German film director Veit Harlan wrote and directed “Jew Süss,” a 1940 box office success in Nazi Germany that, according to a New York Times article by Larry Rohter, is “perhaps the most notoriously anti-Semitic movie ever made.” New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis writes that the film, which opens in 1733, “tells the story of a Jewish money lender from the ghetto, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer (Ferdinand Marian), who rises to power in Wurttemberg (in what is southwestern Germany), where he gains control of the court, taxes the population, rapes a young married woman (who then drowns herself) and is finally executed.” Rohter notes that the film was “so effective that it was made required viewing for all members of the SS,” and to this day its “commercial exhibition or sale as a DVD is still prohibited in Germany and several other European countries.” German film director Felix Moeller has released a documentary titled “Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss.” According to Dargis, the film is “an exploration of the filmmaker, his career under National Socialism and the children and other relatives who bear his name and, with varying difficulty, his legacy.”
Propaganda
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March 3, 2010
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February 3, 2010
Just over two months ago, Switzerland banned the building of new minarets. “A poster was widely cited as having galvanized votes for the Swiss measure but was also blamed for exacerbating hostility toward immigrants and instigating a media and legal circus,” Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times reports. The poster depicted minarets rising like missiles from a Swiss flag with a woman wearing a niqab glaring next to it, and the word “stop” written below. Kimmelman states “the obvious message: Minarets lead to Sharia law.” Alexander Segert, who designed the Swiss minaret poster, told Kimmelman “ ‘if what we do stirs up controversy, then we’ve already won the election.’ ” Political scientist Marc Bühlmann agreed, explaining that “ ‘the aim in making the posters is to be as racist as possible, so then when critics complain, the populists can say elites don’t want ordinary people to know the truth. And the media fall for it every time.’ ” Designers like Segert are successful because, as Segert put it, “ ‘we know how to reduce information to the lowest level, so people respond without thinking.’ ”
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February 1, 2010
The Nazi Party of Colorado has sponsored a mile long stretch of US Highway 85. An official Colorado state Adopt-a-Highway placard announces that the highway is sponsored by the “National Socialist Movement Denver Unit.” Fox 31 News KDVR writes that the National Socialist Movement members “are inspired by teachings of Hitler, believe interracial relationships and homosexuality should be crimes, and they want to start a separate all-white country.” Adopting a highway is a good public relations and recruiting tool, the Nazi party says. Though the Colorado Department of Transportation did not want to accept the Nazi’s application to sponsor the highway, the law is on the Nazi’s side; courts around the country have permitted white supremacists to sponsor adopt-a-highway signs. “ ‘To have our freedom we have to have all kinds of speech, and this is a case where hate speech is protected,’ ” Anti-Defamation League Director Bruce DeBoskey said; “ ‘This organization stands for hate. It’s a white supremacist group. It’s a neo-Nazi group.’ ”
