Education for Death

Posted on July 12, 2003 in Culture

Raven mentioned this short by Walt Disney in the discussion about Der Fuerher’s Face. You can find it online here. (Showing the film may be a little complicated: I recommend using Windows Media Player.)

The film is harsh and jingoistic, painting the German people as without humor, without souls. To kill an enemy, propagandists know, you must mechanize them, make them inhuman. We must remember that this film wasn’t made merely to expose what Germany was “like”, but to apologize for the bombing of cowed civilians while we sought to dismantle an empire run by truly evil people.

On one hand, I think, it is important to expose and reject authoritarian thinking. But by making the Germans robots, we miss out on the ways that authoritarianism and militarism can come amongst us, claiming to protect our liberties as men and women are arrest and held incommunicado, their whereabouts and their fates unknown to their friends and families.

Again the dialogue is disturbing in parts. In modern America, we can’t talk about “genetic purity” (except, of course, at Bob Jones University). But I have heard, from the minions, remarks about how we shouldn’t invest so much in helping the disabled, that the world belongs to the strong, that Democracy is an evil witch, that those who don’t support Bush wars are “cowards”, that we are unconquerable, that we fear no one, that we should say nothing but what we parrot from the television, that our soldiers should follow orders even if it means that they must shoot unarmed civilians, that it is heroic to destroy other nations in the name of liberating them,….

Particularly moving is the scene where the Holy Bible is faded out and replaced by Mein Kampf. Rightists have become craftier since the fall of Prescott Bush’s idol Adolf Hitler, concealing their notions of superiority and contempt for the word of Christ by holding out the Bible and saying that they live by it. They still, unabashably, replace the sacrifice of Christ with a sword.

If you believe you can be a Christian and support George W. Bush, review Chapters 5 through 7 of Matthew.