only a 600% return, er, whatever...
only From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2000 2:36 PM Subject: Haacke Rudy=Hitler piece at Whitney
> [the latest from Robert Lederman]
>
> Giuliani as Hitler Goes Mainstream in Whitney Museum
> by Robert Lederman
>
> In a phenomenally bold move for an institution whose board of
> directors includes many of Mayor Giuliani's top contributors,
> the Whitney Museum of American Art will show a work by
> German born artist Hans Haacke directly equating Giuliani
> with Adolf Hitler. The work titled, "Sanitation", will premiere
> on March 23rd, 2000 at the Whitney Biennial, one of the most
> important art shows in the world.
>
> "Sanitation" features a wall with a series of 8 to 12 garbage
> cans, each containing a speaker which will play an audiotape of
> Nazi troops marching. Above the garbage cans will be
> displayed a copy of the First Amendment surrounded by quotes
> written in a German Gothic script by Giuliani on art and the
> Brooklyn Museum. The work is a response to the recent
> Brooklyn Museum show, "Sensations", which Giuliani made a
> tremendous legal and political effort to close before its
> opening.
>
> The Whitney's director, Maxwell L. Anderson, has gone on
> record that he doesn't share the artists' views about Giuliani
> but promises that the museum will display the work at the
> opening. Mr. Anderson will likely be under tremendous
> pressure in the next two weeks to remove the work from the
> show.
>
> Those aware of my activities during the past six and a half
> years concerning Mayor Giuliani know of his efforts to prevent
> my paintings likening him to Hitler from being seen. He's
> denounced the cardboard protest paintings at numerous press
> conferences, has had me falsely arrested on 41 occasions, has
> had hundreds of the paintings confiscated by the NYPD
> Intelligence Division and during the Diallo protests last year
> organized a campaign among prominent Jewish leaders,
> including the ADL's Abraham Foxman and the NYCLU's
> Norm Siegal, to pressure political activists to ban the paintings
> from demonstrations in NYC. According to many reporters the
> Mayor has also gone to great lengths to pressure the media not
> to show the paintings on television or in newspapers.
>
> While the Hans Hackke work in the Whitney show specifically
> comments on the Mayor's efforts at censorship and their
> striking similarity to Hitler's efforts to censor German art there
> is a much larger context that the work will inevitably be
> viewed within. In recent weeks there have been almost daily
> accusations by ex-police officials, ex Mayors, ministers and
> one-time political allies of Giuliani that he is a racist. Both the
> President and Hillary Clinton made statements last week that
> can only be interpreted as meaning that Amadou Diallo was a
> victim of racial profiling as part of an official Giuliani
> administration policy.
>
> Giuliani can be expected to denounce the Whitney show as a
> political move by Democrats to link him to the far right in
> preparation for the Senate race. The real issue should be
> whether there is anything to the comparisons between Giuliani
> and Hitler not simply whether those making them have some
> political motive.
>
> Despite the existence of a great deal of solid evidence that links
> both Giuliani and his pal GW Bush to far right groups, some
> with direct links to Nazi ideology, racism and Eugenics, there
> have been no efforts by the mainstream media to explore this
> issue. The Hitler/Nazi accusations are treated as nothing more
> than name calling and the venting of emotion.
>
> To give one outstanding example, so far during this
> Presidential election not one mainstream media outlet has
> mentioned the indisputable historical fact that the Bush family
> were among Hitler's most important financial backers or that in
> 1942 the US Congress seized many of their banking assets
> under the Trading With The Enemy Act. [see: Office of Alien
> Property Custodian, vesting order # 248. The order was signed
> by Leo T. Crowley, Alien Property Custodian, executed
> October 20, 1942; Fed Reg Doc 42-11568, Filed Nov. 6, 1942
> 11:31 AM; 7 Fed Reg. 9097November 7, 1942]. Immediately
> before the Super Tuesday Primary, GW Bush was shown on
> CNN in a yarmulke with Jewish leaders dedicating a Holocaust
> memorial. Neither has anything in the mainstream media dealt
> with the undeniable fact that the Manhattan Institute, which
> Giuliani routinely points to as the source of his ideas, has been
> directly linked to far right groups, the CIA, and the
> dissemination of purportedly scholarly works advancing the
> notion that blacks are inferior.
>
> In addition to his well-documented efforts to eliminate First
> Amendment protection for visual art altogether...
