If Pope Francis doesn't want to judge, why not join a disco than a church? Religion exists to judge, and Christianity is a judgmental religion. If he doesn't want to judge, he should find a new 'faith' or some hobby. But then, Francis really does love to judge. He loves to judge and condemn traditionalists for refusing to bow down to the latest fashions of degeneracy.
1. It has gone from so-called ‘gay rights’ to Gay Rites, a 'neocracy' of globohomo-mania as new object of reverence, rapture, and worship. It’s been noted by many that the West is becoming irreligious. True, in the sense that traditional faith is waning. But no, in that there's a neo-theocracy or 'neocracy' of satanism with Sodomania and Tranny-scendence as the highest value, along with Magic Negro Cult and Holy Jew Worship. Idolatry is the new religion, and its adherents foam at the mouth in their faddish fanaticism. For the longest time, the 'gay' agenda was sold as a secular and 'rational' movement in favor of individual rights, i.e. some individuals are homo, and they have rights as individuals to practice homo-fecal-penetration and be what nature made them to be. Then, the 'gay' agenda became the official policy of statism: Government and politicians must either observe, celebrate, and praise homosexuality OR keep their mouths shut if they lack the requisite enthusiasm. But, they must NOT oppose the agenda as it would displease the Jews who control both political parties, big media, and the deep state. Finally, we now see globo-homo nuttery being pushed into houses of worship. It is no longer secular but 'neocratic'. For some reason, churches and temples fling their gates wide open to the worship of satanism. And Jews turned the Holy Land into Sodom and Gomorrah, and we must all praise the fact that Israel annually(and anally)has one of the biggest 'gay' parades in the world.
2. Jews were the main force behind globo-homo. Anyone who denies this fact is either ignorant or mendacious. It’s been a way for Jews to enforce and reinforce minority-elite-supremacism. As homos are minorities all over the world, any society that puts homos on a pedestal puts minority before majority. Such developments complement Jewish minority-supremacist power. People who bow down before minority-homos are also more likely to be accustomed to bow down before minority-Jews. Also, as homos are alienated from their own societies, they make ideal collaborators of Jewish Globalist Power. Jewish Power coddles and bribes them, and they do the bidding of the Empire of Judea.
Sign says ALL ARE WELCOME but of course decent people who refuse to celebrate Homo-Fecal-Penetration and Tranny-Penis-Cutting are NOT welcome in this neo-satanist church gone rotten.
3. Jews hated Christianity for historical reasons(of 'antisemitism' and having passed the Jewish God to the goyim) and for being a key bastion of conservative values. The church was, at one time, the main force against globo-homo and other forms of decadence, depravity, and degeneracy, often pushed by Jews. Jews figured there are two ways to deal with this problem. Bring down the church and discredit it with salacious scandals, mocking caricatures, and secular arguments. Or change it from the inside. Turn the church into a dispenser of globo-homo, and then there would be no effective force against the ‘gay’ agenda, especially as secular ‘conservatives’ only cater to power and money and will suck up to anyone on top — notice that once rich Jews told GOP to stop opposing globo-homo, ALL Republicans followed suit. Also, a christianity that’s gone globo-homo is spiritually dead. No sane religion celebrates sodomy and tranny-penis-cutting in its houses of worship. The fact that so many people in the West will approve of christianity ONLY IF it embraces the 'gay' agenda is proof that they put sodomy and tranny-vanity over God and Jesus. They don't expect homos and trannies to repent and atone before God and Jesus(and Allah and Muhammad). Instead, they expect Divinity to bow down to the fad-fanaticism of the day. In other words, divinity now exists to flatter the vanity of sexual deviants.
4. Any institution is more about personnel than principles. There is nothing in teachings of Christianity that would celebrate sinners and sodomy. Jesus opened His heart to everyone, even murderers and rapists, but on condition that they sought repentance and redemption. So, all this globo-homo stuff has nothing to do with church doctrine or principles. But, that doesn’t matter as any institution is really controlled by the people inside. If satanists take over the church, it will become satanist. If capitalists take over a communist government, it will practice capitalism. If communists take over a capitalist industry, they will run it along communist lines. If the Supreme Court is taken over by radicals or Jewish supremacists, it will do away with free speech, gun rights, freedom of assembly, and etc. EVEN IF those are guaranteed in the Constitution. People of Power decide, not core principles. So, if catholic church is taken over by globo-homo types, it is effectively 'sodomitic'. It doesn’t matter what church doctrine has said since time immemorial. This is why ‘muh constitution’ types are misguided, indeed clueless. They really believe laws and policies are governed by principles. No, it's the Power that decides. Jews took over US institutions and used their power to shut down BDS, suppress free speech, and promote tribal supremacism of Zion. Such policies don't flow from the Constitution, but Jews enforced them because they got the power. They even passed ‘gay marriage’ through the Supreme Court. Where is that in the Constitution? People of Power or POP can just pull stuff out of the thin air. It’s like Stalin had the power to make a pact with Hitler even though it went against communist principles. In this sense, fascism has a better understanding of how things really work. Power itself is the ‘principle’ of history.
Welcome to Anno Sodomini
5. If the masses were at odds with the elites, then the People of Power or POP would have far more difficulty doing as they please. In other words, even if all the institutions were pro-homo, they would have a hard time pushing ‘gay marriage’ as too many people would be outraged. So, popular will matters. But then, popular will, especially in the age of mass media and public education, is molded by POP or people of power. They decide on the Narratives that young ones grow up with. They churn out pop culture, movies, and TV shows that affect how people feel about topics & issues and, furthermore, decide what kinds of images and idols will colonize their minds. And Jews have control of mass culture and pushed ‘gay’-as-angel iconography to the masses. As most people are sheeple, they fell for it like children fall for Santa. So, Jews got elite power and control mass passion, or 'massion'. It’s like, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Mao had both institutional/military power and mass-youth power because young ones were whipped into mania by Maoist propaganda. And Jews got that kind of control. They rule from the top, and they also mold the hearts and minds of the masses. And what have conzos been doing about this all these years? They offered us nothing but “Muh Israel” and “Gay Marriage is now a conservative value.”
Jewish Satanism and Homo Vanity demands that the Christian God and Jesus cater to the narcissism of sexual deviancy.
6. There are two kinds of people. The Easies and the Hards. The Easies are push-overs. Easily molded by public education, advertising, fads & fashion, state propaganda, and political correctness. Most ‘liberals’ today are Easies. They are so easy to influence, so receptive to the latest manias. They are so trusting of elite institutions, so status-conscious, and so into proggy conceits that they fall for anything packaged as ‘new’, 'radical', 'hip', 'cool', and/or pro-'social justice'. So, if the Power says a man can be a ‘she’ or even a ‘they’, the Easies just go along with it without thought. They sure are Easy. As even higher-IQ ‘liberals’ fall for this, Easiness is less a matter of IQ than a matter of self and conviction. Easies have weak individual sense, racial consciousness, and/or awareness of culture/roots. They’ve been uprooted but hardly inculcated with the importance of individuality and critical thinking. A rootless person with strong individuality and critical mindset wouldn’t be so Easy. He may not be conservative, but he won’t fall for every fad and fashion either, especially for approval. But today’s ‘liberals’ have not only been uprooted but denied individuality and criticality. That means they’ve been made Easy to any fad/fashion; however, lacking any sense of individuality, they latch onto the judgmental emotionalism of PC. 'Easy' connotes tolerance, taking-it-easy, and live-and-let-live attitude(the kind seen in the movie DAZED AND CONFUSED), but today's Easies are instantly 'triggered' by whatever that goes against their indoctrination and 'idolatration'(the process of instilling idol-worship). In a way, so-called ‘wokeness’ is paradoxical. Ideologically, it is so flimsy and keeps changing at the drop of a hat. And yet, its minions are puritanically rabid. Now, how can anyone be SO SURE about an 'ideology' or idol-driven-ideology(or 'idology') that is changing all the time, often contradicting itself, and/or going from one outrage to another at breakneck speed? One moment, the all-consuming outrage is over ‘those poor immigrants’. Next moment, the immigrants have all been forgotten and it’s about celebration of ‘gays’. Then, the ‘gays’ are neglected and the new outrage is about the Noble Negroes and 'systemic racism'. Then, it’s about trannies. Then, it’s Me-Too and feminism(even though the 'liberal'-dominated pop culture has pornified womanhood). Then, it’s something else and etc. People who would have scoffed at the notion of Bruce Jenner as a ‘woman’ are suddenly SO SURE that he is one, and YOU BETTER AGREE or else you’re a ‘transphobe’ who must be fired, purged, and blacklisted. So much conviction with so little consistency. How can this be? It’s because PC is essentially amnesiac. It instills people with a righteous sense of outrage but without roots/heritage and/or individuality/criticality. Conservatives argue for roots/heritage, for values with deep historical and spiritual pedigree. Classical liberals and libertarians argue for a strong sense of individuality. PC rejects both and calls for Collective Outrage over the latest ‘injustice'(to be decided by the Power). PC minions are game for this because they have no roots and weak sense of self. They are neither like Patrick Buchanan nor Ayn Rand. Whatever one feels about Buchanan, he has a strong and hard sense of tradition and heritage as a shield against the winds of fashion. Whatever one thinks of Ayn Rand, she believed in the power of the individual to think for himself/herself. She refused to agree with anyone under pressure or merely to seek approval. But lacking such qualities, PC minions have a kind of passion without a core of roots or criticality. It’s a passion of amnesia that easily conforms to the latest fads. PC created a population that is ‘Easy’ but also Queasy. They are Easily molded by the Power but feel so queasy about anything that won’t jibe with the latest fashionable outrage. They are puritans of impurity as the current PC ideology or 'idology' is actually more a mindless idolatry of Jews, homos, and blacks, thus a kind of Tri-Supremacism. It should be obvious to anyone with sense that 'wokeness' is not leftist, egalitarian, or progressive. It is about the supremacism of Jews and whatever Jews prefer uber alles. In a way, Easy-Queasies are like dogs. Notice dogs can be made to bark/bite at ANYTHING by their master. A dog that is gentle with a rabbit can be turned instantly to maul it. Their emotions of servitude to the master overrides all other consideration. Even though most Jews claim to be ‘liberal’, they themselves are not easy-queasy. If anything, they push the Easy-mentality on the goyim because, deep down inside, they themselves are Hard-minded about their own tribal identity and interests. Jewishness is hardcore tribal supremacism wrapped in ‘liberal’ clothing.
The Easy-Queasies hate the Hards. If Easies have soft clay heads molded by the Jewish hand, the Hards are hard-hats who are tougher to crack. Some are hard due to a sense of heritage or tradition. People like Buchanan are true Catholics with a deep sense of church history and values. They won’t cower to the latest fad or outrage. Others are hard for reasons of individual pride. They believe that right-or-wrong and good-vs-bad must be a matter of individual reasoning and conviction. It shouldn’t be decided by popular outrage or political pressure. These individuals may disagree with one another, but each of them is Hard in that he or she trusts himself/herself than pressure from above or below or from their peers. This is why Jews like the Easies and hate the Hards. Easies are easy to control, whereas the Hards have their own ideas rooted in tradition or individuality.
Of course, there are Hard-Tards as well, such as moronic Creationists or the ‘god hates fags’ crowd who simply won’t believe the science that homos are born that way. Being dogmatic or stubborn for the hell of it isn’t a good way to be Hard. There are also the Hard-Lards, those who seem to be Hard but are actually all talk and no walk. All those ‘right-wing’ talk show hosts sure talk big but usually fold when push comes to shove. Donald Trump is hard-lard. He acts and talks tough but usually caves to every fashion and to the Jews who hate him. ‘Muh Israel’.
