28 June 2012

"Unreconstructed white supremacists - inbred, half mad, speaking zombie German"

Last week I was looking in my "Things To Do" folder and encountered a book review from the Atlantic that I had tucked away 18 years ago:
Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche, by Ben Macintyre (1992).
The intrepid Macintyre took a boat trip into the Paraguayan jungle in 1991 in search of the surviving inhabitants of Nueva Germania—an abortive "Aryan" colony founded in the late nineteenth century by the ghastly Elisabeth Nietzsche, racist sister of the philosopher. He found a weird village of unreconstructed white supremacists—inbred, half mad, many of them still speaking a kind of zombie German—and heard some curious and frightening stories about Josef Mengele. A true-life Heart of Darkness
It sounded fascinating at the time, and still does, so yesterday I obtained the book from the library.  If you've read it, please feel free to comment.

And yes, my TTD folder does have items 18 years old.  Sigh...

Addendum:  Hat tips to Hero for Hire and to Bub for leading me to this related video from Vice: Vice link.

Addendum #2:  See also this link found by Mark.

21 comments:

  1. Vice magazine filmed a short video about these sad folk, entitled "The Last Aryans of Paraguay"

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    1. Yes, but the location has been renamed Inland Alabama.

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    2. Wait a minute, I live in Alabama. That's not quite fair. We have plumbing now. And a Honda plant.

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  2. I'll be damned... that is the most interesting bit of information I came across today. Now I really have to read the book.

    I know this will end up in the spam filter (it always does when I'm posting from my office) but that's ok.

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  3. I hate to ruin the ending , but....they all moved to Washington, DC and became raving Republicans. sorry....very sorry

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  4. Whew! Checked into Hennepin County library and requested the second of 2 available in the system.
    I suspect I will be saddened and disgusted but also fascinated. I'll look for the above-mentioned video. Thanks!

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  5. http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-last-aryans-of-paraguay

    bonus appearance by Johnny Knoxville

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  6. So many books, so little time...

    http://page99test.blogspot.com/2011/11/nigel-cliffs-holy-war.html

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  7. Well, this could be a refuge for the teabaggers to emigrate to if Obama is re-elected. Sounds like they'd fit right in, as long as they can learn to write their signs in misspelled German instead of misspelled English.

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    1. Yeah, I mean, the fascist party that ruled the country since the WWII just ousted the first center-left president Paraguay ever had, with the help of the liberals. Paraguay is very likely resting as a racist society for the next fifty years.

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  8. Almost done reading, Ben Macintyre does have a soft spot for scoundrels, and a marvelous sense of humor. My husband loves his books about Agent Zig-Zag, Operation Mincemeat, and the double-cross system. (All of which I now have to find as well.)

    When I came across the line about Edvard Munch painting Elizabeth Nietzsche, I had to see what that looks like.

    http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=52682#

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    1. That is one scary lady - she looks like she's ready to take a ruler to someone's head.

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  9. There is more to this story. An "artist" (David Woodward) from San Francisco living in the desert (Juniper Hills) tried to continue the colony. He actual hosted juniperhills.net for a long time (I own some property there) and was the bane of the Juniper Hills city council that wanted nothing to do with the whole affair.

    David Woodward also sold "dream machines" ... google for it. An interesting nut case.

    http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Rebuilding-a-pure-Aryan-home-in-the-Paraguayan-2723542.php

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    1. Very interesting; I had not heard that part of the story. Thanks, Mark.

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    2. He uses the name Woodward on the DVD William S. Burroughs In The Dreamachine and on the Dreamachine that he donated to the Beat Museum. However, his name is Woodard, unless he changed it to Woodward at some point. He made some Dreamachines that he was selling on his website which he closed or took private. I believe he did not sell many because the odd size makes them too difficult and expensive to mail. He had this woman pick up hers in what was an abandoned house in Juniper Hills because he did not want to met her in person. Search for The Dream in The Machine by Nika Scheidemandel.

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  10. I've finished the book, and was less than enthralled. It's less about the colony than it is a biography of Elizabeth Nietzsche and her relationship to her brother's legacy. (To be fair, that's what the subtitle of the book indicates). There were some very interesting sections, but I wound up skimming a lot.

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