A. Zarkov says: “This statement is false. The USSR practiced anti-Semitism on a grand scale.”

But not explicitly. One can search the entire corpus of Soviet law without finding any statute which discriminates against Jews as such. One can search the back numbers of Pravda and Izvestia without finding articles denouncing Jews as such. Yes, there was much covert discrimination. There were tacit quotas, and code words in the press such as “cosmopolitan”. Another private code word was “fifth pointer” – a reference to line 5 of a Soviet identity card, which was the person’s nationality.

But this was very different from conditions in Nazi Germany, or under the Czar. In Imperial Russia, Jews were restricted to living in the Pale of Settlement, barred from political office, subjected to explicit quotas in the universities and professions, brutally attacked by state-sponsored mobs (the pogroms of the Black Hundreds), libeled daily in the popular press, and even put on trial for ritual murder.

The Bolshevik Revolution ended all that. The Old Bolsheviks included many Jews; four of the seven members of the first Politburo in 1917 were Jews. Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev held high office until purged by Stalin – whose Jewish crony Kaganovich sat in the Politburo till 1957. In the wake of the Revolution, freed of Tsarist barriers, able Jews rose to high positions in all areas of the new society (including the secret police).

There was a reaction to this later, of course. There was some scapegoating of Jewish chekists for the Stalinist terror, and Stalin himself in his dying madness plotted an abortive pogrom. Quotas came back unofficially. But these problems were much less significant for the image of the USSR than the earlier contrast with Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. It was not until the 1970s that Soviet anti-semitism got much attention; and the relatively mild abuses of that period did not provoke the sort of outrage that Nazi crimes had.

This is not to say that Jews have been particular apologists for the USSR or Communism; only that they have never had the motive to denounce it as they have Nazi Germany.

Are you suggesting that it isn’t?

Randy: If there is this vast conspiracy that doesn’t care about box office returns but only about propaganda, you should be able to support your claim with *dozens* of such films. I will be happy if you list just three.

[ I list five]

Randy: Nope. Not one of these films has anything to do with communism. Remember? That was the cause here. Please try again.

My point was that Hollywood doesn’t release movies with anti-Communist themes. If I listed movies with anti-Communist themes, I would be proving myself wrong.

My list was of propaganda movies made at great expense, advertised heavily, and released, despite the virtual certainty they would lose money.

Randy: (sigh) I guess I have to do all the work here: [lists the Rambo movies]

One sequel (the first Rambo had nothing to do with Communism) does not a cottage industry make. By that standard, dressing up in a hockey mask and vivisecting promiscuous teenagers would be 12 times more important economically than anti-Communism.

Randy: Before Night Falls is another recent film that made Cuba’s communist government look pretty bad. IT starred Javier Bardem. Malvolio will undoubtedly say that doesn’t count because it starred a Spaniard, not a real Cuban.

It doesn’t count because no one saw it, but I think it’s instructive that it got made at all. The only movie about the evil of a dictatorship that’s closer to Miami than San Francisco is to San Jose, and what is the particular evil highlighted? That they persecute homosexuals.

Hey, guys, how about a movie about how Cuba persecutes heterosexuals? They do that too, you know. They persecute everybody!

However, currently there is an interesting issue at Washington U.
They’ve shut down a student demonstration and fake Gulag. It’s “offensive”. That implies the university in all its wisdom–remember, they’re professors like many of you all–are convinced there are many on campus who would be offended by being reminded of the gulag.
Now, the question is, is the U right? If not, who’s being offended?
I figure Washington U, being full of advanced degree types, knows more about their own establishment than redstater Aubrey.
That is, to be explicit, the U knows there are a lot of employees who would be offended by the reminder of the gulag. Either they’d think it was directed at them as a reproach, which is likely, or they wouldn’t want others reminded of what they, themselves, whitewashed.
Don’t blame me. It wasn’t my idea. I’m not Washington U.

Amen.

Hollywood certainly tried to make anti-red movies, because Richard Nixon pretty much promised he would terrorize it if it didn’t. “Red Snow” was the result.

The funniest anti-red movie ever made.

Malvolio will undoubtedly say that doesn’t count because it starred a Spaniard, not a real Cuban.

You need to tell that to Malvolio, because he is convinced that Hollywood makes films like that regardless of whether they make money.

