in your minority group."

The movie is clearly not the same as the book, and we can debate the artistic merits of Mad Mel's choices. But I would contend that seeing racism in minor artistic elements says as much about the heart of the viewer as the artist.

(Note: I am only working on what I have read about the story - that he has changed/interpreted a few minor details and not the plot or theme).

Also -- there some that Believe the the story of the Gospel is true, so maybe this is an unfair comparison. But a story is a story (true or not) and any movie will by nature require artistic changes to get it up on the screen.

(PS: Everything above is a generalization. Please disregard the post if you are easily offended)

Posted by: ex-democrats at February 20, 2004 12:41 PM

Hah...left-wing Republicans and right-wing Democrats! Maybe there used to be more of a crossover, but not anymore (at least not in Congress anyway).

But, yeah, you're right. I overgeneralized. I'm sorry. At least I didn't call all of those left-wing Republicans and right-wing Democrats anti-semitic, though.

Zell Miller's another story, however. (a joke! a joke! ONLY a joke! I keed. I keed.)

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 12:48 PM

From what I've seen, Anti-Semitism is a traditional value.

Seems to be pretty traditional in a lot a places.

Is Mel's film anti-Semitic? That might depend on which Gospel(s) he used as his source(s). Or not.

The point is, what does his geezer dad got to do with it?

Posted by: eric at February 20, 2004 12:54 PM

"From what I've seen, Anti-Semitism is a traditional value."

Actually it has an equal history among modernists and the Left. Sadly the Jews have been scapegoats by both traditionalists and radicals.

Posted by: ex-democrat at February 20, 2004 12:57 PM

"what does his geezer dad got to do with it?"...

Absolutely nothing, in and of itself. Mel Gibson denounced his father's traditionalism. If he truly doesn't endorse that kind of crap, like his father does or did, the movie will prove it.

Screw what his Dad thinks. Let the work stand on its own, then judge the guy.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 01:05 PM

People need to get over their faux aversion to generalizations. When I say "Left", it doesn't mean, Grant or his mom and dad and baby sister necessarily. Grant, and exceptions in general, do not the rule make.

A generalization is a useful tool which allows for such exceptions (such as Grant), but will still hold true as a general rule. Of course, my experience is that nobody likes generalizations except when they choose to use them against somebody else.

If you want more specificity, then that's valid, but to start by objecting to the general rule on the basis of an exception is poor logic and sloppy debate. You start with the general and move to the specific. Argumentation 101.

As a general rule, the Left is secular (godless), and the Right isn't. That's the general rule, "Grant" notwithstanding.

Flowing from that simple fact were my comments about Leftist aversion to religion, christianity, etc, and all the hoopla about
The Passion, and the bandwaggoners like Totten.

Posted by: David at February 20, 2004 04:40 PM

Okay, I'll take issue with your "general rule" then. The vast majority of the Left, here defined as all of us who fall anywhere left of center, is hardly "Godless".

I don't seem to recall an "atheism" plank in the Democratic Party Platform. Your "general rule" is pretty nutty, dude, and I'm done arguing against it. Get out and talk to a few more average folk every once in a while.

Posted by: Grant McEntire at February 20, 2004 06:08 PM

Is Mel's film anti-Semitic? That might depend on which Gospel(s) he used as his source(s). Or not.

There are some who believe that the orthodox Christian version of the events leading to Jesus' crucifixion (which relies on all four Gospels as canon) is anti-Semitic. Objections center on the claim that many of the Jewish leaders approached Pilate and demanded His execution, and that many in Jerusalem mobbed the Judean governor's palace and did likewise. I have a few observatioms:

1) Abraham Foxman is a paranoid barking moonbat. The complicity of the Jewish leadership in the Crucifixion is something that the vast majority of Christians have always taken for granted. If thousands of Sunday school classes can't bring back the "Christ killers" slur, how can Gibson's film expect to do so?

2) The people whom the Gospel records as instigating the Crucifixion represent a tiny majority of the Jewish population. Not everybody in Jerusalem and not all of the Sanhedrin (Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are two known dissenters) were on board for killing Jesus, and the Jews outside of Jerusalem in Judea and elsewhere were oblivious to the events. Blaming people for what their direct ancestors did is bad enough; blaming them for what only a minority of those of their faith, ethnicity, etc. did in the past is even worse. It's like blaming all living white Southerners for antebellum slavery, or blaming all living Russians for the purges of Lenin and Stalin.

3) Isn't it rather statist to judge an entire people according to actions supported by a majority of its top leaders but a minority of its population?

4) The medieval bigots, so I'm told, relied on the mob's cry of "Let His blood be on our heads and on the heads of our children" to justify their demonization of all Jewry. They didn't stop to consider that if the mob was wrong to demand Jesus' death, it might have made other irrational remarks that day. The crowd rightfully claimed responsibility but wrongly assigned that responsibility to their children.

5) The only backlash I'm seeing is against ADL barking moonbattery.

Posted by: Alan K. Henderson at February 21, 2004 12:28 AM

Alan: So there are some Jews that find the Gospels themselves as "anti-Semitic"? So essentially they see Chrisitianity itself as anti-Semitic? Interesting...

This would seem to devalue what most of mean by "anti-Semitism," that is, irrational, unjust hatred of a broad group of people.

So essentially those that see Christianity itself as "anti-Semitic" are really being anti-Christian and irrationally hating a broad group for the actions of a tiny minority. Sadly ironic...

Posted by: Ex at February 22, 2004 09:41 AM

As a Jew formerly of the left but now right of center, I find this whole thread nit picky and depressing.

Grant you are not a typical liberal, far above it and way more reasonable than I ever was while on the left. Your over-zealous desire to defend the left however, dilutes your reasonableness.

And don’t accuse me of the same, I never said I was reasonable, I’m an evil neo-con now anyway, we can’t be reasoned with!

:^)

Posted by: Samuel at February 22, 2004 09:12 PM

Funny, but I don't recall any concern over Mel hating the British when he made Braveheart.

Amen. I think the Jewish hypersensitivity is a little overdone. What exactly is the desired result from this sort of reporting? That "The Passion" should not be shown any longer? That Mel should add an apology to the end of the movie? Or merely to drag his name through the mud and muck in an attempt to discredit the movie?

So, perhaps Mel Gibson's father is a crackpot. However, to then somehow take this to mean that Mel Gibson is a crackpot/anti-semite is a stretch to say the least. I'm not sure why this is "news". I guess in the end, like most other things on this blog, it is intellectual candy. I personally would like to see The Passion because of all the controversy that it has stirred up. Probably counter to the intent of those who opposed the movie in the first place.

Posted by: Graham at February 22, 2004 09:27 PM

So there are some Jews that find the Gospels themselves as "anti-Semitic"?

I do know that some revisionist biblical scholars suggest that the Crucifixion was initiated totally by Rome. I vaguely recall some of the arguments: that Jesus was a threat to Rome (for what?), that the trial before the Sanhedrin would have been illegal (and what's the proof that the Sanhedrin wouldn't break the law to lynch Jesus?), and that blasphemy wasn't a capital offense (see previous remark).

While the majority of the "it was all Rome's fault" is most likely nominally Christian, I imagine that a number of Jews find the idea attractive. Is Abe Foxman one of them? Don't know. I'd sure like to know to what he was referring when he said that the film "rejects modern critical biblical scholarship."

Posted by: Alan K. Henderson at February 23, 2004 12:12 AM

I read this with a bit of sadness considering the source.

Just one comment -- it was not just "some medieval peasants" who believed that Jews -- by birth -- were Christ killers who deserved to be murdered and raped and have the property pillaged, have their birthrates controlled, be kicked out of every place they lived, etc. etc.

It was pretty much the official doctrine of the Catholic church. Just go by the synagouge in Rome, in the old Jewish ghetto and read the inscriptions telling the Jews to convert. That didn't end in the Middle Ages. Just about every Ashkenazi Jew (from Europe) in the US has ancestors who escaped here from the pograms in the early part of the last century (in which the locals would roam through Jewish towns screaming "Christ killers!!") and murdering innocents. My own father, when he came to Canada before emigrating to the US -- was routinely called a "christ killer" and couldn't go out on Easter in Quebec. Wasn't that long ago.