Jews understand a crucial truth. People are Extensions than Individuals. As social creatures, people are more like ants than lone animals like tigers or bears. People constantly pick up signals, all the more so in our age of electronic media and gadgets. Every time someone uses 'my' device, he or she is being tuned to signals emanating from a center of power/influence. He or she thinks, "I'm a free individual with 'choice'", but in fact, the possible 'choices' are fed into his/her mind through electronic signals. In some ways, people became less individualistic with the rise of radio and TV. Prior to such technology, everyone in the US did something different on any given night. Some read books(countless different titles) and magazines, some went for social gathering, others went for a walk, some stared at the moon, and etc. If ANYTHING unified people in the US and the West prior to Radio and TV, it was the Bible. But with the TV, just about everyone in the US could be watching the same show at the same instant. Despite the 'participation' of countless millions, the shows were created by just a handful of people. As Jews gained control of the media, they were filling our minds with 'control' signals. A the guy in A SERIOUS MAN(by Coen Brothers) messes with the TV antennae, he senses the TV is exerting serious influence on his children, not all of it good. Still, Jews needed to worry less about TV & Radio as Jewish Media Masters were careful not to send signals that would be negative for Jews. Instead, signals instilled the mass public with the message that one's moral character is a measure of his/her 'philosemitism'. If animus, hostility, and hatred were spread by the electronic signals, they were aimed at whites because Jewish supremacist power needs white submission and obedience, the product of white shame, moral paralysis, and self-loathing. Jews need whites to be in forever-redemptive mode for their history of 'racism', 'antisemitism', and etc. because then they can exploit the white need for atonement by directing white actions toward Judeocentric goals. "Jews are so good and holy, whites are so vile and loathsome; therefore, in order for whites to cleanse their souls, they must look to Jews for wisdom and guidance."
In a way, libertarianism, especially the kind pushed by Ayn Rand, has been of great use to Jews. Libertarianism served as a loosening agent. It's like you must first weaken the bonds that hold a structure together; then, the structure can be dismantled brick by brick. But do you break things apart to keep them apart indefinitely? No, you take them apart to use as building blocks for a new structure based on YOUR blueprint. Libertarianism promised individuality, freedom, and choice to everyone. It was especially useful in disassociating the White Right from its bonds of conservatism. White Conservatism championed bonds to the past & heritage and bonds among white folks(and Christian folks). While Americanism(and Western Culture in general) had long been more individualistic than others, it rejected radical individualism. If one had to make a choice between unity/community and division/individuality, the former was prioritized. So, while American Conservatism wasn't anti-individualist, it put unity before the individual. Libertarianism was poised to reverse the formula. Among the more moderate libertarians, it was individuality and choice before unity and tradition, but they weren't hostile to latter. Ron Paul belongs to this school. (His is the school of Virtue Libertarianism, the idea that more freedom and individuality will mean more choice and means by which people can make better, saner, more rational, and sensible decisions. More freedom means more opportunity to be good and moral. In contrast, there is the school of Vice Libertarianism that looks upon traditional virtues as 'square' & 'lame' and argues that vices will cancel each other out and lead to a kind of balance. This might as well be the Anton LaVey school of individualism.) If moderate Libertarians placed individuality before unity(but still valued unity), the radical libertarians were opposed to any sense of unity and heritage. It was all a matter of 'me and my choice'. It's no wonder they oppose nationalism, which is about the consensus that favors policies thought to be good for the organic whole. Radical libertarians see such policies as standing between the individual and choice. The GROUP representing National Interest prevents individuals from acting freely vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Anyway, unbeknownst to most goy libertarians, Jewish elements pushed libertarianism as a means to an end, not as the end itself. Consciously or subconsciously, Ayn Rand and other Jews would have sensed that Jewish Power will grow immeasurably if whites could be made more individualistic while Jews are made more tribalist, more pro-unity. Unity creates a gravitational core whereas individuality scatters force in all directions. The universe is filled with stardust, but stardust remains adrift in the dark. Bright suns are created by the unity of stardust into great concentrations of matter that generate tremendous energy. No wonder cities rule over the countryside. Cities concentrate power, countryside scatters it far and wide. Even Mao Zedong, who called for 'surround the cities from the countryside', got his education in the cities and, when his side won the war, made sure that the communists controlled all cities with a tight grip. Paradoxically, city life is more rootless and individualistic, yet power is concentrated into a singular unity. In contrast, country life is more rooted and communal, but people are smaller in number and separated across great distances. Perhaps, city folks could be more individualistic because they can take their systemic unity for granted. They live in such an elaborate and elevated form of social order that they don't have to work so hard at basic survival. Anyway, dimwit goy libertarians thought that individualism was for everyone. Everyone would become deracinated and come to regard himself or herself primarily as an individual, as a 'me' or 'myself'. Everything else — national loyalty, racial identity, religious affiliation, kinship, or etc. — would be secondary or nonexistent. All groups would move in this direction. Not only whites but Jews, blacks, browns, and the rest. But just when whites were moving toward an identity based solely on the individual, Jews were playing up the Holocaust Cult, Zionist Ideology, and Yiddish sensibility. Jews were reminded to never forget their Jewish history and unique ALL-TOO-JEWISH suffering. So, even though Jews prized individualism, it came AFTER unity. Philip Roth, for example, could be an individual and write 'porny' stuff, but all said and done, he was praised for his Jewish pride and Zionism. Jews were JEWISH individuals, not generic individuals, which is what Jews urged whites to become. For non-whites, Jews had a different agenda. Jews did everything to weaken the identities of Muslims, Asians, Hindus, Latin Americans, and Africans. After all, mass immigration is about the Melting Pot. Jews pushed for more immigration and in order for all immigrants to get along, they must put aside their identities/loyalties of origin and become 'good Americans'. And yet, if non-whites were urged to be just like whites, 'generic individuals', they wouldn't be of much use to Jews. Indeed, whites and non-whites as 'generic individuals' might come to see eye-to-eye on lots of things. But Jews needed to use non-whites against whites. But what kind of identity could non-whites have if they were urged to become part of the melting pot? Jews pushed Negative Identity on non-whites, an identity based on hostility toward whites. Thus, being non-white, be it black, brown, yellow, Hindu, Muslim, or whatever, is less a matter of positive connection to one's racial or cultural background than a matter of being AGAINST whites. Blackness is essentially about 'victims of white supremacist racism'. Brownness is mostly about resentment at the Gringo. And yellowness is about proving one's credentials that Asians are not a 'model minority' and also 'victimized' by whites on a daily basis — I mean, it could be a micro-aggression! While Jews also have a powerful sense of Negative Identity — "Evil White goyim did pogroms on us and threw us into gas chambers" — , they also have a powerful sense of Positive Identity rooted in history, heritage, and remembrance. In contrast, as most non-white goyim have weaker cultures and identities, all they have left as identifier is the 'moral pride' of being wronged and victimized by White 'racists' and 'supremacists'. It's like Jews tell Muslims, "Forget about Islam, let your daughters grow up to 'twerk' & act like sluts, let your sons ape black rappers, and wave the 'gay pride' flag." So, what would be the meaning of being a Muslim in America? It would be as a member of People of Color who are forever 'victimized' by nasty 'white supremacists'.
So, at the end of the day, Jews got positive and negative identities, non-whites got negative identities, and whites got generic identities. Jews have a sense of history and unity(separate from whites) and a sense of moral outrage(in negative opposition to white 'Anti-Semites'). Non-whites, in their amnesia, lose all sense of who they are independent of whites, and as such, their only identity is in relation to whites: "White racists did us wrong." And whites have no sense of who they are and where they came from. Whites are discouraged from looking into their racial, historical, mythical, and spiritual roots. Whites are now utterly post-cultural. If the European past is invoked, it is to willfully misinform whites that Vikings and Romans were black and that Europe was ALWAYS about mass immigration and 'diversity'. (If so, why do Jews say Europe was so 'racist'?) So, can whites at least be free individuals who are left alone to do as they please, like the fellas in Richard Linklater's DAZED AND CONFUSED? No, not even that. Whites too must have an identity that operates on a reverse moral dynamics as the non-white Negative Identity. If non-whites define themselves with Moral Pride vis-a-vis whites, whites must define themselves with Moral Shame/Guilt vis-a-vis non-whites(and Jews of course). Non-whites see themselves as "people who were always wronged by whites", whereas whites are to see themselves as "people who always wronged non-whites". Thus, both non-white identity and white identity lack autonomy and independence. Jews have a sense of who they are apart from their relations with whites, but non-whites, having far weaker memories, only have a sense of 'victimization' under whites. It is a Negative Identity of Moral Pride. Whites have a Negative Identity of Moral Shame. As whites have no sense of who they are independent of the rest of humanity — the mantra of 'Diversity Is Our Strength' across both North America and Europe has made it taboo for whites to conceive of a world unto their own, past, present, or future — , whites have been conditioned to always think of themselves in relation to the Other. According to this logic, there is no whiteness independent of non-whiteness. White Identity is always a function of its relational dynamics with Jews and non-whites. Now, can one say that whites sometimes did wrong to others and vice versa? After all, whites were invaded by Huns, Moors, Mongols, Arabs, Turks, and etc... and they are being invaded today by Third World hordes. And weren't whites victimized by Jewish money-lenders and weren't countless Christian Slavs killed by Jewish communists? No, such thinking is taboo and forbidden. Whites must only focus on the wrongs they did to others, that is unless whites did it for Jewish Supremacists. Whites need not dwell on the guilt of having supported Zionist wars on Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, etc. Of course, when the 'refugees' from the Wars for Israel end up on European and American shores, THEN whites must feel shame and guilt for not taking in more of them. When it comes to smashing Arab/Muslim nations, Jews urge white military men to be like ruthless and heartless Nazis. But when, the 'refugees' come knocking on the doors of the EU and US, the faceless victims suddenly take on the aura of 'New Jews escaping the holocaust'.
In the 1960s and 70s, when Jews were preaching Free Speech and youth culture, it seemed as though most of them just wanted all Americans to be freer and less hung up about race, culture, and identity. And yet, what Jews were really doing was using libertarianism to loosen white bonds from white heritage and white unity. Once loosened and taken apart, there was no way Jews were just going to let whites remain as independent bricks. And they sure as hell weren't going to become like whites and turn generic and 'white bread' as rootless individuals. (If Jews seemed rootless to goyim, it was because they refused to become rooted to goy conventions. They insisted on being rooted to the much deeper history and identity of their own Tribe.) Once white unity was dissolved and whites were turned into atomized individuals, Jewish Power planned to construct them into a new sense of whiteness, the Negative Identity of Guilt & Shame. And this was to be realized through PC permeating not only education but entertainment, advertisement, endless crusades, new purges, and ceaseless public announcements. In a way, Jews did it to mold whiteness into a useful tool for Jewish Power. But it was also because Jews sensed that arch-individualism is not natural to humans who are social creatures. Indeed, there were signs of a Christian Revival and counter-revolutionary Conservative tide in the 1980s after the tumultuous Sixties and the Me-Decade of the Seventies. It was a high water mark for Evangelicals in the post-war era. Against them, Jews concocted Political Correctness, Magic Negro, Globo-Homo, Diversity-mania, and Holocaust Cult as the new secular religions. Jews figured that whites would feel too lonely as mere individuals and would want to coalesce into some kind of 'spiritual' community. But what kind of community? The kind that is about white pride, Christian values, conservatism, family values, and nationalism? If whites were to be steered away from individualism toward some kind of unity and identity, it had to be one where white sense of goodness derived from their atonement scorecard. Whites feeling good about being white was absolutely unacceptable. Whites could only feel good about atoning at the feet of Jews and blacks, celebrating Diversity, cheering globo-homo, and praising white female race-traitors who go for Afro-Colonization of White Wombs. Over time, this mentality even spread to once conservative American suburbs and small towns. After all, no matter where you live, you have a TV set that emits signals from Jewish-controlled centers of news, information, and entertainment. As Joe Biden said, Jewish media made America accepting of 'gay marriage'. All those electronic signals beamed into the eyes and ears of Americans made them regard homos, the proxies of Jewish Power, as 'angels' while despising anyone opposed to the 'gay agenda' as a subhuman 'homophobe', the face of which became the Greensboro 'church', which might as well be a Jewish Front(just like all those phony Neo-Nazi groups led by Jewish hucksters).
