Ladies and Gentlemen, say hello
to Dmitry Kiselyov, Russia’s #1 news anchor, and simultaneously, the head of
one of the biggest government media conglomerates, Rossiya Segodnya, which
owns, among other things, RT.
He has been roundly demonized by the western media, and put on the
sanctions list, a strong hint that he probably talks a lot of good
sense and is worth listening to.
Kiselyov is an excellent wordsmith, and his carefully crafted
video essays pack a punch. This time he’s found an excellent translator to
convey a hint at his style. Some choice chops:
I can’t say that we are always happy with our turbulent history,
but at least unlike America, Poland or Ukraine, we don’t destroy monuments and
don’t ban films.
Otherwise, we would have to stop showing, for example, “And
Quiet Flows the Don” or “Battleship Potemkin,” to ban the “The White Guard” or
“Lenin in October.” Then, we would begin to destroy the monuments.
And then, we would get indignant because Chekhov romanticizes
the old landlord life in the play “Three Sisters.” And then we would ask if we
needed Chekhov at all?
And did you know? Pushkin was a landowner himself. He received
200 servants as a wedding gift from his father. Is it possible to give living
people as a gift? And hundreds of them at that?
And what should we do with Pushkin now?
For starters, the intellectual fare served to the broad masses in
Russia is substantially higher than in the US.
Well worth listening to his take on the PC plague gripping
America: (video and full text follows below)
Last
week, stunning news came out of America even though to the unobservant eye,
what happened could seem trifling at first glance.
At the
Orpheum Theater in Memphis, Tennessee, it was officially announced that from
now on the movie “Gone with the Wind” would be banned. Although until now, the
same Orpheum Theater in Memphis has traditionally shown “Gone with the Wind” in
August during the Film Classics days…for 34 years in a row. There won’t be a
35th season.
What
happened, in my opinion, is a national catastrophe for America.
I’ll
try to explain why. To assess the scale of the disaster, it’s worth recalling
something that everyone knows. The great movie of the great director Fleming,
“Gone with the Wind,” which premiered in 1939, is the most popular film in the
US in the history of American cinema. It’s the absolute champion in tickets
sales. Taking into account inflation, nearly $3.5 billion was collected.
Modern-day Hollywood blockbusters can’t even get close to that kind of runaway
success.
Vivien
Leigh was cast in the lead role, an English actress, she was selected out of
1,500 candidates. “Gone with the Wind” immediately brought her world fame.
Vivien Leigh is also remembered as an all-time symbol of British cinema.
However, she received her first Oscar for the American movie “Gone with the
Wind.”
Them damned Yankee, SPLC
lovin’, boney-ass globalists up to their monkeyshines again darlin’
In
total, this film has received 10 Oscar awards. One of them was given to a black
actor for the first time in history. The highest award of the American Film
Academy for the Best Supporting Actress was given to Hattie McDaniel, who
played the maid, Mammy, in “Gone with the Wind. Now, the film is accused of
racism, an insult to the black population of America, and the romanticization
of the South during the slavery period.
The
love story of this film is told against the background of the Civil War between
the South and the North in the 19th century. And, they say, the movie is
painful for a portion of America’s modern day population.
The
representative for the distribution company states the following: “As an
organization whose stated mission is to entertain, educate and enlighten the
communities it serves, the Orpheum cannot show a film that is insensitive to a
large segment of the local population.”
In
order to understand the context, I should add that the Negroes – this word is
fine in Russian – are about two-thirds of the population of Memphis. It’s them
who are offended by the classics of American cinema. However, banning one film
in only one city is only a part of a general process, which was kicked into
high gear during the Obama presidency.
Racial
tensions are at an all-time high in the United States. It was during Obama’s
presidency that the first monument in a larger campaign to remove monuments to
White heroes was taken down, the statue of the hero of the South, General Lee,
in New Orleans. The decision was finally executed last May during Trump’s
administration. But this was only done by labeling the General Lee monument a
symbol of the superiority of the White race or, to translate it into PC-speak,
a symbol to “White Supremacy.”
However,
it is impossible to speak today in the United States about the atrocities of
the northerners, in particular, about the “scorched earth” tactics of General
Sherman during the American Civil War. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, the monument
to the president of the Southern Confederation, Jefferson Davis, has already
fallen, followed by a monument to the fighters for the freedom of the South.
Another
general for the South, Pierre de Beauregard, was taken down as well. Later, the
monument to General Lee was slated for demolishing in Charlottesville. This is
similar to the mass toppling of Lenin statues, only done in the American way
and it quickly spread to Baltimore. There, they brought down the monuments to
four generals of the Confederation and other figures of the South of the Civil
War period. A monument to the soldiers of the South was removed in North Carolina.
The
fervor is so contagious that desecration operations are now planned for
monuments all over the US. Moreover, not only memorials and monuments to the
Southerners will be removed, of which there are more than 1,500 in the country,
but their names will also be erased from the names of streets, schools, and
public institutions.
With a
red-hot iron against history.
The
cinema’s turn has now come. Now, the brilliant movie “Gone with the Wind” runs
the risk of disappearing from all American screens. The Memphis precedent will
work. And they will certainly never ever show one of the first US full-length
films, “The Birth of a Nation,” directed by David Griffith, who, by the way, is
considered the father of American cinema.
