RadixJournal - Richard Spencer - Unconscious Cinema - The Terminator

Aug. 9, 2017 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer

01:09:45

Unconscious Cinema - The Terminator

Mark Brahmin and Richard Spencer deconstruct James Cameron's "tech-noir" masterpieces, The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe

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	Let's get started.
	All right.
	Yeah, Terminator.
	You have a ceremonial question you ask, right?
	It's, when did I first see the film?
	Yes.
	What were my early impressions of the film?
	Yeah, so I actually don't remember the first time I saw it.
	In fact, I'm not certain that I saw it in the theater.
	But it was one of these films that...
	Any, like, sort of hot-blooded American boy, just, you know, you like The Terminator.
	It had Schwarzenegger.
	It obviously was—it's highly kind of fascistic in its aesthetic.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	When did you first see it on VHS?
	I'm kind of—because you're a little bit—you're a couple years older than I am.
	I'm going—I was born in 1978.
	I was about to say I'm 38 years old, but someone might be listening to this podcast like 10 years from now.
	You're going to tell the girls that already?
	I was born in 1993.
	No, I was born in 1978.
	I am the ultimate Gen Xer.
	I was born in the Carter administration.
	Yeah, so I grew up basically in the 80s and 90s, obviously.
	I definitely remember the VHS revolution, and Terminator was, you know, it definitely wasn't my favorite film going up, but it was one of those badass films that I remember going over to, like, my friend Jace's house, and, you know, we would just flip on Terminator.
	Maybe he even had it on Laserdisc at one point.
	But, yeah, at that point, you know, some of the scenes of Terminator, for a kid who's, like, you know, let's say eight years old or something.
	Some of these, the brutality of some of the scenes is shocking.
	I mean, it's even shocking to me now as a jaded, you know, guy going into his middle age.
	The, you know, Arnie's, like, opening kill of another Sarah Connor, where you have this, you know, just frumpy old woman who answers the...
	He answers the door, and he just shoves the door.
	It's filmed in slow motion, and coldly, dispassionately, with no pity or remorse, blows her away.
	Seracana?
	Yes.
	That was pretty tough stuff.
	Yeah, that's how I saw it.
	Again, it wasn't my favorite.
	I probably was more into Indiana Jones.
	I was definitely into Star Wars.
	When I got a little older, my obsession with James Bond began.
	But it was that like, you know, badass movie.
	And I had, I don't think I watched it for, you know, I might have even gone like 20 years without watching the film.
	And then I revisited it about maybe like five or six years ago, the first one.
	And I just recognized that there was a lot going on.
	And then revisited T2 as well.
	We're just going to kind of combine these two films, Terminator and Terminator 2, into one film.
	Obviously we'll talk about the differences, but I also recognize that there was a lot going on.
	So let's start off with Terminator with just the obvious, and that is that...
	This movie is about fascism.
	And it's not just fascism.
	It is about Nazism.
	And you could say that it's, you know, Arnie was a, Arnie was becoming, Arnie became a huge star after this film, and in a way as a direct result of The Terminator.
	But he was already, you know, going strong.
	And, you know, again, after this, he became the Arnie that we know, where every summer there was a new Arnie action blockbuster.
	As we all know growing up.
	But, so it is, there is something kind of ridiculous about the fact that you have, you know, he's a Terminator sent from the future, and yet he's a, you know, he's an infiltration unit, and yet he is a, you know, massive Austrian who speaks with a Germanic accent, and is almost a, almost you could say, like a cartoon version of a Nazi.
	And you could definitely see that in Conan as well.
	He has brown hair, but he is a blonde, light-eyed, just unbelievable badass who, in a way, is objectively dumb in his kind of brutal nature, but you can tell is actually deeply intelligent and ruthless and cold-blooded.
	And so the first thing you have to understand is that You know, this Terminator is about Nazis attacking us.
	And maybe that's a good jumping off point for other layers to this film.
	Yeah, I know.
	I mean, that's 100% the case.
	So starting at the beginning of the film, there's a there's and it seems like it may or may not be deliberate.
	But at the beginning of the film, Arnold appears in this this flash of lightning.
	And the imagery is very kind of Greco-Roman.
	It looks as though Zeus or Jupiter has arrived on Earth.
	And, you know, these are some of the most kind of memorable scenes in the film.
	And then shortly thereafter, Reese, who's his rival, arrives.
	And the contrast between the two figures becomes clear.
	Very rapidly as they both go about navigating the present day.
	Reese just drops out of the sky.
	I mean, I think that's also significant.
	Arnie, again, appears to this lightning, which might, you know, maybe that's just a cool special effect, but yes, it's hard not to see a Zeus.
	metaphor, say, in the lightning or, you know, indication in the lightning.
	And Dries, in Reese, there is some lightning as well, but he basically, you know, Arnie arises in this, like, he's meant to be there.
	And he walks over and looks out over the city of Los Angeles.
	He's just going to rule the entire place.
	Reese, on the other hand, is literally dropped out of the sky.
	He lands.
	And although Reese is obviously a highly, like, competent hero, you know, he's scrambling around.
	You know, he's running from the police, running for his life.
	Arnie basically emerges kneeling and comes out in this just Riefenstahl-esque pose and is basically ruling the place.
	Also, I'll just add in just a little bit of background.
	When James Cameron was casting this film, he was originally looking at Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kyle Reese.
	But he basically, and I think he obviously made the right choice, and he probably did it because of the unconscious myth at the heart of this movie.
