I was alive and not a toddler in the late 80s and had forgotten about this guy. For those unfamiliar, it was the last-gasp Nazi war crime trial in the news for the Reagan/Thatcher era. The only thing people knew about Demjanjuk for sure was that he was a Soviet solder originally from Ukraine, and was a POW after surrendering to the Nazis at some point during Hitler's failed invasion. From there he may have been used for labor, or as a guard in a camp in Poland, or who knows what else. After the war he immigrated to the US and worked in a Ford factory near Cleveland for over 20 years. He did not have any obvious political affiliation when all of this blew up.
At some point a member of congress was informed that Nazi sympathizers influenced US immigration policy after WW2 and started a preference for allowing former Nazis into the US (which is true, they did). Rather than address this issue head-on, they decided to feed Demjanjuk to the meat grinder. OSI started proceedings to extradite him to Israel to stand trial for being an accused former Nazi death camp guard. They successfully accomplished this based on records obtained from the Russkies about Demjanjuk saying that he was in a training facility that the Nazis used to train concentration camp personnel. The Russians said that they seized the training facility in their counter-offensive that eventually ended the war, and kept all of the records they found.
After OSI / State Dept succeeded in extraditing Demjanjuk to Israel to stand trial as a Nazi war criminal, fashy Reagan officials like Pat Buchanan seized on the press attention and set Demjanjuk up with a fashy Nazi-sympathizer defense attorney, which to his credit Demjanuk fired during the trial when he realized he was being pawned with. By all indication Buchanan and his circle wanted Demjanjuk to be a notorious Nazi so that they could be perceived as defending one. This was the OJ Simpson trial equivalent in Israel, everyone watched and listened to the proceedings every day until Demjanjuk was predictably convicted and sentenced to hang. However, upon appeal the Israeli supreme court equivalent threw out his conviction based on inconsistencies in the testimony from people who claim to have identified Demjanjuk by first-hand accounts from the camps. One witness in particular who was claiming to positively identify Demjanjuk in the 1980s trial had given a statement in the early 1950s claiming that the notorious sadistic guard Demjanjuk was accused of being was killed in a prisoner uprising during the war.
So Demjanjuk's conviction was overturned and he was returned to the United States after a five year ordeal. Almost immediately, this time under the Clinton state dept, OSI starts proceedings to revoke his citizenship and deport him, this time seeking to extradite him to Germany for the same sort of dog and pony show trial about being a former Nazi camp guard. They predictably succeeded after another decade+ of legal proceedings and he is deported to Germany despite never being a German citizen, unless you were to count him as one for being a Nazi POW during the war. By this time he was very old and well into the Bush Jr administration, and wound up standing trial from a nursing home. The Germans predictably convicted him just as the Israelis did, but he died of natural causes before he got a chance to appeal (which apparently carries a presumption of innocence by German criminal law).
All of this was a ridiculous farce that demonstrated the lengths to which four governments (The US, Israel, Germany, and Russia) would go to in using a random nobody as a pawn to fuck with each other. The "evidence" of Demjanjuk's participation in the Nazi army division that staffed the death camps was laughable at best (stuff like, his photo was stamped with some sort of seal that appeared to be consistent with an underlying identification card, like a passport, but the picture had staple holes in it while the underlying card did not. Derp...). This ridiculous ordeal spanned an incredible FUCKING SIX presidential administrations (Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama). Demjanjuk's last appeal to the US was during the Obama admin in 2009, during which the Obama admin fought his attempt to re-establish his US citizenship.
He died in Germany in 2012 of natural causes.
tl;dr: It was the Janet Reno satanic panic trial in which random innocent people were subjected to decades of criminal accusation, only with Nazis as the backdrop and drawn out over a whopping 32 years.
Edited by Over9000ft ()
cars posted:c_man posted:tvtropes is people taking seriously the premise of the joseph campbell idea that
i hate to defend Joseph Campbell but TV Tropes is people taking seriously the premise that their Web site isn't a piece of shit
I honestly think that tvtropes actually represents an intellectual development beyond campbell. If that sounds stupid its because campbell was fucking stupid too, even though he shopped his ideas to a higher falutin audience, imo. Tvtropes is about taxonomy, whereas campbell was about singular teleology. None of this makes any of them less stupid, to be perfectly clear
serafiym posted:I watched The Witcher and the whole time I was thinking "this would be a really great video game"
or a book
c_man posted:cars posted:
c_man posted:
tvtropes is people taking seriously the premise of the joseph campbell idea that
i hate to defend Joseph Campbell but TV Tropes is people taking seriously the premise that their Web site isn't a piece of shit
I honestly think that tvtropes actually represents an intellectual development beyond campbell. If that sounds stupid its because campbell was fucking stupid too, even though he shopped his ideas to a higher falutin audience, imo. Tvtropes is about taxonomy, whereas campbell was about singular teleology. None of this makes any of them less stupid, to be perfectly clear
the synthesis i'm getting out of this is all movies are just a chart of buildups and letdowns and payoffs in various permutations, but this puts paid to mood pieces, grossout, boredom generation, levels of heteroglossia in audiences, intrigues and pastiche and other possible innovations, imho
which reminds me of a great time i had at the movies by substitution which involved just getting fooled ending up picking "detective dee: mystery of the phantom flame" without knowing it was gonna be a pulpy wuxia type movie with zero detectiving really. i walked in thinking it was gonna be some film about john dee and old timey anglosaxon magic occult stuff because i didn't bother to look hard at the poster.
