Harry Hay: Hostile Witness at HUAC

It has come to my attention that there are those who claim that Harry Hay was a "friendly" witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives back in the 1950s, which is to say, that he cooperated with anticommunist witch-hunters, implying both personal disgrace on him and motivations for his eventual departure from membership in the Communist Party USA.

This of course is untrue, though I must hasten to add, LGBT-world's long efforts to remove Hay's lifelong self-identification as a Marxist and his proud roots in the American Communist left have not helped little matters like the facts stand on their own. What is a committed, class-conscious LGBT historian to do?

Well, the record won't speak for itself, but rather than make you wait the months and years for the evidence to surface, buried in footnotes, instead I offer what follows: the full transcript from Harry Hay's testimony to HUAC. The facts will show clearly forth from the evidence: Hay was a hostile witness, repeatedly citing the 1st and 5th Amendments to the US Constitution (just like dear old Uncle Pete Seeger) in his refusal to answer questions.

***** Begin transcript from Congressional Record:

(header, p. 1851. Hay testimony, 1872-1875)

INVESTIGATION OF COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES IN THE LOS ANGELES, CALIF., AREA--PART 4

SATURDAY, JULY 2, 1955

United States House of Representatives, Subcommittee of the Committee on Un-American Activities, Los Angeles, California.

PUBLIC HEARING

A Subcommittee of the Committee on Un-American Activities met at 9:10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 518 Federal Building, Los Angeles, Calif., Hon. Clyde Doyle (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Committee members present: Representatives Clyde Doyle (chairman); Morgan M. Moulder, and Gordon H. Scherer.

Staff members present: Frank S. Tavenner, counsel, and William A. Wheeler, investigator.

Mr. Doyle: Will the committee please convene? May the record show there is a quorum present: Mr. Scherer of Ohio, Mr. Moulder of Missouri, and Mr. Doyle of California acting as chairman. Are you ready, Mr. Tavenner?

Mr. Tavenner: Yes, sir. I would like to recall Mr. Wereb at this time. Mr. Wereb was sworn yesterday.

[snip, start again at p. 1872]


Mr. Tavenner: Mr. Harry Hay.
Mr. Hay: May I beg alowance of this committee to have counsel sit on the right hand side. I have very poor hearing in the left.
Mr. Doyle: Yes, indeed. Counsel should always be in the right. Let’s adjourn for 5 minutes before you are sworn in.
(Brief recess.)
Mr. Doyle: Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. Hay: I do.
Mr. Doyle: Thank you. Let the record show that the committee reconvenes after the recess and that a legal quorum of the committee is here, Mr. Scherer, of Ohio, Mr. Moulder, of Missouri, and Mr. Doyle, of California.


