Best movies/books that warn against fascism!

[ProfessorPlum]

We need a list of books that our representatives need to read and re-read until they get the point. Can't people in our leadership see what is really going on?

I'll get it started, please add your own:

Animal Farm
1984
The Wave
Handmaid's Tale
Brazil

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. Dr. Strangelove

[Worst Username Ever]

2. a brave new world

soma... delicious...

[Dora]

3. Fahrenheit 451

(Did I get the degrees right? It was really hard not to put "9/11" there, dammit Michael Moore)

[el_gato]

4. Network

[AP]

29. I really hate Network. I'm not looking for realism when I go to the movies

but, come on, there is no chance that a TV broadcaster in America would EVER put on the reality Marxist TV show that is at the center of that movie. It is just way too distracting.

[Liberal Veteran]

5. Sinclair Lewis - It Can't Happen Here.

:(

[SouthPasadenaDem]

11. I'll second liberal_veteran

It can't happen here.

[Neoma]

6. Demon-haunted world by Carl Sagan

[Dora]

7. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

[dave123williams]

8. All the Kings Men (1949)

Brilliant cautionary tale of the pittfalls of demagougery...

[lizzieforkerry]

9. Is there a certain point,

historically, that usually can be pinpointed to when a government officially becomes fascist? In the future will we be able to look back and say, yeah when this happened it was the turning point or is it ambiguous?

[Mist]

22. I think this is a topic that deserves it's own thread

in Politics, perhaps? I think there's the "creeping" stuff, and the sudden lurching stuff. I'd like to hear what others think about this.

[Old and In the Way]

10. JFK

And that was a central point in the movie. I assume the courtroom scene where Garrison gives his concluding remarks to the jury is taken from the trial transcripts. If so, this was Garrison's #1 point to the jury....and America.

[Cyrano]

12. A Face In The Crowd

An Elia Kazan movie from the mid-fifties. The only film that ever starred Andy Griffith that was worth anything.

[dot75]

13. 1984 by George Orwell

There a re a lot of things about this administration that makes me think of this book.

[stinkeefresh]

14. The Wave!

Nice! I thought that thing was lost to time...

[ProfessorPlum]

15. Saw it when I was in jr. high

and it scared the sh*t out of me.

[northernsoul]

49. never heard of it - give us a synopsis please?

Thanks!

[ProfessorPlum]

52. It's based on a book

Here is the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0440993717/qid=1100898654/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-9180422-7267844?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

and a summary from the website:

From the Inside Flap
The Wave is based on a true incident that occured in a high school history class in Palo Alto, California, in 1969.

The powerful forces of group pressure that pervaded many historic movements such as Nazism are recreated in the classroom when history teacher Burt Ross introduces a "new" system to his students. And before long "The Wave," with its rules of "strength through discipline, community, and action, " sweeps from the classroom through the entire school. And as most of the students join the movement, Laurie Saunders and David Collins recognize the frightening momentum of "The Wave" and realize they must stop it before it's too late.

Based on some comments in other threads, I don't think the movie was that great in quality. It's been about 20 years since I've seen it, but it made an impression.

The descriptions remind me of the Stanford "prison" experiments.

[ohiosmith]

16. Z

When the preview of "Z" was shown at the Oscars, it received a standing ovation. I didn't know why until I saw the movie. The Oscar forced it to be shown in the United States. At the time, the US backed the military government in Greece. The totalitarian government represented a stand against communism. This movie depicts the true story of a beloved olympic athlete who became a doctor and began speaking out against his Greek government. For that, he was murdered. This is about a brave investigator who begins to search for the origin of the orders to have the doctor killed.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

55. Fantastic movie

and in about five years of having cable, I've NEVER seen it, not even in the listings for channels I don't get.

But even though I saw it in the 1970s, I still remember the last few minutes vividly.

[Journeyman]

17. Lina Wertmuller's "Seven Beauties" ("Pasqualino Settebellezze"). . .

one of the most disturbing stories of ultimate hope ever filmed.

