Hanukkah Presents 5/8
Jimmy Carter is gone. It's time for Historically & Politically Appropriate Movie Night.
Former US President Jimmy Carter is dead. He was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, many will eulogize him, and there is much to praise in his life. It is undeniable that he did a lot of good in his 100 years on Earth.
For reasons pertaining to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, I was not a fan.
But, instead of speaking ill of the dead and his foreign policy failures, I want to assign some entertaining homework. This is a Portland newsletter and I don’t want to get too “in the weeds” about Dead Presidents and Global Affairs.
So… let’s watch something in German set in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 😅
Why? Because some of us need a reminder of what Left populism can look like under a conservative government. Why Germany? Because the kids today don’t really look up to Carter, hippies, or the American anti-war movement. They turn to Europe, and many of them really enjoyed this film.
The Assignment
Uli Edel’s The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008). You should be able to watch it on Amazon Prime or Tubi.
The film tells the origin story of Germany’s Red Army Faction (RAF). It’s a story of student activists, leftist labor organizers, and journalists organizing into a far-left terrorist organization.
Watch this scene and you will recognize what the Portland DSA and frequent visitors to the Portland Liberation Center are LARPing at. I don’t think they are these people, but they so desperately want to be.
The film is superbly acted. You’ll likely see the parallels to today. Not in the global climate, but in the simplistic and brutal attitudes of the activists. German Socialists railing against the “American genocide in Vietnam” and their obsession with Israel will likely stand out.
The irony is there would soon be a real genocide in that region, involving Vietnamese victims. It was carried out by the Ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge, funded by China, in their push for Communist rule of Cambodia. 1.5-2 million dead in Cambodia with an additional estimated 30,000 Vietnamese civilians killed in border raids. That’s Communism in action. “By any means necessary,” after all.
The Left was divided on their support for Pol Pot and his merry band of butchers. These days they mostly engage in historical revisionism, claiming he was never “a true Communist” or distancing themselves from historical support.
See Jeff Jacoby’s Boston Globe article from 1998 on Pol Pot’s death.
The LARPers
I’ve focused on The Portland Democratic Socialists of America, because they’re the #friendly “Bernie Bro” part of Portland’s Communist Movement, but I haven’t introduced you to the Party for Socialist Liberation (PSL). They’re a “real” political party. They even had a Presidential Candidate.
One of their pet causes this year (other than Israel and ending capitalism) was supporting Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian theft of an election in Venezuela.
They hosted an event, along with DSA members, to set the record straight. Maduro’s killing of protestors and attempted assassinations of political opponents? CIA propaganda! Copaganda, if you will. All part of the American Imperialist War Machine.
Oh no! Portland Democrats, what are you doing liking this post? Maduro is a Communist dictator. Could it be that the person who runs this social media account is sympathetic to the message?
After the Rene Gonzalez x Andy Ngo debacle, you’d expect local political groups and hopefuls to be more careful with their social media.
But what more could I possibly find? It’s not like the DSA members who work in Portland Public Schools would have a Communist meme page, helping us connect all of them.
That would be crazy.
Are they all this sloppy? Mostly, yes. Next time!