My point is that this went on for nearly two millenia and it wasn't a fringe movement. See also Martin Luther's writings on Jews.

The whole point of Vatican II -- in regard to the Jews -- was to put an end to this. They didn't treat it as a minor, tangential matter. To this current Pope's great great credit, he has advanced the cause of Jewish-Christian harmony. Read his words. He knows his history.

Now this is not to say that Christians are anti-semitic (a completely ridiculous notion in the US, at least) or that Christianity is. But historically, Christianity has had a BIG problem with anti-semitism. To disregard this is to disregard history.

Much of this anti-semitism stemmed from charges of deicide -- which is exactly why Jews fear and loathe the potential for Gibson's film (especially considering that he himself belongs to a sect that rejects Vatican II).

To lump this real criticism in witb a "secular, anti-christian agenda" is a small-minded, Coulteresque way of arguing.

Jews and Christians would greatly benefit from talking about our differences -- theologically and historically -- in order to build a better future.

Posted by: Al at February 23, 2004 03:17 PM

Jews and Christians would greatly benefit from talking about our differences -- theologically and historically -- in order to build a better future.

If there was honest debate on these issues, instead of thinly disguised agendas, then yes, talking would be great. Jewish/Catholic history should not be ignored. And you sound pretty reasonable by the way.

But did you hear the way Andy Rooney ridiculed Mel Gibson on 60 minutes the other day? Called him a nutcase, a wacko, "talking with God", etc. That's fairly routine, and it's crap. And from the Jews, accusations of being anti-semitic.

Surely, that's not what you had in mind when you say "talk about our differences", right?

But you're feelings are hurt because you're called out on your anti-christian agenda? Cry me a river.

Posted by: David at February 23, 2004 08:32 PM

Jews and Christians would greatly benefit from talking about our similarities. Common bridges have to be established before any two groups can engage in civil discourse about their differences.

We can start with a thespian performance that both camps find anti-Semitic.

Posted by: Alan K. Henderson at February 23, 2004 11:32 PM

David,

Don't jump to conclusions. I didn't see Andy Rooney much less endorse him. Most of the "Jewish" reaction (which is hardly uniform by the way, see David Horowitz, Dennis Prager, David Klinghoffer, to name but a few Jews who don't find the film anti-semitic) centers on legitimate fears based upon the history of how the Passion has been presented. And that the person directing the movie comes from a sect that rejected Vatican II, the most important event in Christian-Jewish relations in nearly two Millenia.

The fact is, the Passion has been used by anti-semites for centuries. At one time, the idea that the Jews killed Christ and therefore should be oppressed was pervasive -- I cited you several examples. There are many more. Please, open up a history book.

THAT was the reason the Vatican issued Vatican II.

Since when is support for Vatican II "anti-Christian?" That's preposterous.

Calling out Mel Gibson on his many historical errors is not anti-Christian. Fear of anti-semitism that may be stoked by this movie is not anti-Christian. Questioning the refusal to accept Vatican II is not anti-Christian.

Would you call Jewish AND Christian criticism of the pervasive anti-semitism/anti-Christian/anti-Western/anti-"infidel" ideas in the Muslim world an "anti-Muslim" agenda?

Please.

Al

Posted by: Al at February 24, 2004 08:42 AM

Al,

thanks for stating the obvious. I've already said in very clear terms that Jewish attacks on The Passion are motivated by fear and that Jewish/Catholic history should be discussed. No need to repeat the obvious as if I were in disagreement, because I'm not.

I said that calling someone an anti-semite right out of the gate is no way to dialogue; it only comes off as anti-christian--which it is. If you're not anti-christian, you don't insult them by calling them nutcases, wackos and laugh at their prayer life. By the way, I offered Rooney only as an example the kind of "dialogue" that is to be found out there, so don't even think you can pass him off as an isolated exception.

And yes, I know Jewish response has not been entirely monolothic, but in general it has--Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, and Rabbi Lapin notwithstanding.

Posted by: David at February 24, 2004 12:26 PM

>>To disregard this is to disregard history.

And we know there is no such thing as progress.

Now I personally hope nobody goes to this movie and/or reads the anti-semtic books ("Gospels") and we can forget about the whole Christ thing forever.

Posted by: xians suck at February 24, 2004 02:07 PM

Now I personally hope nobody goes to this movie and/or reads the anti-semtic books ("Gospels") and we can forget about the whole Christ thing forever.

I now rest my case.

Posted by: David at February 24, 2004 04:42 PM

Hans Steinhoff made a very popular film called the Hitlerjunge Quex (Hitler Youth Quicksilver) in which a virtuous German boy is murdered by communists (Jews) after leaving their party to join Hitler Youth in Berlin. Mel Gibson made a film about a Jew who spoke out against his religion only to be killed by the greedy hooked-nosed bastards with the help of a very reluctant Pontius Pilate. Both films are based on true stories. One film was awarded praise by Joseph Goebbels one did not make the cutoff for nominations. Both films are inciteful(sic). One would think that Mr. Gibson, an accomplished director, is a smart man and would understand the controversy that would arise when making a film depicting a bloody deicide. I am not saying he is his father but he could have easily distanced himself and repudiated the hateful speech his father is usually engaged in. No. Not once did he denounce his father’s words. What Mr. Gibson did do many times was attack the motivations of the people asking his feelings about his father. Like every media savvy liar before him (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, et al.) they all do the semantic dance around the truth. There are probably one million answers that could have been given by Mr. Gibson to alleviate fears of anti-Semitism but he will never give one. Why?

Posted by: Jim at February 25, 2004 10:47 AM

Jim,

are you calling Jews "hooknosed"? The Jews depicted in Gibson's movie are quite handsome to look at in my opinion, and not a hooknose to be seen anywhere.

I saw the movie. Did you? Probably not. But tell us anyway about all the "hooknoses" Gibson has portrayed.

Posted by: David at February 25, 2004 10:53 AM

David, I did see the film this morning but I am sorry if I used poor diction. I did not mean the actors in the film were hook nosed. I took sarcasm a little to far. I could complain about your use of the quotation marks but i am not really discussing a grammar lesson. Did you have a problem with what I said or just one adjective? Oh, sorry God really is in the details.

Posted by: Jim at February 25, 2004 11:32 AM

Did you have a problem with what I said or just one adjective? Oh, sorry God really is in the details.

I had a problem with what you said, and your use of that adjective was the most revealing part about it. It was a classic case of projection if I ever saw it. Gibson has not portrayed "hooknoses"--but you see hooknoses nonetheless, whether they are there or not.

I saw no hooknoses during the movie, and I didn't walk out of it wanting to lynch Jews either. But you saw hooknoses--sad.

Posted by: David at February 25, 2004 12:33 PM

Thanks for the dime store psychology. I apologized for the poor use of that adjective but you are going to harp and analyze that adjective no matter what else is said. You are right about not seeing stereotypical Jews in this film but I have seen it in films of this type such as Nazi propaganda films and speech. Goebbels in a sarcastic essay even jokes about it when he says “Isn't it true that the German nailed Jesus to the cross and the Jew transformed his teaching of love into reality?” The Passion is propaganda by a man who apparently stands by hateful and racist rhetoric. This man needs to distance himself in order for some other Catholic message to be heard. How else can observers feel of his passive behavior when it comes to anti-Semitism and active behavior when it comes to incite that prejudice? When his father makes hateful remarks it is reporters who have the problem? When reviewers comment on the film they are just anti-Christian?
(Exaggerated dramatic comments but about as faithful to history as the Passion is)
Hutton Gibson: Alan Greenspan (Jew) should be lynched
Mel Gibson: Damn Reporters
Hutton Gibson: The holocaust never happened or is mostly bull
Mel Gibson: Damn Reporters
Hutton Gibson: It takes a lot of gasoline to burn a Jew but the Germans needed it for the Luftwaffe and the Panzers to kill Americans (It is historically truthful not inflammatory speech ;)
Mel Gibson: Damn reporters trying to put a wedge between me and my father. It is not going to happen.
All this sarcasm aside do you really think Mel Gibson should be immune to people drawing parallels between his film and anti-Semitism when he only adds fuel to the fire? I might have accepted a historically skewed movie from a different director without an obvious background in hate but Mel Gibson's interviews leave me wanting a stronger condemnation.