As such, all those white people became mere EXTENSIONS of Jewish Power. Even though they feel themselves to be free and independent, they are bombarded by Jewish electronic signals on a daily basis. The airwaves are essentially mental whips, rods, and leashes. They tell us what is 'true' and 'false'. They work on our emotions. Consider all the stupid white people who were led to believe it is 'Nazi-like' to support or enforce border security. Getting their news and opinions from Jewish-controlled sources, they're like dogs on a leash. They are like horses with blinders on, constantly goaded with cracking whips. They consider themselves to be free individuals who seek out the news, but most of the news they absorb comes from a handful of Jewish-owned-or-controlled conglomerates that work hand-in-glove with the Deep State. Instead of them seeking out the news, it's more like Jewish Propaganda and Mind-Control seeping into them through the devices that they own. (Those devices are like crack pipes. You may own the pipes, but the drugs are supplied by the pushers. You own the crack pipes, but the drugs own you, and the drugs are sold by the kingpins.) If they're truly free and independent, they would be for Free Speech and more options, but having been so brainwashed and conditioned by Jewish Power, they support speech control and censorship lest they see or hear something that runs counter to the Official Narrative that they've been fed. Because PC dogma makes them feel good for parading their 'white guilt' but feel bad for being critical about Jews and non-whites, they'd rather have censorship than be 'triggered' and psychologically threatened from their 'safe spaces'. It's funny how these idiot whites oppose border security that makes for physical safe spaces but support speech restriction to maintain their psychological safe spaces. They confuse mind with matter. But as the recent BLM riots have shown, what makes for psychological safe spaces makes for physical danger zones, which eventually destroy the psychological safe space as well. So many whites feel psychologically 'safe' with the conceit of Magic Negro and struggle against 'white supremacist racism'. They scream and shout at those who object to such fantasies. They feel psychologically threatened by the truth and demand their mental 'safe spaces'. And yet, what did the ideas emanating from their psychological safe spaces lead to? It led to 'defunding the police' and blacks acting badly with the support of Antifa thugs. The end result has been many more actual dangerous spaces and zones for both blacks and whites. Ideally, psychological safe space should be in sync with physical safe space. Indeed, that's how the suburbs grew and expanded. Whites knew that moving away from blacks would make for safer neighborhoods. They knew it in their minds and felt it in their feet. But over time, the Jewish media-control filled white minds with the notion of Magic Negro vs Evil White 'Racist'. So, blacks were always good and true, whites were always bad and false. Saddled with such PC notions, even whites in white communities came to regard Diversity and Blackness as holy while feeling disgust at whiteness. So, instead of trying to defend and preserve their communities, they chipped away at the foundations of their own physical well-being in subservience to the demands of psychological safe spaces deluded with PC soma. Consider white idiots in the suburbs holding rallies in honor of Fentanyl Floyd. In a way, it's fitting that the druggy Floyd has been 'canonized' by secular progs in search for new gods. In a way, psychological safe space is like addiction to opium. Someone sucking on an opium pipe is in his la-la land. He thinks he's in heaven, and even though his habit is actually ruining his physical and material well-being, he prioritizes mental bliss over physical reality. Of course, it's only a matter of time before deteriorating material reality catches up to him and drags him down to the gutter in the most unceremonious way. So, in the end, white people didn't become individuals but mere EXTENSIONS of Jewish Power. Of course, they are too ignorant or stupid to realize they're being thus manipulated and led around by the nose. Or, having been instilled with Jew-Worship, Homo-Mania, and Magic Negro Reverence, maybe they feel virtuous in being so servile and obeisant to the Power. But then, are American 'conservatives' any better? The essence of current 'conservatism' can be found in Chris Christie's groveling at the feet of Sheldon Adelson, Mitt Romney shuffling before his massuhs at AIPAC, or Marco Rubio playing his turn as the wooden dummy of The Lobby. They are mere Extensions. Now, it's natural to be an extension, but of what? Of white identity/interests or Jewish interests/identity? It's like the Bob Dylan's song(during his Christian phase) called "Gotta Serve Somebody". It could be the Devil or the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody. Ants on their own are nothing. But then, the queen ant would be nothing too if not for the fact that all the other ants are essentially extensions of her role in the order. They protect and feed her, and she produces the offspring that keeps the species alive. In the case of slave-taking, the ants of one colony can be made to serve another. The raiding ants take the larvae of another ant colony, and the baby ants are raised to serve the former. Of course, they don't know it, even as they dutifully serve as the Extensions of the colony that raided and/or destroyed their colony of origin. Whites brought over black slaves to serve as Extensions of whites. Because whites were far more advanced, blacks(even as slaves) had much to gain, but the fact is they were no longer serving their own tribe but working for the white tribe. And even as a free people, blacks in the US military continue to serve as Extensions of the US Empire, now controlled by Jews who are most hellbent on Wars for Israel and Judaic Hegemony. Still, if blacks always knew they were slaves because their subjugation was so visible and physical, most whites don't know that they are essentially mental slaves of Jewish Massuhs(who use blacks, Diversity, and Antifa Janissary idiots as overseers to attack and intimidate the white masses). If whites enslaved blacks physically, Jews stole the hearts and minds of Jews. Jews stole the white soul. In a way, what Jews have done to whites is worse than what was done to blacks. Blacks were savages and, despite physical slavery, were given souls with Christianity. Even as whites made blacks pick cotton, they spread the notion among blacks that God is bigger than any number of white folks with guns & whips, and that Jesus, the Son of God, loves the wretched of the Earth, the poor, and the oppressed. So, even as whites shackled blacks physically, they freed black souls from the depths of jungle savagery. And in time, black Christians would use a powerful spiritual argument for freedom and dignity. In contrast, Jewish Power used media and academia to rob whites of their hearts and minds that make up the soul. Jews, the masters of psychology, studied what methods are most effective in slipping into the subliminal and subconscious zones of people. Having thus sneaked in, they set all sorts of traps and spread all sorts of poisons in the white minds so that whites would feel nauseous at any thought of 'white pride'(like Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE) and would feel nervous at entertaining any thought that might offend Jews, blacks, and homos. Jewish mind-control crept into the hearts of white goyim and convinced them that the essence of Christianity is worship of sodomy and a Negro druggy. Every man, no matter how smart or strong, isn't much on his own. He is just one person. He gains power by turning other men into Extensions of himself. Their bodies serve as extensions of his mind, will, and vision. He is the will-to-power. Under Adolf Hitler, it was like all Germans were extensions of the Fuhrer's own arms and legs. And under Mao, countless Chinese were carriers of his will. More Extensions means more Power. This is what Jews had in mind. In a world governed by power, people exist as Extensions. There are many more Extensions than Extenders, just like there is one Sun but many planets. THE GODFATHER is not about individuals but about a handful of characters, Vito and Michael(and Barzini), who are Extenders while the rest are mostly Extensions or Buffers of one kind or another. And in THE GODFATHER PART 2, even the witnesses at the Congressional Hearing are Extensions of one side or another. They either belong to Michael Corleone or to Hyman Roth. Most people belong and serve. On their own, they are nothing or with protection. At one time, Jews rose up the ranks in the US as Extensions of Wasp Power, but the tables were turned, and now Wasps serve as Extensions of Jewish Power. The difference is that, even when Jews were playing the role of Extensions of Wasp Power, they had a powerful sense of who they are and planned for the day when they would rule. In contrast, today's Wasp Extensions of Jews are truly a sorry and pathetic lot. They are without identity or pride and happily servile as minions of Jews. They are like ants-taken-to-serve-as-slaves. They are 'white uncle toms' or 'white toms'. And if Wasps in the past thought it was rather uncouth to be overly 'antisemitic', Jews today are utterly shameless and relentless in insulting, humiliating, and dehumanizing whites in every possible way. And what do whites do? They beg the Jews, "Can I suck your dic*?" At most, some whites will plead with Jews, "Please oh please, don't be so mean to us? I mean, you wouldn't like it if we did it to you. So, please oh please, be nice to us, and we will kiss your behind." How utterly pathetic. In the movie MY BODYGUARD, the small kid is bullied by tougher kids and recruits a much bigger guy to serve as his Extension. Jews are nothing without their Extensions. Ironically, the most valued Extensions of Jewish Power is white people even though Jews also believe they need Diversity as bulwark against the White Threat. Jews see whites as the most useful horse but also the most dangerous that may throw off the Jewish rider and kick him in the skull and run off to be free. So, Jews need Diversity as added baggage on the horse so that it won't be able to jump and be wild. Of course, if Diversity serves as the straw that broke the white horse's back, Jews will have nothing. With whites, it's a game of carrot and sticks. If a white person collaborates fully with Jews, he gets lots of carrots. If they deviate from the Plan, they are attacked with big sticks. (It's like Leon Wieseltier's formula for dealing with Muslims. Total ruthlessness OVER THERE where they pose a threat to Israel and kindness OVER HERE where they can used as part of the coalition against whites.) Jews use Diversity to tame whites but fear that too much anti-white bashing may lead to diminished white energies, in which case whites won't be so useful as managers and foot-soldiers of the empire. In MY BODYGUARD, we naturally sympathize with the small kid because we don't like bullies. And we would like to believe that the good weakling uses his wits to hire good muscle as Extensions to push back against bad bullies. But the kid is also a smart-ass and a jerk. In a way, the dark version of him is Sean Penn's character of Davey Kleinfeld in CARLITO'S WAY. Here's a brainy guy who isn't good with fists and guns, but he knows the law and has connections. He can get people to do all kinds of things for him. And yet, he is a crook and an arch-criminal in the making. Over the years, many Americans got to thinking that Jews, while not the toughest and hardiest men around, are the smartest, wisest, most decent, most judicious, and most understanding, not least because they suffered the Shoah and have been the People of the Book, the greatest ever written. So, why not have Jews take over elite institutions? Why not be guided by Jewish wise-men, philosophers, big thinkers, and teachers? What better kind of elites can one hope for? Let the US be led by such sterling people and let the rest of us be happy and lucky Extensions of Jewish Power. The problem with this view is it misunderstands the nature of power. It may well be that there are wise, smart, and judicious Jews, but such people almost never gain power. Power almost always ends up with the cunning, devious, egotistical, ruthless, greedy, vain, nasty, vicious, corrupt, unscrupulous, and/or decrepit. So, what kind of Jews gained power? The likes of Norman Finkelstein(who, for all his faults, is sincere in trying to come to terms with the Palestinian issue) or a sleazebag like Chuck Schumer? Thus, letting Jews take power didn't end up with US being ruled by wise-men but by gangsters with law degrees, business degrees, or high-tech know-how, the geeksters. George Soros, Paul Singer, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. The Question is, "Do you want to be an Extension of this Power, or do you want to cut free and become an Extension of the forces that defend, support, and preserve YOUR OWN race, culture, and history?" Choose the Proper Extensionism for yourself. https://www.bitchute.com/video/5sTJuYiYD0k/
It's been said the Chinese have invested heavily in the US, buying up all sorts of properties and spreading the cash around to people in various industries and politicians. They are doing what the Japanese did in the 1980s. And yet, we see the weakness of this approach, the over-reliance of money without gaining power over the morality, or moral narrative. It reminds us of the power dynamics in THE FOUNTAINHEAD. Gail Wynand is the tycoon while mid-cult Ellsworth Toohey isn't stinking rich. And yet, Toohey gains the upperhand against Wynand because he has cornered the market on public morality and opinion.
