Ferry rowing backwards fast
Brian Ferry for his
Recently, he made a comment about the Nazi movement's ability to mobilise mass support using carefully crafted symbolism. I think few historians would dispute that fact. He also noted that some leading Nazi artists produced works of art that were quite beautiful -- architecture and films in particular. Here's the comment that has landed Ferry in such trouble:
My God, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight... Leni Riefenstahl's movies, Albert Speer's buildings, the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful .
It's one thing to say the Nazis distorted something beautiful in the furtherance of their murderous ambitions; it's quite another to apparently take inspiration from Nazi aesthetics and nickname your studio "the Führerbunker". And to reveal this kind of information, as he has done, in an interview with a is trully mind-boggling. Keep digging, Brian.
Comments
Fuhrerbunker, Westminster Abbey, The Vatican, Buckingham Palace, the Kremlin, the Palace of Versailles, what difference does it make they were all the seat of power of so many brutal mass murderers. Just a couple of weeks ago the British government lamented its role in centuries long practice of slavery and slave trade which destroyed untold numbers of lives for no reason more than greedy profit. Exactly the same can be said of the others, only the specific details are different. Next time you visit Spain, keep in mind that almost all the gold you see was obtained through genocide centuries ago.
He's right though - they did know how to look and sound mighty impressive. They were experts at it.
SG
PS...I wonder how long it'll take before Davy Oxo calls me a Nazi lover for saying that.
Stephen G #2
They perfected the "big lie" the repetition of a lie so many times that people became convinced that it's true. A lot of people learned from them and used it, the Arabs in their relentless incitement of hatred in their war to destroy Israel, Iran in its war to destroy America, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ in its war to destroy any thoughts independent of its own conception of how the world should be run.
If you wanted to have any career in Nazi Germany, you had to join the Nazi party. That's why for example, Herbert the Nazi Von Karajan had to join. If he hadn't, he'd have wound up conducting trains instead of orchestras. And how do you think America won its race to the moon?
Stephen, we're starting to agree way too often! As Will says in the post, it's beyond doubt that the Nazis know how to work a crowd and they used art to benefit their cause. I think some of this has been overstated and Brian Ferry was just making a comment about the ar, not the ideology. This is one seriously sensitive area though. What he needed to do was condemn the Nazis WHILE acknowledging their aesthetic skills.
If one of today's "trendy" celebrities like Russell Brand had made a similar comment would it have attracted the same amount of controversy ?
In fact I can't see even an eyebrow raised if the tight jean clad dandy had uttered these words.
There's hardly a contemporary politician whose live stage performance and video backup are not directly descended from Leni Riefenstal's Triumph of Will... Similarly millions of people throughout Europe and America were part of youth, health and fitness movements in the 1930s very similar to those of the NSDAP without ever being contaminated by the Nazi virus. Nazi extermination of Jews was one of the world's most despicable crimes but not the only one of its kind either before or since. Attempts to copyright the Holocaust, to restrict the use of and otherwise manipulate references to the Nazi movement and its race crimes is a disservice to the Jews and to others who died and is in serious danger of leaving us ignorant and defenceless in the face of similar deviations and abuses today. Know your enemy or you will discover he is amongst you too late.