Oliver Stone has issued the following statement:
“In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret. Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry. The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity – and it was an atrocity.”
Norm says:
Well, an apology is an apology and it would be churlish not to accept that he means it. A question remains, all the same, about how it is that Stone could come to make the mental associations he now regrets having made: between public interest in the Holocaust and Jewish domination of the media; between the Jewish tragedy in Europe and the far greater damage he said was done by Hitler to the Russians. It’s good that Stone should be sorry for what he said. It will be even better if he’s not only sorry but also understands how he came to say it.
Let’s take a step back and compare Stone’s outburst with Mel Gibson’s.
Mel Gibson is a racist drunk with a very messed up family life. While drunk, he expressed the following view
“Fucking Jews…the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”
Gibson is also the subject of allegations of domestic abuse, and left an answerphone message for his ex, in which he expressed the view that it would be her fault if she was “raped by a pack of niggers”.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Gibson’s views on Jews – which come straight from the Protocols and are also rehearsed in the Hamas Covenant – are connected to the extreme theology promoted by his father. Equally, it is obvious that Mel Gibson’s outbursts are also an expression of deep seated personal problems.
By contrast, Oliver Stone’s comments are entirely in line with views espoused by broad swathes of the liberal Left. He made them because he thought them uncontroversial. They weren’t “clumsy”. They were deliberate. We’ve all heard precisely these views, generally expressed by bien pensants.
Here they are again:
Why such a focus on the Holocaust then? “The Jewish domination of the media,” he says. “There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years.”
There are a certain people who, by default, are racists. They look at a black family in their street and see a pack of rapists. They look at a Jew and see a conspiracy. However, knowing that those views are unacceptable, they generally bite their tongue.
If you are drunk, you are liberated from those internal controls. Similarly, if everybody around you hates blacks, Jews and gays, you will feel comfortable about speaking your mind.
Now that antisemitic themes – Jewish control of the media, Jewish control of politics, child killing – have become just about acceptable again, if expressed in the correct Mearsheimer and Walt manner, expect to see more antisemites “coming out”.
You can be sure that Stone resents having to make this public apology. The day will some come when he won’t have to.