This is why Jews were smart to push the Holocaust Narrative to prevent any moral criticism/condemnation of Jewish behavior. By spiritualizing the historical tragedy of Jews as a world-shaking event, the greatest evil in history that transformed every Jew into a little christ and every critic of Jews into an 'anti-Semite' or 'nazi', Jews made it nearly impossible to criticize Jewish Power. Money Power goes a long way, but it's a double-edged sword. While money can buy influence, it also naturally attracts criticism as the People like to blame the rich, privileged, and powerful. Thus, Money Power is a disadvantage as well an advantage. Moral Power, on the other hand, can be righteous and shielded from criticism but, without the backing of money, can only go so far. But money combined with morality is formidable. Even though Ellsworth Toohey in THE FOUNTAINHEAD isn't himself stinking rich, he has created a name for himself as the voice of 'public conscience', built up a loyal cult-like following, and formed networks with oligarchs all over the city. So, even when Gail Wynand fires him, others at the newspaper follow him than continue to work for Wynand. And Toohey joins forces with Wynand's competitors. Wynand the tycoon was about buying people left and right. It was only about the money. In contrast, Toohey, though a power-hungry operator, was always careful to wrap his words with concern for public morality, decency, justice, and etc. Initially, he did this under Wynand who assumed that Toohey was just a whore who said whatever to please his boss. Actually, Toohey, though acting the flunky of Wynand, was building up his own cult, his own army of devotees, and taking control of public opinion. While his loyalty to Wynand was based on money, the loyalty of those under him was based on fanaticism and his cult of personality. His minions regarded him as the voice of decency, justice, morality, and truth. Though a cold-blooded Machiavellian who resents the power of originality and brilliance(as truly great individuals would see right through his BS), he honed his skills as a public intellectual and moralist. He created an image of himself as a man deeply committed to the public good.
Jews gained power as Wynands of the world, but they also played Toohey, or Joohey. They cleverly used the Holocaust Narrative as a global cult that got so many people, especially in the West, feeling that NO PEOPLE suffered as much as Jews. And on that basis, there must be something wrong, wicked, evil, and irrational about disliking Jews. Only pathological nuts like the Nazis could possibly hate and murder Jews. Therefore, ANY expression that is critical of Jews must be sick, demented, dark, and irrational. If Wynand and Toohey became enemies(until Wynand finally caved and became a 'spiritual' slave of Toohey despite his own riches), the Jewish Wynand and Jewish Toohey worked hand in glove to use Money Power and Morality Cult to gain near-total control of the US and the West. Indeed, what with all this BLM nonsense, we can see how the Power of Money often feels intimidated by the Cult of Morality. Cult of Morality doesn't have to be real morality. It could be sham-morality, utterly false, and even downright evil. While there is true morality, the fact is anything can be 'moralized', especially as, for most people, emotional and sensory manipulation often overrides moral reasoning. Thus, falsehood or evil can be moralized by any side. Ruthless men can invoke God and Jesus to justify wars for gold. Scum rulers can invoke Patriotism to justify imperialist wars. Adolf Hitler could iconize the Aryan Myth to justify wars. Mao Zedong could stir up the social justice of class struggle to unleash demonic energies. Neocons could scaremonger about the threat of terrorism to invade and destroy nations that had nothing to do with 9/11. Madeleine Albright could claim it's 'worth it' to kill 500,000 Arab children as a lesser evil than letting Hussein's Iraq return to normal. Moralize wars for Israel into sham talk of international ethics. And how many evil deeds have been justified on account of spreading 'liberal democracy'?
Still, there's a difference between right-and-wrong and holy-and-unholy. At the very least, right-and-wrong issues can be debated. For instance, one may be deemed wrong for opposing 'war on terror' foreign policy but isn't necessarily deemed evil. In contrast, on matters that are holy, it is deemed downright unholy and evil to say or act in ways that seem to go against its spirit. For instance, MLK isn't a matter for debate. He is now bigger than god and jesus, and any rational discussion of the man is not possible. You are either on the side of angels or with the devil. Same goes for Jews whose main identification is not with religion or heritage but with the Shoah. As such, to be anti-Jewish means you're a 'nazi' who wants to gas Jews. You can only be evil to be anti-Jewish or even anti-Zionist as the combo of Jewish Money Power and Jewish Morality Cult now insists that to be anti-Israel is tantamount to being 'antisemitic'. Thus, Jewish power/money is shielded. Generations of people in the West were raised with official dogma associating Jews with the Holy Holocaust. For most of Christo-European history, goyim felt moral/spirituality over Jews on the basis that, (1) whereas goyim did real work(like grow food and make things), Jews made their fortunes with usury and other parasitic practices and (2) whereas goyim worshiped Jesus as Son of God, Jews were unrepentant of having killed the Messiah and refusing to convert to the universal faith. So, no matter how rich Jews became and used their money to buy favors & influence, the goyim(elites and masses) felt free to criticize and even condemn Jews. But it began to change with the rise of the Holocaust Cult. Just when the power of religion was waning big time all over the West, Jewish Money Power did all it could to push the Holocaust as the new faith. But Jews didn't end there but also pushed White Guilt about blacks. Thus, whites were doubly paralyzed from the moral standpoint. They needed to atone forever for Holocaust and Slavery — never mind that genocides and slavery were nothing new in history. Though Ellsworth Toohey is the villain of THE FOUNTAINHEAD, he is the most useful and instructive figure on the art/science of real power in the world. While Howard Roark is a shining ideal that can only exist in fiction, the Tooheys of the world do amass tremendous power in the world. Just like the rich and powerful through European history had to seek approval of the Church on moral and spiritual matters, the rich and powerful today must 'take the knee' to the dominant Narrative that often originates from media and academia, the hives of Tooheys. Robin DiAngelo's WHITE FRAGILITY is the latest example of Tooheyism. It's nonsense but promoted as the New Morality. People like Amy Harmon also serve as the new tooheys. They are not after the truth but push the Narrative by moralizing endlessly about 'racism' and 'white supremacism', the equivalent of 'bourgeois' in communist nations. (Even when BLM and Antifa thugs burn down cities, city leaders often blame 'white supremacists', which is blaming witches for whatever goes wrong.)
Chick-Fil-A owner washes the feet of an amused Negro as holy saint
Now, Tooheyism isn't about total domination of Morality Cult over Money Power. After all, Toohey couldn't have done much if he didn't have the backing of other oligarchs and bigshots when Wynand canned him. Rather, Tooheyism is the compromise between Money Power and Morality Cult whereby the money flows to the moralizers in exchange for the moralizers devising the rules so that those doling out the money will be spared the brunt of the abuse. It's a way of buying indulgences like in the old Catholic days. Indeed, consider the Tooheic contract between Big Capital and 'Progressivism' in the creation of 'woke capital'. As Big Capital supplies the Money, the Progs have replaced class conflict with Ass Politics of globo-homo, something that Big Business can embrace as homos tend to be vain, narcissistic, and oh-so-cozy with the rich & famous. Replacing Mayday with Gayday was a huge boon for Big Capital. But then, the Old Church played similar games. They rather spent more time denouncing the poor and the wretched while sucking up to the rich and powerful. The rich provided the funds for the clergy, and the clergy, even though committed to a religion that spoke of the virtues of the meek and poor, favored the rich and went easy on them. It's no wonder why so many of the poor in Russia felt no particular sadness when the revolutionaries who burned down churches. They could recall Orthodox priests admonishing the poor and wretched to stop complaining and accept their lot in life while catering to the rich and powerful who wallowed in luxury and ate like pigs. In current America, the Mainline churches are just globo-homo centers catering to the elites, and the major Evangelical churches are dominated by disgusting fatsos who whore themselves out to Neocons and Zion. Tooheyism is alive and well. Some say BLM is like a new religion, and it's certainly useful for big corporations. Since blacks have the cool factor as rappers & athletes and carry the aura of nobility in association with MLK & Civil Rights Movement, it is so easy for crass profit-oriented corporations to burnishing their image by invoking BLM symbolism. Nike is a cutthroat company that exploits cheap labor abroad, and what an easy way to 'moralize' its image by paying big bucks to the likes of Colin Kaepernick. And of course, the people who take the money from Big Capital get the message and focus their ire than anything but their sugardaddies. Antifa is purportedly communist, but its main obsessions are globo-homo and tranny-stuff, both favored by Big Capital as replacement for themes of class struggle. And instead of attacking Big Capital, Antifa leaders direct the rage of their drug-addled minions toward attacking Trump supporters, white Americans, and patriots.
This is why the Chinese are foolish. They think they will gain more power and influence in the West by throwing more money around. But paradoxically, the more money they spend to gain influence, the less power they will have at the end of the day. Because there is no moral taboo against China-bashing, the increase of Chinese influence-buying-and-peddling will simply provide more ammo to the China-bashers. Same happened with Japan in the 1980s. As there was no taboo against Japan-bashing, the more money Japan poured into the US, the more the media and various talking heads warned of the Japan menace. "The Japs are buying everything." Ironically, the Jewish media treated Japanese Power like Christian Goyim used to regard Jewish Power: All Money and No Morality. Because Jews experienced this, they were careful to morally launder their money power in the post-war period. Jews did it by pretending to push socialism against greedy capitalism. Thus, even though Jewish power was growing by leaps and bounds through capitalism, there was the impression that Jews were mostly socialist and committed to 'equality' than to greed. Also, they pushed Western/White Guilt via Holocaust Cult and Slavery Narrative. Jews mastered a Tooheic method of fusing Money and Morality to gain near-absolute power over the West. Jews even sham-'moralized' homosexuality and tranny-stuff into something next to godliness. Again, anything can be 'moralized'. And anything can be 'immoralized'. Wickedness can be 'moralized', as 'gay marriage' was by the power of TV shows and news/education as propaganda. And virtue can be 'immoralized'. Christian bakers who would rather face financial ruin than bake cakes to honor satanism have been vilified as 'homophobic' and 'bigots'. And women who insist on biological womanhood and believe trannies are not real women are denounced as 'transphobic' TERFS. Most people respond to the sensory-manipulative idolatry and emotional manipulation of propaganda than rely on truth and moral reasoning.
This is why China will lose everything in the end in the West. The more money they pour into the US and the West, the louder will be the outcry that the 'Chicoms' are taking over and buying up everything. Money Power without Moral Protection is vulnerable. After all, one can attack George Soros as a billionaire but NOT as a Jew. One can denounce the abstract 1% but not the tribal 2%(the Jews). If Chinese really wanted to gain greater foothold in the West, they should have found Tooheic ways to promote Western/White Guilt about the history between East and West. The history of imperialism, Opium Wars, West's partnership with Japan in carving up China, and US neo-imperialist wars in Asia. And the sad story of Chinese railroad workers in US and Canada. Whether such guilt-tripping would have worked or not, it is foolish for China to invest big money in the West without moral protection. China-bashers can have a field day with 'Communist China is buying up America' narrative, and the ruling elites can cook up some 'human rights' excuse to freeze and grab all of Chinese assets in the West and renege on all debts. It goes to show that the Chinese are still amateurs when it comes to the psychological dynamics of power.
High and Low is a portrait of a virtuous industrialist who is targeted for destruction by a nihilistic criminal who hails from the professional rather than the working class and is motivated not by need but by envy and pure malice.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s virtuous. To a large degree, Kingo Gondo(Toshiro Mifune) was compelled to do the ‘right thing’. If he has something in common with the kidnapper(named Takeuchi and played by Tsutomu Yamazaki), it is neither character truly understands himself — ultimately, both are driven by emotions than moral reasoning though, to be sure, whereas Takeuchi had all the time in the world to plan the crime(like Gondo with his secret plot to take over the company), time is running out for Gondo to either pay the ransom or finalize his takeover, a classic 'gain the world, lose the soul' situation. Gondo does the moral thing, but he’s not really sure what drove him to it. And even though the criminal later tries to justify or explain himself, he doesn’t really know his own heart(or lack of one). After all, the economic argument isn’t very compelling on his part. Though he’s known poverty, he was studying to be a doctor and had something of a future. So, he was driven by more than need. Was it an idea, a kind of twisted philosophy that possesses the character of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT? Or was it just the nature he was born with? In RED BEARD, there’s a psycho-woman who goes around seducing and killing men. We learn she was victimized as a child, but Mifune’s character of the wise doctor says that some people are simply born evil, and there's nothing that can be done about it. If so, are they to blame for their pathology? Can society be blamed for failing to reform such individuals? If being born-evil is a natural condition in some people, what is to be done? Most likely, even had Takeuchi been born into affluence/privilege, he likely would have had evil lurking in his heart and would have committed other crimes of sociopathic nature. There are surely plenty of white collar criminals and scumbags in the Deep State. Alas, they have the Law on their side and can get away with acting like miscreants. Rule of Law is for little people. Jewish Power and Deep State are above that.
