Black Nazi???


I remember seeing this film about 10 years ago. Was I just halucinating or did I see a black Nazi?

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more specifically, the black fueher of harlem :)

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[deleted]

yeah read the book! its wonderful, as are all kurt vonnegut writings. :]

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Hello Roger,

Speaking of Black Nazi's:

Last year I had a spell of mental derangement while flipping through
the TV channels, and I actually watched several minutes of that Godawful
Chuck Norris tripe where he plays a marshall who subdues all baddies with
his flying feet. A mob was threatening to take a prisoner from a sheriff,
and among the howling rednecks were---you guessed it---BLACK LYNCHERS!

If this ain't Political Correctness and/or Affirmative Action and/or
actor's union rules run amok . . .

Gary In Arizona


"Thank God for prisons!" Richard Pryor

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To the original question -- Yes, there is a Black Nazi in this movie/book and it has nothing to do with political correctness (I doubt that Vonnegut even knew what the concept was when he wrote this piece). K.V. used surreal absurdity (humor) in all his works to demonstrate that "not only is the universe stranger than we think, it may be stranger than we can think."
A Black Power Nazi makes as much sense as anything else in the world of Howard W. Campbell, Jr. ever does. But, to be more precise, I am fairly sure that K.V. was making a layered observation about the 1960's Black Power movement (H. Rap Brown, Stokley Carmichael, Bobby Seals, Eldridge Cleaver, Malcom X., etc.) as much as he was creating an absurdity that makes you laugh out loud. For K.V. everything about human existence is so seriously real, so heartbreaking, so powerfully FUBARed that you either laugh, at times, or go crazy and fling your feces on your prison walls. In his lifetime K.V. did some of both.
Gary you lack some perspective on both Kurt Vonnegut and the history of your own society. Learning more of both will alleviate some of your misconceptions.

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The "Black Fuehrer of Harlem" (played by Frankie Faison, of Silence of the Lambs fame) was by far the funniest scene in the film, particularly when he rambles on about Japanese and Jewish hydrogen bombs.

Mother Night was a great film when it came to conveying the pathos of Vonnegut's novel, but it mostly missed his (admittedly difficult to film) humor. The scenes with Faison were the one exception.

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There really was a Black Fuehrer of Harlem, Robert Williams. Check out UNDER COVER, by John Roy Carlson, the chapter entitled "Hitler and Hirohito in Harlem."

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Yes, Vonnegut used the humor of the undiscovered, or accidentally discovered absurd circumstance better than any other writer of his time. Was it his defense against final insanity? Was it merely humor for laughter sake? Was it K.V. giving God the finger back? I think it was all of those and more, but the kind of surreal humor contained in Vonnegut's work has to be handled very crefully when tranferring to a movie, lest it just become a series of poor gags. Mother Night is a book you read with puncuations of howling laughter, but the well-done movie doesn't have a laugh track to help the uninitiated to see the jokes. The Black Nazi is the one joke almost everyone got. But there were so many ohters!

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Actually, I once MET a gypsy skinhead! In my country there are no black people so skinheads hate (and ocasionally even kill) gypsys! When I asked a friend of mine how is it possible for him to be a member, he said that that gypsy guy is really cool and that he hates jews a lot so other skinheads had accepted him !!!!!!

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there are quite a few self-loathing jewish nazis out there - its an odd but very real phenomenon.

Also, there are many neo-nazis in russia, one of the largest masses in europe i believe - and yet they're all slavic, which is subhuman in nazi ideology.

in new zealand, where i live, the mongrel mob - a biker gang full of maoris(brown-skinned native new zealanders with polynesian ancestry) that have swastikas all over their jackets and yell "sig heil" despite the fact that they were on hitler's "subhuman list"

im sure the list goes on.

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IMHO anyone can be a nazi in the sense of being a fascist, regardless of race, color or creed. The only qualification is identification and hatred of a scapegoat - any scapegoat, and the ability to detach from reason. Well, that's how it seems to me, anyway.

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No, that's incorrect. A fascist is a particular ideology that has nothing to do with the Nazis. Fascism is, in essence, the corporate state plus militarism. Nazism, or National Socialism, was essentially Hitlerism in as much as it meant anything Hitler said it did. It's key component was racism and anti-semitism.

Too many people misuse the term "fascist" as a stand-in to mean anything they dislike.

I think Vonnegut's point was that, once you enter the shadowlands that these people inhabit, everything is turned upside down: Black Nazis, Nazi propagandists working for the enemy and your best friend is a Soviet agent looking to turn you in.

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Fascism has a bunch of different definitions and interpetations. So what?

If you are familiar with the atrocity that is the career of Clarence Thomas, then you should find the concept of a Black Nazi Emperor of Harlem easy to accept.

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Wow. Total bizarrerie. Look it up. AND... think for your damn self.

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Uh no, Nazi ideology is centrally defined by hatred of Jews, it isn't defined by "scapegoat". A Finn who hated Eskimos but loved Jews would not be defined as a Nazi by the Nazis themselves.