TESTIMONY OF HARRY HAY, ACCOMPANIED BY COUNSEL, FRANK PESTANA

Mr. Tavenner: Will you state your name, please, sir?
Mr. Hay: My name is Harry Hay.
Mr. Tavenner: It is noted that you are accompanied by counsel. WIll councel please identify himself.
Mr. Pestana: Frank Pestana, P-e-s-t-a-n-a.
Mr. Tavenner: When and where were you born, Mr. Hay?
Mr. Hay: April 7, 1912, in Worthing, England.
Mr. Tavenner: When did you first arrive in this country?
Mr. Hay: My father and mother were American citizens at the time of my birth and the family returned to the United States at the end of 1916.
Mr. Tavenner: Therefore you are an American citizen.
Mr. Hay: Yes, sir.
Mr. Tavenner: Do you now reside in Los Angeles?
Mr. Hay: We came here to Los Angeles in 1916, and we have been here ever since.
Mr. Tavenner: What is your occupation, please, sir?
Mr. Hay: I am a production control engineer.
Mr. Tavenner: In what industry?
Mr. Hay: We make burners and boilers for basic industry.
Mr. Tavenner: Will you tell the committee, please, what your formal educational training has been?
Mr. Hay: Yes; I would say that in the beginning the position of production control engineer up until about 1947 or 1948 did not have regular university training so that my education for that is partl formal and partly applicatory in the field. I will do the best I can in that field, 6 years of grade school, 3 years of junior high school. Because I was graduated from high school before I was 14 I went through 3 years and dropped back and took 2 additional years of electives so I had 5 years of high school. Two years at Stanford; financial difficulties made it impossible for me to continue, so that in preparation for the type of work I do now, I had approximately 2 years in historical research, 1 year in record research, 1 year in market analysis, 1 year in actual practice as a foundry man, 3 years, 1 year in architectural--
Mr. Tavenner: I didn’t mean for you to go into the detail of stating your curriculum.
Mr. Hay: I suggested these things because to speak of yourself as a production control engineer without a degree sometimes seems a little strange. Would you like me to stop now?
Mr. Tavenner: If you have covered in a general way, that is sufficient. If you have not, I don’t want to limit you.
Mr. Hay: I would simply want to mention 3 years as a small tool analysis and material planning and 2 years in production planning.
Mr. Tavenner: Have you also engaged in the profession of teaching in addition to the other occupation which you mentioned?
(The witness conferred with his counsel.)
Mr Hay: Mr. Chairman, I must decline to answer that question on the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Tavenner: Have you had any training in music?
(The witness conferred with his counsel.)
Mr. Hay: I must decline to answer that question on the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Tavenner: Investigation by the committee discloses that under the schedule of classes for the winter of 1950 of the California Labor School you were an instructor of a class in music and the people’s struggle through the centuries. Did you actually teach such a course in the California Labor School?
(The witness conferred with his counsel.)
Mr. Hay: Mr. Chairman, I am compelled to answer by declining to answer your question for the reason of the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Tavenner: Do you know whether the Communist Party in Los Angeles on a county level selected those who were to teach in the California Labor School?
Mr. Hay: I beg your pardon. Is that the whole question?
Mr. Tavenner: Yes.
Mr. Hay: Would you repeat it?
Mr. Tavenner: Yes, I will try to repeat it. Do you know whether or not the Communist Party in Los Angeles on a county level selected those who were to teach in the California Labor School?
Mr. Hay: I decline to answer that for the reasons previously stated.
Mr. Tavenner: Were you given instructions by the Communist Party to conduct classes on any occasion?
Mr. Hay: I decline for the same reasons, sir.
Mr. Tavenner: Mr. Wereb, who appeared as a witness yesterday, and also this morning, stated that you had been sent by the educational director of the Communist Party in Los Angeles to the Hawthorne Club of the Communist Party to give a course of instruction. Was that an accurate statement by him?
Mr. Hay: Mr. Chairman, you are asking me to give an opinion, I believe, in this case. I wish to state that I have neither opinions nor recollections to give to stoolpigeons and their buddies on this committee.
Mr. Tavenner: Let’s put the question in a different form. Were you instructed by the educational director of the Communist Party to conduct classes in the Hawthorne group of the Communist Party?
Mr. Hay: I decline to answer that based upon the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Scherer: You called Mr. Wereb a stoolpigeon. Is anything he said about you untrue?
(The witness conferred with his counsel.)
Mr. Hay: I decline to answer that based upon the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Scherer: It certainly comes with ill grace to tag a man like Mr. Wereb as you have and then refuse to say whether what he said about you was untrue or not.
Mr. Hay: Mr. Chairman, this is your opinion. You may keep it.
Mr. Scherer: It certainly is and it is opinion founded on a little testimony and a little experience on this committee.
Mr. Hay: Mr. Chairman, some of the altercation that went on with the last witness-- I might suggest a question in that direction.
Mr. Doyle: May I have that statement? What do you say, please?
Mr. Hay: In effect, Mr. Chairman, what I said a moment ago was that some of the altercation concerning the last witness in this chair might suggest a difference of opinion on the matter.
Mr. Doyle: Altercation? I wasn’t aware that there was any altercation with the last witness.
Mr. Scherer: I think I know what he means.
Mr. Tavenner: Mr. Hay, did you in January or February of 1947 conduct a Marxist school in Los Angeles?
Mr. Hay: I decline to answer that question based on the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Tavenner: Were you a member of the Communist Party in 1947?
Mr. Hay: I decline for the same reasons, sir.
Mr. Tavenner: Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. Hay: No.
Mr. Tavenner: Were you a member of the Communist Party in 1950?
(The witness conferred with his counsel.)
Mr. Hay: I decline to state on the first and fifth amendments, sir.
Mr. Tavenner: Were you a member of the Communist Party in 1954?
Mr. Hay: I decline to state on the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Tavenner: Were you a member of the Communist Party yesterday?
Mr. Hay: I decline to state on the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Tavenner: Well, is it just on Saturdays that you are not a member of the COmmunist Party?
(The witness conferred with counsel.)
Mr. Hay: I decline to answer that, Mr. Chairman, on the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Tavenner: Were you a member of the Communist Party this morning when you entered this hearing room?
(The witness conferred with his counsel.)
Mr. Hay: I decline to state on the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Tavenner: Is it a plan of the Communist Party that when a COmmunist Party member is called to testify before this committee that he is to deny membership for the period of time he is on the witness stand?
(The witness conferred with his counsel.)
Mr. Hay: On the advice of counsel I decline to answer that one on the first and fifth amendments.
Mr. Tavenner: I have no further questions.
Mr. Doyle: Any questions?
Mr. Scherer: No questions.
Mr. Moulder: No questions.
Mr. Doyle: No questions. Thank you very much.
(Whereupon the witness was excused.)

Pier Paolo Pasolini, "Salò," and the Fights for LGBT Marriage and Military Service

by Daniel Frontino Elash
Sat. 13 March 2010, NYC



I've begun rewatching the VERY HARD TO WATCH (fair warning!) Pasolini film Salò, or, 120 Days of Sodom, and I’ve been noticing some things in it. Here I would like to discuss what Pasolini as a gay intellectual and committed Communist might still have to say to us about the struggles for LGBT marriage and for LGBT inclusion in armed forces ‘service’ under a totalitarian system of consumerist-capitalism disguised as a 'tolerant' liberal-democratic one. But first, as is unavoidable when discussing this film, some background.