Now, Gondo's frustration(bordering on anger) in regards to Aoki's desperate pleading to save his son was, in a way, s desperate repression of his shame that he's decided to choose money over life. It's especially stinging on his conscience because he was willing to pay any sum to save his own kid but doesn't feel the same way for another man's son... which, of course, is natural as most of us don't care about strangers. Still, with Aoki the relationship is somewhat complicated because, even though he's just a hireling who's only owed waged, he's also been a loyal servant and grown close to the family, indeed to the extent that his son plays with Gondo's son as if they're siblings. Whereas the parents are distinguished by rank and status, kids are still kids. They even switch roles and toy guns at the drop of a hat in playing cops and robbers. Ironically, Gondo cheers on his son in the role of robber. He tells him to do ANYTHING to 'kill' the cop and come out on top. Winning is what matters. Because his son feels so close to Aoki's kid, Gondo is especially in a quandary. Also, the ONLY reason the kid was kidnapped was because of mistaken identity. The real target was Gondo's son, and so, Aoki's son would NOT have been kidnapped if he hadn't been playing in the premises of Gondo's house and mistaken for his kid. So, in a way, even though Gondo's son is safe at home, it is as if he was kidnapped in a 'spiritual' sense. Aoki's kid could very well be Gondo's kid. It was only by chance that the kidnapper took the wrong kid. There is also the fact that Aoki is a widower and only has his son as family(like with the widower of IKIRU; one of the sad things about the angry peasant in SEVEN SAMURAI is that his wife has been kidnapped by the bandits, and so, he has no family, which for Kurosawa, is the saddest thing, as with the Dersu Uzala character). (In a way, there are two wrongful kidnappings in HIGH AND LOW. Not only is the wrong kid abducted but the wrong Gondo is targeted by Takeuchi the kidnapper, i.e. Takeuchi's imagination of Gondo as heartless villain is at odds with the real man who, though no saint, isn't a monster either. But Takeuchi's craziness can't hold a candle to current PC craziness in the West where Jewish Power willfully paints the wrong image of Evil Whiteness, so evil that it must be attacked and destroyed and shown no quarters. People like Tim Wise, Sabrina Rubin Erderly, and Mark Zuckerberg's disgusting sister are kidnappers and murderers of White Reputation.)
Now, if Aoki's son had been kidnapped at Aoki's house for reasons unrelated to Gondo, Gondo would have felt no special obligation to sacrifice his wealth for the kid. But, as Aoki's kid was playing with Gondo's kid only because Aoki was working for Gondo, it's not merely an academic matter but a very personal one. It's not just a question of abstract altruism but personal attachment. Unlike his partners who are willing to stab him in the back(and vice versa), Aoki has been a loyal worker. Also, children easily become friends and attached to one another, and Gondo would feel shamefaced in front of his own son IF he let the other kid get murdered.
Also, the 'national' and 'social' elements cannot be overstated. Jewish Power pushed two ideologies on Western Man: Anti-National collectivism(especially via communism and anarchism) and Anti-National individualism(especially via libertarianism and me-centered hedonism). Though collectivism and individualism are polar opposites, they have one key commonality: Denial of National Identity, Unity, and Purpose. Ideally, communism was supposed to be a borderless ideology of workers-of-the-world(even though its tyranny, failures, and paranoia about the richer and more powerful West led to strict border controls that actually boosted national preservation, if only by accident). And libertarian capitalism denigrates national identities as 'atavistic tribalism' and emphasizes the free individual as rootless globalist wanderer. But even as Jews pushed these two modes on goyim, their main mode was a form of 'national socialism' via Zionism and Jewish Consciousness. Indeed, it was a key reason as to why many Jews were alarmed by the rise of German National Socialism and fascism in general. Sure, they were disturbed by its anti-Jewish vitriol, but the other reason was the Germans had figured out the real source of Jewish Power: Jews used capitalism and employed elements of socialism BUT centered around Jewish Interests; in other words, make collectivism and individualism revolve around nationalism than abandon nationalism to wholly commit oneself to collectivism or individualism. (To be sure, the main passion of white people today is more idolatry than ideology: Worship of the holy three of Jews, homos, and Negroes, what with both white socialists and white capitalists sucking to Fentanyl Floyd as the holy angel.) Without Tribalesse Oblige, the elites of a people split from the masses of the people... as we are now seeing in the West and even the East.
Now, 'national socialism' only works within the nation, which is why both German imperialism and Japanese imperialism became so problematic and ultimately monstrous. Their strong sense of identity made them cohesive at home but alienated & hostile abroad, especially among those they regarded as inferior. And we see the same problem with Jewish Power. Zionism works well for Jews in Israel but unfolds as supremacist Nazi-like imperialism outside the Jewish nation because Jews feel disdain and contempt for goyim, be they Arabs or Iranians.
Kurosawa on the set of RED BEARD with Toshiro Mifune
But it turns out there is a heroic and manly way to make women’s shoes. Gondo… is hosting some of his fellow executives, who wish to enlist him in a corporate coup against the “old man” who… is stuck in a rut of making unfashionable “army boots.” Gondo’s colleagues wish to manufacture flashy shoes that are cheaply made. Gondo wants to make more fashionable products, but he feels that selling shoddy merchandise is dishonorable…
Here Akira Kurosawa was probably making a commentary on culture as a whole, not least film culture. HIGH AND LOW came out when Japanese cinema was coming under serious competition from TV. Also, with rising prosperity, the culture was changing from post-war humanism & moralism to consumerism, hedonism, & even nihilism. Given the wreckage of war and widespread poverty, the humanist themes/message in fiction and movies had resonated with audiences around the world as nations began to rebuild from the rubble. But in Japan as in Europe, the rise of La Dolce Vita sensibility led to consumers hankering for style and fashion than morality and sobriety. And some even regarded YOJIMBO as a nod in this direction; it was a huge hit in Japan and inspired the nihilistic A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS that changed film history, not necessarily for the better(though Sergio Leone was a true giant). But beneath the veneer of nihilistic ‘cool’, YOJIMBO was meant as morality tale and satire. It was meant to be more despairing of than inspired by the new outlook, especially among the young. On the one hand, Kurosawa understood that Japanese cinema could not rehash the same humanist messages that had special meaning for post-war movie audiences. Times change, and arts/entertainment must stay afloat of new conditions and expectations if they're to be relevant. He understood that people in a more prosperous Japan wanted a popular culture with more color, splash, and excitement. And in a way, HIGH AND LOW is the kind of shoes that Gondo wants to make: sturdy and stylish. It is substantive with serious themes but also stylish and suspenseful. And even though it is on the side of law and morality, it daringly ventures into the nether zones of modern Japan, disapprovingly but with a certain cool fascination.
Kurosawa was feeling the pressure. Not only from the rapidly rising popularity of TV but from a younger generation of film-makers with more of a ‘new wave’ approach. His brand of cinema faced the problem of not being low/popular enough and high/arty enough. Two years prior to HIGH AND LOW, Shohei Imamura made PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS set in a similar social milieu, though mostly of ‘hell’ or the ‘low’. There’s a devil-may-care sensibility in Imamura’s film that lends it nuance and fluidity missing in Kurosawa’s work that, despite ‘modernist’ touches, is essentially a rather rigid moral drama(which at times comes close to melodrama). Kurosawa wore the hefty theme on his sleeve, as with Otto Preminger, and it could have been off-putting to subtler sensibilities(which is why many cineastes never tire of telling everyone they prefer Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, or etc. over Kurosawa). Imamura’s films have a licentious spirit and free-wheeling curiosity, absent of anything like a 'message' and leaving the meaning to the audience to piece together on their own. The mercurial Imamura runs with the idea and follows it wherever it may lead, whereas Kurosawa projects a moral map in an Apollonian manner.
PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS by Shohei Imamura
Like Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, Kurosawa came into his own in the humanist 1950s and was somewhat at odds with the newly emerging film sensibility of the 60s though YOJIMBO did play a role in setting the tone. While the mass audience was turning to TV, leading critics were shifting their attention to younger talents like Nagisa Oshima, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Imamura. Another problem was Kurosawa, like David Lean, got accustomed to scale(as a matter of prestige) and thereby less adept at navigating the troubled waters of changing economy and taste. He faced the danger of becoming a dinosaur in a rapidly changing industry that could no longer afford his kind of 'perfectionism'. Overly confident of his vaunted position as a world-famous master film-maker, Kurosawa stuck with established conventions of film-making, albeit with nods to innovation and fashion. He wanted to make fancier boots than high heels, and sadly, HIGH AND LOW was the last of its kind for Kurosawa. The next film RED BEARD was an excellent boot but very much an old boot. Critics and the public saluted it as a grand monument(and last hurrah) to humanism but didn't salivate over it. It was acknowledged as serious and important but failed to garner enthusiasm as the future direction of Japanese cinema.
Incidentally, the scenario of plotting to overthrow the ‘old man’ in HIGH AND LOW later resurfaces in RAN where the two older sons plot against the father while the youngest son, though seemingly ungrateful and petulant, is not without principles and a deeper sense of loyalty. Likewise, even though Gondo seems to stand against the 'old man', it is out of loyalty to the latter's resolute sense of standards. HIGH AND LOW and RAN also have in common the journey from top to bottom, and few places are as visually apt as Japan, a mountainous island-nation, for themes related to hierarchy.
RAN - 1985
I prefer Kurosawa’s morality plays to Imamura’s anthropological forays, but the didacticism could favor instruction over inspiration. Though Kurosawa’s imagination wandered widely from the high world to the low, his lens was usually focused on the good and the bad, honorable and dishonorable, teacher and student, noble and ignoble. As such, his realism was in service of moralism, even an idealism(a blend of traditional culture of respect and modern commitment to individuality), than acceptance of reality as reality. It's no wonder that, despite the realist settings of many of his films, most characters belong to certain social types. (Only SEVEN SAMURAI comes close to breaking out of this mold.) He was unwilling to see people and accept them just as they are. His vision always had a moral vertebrae with overarching shape and structure from head to tail. The stuff of good vs evil, noble & ignoble, and heroes & villains that audiences could readily recognize. Kurosawa, like Masaki Kobayashi, thought in terms of the Human Condition. But perhaps a closer probing of humanity requires malleability in the degrees of observation and inspection. Imamura was like an octopus. Lacking the rigidity of a moralist backbone, he could slither in and out of all kinds of human situations without moral judgement though his works aren't without moral sense. For Imamura, truth itself intimately observed and accurately delineated has moral value in and of itself. It's no wonder his characters, major or minor, are first and foremost individuals than archetypes or stereotypes. VENGEANCE IS MINE, for example, is the kind of film that Kurosawa could not have made. Kurosawa tried to confront the evil of the kidnapper/murderer in HIGH AND LOW but hit a brick wall. The character comes close to being the face of Evil Incarnate and remains beyond comprehension. He is only to be judged and condemned. It's as if Kurosawa felt there's a limit to human understanding, as with the woodcutter and the priest in the opening of RASHOMON who simply cannot penetrate the mysteries of human darkness. In contrast, Imamura slithered into the decrepit souls of the characters in PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS and VENGEANCE IS MINE and observed like a naturalist. A special kind of skill but sure to be discomfiting to most audiences.
