Amistad Forum
Jennifer Wynter
American University's School of Communication has put together a forum
on Steven Spielberg's film "Amistad," The forum will discuss the
historical validity of the film, as well as its value as an educational
resource and teaching tool. Panelists include Donna Britt from The
Washington Post, Pat Dowell from National Public Radio, Iyunolu Osagie,
a Penn State Professor and an expert on the Amistad story, Chris Stern
from Variety Magazine, and Tony Gittens, founder and director of the
Washington International Film Festival.
The forum will take place on Monday, January 26, at 7:30PM , at the Kay
Spiritual Life Center at American University. The event is free and
open to the public, and a reception will follow the forum. For more
information or directions to campus, call (202)885-2074 or visit our
website at www.soc.american.edu
l...@tiac.net
Thank you for your interest in The Amistad Black Viewer's Guide. It is
available in newsletter form for copying and distribution. Send your
mailing address to l...@tiac.net and we will send one to you.
See also:
THE BLACKS AND JEWS NEWSPAGE
http://www.tiac.net:80/users/lhl/index.html
____________________________________________________________________
The Amistad: The Black Viewer's Movie Guide
Revised - Updated 1/10/98
When one takes to heart the Dick Gregory adage – that Hollywood has
never spent a penny to entertain us – one can more
accurately view Steven Spielberg's Amistad. Bro. Gregory, of course,
meant that every flickering image has a purpose and
function to maintain the balance of power for White people. The Amistad
is a textbook example of this well-established principle.
The following is a guide for the conscious viewing of this pernicious
production. Motown's Norman Whitfield provides the rule of
thumb: "People, believe half of what you see, Oh, and none of what you
hear."
The Amistad was a Spanish slaver which was forcibly taken over by its
former cargo, 53 African Black people. The Connecticut
coast guard apprehended the "mutineers" and imprisoned them on the
charge of murder. The movie purports to describe the legal
battle that ensued all the way to the Supreme Court – spreading lies
with every scene.
1) The purpose of Amistad is made clear even before the movie begins.
Indeed, in the promotional movie poster, Spielberg
exonerates the White man in the crime of Black slavery. Above the title
is the movie's ambiguous operating premise: "Freedom
cannot be given. It is our right at birth. But there are moments in time
when it must be taken." If freedom MUST be taken,
Spielberg reasons, then, of course, the takers are within their rights
and even have a responsibility to participate in the slave trade.
2) When the Amistad crew is subdued and the ship taken over by the
Africans, the first filmed act is a primitive battle between two
African rivals who yell at one another while angrily vying for power.
They do not appear to have the ability to strategize and
communicate among themselves about their opportunity to refocus on the
common need to escape. This theme of tribalism and
savagery is one that is constantly reinforced throughout the film. In a
scene where the White attorney first visits the captives in their
dungeon, the Africans have staked-out "territory," presumably along
tribal lines. The subtle message is that these Africans deserve
to be slaves. This concept is central to the movie's true purpose. The
"Americanized" Blacks (who are never explicitly identified as
slaves) are starkly different in carriage and comportment than the
"savage" Africans. The "Americans" are refined and even genteel,
festooned in the British style with powdered wigs and ruffles. Though of
the servant class, they are well-treated and content and
pointedly "civilized." They are in training, one is led to assume, to be
like Morgan Freeman–a "free" negro of means. This
image-juxtapositioning by Spielberg is central to a pro-slavery argument
advanced by Whites in the mid-1800's. Are not Africans
better off in slavery in America than as spear-chuckers in the jungle?
Spielberg's answer is: "Clearly, Yes."
3) The Amistad Africans themselves are almost immediately turned into
props by Spielberg's script. Once these Africans are
deposited into the dungeon, the rest of the Black Holocaust is played
out in courtrooms and parlors among White people. They
alone have the power to determine the fate of the Africans regardless of
the desires of the Africans themselves. This makes White
viewers comfortable. Firmly in chains, the life and death matters of
these simple Africans can now be litigated by White people.
Ultimately, Spielberg's goal is to fortify and exonerate a system and a
people that profitted from the despicable trade in Black
humanity even at the expense of its Black victims. The point here is
never to compromise, or even question, America's heritage and
worldwide image as having been "founded on freedom, justice and
equality." Slavery, in Spielberg's vision, is merely a bump in
the road.