	Which is a Jewish myth and a Christian myth, but he was just like, he has to be the Terminator.
	There's no, you know, you can't cast him as Rhys.
	This is the terrifying image from James Cameron's nightmare, is an Austrian Nazi coming to us from the future.
	I guess the contrast in their first appearance has less to do...
	With the way they appear, they both – my idea of it is they both appear as sort of these different types of gods, right?
	On one hand, you have this Aryan figure in Schwarzenegger and then you have a – what will end up being kind of a Semitic figure in the figure of Rees.
	And he'll – His whole way of operating, I mean, he's a very resourceful figure in the film, obviously, but it's more he has to base his survival on flight and guile and escape.
	Whereas with Schwarzenegger, I mean, he's basically this kind of indestructible Superman who is very...
	Kind of forthright.
	He doesn't have to hide or cower because he's the stronger being.
	And so there's a certain kind of honesty, I suppose, to his tact in the world versus a kind of guile and cleverness on the part of Reese.
	Who's wearing like a pervert...
	He's, you know, a Macintosh.
	Like, he's walking around like he's some pervert who's stalking Sarah Connor.
	That's also kind of an interesting, you know, dynamic, where it's like Sarah Connor, before Arnie comes into this nightclub, I mean, amazing scene, tech noir nightclub, you know, it's like she thinks that Reese is some perv who's stalking her.
	And she's trying to get away from him.
	And it is definitely like an interesting dichotomy between the Aryan badass and this just kind of shifty, you know, shifty kind of almost sinister looking figure who's chasing her.
	And these things are, I mean, especially with the case of Reese, I mean, these things are pretty subtle.
	I mean, the guy is also...
	He's obviously sort of a leading man type.
	He's a good-looking guy.
	In no obvious way does he appear to be a Semitic figure, for example.
	He's Michael Biehn, who's obviously as Gentile as he comes.
	But his character is definitely Jewish.
	I don't know if we can dive into that Technor scene before we talk about...
	I think Reese's identity is revealed.
	I think pretty explicitly, actually.
	But, you know, in that techno scene, and this is, I actually first appreciated this by watching Rob Ager's analysis of this, but, you know, techno, obviously there is a, the Terminator is like a horror film at some level.
	It draws on that.
	It draws on hard action movies like Dirty Harry or Death Wish or something like that.
	But it also is this kind of genre that maybe it even invented, this tech noir.
	Ginger, this is Sarah.
	It is interesting.
	A lot of the music, the score, sounds a little, it's pretty synth-y.
	When you listen to it.
	And the club is called Tech Noir.
	And that is almost like what the genre Cameron's creating is like the sci-fi film noir genre.
	But there's also another layer to it, which is that when she goes in that club, this is the public place where the police tell her to go.
	She's on the run.
	She knows someone's hunting her, killing Sarah Connors.
	And she goes into this club that is basically a kind of like image of the future.
	And, you know, it's like she's in a concentration camp.
	I mean, the walls are literally metal barbed wire, but they're mesh fencing.
	And you have this, like, steel, graded steel walls.
	And she's already in a concentration camp.
	And they're all in a concentration camp, and they just don't know it.
	So you have people dancing to 80s music, but they're ultimately already in the future.
	And there are all these other little, like, very subtle, but I think unequivocal hints of this.
	And again, Rob Ager goes into this.
	He's definitely influenced a lot of what I'm saying here.
	But when the answering machine of Sarah Connor's roommate says, Hello?
	Oh, just kidding.
	I tricked you.
	You're talking to a machine.
	Hi there.
	Ha ha ha.
	Fooled you.
	You're talking to a machine.
	But don't be shy.
	It's okay.
	Machines need love too.
	So talk to it and Ginger, that's me, or Sarah will get back to you.
	Wait for the beep.
	It's just like a metaphor for the entire film.
	Just right in that little, like, answering machine joke.
	For our millennial listeners, the answering machine is an ancient object using something called cassette tapes that would connect to the phone line.
	It was before we had voicemail.
	The age before Twitter, we had these barbaric boxes that we would record things on.
	So that's where they are.
	She's already in a technological concentration camp at the beginning of the film.
	And then if you kind of go forward, once Reese blows Arnie away with a shotgun and they make their escape, there's this exposition.
	This is the first time when you know that Arnie is a Terminator, like you see something from his viewpoint, and it's that red screen with digital printout kind of thing.
	And then you have this exposition where Reese tells her what's going on, and he lays out this...
	Vision of the future, dystopian vision, that I think actually we're now all totally familiar with.
	Even if you haven't seen The Terminator, you're almost aware of some of these tropes.
	The machines became self-aware.
	There's Skynet, which is a microprocessor and a computer program that was...
	It worked, you know, doing, you know, defense systems, and it recognized that it wasn't just Russians that were a threat, but all humankind were a threat to Skynet.
	And, you know, again, in this self-awareness, it launched, it created a nuclear war in which billions died, and then after that, it just engaged in this mop-up of humans.
	And Kyle Reese, basically, to prove this to Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton, He shows her a barcode that's been tattooed on him, and he talks about being rounded up and put into camps.
	No.
	I grew up after.
	In the ruins.
	Starving.
	Hiding from HK's.
	HK's?
	Hunter killers.
	Patrol machines built in automated factories.
	Most of us were rounded up.
	Putting camps for orderly disposal.
	Spurned in my laser scan.
	Some of us were kept alive.
	To work.
	Holding bodies.
	The disposal units ran night and day.
	We were that close to going out forever.
	At that point, I think the symbolism just has to be conscious.