[Gato Moteado]

18. jack london's "the iron heel"

written in 1908, it predates orwell's 1984 by about 40 years. "the iron heel" is a must-read. a beautifully written book about fascism coming to america.

[Mojambo]

19. Fascism and Big Business

By Daniel Guerin.

A great examination of the influence of business and industry in the lead up to fascism in Germany and Italy.

There are many parallels here

[fknobbit]

20. The Trial by Kafka! nt

[Mist]

21. another vote for "It Can't Happen Here"

Just because it's set in America, and people really think it can't happen here.

[KarmaHappens]

23. Equilibrium

Mention mandatory mental health screening to me and I think of this movie. It won't be long and we will all be on a Prozium like drug.:tinfoilhat:

[Pied Piper]

24. I would add...

...Starship Troopers - guess who the "bugs" represent -
and Brazil

[ProfessorPlum]

25. I'm not really sure Starship Troopers warns against fascism

so much as wallows and celebrates in it. But it does illustrate it.

[kaitykaity]

26. RAH was a lot of things, but "fascist" isn't one of them.

Sexist, hedonist, egoist. But not fascist.

[ProfessorPlum]

27. That debate is currently still going on

Google Heinlein and fascism and you will find quite a wide range of views on whether the author himself endorsed fascism.

But the book itself, and certainly the movie, cheerily endorses fascism. Unless there was a subtext of warning that people aren't detecting.

[kaitykaity]

30. If that's what people think, then they're reading something

into him that isn't there.

The fact that the discussion is so recent makes
it smelly.

Just because RAH was a big believer in military service
doesn't make him a fascist.

Robert Heinlein Political Discussion
... crap :) -- CostinCozianu. This page and others discussing Robert Heinlein's
fascist leanings have only existed for 5-10 years. But it's ...

The Robert A. Heinlein Guestbook Archives, Vol. II
... If this anger seems rather strong, then imagine yourself in my place when some ignorant
idiot proceeds to lecture you on Heinlein's fascist tendencies, etc. ...

[ProfessorPlum]

31. Regardless of Heinlein's own feelings about fascism

Wouldn't you say that Starship Troopers, either the movie or the story it was based on, presented a muscular, heroic, triumphant, fascistic future society?

It certainly didn't read as a warning against fascism to me, although my take is admittedly rather superficial - I didn't care one way or another about it at the time.

[kaitykaity]

32. No. No. No.

Don't get into this nonsense about having respect
for the military and military service automatically
qualifying as fascistic.

That's crap.

Read the Notebooks of Lazarus Long. It's a gathering of
bromides, quips, whatever, that talk about how when
a society gets big enough for ID cards it's time to leave,
or how religion is a sop for the masses.

This was not a man who placed great store in the corporate/
government wedding of the powerful, which is by definition
fascism.

[ProfessorPlum]

33. You are taking this way too seriously

I don't have a dog in this fight. I will note that at the end of the movie interpretation (done by that POS director, Verhoeven), all the main heroic characters are dressed up exactly like the Nazi SS.

"Respecting military service" is fine. I have no personal opinions on Heinlein as a person. But you seem to be avoiding the question of whether a gifted writer could write a story which was actually different from his own views, for whatever reason . . . as an exercise in getting into another person's point of view, as satire, as a warning, in the role of a "false narrator".

There is no reason that Heinlein couldn't be anti-fascism and also write a story that is explicitly pro-fascism. It might, in fact, point to his skills as a writer.

The question is not whether Heinlein is fascistic, but whether the story (and to a lesser degree, the movie) is. What is your opinion on that? And please don't give me another defense of Heinlein the person.

[kaitykaity]

34. Take the hootie footie tone and ......

Whether the FICTIONAL story has elements of militarism or
not is besides the point.

The point of my original post is that RAH was not a fascist.
I am still allowed to make that defense because that was my
first argument.

Heinlein preached military service as good for people, good
for country, good all around. It teaches discipline and
helps with love of country.

None of those things are fascist. They can be used in the
service of fascism. Don't confuse the issue.