Based on the Marqius de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, Pasolini in Salò updates the historical context of that work to the last days of fascism in Italy, i.e. the dual title. After the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943 and the fall of Mussolini’s government in Rome, the fascists regrouped briefly around a rump government located at Salò, in northern Italy. Pasolini simultaneously adheres rather strictly to the actual structure of the de Sade book, which is comprised in parts of schematic notes because it was written in prison (not unlike so much of Gramsci’s work, mind you). Pasolini calls the respective sections of the film version ‘circles’ (girone) as in Dante’s “circles of Hell,” further tying French Enlightenment philosophical literature to Italian ‘high Catholic’ (if you will) philosophical literature, with his own synthetic analysis. Furthermore, Pasolini takes the opportunity to use all this as a basis to launch forth a devastating critique of Italian ‘neocapitalism,’ which is to say, the introduction of American-style consumerism in Italy after the war, particularly in the 1960s and ‘70s. (You can read more of his thoughts on that process in the translations at this blog, below-- but in a word, he called it "genocide").

The story itself is appalling, and the film, rather than sparing the viewer, plays a bunch of sly filmic tricks not only to gross the audience out, but also to make the viewer complicit in the action on the screen, much of which itself is voyeuristic. A stated goal of his was to make an ‘undigestible’ film, in part a response to the commercialization of his previous few films, the so-called Trilogy of Life('The Decameron', 'Canturbury Tales,' and '1001 Nights'), which he formally abjured in a piece I hope to post a translation of soon. That of course also gives an added kick to the anticonsumerist thrust of the piece (which is rendered even more hilarious in the context of all the screaming of ‘Mangia!’ done in the coprophagic scenes, etc). Pasolini’s rage and despair is in full view in this film, at the height of his formidable expressive and semiotic powers, and with less understanding of the work, one might find some relief mingled in with the rage and despair over Pasolini’s death that he never got far in a Trilogy of Death. (If memory serves, and for what it's worth, one of his next films was to be about Saint Paul in modern America.) However, this film particularly, and Pasolini’s thinking generally at the time of his murder, are as prescient as they are over-the-top, and with a better understanding of what he was trying to say and why, his murder can be considered nothing less than a direct counter-blow against humanity’s aspirations to be free from totalitarianism. Please, gentle reader, bear that in mind if you decide to brave an attempt to view this film, and by all means, turn it off if you have to. It is made to be effectively unendurable.

This is not all Pasolini’s fault-- the text he chose by which to say this thing, the one by de Sade, is in itself a scandal. de Sade, of course, was a cornerstone thinker of the French Enlightenment. Often perceived as a defender of aristocracy, because of his title and because of the absolute power and vicious tendencies (i.e. ‘sadism’) of his ‘protagonists,’ effective argument can nevertheless be made that de Sade was a founder of the general ideology upon which is based the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which is to say, of a democratic republicanism whose powers are ‘checked and balanced’ by the rule of money. Sound familiar? Good. A nice summary of the debate may be found in the Peter Weiss play generally known as Marat/Sade, which you can find in both book and movie form. I suggest the film, it's a rollicking good time. Either way, definitely some critical insight there, to all this.

The gist of the story is that a small group of elite-ruler types procures a bunch of impoversihed adolescents, secures them in a remote location, and then collectively debauches, degrades, tortures, and ultimately kills them in a series of ‘sadistic’ orgies and other rituals ruled purely by the whims of the elite. This is a rich source of Pasolini’s semiotic work in Salò, because he class-consciously reassigns the roles to make clear who he thinks the various demographics are in his society and times, while stripping the story of none of the absolutism it was originally intended to advocate. Among other things, what that means is that the historical range and philosophical complexity of what Pasolini has attempted to, well, synthesize here, runs centuries in scope. He does it in two hours, in language enough of which most people can understand, on one level or another. No wonder he’s often considered one of the two or three most important thinkers Italy produced on the 20th century.

Anyway, on to some of my own observations on rewatching parts of this movie, which is to say, this is not a final or thorough analysis of any sort, just some notes, so, okay? Okay.

I find Salò remarkable for the uses to which Pasolini puts what we would now call ‘LGBT’ material. There is a lot of attention paid to gender and to gender transgression in this movie, and indeed much of that traces back not to Pasolini but to de Sade. For example, the positionality of gay males in the movie is invariably either as ruler, or as intended degradation of the victims (though, interestingly, not quite all the victims take it that way). de Sade’s agenda aside, one might readily wonder if that’s simple homophobia (which would have to be ‘internalized’ in Pasolini’s case, but he rather celebrated gayness all through his life and works, taking a lot of crap for it, so I think that would be a feeble argument), or else perhaps it's an expression of a phenomenon with us today, in which the ability to express homosexuality is in fact a privilege of the relatively well-off, one not enjoyed by most of the poor of the world, who are much more vulnerable to violence. Where de Sade saw pre-Darwinian justification of the rule of the ‘strong’ over the ‘weak,’ Pasolini instead seems to point to the class structure in which the modern LGBT-world, if you will, expresses its aspirations. The latter view would better fit with Pasolini's thoughts on the student uprisings of 1968, which were written earlier than when this film was made, and also I think point to the real gist of what Pasolini saw as the logical results of an LGBT movement modeling itself on the pursuit of 'consumer'-based rights in a society of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie: it would become a means by which capitalist hegemony might be both extended and projected, and by which interests that might otherwise oppose the regime for its flagrant ‘crimes against humanity’ would instead orient people towards seeing their interests as laying upward in the social hierarchy-- to become collusive in the system of oppression, in exchange for gaining a slightly better position within it, with no real power to alter its course or consequences.