But in general, I think you are much closer to the mark. Since the 70s, it has become much more fashionable to be anti-anti-communists. I think a lot of that has to do with the McCarthy era, when people saw that red-baiting was destructive and, yes, even ‘un-American.’ Couple that with Watergate two decades later, and you have a great story line — our government, once considered so benign and helpful, is actually corrupt! And it serves the wealthy and elite! It was only after Watergate and Vietnam that we really began to see movies that send a message that you can’t trust the government to do the right thing, or can’t do it competently.

Strangely, McCarthism, Watergate and the debacle that became Vietnam are owned by the Republicans. (I know, Kennedy started Vietnam and Johnson scaled it up. Plenty of blame to go around, but in the end, it was only conservatives who supported the war, not liberals.) Perhaps if it weren’t for these mistakes, we wouldn’t have a film industry that writes plotlines about the corruption of goverment? I don’t know — I’ll leave that to others to argue.

Even more strangely, I would suspect that most people who believe as Malvolio does that Hollywood unjustly produces movies that tell tales of a corrupt and incompetent US government are probably the types who are convinced that our current government is in fact corrupt, incompetent, and serves only the wealthy elite. Not to mention Marxist. So, in a way, they are right (in their own minds), and should in fact welcome the now-honestness of Hollywood.

At the other end of the spectrum of quality is the awful 1987 miniseries AMERIKA, about a Soviet-occupied USA. I gave up on this after an installment or two. It really helped kill the long-form miniseries on network TV. It obviously must have been in the planning stages for years, because it was certainly out of date in the Gorbachev era.

Randy: Oh, and still waiting for that list of pro-commie films that Hollywood produced to indoctrinate us all…

You won’t such a list, at least from me because that’s not how Hollywood works. The culture is anti-anti communist as opposed to pro communist. They obviously can’t make propaganda films because those films won’t make money. Nor will you find a memo that says “don’t make serious and artful films that attack communism at a root philosophical level.” It’s a shared value not to make that kind of film and with a few exceptions they don’t. You won’t see something come out of Hollywood like The Confession 1970. Amazingly this film was directed by the leftist Costa Gavras who made Z, Missing, State of Siege and other films with a left viewpoint. He must have been pissed about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Randy: Zarkov: “This statement is false.:Wow!We finally found something to agree on.Russia has a long history of anti-semitism that predates the communists.During the Brezhnev era, I believe the word as ‘cosmopolitan’.But there was no benefit to being a Jew in the USSR.

Stalin’s code word for the Jews was “rootless cosmopolitans.” In other words people lacking a national character.

(sigh) I guess I have to do all the work here:

First Blood (1982)
Rambo:First Blood part 2 (1985)
Rambo 3 (1988)
And the new one simply called Rambo (release date January 25 2008)

Nope. Not one of these films has anything to do with communism. Remember? That was the cause here. Please try again.

Wow! We finally found something to agree on. Russia has a long history of anti-semitism that predates the communists. During the Brezhnev era, I believe the word as ‘cosmopolitan’. But there was no benefit to being a Jew in the USSR.

Randy: Rambo spawned an entire cottage industry of films, and they kept making them until….they started failing at the box office.

[No list of such films is forthcoming.]

Randy: If there is this vast conspiracy that doesn’t care about box office returns but only about propaganda, you should be able to support your claim with *dozens* of such films. I will be happy if you list just three.

Lions for Lambs
Rendition
Redacted
In the Valley of Elah
Stop Loss

All of them had big stars and big directors and none of them made a nickel. (There was also The Kingdom, but that had far less of a US slant, as did The Hurt Locker.)

Yes and no. Certainy, we didn’t want the communists to gain footholds around the world. But it still amounted to killing lots of people. If you were the one tortured by Pinochet, or your dad was killed by him, it’s pretty chilly comfort to know that the US backed his policies because he wasn’t as bad as the commies.

And Colucci is right — growing up in the cold war, we were taught that communists eat their young’uns. And we had an official push-pull in the US: Hate the communists, but reach out in friendship whenever we can. Remember detente? Remember all those cultural exchanges? So were supposed to hate them AND welcome them with open arms. There was no such ambiguity with the Nazis, and perhaps this ambiguity contributed to our wavering commitment to see anti-communist propaganda in the form of films.