[ProfessorPlum]

35. Gott mit uns

My point is the Starship Troopers can be seen as glorifying military service (and I might add military intelligence) to the degree that it seems to advocate fascism. This has nothing to do with whether Heinlein was a fascist, whether military service cannot, in itself, be ennobling, or anything else.

After watching the movie, without regard to who wrote the story, I felt it was a kind of sick comment on humanity that it could be so cheerfully militaristic and fascistic. I chalked it up to Verhoeven, who doesn't like people very much, judging from the tone and feel of his other movies.

If other people had the same impression, you'll have to forgive them for wondering why Heinlein wrote a piece like that. But you are dragging the thread way off topic. I was looking for movies that WARN against fascism. Would you say that ST WARNS against fascism? Or does it do something else?

[kaitykaity]

38. Lovely Accusation. Thank You So Much.

You make a nasty allegation about one of my favorite
writers and when I say "Whoa, cowboy" I'm the one
dragging the thread off topic?

I guess you get to make all the unsubstantiated
assertions you want because if it's off topic then
nobody can challenge you on it.

Must be nice for you.

[ProfessorPlum]

39. This is like having a discussion with a crazy person

Promoting "love of country" (ie nationalism) through "military service" is not something that is usually lacking in fascist societies. Would you agree with that statement?

I'm glad you like Heinlein's writing. NO ONE here ever said that Heinlein was a fascist. But I don't think it is unreasonable to observe that Starship Troopers is less of a warning about aspects of fascism than, say, Brazil.

Why would Heinlein write such a story? I have no idea. Maybe he was being too clever by half. Certainly, the character which Isaac Asimov modeled Heinlein after in the Black Widowers stories has no love for the Nazis.

I'm not a cowboy, by the way.

The only unsubstantiated assertion on this topic is yours, when you jumped in to fight against the straw man that anyone asserted that Heinlein was personally a fascist.

[Pied Piper]

44. Jeez, folks!

I didn't mean to start a flame war. I just thought that everything in the movie was so over-the-top, it had to be satire. I mean, the unbelievable violence and gore, the militarism and pro-war stance, the live executions on tv. And yes, the SS uniforms. A friend of mine not-so-sarcastically called it "porn".

BTW, I loved the movie, and I have not read the book, and I don't know a fucking thing about the author. So there.

[lazarus]

47. but

military service does not equal fascism. At all.

Or was the US a fascist society during WWII, when everybody who could enlisted in the military?

Note that the "fascist" Heinlein also said that a military draft is slavery.

[Touchdown]

40. It still amazes me that smart people

still don't get Verhoeven's film.:eyes:

[ProfessorPlum]

43. Ok, I'll bite

Enlighten me.

[Touchdown]

45. ST: The movie is deceptive story telling.

What you have on the surface is a teenage fantasy of violence, boobs, and cool looking bugs in an otherwise vapid little action flick. Right underneath the surface, just underneath, is a subversively satirical view of not only the society the Heinlein created, but of the USA's (We're gonna win) attitude.

It is no mistake. The plot devices all point to the conclusion. Verhoeven makes human colonists invading arachnid territory, setting up their camps, only to be slaughtered (we started it, not them). In retaliation, they send a meteor that destroys Buenos Aires, and we (humans) react as if we were innocent, and did nothing wrong. This sets up the justification for war, which is the usual justification in most any war, including Iraq.

Cut to all the pretty boys and girls in Boot Camp. The leadership (Society) pumps up their egos, tells them with the proper training, they can be unstoppable. Their first Lt. even told them as much on their first drop...then Verhoeven, less than 30 seconds on the ground commences to mow them all down. The message is clear, that what you trust may not always be the truth, and that your leaders may in fact be full of hubris.

The images of all the informational cuts throughout the film (Would you like to know more?), are where the true messages of the movie is. It's no mistake that all of the adults in the film are maimed in some form or another. Teachers without arms, or burnt blind, recruiters without legs, etc. It's unmistakeable. Verhoeven is saying that fascism is bad. To get a pro-fascist POV out of this is to not pay attention to the background.