I think of that one young male victim in Salò who decided he rather liked the Duke sliming on him, as it were-- unlike the President's 'bride.' The Duke's boy wasn't all like 'eww,' ya might say, he was more like, 'oh, daddy!' Was this victim merely opportunistic? But there are moments when he seems to truly offer and appreciate the reciprocation of man-man affection. Given the victim’s class origins, is this simply his first chance to express his inner feelings, and it's so nice that he’s willing to endure the circles of hell around him to get it? In fact, all of the guards go along with functional bisexuality, but they are not just victims, they are also perpetrators. Yet I wonder about the pure-victim sissy boy who isn't so victimized, at least for a time. What else might he possibly have seen, where all of his cohort only saw horror visited upon themselves. This makes me think of all sorts of things, everything from the whole ‘daddy-son’ nature of much contemporary urban gay culture, in which older men look for the cutest young ‘twinks’ their money can buy, and newly-arrived, pretty, young gay men seek out a ‘daddy’ that can secure for them a relatively upper-class lifestyle in exchange for affection rather than work. Stonewall was indeed a riot, but that was a long time ago, and there haven't been so many since-- let alone to the same effect.

It also makes me think of the LGBT movement’s strategy of equality via the ‘opportunity’ to ‘serve’ in the U.S. military, particularly given the routine atrocities that have partially come to light and partially been suppressed from public view, in the course of the Iraq War. Just what is LGBT-world fighting for the ‘equality’ to participate in, as perpetrators and not just victims? And in exchange for what, a chance to have one’s continued existence tolerated by sadistic and absolute rulers, in the midst of their untrammeled criminal debauches? Hmm.

Along those lines, on reviewing the film, I was struck by how much use is made of marriage ceremonies. Obviously and again, some of this goes back to de Sade, who had very definite and contrarian ideas about marriage, but did not oppose the institution as such (see for example Philosophy in the Bedroom). Nor am I frankly sure how much of the permutations Pasolini exhibits are his versus de Sade’s ideas, but Pasolini's presentation of marriage is nevertheless rigorous. First, we have a nonconsensual wedding of a boy victim and a girl victim, which they are forced to begin to consummate for an audience, until the rulers intervene for their own ends. The state forcing and interrupting marriages for its own pleasures? Then, there’s the scene where the male rulers all show up in high drag, and another victim boy is forced into a nonconsensual wedding with one of the rulers, in which the male victim is dressed as the bride and the male perpetrator as the groom. The wedding ‘feast’ becomes an amazing, multi-layered critique of marriage and consumerism within a system of arbitrary and total power, and of course, the nature of the fetish involved at that banquet leaves little doubt what the auteur(s) thought the whole thing tasted and smelled like.

Again, what is the predictable outcome of a fight for state-sanctioned LGBT marriage, in the context of a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie? Again, what is the nature of the table at which LGBT marriage would sit, and what depredations would it be willing to tolerate so long as it had a spot slightly above the atrocities? Marriage is particularly interesting for being undeniably and deeply a ritual of property transfer and holding. As a lifelong class-conscious radical and a partisan of the oppressed, I have to say that this time around, I was as struck by what Pasolini had to say with and about marriage, as I was last time I viewed Salò by what Pasolini had to say with and about the non-marriage, furtive, love-and-solidarity relationships people forged in order to attempt to survive their respective and collective ordeals. No doubt, I was prepared for that in part by the ‘gay marriage’ debate, and so was able to compare Pasolini’s two treatments of the ostensibly same relationship, with and without the sanction of the state representing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. One may well wonder whether the comparison was intentionally or unintentionally prescient, but have a look (if you can bear it) and there it is.

Obviously, more can be drawn from Salò and compared to how things are a few generations further into the consumer-capitalist dictatorship Pasolini characterized as ‘a ruin of ruins.’ But tonight, I think it will suffice for various of my purposes to think aloud about what the film has to say to us today regarding that to which the LGBT agenda in the USA has effectively been reduced: marriage and military service. I will surely have more to say on this film, either specifically or integrated into other material, as I delve further into Pasolini’s thinking with two mission-critical tools I didn’t have ten to twelve years ago, when I first started paying attention to him: a commitment to the Communist cause, and some kind of functional fluency in Italian.

Unhappy Youth [I giovanni infelici], by Pier Paolo Pasolini

One of the most mysterious themes of tragic Greek theater is the predestination of the children to pay for the guilt of their parents.

It doesn’t matter if the kids are good, innocent, pious-- if their parents are guilty, the children must be punished.

It’s the chorus-- a democratic chorus-- that is declared the depository of such truth, and it sets it forth without introducing it and without illustrating it, as if it seemed natural.

I confess that I always accepted this theme in Greek theater as something foreign to my knowledge, happening “somewhere else” and in “another time.” Not without a certain scholastic ingenuity, I always considered such themes as absurd and, in turn, ingenuous, “anthropologically” ingenuous.

But now the moment has arrived in my life in which I’ve had to admit to belonging inescapably to the generation of parents. Inescapably, because the children are not only born, they are not only grown up, but they have joined the age of reason and their destiny, therefore, begins to be uneludably that which it must be, rendering them adults.

[...]

I have something general, immense, obscure to rebuke the children for. Something that remains outside of the verbal, manifesting itself irrationally, in existence, in a “test of sentiments.” Now since I-- ideal father, historical father-- condemn the children, it’s natural that, consequently, I accepted, in some way the idea of their punishment.