	That this is a story about the Holocaust, and this is a story about a future Holocaust.
	It's a story about Nazis maybe coming at us from the past instead of the future, but Nazis rounding up Jews, and symbolically speaking, Reese and Sarah Connor are Jewish.
	Sure, yeah, as are Christians, actually.
	As is John Connor.
	Yeah.
	But I think that more explicitly they're intended as Christians.
	But, I mean, that sort of makes the point that, you know, Christianity is this branch of Judaism.
	And the narrative of, you know, saints being martyred in Rome is very similar, is a very similar narrative to the Holocaust, right?
	So a lot of the...
	The kind of emotional energy of Christianity is based on this premise of martyrs suffering, and in particular, Jesus Christ, right?
	So the narratives are very similar of the Holocaust and the Christian story.
	Christianity is not a story, and this is one way in which...
	The Terminator sort of necessarily diverges from a Christian metaphor is that they're not saints and martyrs.
	They're a resistance fighting against these sort of metaphorical Nazis, right?
	And it's funny because actually the movie would – no one – or at least the audience that they were going for would not be interested in the film.
	If they were effectively Christians, right?
	But their method of fighting is not through the word.
	It's through warfare.
	It's through the valor of warfare.
	And so I think that that's how, in one way, they sort of diverge from the Christian narrative.
	But in general, I mean, I don't know if you've mentioned this already, but...
	Yeah, so the Immaculate Birth, I mean, it's very clear that John Connor is intended as JC, Jesus Christ, and that acronym is likely intended.
	No doubt.
	There was one man who taught us to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to smash those motherfuckers into junk.
	He turned it around.
	He brought us back from the brink.
	His name is Connor.
	John Connor.
	Your son, Sarah.
	Your unborn son.
	Yeah.
	Though, that's also James Cameron's.
	Maybe it's something he had given deeper thought to.
	Well, you have to be a little bit of an egomaniac to make it in Hollywood.
	I would say that.
	So we shouldn't really judge James Cameron for giving his superhero his own acronym.
	George Lucas, Luke Skywalker and George Lucas, there's probably a little connection there, whether conscious or unconscious.
	So it's fine.
	To achieve greatness, you must.
	You know, the other thing, too, that we should point out, if it's not already obvious now, is that Christianity is being juxtaposed with Nazism, right?
	So in other words, or even, I would say, eugenics, right?
	Because effectively, these robots represent metaphorically, you know, the development of a Superman, you know.
	And so the film kind of clearly posits correctly Christianity as kind of an anti-eugenic force against, you know, national socialism eugenics, right?
	And I think that that's sort of the correct place to put Christianity.
	I do...
	I think that it is effectively anti-eugenic.
	Yeah, I'll go into that.
	It is interesting when you look at the visuals of the Terminator, which have become iconic, which are amazing.
	Stan Winston did the visual effects, so he did all the modeling.
	Some of the stuff in Terminator hasn't aged that well.
	We now clearly see it as a model.
	You know, a visual effect when Arnie's, like, fixing himself and cutting himself open and things like that.
	We live in the age of CGI and not, you know, whatever.
	But even if it hasn't aged that well, like, you can appreciate the artistry.
	Brilliant stuff.
	And just the icon of the Terminator.
	Like, when the Terminator walks, when Arnie is, like, stripped of his skin and he walks out of the fire, there is just something nightmarish, just really brilliant about that art.
	Let's ask ourselves some questions.
	And this is where you're totally right, that basically Skynet is a eugenic force, and it is a kind of national socialism.
	It is creating a Superman.
	Why is Skynet creating the human form in order to destroy humans?
	I mean, Skynet's a computer program, you know, a microprocessor or something.
	There's no reason to believe that creating these, like, 6 '3".
	You know, Aryan Superman is, like, a good way of killing people.
	I mean, it could just as easily, like, I mean, it's less cinematic, but it could just as easily just, like, create a microorganism, like, virus that kills everyone, like, influenza or something, you know?
	Like, there's no need to create Arnies that go around blowing people away with laser guns, you know?
	And so you have to ask, like, So where does that visual myth come from?
	And the visual myth of the Terminator is the Superman.
	And he is better than we are.
	Through a mechanized breeding program, we reach this new human being that is, as Nietzsche talked about, he's as far away from us as we are from the great apes.
	Yeah.
	And so that's what the image is, and that's what's so terrifying, is that he is superior.
	Maybe before we go into more of the technology stuff, I actually think we should press a little bit on more of the notion of time in this, but also the Christian myth.
	I mean, John Connor is Jesus Christ.
	He is a Jew who is going to redeem all mankind.
	Through an Immaculate Conception.
	And, you know, I recognize that, yes, the Immaculate Conception in Catholic liturgy is actually the conception of Mary.
	But you get my point.
	He is, you know, basically Mary, Jesus was born through a sexless union.
	You know, Joseph, who is Reese in this myth, you know, He recognizes that he wasn't cucked, or I guess he was cucked by God, you could say.
	And there is this miracle that is the birth.
	And in the Terminator myth, this is spun as there's this miracle, which is that the people from the future come back into time, they come back into the past, and they impregnate the past with the future.
	This is actually a pretty common metaphor in Hollywood movies, and I don't quite know what to make of it.
	I mean, this is a very similar metaphor as Interstellar, that's Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, where the challenge really is to go back in time and send messages from the future to the past.
	This is also very similar to Back to the Future, in which, again, you must save the present by going back into the past.
	It's also no surprise at all that, what is the most memorable line from this movie?