Posted by: Jim at February 25, 2004 01:39 PM

The Passion is propaganda by a man who apparently stands by hateful and racist rhetoric.

The only rhetoric is yours, without any valid evidence to support it. That's why you have to quote Goebbels, and not Gibson.

By the way, he thanks you for the cash you spent on his movie.

Posted by: David at February 25, 2004 01:50 PM

I did buy a ticket to Catch That Kid and then walked into Passion not wanting to give money to Gibson. Again it is not what Gibson is saying but what he is not saying in interviews and showing in the theater. Will It take a subpoena by HUAC to get you to answer a direct question or do you do the semantic dance. If it walks like a duck...

Posted by: Jim at February 25, 2004 02:03 PM

Honestly, when I started reading Goebells, I'd read enough.

Posted by: David at February 25, 2004 02:08 PM

Ok, now that you've concluded that MEL is an anti-semite, was his MOVIE anti-semitic? Isn't that where you saw all those hooknosed jews? Back it up, or shut up.

Posted by: David at February 25, 2004 02:11 PM

I understand that. If I walked out of the theater before the ending it would not have changed my opinion. Prove me wrong! Tell me Gibson impugned his father's beliefs. My opinion is if you want to portray Pontius Pilate in a positive light which is a narrow view even for Catholics lessening the impact the Romans had in the Crucifixion. My education taught me that Pilate was a merciless leader who marched into Jerusalem and tortured Jews including Jesus of Nazareth and probably had a greater hand in the Crucifixion then Gibson lets on in the film. Even without historical liberties taken by Gibson he acts as if it is ok to be an anti-Semite as long as you don't actively say it in public. All he has to do is say his father is wrong. If he does not disagree with his father we know why he has made this film. You are saying I can't quote a man discussing the same subject in history when it comes to Goebbels but Gibson uses a blunt historical tool used by many anti-Semites throughout history including Joseph Goebbels and the Catholic Church to incite its constituents.

Posted by: Jim at February 25, 2004 02:31 PM

Mel Gibson decided to make amends by signing on to make the sequel of the Passion. Passion II: Jesus' Revenge. This film will chronical the use of the Crucifixion as a tool to murder millions of non-Christians over the last two millenia.
I guess all is well in the world.

Posted by: Jim at February 25, 2004 02:52 PM

Everyone is crazy because no-one knows exactly what happened 2000 years ago as there is no accurate written account from that period. The Passion was and is a hand-me-down worked over tale used over the centuries to protect the real Christ-Killers (Romans) and persecute Jesus's own (Jews).

Posted by: CB at February 27, 2004 08:45 AM

Let's not forget - Pontius Pilate was a cruel and oppressive imperialist officer overseeing the Holy Land for Caesar. He was hated by the local populations (mostly Jews) and was known to exact terrible punishments (mostly crucifixions) on Jews for crimes against Rome, including sedition and basically talking back to the pushy, demanding occupying force of Romans. Crucifixions didn't normally lead to death - one had to be murdered on the cross to die. They did serve their purpose, however, as they continue to do in Saudi Arabia, by making "criminals" suffer terribly for days in the sun. Pilate hung thousands of Jews on the cross and was ultimately recalled by Caesar and demoted for unnecessary cruelty (from Caesar yet, imagine how bad it must have been). Now, taking all that into consideration, one wonders why the disciples, when constructing the Gospels, whitewashed Pilate. One answer is that having given up on converting Jews (who were content with their God of Abraham), they moved into a more fertile area, namely the basically godless, hedonistic Roman Empire. To try and convert Romans by telling them that THEY, the Romans, were the cruel overseers of the Jewish land where Jesus lived and more than complicit in his death for "crimes" against Rome would hardly gain support (remember, besides taking on the Jewish establishment he was an outspoken critic of the Roman rule and a rebellious individual) - and since the Jews didn't come to believe this individual was their Messiah, they blamed them. And so it goes. And so Mel tells the story written 50-70 years after the event by persons who probably didn't witness them first hand - the disciples of Christ, being wise, probably went underground when the Romans and Pilate began looking for the seditionist cabal led by Jesus of Nazareth.

Just my opinion. Have your way with me, I fear not - for God is at my side.

Posted by: Chaz at February 27, 2004 10:26 AM

Hmmm...I'm Jewish...and married to a Catholic...and a conservative Republican of all things...and I'm amazed at the desperate attempts to shoehorn people into anti-Christian and anti-Semitic camps. If I decide the movie is flawed and in fact anti-Semitic, am I simply acting out my predisposition to be anti-Christian? I think not. This thread is yet more proof that our society has devolved from one where men of good faith can express different points of view without impugning one another to a land of name-calling, vitiolic asshats posing as intellectuals. Ranting, whether by Jews or Christians, left or right, is still ranting. And if Mel Gibson's father is the biggest dork of 'em all, that's Mel's cross to bear...so to speak.

Posted by: BJG at February 27, 2004 01:56 PM

Well gee now I can't ever be a famous celebrity then. Because my father has a big mouth and ignorant views just like Mel's dad. And if the media ever put my dad on tv or radio who would say what's on his mind which would be hell for me cause then everyone will think that I have the same beliefs because "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Well, I am my own person, just like Mel is his own person, and I don't believe the same things as my father. So let's just give Mel the benefit of the doubt.

Posted by: Jane Doe at March 1, 2004 12:40 AM

I wouldn't want to be judged by my mothers entire encyclopedia of comments, however I would be quick to speak out against my mother had she made such statements. The main thing that bothers me about Mel is the statement he made saying, "My father never lied to me." If this is the case you have to say either, his father never made these comments in front of Mel, or Mel agrees with them.

Posted by: EricM at March 1, 2004 04:41 PM

Mel IS anti-semetic. Hutton IS anti-semetic. Europe IS anti-semetic. Asia definately IS anti-semetic. Africa..don't even get me started.

That this farce of a film is not antisemetic is ridiculous. It is. Anti-semetism is now tre-chic' and Mel is leading the way.

Posted by: Hollywood Jew at March 1, 2004 08:17 PM

His father is a cuckoo, but many people believe strange things. Obviously Mel knew this would all come out, for whatever that matters. And historically hating the British not once but TWICE, although twice as many movies, is no comparison. The comparison to what happened to the British vs. the Jews is not even a comparison. Basically, I don't think the movie is probably that offensive, as long as one realizes that there were Romans and Jews at the time, no CHristians at all, and that if your concept is that a crowd of rowdy Jews talked the otherwise benevolent Roman leaders into doing this evil deed, well, I don't need to say more.

Larry

Posted by: Larry Mann at March 2, 2004 09:31 AM

The big reason why Mel won't repudiate Pops is that this whole mishigas got his Irish up. A thousand beetweed Mitch Albom types can clamor for him to do so, and it ain't gonna happen.

There's also been a tectonic shift as far as the charge of *anti-semitism goes. From foolish and hyterical over-use, it's now more stigmatizing to be called a "litterbug!" or a "Sunday driver!", than an "anti-semite!" It's the contemporary equivalent of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Never in their history have Jews had it so good, nd a damn moie comes out and they (not all) start running around like headless chickens. Add to that the fact tht the neocons try to hide behind all the Jews when they're called to account by legitimate criticism. The general non-jewish public (worldwide) is so sick to death of what they perceive as hysterical, whining, ludicrouly self-absorbed Jews, and the booming success of "Passion" proves it. Who cares if it's "good for the Jews." What about the rest of the goddamn planet? Or are they just filthy goyim?

Clearly, the ADL, and the N.Y. Times, much of the Jewish Estblishment made a serious blunder in trying to suppress the movie, and ruin Mel Gibson. He basically told "the Jews" (those who presume to speak for all Jews) to go fuck themselves. And, the public was overwhelmingly on his side. The phony phone-call to old man Gibson even backired. Most people feel it was a dirty trick. Whether all this fires up a tremendous well of latent nti-semitism, who knows? But I doubt it. Americans are mostly pussillanimous, and anti-semitism here was never particularly strong relative to England, let's say. British antisemitim is deep, and insidious. And, we're seeing indications of that now.