Verhoeven himself has seen fascism. He grew up in occupied Holland, and saw the Nazis take their food and burn their towns. I like the fact that he didn't use a sledgehammer to get his point across, which Oliver Stone most certainly would have done.

This is a smart film, disguised as a mindless teenage fantasy. Once you "get it", it's eminently watchable, and quite a good satirical comedy. Robocop and Total Recall have the same bits of irony in them that ST does. What happened to Basic Instinct, Showgirls, and Hollow Man is bad writers, and a lack of taste on Verhoeven's part, not Verhoeven himself.

[Pied Piper]

46. Thank you so much

... for such a well-reasoned response. It's been a while since I've seen the film, but several scenes stick out. One is the televised debate between a bow-tie-wearing man and a gray-haired women. She keeps trying to point out that we don't really know everything there is to know about the arachnids, and he keeps shouting, in essence, "Shut up! Shut up!" a la Bill O'Reilly. At least she stomped on his foot at the end of the clip!

I also found it interesting that during one of the infomercials, a cow is slaughtered by an arachnid in a test lab. The actual gore is superimposed with a "Censored" label, but in the main story line, no one is spared the gore of mutilated human bodies. It sounds an awful lot like today's media, which is prevented from showing the actual human cost of the Iraqi occupation. And yet, we all know what is really going on over there.

I also should point out that in my original post, I was referring to the movie, and not the book, which I have not read. I'm also sorry that kaitykaity mistook my reference to Starship Troopers as a person slam against Heinlein.

[ProfessorPlum]

48. Ok, I start to see the pattern in Verhoeven's method now

the deceptive storytelling is definitely a pattern. I see that it is clever, but my problem with him is that he doesn't seem to like people very much (that is an issue of subjective taste on my part, not a reflection of the quality of the films) and that the deception is either too subtle/not subtle enough to always work.

As I was watching ST, I didn't relate to the heroes at all - they were stupid and militaristic, and at the end when Doogie Howser walked in dressed as a Nazi, it wasn't some kind of shocking surprise - I was fully aware that I'd spent two hours of my life watching a film about space Nazis. I just thought it was Verhoeven showing, truthfully, how easily fascist-ified we all were.

The scary part to me about this, is I don't think less sophisticated viewers would ever get the point, that is, the Gotcha moment never comes for them.

I'm reminded of some anecdotes about the Joel Schumaker film, "Falling Down". In that one, the director wants us to initially identify with the frustrations of the Michael Douglas character, but as he ramps up the violence and eventually becomes a horrible monster, the audience is supposed to (at some point) transfer their sympathies from Douglas to his victims. But many people watching the movie with audiences (I think Ebert was one of them) noted that they transfer never happened. Rather than feel betrayed by the character they'd come to identify with, the crowd suspended their morals and just kept rooting for him.

Thanks for your explanation - maybe I'll take another look at ST again after all these years. In the good news, I was smart enough to get the irony of the way tough-guy cops were satired in Robocop.

That doesn't excuse those who would defend the movie as advocating love of country through military service. Your explanation is what I was hoping for, that the movie itself was a sly warning against fascism.

[Touchdown]

53. I believe not relating to Rico and his pretty friends is the point.

Simple minded fascists, with a black and white world view are shallow, annd it is hard to find the humanity in them. We talk about this here on DU all the time about Freepers. My friend watched it, because he wanted to see the shower scene, and took away the same things you did, especially when Doogie Howser came out in that SS uniform. We got into arguments for weeks on it. He eventually bought the DVD for himself, so I was like..."So you approve of Nazi movies now?";) But I never related or sympathised with the characters, as I never thought that was the point, or not identifying with them is exactly the point. Flip your perception on the "heroes" the next time you watch it. In this film, look at the humans as the bad guys, and these kids as the unwitting, and compliant pawns in a game of invading someone else's star system, who was only retaliating for our original colonization, which is what really happened. We're just watching from the bad guy's POV.