>
> ["Elizabeth Freedman, an attorney speaking on behalf of the
> N.Y.C. Corporation Counsel's office [Mayor Giuliani's
> lawyers], explained the City's anti-art position. "Visual
> art...does not express ideas", Ms. Friedman said, "and as such
> is not entitled to First Amendment protection." 2/24/97 radio
> interview WNYC's syndicated business news show,
> "Marketplace"
>
> "An exhibition of paintings is not as communicative as speech,
> literature or live entertainment, and the artists' constitutional
> interest is thus minimal." -Giuliani appeal brief against street
> artists having First Amendment protection, Giuliani v
> Lederman et al and Giuliani v Bery et al, filed with the U.S.
> Supreme Court 2/24/97.]
>
> ...the Mayor's efforts to cleanse the City of immigrant vendors,
> community gardens, the homeless and his policies on a host of
> other issues makes a convincing case that he is being compared
> to Hitler for substantial reasons.
>
> Last Fall the Mayor's insistence on repeatedly spraying the
> City with Malathion, an organophosphate nerve gas his own
> Chem-bio Handbook described as similar to those invented by
> the Nazis for military use and which is known to cause sterility,
> birth defects, cancer, immune deficiency and encephalitis, was
> for many observers an indication that Giuliani's Nazi
> connection was coming out of the closet.
>
> When the Mayor begins his inevitable denunciations of the
> Whitney exhibit, including likely statements bizarrely
> suggesting that the show is anti-Semitic, let us hope the media
> will once and for all delve into why so many call the 107th
> Mayor of NYC, Adolf Giuliani. To paraphrase Johnnie
> Cochran, let the jury of public opinion decide: if the moustache
> fits, you must not acquit.
> -----------------------------------------------
> Robert Lederman is an artist, a regular columnist for the
> Grenwich Village Gazette [See: http://www.gvny.com/ for an
> extensive archive of Lederman columns] The Shadow and
> Street News, and is the author of hundreds of published essays
> concerning Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. His essays and letters
> have appeared in the NY Times, NY Post, Daily News,
> Newsday, Brooklyn Bridge, Park Slope Courier, The Daily
> Challenge, Amsterdam News, Sandbox, Penthouse, Our Town,
> NY Press and are available on hundreds of websites around the
> world. Lederman has been falsely arrested 41 times to date for
> his anti-Giuliani activities and has never been convicted of any
> of the charges. He is best known for creating hundreds of
> paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator.
>
> Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
> (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
> ARTISTpres at aol.com (718) 743-3722
> http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
>
> "Sanitation," an installation by Hans Haacke, a well-known
> German-born New York artist, puts Mayor Rudolph W.
> Giuliani in the company of the Nazis, with quotations by him
> written in the Fraktur script favored by the Third Reich and the
> sound of jackboots marching in the background. The artwork,
> which will be on view when the 2000 Biennial opens on March
> 23, recalls the fury over the First Amendment issues raised by
> the "Sensation" exhibition at the city-subsidized Brooklyn
> Museum of Art last fall when the Mayor attacked some of the
> art work as "sick" and "disgusting." -NY Times 3/9/2000 Signs
> of New `Sensation' at the Whitney Museum
>
> "But the Mayor repeated his anger over signs and chants at the
> post-Diallo protests that liken him to Adolf Hitler. "The
> comparisons to Hitler, Adolf Hitler, and fascism have to stop,
> because they're sick, perverted, and they do affect some
> people," he said. "Invocations of Adolf Hitler are despicable no
> matter who it is. Nobody should participate in it, and nobody
> should do it." -NY Times Sunday March 28, 1999 "After
> Meeting Mayor Vows Major Changes for Police"
>
> "We'll say it simply: Just because people don't like Rudy
> Giuliani doesn't give them license to compare him to Adolf
> Hitler. The Hitler analogy is something that seems to amuse
> many people in this city. Cutesy stories have been written and
> published in the past week about an art installation on Madison
> Avenue called No York in which the mayor is depicted with a
> Hitler moustache. This image was first bandied about by an
> obnoxious twerp who claims to represent a group called
> A.R.T.I.S.T. - but which really ought to be called M.O.R.O.N.
> - who is outraged that the mayor attempted to enforce plainly
> written statutes regarding sidewalk clutter in front of the
> Metropolitan Museum. For this, the twerp (whose name we
> shall never again use because he deserves no more public
> mention) imagines that Rudy Giuliani deserves comparison
> with the personification of evil in this century...As the New
> York Times' gleeful seizure of the "bunker" story indicates,
> you don't have to be a cabbie, a vendor or a M.O.R.O.N. to
> issue forth such repulsive opinions. -NY Post Editorial 6/16/98
>
> "In satire and protest, the Mayor of the City of New York is
> again being likened to some of the vilest figures in history. But
> this time Rudolph W. Giuliani is learning to accept it....