For the first time in my life, it turns out thus to liberate in my conscience, by means of an intimate and personal mechanism, that terrible, abstract fatality of the Athenian chorus that reconfirms as natural the “punishment of the children.”

Only that the chorus, gifted with so much immemorial and profound wisdom, added that the children were punished for the “guilt of their parents.”

Well then, neither exists a moment to admit it, to accept, that is, personally such a guilt. If I condemn the children (because of a cessation of love for them) and therefore presume their punishment, I don’t have the least doubt that it is all my fault. In the father. [In quanto padre.] Insofar as I’m one of the parents. One of the parents that has turned out to be responsible, first of fascism, then of a clerico-fascist regime pretending to be democratic, and, in the end, have accepted the new power, the power of consumers, the last of the ruins, the ruin of ruins.

The guilt of the parents that the children must pay for is thus [that of] “fascism,” be it in its archaic forms or in its absolutely new forms-- new without possible equivalents in the past?

It is difficult for me to admit that the “guilt” might be this. Maybe also for private and subjective reasons. I, personally, have always been antifascist, and I have never accepted the new power which in reality Marx used to write about, prophetically, in the [Communist] Manifesto, believing he spoke of the capitalism of his time. It seems to me that there might be something conformistic and too logical-- that is, unhistorical-- to identify with this guilt.

[...]

So, the kids that we see around us are “punished” kids, “punished,” for one thing, by their unhappiness, and then, in the future, by who knows what, by which slaughters (this is our irrepressible feeling).

But they are children “punished” for our guilt, that is for the guilt of the parents. Is it fair? It was this, really, for a modern reader, the question, without an answer, of the dominant motive for Greek theater.

Well yes, it is fair. The modern reader has seen in fact an experience that renders it finally, and tragically, comprehensible in the affirmative-- that which used to seem so blindly irrational and cruel-- of the democratic chorus of ancient Athens: that is, that the children must pay for the guilt of their parents. In fact the children that aren’t freed of the guilt of the parents are unhappy, and there is no more decisive and imponderable sign of culpability than unhappiness. It would be too easy and, in a historical and political sense, immoral, if the children were to be exonerated [guistificati] of that which there is in them that’s ugly, repellent, inhuman-- from the fact that their parents have been mistaken. The hereditary negative paternity can half justify it, but for the other half they themselves are responsible. They are not innocent children. Sad and culpable, but so are the children. And it’s fair that they should also be punished for that half of the guilt they cannot otherwise free themselves from.

But the problem always remains of what might be in reality such “guilt” of the parents.

It’s this that substantially, in the end, matters here. It’s much more important than, having provoked such an atrocious condition for the children, and consequently such an atrocious punishment, it must be treated as a grave sin. Maybe the gravest sin committed by parents in all of human history. And these parents are us. Something that seems incredible to us.

As I have already emphasized, moreover, we must free ourselves of the idea that such guilt might be identified with fascism old and new, that is with effective capitalist power. The children that are being punished so cruelly by their mode of being (and in the future, certainly, by something more objective and more terrible), are also children of antifascists and communists.

Thus fascists and antifascists, bosses and revolutionaries, have a common guilt. We all do. As much as we all [tutti quanti noi], in fact, down to today, with subconscious racism, when we have spoken specifically of parents and children, have always intended to speak of bourgeois parents and children.

History is their history.

The people, according to us, have their own history apart, archaic, in which the children, simply, as anthropological study of ancient cultures has learned, reincarnate and repeat the parents.

Today, all that has changed: when we speak of parents and children, if for parents we continue always to mean bourgeois parents, for children we might mean bourgeois children or proletarian children. The apocalyptic picture that I have outlined above, of the kids, means [the] bourgeoisie and [the] people.

The two histories are thus united: and this is the first time that this has happened in the history of humanity.

Such unification has come about under the sign and by the will of consumer society, of “development.” It cannot be said that the antifascists in general and in particular the communists had really opposed themselves [si siano veramente opposti] to a similar unification, whose character is totalitarian-- even if its repressivity is not archaically police-based (and if it never resorts to a false permissiveness).

The guilt of the parents is not therefore the violence of power, fascism. It’s also this: first, the removal of conscience, on the part of we antifascists, of old fascism, the convenient self-liberation from our profound intimacy (Panella) with [fascism] (having considered the fascists “our cretin brothers,” as it’s put in a phrase by Sforza recorded by Fortini); second, and overall, the acceptance-- so much guiltier than it is incomprehensible-- of the degrading violence and of the true, immense genocides of the new fascism.

Why so much complicity with old fascism and why so much acceptance of the new fascism?

Because it is-- and here we are at the point-- a guiding idea sincerely or insincerely common to all, the idea that the worst bad thing in the world were poverty and that therefore the culture of the poor classes should be substituted with the culture of the dominant class.

In other words our parental guilt would consist in this: in the belief that history were not and may not be able to be other than bourgeois history.


by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Lettere luterane, 8th ed. (Trento: Einaudi, 2007 [1976]), 5-12.
Translation by Daniel Frontino Elash, February-March 2010, NYC.