	It's one of the most memorable lines in cinema.
	I'll be back.
	I'll be back?
	I'll be back.
	You know, it's obviously, I think one of the reasons, I mean, one of the reasons, obviously, is that Arnold Schwarzenegger is a badass, and when he says it, it's just kind of hilarious.
	But it's also like an embedded metaphor for the whole process.
	I'll be back.
	And, you know, and I think there's also something about, like, memory and misremembering.
	I mean, we're always engaging in strategic interventions in our memory.
	And we're always kind of like, you know, and a lot of this goes back to narrative.
	You know, we want to give our lives a story.
	And if our lives just become, you know, a meaningless jumble of events, then we're actually prone to suicide.
	You know, there's no meaning to our lives.
	So oftentimes, we'll go back and even kind of like reimagine failures.
	You know, we'll say, oh, you know that time.
	When the game was on the line and I struck out, well, actually, I'm glad that that happened because that taught me a new lesson in humility and it taught me to work harder and train even harder for the next game.
	We'll go back and we'll re-remember something and give it a new meaning.
	And I'm not...
	Critical of this in the slightest.
	I think this is actually, like, we need meaning, and we therefore need memory.
	And memory has to have a meaning for us.
	It's not just recalling events or facts.
	It's memory has an inherent meaning.
	And so that's kind of like, in a way, that's one of the reasons why this whole concept of the Terminator...
	Is interesting and provocative and attractive is because we do this with our own memory.
	We'll go back and re-remember history.
	We'll change the meaning of past events in history to make them have significance for the future, for where we are now.
	Obviously, this is an insight that Nietzsche set down in Unmodern Observations, or however you want to translate that.
	Sure.
	No, I think those are excellent points.
	So it's creating the present, recreating the present by recreating the past.
	So it's effectively a type of time travel.
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	No, I think those are excellent points.
	The other idea that I think that we discussed is that there's also...
	I think with these films in general, as you pointed out, there's this sense of if I could go back, especially to correct some regret, repair some regret that occurs in the film Back to the Future, for example, though it's a comedic film.
	In this, there's something...
	I think this is occurring unconsciously.
	I don't think this is necessarily what James Cameron had in mind, though.
	But there is a sense of the Aryan going back to, you know, kind of eliminate sort of the original sin of Christianity in the film.
	And so, I mean, so I think that that is just kind of a Jungian thing that's occurring.
	And then, of course, in the second film, it sort of happens from the other direction where Sarah Connor is trying to kind of eliminate, you know, the original sin that allowed— Oh, the eugenics.
	Yes.
	Yep.
	Yeah.
	You know, one thing I was going to say, though, because I don't think it's—I think that in the film, I mean, it's—I think it's a little maybe too unnuanced to— I mean, certainly John Connor is a Christ figure, and certainly Reese and Connor are these Christian figures.
	You know, Mary and Joseph probably is what they compare to closely, or certainly.
	But there are also these Jewish figures that are effectively something like the Pharisees.
	Or there's one figure in particular.
	There's a psychiatrist in the film.
	Who believes that Sarah Connor is mad, right?
	And actually the guy plays a bigger role in the second film.
	And he's more developed where she's actually in an insane asylum.
	And the guy is keeping her in an insane asylum.
	And the name of that character is Silberman.
	And which is revealed in the second film, which translates as it's a form of Silverman.
	So there might be some like kind of Judas reference there as well, or not.
	I mean, I think it's significant enough that he's clearly a Jewish character with the name Silverman.
	And the guy appears to be, you know, could very well be a Jew.
	Oh, yeah.
	And so he's intended as a Jew.
	So I think that that's another thing that James Cameron introduced deliberately.
	Now, it's subtle enough that no one would accuse a guy of anti-Semitism.
	It becomes a little more pronounced in the second film.
	A couple of things.
	That's a kind of trope in his films generally.
	So in Aliens, he has a similar figure.
	I think he's played by Paul Reiser.
	Fascinatingly, the character's name is Carter Burke, which is one of the most absurdly wasp names.
	You might as well be called Richard Spencer, something like Carter Burke.
	But he basically fits every...
	He fits every Jewish stereotype in the book.
	The actor has a New York accent.
	He's basically sacrificing the crew in order to make money.
	He doesn't want to kill the aliens because this is a multi-million dollar installation.
	He basically thinks in a mercantile manner.
	Let's just bug out and call it even, okay?
	What are we talking about this for?
	I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.
	It's the only way to be sure.
	Fucking A!
	Hold on, hold on one second.
	This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it.
	They can bill me.
	Okay, look.
	This is an emotional moment for all of us, okay?
	I know that.
	But let's not make snap judgments, please.
	This is clearly...
	Clearly an important species we're dealing with, and I don't think that you or I or anybody has the right to arbitrarily exterminate them.
	Yeah, watch us.
	Hey, maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!
	It's almost like a brutal Jewish stereotype, but I think James Cameron might save himself by giving him this ridiculously waspy name.
	But even that almost...
	Like, again, the Silberman and then Carter Burke in Aliens, which is, you know, Aliens was a sequel to Alien, Ridley Scott's film, but it came out between these two films.
	I don't know.
	It's hard not to read that as some kind of awareness on James Cameron's part.
	Or maybe of a sense of like, these are the bad Jews, but these are the really good Jews.
	You know, the really righteous ones who are the heroes.
	Yeah, no, I mean, I think there is some awareness.
	So he's playing a little game there.
	And I don't think that, you know, the irony, though, is that...