> Deputy Mayor Randy M. Mastro goes so far as to detect a
> touch of flattery in the Giuliani-as-Dictator analogies." NY
> TIMES 6/24/98 "Hudson Hitler? Midtown Mussolini? Giuliani
> Grins and Bears It"
>
> "I take a different view of someone comparing me to Adolf
> Hitler than when someone calls me a jerk." Mayor Giuliani,
> N.Y. Daily News 10/25/1998
>
> 'The Manhattan Institute clearly has become the force, and
> there is no progressive force to counter it. There isn't even a
> debate.' "The mayor has a very close working relationship with
> the Manhattan Institute," Giuliani's communications director,
> Crystine Lategano, said...Another sign of how much New York
> has changed: The most influential source of political ideas is a
> conservative think tank that was founded by Margaret
> Thatcher's mentor and Ronald Reagan's spymaster." -Boston
> Sunday Globe 2/22/98
>
> "It [The Manhattan Institute] was an early proponent of
> shrinking city government; it enabled Charles Murray to
> publish the 1984 book that many people believe begat welfare
> reform, and it promoted theories about crime and public
> disorder that later underlay the work of the former Police
> Commissioner, William J. Bratton. It took up the question of
> the quality of life in New York City in 1990, well before Mr.
> Giuliani made that a cornerstone of his successful election
> campaign in 1993. The institute has savaged open admissions
> al the City University of New York, pushed hospital
> privatization and aggressively promoted school choice...Mr.
> Giuliani and his campaign staff began meeting with institute
> members in 1992, and since that time have absorbed many of
> its ideas, particularly on such issues as the city's tax structure,
> economic development, education policy, policing and quality
> of life...In mid-1992, the magazine published an issue on the
> quality of life - full of articles on such subjects as "reclaiming
> public spaces" - and Mr. Giuliani could be found seated in the
> audience at an institute sponsored conference pegged to the
> issue, scribbling notes...In a brief interview recently, Mr.
> Giuliani said he had found City Journal, in particular,
> "enormously helpful. I've read it for years, since it first came
> out. It has sparked a lot of the reanalysis, reinvention,
> reinvigoration of government. It produces provocative and very
> good ideas." -NY Times 5/12/97 Turning Intellect Into
> Influence: Promoting Its Ideas, the Manhattan Institute Has
> Nudged New York Rightward
>
> From: http://www.accuracy.org/articles/manhat.htm
> The Manhattan Institute: Launch Pad For Conservative
> Authors
> "The Manhattan Institute was founded in 1978 by William
> Casey, who later became President Reagan's CIA director.
> Since then, the Institute's track record with authors has been
> notable. Funneling money from very conservative foundations,
> the Institute has sponsored many books by writers opposed to
> safety-net social programs and affirmative action...Charles
> Murray's Losing Ground -- a denunciation of social programs
> for the poor -- catapulted him to media stardom in 1984. More
> than a dozen years later, the Philadelphia Inquirer (10/13/97)
> recalled that Losing Ground "provided much of the intellectual
> groundwork for welfare reform." As Murray wrote in the
> book's preface, the decision by Manhattan Institute officials to
> subsidize the book project was crucial: "Without them, the
> book would not have been written."...When Murray appeared
> on ABC's This Week (11/28/93), host David Brinkley
> introduced him with lavish praise as "the author of a
> much-admired, much-discussed book called Losing Ground,
> which is a study of our social problems." Minutes later, Murray
> was explaining his solution: "I want to get rid of the whole
> welfare system, period, lock, stock and barrel -- if you don't
> have any more welfare, you enlist a lot more people in the
> community to help take care of the children that are born. And
> the final thing that you can do, if all else fails, is
> orphanages."...: Shortly after The Bell Curve was published [in
> late 1994], the Institute sponsored a luncheon to honor Murray
> and the book, in which he proposes a genetic explanation for
> the 15-point difference in IQ between blacks and whites that is
> the basis for his dismissing affirmative action policies as
> futile."...Along with ongoing subsidies from a number of large
> conservative foundations, the Manhattan Institute has gained
> funding from such corporate sources as the Chase Manhattan
> Bank, Citicorp, Time Warner, Procter & Gamble and State
> Farm Insurance, as well as the Lilly Endowment and
> philanthropic arms of American Express, Bristol-Myers
> Squibb, CIGNA and Merrill Lynch. Boosted by major firms,
> the Manhattan Institute budget reached $5 million a year by the
> early 1990s."
