V - 32 Years Ago Today

32 years ago today this television series aired called “V.”  Aside from the fact that the title itself, a letter, was weird and basically told you nothing whatsoever about it, the idea of a new science fiction series with costumed aliens, laser guns and some kind of story which actually takes place on earth instead of space was exciting for a little kid.  Since the 1970s, the idea of aliens landing on earth was actually frighteningly anticipated by a lot of people. There was quite the interest in UFOs, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind had come out with Star Wars just a few years earlier.

Boy, were we in for a surprise, these aliens, this show, this story was not exactly that simple idea at all. "Nazis from outer space" was hinted at in Star Wars, but I can imagine that not everybody got that due to the ambiguity of it, nowhere in Star Wars does George Lucas overtly show the ‘Evil Empire’ doing anything really bad. Sure they blow up a planet, they shoot at people on board their ships, it is implied they killed Luke’s foster parents, and it is implied that Darth Vader tortures Leia, but in fact, the ‘bad guys’ really don’t do anything to show just how bad they are, they just ‘look’ weird, and it is implied they are bad. That’s not always a good thing, even though it worked for most audiences. You’re simply told visually that these ‘rebels’ are good, the empire is ‘bad’ because Darth Vader wears black and has some kind of nazi space helmet. (Sadly, the concept of the ‘evil’ empire in Star Wars has been lost on a great many people, as they often embrace all that imagery, and became obsessed with the style of outfits that the ‘evil’ empire wears—and not just for Halloween.)

Here comes a show where you are shown just how ‘bad’ and evil these aliens are.  They are essentially ‘the nazis,’ and yet they don’t have foreign accents, they look like us, and they seem like nice guys. Dark foreboding music doesn’t start playing every time the ‘Visitors’ are on screen, or whenever “John” is on screen. Even though we see the ‘Visitors’ in their ships plotting and scheming, and we get the idea that they’re really villains, the tension builds as they engage their ‘friendly takeover’ of everything from industry to politics to policing.

These aliens are fascists, and what is only vaguely implied in Star Wars about the ‘evil empire’ is that as Sinclair Lewis once implied, fascism won’t always come with the face of Adolf Hitler.  People today, as in the 1980s, still fail to realize that fascism can come without German Nazi ideology. By being ignorant of this, they ONLY expect a fascist regime to appear with literal nazi swastikas and posters of Hitler. This is not the case at all. This also allows generation after generation to allow and appease the real fascists of this world who hide using that ignorance.  While people are expecting full fledged Nazism,  and only Nazism, the real modern fascists navigate their way utilizing their influence in ways that even if it thinly disguises their real motives, since it’s not emblazoned with a big square swastika and a red flag, the people seem to think there’s nothing wrong with them.

I heard somebody on the radio the other day defend the police in Baltimore who killed a man, by saying “these people criticizing the police are acting as if these cops are all members of the KKK or something, or have some ‘hate’ websites that they regularly post racist rants…”   This is the same mentality which people still have that suggests that if somebody is not wearing a Nazi armband that they’re not and can’t be real fascists, or racists. This is a grievous error. 

The analogy in “V” is of course that people can come along wearing any kind of new uniform, with new symbolism, with new posters, new promises, and new technology and hide their fascist agendas and that people will buy it, as they did in Germany, as they did in many South American countries in the 60s and 70s, as they did recently in a couple countries in Europe, and though it is more complicated in America today, this kind of ‘tyranny cloaked in beneficence’ continues to happen again and again.  This is a ‘cautionary tale’ and not about spaceships and reptiles and laser guns at all. This is much like an extended Twilight Zone episode (of which several were about this same thing—fascists taking over America).  Of course there was the Soviet regime which classified itself as ‘communism’ in Russia and East Germany (among many other countries) which brought tyranny and stole the freedom of millions of people, which followed the dictatorial rule of Stalin, but once again, these same people who would wait for a Nazi Swastika to show up, also are the ones who cry “commie” as if this very same brand of Soviet Communism would make its way back. Which it won’t.

Today, we’ll never likely see the rise of Adolf Hitlerism, or Stalinism again, on the scale which it once was, (though just look to the Ukraine for literal ‘neo-nazis’ in power and I mean literal neo-nazis)… the modern fascist, or even a modern ‘communist’ is actually neither in the sense we’re familiar with, and branding anyone specifically a ‘commie’ or a ‘nazi’ fails to define the villain in our midst. It’s easy, it is a hyperbole which seems like the easiest way to point out what’s happening yet, it never seems to work. There are elements of the same ideology, and yet not entirely. Today in the modern world, these elements are arranged quite differently, and yet behind them this weird tendency in human nature to begin to use weird symbols, militant power, and technological statism recurs again and again, without so much as a mention of Hitler, or ‘Aryanism’ or any of the old out-dated terms.  In each new succession of tyrannical ideological power-seeking, the vocabulary adapts itself, nobody speaks of “Master Races” or ‘sub races’ anymore, they use completely updated and new terminology, which many many people buy into and defend themselves by rationalizing “this isn’t nazism,” “nowhere in there does it say we have to worship Adolf Hitler.” 

