The Believer, a film written and directed by Henry Bean about Danny Balint an orthodox Jew who becomes a neo-Nazi, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance film festival. It's based loosely on the life of Daniel Burros, a neo-Nazi who committed suicide in the mid-‘60s after the New York Times exposed him as a Jew. According to Bean: "The Nazis weren’t upset. They were saying just sit down; we can talk about this. But Burros went up to his room, put on a Wagner record and shot himself. He killed himself within an hour of the story coming out."
Bean saw Burros as typifying a particular kind of Jew. "He was a rabbi manque. Antisemitism is a form of practicing Judaism. He’s sort of a rabbi after all. A Jew by day, a Nazi by night. . . . He was desperately hiding something and compulsively trying to bring it out at the same time. People are drawn to contradiction. He undergoes a conversion, but not back to the Torah." By telling the story of the Jewish Nazi, Bean concluded, "I began to understand what Judaism was."
When Danny Balint gets a call from a New York Times reporter, he gives an eloquent articulation of anti-Semitism. Judaism "is a sickness. . . . The real Jew is a nomad and a wanderer. He has no roots and no attachments. He universalizes everything. All he can do is buy and sell and manipulate markets. It’s all mental. Marx, Freud, Einstein: what have they given us? Communism, infantile sexuality and the atom bomb. They want nothing but nothingness, nothing without end."
The main issue in The Believer is theological. Danny Balint penetrates to the heart of the Jewish religion by understanding that the Jew worships Nothingness. If Hitler is the chief Nihilist of the 20th century, then he is the chief rabbi of the religion that worships "nothing but nothingness, nothing without end." He attained that position by default when the Catholic Church stopped working for the conversion of the Jews.
Penetrating and controversial cultural commentary by E. Michael Jones, editor of Culture Wars Magazine.
Bean saw Burros as typifying a particular kind of Jew. "He was a rabbi manque. Antisemitism is a form of practicing Judaism. He’s sort of a rabbi after all. A Jew by day, a Nazi by night. . . . He was desperately hiding something and compulsively trying to bring it out at the same time. People are drawn to contradiction. He undergoes a conversion, but not back to the Torah." By telling the story of the Jewish Nazi, Bean concluded, "I began to understand what Judaism was."
When Danny Balint gets a call from a New York Times reporter, he gives an eloquent articulation of anti-Semitism. Judaism "is a sickness. . . . The real Jew is a nomad and a wanderer. He has no roots and no attachments. He universalizes everything. All he can do is buy and sell and manipulate markets. It’s all mental. Marx, Freud, Einstein: what have they given us? Communism, infantile sexuality and the atom bomb. They want nothing but nothingness, nothing without end."
The main issue in The Believer is theological. Danny Balint penetrates to the heart of the Jewish religion by understanding that the Jew worships Nothingness. If Hitler is the chief Nihilist of the 20th century, then he is the chief rabbi of the religion that worships "nothing but nothingness, nothing without end." He attained that position by default when the Catholic Church stopped working for the conversion of the Jews.
Penetrating and controversial cultural commentary by E. Michael Jones, editor of Culture Wars Magazine.