The enduring explanatory powers of Pier Paolo Pasolini...

in the form of a translation, excerpted from

Apology (to “Il PCI ai giovanni!” [“Communist Party of Italy to the Young!”])
by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968
translation by Daniel Frontino Elash
from “Empirismo eretico” [Heretical Empiricism], 2 ed. (Rome: Garzanti, 1991 [1972]), 156-159.


...until and including my generation, the youth had before itself the bourgeoisie as an “object,” a “separate” world (separated from them, because, naturally, I speak of the excluded youth, excluded by trauma, and let’s take as a typical trauma that of 19-year-old Lenin who had seen his brother hanged by the forces of order.) We were able to watch the bourgeoisie, thus, objectively, from the outside (even if there were horrible implications to this, history, school, church, anguish); the way to watch the bourgeoisie objectively was offered to us, according to a typical scheme, from the gaze placed on it by that which wasn’t bourgeois: workers or peasants (by those that would therefore be called Third World). For this reason we, young intellectuals of twenty or thirty years ago (and, by class privilege, students) were able to be antibourgeois also outside of the bourgeoisie: by means of the view offered us by other social classes (revolutionary or rebellious as they may have been).

We have grown up, therefore, with the idea of revolutions (Russia ’17, China, Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam). Consequently we have made, from the traumatic hatred for the bourgeoisie, also a correct perspective in which to integrate our action, in a non-evasive future (at least partially, because we’re all a bit sentimental).

For a youth of today the thing is placed differently, for him [or her] it is much more difficult to watch the bourgeoisie objectively by means of the gaze of another social class. Because the bourgeoisie is winning, it is making the workers bourgeois, in part, and ex-colonial peasants in part. In sum, by means of neocapitalism, the bourgeoisie is becoming the human tradition. Those born in this entropy cannot in any way metaphysically get out of it. It’s finished. This is why I provoke the young: it is presumably the last generation that sees workers and peasants, the next generation will not see inside itself [anything] but bourgeois entropy.

Now I, personally... and publicly... am too traumatized by the bourgeoisie, and my hatred of it is by now pathological. I can hope neither for anything from it, nor that from it will come antibodies to itself (as happens in entropy. The antibodies that come from American entropy have life and reason to be only because in America there are the Blacks, who have for a young American the function that poor workers and peasants have had for our youth).

Given my “total” lack of faith in the bourgeoisie, I resist, therefore, the idea of civil war that, ideally given the student explosion, the bourgeoisie would fight against itself. Already the young of this generation are, I would say physically, much more bourgeois than us. Therefore? Do I not have the right to provoke them? What other mode is otherwise given me in relation to them, if not thus? ... To conclude, therefore, the students of today, belonging to a “totality”... are strictly unified and enclosed; they aren’t therefore in a position, I believe, to understand on their own that when they are defined as “petit-bourgeois” in their self-criticisms, they commit an error as elementary as it is unconscious; in fact, the petit-bourgeois of today no longer have peasant grandparents, but great-grandparents and maybe great-great-grandparents; they haven’t seen an anti-bourgeois revolutionary experience (of workers) pragmatically (and from that [come] the inane attempts at research on worker-comrades); it’s been experimentally tried, instead, the first type of quality of neocapitalist life, with its problems of total industrialization. The petit-bourgeoisie of today, therefore, is no longer that which was defined in the Marxist classics such as in Lenin. (Such as, for example, today’s China is no longer the China of Lenin, and therefore to cite the example of “China” from Lenin’s pamphlet on imperialism would be foolish.) Instead the youth of today (that might be hurried then to abandon the horribly classist denomination of students, and to become young intellectuals) don’t realize just how repellent were the petit-bourgeoisie of today; and that the workers might be conformed to such a model (despite the persistent optimism of the Communist canon), as might the poor peasants (despite their mythicization on the part of Marcusian and Fanonian intellectuals, including me, but ante litteram [ahead of one’s time]).

To such a Manichean conscience of the evil bourgeoisie the students can therefore add (to recapitulate):

a) reanalyzing - outside thus of sociology like the classics of Marxism - the petit-bourgeoisie that they (and we) are today.

b) abandoning their own ontological self-definition and “student” tautology and accepting simply to be “intellectuals.”

c) using the last possible choice - on the eve of the identification of bourgeois history as human history - in favor of that which is not bourgeois (what can they do anymore only substituting the force of reason for the traumatic personal and public reasons that I have hinted at, an extremely difficult operation, this, that implies a “genial” self-analysis of itself, outside of all conventions).

Soviet Film Preservation Project-- ready to roll!

Comrades in Berkeley CA today loaded a U-Haul truck with what had been the film library of the Berkeley, CA 'Soviet-American Friendship Society' for transportation to New York City, where they will be preserved, digitized, and distributed under the auspices of the U.S. Friends of the Soviet People, the Northstar Compass, and the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People. This project has also benefitted from the comradely support of both leadership and membership elements within the Communist Party USA.



Truck driving provided by yours truly :-) Watch here or at my Faceborg for updates from the road, insh'allah...

By the way... in the course of today's efforts, I found a video cover to 'Hunt for Red October,' which is now a dashboard icon!

"U.S. Friends of the Soviet People" Commits to Soviet Film Project, Fundraising

Last December [2008], comrades in the San Francisco Bay Area regained possession of what had been the film library of the Berkeley branch of the Soviet-American Friendship Society (SAFS), consisting of some 300 16-millimeter films. About a third have been exposed to open air for a long time, and are seriously degraded as a result. The rest are in good condition. A SAFS catalog from 1986 indicates a representative sample of all film categories exists in the Berkeley cache.