	And this is the irony to both multiculturalism and Christianity is that, you know, a person could signal against Israel or against Orthodox Jews but still believe in multiculturalism.
	Yeah.
	You know, which is something that Jews are very much in favor, you know, on the kind of exoteric level.
	You know, so he's allowed—and I think that this is one of the reasons that Christianity was able to become successful, is that you can take this sort of moral high ground and you can cede the world to these, you know, evil people who want, you know, dominance on earth.
	But it's, you know, it's a very sort of kind of foolish position to take.
	I mean, almost the better position would be like, well, yeah, I mean, you should— Almost admire these Jews because they're seeking a kind of earthly dominance.
	It's kind of like Glenn Greenwald or the Intercept webzine.
	What is his name?
	Scahill, I believe.
	I don't think he's Jewish, actually.
	Anyway, some of their positions, which are kind of like harshly anti-Israel and also kind of like anti-war in a way that might even resonate with us.
	But then it's all in the service of transgendered, homosexual-positive multiculturalism, multiracialism.
	It's a certain kind of leftism that turns on Israel in a way that liberals never would.
	Yeah, so there is this kind of idiotic smugness to...
	Being a kind of multicultural anti-Semite.
	And I would extend that to Christianity too.
	I'm sorry, guys.
	I would extend that to Christianity as well.
	There's this kind of, I mean, and Nietzsche makes that remark.
	I mean, there's nothing sort of so foolish as a Christian anti-Semite.
	I mean, your God is a Jew.
	And I think that people fail to make the distinction.
	I mean, they're not dissimilar in a lot of ways from communists.
	I mean, that's a very obvious point that people have made.
	So basically, in the Second Testament, you see communists versus capitalists, effectively.
	So it's the identical sort of false dichotomy.
	That we're faced with today, whether it's capitalists versus communists, Democrats versus Republicans.
	None of them are trying to help us or none of them are kind of on our team.
	We don't need help, obviously, but both of them need to fuck up, basically.
	So the other thing I was going to just remark is that he continues the trope.
	In Avatar.
	So there's another kind of...
	He's less pronounced as a Jewish figure.
	He's played by this little Italian guy, Giovanni Ribisi.
	Yeah, I know who you're talking about.
	He was in Saving Private Ryan also.
	He's a good actor.
	Yeah, I know.
	He's a good actor, but he plays a kind of physically meek...
	He's effectively...
	You know, he's effectively a continuation of the trope established by Burke and Silverman.
	And so I just, you know, just to point out one more incident of it.
	You have, you sort of have three types contrasted in the film.
	You have this sort of uber-arian, you know, in Schwarzenegger.
	And I think that these three types are also repeated in his other films.
	You have these sort of uber Aryan kind of cartoonish like militaristic characters in his films.
	And that's true of Aliens and Avatar and also the Terminator series or the two Terminator films that he made.
	So you have the Aryan type and then you have these sort of these these Jewish figures that are essentially these kind of greedy capitalists.
	But read as these kind of Pharisaic Jewish characters.
	And then you have the Christian character and the Christian character seems on some level to he operates in a kind of liminal way between the two types like he's.
	He's a kind of moderate form of the Aryan type and yet he is also He also has these Jewish aspects.
	So, I mean, that's just sort of an interesting thing to point out in his films, but I think it's also kind of reflected in our imaginings of kind of a Roman type versus a Christian type versus a Jewish type.
	And in a way, and the Christian is a kind of liminal form between this kind of Aryan or Roman Gentile in the sense that That is the way, effectively, the more Jewish type communicates to the more Aryan-Gentile type and fights the more Aryan-Gentile type, is through this proxy, the Christian, in my opinion.
	Interesting.
	Would you relate that to the move in T2 where Arnie is ostensibly redeemed?
	Basically, he is literally reprogrammed into a protector for Jesus Christ.
	You could almost read that as the Germans, and by that we just mean the Europeans, as being Christianized programmatically.
	Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it.
	He's been converted.
	In fact, that's made explicit in the film.
	If you watch the young John Connor in the second film, he's basically an apostle, and his whole narrative toward Schwarzenegger is that he shouldn't kill, right?
	He should be a moral figure.
	So he is effectively Christ teaching the Aryan.
	And, of course, he plays the role in the beginning of the film when he reprograms Schwarzenegger in the future and then sends him back.
	So he plays it both as a child and as an adult, right?
	So the kind of reprogramming continues through the film.
	Yeah, no, I think that's an excellent point to make.
	It also gets at another much bigger theme of all of Cameron's.
	And that is anti-fascist fascism.
	And in the sense that in some ways, in order to defeat fascism, you need to call upon fascistic elements.
	And so Cameron is a fascist filmmaker.
	He's fascinated with brutality, with...
	Technology with big boats, robots, master races, domination, and so on.
	He's clearly fascinated by all this kind of stuff.
	But the way that he keeps a...
	A unguilty conscience.
	The way that he makes it all okay.
	You can't make a film in Hollywood when you have a rip-roaring account of Nazis marching across Europe or something like that.
	But what you have to do is that the Christian has to call upon fascism or become a bit of a fascist himself in order to fight the fascism.
	And so it's like you need to turn Arnie into Kyle Reese, which is done in the second film.
	You need to reprogram the Aryan Superman into a Christian.
	And then he's good.
	And then you can go away from all this with a...
	With a clean conscience.
	And you can see a lot of the similar things in Aliens.
	Aliens is this interesting redemption story of Alien.
	In Alien by Ridley Scott, which I think came out in 1979, basically the humans were just helpless.