4) True to the "good Nazi" theme of Spielberg's Jewish Holocaust movie
Schindler's List, the Amistad is offered up with a group
of historically bizarre creations of the Hollywood propagandists-a good
White man and a 19th century "free" Black aristocrat.
Contrary to Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of the cantankerous former
president John Quincy Adams, who represented the Amistad
rebels in the Supreme Court, he was no lover of the Black man. His home
state of Massachusetts was making so much money on
slavery that Adams absolutely favored it. The cotton mills of Lawrence
and Lowell and the banks of downtown Boston all would
have collapsed without slavery and the money it generated. He has other
racist credentials:
·When Adams was a diplomat after the Revolutionary and the 1812 Wars, he
went to the British on behalf of slaveholders to
attempt to get their slaves back.
·He believed that Congress had no right to abolish slavery where it
existed.
·He believed that the ultimate solution for the Black Man would be
widespread interbreeding, which he said "would be the
extirpation (extermination) of the African race upon the continent, by
the gradual bleaching process of intermixture, where the white
portion is already so predominant..."
·He believed that another possible solution would be a race war.
·Adams also believed that the American Indian was "an inferior
race...and perhaps not worth preserving."
The fact is that there is no evidence that he ever even met the Amistad
rebels though the film portrays them as becoming friends.
But Spielberg is probably unaware that his White hero was a Jew-hater as
well. According to Jewish author Nathaniel Weil, Adams
"often spoke of Jews in such a way as to suggest a strong anti-Semitic
prejudice."
5) Spielberg uses Morgan Freeman to perpetuate another destructive myth.
The "fictional composite" Freeman plays is a free Black
aristocrat in New England and is the character under dispute in the
plagiarism lawsuit against Spielberg. The idea that the North was
"free" and that the Northern Black population enjoyed equal relations is
a bombastic falsehood. "Free" Blacks did not exist in the
North or South in the 19th century. This unfortunate segment of Black
society was often in worse condition than slaves whose
White masters had an economic interest in their survival. There was a
good reason why Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad
stayed underground in New York and New England, moving instead to
British Canada. Abolitionists were viciously denounced,
tarred and feathered, and generally terrorized for their opposition to
slavery. They were, in fact, an insignificant minority among
Whites until guilt-ridden historians gave them a prominence they could
never have dreamed of in their lifetimes. One might read
Lorman Ratner's Powder Keg, for an enlightening account of the Northern
attitude against Blacks at the time of the Amistad affair.
The Spielberg movie shows Freeman in a top hat, riding around in a
carriage casually dining with his White friends. In fact, all of
the "American" Black people/props calmly intermingle with White people.
Spielberg covers up the fact that there was extraordinary
White violence directed against Black people for simply being Black. The
U.S. Congress actually had a "gag rule" against any
debate against slavery at this time.
6) Amistad Film Note: Spielberg boldly filmed much of the movie in
Newport, Rhode Island, the very center of the Jewish-run
slave trade. Rum, of course, was central to the wicked trade in Black
flesh and Newport was its center of production. At one point,
all 22 stills were owned by the Newport Jews. Aaron Lopez and Jacob
Rivera were among the Jewish leaders of the trade and
dominated Newport's business community. One Jewish historian wrote of
the Newport Jews: "[They] traded extensively in
Negroes." The pious Newport Jews prayed at a synagogue that was built by
Black slaves "of some skill," and all the Newport Jews
owned domestic slaves-Lopez, who the Jewish organization Anti-Defamation
League calls "beloved and respected," had 27.
7) A British Navy officer who wants to see an end to the trans-Atlantic
slave trade testifies on behalf of the Africans. In the end of
the movie, he is seen bombing the slave fortress in Africa – presumably
ending the African slave trade. There are two falsehoods
being proffered here:
a) The British wanted to end the slave trade, but not for the noble
purpose implied by Spielberg. They wanted to stop the export of
slave labor, because Black bodies were required in Africa to colonize
and exploit Africa for the British! They also wanted to cripple
their business competitors all of whom were dependent on slave labor.
Twenty years later Britain was the biggest foreign supporter
of the Southern Confederacy.
b) Long after the Amistad Africans were returned to Africa the slave
trade continued in America. The profits of slave dealing were
shocking. The slave ship Espoir made a profit of $436,200 on one trip.
