Who is Doctor Death? Herbert and I created him between us. No… we
didn’t create him, he was there… we found him in ourselves. We looked
into the depths of our souls, and he was there. He was already there,
and he will always be there.
Here’s the whole video. It’s called “Don’t Be A Sucker” and it’s 17 minutes long.
don’t just scroll past this actually watch it, it’s only 2 minutes long. If you re-recorded this today word for word with modern actors and places, it wouldn’t even look out of place as a PSA
300,000 notes and i can’t find a transcript
Transcript: (sorry for the language!)
Speaker: “I see negroes holding jobs that
belong to me! And you! I’ll ask you, if we allow this thing to go on,
what’s gonna become of us real Americans!”
Hungarian man with clear foreign accent: “I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America.”
Young man: “This man seems to know what he’s talking about.“
Speaker:
“What are us real Americans gonna do about it? You’ll find it right
here in this little pamphlet—the truth about negroes and foreigners! The
truth about the Catholic Church! You’ll find…” [audio grows quieter
as camera shifts to the onlookers]
Hungarian man: “You believe in that kind of talk?“
Young man: “I dunno, it makes pretty good sense to me.“
Speaker:
“And I tell you, friends, we’ll never be able to call this country our
own until it’s a country without… without what?“
Other man: “Yeah? Without what?“
Speaker:
“Without negroes, without alien foreigners,”—the young man is nodding,
following along—“without Catholics, without Freemasons! You know
these…“
Young man: “What’s wrong with the Masons, I’m a Mason.” Looks to European man worriedly, “hey, that fellow’s talking about me!“
Huungarian man: “And that makes a difference, doesn’t it.“
Speaker:
“These are your enemies! These are the people who are trying to take
over our country! Now you know them, you know what they stand for. And
it’s up to you and me to fight them!” A bunch of the onlookers in the
vicinity wave him off like he’s crazy and turn away, “fight them and
destroy them before they destroy us!”
Speaker: “Thank you.“
One man in the now somewhat awkward crowd: “claps“
Young man: *is visibly uncomfortable*
Hungarian man: “Before he said Mason, you were ready to agree with him.”
Young man: “Well yes but, he was talking about… what about those other people?“ *the pair sit down on a park bench*
Hungarian man: “In this country, we have no ‘other people.’ We are American people, of course.“
Young man: “What about you? You aren’t American, are you?“
Hungarian
man: “I was born in Hungary. But now, I am an American citizen. And I
have seen what this kind of talk can do. I saw it in Berlin.”
Young man: “What were you doing there?“
Hungarian
man: “I was a professor at the university. I heard the same words we
have heard today. But I was a fool, then. I thought Nazis were crazy
people, stupid fanatics. But unfortunately it was not so. You see, they
knew that they were not strong enough to conquer a unified country, so
they split Germany into small groups. They used prejudice as a practical
weapon to cripple the nation.”
A film created for folks in case
Martin Niemöller
was too subtle.
“They used prejudice as a practical weapon to split the people.”
In this country, we have no ‘other people’.
90% of Denmark’s Jews survived the Holocaust, because starting at the top, Denmark’s government and prominent citizens and all the way down emphasized this.
And all this was openly supported by King Christian. He did not, contrary to popular myth, ride his horse through Copenhagen wearing the Star of David, but he did make it clear, as he wrote in his diary, that he considered “our own Jews to be Danish citizens, and the Germans could not touch them”.
Denmark had, in essence, inoculated itself against Nazi propaganda because its citizens believed that Jews were not “other people.” As Bo Lidegard writes in Countrymen:
The Danish exception shows that the mobilisation of civil society’s humanism and protective engagement is not only a theoretical possibility: It can be done. We know because it happened.
Being a Jewish Dane or a Danish Jew might have made you a little different, but it didn’t make you other people.
Unlike Niemoller, they didn’t have to see atrocities visited on a series of Other People and only start caring when it happened to themselves. They understood it as happening to themselves from the start. Because their Jewish neighbors weren’t Other People.
As Denmark’s Jewish population sprang into panicked action, so did its Gentiles. Hundreds of people spontaneously began to tell Jews about the upcoming action and help them go into hiding. It was, in the words of historian Leni Yahil, “a living wall raised by the Danish people in the course of one night.”
Many of them didn’t even see it as “resistance work” on behalf of the Jews because it was simply fighting back against an attack on their own community.
Though there was anti-Semitism in Denmark before and after the Holocaust, the Nazis’ war on Jews was largely viewed as a war against Denmark itself. After the war, most Danes refused to take credit for their resistance work, which many had conducted under false names. Ordinary people who never considered themselves part of the Danish Resistance passed along messages, gathered food, gave hiding places or guarded the possessions of those who left until they returned home from the war.
Communities in which there are no Other People save lives.
EYE remember. They sicced the police and the National Guard on us. For exercising our constitutionally protected right to assembly and protest.
And I also remember how, especially under cover of darkness, cops became particularly nasty and brutal.
We protested to say Black Lives Matter,
People protested to Occupy Wall Street, the police brutally attacked them.
Water protectors protested at Standing Rock, police and the National Guard pepper sprayed them.
The police are attacking and killing unarmed protesters right now today at Cop City in Atlanta. So please let’s knock off the “imagine if people in the US protested like that” nonsense. Sometimes it feels like we stay protesting, like since before I was even ever born.
In addition to all the innocent and unarmed Black people they routinely murder, the police also did things like shoot protesters directly in the head with tear gas canisters, at point blank range. I remember police wilding out on students who were protesting at UC Davis campus to protest tuition hikes. I remember the police tear-gassing a young girl named Sarah Grossman. The cops gassed her in the face and she died from it. And the media even tried covering for the police by parroting their version of events that she had asthma.
But I do not begrudge the French protesters. Like, not at all. They are right to protest Macron’s callous neoliberal ass, and I hope they get what’s theirs. I hope they win. We are on the same side.
#Solidarity #PowerToThePeople ✊🏿
But yeah, let’s not divide and conquer by pitting “our” protests against “their” protests. Let’s not memory hole lived reality and dishonor all the protests that really truly did occur, and are still ongoing even as we speak.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