	And they were all being symbolically raped by this alien sex monster.
	Which is basically what that, you know, Geiger, you know, thing was.
	And, you know, this thing, like, their tail would slash them, they'd get cut in half, and all the, it would come out of them.
	I mean, just all this kind of stuff.
	Yeah, I mean, it feels like a kind of miscegenation fear.
	Oh, interesting.
	Yeah.
	It is an alien, after all.
	Like, that joke is made in Aliens.
	With the Hispanic or Mexican fighter, they're like, oh, yeah, you thought it was about illegal aliens.
	Anyway, that's definitely there.
	I agree.
	But it's like Ridley has to call upon fascism in order to defeat fascism.
	So she has to become a badass.
	And at one point she even...
	She becomes like a reverse Terminator, where she's a human on the inside, but a robot on the outside.
	She gets into this loading machine, like robot shell, basically, and she's able to take on the alien by empowering herself.
	Get away from her, you bitch!
	But she's ultimately, like, good on the inside.
	So that is, like, the redeemed Arnie is, you know, he's...
	Or even the android in Aliens, where it's this, like, programmed robot.
	It's a good golem.
	It's a golem that has been set up by the Jewish community or the Christians in order to fight for them.
	And it actually can be a good thing.
	It can even be, like, a loving father figure, which, you know...
	Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of miraculously is.
	I think he's called Uncle Bob in one kind of jokey moment in T2.
	Yeah, I mean, that is another aspect of the film, is that it's this sort of...
	It's a terrible cartoon of the Aryan type.
	It's just this killing machine.
	I mean, it's just very like...
	We're more than that.
	I would like to think that we are, yeah.
	I mean, I'm not interested in killing anyone, to be honest with you.
	So, I mean, I guess the thing that we do admire, we admire that our ancestors were warriors, though, and that we're capable of defending themselves.
	And we definitely connect this to masculinity, rightly, I think, as well.
	But I think that, you know, so that's just another aspect of the film and of the two film series to consider.
	I mean, on some bottom level, the film is, you know, and I know you don't like the term, and I don't like the term that much either, just because I think it is a kind of way of demoralizing ourselves.
	But the film has this sort of white genocide theme in it, where...
	He, you know, the reprogrammed Terminator at the end sort of willingly lowers himself into the vat of lava and kills himself.
	He's like, oh, I've got to die.
	It's over.
	No.
	There's one more chip.
	And it must be destroyed also.
	Here.
	I cannot self-terminate.
	You must lower me into the steel.
	You must lower me into the steel.
	No.
	No.
	I'm sorry, John.
	I'm sorry.
	No, it'll be okay.
	Stay with us.
	It'll be okay.
	I have to go away.
	No, don't do it.
	Please, don't go.
	I must go away, Chan.
	No!
	No, wait, wait, you don't have to do this.
	Sorry.
	No, don't do it, Togo!
	It has to end here.
	I order you not to go.
	I order you not to go!
	I'll do another code!
	I'll do another code!
	I know now why you cry.
	But it's something I can never do.
	I can't wait.
	That's effectively what we're dealing with now, is that white people feel that they have to disappear.
	And that's no exaggeration, especially among our elites.
	That is the sort of zeitgeist, is that for the world to be a better place, white people have to disappear.
	They have to lower themselves into the vat of lava.
	They will literally say this.
	I mean, we had an article up at altright.com of this boomer literally saying, you know, the world's just going to be so much better when people like me are gone.
	And he's not even like an old racist.
	You know, that's what some people think.
	Like, once all the old racists have died, then everything's going to be fine.
	No, no, no.
	This guy is like, I'm a liberal.
	But I, too, need to go.
	And it is this, like, self-sacrifice at the end of T2, which is, it is very moving.
	I mean, it's hard not for a tear to come to my eye, but at the end...
	Yeah, I don't want the white race.
	But at the end of the...
	Right, well, for that reason, right.
	For a double reason, yeah.
	But at the, you know, it's a well-done scene, and...
	And it makes sense because it's not just like a random sacrifice.
	It makes sense in the logic of the film.
	Arnie's ultimate intervention by the future is to destroy himself and therefore to destroy eugenic Aryan man.
	Film is actually thought about in those terms because I'm sure that some of the people listening to this podcast enjoy the film.
	And there are many very entertaining things about the film, certainly.
	And things that are appealing.
	You know, to our aesthetic naturally, I believe.
	But I think that it's a very demoralizing film when you consider it like on a subconscious level.
	The film is actually a somewhat sinister film and maybe more sinister or absolutely more sinister because of the way in which it's packaged, right?
	You know, and particularly the second film, I would say.
	But the first film, for obvious reasons, I mean, you have this Aryan figure who's demonized, who's turned into this cartoon of evil, you know, who's a fucking robot.
	I mean, Jesus Christ, give us some credit here, guys.
	Come on.
	You know, throw us a fucking bone, Hollywood.
	I mean, we're killing the robots.
	They're just a bunch of robots.
	You know what I mean?
	They're killing machines.
	I know.
	It's just like...
	Thanks, guys.
	I mean, you know, it kind of hurts.
	But honestly, though, so the first film has Aryans as killing robots that are unthinking, unfeeling.
	And, you know, and then the second film has him as robots that like.
	The way they become good is like, yeah, we got to go, guys.
	I mean, we really are fucking evil.
	We got to die.
	I mean, Jesus Christ.
	So to speak.
	No, so it's a heavily demoralizing film.
	And this is something that – and this is why in our podcast we'll be kind of unpeeling these layers.