Kidnapper C.A.L.Lamar wrote in 1860 (twenty years after
the Amistad affair), "The trade cannot be checked while such great
percentages are made in the business. The outlay of $35,000
often brings $500,000....No wonder Boston, New York and Philadelphia
have so much interest in the business." Steel-hulled
steamers were introduced into the trade, inflating profits even more,
for these vessels were able to carry many more slaves than the
sailing ships.
8) Spielberg doesn't tell us that one of the Amistad Africans was deemed
the property of one of the Spaniards and NOT FREED, or
that the U.S. Congress attempted to give the Spanish slave dealers
$70,000 to pay for their losses while the Africans were forced to
sing and dance for years to raise money to pay for their trip back to
Africa. Such details are inconsistent with Spielberg's Happy
Slave Holocaust fantasy.
9) The John Williams score is designed to usher a viewer through the
range of emotions that Spielberg cannot elicit with his visual
images. It is especially overbearing during a pitifully trite Christian
conversion scene where a once proud African is willing to
accept a White Jesus and a new religion from a series of drawings in a
Bible! Here, Spielberg again intends to show how
simple-minded the Africans are. It is patently offensive and plainly
malicious. As for the musical score, Williams is simply
unqualified.
Steven Spielberg, who once said that he "could never forgive"
entertainer Michael Jackson for introducing his Jewish children to
anti-Semitic epithets, has no such reservations about introducing our
Black children to all manner of falsehoods about their own
history. Spielberg's open assault on Black history is inexcusable. He's
wagered heavily that Black people are as ignorant as his
Black characters.
_______________________________________________________________
What about the Slaveship Creole?
Just 7 months after the Amistad Supreme Court decision was rendered,
another remarkably similar incident sailed into the
American consciousness. The slaveship Creole left Virginia in October of
1841, heading for Louisiana with 135 Black slaves and
19 White crew and other passengers. For eleven days it made its way down
the coast. When it neared the Bahamas nineteen Black
freedom-fighters emerged from the ship's hold and overtook the White
crew, killing at least one of their captors. The ship was
commandeered into the British port of Nassau, where it was seized by the
British military, and the 19 Black "mutineers" were
arrested. Black islanders, hearing of the incident, surrounded the ship
with as many as 50 of their boats and freed the remaining
Black captives.
Those freedom-loving Americans who had just "freed" the Amistad
Africans, were now outraged that the British had "freed" the
Creole Blacks. Some actually tried to retake the ship and its Black
cargo, but they were met by British muskets and hastily retreated.
The United States demanded compensation. Politicians, newspapers and
common citizens condemned the British action, saying that
it encouraged mutiny and murder. Some even suggested that the British
action might provoke yet another war. Secretary of State
Daniel Webster demanded the return of the "mutineers." Britain, instead,
"freed" the 19 Black freedom-fighters and Webster was
left playing the role of the defeated Spanish slavers in Spielberg's
film.
Though this story is eminently more dramatic, such history could never
be twisted into a Hollywood script–the only heroes are
Black. Britain subsequently ruled that their Bahamian officials had
acted improperly and should have returned the slaves to
America. In 1855, the American owners of the Black slaves were awarded
$110,330 by Britain to cover the cost of their lost
"property." The Blacks of the Bahamas and the Blacks they rescued from
slavery were the only heroes in the entire incident.
But there is a more compelling reason the much more dramatic case of the
Creole could not fit the Spielberg/ADL agenda. In 1843,
an outraged senator took a special interest in the Creole case. He stood
in the Senate gallery and declared that the Creole Africans
were:
"blood-stained murderers and pirates [who] were shielded from the
punishment due to their crimes, under circumstances that would have
richly justified a declaration of war."
The senator? David Levy Yulee – the first Jew ever elected to the United
States Senate.
________________________________________________
Spielberg's Motive: Answer to Jewish Slave Dealing?
by J.F. Moses
A Jewish woman stopped me in a bookstore checkout line and seemed
delighted to ask me something "because I was Black." It
seems she saw one of the many television "reports" designed to usher me
into a moviehouse to see Steven Spielberg's Amistad. I
listened politely. "Oh, the movie is great," she said. "It's a true life
movie about a slave ship." I know that "true life" and
"Hollywood" are irreconcilable enemies, I thought to myself, besides,
the movie was not due to open for another two weeks and
this woman speaks as though she already saw it. But I could see that my
new Yiddish friend felt it was a good enough vehicle to
revive the brain dead Black/Jewish relationship with me. And then the
kicker: "You know, I didn't know that it was Africans that
put Black people in slavery." "Yeah," she continued excitedly, "It was
Africans that sold the slaves." Perceiving my now furrowed
brow, she added, "Of course the Europeans helped, but they bought the
slaves from Africans!"