>
> "Mayor Giuliani yesterday left open the possibility that his
> office might begin screening art exhibits bankrolled by
> taxpayers. The closer scrutiny would come on a "case-by-case
> basis,"...Giuliani's comments came a day after he warned he
> would slash money to any of 41 city-funded cultural
> institutions that presented works, which, in his view,
> aggressively attacked religion". -Daily News 10/6/99 Mayor
> Hints at Art Exams Says city might do 'case-by-case screening
> of exhibits
>
> "Anything that I can do isn't art," he said. "If I can do it, it's not
> art, because I'm not much of an artist. And I could figure out
> how to put this together. You know, if you want to throw dung
> at something, I could figure out how to do that." -. NY Times
> 9/25/99
>
> "There is no federal constitutional issue more grave," the judge
> wrote in her 38-page decision, "than the effort by government
> officials to censor works of expression and to threaten the
> vitality of a major cultural institution as punishment for failing
> to abide by governmental demands for orthodoxy." Giuliani
> called Judge Gershon's decision "the usual knee-jerk reaction
> of some judges" and said the city would appeal..."This is all
> about dollar signs," Giuliani said Monday. "It isn't about free
> speech. It's actually a desecration of the First Amendment, as
> much as it is a desecration of religion, to use the First
> Amendment as a shield in order to take money out of the
> taxpayers' pockets in order to put that money into the pockets
> of multimillionaires." NY Times 11/2/99 Giuliani Is Ordered to
> Halt Attacks Against Museum
>
> "Jewry was able, largely by exploiting its position in the press,
> to enlist the aid of so-called art criticism not only in gradually
> obscuring all normal ideas of the nature and function of art and
> its purpose, but also in destroying the general healthy response
> in this area". -Adolf Hitler
>
> "For it is an affair of the State ..... to prevent a Folk from being
> driven into the arms of spiritual lunacy ..... for on the day that
> this kind of art were actually to correspond to the general
> conception, one of the most severe changes of mankind would
> have begun; the backward development of the human brain". --
> Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
>
> "It is not the function of art to wallow in dirt for dirt's sake,
> never its task to paint the state of decomposition, to draw
> cretins as the symbol of motherhood, to picture hunchbacked
> idiots as representatives of manly strength". Adolf Hitler
> speech at the Nazi Party Rally in Nürnberg in 1935.
>
> A07 "By seeking to shut a controversial art show at The
> Brooklyn Museum, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani managed this
> week to eclipse another issue, involving park permits, that
> threatened to highlight his troubled record on First Amendment
> liberties... The mayor's aides deny that he chose Wednesday
> to divert attention from the park issue by launching a perhaps
> more politically beneficial assault on the museum. Yet at the
> same news conference where he found himself denying and
> denouncing a Daily News front-page headline warning that the
> city wanted citizens to "pay" to use parks, Giuliani revealed
> that he'd cut city funds for the museum. "This is not exactly a
> topic that's been dormant," said Giuliani's spokeswoman,
> Sunny Mindel, citing published reports on the exhibit last
> week. "There were a number of news organizations that were
> calling on this." She denied that the museum denunciation was
> linked to the park story. Whatever the intent, however, aides let
> it be known among reporters before Wednesday's press
> conference that he was "fuming" about the exhibit, planting the
> seeds for the stories that followed. -Another 1st Amendment
> Fight / Rudy's Museum Spat Has Political Benefits." -9/24/99
> Newsday
>
> "I ask you not to create any undue or unnecessary alarm or
> panic," Giuliani said at a City Hall news conference on
> Thursday morning. "There's no point in not spraying, because
> there's no harm in spraying. So even if we're overdoing it,
> there's no risk to anyone in overdoing it...The more dead
> mosquitoes," he added, "the better. I don't think the media
> should try to push this out of proportion". NY Times 9/10/99
>
> "The mayor dismissed complaints from environmental
> advocates about the spraying, referring to them as hysterical
> "environmental terrorists" who "like to get you angry because
> it gets them on television." The spraying is harmless, he
> insisted." "More Mosquito War Protests greet new plan for
> spraying"-Daily News 9/18/99
>
> "I have nothing to hide," "I'm very comfortable with the
> spraying of Malathion. If we had to do it again, we would do it
> the same way". Jerome Hauer, director of the Mayor's Office
> of Emergency Management 1/27/2000 Queens Tribune
> Emergency Management Director Grilled On Mosquito
> Control