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By Alexandru Ionita/Amazon Prime Video.

In a hushed tone, Channing Tatum urges me to watch as much propaganda as you can possibly find. After a beat, he lets out a laughbut really, hes serious.

Tatum stars and is executive producer of Amazons Comrade Detective, an eerily timely satire of Romanian Communist propaganda. Created by Brian Gatewood and Alex Tanaka, with director Rhys Thomas, the six-episode cop drama was brought to Tatum when he asked the creative team to give him their worst idea. As he explains, When you try to find something that is not working, you figure out whats cool about it, and you can find some really hidden gems.

The initial idea, Gatewood says, was to take actual Communist propaganda and dub it with English dialoguelike a TV version of Woody Allens Whats Up, Tiger Lily? When obtaining the rights to Cold War-era television proved difficult, they decided to film their own faux propaganda, complete with a strong 80s aesthetic.

After filming with Romanian actors, they dubbed the series with the vocal talents of an all-star cast. Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (dubbing for actors Florin Piersic Jr. and Corneliu Ulici) star as the loyal Communist cops; other voices include Jenny Slate, Jason Mantzoukas, Nick Offerman, Mahershala Ali, Chlo Sevigny, Jerrod Carmichael, and Fred Armisen, to name a few. The series begins with footage of Tatum and author Jon Ronson, who present the series as a recently unearthed archival treasure.

After delving deep into the archives of Cold War propaganda, Gatewood and Tanaka took inspiration from hits like the Czechoslovakian classic Thirty Cases of Major Zeman. When creating their homage to shows created behind the Iron Curtain, Rhys explains, We werent going in with the mindset that we were Westerners making fun of Communism. We always tried to make sure that, no, no, were the Communist filmmakers.

As Gateway says, We grew up in the 80s, watching Red Dawn and Rocky IV and all these filmsnot really knowing as kids that we were essentially watching propaganda. Tatum recalls a youth where every movie had a Russian bad guy. Showing the reverse, though, is both hilarious and really poignant right now.

The series effectively satirizes both Communism and capitalism while maintaining expertly stylized cinematography, replicating a time when propaganda was overt and clear. Now, of course, such machinery has grown more sophisticated; the shows creators note that propaganda has become more obscured, subliminal, and subtle. Gatewood hopes the show will help viewers reflect more on the power of propaganda, and how its seamless in society todayeven as they enjoy a comedic cop thriller populated by characters who say Monopoly is dangerous, think baseball is boring, and have nightmares about young children chanting, I want my MTV.

Gordon-Levitt compares the series to ideas media theorist Neil Postman presented in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, which examines the negative effects of television on politics. What [George] Orwell feared were those who would ban books, Postman wrote. What [Aldous] Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism . . . In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

At the end of the book, Gordon-Levitt explains, Postman does say, look, the way to deal with this is to just get people to understand it. Television doesnt have to be harmful if people [are] aware of the way it is manipulative, if they were aware that you literally cant communicate well-reasoned arguments and ideas through television by virtue of the medium.

Comrade Detectives second day of shooting in Romania was November 9, the day after Donald Trump was elected presidentwhich further fueled the teams ambitions for the series. It was such a weird thing, to walk on set and have them do Communist propaganda, Rhys says. The election results definitely, to me, solidified what were doing. It focused us in a different way. Not that it changed much, but there was a slightly different energy towards what we were doing.

The Romanians on set asked the American producers how they could let Trumps election happen. Theyre so used to propaganda, Gatewood says, that they couldnt understand how a majority of Americans had been duped by propaganda masquerading as something elsefake news, senseless slogans about making our country great again, and the rampant proliferation of alternative facts.

Neil Postmans solution was to promote understanding through exposure. And while Gordon-Levitt doesnt see Comrade Detective as a direct parallel to what Postman suggests, he does think that satirizing propaganda is a great way to draw attention to it. In hindsight, you can look back at the way that propaganda worked and see, oh, well, those same mechanisms are still in place. The same things are happening. They have different flavors now . . . They are different labels that get demonized, but theyre still the same kind of finger-pointing used to the advantage of power-grabbers. As Rhys adds, Looking at old propagandas probably a useful exercise. But its too late.

All we can do now, then, is laugh in our misery. Tatum suggests that while Comrade Detective does open up a thoughtful discussion on propaganda, at heart, it really is a comedy: Theres a lot going on way underneath it, but on top theres just entertainment . . . Im thinking of Make Em Laugh, the classic Singin in the Rain song his co-star Gordon-Levitt memorably performed on Saturday Night Live. You gotta make em laugh, and make people listen, and keep them entertained . . . [and] I just really wanted to do a TV show that showcased the fashion in Romania in the 80s.