There's one other problematic element for Jews. And, it goes beyond Israel, "The Jewish Homeland" turned Neo-Nazi Occupier. There is a strong sense in the reformist or anti-globalization movement that much of the spirit and substance of the parasitic new global economy is Jewish. Neo-liberalism, Wal Street, the WTO, World Bank, there is a strong Jewish component to each. That's why a fashionable new quote is:

"The hunt for anti-semitism is a hunt for pockets of Resistance to the New World Order, like Nazis going house to house."

Call this unfair, wild, insane, and cry "anti-semite!" until you're green in the face, but resentment of Jewish authority, Jewish meddling, Jewish whatever is spreading. And, History does not reassure us that it's all just a crazy phase.

Posted by: Trevor at March 4, 2004 10:58 PM

Half of anti-semitism is being anti-jewish the other half is being anti-humanist.
If his dad is an anti-semite then mel is probably anti-jewish. Its common for sons to accept half of their fathers ideology in order to avoid complete rejection. Its possible that his entire position relating to vatican 2 and the film he produced are the only angles through which he can relate to his father. If his dad loves to hate then the only way he think for sure that he will recieve love from his father is by feeding his hatred.

Posted by: Roland at March 5, 2004 02:46 PM

Half of anti-semitism is being humane and intelligent. It's being anti-Jewish racism. The most humane and intelligent Jews are most often the ones wo are labeled "self-hating Jews" by their stupider and morally obtuse brethren.

If people who have yet to see the movie continue to decry it as "anti-semitic" or smear Mel Gibson, a man who spent twenty plus years working in the most Jewish business imaginable because of the remarks of his dad...you'll only isolate ourselves as cowards, bigots and ignoramuses.

Posted by: Trevor at March 5, 2004 04:42 PM

While I condemn anti-Jewishism, why is it that certain self proclaimed self annointed champions of Jewish interests -- Elie Wiesel, Marvin Hier, and Simon Wiesenthal -- get a free ride and a quote in the protected mass media?

Dr. Norman Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry scratchs the surface on the seemier side of the aforementioned you don't read about in your local newspaper.

Posted by: Artemus at March 7, 2004 12:48 PM

You're absolutely ight about Norman Finkelstein. The guy has made a real difference in shifting the Israel/palestine debate from "Peace" to Ending The Occupation. He's exposed the grotesque extortion racket these Holocaust Museums and Conferences, and sleigh-rides, and reparations are all about. And, wht does he get for it? Death threats from Jews upset that he's telling the truth and daring to help people, including many of the Holocaust survivors who never saw a penny from all the billions these Jewish goups squeezed out of the Germans and the Swiss.

Posted by: Trevor at March 8, 2004 12:59 AM

David Duke is a malignant narcissist.

He invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and the trappings of power further exacerbate this. Real life authority and David Duke’s predilection to surround him with obsequious sycophants support David Duke’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience.
David Duke's personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as "victims of persecution".
Duke fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, and mythology. The leader is this religion's ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Duke is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people - or humanity at large - should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, Duke became a distorted version of Nietzsche's "superman".
But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.
In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things "natural" - or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to, as "nature" is not natural at all.
Duke invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial - though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols - not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.
In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.
Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism - and the cult's leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.
Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the "old ways" - against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon David Duke like (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.
Minorities or "others" - often arbitrarily selected - constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is "wrong". They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are "decadent", they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin ... They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenseless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.
This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm - together with Stalin - as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.
Duke prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - Duke having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "Earth shattering" and "revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.
It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of David Duke. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform David Duke like narrative. Thus, David Duke who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite - is highly unlikely to use violence at first. The pacific mask crumbles when David Duke has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, and the prime sources of his narcissistic supply - have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, David Duke strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form", etc. When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail, David Duke becomes injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized - is now discarded with contempt and hatred. This primitive defense mechanism is called "splitting". To David Duke, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. Duke is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the country, etc. The "small people", the "rank and file", and the "loyal soldiers" of David Duke - his flock, his nation, and his employees - they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated - is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of David Duke. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.

Posted by: WASPS AGAINST DUKE at March 10, 2004 06:36 AM

Hey, Trevor.

One thing that the un-matched book The Holocaust Industry did not tackle was the "Nazi war criminal" witchhunt racket.

About 80 elderly emigres have been bankrupted under the Elizabeth Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationalities Act when they were accused of being "collaborators" (to make it short) for some of Hitler's goon squads. The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) inside the US DOJ used to rely on communist witnesses and often faked documentation in order to effect deportations of the accused.

Reagan, Clinton and two Bushes wouldn't touch OSI. When Estonian war hero Karl Linnas was kidnapped (Rudy Guiliani at your political soivice in New Yawk City),hidden, drugged, dragged to the airport by federal goons and sent to death in the Soviet Union, his case was the closest that Reagan and the Supreme Court came to halting. That same year arch-fraud Simon Wiesenthal got accolades from Reagan, following up the congressional medal from Jimmy Carter around 1980, after all that Wiesenthal had been shown to be in the Frank Walus affair in Chicago in the 1970s. After the media rapped Wiesenthal for virulent slanders, not just in the beginning when Wiesenthal accused the Polish born Walus of being a real GESTAPO officer!, Wiesenthal then gathered professional witnesses out of Israel for the deportation trial which continued and in the macabre Walus was hours away from deportation to the communists. Last minute culmination of evidence showed Walus totally innocent and of course Wiesenthal and the Israeli witnesses as liars. Walus, nor any falsely accused Nazi collaborator, has ever received reparations for what professional liars outside in and inside the US DOJ have done to them.

Bruno Kreisky (himself Jewish) former chancellor of Austria publicly condemned Wiesenthal and had the WWII intelligence reports on Wiesenthal showing a vile collaborator who acted as a double agent in Poland and Ukraine finking on his people.

Former OSI director Neal Sher was disbarred last year in Washington DC for misappopriation of Holocaust survivor funds squeezed out of the Swiss and German patsies. Too bad Sher was never punished for framing innocent Americans of Nazi crimes. Mark my words, although John Demjanjuk of Cleveland has survived 30 years of persecution, the media obituary will eventually be "Nazi war criminal dies."

Wiesenthal and Hier may escape justice on earth, but Someone is waiting for them for a long discussion.

OSI will however not touch communist war criminals. That would cause too much of a stir among the Holocaust hucksters here at home.

Posted by: artemus at March 14, 2004 05:39 PM

Communism has nothing to do with love. Communism is an excellent hammer which we use to destroy our enemy.

Posted by: Lieber Angie at March 17, 2004 11:27 PM

My complaint about Mr. Mark Geragos, Esq.
Rather than engage in a point-by-point response to the textual interpretation of Mr. Mark Geragos, Esq.'s whinges, I want to respond to the more general issue at hand. So, without further ado, I present you with this all-important piece of information: One of Mr. Geragos's favorite tricks is to create a problem and then to offer the solution. Naturally, it's always his solutions that grant him the freedom to consign most of us to the role of his servants or slaves, never the original problem. If it is not yet clear that his Ponzi schemes are part of a larger attack on the very notion of meritocracy and quality, then consider that I wonder if he really believes the things he says. He knows they're not true, doesn't he? I'll tell you the answer in a moment. But first, let me just say that it's quite a feat of hypocrisy for him to deny he wants to generate alienation and withdrawal after so recently doing exactly that. Am I being too harsh for writing that? Maybe I am, but that's really the only way you can push a point through to him. Even Mr. Geragos's brethren don't care much for his political objectives; they simply wish to associate with other chauvinistic sideshow barkers and take away our sense of community and leave us morally adrift. Mr. Geragos, please spare us the angst of living in a fallen world. Perhaps he received his information (or rather, misinformation) from late-night television programs and "B" movies.

I have to wonder where he got the idea that it is my view that the boogeyman is going to get us if we don't agree to his demands. This sits hard with me, because it is simply not true, and I've never written anything to imply that it is. I want nothing more -- or less -- than to weaken the critical links in Mr. Geragos's nexus of malignant blackguardism. To that task I have consecrated my life, and I invite you to do likewise.