The goal of this project is to save these Soviet-era films from disintegration, and to produce DVDs and online content from them, assuring them life well into the 21st Century. New York-area FSP members have committed to take on this work, and comrades in Toronto have pledged an initial $4000 towards transportation, digitization, and related costs to see this project through to completion. This is about half of projected total costs, the rest of which has yet to be raised. Comrades in San Francisco will be raising funds as well.

In order to successfully complete this project, USFSP is also seeking an inexpensive or donated space in which to conduct the work, as well as volunteers willing to help run the machines. Please contact us if you can assist us in any of these ways.

The USFSP has committed to a sustained fundraising drive in its newsletter in support of this project. Your donation now will be critical to the success of our collective efforts to preserve these memories in film of the USSR! Please see the last page of this newsletter for information on sending funds to the USFSP, and please be sure to mark your donation as intended for the Soviet Film Project.

The USFSP has committed to a sustained fundraising drive in its newsletter in support of this project. Your donation now will be critical to the success of our collective efforts to preserve these memories in film of the USSR! Please see the last page of this newsletter for information on sending funds to the USFSP, and please be sure to mark your donation as intended for the Soviet Film Project.

How to contact USFSP:
U.S. Friends of the Soviet People
P. O. Box 140434, Staten Island NY, 10314-0434
Phone: 718-667-4740

LGBT Social Progress in China Braves Muddled NYT Coverage

According to today's NY Times website, Chinese Contestant Enters Worldwide Gay Pageant. His name is Xiaodai Muyi and, I would add, he's hella cute!



The contradictions in the NYT article are, however, dizzying. They've really been stressing that the Chinese government closed down the Chinese pageant, yet X.M. was obviously allowed to fly to Norway to compete for the global title. Also, according to the same article, China decriminalized gay sex in 1997-- years before the USA did. The article also discusses how X.M. is muslim, and more or less a professional gay activist in Xinjiang, where his main obstacle is not politics but religion. But isn't the official story that the Chinese Communists oppress religion?

It sounds to me like social progress is being made on LGBT stuff in China, comparable to that being made in the USA, both of which lag behind Europe. It also sounds to me like we've been fed a lot of bullshit on China for a long time, such that reporting of reality conflicts with and has to be shoehorned into the official narrative framework.

All that said, and for the record, I stand ready to heed the call of duty, and personally investigate the situation faced by gay Chinese hotties looking for dates in various parts of China, the moment funding is secured. Ni hao, comrade! :-)

Latest in my mini-Garrelfest: Les amants réguliers (eng: Regular Lovers)

This one is far less... sexually transgressive than Louis Garrel's other works discussed on this blog, dear readers-- which is okay, because: 1. his dad Philippe is the director, and that would be really weird; and 2. this film makes up for it in high-quality French-leftie content. Think of it-- hot, brooding French men and women stare at each other, and the camera (and that means you, dear viewer), in long, lingering shots. Street battles from May '68 in Paris are lovingly recreated, anarchists and communists make common cause in basement meetings and smoke opium together in art lofts. For three screen hours! Never mind the 90 minute rule-- in this case, the rule is meant to be broken-- just like that one about looking directly at the camera-- and all in glorious black and white!

I wondered aloud, elsewhere I think, what relation this would have to Bertolucci's I sognatori (eng: The Dreamers, also starring Garrel with Eva Green and that kinda-cute white boy who played Tommy Gnosis in Hedwig and the Angry Inch)-- which covered pretty much the same subject, but in a much more interiorized setting and presentation, if somewhat more perversely. Much to my delight, P. Garrel has a main character directly invoke not only Bernardo Bertolucci, directly to the camera by name, but also, the sacred name of Pasolini rolls directly off Louis Garrel's romance-language tongue. Cinegasm!

All of that is a lot of satisfaction, from both a political and a cultural view, and shih! The only thing that could have made it more perfect, reality notwithstanding, would have been anachronistic soundtrack contributions by Noir Désir.

Here's a dream-sequence clip from the film:

Kostja Ullmann

I first noticed smoking-hot German actor Kostja Ullmann in the queer-twink-jock classic, Sommersturm (eng: Summer Storm), playing the ultimately sympathetic but meanwhile knee-jerk "I'm not a fag" best buddy/unrequited-lover. You can see the trailer here:



Obviously, Ullmann is of this new, probably "straight" but certainly not "narrow" variety of, well, whatever passes for an up-and-coming star, anymore. So, as is my wont, I went looking for whatever else he's been in, and today this hidden gem arrived from Netflix, called Verfolgt (eng: Punish Me).



You can expect the same, narrowing semi-slander in the reviews you see creeping into coverage of Ma mère. Punish Me is less transgressive in content, but perhaps even more so in conception. 16 year old Jan, a Jimmie Dean type truant with Sal Mineo's drop-dead looks, is released from punkdom to the tutelage of 51 year old probation officer Elsa (played by Maren Kroymann). She's supposed to teach him a thing or two, but it turns out the bridge transports both ways. In a plot twist reminiscent of Teorema meets Ma mère, somewhere between tasteful and boundary-pushing, Jan seduces Elsa into a sadomasochistic relationship in which the precise meaning of the title not only becomes apparent, but also is actively explored in several of its sociological ramifications. As a true depiction of paraphilia (which is to say that sexual arousal becomes separated from actual sexual activity, in the form of a "fetish,"), no actual sex occurs-- this film is about internal life, not pornography. Though I can't help but add, the full rear nudity of Ullmann certainly lends adequate prurience, sui generis, to enter this one in the "Perv away!" files.