Gondo then explains to his assistant that he has been planning his own takeover of National Shoes, mortgaging himself to the hilt buying up chunks of stock. All he needs is to complete one last purchase.
This suggest Gondo isn’t exactly virtuous. Though clearly more admirable than his partners, he’s not above backroom deals and intrigue to gain the upper hand. Perhaps, he’s justified in his maneuvers, but he’s also driven by egotism and pride.
If he does pay, the child may still die, the money may never be recovered, and Gondo will almost surely be ruined. Eventually, though, Gondo is persuaded by his wife, his driver, and the police to pay the ransom. It is the compassionate thing to do.
It is a bit more complicated. There is the matter of public opinion. If Gondo doesn’t pay the ransom and uses the money to take over the company, he could get such bad press that he will be ruined anyway. It’s really a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, or being stuck between a rock and a hard place. So, even though he was partly motivated by conscience, did he really have a choice? Either way, he might have faced ruin. A man is not an island but lives in a community. (If Gondo doesn't pay the ransom and if the kid dies, he has to deal with both public pressure and personal issues. Without the love/respect of his wife and son, could he really live with a peace of mind? He isn't a loner but a family man, and there is something like a family-mind in any household. What he might accept on his own is far more difficult to accept as the head of a family. The old villain in BAD SLEEP WELL is willing to even lose his son & daughter to keep his position, but Gondo isn't that kind of man.) If the community rejects the man as immoral or soulless, the man becomes an outcast. There is some of this in the dynamics of ‘woke capital’, the difference being that whereas Gondo was faced with a real moral dilemma and did what was right, most of ‘woke capital’ is either just delusional or craven in sucking up to PC narrative pushed by insane Jewish Supremacists. (I mean, when will ‘woke capital’ push ‘Palestinian Lives Matter’ or ‘Justice for Libyans and Syrians destroyed by Obama and Hillary’ or ‘Sanction Israel that has nukes and stop sanctioning Iran that has NO nukes’?) As in IKIRU, we don’t really know the motivation behind Gondo. He doesn’t really know either. Was he truly motivated by conscience or did he do the right thing because he couldn’t win either way? Or did it have to do with self-justification under the gaze of his family and the police. The policemen remain as calm and professional as the wife is distressed and pleading, but Gondo can sense judgement in their silence. So, there is jumble of motivations. Likewise, was the old man in IKIRU really motivated by compassion or did his ego seek validation before he died? Was it really selfless or was it about the self, the need to be remembered? https://www.bitchute.com/video/hm6NAwdsTzM/
Thus far, High and Low has been, in effect, a filmed stage play. But Kurosawa is so virtuosic at creating dramatic tension and coaxing out compelling performances that the result is not static at all.
An odd thing about HIGH AND LOW is that the ‘stage play’ opening of the film is more exciting and suspenseful than the latter part, much of which takes place outdoors and is full of movement. The interior scenes are less static than the exterior ones.
The film then switches gears again into a quasi-documentary about the police’s attempts to find the kidnapper and recover Gondo’s money. At this point, some people might feel the movie drags, but I found the meticulous rationality of the detective work fascinating.
For first-time viewers, it won’t drag because of the element of mystery and suspense. But for repeat-viewing, some of the later scenes with detective work do drag because they are presented more like docu-drama procedural than psychological drama. (In contrast, Fritz Lang’s M is compelling from start to finish no matter how many times you watch it.) It would have been more interesting had Kurosawa developed the detectives as fully-realized characters than presented them rather too heroically as social ideals. They strike me as too-good-to-be-true, too upright. Kurosawa mocked such earnestness in the young samurai in SANJURO, but the lawmen of HIGH AND LOW are to be taken as the best of the best. For this reason, the darker implications of the police work don't register as powerfully. After all, the inspector could have had the kidnapper arrested but prolong the pursuit to charge him with a more serious crime, thereby receiving a sentence befitting his wicked nature and the grave harm he's caused. As a result, the kidnapper ends up killing another person, a female junkie who is used as a guinea pig. This raises a ethical question as to whether the police acted professionally or out of vendetta against the criminal, especially as the head detective became personally invested in bringing justice to Gondo, who did the right thing at great cost. His personal feelings about Gondo may have affected his professional decision, leading to the death of a woman. (Also, in a question session with reporters, the police urge the newsmen to give bad press to the shoe company for firing Gondo. It is to punish the executives, but won't the depressed sales hurt the workers as well? Also, is it professional or ethical for the police to make such a request? This darker side of police work — the questionable ethics even when the lawmen act in the name of justice — isn't addressed in the film.)
It is a wonderful portrait of what is possible in a homogeneous, high-IQ, high-solidarity society—everything whites have lost by embracing diversity.
This is questionable. Japan has been called a high-trust society, but it’s more a high-conformist and high-obedience society, though these days perhaps not even that. Japanese justice system has been notorious for being unresponsive to problems until things really go south. Also, the legacy of caste-mentality and social hierarchy can just as easily foster distrust as trust among the populace. After all, the film is called HEAVEN AND HELL or High and Low. Japanese with privilege don’t care about the rest. Their attitude is “I got mine” or at best, "My family got ours", and that is the extent of Gondo's concern when he realizes his chauffeur's son has been kidnapped. Why is the nation of Japan in a death spiral? Because Japanese look down on 'dirty', 'dangerous', and 'degrading' labor. Japanese would rather die than do ‘dirty’ work. In the past, many Japanese just accepted their lot and did whatever job was available but prolonged affluence led to higher expectations among many Japanese, and they’d rather commit national suicide and import cheap labor(that will lead to the great replacement) than do ‘dirty’ jobs. In BAD SLEEP WELL, Kurosawa exposed the hollowness of the cult of trust in Japan. While underlings sacrifice their lives for their bosses, the latter just hoard everything for themselves. The rich care about family members but lack any sense of larger good or national interest. Kurosawa himself, despite the humanist themes of his works, attempted suicide in the early 1970s when he felt he could no longer make the kinds of films he wanted to. Accustomed to his role as the emperor of Japanese cinema, he was unwilling to shift gears and work on more modest projects as some of his peers did. Perhaps, he found them 'degrading'.
High and Low is clearly an anti-Marxist film.
While it’s not a Marxist film, it isn’t anti-Marxist either. It might be called ‘national socialist’ with little ‘n’ and ‘s’. It is about a rich man who comes to look beyond class & privilege and embraces the child of his servant as if his own. He goes from capitalist mindset and family-centrism to national and humanist consciousness. This was the positive side of National Socialism and New Deal. This theme, of the high and mighty being compelled to recognize the humanity of those below them in status, recurs throughout Kurosawa’s works. In SEVEN SAMURAI, the ronin are masterless knights but still higher in social rank than the lowly peasants. Initially the samurai feel it’s beneath them to risk their lives for dirty peasants, but the two groups join forces against the bandits. In MEN WHO TREAD ON TIGER’S TAIL and HIDDEN FORTRESS, noblemen-in-exile disguise themselves as commoners and come to see the other side of society. Kurosawa as a young man had communist sympathies and even as late as the 1970s, he had glowing things to say about Lenin(to Andrei Konchalovsky’s horror).
In films like BAD SLEEP WELL, RED BEARD, and YOJIMBO, merchants don’t come across as noble characters. And yet, Kurosawa could see things from both sides. As such, HIGH AND LOW makes an interesting contrast with BAD SLEEP WELL. The latter film is about the evil of corruption fueled by greed, whereas the hero of the former is a businessman tormented by an impoverished medical student. Thus, good and evil isn’t a matter of class(though it seems those who gain great wealth or power tend to be sociopathic: take the loathsome Jeff Bezos and the scum in the Deep State; on the other hand, consider all the lumpen scum who loot and burn; 2020 is the year of synergy between elite deep state and lowly street scum, with horrendous consequences; for sure, the convergence of sociopaths on top and psychopaths on the bottom is recipe for disaster). Kurosawa had socialist-humanist leanings but also an elitist streak, not least because of his samurai background. It’s like Oliver Stone is a man of the Left but with a Great Man Complex: Tony Montana, Gordon Gekko, Alexander the Great. Kurosawa found humanism in the lower depths but also nobility in the higher reaches. KAGEMUSHA is kind of a reverse of HIDDEN FORTRESS. A vulgar thief comes to appreciate and ultimately die for the lofty honor of the Takeda clan. It's about the low entering the realm of the high than the vice versa in HIDDEN FORTRESS.
HIDDEN FORTRESS
In fact, the leftist rhetoric he spouts is simply a tool by which these monsters gain the power to murder millions.
There’s an element of leftism but also nihilism. He tries to convince Gondo and himself that he doesn’t care if he dies. He claims to be unafraid of anything and beyond human emotions, but he breaks down with a fury and desperation that is all too human, even animal. The final moment is harrowing because the would-be-nihilist finally realizes his own humanity, its fragility and weakness. It’s been said of Kamikaze pilots that they died beautifully and poetically without fear, for country and emperor. But it’s been recorded that many charged to their deaths scared out of their minds screaming for mother. In the end, they were human after all.
In their meeting, Takeuchi(the kidnapper) realizes that Gondo is not the monster that he made him out to be, imagined him to be, indeed willed him to be. Seeing the big mansion from below, Takeuchi created his own impression of Gondo. Since greed is a common feature among the rich, Takeuchi created an essentialist view of Gondo as a rich parasite; by what is shown in HIGH AND LOW, he isn't exactly wrong as Gondo's business associates do come across as greedy and unscrupulous. In a way, it might have pleased Takeuchi IF Gondo hadn’t paid the ransom and let the child die. Then, Takeuchi would have been vindicated in his view of Gondo. But Gondo paid, even if it meant personal ruin for the sake of a child who isn't his own. Gondo did the ‘leftist’ thing in favoring the life of a servant than personal profits. In contrast, Takeuchi ended up taking money in exchange for the life of a poor man’s son, hardly a leftist thing to do. Perhaps, Takeuchi would have at least felt vindicated if Gondo had been bitter toward him in their meeting — greedy Gondo angry about the money or the anger as evidence of Takeuchi's significance in the lives of others. Instead, he sees a decent man and has to face the fact that he ruined the life of a man, not a monster. Thus, Takeuchi loses something more dear to him than his life: His radical self-justification based on a delusion. Sadly, such deluded conviction is now the official ideology of the US. Any black person is morally justified in seeing every white person as ‘racist’, ‘fragile’, ‘privileged’, or whatever. The fantasy of righteous hate takes precedence over reality and complexity. Thus, the whole nation has been taken hostage by black and Antifa lunatics egged on by insane Jewish supremacists.
High and Low’s portrayal of a heroic businessman plagued by an envious villain, as well as its celebration of the rationality of the police detectives could almost spring from the pen of Ayn Rand. Gondo and the detectives represent the highest virtues of bourgeois modernity, whereas the kidnapper represents its deepest vice.
Not sure about this. Ayn Rand was not about bourgeois values but radical individualism. She might have sneered at Gondo’s decision to pay the ransom as sappy ‘altruism’. Granted, Randism at its core isn’t really about ‘muh profits’. In THE FOUNTAINHEAD, Peter Keating reaps the profits by whoring out to public taste whereas Howard Roark faces many hardships and bouts of poverty. Still, he has Rand’s respect because of his vision and refusal to compromise, ever. But HIGH AND LOW isn’t a celebration of the superior individual. Its morality is closer to IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE where an individual with visibly superior qualities sacrifices personal dreams for what is good for his hometown community. Would such outlook have sat well with Ayn Rand? Rand surely would have told George Bailey to leave dinky Bedford Falls and follow his dream like Howard Roark.
HIGH AND LOW might make for an interesting comparison with the Oscar-winner Korean film PARASITE by Bong Joon-Ho. Both are about class tensions. The difference is, whereas HIGH AND LOW offered some hope of mutual understanding between the classes on the basis of nationalism and humanism, there is nothing to salvage in PARASITE where society and culture are utterly soulless, bloodless, and gutless.