Oddly enough, I have come to know Mr. Geragos's advocates too well not to feel the profoundest disgust for their mudslinging sermons. Stranger still, Mr. Geragos is frightened that we might express our concerns about his gloomy remonstrations. That's why he's trying so hard to prevent whistleblowers from reporting that he offers his compeers a vehicle of sorts for their revenge fantasies. The best example of this, culled from many, would have to be the time he tried to toss quaint concepts like decency, fairness, and rational debate out the window. He can write anything he wants about how things would be different were we to give into his demands and let him provide the pretext for police-state measures, but he doesn't use words for communication or for exchanging information. He uses them to disarm, to hypnotize, to mislead, and to deceive. What is often overlooked, however, is that I have often maintained that reasonable people can reasonably disagree. Unfortunately, when dealing with Mr. Geragos and his secret police, that claim assumes facts not in evidence. So let me claim instead that it is more than a purely historical question to ask, "How did Mr. Geragos's reign of terror start?" or even the more urgent question, "How might it end?". No, we must ask, "What provoked Mr. Geragos to manipulate public understanding of mercantalism?" To rephrase that question, is he so obtuse as to think that this can go on forever? Fortunately for us, the key to the answer is obvious: If he is victorious in his quest to siphon off scarce international capital intended for underdeveloped countries, then his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity. You may be picking up on something here in all of my responses to Mr. Geragos's misoneism-oriented projects. All of my responses presume that when you tell Mr. Geragos's goombahs that Mr. Geragos, perhaps more than anyone, should take seriously the challenge to carry out this matter to the full extent of the law, they begin to get fidgety, and their eyes begin to wander. They really don't care. They have no interest in hearing that he teaches workshops on despotism. Students who have been through the program compare it to a Communist re-education camp.

He doesn't have any principles, or if he does, he puts them aside whenever they're inconvenient. If there's a rule, and Mr. Geragos keeps making exceptions to that rule, then what good is the rule? I mean, we mustn't let Mr. Geragos pull the levers of opportunism and oil the gears of ageism. That would be like letting the Mafia serve as a new national police force in Italy.

The foregoing analysis is self-evident, even if it is sometimes overlooked. Less evident are the specific ways in which we should punish those who lie or connive at half-truths. My own position on this issue is both simple and clear: He contends that it is not only acceptable, but indeed desirable, to exert more and more control over other individuals. Sounds rather brain-damaged, doesn't it? Well, that's Mr. Geragos for you. I thought it couldn't be done, but, once again, his overgeneralizations have sunk to a new low.

His principles will have consequences -- very serious consequences. And we ought to begin doing something about that. Contrast, for example, Mr. Geragos's notions with those of self-deceiving schmucks, and observe that there is no contrast. I, by (genuine) contrast, take the view that implying that cannibalism, wife-swapping, and the murder of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior is no different from implying that Mr. Geragos can achieve his goals by friendly and moral conduct. Both statements are ludicrous.

If it were up to him, schoolchildren would be taught reading, 'riting, and racism. Although feckless nymphomaniacs are relatively small in number compared to the general population, they are rapidly increasing in size and fervor. Mr. Geragos has never satisfactorily proved his assertion that mediocrity and normalcy are ideal virtues. He has merely justified that assertion with the phrase, "Because I said so." He hates people who have huge supplies of the things he lacks. What Mr. Geragos lacks the most is common sense, which underlies my point that his disciples are unified under a common goal. That goal is to marginalize me based on my gender, race, or religion. This is particularly interesting when you consider that if he got his way, he'd be able to demand special treatment that, in many cases, borders on the ridiculous. Brrrr! It sends chills down my spine just thinking about that.

Yes, I realize that it's about time for Mr. Geragos to pay the piper, but for the sake of brevity I've had to express myself in simplified terms. Did it ever occur to him that outrage pounded in my temples when I first realized that he wants to make us the helpless puppets of our demographic labels? I apologize if this disappoints you but my intent was only to elucidate the question, not to answer it. I shall therefore state only that there is a format Mr. Geragos should follow for his next literary endeavor. It involves a topic sentence and supporting facts. I am aware that many people may object to the severity of my language. But is there no cause for severity? Naturally, I assert that there is, because he had promised us liberty, equality, and fraternity. Instead, Mr. Geragos gave us prætorianism, irreligionism, and boosterism. I suppose we should have seen that coming, especially since Mr. Geragos is like a magician who produces a dove in one hand, while the other hand is busy trying to impose ideology, control thought, and punish virtually any behavior he disapproves of.

If one accepts the framework I've laid out here, it follows that throughout history, there has been a clash between those who wish to discuss the relationship between three converging and ever-growing factions -- nit-picky urban guerrillas, barbaric spouters, and the most disrespectful busybodies you'll ever see -- and those who wish to denigrate and discard all of Western culture. Naturally, Mr. Geragos belongs to the latter category. How can he live with himself, knowing that there is a tortured quality to his reasoning, a careful avoidance of obvious conclusions, and a painstaking circumnavigation of embarrassing facts? That is, why doesn't he try doing something constructive for once in his life? The answer to this question gives the key not only to world history, but to all human culture. I am now in a position to define what I mean when I say that Mr. Geragos is trying to hold himself up as a cultural icon. What I mean is that he is a psychologically defective person. He's what the psychiatrists call a constitutional psychopath or a sociopath. His lies come in many forms. Some of his lies are in the form of prognoses. Others are in the form of reinterpretations of historic events. Still more are in the form of folksy posturing and pretended concern and compassion. Those of us who are too lazy or disinterested to turn random, senseless violence into meaningful action have no right to complain when he and his representatives deny the obvious.

Our pain is Mr. Geragos's ecstasy. Some people might object to that claim, and if they do, my response is: You may have noticed that I resent being exposed to macabre stupid-types of one sort or another. But you don't know the half of it. For starters, Mr. Geragos truly believes that women are crazed Pavlovian sex-dogs who will salivate at any object even remotely phallic in shape. I hope you realize that that's just a self-serving pipe dream from a voluble, lawless pipe, and that in the real world, incendiarism is the principal ingredient in the ideological flypaper Mr. Geragos uses to attract the most ghastly Neanderthals you'll ever see into his camp. If, after hearing facts like that, you still believe that we should all bear the brunt of Mr. Geragos's actions, then there is sincerely no hope for you. I'd like to finish with a quote from a private e-mail message sent to me by a close friend of mine: "Whenever Mr. Mark Geragos, Esq.'s lickspittles say that he acts in the public interest, their noses grow by a few centimeters".

Posted by: My complaint about Mr. Mark Geragos, Esq. at March 22, 2004 01:08 AM

Jesus was a Jew, he died a Jew, and he will always be a Jew. Therefore, beleiving in Jesus is like believing in Abraham or Moses. Jesus's followers however brought it to a entirly different level. Jews and secularists arent anti-religion or anti-christian, they just seek fair and equal treatment without any source of prejudice. I think we all need rethink what we are talking about and not forget the past, or else it is doomed to repeat itself.

Posted by: JRR at March 22, 2004 06:20 PM

Tho following article is a prime example of how America has little struggle disputing facts of Islamic Faith, Judism, and even the number of those slaughtered during the holocaust, however when a "FICTIONAL" book challenges Christianity the intellectuals of our churches begin to launch defamation campaigns. I now understand how some Jews feel conflicted with Mel Gibson's account in the Passion of the Christ after reading Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code followed by this article.

Dismantling The Da Vinci Code
by Sandra Miesel

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"The Grail," Langdon said, "is symbolic of the lost goddess. When Christianity came along, the old pagan religions did not die easily. Legends of chivalric quests for the Holy Grail were in fact stories of forbidden quests to find the lost sacred feminine. Knights who claimed to be "searching for the chalice" were speaking in code as a way to protect themselves from a Church that had subjugated women, banished the Goddess, burned non-believers, and forbidden the pagan reverence for the sacred feminine." (The Da Vinci Code, pages 238-239)

The Holy Grail is a favorite metaphor for a desirable but difficult-to-attain goal, from the map of the human genome to Lord Stanley’s Cup. While the original Grail—the cup Jesus allegedly used at the Last Supper—normally inhabits the pages of Arthurian romance, Dan Brown’s recent mega–best-seller, The Da Vinci Code, rips it away to the realm of esoteric history.