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I just saw it on cable TV. I've read the book, don't remember it having a coal black Nazi in SS regalia and an iron cross, but IT COULD HAPPEN. Just this week I saw a clip of a self styled Ph.D minister, in a self designed blue gown to match the Pope's -- addressing his flock in Harlem, denouncing Obama as a longlegged Mac Daddy who was causing the whites to rise up in rightous anger to smite .... well, that's a digression. Except to say, "I hopes they will let me join them!"

I miss Big Band music and talented singers. Leonard Cohen/idol. Civility, harmony, unity!

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It boggles the mind to me such as when people refer to liberals as Nazis or call Obama the Black Hitler. I'm thinking out so the Democrats are an anti-leftist left wing party and a racially mixed intellectual who would have been killed in Nazi Germany is the next Hitler. It just totally makes my head spin. But hey, I know a Jewish guy who said Hitler was cool and collects Nazi paraphenalia. I'm like dude, it's Hitler. He's like what's wrong with Hitler and I'm like "your Jewish!" So yeah I guess living contradictions aren't that uncommon, although a black person trying to gain membership to the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan brotherhood would have a hard time of it. Just goes to show you how ignorant prejudice is or how internalized self hatred can be!

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I found that pretty strange when I saw Afro-American actor Frankie Faison dressed in a Nazi SS uniform in this movie. And believe it or not there is an actual Nazi Party down in Mexico. There are some videos on Youtube that provide this evidence. One video in particular is entitled, "Skinheads en Mexico88 Marcha 09." This video shows Mexican Neo-Nazis marching through some of the streets of Mexico City waving both the Mexican and Nazi flags. And these are the type of Mexicans that look more indian than Mestizo or of European(Spanish or other European settlers in Mexico)descent as well. As a Mexican-American, I found the video shocking because I couldn't figure out who these Mexican Nazis would target in Mexico. But then I realized that they would possibly target illegal immigrants from Central and South America that are entering/passing through Mexico illegally and using that country as a "gateway" to enter the U.S.A. illegally. And I'll admit to it, but I do collect Nazi paraphernalia primarily because of the imagery and I also have some German ancestry too. And I also use both the Confederate and the original 13 star American flags as alternate American flags for certain personal reasons. And yes, I shave my head and have a goatee on my chin that I have in the "peckerwood" style as well. And I also dress like a skinhead but I've gotten stared down by actual Neo-Nazi skinheads because of being thought of as a SHARP(non/anti-racist skinhead)and even by Surenos(Southern California Hispanic gangmembers) as well. The way I see it, if someone has an eerie fascination that might be considered against them as a person(race, color, creed, etc.) who cares? At least that particular person likes that particular thing and isn't hurting anybody.

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You are confusing 1920-1945 Nazis with today's skinheads, they don't share the same racial views. During the 1930's the Nazis worked to cultivate trade deals with South American nations. Furthermore, there was hardly anything written by the Nazis for or against Hispanics or Native Americans, it was not a main field of concern since those ethnic groups didn't share a border with Germany and lived on a different continent across a huge ocean. Therefore, there's nothing that really prevents Mexicans from forming their own Neo-Nazi organizations.

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Yes, I can easily see how it (comparison of liberals to Nazis) would make your head spin. Actually, the comparison should be "Leftists" to Nazis. Like everything in life, there are shades of gray.

If you want to explore the Leftist-Fascist connection, read a great book by Jonah Goldberg called "Liberal Facism" and listen to Michael Medved/Dennis Prager on your local AM stations. Usually, a station that will carry one will carry both.

As for your Jewish friend who collects Nazi militaria/memorabilia I can understand. That he admires Hitler is another story altogether. As previous posters have stated, there are a lot of self-loathing Jews out there and many books and dissertations have been written about this embarrassing subject.

One of the reasons that nobody makes the association between the Left and Nazism is because the Left excels in one thing and one thing only-demonizing the Right, and especially painting us as Nazis when of course Nazism and (Russian) Communism are simply two different birds of the same feather.

Good luck in your discovery of the truth and be ready to have your world turned upside down!

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Jonah Goldberg= NeoCon Republican crap

Michael Medved= NeoCon Republican crap

Dennis Prager= NeoCon Republican crap

Nobody would read that biased garbage, you are an idiot to even recommend it.

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Spoken like a true Leftist.

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Actually I'm an Independent you bozo. Don't recommend NeoCon *beep* and try to pretend it is real journalism or real history, it is junk, you disgraced yourself with that post.

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If you are an "independent" then why all the rancor?? I didn't insult you or call you names, now did I??

Character assassination and ad-hominem attacks are a hallmark of the Left.

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The main Nazi ideological focus was their belief in a worldwide Jewish Communist plot to take over the world, for the sake of fighting against that they were willing to work with numerous minorities. The first Arabic language version of Mein Kampf was published in 1938 in Damascus, Syria. There was a wealthy Shiekh from Yemen who sent Hitler fresh coffee grinds every year for Christmas.

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Check this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-177-1465-16,_ Griechenland,_Soldaten_der_%22Legion_Freies_Arabien%22.jpg

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It's reckoned that over 3 million non-Reich citizens (many of them non-white) fought with the German military during World War II. Stick that in your pipe, all those who claim the Germans were 'racist'.

"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul" - C.G.Jung

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