HIGH AND LOW diagnosed the problems of its day as festering future wounds if left untreated. (How ironic that the villain is a medical student. Medicine as mere profession isn't enough to guarantee the nobleness of its calling, the theme of Kurosawa's next film RED BEARD.) Post-war prosperity was welcome but had a divisive effect on the Japanese who, due to war and deprivation, had shared in the hardships together as a nation. Class divisions are inevitable in any society but threaten the sense of national identity and unity. Today, we see this problem all over the world. Western elites no longer feel any sense of unity or solidarity with their racial brethren among the lower classes. They are too busy snubbing white masses as ‘racist’ or virtue-signaling about homos, Negroes, and Diversity. And much the same is happening in Japan. Its merchant elites have turned Japan into a soulless consumer society. With its adoption of globo-homo, afro-globo, mass immigration, and irreversible decline in birthrates, Japan is doomed like the West.
There’s a harrowing scene of druggies in HIGH AND LOW, and fast-forward to today, and consider the global spread of drug culture(aided and abetted by pop culture that has increasingly grown to resemble drugs, more like chemicals than experiences). In every continent, there's massive addiction to legal and illegal drugs. Mass white deaths from opioids(but white lives don’t matter in Jewish Supremacist America where countless brain-dead whites worship George Floyd the Fentanyl Negro.) Entire cultures centered on drugs and fantasy of escapism. Junkies seek insta-heaven with easy highs but fall deeper into the pits of hell. HIGH AND LOW also exposes the problems of US imperialism and the vices it spreads. Surely, the most outrageous scene is in the nightclub where some monster-sized Negro with a big ass fattened with countless buckets of fried chicken keep trying to land a five with his big fat hand on everyone. It's a vision of Japan as whore nation to the US. A memorable Ugly American scene. Against drugs, nihilism, and mindless hedonism, Kurosawa offered a vision of life and economy centered on honest work, family, and morality. At one time, such values were easily recognized by most people, but today, they are shocking and scandalous in a world of the New Normal where the highest morality is LGBT marching with BLM to push utterly delusional visions of reality. In the end, Kurosawa’s warnings came to naught, and modern civilization is one big suicide cult.
One problem with the film is that the rival executives are reduced to paper-thin scoundrels to make Gondo seem so much better. They are too obvious as foils. It would have been more interesting if the execs were presented as men with reasonable(if not exactly noble) motives of their own. After all, they are selling women’s shoes, the kind women intend to dispose of sooner than later. Shoddy boots are a bad idea, but shoddy women’s shoes make sense given women’s shoes change with fashion. Also, there is the high-end market and low-end market. A lot of people buy stuff that they don’t intend to keep for long. Indeed, Gondo and others could have compromised. Make high-end quality shoes at higher price and make cheap shoes for low-end market. Why not both? It’s like Hollywood made both A movies and B movies. But Kurosawa and his co-writers opted for a simpler setup verging on melodrama. In contrast, consider the characterizations of Barzini and Hyman Roth in THE GODFATHER movies. Though we are left rooting for the Corleones, we can see where Barzini is coming from. The man is all business, and he knows drugs are the future. And we know Roth holds a personal grudge(about Moe Green) to rival Michael's own regarding Sollozzo the Turk. MICHAEL CLAYTON may not be a great movie but is all the more interesting for having a villainess who isn't evil by design but by circumstances. If Gondo is compelled to do the 'right thing', she is compelled under pressure to do the wrong thing. Not because she's evil at the core but because her vanity and loyalty to the company require she do so. Still, she takes no pleasure in doing it. Perhaps, only few people are evil at the core(and relish acting evil), but many people do end up committing evil acts out of 'necessity'; worse, it can become habitual and mundane, thus no longer appearing on the moral radar — it's like those working in the sewage don't notice the smell so badly. Granted, the rival execs in HIGH AND LOW are not exactly evil — they are too petty and predictable for that — , but they are utterly two-dimensional creatures.
In RAN, while the two older sons are vile characters, we can at least understand where they're coming from. Their motives aren't purely scoundrel-like. The oldest son isn’t very bright and has only the position to stake his authority. The second son is smart and feels HE should inherit the throne. They are bad but understandable. In contrast, the execs in HIGH AND LOW are shallow jerks, and that’s about it. Now, there are real people who are little more than jerks, but in HIGH AND LOW, such characterizations seem too easy a way to burnish Gondo's credentials as an ethical businessman. There’s an element of cheap shot.
The great thing about SEVEN SAMURAI is that even the most craven and despicable peasant, the father of the pretty girl, is utterly understandable on human terms. And he’s not entirely wrong in his arguments and in his feelings. HIGH AND LOW doesn’t reach so high.
The Japanese title of High and Low… literally means “Heaven and Hell.” But High and Low is a good title, because the movie is constructed around the contrasts between a modernist mansion… and the crowded, chaotic city below.
While HIGH AND LOW as title is certainly workable, it misses at the bigger meaning of the film. ‘High’ and ‘Low’ indicate differences in wealth and status, but Kurosawa ponders something darker than mere economic hardship and poverty. One can be in the low world but not in hell. ‘Hell’ is a moral and spiritual condition. Kurosawa’s earlier films showed much poverty, but in ONE WONDERFUL SUNDAY, a real gem, a couple barely has enough money for a cup of coffee but are still in a kind of heaven than hell because they have each other.
The hell in HIGH AND LOW is not the world of the poor. It’s a state of mind, the destruction of souls. The film goes from the rich world to the world of the poor, but we still don’t see hell. We see hell when we finally encounter kidnapper and the world of addiction. We also see hell in the raucous night club scene. Now, hedonism isn’t necessarily hellish, and every city has(and even needs) something like the Red-Light District, but there’s something especially sleazy about the night-club scene and not because of some gorilla-like big-ass Negro fattened on fried chicken. It is a vision of Japan as un-Japan, a zone not only of military occupation but cultural degeneration. The racial mix in the club are united only by noise, rancor, and amnesia. (It’s different from the folk music in HIDDEN FORTRESS that confirms the community.) Now, if such stuff can be restricted to the Red-Light District, it wouldn’t be so bad, but such Americanism came to serve as the blueprint for ALL OF CULTURE and ALL OF SOCIETY and ALL AROUND THE WORLD, a hellish vision of the Kalergi Plan of no borders, no limits, no thoughts of past or future but just the thrill of the jungle moment. What is the main expression of Western Civilization today? ‘Twerking’. At least the Twist(seen in the movie) was a half-decent kind of dance.
So, using ‘low’ than ‘hell’ misses what the film is ultimately about. It’s about something worse than poverty of means. It’s about the poverty of the soul. In this respect, HIGH AND LOW is a lavish variation of STRAY DOG where the gun-thief and his girlfriend have adopted a kind of nihilism. Indeed, the scenes of arrests of the criminals in the two films are similar. They are handcuffed amidst flowers and reminders of innocence lost.
Also, ‘heaven’ lends a special meaning that ‘high’ simply misses. It adds an element of irony for the ‘heavenly’ world of the high is filled with its own demons. And in a way, the problems of ‘heaven’ is connected to ‘hell’. While Takeuchi the kidnapper was likely born evil or had a childhood so bitter & painful that he was scarred for life, he is also the product of New Japan as created by the US empire with the collaboration of the merchant and war-criminal class. Initially, US Occupation worked with the Japanese Left against the defeated and disgraced Militarist Right. But things soon changed as China turned communist and Soviet Union became the main rival of US power. Also, the Japanese Left got too radical and demanding. So, the US rehabilitated many militarist elites who’d earlier been accused of war crimes. So, many of the militarist elites who’d once sworn to fight the US to the last man were working as toadies, which ended up creating, more or less, the one-party system in Japan that is totally servile to the US. As such, there was no national theme in Japan but economic growth and materialism. It was all about the Money, and Takeuchi is someone who grew up under the new system. Of course, his crime is his own. After all, most Japanese, regardless of circumstances, didn’t go around committing crimes or kidnapping kids. Still, his soullessness is part of the larger disease flowing from those on top. Just like the corrupt businessmen in BAD SLEEP WELL are capable of ANYTHING to get what they want, the kidnapper follows the same logic. The differences is that those with privilege and connections can pull strings and get away with it. In contrast, low-level criminals when caught must face justice.
…as the detectives observe Gondo’s character—his decision to pay the ransom, his courage, his intelligence, and his unpretentiousness (mowing his own lawn, breaking out his shoemaker’s tools to help modify the briefcases for the ransom)—they are won over
To be sure, he mows his own lawn because he was fired from the company and has too much time on his hands. Ideally, he should be at work and his servant would do the lawn work.
Gondo is a self-made man, who rose to his position due to hard work. He was not born to wealth and privilege. His wife does come from a privileged background, and her dowry certainly helped matters, but he had to win her through hard work and character as well.
Right. The thing about Gondo is we mustn’t see him only as a businessman. He rose up the ranks and became an executive, but he began as an apprentice and worker on the shop floor. So, he’s the full package. He knows the business from low to high. He paid his dues. He didn’t inherit some high position from a rich father. So, Gondo has the consciousness of prole, craftsman, professional, and businessman. In a way, it could be Kurosawa’s commentary on how he became a director. Before Film Studies in universities, film-makers rose up the ranks by doing just about anything. They mopped floors, served as extras, learned various skills and tricks on the job. This was true of men like Raoul Walsh and John Ford. While young film-makers today must also work up the ladder, they develop more of a privileged mindset because they enter the profession through college courses. They begin with a cerebral outlook and seek to specialize as writers, producers, or directors. But in Kurosawa’s time, you had to work yourself up from the shop floor. You began like the privates in FULL METAL JACKET, as grunts and maggots. Same with newspapers. Before elite college kids filled the ranks of journalism, many had entered the profession through experience. Now, the Film School system has much to recommend it. It did produce great directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, among others. But, psychologically at least, it’s about going from high to high than working from low to high.
So, characterizing Gondo primarily as a ‘businessman’ would be misleading. The workers in the factory seem to respect him despite his hot temper because he knows the industry from shop floor to high office. He was one of them. Still, as a businessman, he’s far from virtuous and is capable of gambling everything and acting like a shark. Though his partners aren’t saints, his underhanded plot to take over the company was ethically dubious. (Also, Gondo didn’t only plot against the partners but against the ‘old man’ who, though behind the times, seems a man of principle in product quality. The bigger question is why would the ‘old man’, who stodgily resists change, cooperate with unscrupulous short-term profiteers? I suppose the latter could be more shameless in flattering the ‘old man’ in his presence, much like the older sons in RAN who gain the approval of their father while planning his demise.) Worse, without consulting his wife, Gondo put up the family house up as collateral to acquire the loans, thereby risking everything in a daring move to take over the company. Because he bet so much, his fall is especially hard when he must pay the ransom. In a way, he’s a victim of his own hubris, despite the fact that his vision of the company was more admirable than that of his partners.
The ending is happy but haunting. In this case, justice has triumphed, but at great cost. Evil and chaos will always threaten order and goodness.
Can the ending be said to be ‘happy’? Sure, the criminal is caught and brought to justice, but the final scene is grim. Also, by ‘evil and chaos’ threatening the order, what if the very order breeds such evil and chaos(especially of the soul)? In a way, the kidnapper is an agent of evil and chaos. In another way, he is the product of the New Order, a Japan of materialism without a soul. A nation whose survival and livelihood depend on playing whore to US imperialism. Japan gained tremendous economic benefits as a vassal of the US, but what did it lose? Before defeat, Japan was plagued with a different kind of evil. This Japan did have a soul. It did have a meaningful connection to the past. The Emperor represented the Japanese people’s connection to their history and to their island nation as sacred homeland than mere geography. Through the Emperor, Japanese blood was one with Japanese soil. But with Japan as an imperialist power in its own right, the Yamato spirit had grown cancerous and risked everything. In doing so, it committed great crimes all over Asia and got embroiled with war with US(and then USSR) and then lost everything and had to start from scratch as the Tokyo Shoeshine Boy and Mamasan of the US. In a way, Gondo’s attempted putsch and the son’s overly ambitious battle plan at the end of KAGEMUSHA have something in common with Japanese imperial ambitions. They put all the eggs in one basket, took a huge gamble, and lost everything. Still, militarist Japan stood for something. Japanese people were bound together, high and low, not only by material need but a sense of national culture and spiritual connection to the past. It's as if Japanese had something like the covenant through reverence for the Emperor.