Trailer:



PSes: Oh, did I mention: 1. glorious black and white!; 2. the kid, i.e. the masochist, emphatically initiates the whole thing; 3. bigotry and oppression vs. harmless but transgressive sexuality figures prominently in the story... just like in Sommersturm. Also, Kostja is devastatingly hot, and obviously cool.

Extra credit: what is the nature of the system in which this kind of relationship makes sense?

Hey, there be a comments section, discuss.

Hadouken! in Manhattan, 2/8/10....

You can find pix of the show by clicking through here. The html isn't willing to display pix here from FB, so until I work something out @Photobucket or whatever, the click-thru will hafta do.

It was an early show at the Mercury Lounge, on Houston St. in Manhattan, and the first time I'd been there since breaking my ankle at the Germs show last summer. It was good to be back :-) The opening band was hand-distributing CDs whose cover design clearly showed some New Order aesthetic influence, which I didn't particularly note in the music itself. They were okay, but not enough of a distraction to prevent figuring out how to get a tab at the bar.

Hadouken!, though fresh off the plane from their surging popularity in the UK, were clearly a bit nervous about gigging the USA, according to James due to our immense national geographic size. Maybe they're just friendly anyway, but it certainly put them in the mood to be super-nice to their audience. So, if you catch them on this tour, you've a good chance of getting to say 'hi' and hang out with the band for a bit.

It was a lot of fun to see how excited they got as audience members sang along with some of their songs, like "Turn the Lights Out" and "Get Smashed Gate Crash." The latter in particular is worth noting for those of you who think you're still too punk to enjoy music with electronics in it, as the chorus goes something like "Welcome to our world / We are the wasted youth / And we are your future, too..." Dude. It's like an 80s synth band had a love child with Black Flag, or something.

A good time was had by all-- and I even met another visibly-lefty fella, who'd come all the way up from Baltimore, in this weather, to catch Hadouken!'s maiden tour of the USA. Who know what the future holds, but it reminded me of all those stories about some dozens of people at those first Sex Pistols show. Don't be one of the thousands claiming you were there later, because it turned out to be a significant moment in pop-musical culture, just because you were too lame to go out on a Monday night. Bring a buddy, s/he will thank u later.

In short, it was the best $10 show I've been to in quite a while. Good times!

PS: Hadouken! has a new album out, Hadouken! For the Masses.

Coming up next.... Hadouken!

...in one of, if not their first-ever US shows, tomorrow night, NYC!

Here's some thing to look at:

Oh those wacky, wacky, transgressive French....

I've shamelessly been developing my... infatuation with French film-star hottie
Louis Garrel-- and not just for the dark curly hair and the sexy moles. Though, the royal we must insist, none of that's the least of it, either.

No, there's much more to this one, as becomes immediately apparent in his work opposite
Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet and
Ludivine Sagnier, among other hotties, in Chansons d'Amour (or Love Songs, if one simply must have it en anglais). See the trailer here:

As if a Parisien-Bretagne menage-a-lot weren't enough to, um, pique the prurient interest (and it is, dear reader), my subsequent inquiry into his work, much but not all of what I could find for typically-leftie-French-intellectual director Christophe Honoré, turned up perv gold!

Ma Mère, based on a book by 20th century sex-and-philosophy frekazoid Georges Bataille (and you know what happens when the French start mixing that kind of stuff together), finds Garrel not only playing the (often naked) (frequently cumming) school lad returned to his pervy parents' summer home out on some island. Mom, as referenced in the title and played stone cold by
Isabelle Huppert, decides it's time her son weren't so. damn. innocent. But she (and several others) get more than they bargained for, and sexual Bolshevism and its attendant psycho-sexual degeneracies ensue. Good times!

Don't let reviewers' preoccupations with, um, the sins of Oedipus fool you, this-here's a many-course feast of the French tendency to, as one wag put it, philosophize in the bedroom.

Extra special mention, before the trailer: Garrel, as Pierre, doing poolside pushups in only short-shorts and his Vans!
Sweet twinkie Jebus, a visual feast!

Now available on Netflix! So, okay, perv away:

Celebrating the proto-5th International-- in short, the Best. Blog. Ever.

Don't know much about Latin America, but yer sick of all the noize about little brown 'Commie' nations hating our freedoms? Never fear! The Bolivarian Revolution is reaching out to you... at BoRev dot net.

Oh don't worry, this isn't some preachy, pedantic site filled with bespectacled 'expert' whities and mind-numbing statistical tables. Just painfully plain facts reasserted every time the lie machine spits out more garbage, and all the snarkasm you can endure.

Really, I've spent hours and hours reading through the archived months, and it remains funny, spot-on, and even kind of... daresay, liberating.

That number again! BoRev dot net... check it out.

(h/t Peter for the clue)

Yeah... blogging.

It's like, postfaceborg, except from years ago...