I'd known that Spielberg was up to something with this movie about
slavery, and my new Jewish friend let the cat out of the bag.
Spielberg, Hollywood's super Jew since Schindler's List, whose movies
are the epitome of American whiteness, will now take on
the enormity of the Black Holocaust in 153 minutes. I interrupted the
woman's glee to offer a comparison that I thought she could
identify with: "It's kind of like the 77 or more Nazi officers who were
Jews, and kinda like the Jews in the concentration camps that
informed on other Jews to the Nazi guards, huh?" I could have gone on
but her face, once comely, had became twisted and
distorted just as my brow relaxed to its original repose.
Jews have been in a dilemma for some years now. For years they duped the
negroes into the belief that they alone were our friends
among Whites and could therefore choose and approve our leaders and
dictate the movement and direction of Black organizations.
Furthermore, many Jews believed that we "owed" them a debt of gratitude
in the form of unquestioned and unwavering support of
the outlaw state of Israel. But history has now caught up with them.
Jews were indeed central participants in the Black Holocaust, a
point made most clearly by their own historians in journals, articles
and books. Even, Dr. Marc Lee Raphael, head historian at the
American Jewish Historical Society at Brandeis, had to come clean:
"Jews also took an active part in the Dutch colonial slave trade;
indeed....in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique),
British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated."
One commentator said of the Jews-in-the-slave-trade debate, about which
rivers of expiatory ink have now been expended, "One
could not mention the word 'slavery' without thinking 'Jew.'"
Enter Steven Spielberg who, in the tradition of D.W.Griffith's
Jewish-funded racist epic Birth of a Nation, was called in to stamp
out the "rumor circulatin' among the slaves"-that Jews were heavily
involved in the Black Holocaust. Griffith's 1915 movie made
the world to know that Blacks were responsible for the calamity of the
Civil War and that the Ku Klux Klan reclaimed civilization
from the bestial and ferocious negroes. It was a devastating false
indictment that was intended to reestablish the racial order in the
South (and the North for that matter) and was successfully used as a KKK
recruitment film in their subsequent 1920's resurgence.
Now, more than eighty years later, Spielberg, a la D.W.Griffith, will
place the blame for the Black Holocaust on Blacks
themselves!
But now there is an even more sinister ploy by Spielberg's gang. They
have teamed up with an organization called Lifetime
Learning, Inc., which has developed a "Film Study Guide" that is
intended to "supplement and enrich their students' viewing
experience." They have sent this "lesson material" to 20,000 schools in
America and around the world so that teachers will make
sure that Black students all over the world get THEIR twisted message
about Black slavery. The material is suspiciously similar to
that of the "A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE" program (AWOD) run by the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL)! This is the program that
has been used to push the Jewish Holocaust into the consciousness of
Black children under the guise of teaching "tolerance." Many
school systems have been bullied into accepting the AWOD program even
though a recent study has deemed the program to be
ineffective.
Because the AWOD program ignores the Black Holocaust, the program has
met increasing resistance from many of the Black
schools where the program is peddled. Spielberg's Amistad is the vehicle
through which the message of the "WORLD OF
DIFFERENCE" program will be delivered to Black children. They will show
the movie to our youth and claim that they have taught
the "Black Holocaust." If the Black Holocaust IS TRULY TAUGHT, Jews will
be as responsible for slavery as all other groups,
including Europeans and Africans, yet these "educational" materials have
not a trace of information on the history of slavery. The
"Study Guide" treats the Morgan Freeman character as though he really
existed and puts words in the mouth of John Quincy Adams
that he never said–something permitted in movies but which should never
be allowed in an educational institution. It does not
distinguish between Spielberg's dramatic adaptation of the Amistad
incident and the actual historical record–an unacceptable
compromise of our Black children's minds. Many diverse commentators,
including movie critic Michael Medved and historian Eric
Foner, have decried Spielberg's deception.
