Cause for Pause: the Rot at the Core

Hitler - oil painting - 1934, Victor Brauner.

"Each painting that I make is projected from the deepest sources of my anxiety..."

- Romanian-French Surrealist artist, Victor Brauner, (1903-1966). Although not always as well-known in the States as he was in Europe, recognition of his importance in Surrealism is more evident now than it was when I first featured him in an old TD post, The Magic of Art & The Art of Magic. In the post I included a link to the Hitler image (above), referring to it as "Brauner's voodoo doll." Nowadays I would use the word Vodou, but I would still interpret it the same. I imagine André Breton did, too, when he added it to his eccentric art collection. (Brauner's haunting portrait of Breton) Hitler would be dead 11 years later... No, not soon enough for an authentic correlation, but, in this case, it's the thought (and the passion) that counts. From this excellent online source we have:

" One of the most significant symbolic aspects of voodoo dolls is their role as a conduit for energy and intention. In many traditions, the doll is believed to act as a vessel, allowing the practitioner to channel their desires, whether for healing, protection, or even retribution, into the physical form of the doll."

But, can weaponized art fulfill the requirements of aesthetic beauty? Apparently, it depends upon who you ask. For some members of the Young Republican National Federation here in the States, Hitler had an "aesthetic." (See quotes below.)

'I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

"Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that 'everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.'

Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote o@n whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.

'Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,' he continued.

'Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic,' Joe Maligno, who previously identified himself as the general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans, wrote back.

'I’m ready to watch people burn now,' Annie Kaykaty, New York’s national committee member, said."

For most of us, this latest Republican gaff is old news. But, I must admit, of all the nightmares presented to us in the past year, this one made my blood run cold. While it's possible that the words may have been taken out of context, the message is clear. The "Hitler aesthetic" is the cherry on this shit-sundae. I can find no element of grace or beauty in Hitler's pathological hate tale.

What is particularly scary is that most of the members quoted actually worked for the government, up to and including a Senator!

Yes, this chat was immediately condemned by the Republican base, but it was too late to get the cat back into the bag. The rot at the MAGA core was exposed.

Bravo, Politico, this story makes for a "charming" Halloween horror vignette!

It is, after all, the witching season; Halloween is arriving soon, along with the Day when the Dead shall rise. But, while Halloween is a great time for confronting ones deepest fears, in the modern world, we do so almost as a form of play. The vintage animation below is an example of this. Created by Disney studios in the late 1920s, Skeleton Dance was the first of the Silly Symphonies. Ah, maybe this fits the "Hitler aesthetic"...

... along with another seasonal title, Mel Brook's Springtime for Hitler.

(Source: the Laughing Place.)

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UPDATE - October 18, 2025

LIVE - NO KINGS Protests, USA

PBS - Live coverage in DC

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CNBC-TV 18 Live Nationwide Coverage

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The Daily Discourse - Live National Coverage

They Live

 

"Nada retrieves one of the boxes from the church and takes a pair of sunglasses from it, concealing the box in a trash pile. He finds out that they make the world appear monochrome and reveal subliminal messages in the media to consume and conform. They also disclose that many people are ghoulish, bug-eyed aliens hiding under human façades."

- Via the Wiki article for They Live, a sci-fi film from 1988 directed by John Carpenter, a master of the horror genre. Interestingly, it was written in response to Ronald Reagan, the US president at the time. The article goes on to say:

"...Carpenter decided to use the pseudonym "Frank Armitage", an allusion to one of the filmmaker's favorite writers, H. P. Lovecraft (Henry Armitage is a character in Lovecraft's Dunwich Horror) Carpenter has always felt a close kinship with Lovecraft's worldview, and according to the director "Lovecraft wrote about the hidden world, the 'world ally'. His stories were about gods who are repressed, who were once on Earth and are now coming back. The world underneath has a great deal to do with They Live."

And, so it does. But, John Carpenter is no smug evangelist and there's an element of high camp present in They Live which prevents it from being taken too morbidly, thereby taking the fatal sting from it's central motif: the horror of losing control over ones autonomy, ones own anatomy and existence, while relinquishing all existential freedom to an alien foe, an unrelenting monster whose agenda is to destroy the world upon which you and your loved ones must exist. Carpenter foresaw the immediate future.

Can't beat that for an introduction to the witching season... although discussions of evil technocracies also has its sinister appeal.

Stay tuned for more Halloween merriment! ;-)

(For more They Live and numerous other cool clips visit the YouTube channel, Fonoptikon.)

Vale to an Extraordinary Scientist, Jane Goodall

The cover of Jane Goodall's The Book of Hope.

"Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to free them."

- In Tibetan Buddhism, the first vow of the enlightened Bodhisattva.

"Sometimes people would ask her, which do you like better, chimps or people? She'd say well, it depends.

'Chimps are so like us," Goodall said, "that I like some people much more than some chimps and some chimps much more than some people.'"

- Via the NPR's tribute to Jane Goodall who passed away October 1st.

"Instead, let's assume for adventure's sake that we're sharing the planet with a flesh-and-blood offshoot of the human species. As I've tried to demonstrate, the prospect isn't as absurd as it initially seems; indeed, I expect it will seem much less so when we've learned more about our world and our relatively brief tenure here. (It bears mention that eminent primatologist Jane Goodall has defended the scientific search for "Bigfoot," a cryptohominid commonly described as enormous. Assuming a gigantic and purportedly foul-smelling primate can successfully lay low, it may be substantially easier for an intelligent technical society, with a tested capacity for stealth and a full repertoire of disinformation tricks, to dodge our radar.)"

- Mac Tonnies, from a Posthuman Blues post from March 31, 2006. In it, he begins to describe his Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis in its infancy, citing Jane Goodall as one of his influences.

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I was saddened when I came upon the news that Jane Goodall had slipped the mortal coil yesterday. If anyone was influential in establishing the truth regarding the sentience of animals in the 20th Century, surely it was she. At a time when many scientists were still on the fence about the true nature of animal cognizance, Goodall proved that primates could invent and use simple tools... a game-changer that totally blew away all preexisting theories regarding animal behavior, and opened the door for new definitions of the word "sentience." Interestingly, the "new" definitions mirrored observations of philosophers from an earlier century:

"In the 17th century Thomas Tryon, a self-identified Pythagorean, raised the issue of non-human suffering. Soon thereafter, many philosophers used the anatomical discoveries of the Enlightenment as a reason to include animals in what philosophers call "sympatheia," the principle of who or what deserves sympathy."

When I study Jane Goodall's uniquely beautiful face, it really appears to me as if she was illuminated from within, with the unspoiled grace of a true Bodhisattva. I don't think I'm imagining things.

Midnight Update!

I spent some time tonight trying to find the perfect video of Dame Goodall to post here, and I finally found it. Sadly, it's too long to view here, but, Jane Goodall's First Time on the Subway is must-see, in part or whole.

No, she doesn't come across as a Bodhisattva as much as she does a charmer; an artist's scientist with a child's curious nature, a cat's amazing ability to always land on its feet, and a mind like a steel trap! Then again, maybe that does describe the nature of a Bodhisattva. 🏵️