Film director Oliver Stone is right. Now before all who know me wonder if I am not suffering from heat stroke, let me clarify the statement.
“We can’t judge people as only bad or good,” said Stone in his defense of both Stalin and Hitler in recent comments castigating the United States for its disproportionate focus on the Holocaust.
Stone was right in that apparently Hitler liked dogs.
Other than that, Stone couldn’t be more wrong that there are redeeming qualities in Stalin, Hitler, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Chavez has been pointedly anti-American and anti-Semitic and Ahmadinejad has long called for the eradication of Israel from the map both figuratively and literally. Stone defended all four monsters in an interview with the Sunday Times of Britain.
Stone’s sense of history is about as fictional as the garbage he writes and passes off as fine cinema as he said “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people – 25 or 30 million killed.” Stalin was responsible for more deaths of his fellow countrymen than any outside forces. And is Stone suggesting that six million murdered Jewish men, women and children is acceptable because more Russians were slaughtered? Do the math Ollie, no group was marked for evisceration or suffered per capita losses like the Jewish people. Is Stone being a provocateur or is he simply a pernicious insolent anti-Semite and Hitler apologist who clearly hasn’t read a history book? I believe the latter.
Of course Stone makes such delusional remarks to an overseas reporter which will be widely ignored by the mainstream media. Yet, paradoxically, if Stone’s next statement were actually valid, the so-called mainstream media would be all over this interview like cream cheese on a bagel. Stone was asked why there is such a fervent focus upon the Holocaust in the US, to which he said, “the Jewish domination of the media.”
Were the media dominated by Jews as Stone suggests, I should have a nationally syndicated column by now. Clearly Stone is drinking Kool Aid served up by fellow readers of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a popular screed bandied about when anti-Semites need a scapegoat for their own inadequacies.
Stone further demonstrated his faulty knowledge of history saying that Stalin “fought the German war machine more than any person.” Once again, Ollie, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and in your case, very little knowledge is very dangerous, especially since you have a public forum from which to rant and rave.
In an effort to avoid a two-front war, Hitler had learned from the failures of World War I, and forged an agreement with Stalin’s Soviets in August of 1939 – the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. This was weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland and more than a year after Hitler had already swallowed up the Sudetenland. First came an economic agreement, followed by the Non-Aggression Pact itself. Stalin gave Hitler carte blanche to cut through Poland and Western Europe like a hot knife through butter. The 10-year deal lasted only until June 22, 1941 when Germany launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union, thus forcing Stalin’s armies to fight the Nazis.
While the United States did not enter the war until the day after the dastardly and craven attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, and President Franklin Roosevelt was certainly no friend of the Jewish people, American fighting forces took on the Nazis and the Japanese in a fever pitch two-front war. Although the war for the Allies did not start off well, in time they vanquished all enemies and attempted to restore some semblance of order in the ruins of Europe.
Oliver Stone is certainly entitled to his opinion – this is the difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals don’t like someone’s opinion, they seek to have it quashed, while conservatives offer a differing opinion and remind people that their words, thoughts and ideas have consequences. For Stone, those consequences should be failure at the box office. Perhaps eh should cast Mel Gibson in his next film. I have not, for years, put dime one in Stone’s pockets due to his lugubrious sentiments both anti-American and anti-Semitic. I will continue my personal boycott of Stone films. What you do, is up to your conscience to decide.
Sanford D. Horn is a writer and political consultant living in Alexandria.
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