I think every parent has that moment where theyre like, Oh, maybe this was a bad idea; we dont know how to do this, Tatum says.

Channing Tatum, photographed on the back lot at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California.

For a while Im going to try to make movies that, even if they dont make a dollar, Ill still be so proud to be a part of them that it wont matter, Tatum says.

The July 2015 cover of Vanity Fair.

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I think every parent has that moment where theyre like, Oh, maybe this was a bad idea; we dont know how to do this, Tatum says.

Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

Channing Tatum, photographed on the back lot at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California.

Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

For a while Im going to try to make movies that, even if they dont make a dollar, Ill still be so proud to be a part of them that it wont matter, Tatum says.

Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

The July 2015 cover of Vanity Fair.

Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

Originally posted here:
What the Hell Is Comrade Detective - Vanity Fair

Has anyone else observed a striking pattern in the New York Times recently? Theyve hosted a series of fond, nostalgic recollections about the good old days of twentieth-century Communismthe optimism, the idealism, the moral authority. Not to mention the gulags, the squalor, and the soul-crushing conformity.

Actually, they dont usually mention those things. These articles are part of a series called Red Century, which is supposedly dedicated to exploring the history and legacy of Communism, 100 years after the Russian Revolution. But that history and legacy turn out to be very selectively explored. The editors of the Times could easily spend a year filling their newspaper with a hair-raising litany of Communisms crimes across the globe, stuff that would keep their readers up at night for weeks. Theres certainly no shortage of material: the terror, the gulags, the Holodomor, the Cultural Revolution, and so on. Yet in this series, the crimes of Communism are mostly just hinted at.

A few articles deal forthrightly with the horrors of the Soviet regime. Others present being a member of the secret police as a morally complex issueit was way to build the future and be a part of something larger than themselvessomething I doubt the Times would be foolish enough to publish if it were about a former member of the Gestapo or the Klan.

Disturbingly, most entries are in this vein of talking about the idealism and human warmth and just plain caring of the people who denied the gulags and the mass starvation in Ukraine. Sure, they may have abetted the torture and murder of millions, but their devotion to creating a more just world was infectious, the party was possessed of a moral authority that lent shape and substanceto an urgent sense of social injustice, and all of it was infused by an inherent optimism for the future, implied by socialism and progressivism.

The overall thrust of the series is summed up in a call to try Communism again, but maybe this time try not to have any gulags. No, really.

This time, people get to vote. Well, debate and deliberate and then voteand have faith that people can organize together to chart new destinations for humanity.

We may reject the version of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as crazed demons and choose to see them as well-intentioned people trying to build a better world out of a crisis, but we must work out how to avoid their failures.

Meanwhile, we can actually tune in live and see what happens when someone tries to act on this idea of reviving the Communist ideal. A few years ago, leftist pundits were praising Venezuela as a socialist miracle. Then the socialist regime hit the Thatcher Line: it ran out of other peoples money (in this case, oil company money) and the illusion came crashing down. The result: desperate poverty, shortages, squalor, children dying in hospitals from lack of medicine and equipment, refugees fleeing in makeshift boats.

In other words: your basic rundown for a radical socialist regime. Its not the first time this has happened. Its not even the tenth time.

And the socialist revolutionaries respond the way they always have: they try to save the revolution by exterminating political freedom. In the past few weeks, while folks at The New York Times were airily speculating about reviving Communism, but in a good way, Venezuelas socialist revolutionaries staged a flagrantly rigged vote to overturn representative government, and now they have brought back the midnight knock on the door, with the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of opposition leaders.

At home, the Left is calling for resistance against the authoritarianism of Donald Trumpwhile their most prominent mouthpieces are actively whitewashing a movement that stands for totalitarianism, and the actual young idealists in places like Venezuela are getting gunned down in the streets by the regime. Some of this has even been reported in The New York Times. Maybe somebody ought to inform the opinion editors.

What is it about a thoroughly discredited doctrine like Communism that just wont die? My overall sense from the Red Century series is that enough years have passed since the fall of the Iron Curtain that Western intellectuals now feel they can get away with downplaying Communisms crimes and failures and return to rapturous descriptions of its abstract ideals, without the need any longer to take a serious look at what those ideals really meant in practice.

The theory of Communismthe elevation of the collective over the individual and of government dictates above free, private decision-makingis the fundamental cause of all of its evils. But its also a moral theory with old roots, on that has established itself in many peoples minds as synonymous with morality itself. Of course everyone should put the collective public good over private interestswhat could possibly go wrong? Well, we found out what could go wrong, over and over again. We have plenty of reasons to think that individual rights and private interests are actually essential to a free and prosperous societynot to mention that they might help keep us out of the gulag.