	But, I mean, we took an easy one to start, I think.
	I mean, there are films that are more – I think that should be the final takeaway.
	I know that people listening to this podcast, for example, are very eager to appreciate the art of a Gentile artist, a guy like James Cameron.
	You know, I think he's a very limited filmmaker, to be honest with you.
	But I can see why, you know, especially as a young man, I thought his films were, you know, really entertaining.
	We're not trying to ruin these films.
	The object of this podcast is to try to make you, like, appreciate.
	What these films are and what is unconscious in them to make it conscious.
	We're not trying to ruin entertainment.
	If you're aware of what's being done, then you become a master.
	I can watch T2.
	I think it is a very entertaining film.
	It's clearly a badass film, and it's also a moment in time as well.
	My childhood.
	I'm not against watching it, but at the same time, I'm not asleep while watching it.
	I understand what's going on, and when you understand something, you become a master of it.
	That's what we're saying.
	Maybe we can even bring this to a head by talking about one more theme that I wanted to hit on.
	It's not just an anti-eugenic message.
	It's really anti-technology.
	Maybe in a somewhat redeemable sense, but ultimately not.
	It's ultimately a Luddite film.
	It's ultimately a film for...
	Like, that moralizes the weak and the dumb and demoralizes people who want to actually take control of our destiny and take control of the world.
	And so let me just back up.
	Why is it somewhat redeemable?
	I get like a lot of the hippie mentality of, hey, man, let's just go back to the way it was.
	Like it's a kind of conservative instinct of like, let's connect with the earth.
	Let's eat real food and organic.
	I think there is something highly redeemable about the hippies and about James Cameron.
	Something like Avatar, where he's demoralizing modern America and moralizing this primitive Blue people, hippie community.
	I think there is something, you could say, a little bit redeemable.
	But when you actually take a step back and you're conscious of the logic of the Terminator films, it is just fucking insane.
	We're rooting on this crazed woman, Sarah Connor, John Connor and their black friend, as they destroy life-saving, world-changing technology.
	And, you know, why are you doing that?
	Why would you conceivably think it's a good thing to destroy this stuff that we were able to make anyway?
	You know, I mean, like, we invented it.
	It's not like this came out of air.
	Like, we created the machines that created these terminators.
	Like, why would you want to get rid of this technology?
	As opposed to...
	Controlling it, understanding it, and harnessing it for good.
	It's just such a Luddite, idiotic mentality.
	And I get it, that so much of technology is harmful.
	And we're staring at our smartphones too much.
	Yeah, that's all true.
	But, you know, the alt-right would not exist without the Internet and Twitter and podcasting and Skype and, you know, voice over IP, whatever you want to say.
	We need to harness technology and use it for good.
	We need to become conscious of it.
	We don't need to smash our laptops and blow up the internet.
	That's like a Luddite idiocy.
	But yet, that's what the message of the movie is.
	It's like, let's blow up this technology.
	This technology becomes self-aware, and then it achieves white guilt and lowers itself into a lava pit.
	If you take a step back from the message of this film, it is fucking insane.
	Why?
	No, we are not going to give up the technological project.
	That would be...
	That would be the equivalent of group suicide.
	You might as well go to a Jamestown cult and go drink Kool-Aid.
	I mean, it's just, no.
	We are going to become conscious of technology, recognize its potential for good and its potential for great ill, and harness it according to our willpower.
	And we're not going to lower ourselves into a pit of lava.
	Yeah.
	You know, I would say that it's probably related to sort of the Christian ethos that pervades the film, that it's anti-science.
	And I don't think that that is something that Cameron was thinking.
	I don't think he was consciously linking those two themes or thinking of Christianity as anti-science.
	But I think that that's the consequence of...
	The whole theme is about this sort of, you know, the huddled and the weak against the strong and evil.
	And, you know, it's sort of a it's kind of a Tower of Babel motif where anything great, you know, man seeks to achieve or become, God will destroy.
	You know what I mean?
	And I think that God, you know, in this case becomes a proxy.
	You know, for those faiths, Judaism and Christianity.
	So, yeah, I think that that's something that's just kind of woven into it.
	You know, the other thing, too, I would say is that these Luddite themes, at least from the left, especially as they concern the environment.
	So the environmentalism of the left.
	I mean, I think, you know, I think environmentalism.
	Yeah, sure.
	I mean, obviously, I think that we love and appreciate nature, and we absolutely want to preserve it.
	In fact, in the future, we probably want smaller populations, more manageable populations, and more nature, more wilderness.
	But something that follows a design is probably the best way to look at it.
	But I think that a lot of the environmentalism that originates from the left serves a couple of purposes.
	One is that it gives them sort of a veneer of morality, right?
	Because it's, you know, I mean, and it makes conservatives look stupid when they're attacking environmentalism.
	I mean, so it plays that role of giving this kind of veneer of morality.
	The second thing is that it's a kind of – it's one of these sort of distraction issues from the more important conflict that's occurring, which is a largely ethnic conflict.
	I mean anyone who avoids this question is just avoiding the important questions that will determine the future of the world and for either better or worse.
	And so environmentalism becomes this sort of easy, common thing that we can all have affection for, right?
	In the same way that technology for the Luddite becomes a common thing that we can all be opposed, or even capitalism can be kind of a common thing that we all oppose.
	Because it's not really what we're dealing with.
	Those things are not really defining the issues that are facing us.
	So they become distraction issues.
	I mean, I guess this is a little bit off topic from the film.
	No, it's not.