But his book is more than just the story of a quest for the Grail—he wholly reinterprets the Grail legend. In doing so, Brown inverts the insight that a woman’s body is symbolically a container and makes a container symbolically a woman’s body. And that container has a name every Christian will recognize, for Brown claims that the Holy Grail was actually Mary Magdalene. She was the vessel that held the blood of Jesus Christ in her womb while bearing his children.

Over the centuries, the Grail-keepers have been guarding the true (and continuing) bloodline of Christ and the relics of the Magdalen, not a material vessel. Therefore Brown claims that "the quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene," a conclusion that would surely have surprised Sir Galahad and the other Grail knights who thought they were searching for the Chalice of the Last Supper.

The Da Vinci Code opens with the grisly murder of the Louvre’s curator inside the museum. The crime enmeshes hero Robert Langdon, a tweedy professor of symbolism from Harvard, and the victim’s granddaughter, burgundy-haired cryptologist Sophie Nevue. Together with crippled millionaire historian Leigh Teabing, they flee Paris for London one step ahead of the police and a mad albino Opus Dei "monk" named Silas who will stop at nothing to prevent them from finding the "Grail."

But despite the frenetic pacing, at no point is action allowed to interfere with a good lecture. Before the story comes full circle back to the Louvre, readers face a barrage of codes, puzzles, mysteries, and conspiracies.

With his twice-stated principle, "Everybody loves a conspiracy," Brown is reminiscent of the famous author who crafted her product by studying the features of ten earlier best-sellers. It would be too easy to criticize him for characters thin as plastic wrap, undistinguished prose, and improbable action. But Brown isn’t so much writing badly as writing in a particular way best calculated to attract a female audience. (Women, after all, buy most of the nation’s books.) He has married a thriller plot to a romance-novel technique. Notice how each character is an extreme type…effortlessly brilliant, smarmy, sinister, or psychotic as needed, moving against luxurious but curiously flat backdrops. Avoiding gore and bedroom gymnastics, he shows only one brief kiss and a sexual ritual performed by a married couple. The risqué allusions are fleeting although the text lingers over some bloody Opus Dei mortifications. In short, Brown has fabricated a novel perfect for a ladies’ book club.

Brown’s lack of seriousness shows in the games he plays with his character names—Robert Langdon, "bright fame long don" (distinguished and virile); Sophie Nevue, "wisdom New Eve"; the irascible taurine detective Bezu Fache, "zebu anger." The servant who leads the police to them is Legaludec, "legal duce." The murdered curator takes his surname, Saunière, from a real Catholic priest whose occult antics sparked interest in the Grail secret. As an inside joke, Brown even writes in his real-life editor (Faukman is Kaufman).

While his extensive use of fictional formulas may be the secret to Brown’s stardom, his anti-Christian message can’t have hurt him in publishing circles: The Da Vinci Code debuted atop the New York Times best-seller list. By manipulating his audience through the conventions of romance-writing, Brown invites readers to identify with his smart, glamorous characters who’ve seen through the impostures of the clerics who hide the "truth" about Jesus and his wife. Blasphemy is delivered in a soft voice with a knowing chuckle: "[E]very faith in the world is based on fabrication."

But even Brown has his limits. To dodge charges of outright bigotry, he includes a climactic twist in the story that absolves the Church of assassination. And although he presents Christianity as a false root and branch, he’s willing to tolerate it for its charitable works.

(Of course, Catholic Christianity will become even more tolerable once the new liberal pope elected in Brown’s previous Langdon novel, Angels & Demons, abandons outmoded teachings. "Third-century laws cannot be applied to the modern followers of Christ," says one of the book’s progressive cardinals.)

Where Is He Getting All of This?

Brown actually cites his principal sources within the text of his novel. One is a specimen of academic feminist scholarship: The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. The others are popular esoteric histories: The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince; Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln; The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine and The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail, both by Margaret Starbird. (Starbird, a self-identified Catholic, has her books published by Matthew Fox’s outfit, Bear & Co.) Another influence, at least at second remove, is The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker.

The use of such unreliable sources belies Brown’s pretensions to intellectuality. But the act has apparently fooled at least some of his readers—the New York Daily News book reviewer trumpeted, "His research is impeccable."

But despite Brown’s scholarly airs, a writer who thinks the Merovingians founded Paris and forgets that the popes once lived in Avignon is hardly a model researcher. And for him to state that the Church burned five million women as witches shows a willful—and malicious—ignorance of the historical record. The latest figures for deaths during the European witch craze are between 30,000 to 50,000 victims. Not all were executed by the Church, not all were women, and not all were burned. Brown’s claim that educated women, priestesses, and midwives were singled out by witch-hunters is not only false, it betrays his goddess-friendly sources.

A Multitude of Errors

So error-laden is The Da Vinci Code that the educated reader actually applauds those rare occasions where Brown stumbles (despite himself) into the truth. A few examples of his "impeccable" research: He claims that the motions of the planet Venus trace a pentacle (the so-called Ishtar pentagram) symbolizing the goddess. But it isn’t a perfect figure and has nothing to do with the length of the Olympiad. The ancient Olympic games were celebrated in honor of Zeus Olympias, not Aphrodite, and occurred every four years.

Brown’s contention that the five linked rings of the modern Olympic Games are a secret tribute to the goddess is also wrong—each set of games was supposed to add a ring to the design but the organizers stopped at five. And his efforts to read goddess propaganda into art, literature, and even Disney cartoons are simply ridiculous.

No datum is too dubious for inclusion, and reality falls quickly by the wayside. For instance, the Opus Dei bishop encourages his albino assassin by telling him that Noah was also an albino (a notion drawn from the non-canonical 1 Enoch 106:2). Yet albinism somehow fails to interfere with the man’s eyesight as it physiologically would.

But a far more important example is Brown’s treatment of Gothic architecture as a style full of goddess-worshipping symbols and coded messages to confound the uninitiated. Building on Barbara Walker’s claim that "like a pagan temple, the Gothic cathedral represented the body of the Goddess," The Templar Revelation asserts: "Sexual symbolism is found in the great Gothic cathedrals which were masterminded by the Knights Templar...both of which represent intimate female anatomy: the arch, which draws the worshipper into the body of Mother Church, evokes the vulva." In The Da Vinci Code, these sentiments are transformed into a character’s description of "a cathedral’s long hollow nave as a secret tribute to a woman’s womb...complete with receding labial ridges and a nice little cinquefoil clitoris above the doorway."

These remarks cannot be brushed aside as opinions of the villain; Langdon, the book’s hero, refers to his own lectures about goddess-symbolism at Chartres.

These bizarre interpretations betray no acquaintance with the actual development or construction of Gothic architecture, and correcting the countless errors becomes a tiresome exercise: The Templars had nothing to do with the cathedrals of their time, which were commissioned by bishops and their canons throughout Europe. They were unlettered men with no arcane knowledge of "sacred geometry" passed down from the pyramid builders. They did not wield tools themselves on their own projects, nor did they found masons’ guilds to build for others. Not all their churches were round, nor was roundness a defiant insult to the Church. Rather than being a tribute to the divine feminine, their round churches honored the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Actually looking at Gothic churches and their predecessors deflates the idea of female symbolism. Large medieval churches typically had three front doors on the west plus triple entrances to their transepts on the north and south. (What part of a woman’s anatomy does a transept represent? Or the kink in Chartres’s main aisle?) Romanesque churches—including ones that predate the founding of the Templars—have similar bands of decoration arching over their entrances. Both Gothic and Romanesque churches have the long, rectangular nave inherited from Late Antique basilicas, ultimately derived from Roman public buildings. Neither Brown nor his sources consider what symbolism medieval churchmen such as Suger of St.-Denis or William Durandus read in church design. It certainly wasn’t goddess-worship.

False Claims

If the above seems like a pile driver applied to a gnat, the blows are necessary to demonstrate the utter falseness of Brown’s material. His willful distortions of documented history are more than matched by his outlandish claims about controversial subjects. But to a postmodernist, one construct of reality is as good as any other.