It's done in the style of a 1940s propaganda film, maybe that was an artistic mistake on Verhoeven's part, as so many people seemed to have missed the satire, including Ebert. He hated ST. When we have a steady diet of easy SF films, such as Armageddon, Men in Black, Independence Day, Pitch Black, Terminator, etc...we seem to make the same approach when a film appears to be yet one more mindless laser party, so I guess it's understandable that many didn't invest more into it upon first glance.

I agree that Verhoeven doesn't like people much. I suppose when you grew up under the Nazis, and see the jingoism happening again (even in 1997, when the film came out, considering the Clinton witch hunt), in a country that liberated you, it's hard to have faith in humanism.

Whether or not anyone agrees with me, one thing is for sure, this movie (and the book it satires or criticizes) makes for some debate, so there's obviously something there. I can't imagine having the same type of debate over Independence Day, or 1999's Godzilla.

[AP]

28. Spider Man 1 and 2.

Seriously.

[9119495]

36. Bob Roberts

Roberts and followers bear a strong resemblance to the folks in the rep party today. Definite fascist overtones in hiw speeches and the devotion of his followers--one of whom is a young Jack Black.

[ProfessorPlum]

37. oooh good one

I'd almost forgotten that . . .

[Touchdown]

41. Stephen King's "The Stand"

...for an alternate, more gruesome, and vulgar take on Armageddon.

[NYCGirl]

42. Meet John Doe. A little corny, but very effective.

From allmovieguide.com:

Meet John Doe is the Frank Capra movie that spoke most directly to the mood of the United States at the time that it was made. It's a fundamentally pessimistic film, without a positive resolution, and also an astonishingly mature movie -- virtually groundbreaking as a "message" movie aimed at a mainstream audience. Appearing in 1940, it closed out a decade that had been dominated by despair, disillusionment, dislocation (economic and personal), and desperation, a period characterized by a reliance on often inept government officials or duplicitous would-be leaders. All of these elements are present in Meet John Doe from its opening scene (a mass layoff at a newspaper), and they get addressed over and over again as the plot unfolds. The movie also had the courage to put some very attractive stars -- Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck -- in some very unattractive roles, as two people putting over a huge fraud on a public that trusts them. It wasn't considered a very successful film in its own time, being a little too dark and mature amid the ominous reality of the European war being waged at the time, but it is probably the best of Capra's "message" pictures and his best slice-of-life drama other than It Happened One Night. One scene, in which Cooper's Long John Willoughby tries to address the crowd and is cut off, was mimicked (some would say perverted) in real life during the 1980 presidential campaign, when Ronald Reagan defiantly resisted being cut off during the New Hampshire debates. It was life imitating art, and Reagan played it even better than Cooper did in the movie. -- Bruce Eder

[Ivan Sputnik]

50. The Manchurian Candidate (film)

I recently saw The Manchurian Candidate (the original 1962 version), which I'd never seen before, at the local film revival theater. What a great movie. The plot--which revolves around the notion that someone can be brainwashed to kill and then forget about it--is absurd, but the movie works brilliantly as surreal political satire. Pauline Kael called it "the most sophisticated satire ever made in Hollywood." I couldn't help noticing the almost spooky contemporary resonances. The villains scheme to exploit a terrorist act/assassination designed to "rally a nation of viewers to hysteria, to sweep us up into the White House with powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy." Yikes. If you've seen the film, you may remember one of its most puzzling aspects: the character played by Janet Leigh (her last name is "Chaney"), who seems to serve no purpose at all to the movie's plot, but says and does some very peculiar things. Definitely a film to see more than once, I think.

[ProfessorPlum]

51. Just watched that last week again

An excellent film. I love that they never explain Janet Leigh's character - it's pretty clear that she is controlling Sinatra, though, isn't it? Who is controlling her, though, and to what purpose?

Great stuff.

[ironflange]

54. Cabaret

Musical, movie, doesn't matter.

[whalerider55]

56. Invasion of the Body Snatchers

uh huh

whalewatcher55