And then, when we actually DID attend the Bolshoi Ballet and met the communist dancers, we found out that we sorta liked them — all those beautiful ballerinas and handsome male dancers. And their handlers were so cultured, more so than people in the US. And we found out that they really didn’t eat their young, so we figured that the anti-communist propaganda we were served up in the US wasn’t always true. And if some of it isn’t true, then how much more isn’t?

When you over play your hand, you can’t complain when people call you on it, and then lose faith in the entire message.

Oh, and still waiting for that list of pro-commie films that Hollywood produced to indoctrinate us all…

On the other hand, the USSR began by overthrowing what was then the most notoriously anti-semitic regime in the world, fought and (mightily) helped destroy the Nazi regime, and never explicitly practiced anti-semitism.

This statement is false. The USSR practiced anti-Semitism on a grand scale. Jews (like everyone else) had to carry internal passports, which listed their nationality. But the Jews had no nation within the Soviet group, and were identified as being Jewish. This led to problems. For example the Steklov Institute of Mathematics had an on-going policy to flunk Jews on their oral mathematical exams. The details are given in the book: It Seems I am a Jew.

Then we have Stalin’s Stalin’s unfinished holocaust as described in the book: Why Didn’t Stalin Murder All the Jews? If anything the Communists were worse to the Jews than the czars.

It makes no sense whatsoever to lament the anti-communist, anti-Russion hysteria and insist simultaneously that the American people didn’t care much about the Russians’ crimes.

You don’t need card-carrying Marxists in the universities to teach, formally, or by comment, a negative view of the US, along with whitewashing the crimes of the left. Hell, any liberal can do that in his sleep. See POTUS.

The history of the Vietnam War is probably not being taught at all, or else by a man named “Coach.”

Insufficiently Sensitive: Said Humiliating Defeat was largely due to the successful domestic activities of communist-financed and inspired activism, if not actual communist subversion, of our open society. Afterward, the Gramscian takeover of education and the media just increased, and still does so.

If we are still hearing the Vietnam Dolschtoßlegende, then the history of Nazi Germany is still not taught enough.

But yes. Rambo spawned an entire cottage industry of films, and they kept making them until….they started failing at the box office.

Apparently, the only films that will fit your criteria is a film in which communism is clearly explained to be evil and horrible, the US is perfectly wonderful, and, well, as long as that’s the message, it should be a terrific hit at the box office. And if it isn’t, they should continue to remake that film just to prove to you guys that there isn’t some sort of vast conspiracy to make communism look terrific.

If there is this vast conspiracy that doesn’t care about box office returns but only about propaganda, you should be able to support your claim with *dozens* of such films. I will be happy if you list just three.

Said Humiliating Defeat was largely due to the successful domestic activities of communist-financed and inspired activism, if not actual communist subversion, of our open society. Afterward, the Gramscian takeover of education and the media just increased, and still does so.

It’s interesting that Obama’s very best talent is the slick and constant demonization of any organization opposed to leftism – his community organizing training was a drink from the same Gramscian river.

The judgment of the Nazi leaders was a different situation. They were taken by force, in the immediate wake of spectacularly lurid crimes, by their enemies in open war, who were the most powerful nations in the world and had nothing to restrain their wrath. As noted upthread, this was an exceptional case, and the absence of parallels is to be expected: inertia normally prevails and nothing is done. And even in the Nazi case, there was not a complete resolution. Only a small portion of the Nazi criminals were actually punished.

As to the historical record: the Nazis’ few virtues were not anything the great mass of Western intellectuals sympathized with, their vices were particularly revolting, and they flaunted those vices. The virtues of Communism included things which many Westerners actually liked, and their vices were veiled (they always pretended to be democrats, whereas the Nazis openly embraced dictatorship).

Another factor is that the Nazis committed their worst crimes against the most articulate and proportionately most influential group in the world: the Jews. How many refugees from Nazi oppression ended up in Hollywood? How many Hollywood figures (and scholars, journalists, and millionaires) had relatives murdered by the Nazis?

On the other hand, the USSR began by overthrowing what was then the most notoriously anti-semitic regime in the world, fought and (mightily) helped destroy the Nazi regime, and never explicitly practiced anti-semitism. Communism generally stood in opposition to the reactionary and tradionalist forces commonly associated with anti-semitism, such as the Catholic Church.