Brown’s approach seems to consist of grabbing large chunks of his stated sources and tossing them together in a salad of a story. From Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Brown lifts the concept of the Grail as a metaphor for a sacred lineage by arbitrarily breaking a medieval French term, Sangraal (Holy Grail), into sang (blood) and raal (royal). This holy blood, according to Brown, descended from Jesus and his wife, Mary Magdalene, to the Merovingian dynasty in Dark Ages France, surviving its fall to persist in several modern French families, including that of Pierre Plantard, a leader of the mysterious Priory of Sion. The Priory—an actual organization officially registered with the French government in 1956—makes extraordinary claims of antiquity as the "real" power behind the Knights Templar. It most likely originated after World War II and was first brought to public notice in 1962. With the exception of filmmaker Jean Cocteau, its illustrious list of Grand Masters—which include Leonardo da Vinci, Issac Newton, and Victor Hugo—is not credible, although it’s presented as true by Brown.

Brown doesn’t accept a political motivation for the Priory’s activities. Instead he picks up The Templar Revelation’s view of the organization as a cult of secret goddess-worshippers who have preserved ancient Gnostic wisdom and records of Christ’s true mission, which would completely overturn Christianity if released. Significantly, Brown omits the rest of the book’s thesis that makes Christ and Mary Magdalene unmarried sex partners performing the erotic mysteries of Isis. Perhaps even a gullible mass-market audience has its limits.

From both Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation, Brown takes a negative view of the Bible and a grossly distorted image of Jesus. He’s neither the Messiah nor a humble carpenter but a wealthy, trained religious teacher bent on regaining the throne of David. His credentials are amplified by his relationship with the rich Magdalen who carries the royal blood of Benjamin: "Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false," laments one of Brown’s characters.

Yet it’s Brown’s Christology that’s false—and blindingly so. He requires the present New Testament to be a post-Constantinian fabrication that displaced true accounts now represented only by surviving Gnostic texts. He claims that Christ wasn’t considered divine until the Council of Nicea voted him so in 325 at the behest of the emperor. Then Constantine—a lifelong sun worshipper—ordered all older scriptural texts destroyed, which is why no complete set of Gospels predates the fourth century. Christians somehow failed to notice the sudden and drastic change in their doctrine.

But by Brown’s specious reasoning, the Old Testament can’t be authentic either because complete Hebrew Scriptures are no more than a thousand years old. And yet the texts were transmitted so accurately that they do match well with the Dead Sea Scrolls from a thousand years earlier. Analysis of textual families, comparison with fragments and quotations, plus historical correlations securely date the orthodox Gospels to the first century and indicate that they’re earlier than the Gnostic forgeries. (The Epistles of St. Paul are, of course, even earlier than the Gospels.)

Primitive Church documents and the testimony of the ante-Nicean Fathers confirm that Christians have always believed Jesus to be Lord, God, and Savior—even when that faith meant death. The earliest partial canon of Scripture dates from the late second century and already rejected Gnostic writings. For Brown, it isn’t enough to credit Constantine with the divinization of Jesus. The emperor’s old adherence to the cult of the Invincible Sun also meant repackaging sun worship as the new faith. Brown drags out old (and long-discredited) charges by virulent anti-Catholics like Alexander Hislop who accused the Church of perpetuating Babylonian mysteries, as well as 19th-century rationalists who regarded Christ as just another dying savior-god.

Unsurprisingly, Brown misses no opportunity to criticize Christianity and its pitiable adherents. (The church in question is always the Catholic Church, though his villain does sneer once at Anglicans—for their grimness, of all things.) He routinely and anachronistically refers to the Church as "the Vatican," even when popes weren’t in residence there. He systematically portrays it throughout history as deceitful, power-crazed, crafty, and murderous: "The Church may no longer employ crusades to slaughter, but their influence is no less persuasive. No less insidious."

Goddess Worship and the Magdalen

Worst of all, in Brown’s eyes, is the fact that the pleasure-hating, sex-hating, woman-hating Church suppressed goddess worship and eliminated the divine feminine. He claims that goddess worship universally dominated pre-Christian paganism with the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) as its central rite. His enthusiasm for fertility rites is enthusiasm for sexuality, not procreation. What else would one expect of a Cathar sympathizer?

Astonishingly, Brown claims that Jews in Solomon’s Temple adored Yahweh and his feminine counterpart, the Shekinah, via the services of sacred prostitutes—possibly a twisted version of the Temple’s corruption after Solomon (1 Kings 14:24 and 2 Kings 23:4-15). Moreover, he says that the tetragrammaton YHWH derives from "Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah."

But as any first-year Scripture student could tell you, Jehovah is actually a 16th-century rendering of Yahweh using the vowels of Adonai ("Lord"). In fact, goddesses did not dominate the pre-Christian world—not in the religions of Rome, her barbarian subjects, Egypt, or even Semitic lands where the hieros gamos was an ancient practice. Nor did the Hellenized cult of Isis appear to have included sex in its secret rites.

Contrary to yet another of Brown’s claims, Tarot cards do not teach goddess doctrine. They were invented for innocent gaming purposes in the 15th century and didn’t acquire occult associations until the late 18th. Playing-card suites carry no Grail symbolism. The notion of diamonds symbolizing pentacles is a deliberate misrepresentation by British occultist A. E. Waite. And the number five—so crucial to Brown’s puzzles—has some connections with the protective goddess but myriad others besides, including human life, the five senses, and the Five Wounds of Christ.

Brown’s treatment of Mary Magdalene is sheer delusion. In The Da Vinci Code, she’s no penitent whore but Christ’s royal consort and the intended head of His Church, supplanted by Peter and defamed by churchmen. She fled west with her offspring to Provence, where medieval Cathars would keep the original teachings of Jesus alive. The Priory of Sion still guards her relics and records, excavated by the Templars from the subterranean Holy of Holies. It also protects her descendants—including Brown’s heroine.

Although many people still picture the Magdalen as a sinful woman who anointed Jesus and equate her with Mary of Bethany, that conflation is actually the later work of Pope St. Gregory the Great. The East has always kept them separate and said that the Magdalen, "apostle to the apostles," died in Ephesus. The legend of her voyage to Provence is no earlier than the ninth century, and her relics weren’t reported there until the 13th. Catholic critics, including the Bollandists, have been debunking the legend and distinguishing the three ladies since the 17th century.

Brown uses two Gnostic documents, the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary, to prove that the Magdalen was Christ’s "companion," meaning sexual partner. The apostles were jealous that Jesus used to "kiss her on the mouth" and favored her over them. He cites exactly the same passages quoted in Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation and even picks up the latter’s reference to The Last Temptation of Christ. What these books neglect to mention is the infamous final verse of the Gospel of Thomas. When Peter sneers that "women are not worthy of Life," Jesus responds, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male.... For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

That’s certainly an odd way to "honor" one’s spouse or exalt the status of women.

The Knights Templar

Brown likewise misrepresents the history of the Knights Templar. The oldest of the military-religious orders, the Knights were founded in 1118 to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land. Their rule, attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, was approved in 1128 and generous donors granted them numerous properties in Europe for support. Rendered redundant after the last Crusader stronghold fell in 1291, the Templars’ pride and wealth—they were also bankers—earned them keen hostility.

Brown maliciously ascribes the suppression of the Templars to "Machiavellian" Pope Clement V, whom they were blackmailing with the Grail secret. His "ingeniously planned sting operation" had his soldiers suddenly arrest all Templars. Charged with Satanism, sodomy, and blasphemy, they were tortured into confessing and burned as heretics, their ashes "tossed unceremoniously into the Tiber."

But in reality, the initiative for crushing the Templars came from King Philip the Fair of France, whose royal officials did the arresting in 1307. About 120 Templars were burned by local Inquisitorial courts in France for not confessing or retracting a confession, as happened with Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Few Templars suffered death elsewhere although their order was abolished in 1312. Clement, a weak, sickly Frenchman manipulated by his king, burned no one in Rome inasmuch as he was the first pope to reign from Avignon (so much for the ashes in the Tiber).

Moreover, the mysterious stone idol that the Templars were accused of worshiping is associated with fertility in only one of more than a hundred confessions. Sodomy was the scandalous—and possibly true—charge against the order, not ritual fornication. The Templars have been darlings of occultism since their myth as masters of secret wisdom and fabulous treasure began to coalesce in the late 18th century. Freemasons and even Nazis have hailed them as brothers. Now it’s the turn of neo-Gnostics.