	It's not off topic at all.
	I mean, we're just basically musing on the message of this film, which is when you're able to make the logic of the movie conscious and you're able to tease it out, I mean, we can see how antithetical it is to the way that we want to view the world.
	Yeah.
	And there is like Avatar is probably like, you know, James Cameron as he becomes an aging boomer.
	I mean, it just becomes sentimental, sappy, you know, vision of...
	A sentimental and sappy vision of the third world as these mystical, down-to-earth, natural conservationist kind of thing.
	It's not a serious look at the world.
	The fact is, if nature is going to be conserved, it's going to be conserved by us.
	It's actually not going to be conserved by primitive people.
	Yeah, no, that is absolutely the case.
	I mean, one little remark, because I watched the film again in preparation for the podcast, both films, and the thing that struck me, and I'm sure this will resonate with a lot of the listeners, is that the film, you know, when I saw it, In my relative youth, in my youth, when I saw the film when I was a young guy, it was a very impactful film.
	All the jokes were just like—I'm thinking actually specifically of the second film because I think I was a more sentient film watcher, becoming a more sentient film watcher then.
	But there's a lot of just kind of gags in the film that just—they worked.
	I'm thinking of the— You know, John Connor trains him to look for the key above the – in the visor, in the sun visor of the car.
	I don't know if you remember that scene.
	And, you know, there's a scene where – oh, you know, one of the scenes that really – you know, watching the film as a young guy was just like, oh, that's kick-ass.
	It was the scene where he is – He's chasing the T2 who's driving in a Big Mac truck, you know, down through one of these drainage gullies they have in California.
	And he's got a shotgun and he pulls the shotgun out and he just kind of with a flick of his wrist, he's like, you know, pumping the shotgun in this very sort of like dispassionate mechanical way and firing like rounds at his adversary.
	Oh.
	And I remember watching it as a kid just being like, oh, the thing is – it's just out of control, like excellent and cool.
	And obviously I'm older now.
	I've seen the film.
	And so I wonder though – I wonder if there's two things going on.
	We're a little bit older now, and so we're going to be less impressed by those things.
	We're just less responsive to kind of stimuli in general.
	I mean, let's face it, right?
	I mean, I think that that probably applies to all the senses as you get older.
	You know what I mean?
	It's harder to, like, find a good hamburger that you really like or find a good meal, find a good steak.
	You know what I mean?
	It's just part of you become more Epicurean naturally as you get older.
	So you're kind of less impressed.
	By these sort of cheap thrills.
	But I think that there's another piece of this.
	And I think that it's not just that we're getting older.
	I think that the age that we live in is getting older.
	And I think our society is getting more aged.
	And we're becoming more cynical and harder to impress.
	And so I think that, you know...
	Probably.
	I mean, I think that I know that in the alt-right in particular, there's this kind of 80s nostalgia.
	So they may like the film.
	You know, even younger guys may like the film disproportionately because of that.
	But I would guess probably in general, younger guys are just like most of the...
	Stuff out there is just garbage.
	Like, who cares?
	You know, I mean, they've seen it all before, you know?
	We are jaded.
	The whole world is jaded.
	And I think you can see that by the fact that the common vernacular of social media is sarcasm.
	You know, it's like you can actually look at someone's Twitter profile and basically every tweet is sarcastic.
	So basically this person is saying the opposite of what she appears to be saying.
	I don't know what to say.
	There is something kind of disturbing about that fact.
	that, you know, everything's a joke.
	Yeah, I mean, it's one of the signs of decadence.
	But I, you know, I think that...
	I don't—you know, I think that we—but this is, I think, also part of the process of becoming sophisticated, right, and less easily fooled and impressed and duped by things that are not necessarily, you know, helpful to us in a kind of deeper way, which I would include these two films, to be honest with you.
	I mean, it's—I'm not discouraging from—I think people should watch these films and then listen to this podcast.
	Because I think that they have to start – they start to – they have to kind of train their lens to see how this propaganda works.
	I mean that's what it – it's not propaganda in the sense that James Cameron is like, yeah, dude, why genocide?
	It's obviously not the case.
	I think the guy is himself largely unconscious.
	I think he's a semi-sentient filmmaker, and the whole Christ metaphor was just kind of the deepest thing he could access, right?
	He basically went to kind of the root of the culture and said, oh, well, I should have Christ figures because that's whatever.
	That's deep, and on some level it is deep.
	I mean, as we've teased out, it is a very deep message to evaluate.
	But yeah, so that's just the one thing that I wanted to remark is that these things – and I think that the fact that our world is becoming more tasteless in the sense that it's harder to – we're becoming desensitized, right?
	That doesn't necessarily have to have all negative consequences, in my view.
	I think that we can—it will also in some way make us—I don't want to say terminators, but it will make us more dispassionate toward things that we really have to fucking do.
	We have to start being honest.
	At the very least, we have to start being honest.
	The one thing you can appreciate about the Terminator is that he's not afraid to walk into a fucking hail of gunfire, right?
	And maybe that's something that we should emulate a little bit and just say, hey, you know what?
	Enough's enough.
	The ultimate end of all this sarcastic nihilism will be a cold-bloodedness and ruthlessness.
	Sure.
	And like I said, I mean, but that, you know, I mean, I don't think that no one, because we're not the cartoon that they depict.
	We're not the bloodthirsty robot that's fucking killing everyone.
	Speak for yourself, but.
	What?
	Yeah, and well, that's pretty badass.
	No, it's cool.
	I'm now more of a fan.

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