Edited by Bablu ()
After a pep talk from Adolf,
swampman posted:jojo rabbit is pro-nazi propaganda
how so
Petrol posted:swampman posted:jojo rabbit is pro-nazi propaganda
how so
Let's see, it trivializes Nazism and Nazi crimes, the protagonists are Nazis, and in the end the Nazi boy proves his maturity by learning to dislike Hitler and is forgiven by the Jew who was imprisoned in his home, shall I go on, it includes a pivotal scene where Soviet soldiers line children against a wall for summary execution but a goodhearted caring Nazi saves our hero from the communist murderers, shall I continue to go on, the ending is actually changed from the book which allows the Jewish girl to repudiate Jojo, and if you will permit me to go on, you know how I know that a movie is Nazi propaganda? if it is about WWII and also has grossed $31.1 million in Amerika and Kanada
swampman posted:Petrol posted:swampman posted:jojo rabbit is pro-nazi propaganda
how so
Let's see, it trivializes Nazism and Nazi crimes, the protagonists are Nazis, and in the end the Nazi boy proves his maturity by learning to dislike Hitler and is forgiven by the Jew who was imprisoned in his home, shall I go on, it includes a pivotal scene where Soviet soldiers line children against a wall for summary execution but a goodhearted caring Nazi saves our hero from the communist murderers, shall I continue to go on, the ending is actually changed from the book which allows the Jewish girl to repudiate Jojo, and if you will permit me to go on, you know how I know that a movie is Nazi propaganda? if it is about WWII and also has grossed $31.1 million in Amerika and Kanada
please check the rhizzone style guide swampman--i expect better from a veteran poster like you. it's "amerikkka" and "klanada." thank you
swampman posted:it includes a pivotal scene where Soviet soldiers line children against a wall for summary execution but a goodhearted caring Nazi saves our hero from the communist murderers,
your post is very funny but i feel the need to point out that this scene does not exist. anyway good parody of twitter 'tankie' moviescolding, 10/10
swampman posted:im not joking. almost all movies are propaganda for something. extreme violence, romantic love, the police, bootstraps, private automobiles... this is one of the nazi ones. dont be sad just turn it off.
it must be incredibly tiring to take everything so seriously that you think indigenous filmmaker taika waititi, by failing to make his cartoon nazis sufficiently demonic, has made a piece of pro-nazi propaganda. is robocop pro-police propaganda? is jaws anti-environmentalist propaganda? is star trek pro-nasa propaganda? your apprehension of media is tv tropes-tier.
Petrol posted:your apprehension of media is tv tropes-tier.
dimashq posted:Seeking films that may or may not be nazi propaganda any suggestions?
Can't help you there. But if you're interested in seeing a film I have just learned is definitely nazi propaganda, you can't go past Jojo Rabbit.
Petrol posted:it must be incredibly tiring to take everything so seriously
you're the one getting mad that i dont like the "funny movie with the jokes." it must be incredibly tiring to constantly have to recant having enjoyed problematic movies 2-3 years ago when they came out but before current affairs dropped an exhausting overboiled zinger tea about how scarlet johanssen's "nazi mom who is secretly a hero" character is played by a woman known for brownface roles and being an ultra-CIA agent in the marvel cinefascist gooniverse
that you think indigenous filmmaker taika waititi,
obama was black
by failing to make his cartoon nazis sufficiently demonic, has made a piece of pro-nazi propaganda.
we have been over this 1000x. it is not enough to say "btw nazis are evil" and expect that to be the takeaway for those sympathetic to nazism. charlie chaplin and thousands of other comedians mocked hitler in the 30s. nazism has been mocked relentlessly for almost a century and now it's back bigger than ever. who did the mockery serve? the only thing we know for certain is that it defused liberals who laugh at that crazy mustache and say "job done". next up a version of "heart of darkness" where instead of having to dig and fill holes for no reason while getting hands lopped off as punishment, the native enslaved congolese can be doing something more arbitrary and funnier like being forced to play family feud. that would certainly be a sour comment on the early days of capitalist imperialism!
to treat WWII's fascist genocides as a zany, awful, but historically discrete event is the BEST outcome for anyone who benefits from the modern continuation of these tendencies
is robocop pro-police propaganda?
yes
is jaws anti-environmentalist propaganda?
yes
is star trek pro-nasa propaganda?
the premise of star trek is that capitalist amerika goes through some hard times and then finally it conquers space
your apprehension of media is tv tropes-tier.
you are intentionally turning off your critical gaze to preserve your ability to consume mass media
Edited by swampman ()
swampman posted:you're the one getting mad
if you say so!
i have to question the leap from 'allows some nazi characters moments of humanity' to 'glorifies nazis' - that is the scolding i refer to. when you wail and gnash your teeth in this way it sounds like you have twitter brain. after all, this conversation started with me saying i saw the film and it wasn't great but had a couple of redeeming features, and you reacted as though i rolled up to the thread all "hey guys have you seen triumph of the will? i know its a bit controversial but what a spectacle!"
Petrol posted:we simply disagree that it 'glorifies' nazis. its nazis are a muddled and not really successful combination of dopey caricature and, at times, humanity.
compared to what fascists actually are, this is glorification