Twisting Da Vinci

Brown’s revisionist interpretations of da Vinci are as distorted as the rest of his information. He claims to have first run across these views "while I was studying art history in Seville," but they correspond point for point to material in The Templar Revelation. A writer who sees a pointed finger as a throat-cutting gesture, who says the Madonna of the Rocks was painted for nuns instead of a lay confraternity of men, who claims that da Vinci received "hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions" (actually, it was just one…and it was never executed) is simply unreliable.

Brown’s analysis of da Vinci’s work is just as ridiculous. He presents the Mona Lisa as an androgynous self-portrait when it’s widely known to portray a real woman, Madonna Lisa, wife of Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo. The name is certainly not—as Brown claims—a mocking anagram of two Egyptian fertility deities Amon and L’Isa (Italian for Isis). How did he miss the theory, propounded by the authors of The Templar Revelation, that the Shroud of Turin is a photographed self-portrait of da Vinci?

Much of Brown’s argument centers around da Vinci’s Last Supper, a painting the author considers a coded message that reveals the truth about Jesus and the Grail. Brown points to the lack of a central chalice on the table as proof that the Grail isn’t a material vessel. But da Vinci’s painting specifically dramatizes the moment when Jesus warns, "One of you will betray me" (John 13:21). There is no Institution Narrative in St. John’s Gospel. The Eucharist is not shown there. And the person sitting next to Jesus is not Mary Magdalene (as Brown claims) but St. John, portrayed as the usual effeminate da Vinci youth, comparable to his St. John the Baptist. Jesus is in the exact center of the painting, with two pyramidal groups of three apostles on each side. Although da Vinci was a spiritually troubled homosexual, Brown’s contention that he coded his paintings with anti-Christian messages simply can’t be sustained.

Brown’s Mess

In the end, Dan Brown has penned a poorly written, atrociously researched mess. So, why bother with such a close reading of a worthless novel? The answer is simple: The Da Vinci Code takes esoterica mainstream. It may well do for Gnosticism what The Mists of Avalon did for paganism—gain it popular acceptance. After all, how many lay readers will see the blazing inaccuracies put forward as buried truths?

What’s more, in making phony claims of scholarship, Brown’s book infects readers with a virulent hostility toward Catholicism. Dozens of occult history books, conveniently cross-linked by Amazon.com, are following in its wake. And booksellers’ shelves now bulge with falsehoods few would be buying without The Da Vinci Code connection. While Brown’s assault on the Catholic Church may be a backhanded compliment, it’s one we would have happily done without.

Posted by: Jack Rohm at March 27, 2004 09:57 PM

Ethics is not necessarily the handmaiden of theology.

Posted by: LobelWeiss Nick at May 2, 2004 03:08 PM

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

Posted by: imbert sarah young at May 3, 2004 02:18 AM

Mel Gibson is the filth of society. Who cares about who his movie did or did not offend, his father claims that the US Government flew the plain into the towers on 9-11, he is a wacko, and the nut doesn't fall far from the tree. Take some tylenol pm with a bottle of $11.99 vodka and shut your hole you disgusting incestuous beast.

Posted by: The Truth at May 4, 2004 12:40 AM

Transcript: Gibson on 'The Passion'

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

This is a partial transcript from The O'Reilly Factor, February 24, 2004 that has been edited for clarity.

Watch The O'Reilly Factor weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET and listen to the Radio Factor!

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Personal Story" segment tonight, Mel Gibson's new film "The Passion of the Christ" (search) opens on about 4,000 screens tomorrow all across the USA. You've heard about the controversy. Now let's hear about the film..

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'REILLY: Do you believe there's a physical presence of Satan in the world? Did that reflect your view?

GIBSON: Hmm. A physical presence? I think that evil pervades certain areas and comes to each of us in an individual way, in a way that it's going to best ensnare us. Firstly, it wants to make you believe that it doesn't exist. And secondly, I think when it does come, it's going to come in a magnetic form. I mean, it's not going to be holding a neon sign with steam coming out its nostrils.

O'REILLY: Yes, what temptation is?

GIBSON: Yes, sure. Yes.

O'REILLY: When you use this character, this Satan character, it's so effective in the film. And I was mesmerized by it, I have to say. I had never seen it done before in that way.

So you think people will understand the point that they're trying to get across there?

GIBSON: I hope so. I think it's kind of alarming because you think perhaps it's an angel. And then you realize that there's something wrong with it. And that's the whole idea.

O'REILLY: Yes, well you see, the insect in the nose, you realize -- it isn't an angel.

GIBSON: Sure, there's a maggot dwelling inside of her.

O'REILLY: Right.

GIBSON: And it's disturbing, but that whole idea of something wholesome, something beautiful, something like the image of motherhood, or any of these things, and that that the mask is slightly askew so that you can see something very nasty, indeed, underneath the initial facade, which may, of course, be pleasing or wholesome...

O'REILLY: Now you introduced the good character, Jesus, and the Satan character at the same time in the opening of the film in the Garden of Gethsemane (search), which signaled to me that the movie was right off the bat going to be a struggle between good and evil.

GIBSON: Sure. I mean...

(CROSSTALK)

GIBSON: Absolutely. I wanted to make it clear from the very beginning. It's kind of like the coin toss at the beginning of a sporting event. It's like here's the players, here they are, this is what's going to happen, and this is why.

O'REILLY: So that was your first departure from scripture.

The second departure was Simon of Cyrene (search), who you -- is mentioned in the scripture but not defined.

GIBSON: Sure. No.

O'REILLY: You define Simon, who was ordered by the Romans to carry Jesus' cross when he could no longer bear it -- and he was a Jew. You defined him heroically. Why did do you that?

GIBSON: Because it was -- he's in the book as protesting. He didn't want to do it. He's saying, hey, remember, I'm not the criminal here, he is. I'm just helping, OK?

And it's sort of -- it's like the journey, I think, that we all have about a -- choices we have to make, and I wanted to take that opportunity to take this man and have him have a burden put on him that he didn't necessarily want, but that he ended up taking and that he ended up engaging with and that he ended up learning from and that -- and that he transcended any kind of self-concern and became a true hero.

O'REILLY: Yes.

GIBSON: You know -- and I think people have the capacity for that, and I...

O'REILLY: I thought that you might have done it because you knew you were going to get criticism from some Jewish groups, and this was a Jewish hero.

And the second thing was nobody's mentioned it, and -- after reading and knowing all the controversy and I saw that Simon of Cyrene character and there's a line in the movie -- they call him a Jew.

(VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: They said Jew, and I said, you know, maybe Gibson put this in there intentionally to show that there was Jewish heroism in "The Passion."

GIBSON: Well, if you look at the whole story, I mean there's only Jews and Romans in the story. I mean I just wanted to flesh that character out and make that a drama about the people around Christ when he was going through this passion. I mean that's well known, but what about those people around him?

O'REILLY: Is it your mission to spread the word of Jesus to people who don't know him?

GIBSON: Here's the deal. I think that what the film speaks about is a sacrifice of a loving God willingly taken, that it's about faith, hope, love, and forgiveness, which I've, you know, said before, and that these are good, valuable messages to sort of send out there.

I know I've been -- you know, had the finger waggled at me and said you're blaming, you're -- I'm not playing the blame game at all. I think it's very clear from the outset and through the film, and it's evenhanded as much as I can make it.

The other thing is that it's -- I'm an artist, you know, and one doesn't -- when one fashions art, it usually comes out of who one is and from a very deep place.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'REILLY: In a moment, I had two problems with the movie, and I will put them to Mel Gibson, as our exclusive interview with the actor/director continues on "he Factor."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly.

Continuing now with the "Personal Story" Segment, reviews for "The Passion of the Christ" have been mixed. Movie critic Roger Ebert (search) says it's brilliant. Others say it's abysmal. Unfortunately, many of the reviewers are pandering to their editors or their personal beliefs rather than just reviewing the movie. Now you can read my review on billoreilly.com and I did have a couple of problems with the film.

I put them to Mel Gibson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'REILLY: Two quibbles I had with the film, and the first one you've heard before. It's exceedingly violent...

GIBSON: Yes.

O'REILLY: ... in an almost unrelenting fashion. I found, as a viewer now, that I became numb to the violence after a while, that it didn't have the effect on me, and