It was
he who laid the foundations for sensible editing and even special effects.
“Birth of a Nation.” 1915. Three hours. The historical period the movie was set
in was the Civil War in the US and the events immediately after.
The
film had unprecedented battle scenes for cinema of that time. The drama lay in
a gripping account of a fratricidal war and the drama of the defeated where
“the White South was crushed by the Black heel of the North.” Without regard to
rules of war and decency. The North unleashed Black brutality on the Southern
Whites in the name of revenge for the past.
How can
this film be shown now, especially since the birth of the awful Ku Klux Klan is
also realistically depicted in the movie as well? It emerged as a necessary
organization for the self-defense of Whites. And, the cavalry charges while
“Ride of the Valkyries” by Wagner is playing as the score. All of this is
unacceptable now, so this picture will be permanently banned from American
cinemas. All of this even though the US President, Woodrow Wilson, who was a
Nobel Peace Prize recipient, but who was also considered an authoritative
historian, called the film “Birth of a Nation” a “terrible truth.”
President
Wilson made this statement right after he organized a review of Griffith’s new
movie in the White House, where he invited both his ministers and foreign
ambassadors.
Surprisingly,
it turns out that a hundred years ago America coped with its past and was ready
to comprehend it and accept it as it is. Now, this ability has been lost, and a
war has been declared on the past. And so far it proceeds in a very primitive
fashion, through the destruction of monuments and censorship. And no one knows
where it will stop.
Why not
then take a new look at the American Westerns? Are they next on the chopping
block? There are many films where the Indians are depicted as stupid and
bloodthirsty, and they are killed by the White man in great numbers.
It
seems that the fight against the Westerns hasn’t started just yet. But
monuments to Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of America, are already being
defiled all over the US. They say that he is to blame for initiating the
genocide of the indigenous population of the country. Last Wednesday, in the
State of New York, a statue of Columbus was knocked down from the pedestal, and
then smashed to pieces.
There
are new heroes in America now. American cinema does its best to create a new
cast of heroes, infused with modern sensibility. The last Oscar for Best
Picture is characteristic of a larger trend. The film “Moonlight”, has the main
character be the son of a drug-addicted mother, a gay Black man, a brutal
gangster with gold teeth. But look at his wounded soul, and his difficult
childhood. It’s now beyond “Gone with the Wind.”
This is
also an example of how America can’t cope with the real history of its own
country. The conflicts of the past, the wounds of which they never managed to
heal, have reopened. History seems to be coming to life and creating serious
tension.
We
lived through something similar in our Soviet experience, when all of society
was ideologically balkanized and forced to take up the position of one of the
parties in the conflicts of the past. We all supported the red and not the
bourgeoisie. We were for the rebels of Pugachev and StepanRazin. We were
against the landlords. We were for the insurgent officers, the Decembrists, and
not for the Tsar. We were for the Narodnik terrorists and not for the tsarist
police.
And we
were all as one against those enemies as if they were still alive today.
The
same thing is happening in the US now. The Confederates of a century and a half
ago are turned into the living enemies of today. And, the relationship between
the Negroes and the Whites in those days can’t be shown as it really was back
then.
Political
correctness is the instrument of American censorship. Under its banner, they
forbid films and demolish monuments. Under its banner, you can destroy White
history to your heart’s content.
In
Russia, we are already so fed up with all that nonsense and thank God, we can
now quietly write, publish, read, film and show our history. We can allow
ourselves to look at events from different sides. I can’t say that we are
always happy with our turbulent history, but at least unlike America, Poland or
Ukraine, we don’t destroy monuments and don’t ban films. Otherwise, we would
have to stop showing, for example, “And Quiet Flows the Don” or “Battleship
Potemkin,” to ban the “The White Guard” or “Lenin in October.” Then, we would
begin to destroy the monuments.
And
then, we would get indignant because Chekhov romanticizes the old landlord life
in the play “Three Sisters.” And then we would ask if we needed Chekhov at all?
And did you know? Pushkin was a landowner himself. He received 200 servants as
a wedding gift from his father. Is it possible to give living people as a gift?
And hundreds of them at that? And what should we do with Pushkin now?
But
this would mean applying today’s norms to the past. We have already spilt so
much blood over the past, that we don’t want to reopen those wounds again. We
want to heal our past divisions, to learn and accept everything as it was, and
to learn from the experience. We don’t want new civil conflicts.
Meanwhile,
America still has the energy to reopen old wounds and stoke the flames of
resentment. Political Correctness only worked as a band-aid it seems, it masked
the old tensions under a superficial layer of civility, meanwhile the old
racial hostility and enmity smoldered in the deep like a simmering, submerged
peat fire.
Now,
the tongues of flame are already peeping out of the ground, licking the turf on
top. And the scale of the fire when it finally breaks out is difficult to
predict.
When a
society is split, when politics are saturated with hatred, and the rule of law
no longer exists, what will hold keep the whole thing from collapsing?
Reprinted from Russia Insider.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/09/no_author/americas-pc-plague-a-national-catastrophe-russias-1-anchor-kiselyov/
