It’s hard not to enjoy seeing someone speak actual truth to actual power in the entertainment industry. So when the celebrated Hungarian filmmaker Laszlo Nemes was asked by the Guardian about his new WWII movie, Orphan, and the cultural and political implications of its subject, Nemes did the whole world a giant favor.
“There’s an orgy of antisemitism, an absolute, shameless orgy of antisemitism, overtaking the west,” Nemes declares. He’s had enough of the “puritan, moralising, self-righteousness” from people who think of themselves as cultured and enlightened. “I think it’s all anti-humanist regression. And because it’s not identified as this, I think it’s very effective at spreading. And one of its very potent vectors has been antisemitism. … The Jew has always been [cast as] the sort of internal enemy, and I think now [the idea of] the Jew as the internal enemy of the west has reached the dimensions of European antisemitism before the takeover by the National Socialist [Nazi] party.”
His much-awarded 2015 masterpiece Son of Saul, Nemes suggests, would not fare well in this environment, where “anything that’s Jewish is now considered… Nobody would touch it with a 10-foot pole.”
Orphan is also a Holocaust movie, and despite Nemes’s mastering of the subject, this time he has yet to find a U.S. distributor. “You should be able to talk about these things without being ostracized,” he told the Guardian.
Nemes, who is Jewish, said that at conversations ostensibly about his new movie, “people [would] ask me about Gaza, instead of, you know, asking about the movie. [They ask] if I signed this or that petition.”
In other words, is he, you know, a good Jew? “We know how totalitarian mindsets work. … This kind of ideology always attaches itself to the sense of being on the right side of history, being on the righteous side. There’s a very strong, moralizing, puritan surface on which this ideology can attach itself.”
Obviously Nemes is correct in every particular. But it’s worth noting that we have confirmation that he is correct from the very cohort he’s talking about.
Usually, what Nemes calls the “overclass of Hollywood” loves to portray itself as some courageous institution. But occasionally a smug buffoon like Javier Bardem will be so giddy with self-righteousness that he’ll reveal the truth.
Bardem was asked by AFP if his career is suffering because of his insufferable obsession with mouthing anti-Israel propaganda (though the AFP didn’t phrase it that way, of course). No, he’s “getting more work than ever.”
He went on: “In fact… they’re calling even more because the narrative is changing. Now it’s no longer as controlled by those who have always controlled it. Instead we now understand that there are consequences when you support or justify a genocide like the one that is happening. And society knows that.”
Unfortunately AFP doesn’t appear to have asked Bardem who he means by “those who have always controlled it,” but that’s probably because it was unsubtle and AFP saw no reason to ask him to clarify the obvious.
Meanwhile, at the Cannes Film Festival, Bardem gleefully suggested that a campaign of retribution was coming to those who criticize movie stars who express anti-Semitism. “I believe that those who are drawing up the so-called blacklists will actually be exposed, and they will be the ones suffering the so-called consequences,” he said.
Wait, he knows of blacklists against “pro-Palestinian” actors? Well, not exactly. Reports Variety:
“Bardem noted that he ‘can’t corroborate’ that there is an actual blacklist, and has actually continued to receive many offers all over the world which makes him believe that ‘things are changing.’”
So, to sum up: Being “pro-Palestine” has been a boon to Bardem’s career (not that he was begging for work before) and he knows nothing about a blacklist that would sideline the Gaza obsessives in Hollywood.
Ah, but of course there are blacklists—of Israelis. Bardem knows that. He signed a petition supporting one!
It’s easy to get annoyed at Bardem, but what would we do without him? We wouldn’t fully understand just how good it is for your career to accuse Jews of genocide. Meanwhile, as if he needed it, Bardem is living vindication of Laszlo Nemes’s words. Yet again, perfect casting and directing all around.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.commentary.org ’