But if you cant bring yourself to question whether the theory of socialism is synonymous with the very idea of morality and progress, you wont be able to relinquish the socialist dream, even after it has been exposed as a nightmare.

This deep vein of denial has troubling consequences. One signstill on a very small scaleis the reconstitution of Young Communist Clubs, something I havent seen much of since I was in college in 1989, the year reality pulled the rug out from under all of the earnest young socialists. This can only be happening again because todays young people have been allowed to grow up ignorant of the nature of Communism, both in the past and in the present. And this is aided and abetted by publications at the top of the culture, like The New York Times, as they draw a gauzy curtain of nostalgia across the history of twentieth-century Communism.

One of those Red Century encomiums to Communist idealism sums up its case by recalling Rosa Luxemburgs revolutionary ultimatum: socialism or barbarism.' But the lesson of historyheck, the lesson of our own timeis that socialism is barbarism.

Dont let The New York Times send this truth down the memory hole.

Follow Robert on Twitter.

Read this article:
Why Is The New York Times Trying to Rehabilitate Communism? - The Federalist

"Teekond" ("Journey" in English) was chosen as the winning design for the Victims of Communism Memorial in Tallinn.

State real estate management company Riigi Kinnisvara AS (RKAS) has announced a public procurement worth 4.5 million for the construction of the planned Victims of Communism Memorial in Tallinn, the deadline for which is Sept. 12.

According to the procurement notice, he contract is planned to enter into force on Oct. 10 and construction work should be completed by Aug. 1, 2018.

The memorial is to cost up to 4.5 million, exclusive of VAT. Its construction will be financed from the state budget.

The planned site of the future memorial is the Maarjame subdistrict of Tallinn, between the districts of Kadriorg and Pirita. The memorial will include the names of approximately 20,000 people who lost their lives as a result of the actions of the communist regime last century, many of whom died far from home and were buried in unknown graves.

See the original post here:
RKAS announces procurement for construction of communism victims memorial - ERR News

Blessed Virgin, Mother of Coromoto, heavenly Patron of Venezuela, free our country from the claws of communism and socialism, the CEV posted on Twitter this Sunday, complete with an image of Santa Maria and a Venezuelan flag.

On Sunday, Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro convened the members of the Constituent Assembly for a vote to replace Venezuelas National Assembly with a new National Constituent Assembly, an attempt to further concentrate his power and eliminate the legislative body that has an opposition majority.

Maduro declared a sweeping victory for himself, which will give him near absolute power over the crisis-torn nation.

The unpopular socialist president is a former bus driver who worked his way up to become a member of the inner circle of former President Hugo Chvez. Chvez eventually made Maduro his vice-president and recommended him as successor to the presidency.

Maduros calling of the Constituent Assembly was harshly criticized by the Venezuelan bishops, who in a communiqu issued on July 27 called the measure unconstitutional, as well as unnecessary, inopportune and harmful for the Venezuelan people.

The Treasury Department has reacted to the power grab by imposing sanctions on Maduro, sending a clear signal of the Trump administrations opposition to his regime.

Yesterdays illegitimate elections confirm that Maduro is a dictator who disregards the will of the Venezuelan people, said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement announcing the sanctions.

As of Monday, all of the Venezuelan presidents assets that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction were frozen, and all U.S. citizens have been barred from dealing with him.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter

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See original here:
Venezuelan Bishops Pray to Virgin Mary to Free the Country from the 'Claws of Communism' - Breitbart News

Venezuelan people living in Brazil protest against the election of the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela (Getty Images)

The appeal comes as Venezuela descends further into chaos and violence

The Venezuelan Bishops Conference has pleaded for the intercession of the Virgin Mary to free their country from the claws of communism and socialism.

As the country descends further into political chaos, the bishops posted the prayer to their Twitter account along with an image of Mary and a Venezuelan flag.

The prayer reads: Most Holy Virgin, Mother of Coromoto, heavenly Patron of Venezuela, free our homeland from the claws of communism and socialism.

The tweet was posted as Venezuelans went to the polls the elect members for a constituent assembly charged with rewriting the countrys constitution.

President Nicols Maduro convened the assembly on 1 May amid increasingly violent anti-government protests, arguing that rewriting the constitution would promote reconciliation and peace.

Opposition activists accuse the socialist president of a power grab and fear he will use the assembly to cement his own position and hold on to power.

No independent observers monitored the vote, and other South American countries such as Colombia, Panama, Peru and Argentina have refused to recognise it.

Venezuelas bishops have denounced the assembly as unconstitutional and as unnecessary, inconvenient and damaging for the Venezuelan people.

Read the rest here:
Bishops plead to Virgin Mary to free Venezuela from 'claws of communism' - Catholic Herald Online