KAGEMUSHA - 1980
With defeat and US occupation, there were surely great gains in freedoms and economic development. Lots of good positive stuff in many walks of life. But a people cannot live with bread and liberty alone. They need meaning, connection, & pride as a people, and those essentials were lost. The new elites promoted this soulless Japan, and in a way, the kidnapper’s attack on the rich could be, on some subconscious level, a strike against their perfidy. After all, in a nation with meaning, even the poor might feel some ‘spiritual’ connection to the rulers. In his autobiography, Kurosawa said he despised the military dictatorship during the war(and didn’t believe in the literal divinity of Hirohito), but if the Emperor had told the people to commit mass ritual suicide, he would have. What this suggests was that pre-defeat Japan, though defined by some very dark atavistic ideas, was a nation of meaning. There was some real connection between the rulers and the ruled.
In contrast, the kidnapper, like most post-war Japanese, has no soulful connection with the rulers(who are really servants of the US as shogun) or to the nation. Japan is just a marketplace, or worse, a big brothel. Japanese are no longer part of a tree but mere mushrooms growing on rotting wood, which seems to be the theme of ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE(which came out the same year as HIGH AND LOW). Just like underwater atomic blast unleashed Godzilla, something about the New Order made way for the monstrous soul of the kidnapper, especially as he was conceived to be more than a mere individual. He stands as an archetype of soul-malaise, as the inspector, in contrast, stands for duty, dedication, and professionalism amidst the national shame. In other words, while Kurosawa could empathize with those who felt a blinding rage about the New Order, it didn't absolve one of the obligation of being a decent person with a sense of responsibility to the community.
In BAD SLEEP WELL, Kurosawa felt nothing but contempt for undying loyalty based on profits. Why should underlings sacrifice their lives for men who care for nothing but their own privilege and money? But in KAGEMUSHA, despite the oppressive and unjust ways(by modern standards) of the feudal order, Kurosawa is fully of empathy. It is an order of culture, tradition, and meaning, indeed one that so moves the thief that, in the end, he chooses to die in its honor even though he could have lived out his life as a free man without attachment. (The pathology of the killer in VENGEANCE IS MINE is also associated with the theme of weakness. Not only is the killer living in post-defeat Japan but he was raised by a Christian father who seemed so weak and pathetic. It’s as if the son over-compensates as the absolute opposite of his father. His characterization is both more mundane and terrifying than Takeuchi in HIGH AND LOW. Whereas Takeuchi is a damaged soul, a man-turned-monster by whatever circumstances, the killer of Imamura’s film defies all labels and brands and yet is nothing more or less than a man. And if Takeuchi, on some level, can sense his own sickness and feel normal human emotions — no matter how much he represses them — , the psycho in VENGEANCE truly unnerves us as evidence that man can be so far removed from human values but still be utterly human.)
But in a nation without meaning, the rich are simply rich and the poor are simply poor. Consider the new West. In the past, despite class tensions, white folks of a national community might have felt some cultural and spiritual link with their rulers. Today, there is only status for the rich and resentment among the poor. Indeed, if the mob rounded up rich globalist urbanites and threw them into a bonfire, would most of us care? As much as I loathe BLM and Antifa, I watched with pleasure as they ransacked parts of Manhattan and boutique stores around L.A. In a way, Antifa’s embrace of BLM is a reaction to white elite’s embrace of Magic Negro and Diversity. White elites have been telling the white masses, “You are a bunch of ‘racists’, and we GOOD white elites care about blacks and diversity.” Antifa, filled with ranks of lesser whites with cruddier education, romp around with a twist of the white elite logic. Antifa whites in the streets say, “We embrace black rage and attack privileged blue cities filled with white elite privilege.” Elites used pro-blackness as fancy perfume. Antifa uses pro-blackness as Molotov Cocktail. Elites want to pretend it’s mostly about ‘peaceful protesters’, but reality says otherwise. (Amusingly enough, the elites are trying to unite BLM with globo-homo in the hope that all that ‘gay’ stuff may pacify black rage somewhat. Don’t be so black with rage, wave the colorful rainbow with smiley face. And let’s sing about black trannies for a change.)
White America once seemed the model for all the world, but it has proven to be a delusion, something that can be discerned in HIGH AND LOW. What has this White America done in the post-WWII period? It ceded power to Jewish globalists and defined its essence as youth culture based on black rhythms. It favored short-term thrills over long-term virtue. Fast-forward to 2020, and White America is a trashy, soulless entity that either marches with globo-homo and BLM thuggery or cravenly cowers in the corner while its heritage, statues, monuments, and symbols are torn down everywhere. If this is the fate of White Americanism, why should any majority population follow down the same path? In a way, the white-cuck elites of the GOP are like post-war Japanese elites that played doggy to the US as long as they received regular doggy biscuits. GOP is now a useless cuck-party whose only purpose is to cower before Jews and play roll over as long as the cuck-collaborator insiders get their doggy treats. The White American Model to all the world is “Surrender your identity, body, and soul to the worship of Jewish globalists, decadent homos, and wild Negroes.”
This is why neither capitalism nor leftism can serve as the Core Principle of a People and Culture. Capitalism is useful as economic system, and leftism can do good by emphasizing some measure of equal justice and people’s interests. But capitalism ultimately comes down to ‘muh profits’, and leftism, in its puritanical obsession with justice-and-more-justice, ends up waging endless war on all culture and tradition that doesn’t satisfy the latest demands. (What capitalism and leftism have in common is a kind of radical amnesia that emphasizes the hype-or-passion-of-the-moment at the expense of all else.) Thus, ideally capitalism and leftism must revolve around something else. It’s no wonder that Jews have chosen a kind of national-socialism for themselves while pushing either soulless capitalism(or libertarianism) or ‘leftism’ on everyone else. Libertarian whites will never unite as white people as they’re all about ‘muh individualism’, and ‘leftist’ whites will be too obsessed with stamping out ‘white privilege’ and ‘racism’ to ever develop a sense of white identity or white culture. As for conservatism, it can only say ‘oh, please stop’, as Bill Buckley did. Only neo-fascism can save a people, and that is why Jews, despite all their diatribes against ‘fascism’, practice a form of fascism for themselves. But it’s a bad kind like German National Socialism because it’s imperialist and supremacist than national-humanist. Still, Jews understand the need to fuse respect for Jewish tradition/identity with some measure of individualism and acceptance of modernity. It's not an accident that Jewish Power is founded on both traditional tribalism and modern individualism.
One thing that might disturb some viewers about HIGH AND LOW is the mention of capital punishment as just desserts for the kidnapper. The inspector played by Tatsuya Nakadai is presented as an admirable character, and it is his idea to convict Takeuchi on murder as well, thereby sending him to the gallows than merely have him serve fifteen years for holding a child hostage. Was Kurosawa okay with capital punishment? If so, maybe it had something to do with his samurai background. After all, Japanese culture is one where it’s worth dying for honor. Then, death is surely an option for a unrepentant psychotic punk.
It is also an avant garde cinematic experiment—in fact a whole series of them—a fact that most viewers are too enthralled to even notice. It really sneaks up on you.
Kurosawa’s modernist touches were only that: touches. HIGH AND LOW has traditional narrative conventions with heightened style, but it is far from avant-garde, which reached its artistic peaks with Hiroshi Teshigahara’s FACE OF ANOTHER and perhaps Yoshishige Yoshida’s EROS + MASSACRE, which isn’t easy watching. Seijun Suzuku got canned for his avant-garde experiment BRANDED TO KILL and later returned to modernism with the TAISHO TRILOGY. There is a fresh and exciting quality to HIGH AND LOW, and one can find seeds of movies like THE FRENCH CONNECTION, which too is essentially conventional storytelling. HIGH AND LOW is even less avant-garde than THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and DR. STRANGELOVE, both of which stick mostly with conventional narrative form.
Now, some people think modernism is part of a linear progression, something more ‘advanced’. But while modernism created whole new possibilities and pushed boundaries, the arts can’t be judged like science. We can value Pablo Picasso and Igor Stravinsky, but the notion that their works are ‘more advanced’ than those of Sandro Botticelli and Richard Wagner is one of those unfortunate conceits that did much to undermine art and creativity. Consider the damage done to serious music by university departments controlled by modernists who insisted on certain ‘radical’ schools of music as the ‘most advanced’. Modernism is most painful when those who don’t really get it apply it inappropriately to works that don’t have a genuine modernist bone in its body… like Kurosawa’s ridiculous color schemes in DODES’KA-DEN.
Perhaps, Kurosawa got confused with modernism because of RASHOMON with its unusual(at the time) chronology. But in fact, Kurosawa gave a rather conventional treatment to a genuine piece of modernist writing by Akutagawa. To be sure, Kurosawa did revolutionize film-making. No one had done action like Kurosawa in SEVEN SAMURAI, a hugely influential film. And YOJIMBO’s sardonic sensibility was new in cinema. And in films like IKIRU, HIGH AND LOW, DERSU UZALA, and later RAN, Kurosawa chose the somewhat unconventional approach of reaching the dramatic peak before the first half and then spending the rest of the film to return, re-examine, and/or resolve the issues. In the more conventional dramatics of SEVEN SAMURAI, the tension builds and builds until reaching crescendo in the final scene. In IKIRU, HIGH AND LOW, DERSU UZALA, and RAN, the emotional peak is reached in the first third or half of the film, and for that reason, some viewers might find the rest rather anticlimactic. Stanley Kauffmann much admired IKIRU but thought the long funeral scene where the guests piece the puzzle together overlong and redundant. The emotional peak of DERSU UZALA is when the Goldi hunter bids farewell to the Russian explorers, and as the result, the story following the reunion unfolds more like a long aftermath than second act. RAN reaches its emotional peak in the first hour, and the rest, like APOCALYPSE NOW following the helicopter raid, tends to meander in search of shape and meaning. HIGH AND LOW is feverish drama in the first hour, and the rest of the film is about picking up the pieces and is markedly different in tone from the first act and half. Alfred Hitchcock did something similar with PSYCHO where the seemingly lead character is killed off in the first third, followed by the rest that’s about piecing together the puzzle.
IKIRU - 1952
The first hour of HIGH AND LOW is clearly the best. The final twenty minutes are pretty suspenseful. But the second hour is problematic. It is good cinema but only good. Perhaps, Kurosawa should have balanced the second hour more between the police and the kidnapper. Also, instead of presenting the police as so cool and professional, it would have been more interesting to dramatize them with warts and all(as every police department has its own problems and failings). And it would have been better if Takeuchi was examined a bit more than kept as a cipher with a troubled soul. He’s presented more as a cold-blooded reptile than a sick-souled man. Kurosawa said the artist he admires most is Dostoevsky but he missed a Dostoevskyian opportunity. At best, the kidnapper is Dostoevskyian only on the surface.
The police work may remind us of the head samurai’s preparations in SEVEN SAMURAI. He surveys the nearby region, scours for weak spots, draws up a map, and pools resources to devise a plan of battle. Still, it’s more compelling in SEVEN SAMURAI than in HIGH AND LOW. But that may owe largely to the fact that defense of a village is simpler and clearer than navigating a huge city for tidbits of clues that may lead to the criminal. Protecting a haystack is simpler than finding a needle in one. In SEVEN SAMURAI, the planners know what they are defending. In HIGH AND LOW, the planners have too many ideas and too few leads. A far more challenging and elusive task.