If you continue to buy into things like this, as people have now for decades, the rise of a new kind of global tyranny will come to pass, because today it includes (as did Hitler’s) many ideas of both the left and the right wing politically.  As they come to ‘solve the world’s problems’  and cater to various ‘issues’ of the left AND the right, these ‘sides’ are merely pawns in a larger game. This game is consolidation of power. There will be victims, and the ‘modern citizen’ will take up the euphemisms they’re given by this new political force, and rationalize every crime no matter how horrendous, rationalize everything from the direct execution of people, children, to the starvation and torture of people including children. It’s already happening, and by even saying this, what I just now wrote, many will have visceral reactions of “you’re helping the terrorists by saying things like that” or “you’re a dirty commie traitor” or “you’re fomenting hate and instigating rebellion.”  Yes, today, even in America. 

“V” is about all these things, and I’m not reading anything into it. Write the creator, Kenneth Johnson, and inform him of my “lies” and ask HIM, his email is available on his website, and you can email him this entire blog entry. I think he’d agree.  “V” is still relevant today, even though nobody uses a cellphone, there is no internet, and no drones in the series. It is still relevant and everything that occurs in it is still analogous to what has been happening today.  Aliens haven’t stolen the water in California, but somebody else has. While people are still claiming it’s a conspiracy theory that California is about to run out of water, people like William Shatner, the governor, Nasa Scientists and others are publicly calling for solutions and stating this fact.  This will become a recurring theme in tomorrow’s world, and if you look close and follow the money, you’ll find something shady, and not simply a drought has taken place. 

There are problems all across the world like this, and though aliens haven’t landed with signs saying ‘we’re the fascists you’ve all been waiting for,’ the people argue amongst themselves about who’s doing it, and while in some places it is as overt as it can be, other places it remains hidden, but not by ‘conspiracy’ but because of the ignorance of the people who refuse to believe that anything is wrong while they sit in their comfortable homes and apartments playing video games, buying toys on ebay, and pretending that the ‘digital age’ is some sort of stage in human evolution which is natural and automatic and helping all mankind. Euphemisms and buzzwords come in and out of their heads, and they lap it all up unquestioningly second to second.  

“We come in peace.”  “We’re helping you.” “We’re solving the world’s problems.” “We’re making the world safe.” “We’re making the environment secure.” Meanwhile, they’re murdering people with their latest technology, pretending ‘humanitarian missions,’ collecting your money to ‘solve the world’s problems’ with the latest scheme, taking your rights away to make you safe, and taking control of the ‘environment’ (real estate and natural resources) by selling it to the highest bidder.  You’re living in a tyranny which doesn’t exactly line up with Nazi Germany, and yet nearly all the motions are there. And you’re doing nothing. And they say, “what you do expect me to do, I’ve got a mortgage.”  These are the questions you’ll have to ask yourself while this all continues to get worse and worse until one day, it will look like Nazi Germany, every day, everywhere, in every country, and every town. It’s new, and it is neither communism nor nazism, it is the worst of both, and yet is neither, but the rich and powerful are still there raking in the benefits. 

Aliens aren’t going to land and save us, nor are they going to land and bring a new nazism either, if you wait for the ‘lizard people’ to be ‘revealed,’ it will be too late.  There were no drones, cellphones or iPads in “V” and neither were there any in Nazi Germany, and if you believe these things somehow actually ‘prevent’ fascism, you’re in for a surprise. You better adapt your own views regarding things like this, and develop the insight, or you will be the next victim.  One doesn’t need a ‘global conspiracy theory’ to see what has been happening, in fact it all comes down to a ‘mentality’ and not even an ‘ideology,’ for the ‘ideology’ is there just for people to rationalize their atrocities. That ‘mentality’ is simple, you want power, you want ‘your side’ to win, you want money, convenience, ease, you want to get whatever you want, and if that means writing off segments of the population who show up your delusion for what it is, you go for it. If that means destroying entire natural areas to get your profits, you do it. If it means creating entire cities, towns and countries full of poor people so you can have your profits, you do it.  If it means rallying people around fake belief systems, telling lies and spinning the truth in your favor, you do it. The problem of course is, by living like that, you’re not only a dumb neo-fascist, you’re surrounded by them, and they’ll make the same rationalizations to take you down if need be.  If you start believing in the lies of your ‘perfect system,’ your ideology, you’ll quickly discover that nobody’s following party line, and they’re all out for themselves, for the profit, every man for himself. It is self-perpetuating, and total destruction of everything is the result.