So Jews, as Jews, had no particular quarrel with the USSR and Communism. There have always been some Jewish opponents of Communism, but no great force. That changed somewhat in the 1970s, when the Soviets became the chief backer of the Arab war against Israel and the refusenik issue arose. A segment of Jewish opinion was mobilized against Communism, and combined with other factors, such as the revelations of Solzhenitsyn and the long work of traditional anti-Communists, to overcome that inertia and and bring about the exposure and condemnation of Communism.

Randy: Imagine making a film anytime in the late 60s through the 70s on fighting communism! It would be a box office disaster. And once that mentality gets cemented, it’s hard to change it. I hardly think it’s some sort of conspiracy by Hollywood execs to be soft on communism

Isn’t it? I mean, I hate to be one of those people but still. When Red Dawn and the Rambo movies and were very successful, you’d figure there’d be a whole bunch of them — nothing Hollywood likes to do more than take a successful idea and run it into the ground — but no.

Similarly, True Lies was very successful, as is “24″ on television, and the huge parade of anti-GWOT movies (Rendition, Valley of Elah, Lions for Lambs, &c.) tanked utterly, so you would think the movie studios would get the message: Americans don’t like terrorists and therefore like movies in which terrorists get their asses kicked. Nope. When Clancy’s popular terrorists-get-their-asses-kicked book Sum of All Fears was made into a movie, the terrorists became … wait for it … neo-Nazis, because, according to the studio, that was more “realistic”.

The only pro-GWOT movie made, 300, was done in allegorical form. It didn’t fool anybody, on either side of the issue, but one can’t help suspecting it did fool whoever originally greenlighted it and that that guy was in big trouble at the next meeting of the Conspiracy…

FWIW, this is from the Wikipeida entry (footnotes removed):

Hollywood rumor holds that Sinatra removed the film from distribution after the John F. Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963. Strictly speaking, the film was not removed from distribution, as can be confirmed from Time magazine’s archives section online. Certainly the film was rarely shown in the decades after 1963, but it did appear as part of the Thursday Night Movies series on CBS on September 16, 1965 and again later that season. It was also shown twice on NBC, once in the spring of 1974 and again in the summer of 1975. It has been said that Sinatra did not acquire distribution rights to The Manchurian Candidate until the late 1970s. He was involved in a theatrical re-release of the film in 1988. In recent years, the film has aired occasionally on the Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics cable networks.

Michael Schlesinger, who was responsible for the film’s 1988 reissue, maintains that the film’s apparent withdrawal was unrelated to the Kennedy assassination. He says that the film was “simply played out” by 1963, and that MGM did not re-release it theatrically until 1988 due to disagreements with Sinatra’s attorneys over the terms of the film’s licensing. Similar questions surround the film Suddenly in which Sinatra himself starred as a presidential assassin.

So if Hollywood made anti-communist movies when they would sell (there is, by the way, a fair amount of literature on Hollywood’s active cooperation with the government during the Cold War — check it out) it’s irrelevant, and when they stop making them when they won’t sell, it reflects bias? Got it. Anyone serious want to talk about this?

If you really believe that some past or present horrible hasn’t gotten it’s due, then the answer is quite simple: Make your own movie. It isn’t that hard. People do it all the time. Get it shot and in the can, and then peddle it to independent filmfests, Hollywood or wherever you can get it shown. Can’t get it shown? Contact Mel Gibson — he knows how to get around the distribution system.

It turns out that instead of actually doing anything, people constantly bring up two points: Liberals all loved Stalin in the 1930s, and Marxists are everywhere in college campuses today.

And somehow, the fact that communism in N. Korea exists, or China, or Cuba, all flows from these two points. It’s absurd, of course, and a pointless argument. No one is able to identify more than a handful of actual Marxists in the entire university system, yet these few control everything in America.

And of course, they conveniently leave out all the right wing apologists for the brutal dictators that we have supported, be they in S. America or Africa, or whatever. No one remembers Jeane Kirkpatrick? It seemed as though we supported any tinhorn dicatator as long as he was anti-communist.

Also the whole genre of scifi movies of the 50s, from The Blob to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which have been interpreted as thinly veiled attacks on the cult of communism.

This has the same problem as the Manchurian candidate–because these movies were so long ago, they were made before the movie industry got the biases it has today, so they’re irrelevant.