The enemies of Black people are going after the minds of our Black
children and they are using Hollywood to do it. The Jews and
their negroes associated with the Amistad want this to be the definitive
Hollywood movie on Black slavery. It is more likely to fuel
another round of anti-Black recriminations. They underestimate the
tolerance of the Black community. These fabrications and
distortions, which would never be tolerated if they were applied to the
Jewish Holocaust, are once again liberally heaped upon the
Black community. When all is tallied around Amistad, Spielberg will get
his few millions, but Farrakhan will get millions more.
____________________________________________________________
Morgan Freeman: Mr. Dignity?
According to the Boston Globe, Morgan Freeman "is one of the few actors
producers sign when they want to add dignity and
gravity to a film." No, really, they wrote that. They said that he was
the first actor to get the call from Spielberg once the plot was
hatched. With "dignified" roles to his credit like his breakthrough
stage role in The Niggerlovers, a "sleazy pimp" in Street Smart, a
"pretty shady character" in Chain Reaction, a convict in Shawshank
Redemption, and the affable Uncle Tom nigger to an aging
Southern Jewess in Driving Miss Daisy, who could be more dignified than
Morgan Freeman?
But Freeman has scant credibility with the African-American people to
whose history he must be true: "I don't think we were
dragged out of Africa [in the slave trade]," he reportedly told the New
Jersey Star Ledger in 1993, "I think we fled." He went on to
bitterly denounce his African heritage, and then the ironically named
Freeman proclaimed that he "has a hard time" referring to
himself as an "African-American," stating he prefers the term "mongrel."
Satmar Hassidim
l...@tiac.net wrote: a lengthy, fascinating expose of jewish
assaults on African-Americans.
I have bought several copies of the underground bestseller
THE SECRET RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BLACKS AND JEWS and must agree
with you, completely. This may be one of the best authenticated
books of ALL time. I have placed copies in several metro libraries.
As Ashkenazi "jews" seek to have them removed, I just place
additional copies.
I strongly recommend that all interested Blacks read this "old
Deja News post",
http://x2.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=255550247&CONTEXT=885616930.1811612274&hitnum=13
which has to do with "Why The Statue of Albert Pike Must Fall".
Very few whites or blacks have ever heard of Albert Pike. He
was the nearly diabolical leader of Freemasons who shadowed
the construction of the KKK and who took many of his marching
orders from none other than the West Indian "jew", Judah
Benjamin. Benjamin held very high office in the Confederacy
and fled to exile in the bosom of jewish Rothchild protection
in England as the Confederacy was collapsing. Judah Benjamin
is NEVER spoken of in realistic terms in discussing the Civil
War. He was admitted to the English Bar by jewish Rothchild
monies. Another very interesting book on Masonic and jewish
influence here is SCARLET AND THE BEAST by John Daniels.
Most whites reading this NG message have NO idea of the real
history of Sephardic and Ashkenazi jews' HOLOCAUST against
Black people. They have no understanding that the very leaders
of these self-styled "jews" such as Maimonides went on record
as giving their endorsed opinion in favor of kidnapping to
be sold into slavery.
Most whites and blacks also have NO understanding that these
self-styled "jews" are NOT at all Biblical Jews but are recent
turkoslavic and turkorussian converts to Judaism. They had told
us they were Jews; now they style themselves as Americans; if
we began to colonize Mars and wealth was found there, this group
would suddenly style themselves as Martians. They merely go where
the money and political capital can be made. For the purposes
of accumulating vast wealth to these jews, Africans were cruely
used and exploited. It is intensely galling to the self-styled
"jew" that the Nation of Islam is fully able to document the
history of these jews exploiting humanity.
I was amazed at your further comment on Ashkenazi jews in the
U.S.Congress,
>But there is a more compelling reason the more dramatic case of the
>Creole could not fit the Spielberg/ADL agenda. In 1843,
>an outraged senator took a special interest in the Creole case. He
>in the Senate gallery and declared that the Creole Africans were:
"blood-stained murderers and pirates [who] were shielded from the
punishment due to their crimes, under circumstances that would have
richly justified a declaration of war."
>The senator? David Levy Yulee – the first Jew ever elected to the US
Senate.
I congratulate you on your superb scholarship in consistently
revealing this VERY REAL and very disturbing history of the
self-styled "jew" in the New World and their highly destructive
impact on Africans. The time has finally come to speak of
reparations paid to surviving African-Americans.