The White Rose
by Doctress Neutopia
The White Rose, a film about the life of Sophie Scholl and a group of
German
university students in Munich who became Nazi resisters is an inspiration
and a warning to America students who love justice and freedom. When
students realized that the Nazis had been killing Jews and political
dissenters, they took it on themselves to create a resistance movement at
the university. They wrote text and made fliers with their call for
students
to overthrow the Nazis. They copied them by using a hand-cranked
mimeograph
machine. Such activity had to be done in secrecy. These students risked
their lives to distribute their literature. They also wrote anti-Nazi and
freedom messages in the style of graffiti on the walls of the university.
Another tactic was they sent their resistance literature through the mail
to
university faculty, doctors, lawyers and other people of social standing,
not only in Munich, but in Berlin. It was risky business buying a large
quantity of stamps since it could alert the Nazis to their activities.
The White Rose found out from distributing their fliers that students were
too afraid, apathetic or politically unconscious to even pick them up.
Nevertheless, Nazis were threatened by such thought and searched for the
group of conspirators. Even though they were up against extreme odds, they
continued until they were caught by a janitor who re****ted them to the
Gestapo for distributing fliers outside a lecture hall that was about to
be
let out. For their heroic action, Sophie and others were beheaded.
Hitler's secretary, Traudi Junge, in an interview at the end of the film
DownFall, about the last days of the Third Reich in the bunker in Berlin,
said that she deeply regretted her involvement with the Nazis. After she
learned of the life and death of Sophie Scholl who was the same age as
her,
she realized that making the excuse that she was too young, naïve, and
unaware of Hitler's plans to exterminate the Jews was no real excuse for
her
cooperation with Hitler.
After seeing the White Rose, my partner and I went to the University of
Arizona with a flier I created comparing the destruction of Fallujah with
the destruction of Warsaw. The America and Nazi armies destroyed these
cities for the same reason, to crush and punish liberation uprisings.
Tragically, the University of Arizona was similar to the way the film
****trayed the university in Munich during the time of the Nazis.
Everything
seemed controlled and sanitized. There were few places where the public
could officially post a flier. Most bulletin boards in such places as the
library said posters are removed daily. The only politically conscious
flier
we saw was advertising the Monday Night film series latest film, a
documentary about Battle of Algerias. Students were not being exposed to
fliers that illustrated the crisis we face. Instead, students were
inundated
with commercials. From looking at the posters, one could surmise there was
no visible resistance movement against the American fascists happening on
campus. The place appeared to be void of intelligent and wise thought.
A month before, at the annual "progressive fair," which I tabled for my
organization, Lovolution Village, it was discouraging to witness the
student
body walking to classes. Very few showed any curiosity about what was
going
on at the tables. They walked by chatting on their cell phones or listened
to music on their iPods as if to escape the world around them. They walked
by as if in a deadly trance or as if they had been programmed to not look
at
the humanitarian literature on the tables.
The only time student groups who scheduled an outside event could
officially
use an amplified sound system was from noon to one pm. I asked the student
organizer if I could speak, but she said there wasn't time because of the
musical acts that they had scheduled. The first music group played was on
stage for around 45 minutes. In my mind they were absolutely terrible.
Their
lyrics had nothing to do with social liberation or progressive issues and
it
had everything to do with escaping into the "tits and ass" American
consumerist mentality. It was insulting to the intelligent mind and spirit
to sit there and be entertained as if there was nothing seriously wrong
with
what was happening in America. Even though many of us at the tables were
veterans of the peace movement and would have loved to voice our concerns
and share with the students our insights into the struggle for liberation,
the students had no intention of breaking the administrations rules of no
amplified sound after the clock struck one. The administrators said the
reason for one o'clock being the cut off the amp time was because it might
interfere with classes.
I wondered what was being said in the classes anyway. Were the professors
talking about how we must stop the American invasion of Iraq and disarm
the
American military of all nuclear weapons so that we can honestly say to
Iran
that they are not allowed to have them? Do you think the professors are
telling students to impeach Bush and put him and his group of murderers on
trial for their war crimes? It seemed apparent that their professors were
not steering them in this direction. Students who organized the
progressive
fair were unprepared to lead a resistance organization to save the world
from the Americans.
My suspicion is that there are very few socially conscious activist
professors left in universities throughout the United States. The
systematic
elimination of progressive, pacifists, and radical professors have been
taking place for years. I was the last futurist to graduate from the
University of Massachusetts before the program at the School of Education
was killed along with public health and the philosophy of art. Also,
during
that time of targeted budget cuts went the plans to build a solar power
engineering program. So, there is no place for me to teach at a university
because they have eliminated Future Studies from the curriculum. What does
this mean for students, for America?
White Rose where are you, my lovely comrades in truth? The mountains echo
back to me, "their heart lies in each one of us." It's time to resurrect
the
White Rose. Let's find creative and daring ways to stir up the campus
across
America. Only then will programs like public health and future studies can
be restored, so that we can entirely transform education into a place
where
philosophy, the wisdom of the people, reign over society. I ask any person
who resonates with this essay to be part of the White Rose. Start out by
making anti-establishment fliers and put there everywhere you can think
of,
on computer terminals, in phone books, on tables in campus centers. Bring
megaphones to the campus squares and hold rallies for Lovolution, a
non-violent world-wide transformation to build Ecocities. If Sophie Scholl
and the White Rose can do it under the tyranny of Hitler, we can do it
under
the tyranny of Bush.
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