You’re A Nazi If....

Matt Vespa reporting for Townhall

Liberal Media: 

You're a Nazi If You
Like the Hallmark Channel

Well, the Christmas season is over. Some people are undecorating because they’re off to warmer climates for the winter. Others are keeping their decorations up for a bit longer. And throughout this season, you probably saw an advertisement or even watched one of those sappy Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel. You don’t have to watch them, but next season just make an effort to keep a movie on in the background when you’re decorating or wrapping gifts. Why? Well, it drives the Left insane. Hallmark is now a white nationalist network because the casts are not diverse—not true—and well, people are happy in the movies. It’s over the top, yes. And I’ve admitted many a time some of these films, with Gremlins, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, It’s A Wonderful Life, and Home Alone, get me in the Christmas spirit. It’s a nice break from the pervasive amounts of blood and guts that I watch year-round. and I’d never thought that this network would be a target, but here we are. Slate magazine was the first to voice their concerns about Christmas movies a couple of years ago [emphasis mine]: 

At a rally in November 2015, Donald Trump heralded, “If I become president, we’re all going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again, that I can tell you.” Of all his empty guarantees, the president has perhaps fulfilled none better than a counterstrike in the War on Christmas, and no battalion has fired more rooty-toot artillery for him than the Hallmark Channel. In 2017, the network is premiering 21 original Christmas movies (up from 20 last year)—42 hours of sugary, sexist, preposterously plotted, plot hole–festooned, belligerently traditional, ecstatically Caucasian cheer. To observe the first holiday season under the Trump administration, I’m bearing witness to them all.

Hallmark Channel, owned by the Kansas City, Missouri–based greeting-card giant, has boomed since Trump began campaigning. In 2016, Hallmark was the only top-15 entertainment channel with double-digit ratings growth, and viewership has jumped another 16 percent this year. Meanwhile, Hallmark’s Christmas programming, which this year began before Halloween, generates more than 30 percent of its annual ad revenue and has helped Hallmark become the season’s highest-rated cable network among women aged 25–54. More than 70 million Americans watched Hallmark Channel Christmas movies last year.

The network has already approached that number in 2017, with three weeks and five premieres remaining. And the network’s strongholds map to Trump’s Electoral College victories.

After watching a few of Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas films, the network’s burgeoning red-state appeal comes into focus. As much as these movies offer giddy, predictable escapes from Trumpian chaos, they all depict a fantasy world in which America has been Made Great Again. Real and fictional heartland small towns with names such as Evergreen and Cookie Jar are as thriving as their own small businesses, and even a high school art teacher (played by Trump supporter and the face of Hallmark, Candace Cameron Bure) can afford a lavishly renovated Colonial home. They brim with white heterosexuals who exclusively, emphatically, and endlessly bellow “Merry Christmas” to every lumberjack and labradoodle they pass .They’re centered on beauty-pageant heroines and strong-jawed heroes with white-nationalist haircuts. There are occasional sightings of Christmas sweater–wearing black people, but they exist only to cheer on the dreams of the white leads, and everyone on Trump’s naughty list—Muslims, gay people, feminists—has never crossed the snowcapped green-screen mountains to taint these quaint Christmas villages. “Santa Just Is White” seems to be etched into every Hallmark movie’s town seal.

Folks, this is what the Left thinks about during the season. Anything that’s nice, they have to destroy. They’re a virus. And as with treatment for any virus, you have to let it run its course. But this is a political virus. The best way is to show support for things they hate, even if you don’t like it. I hate peas, but if some liberal decided to deem peas a Trumpian food (I know, odd example but just bear with me)—I’d buy 100 lbs. what the Left hates is usually supported or adored by the vast majority of normal people. Keep doing what you’re doing, show them they’re an annoying minority and make them embarrassed to believe what they believe. After all, being a liberal Democrat is the most embarrassing affiliation one could have besides being part of NAMBLA. Okay, maybe that’s a bit much, but screw these people—all of them. 

Now, we have Salon, who is a bit late to the game, calling Hallmark…“fascist propaganda.” These folks just love to be miserable over the holidays, huh? I mean I know there’s a slice of America that’s into sadomasochism, but this is getting to be a bit disturbing. Imagine waking up and searching for something to make you miserable. Oh, and The New York Times and The Washington Post decided to join this offensive against…what’s offensive about Hallmark. Grabs some popcorn for this (via Salon) [emphasis mine]:

 Running down this year's schedule of Christmas movie offerings is like a trip into an uncanny valley of shiny-teethed, blow-dried heteronormative whiteness, with only a few token movies with characters of color. It's like watching "The Stepford Wives," but scarier, since the evil plot to replace normal people with robots is never actually revealed.

None of this should be a surprise, because Hallmark movies, as cloying and saccharine as they are, constitute the platonic ideal of fascist propaganda.

That is probably a startling statement to some. When most of us think about fascistically propagandistic movies, we think of the grotesque grandeur of Leni Riefenstahl's films celebrating the Third Reich — grand, but cold sweeping shots of soldiers goose-stepping and flags waving, all meant to inspire awe and terror. But the reality is, even in Nazi Germany, the majority of movies approved by the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, were escapist and feather-light, with a Hallmark movie-style emphasis on the importance of "normality."

There's plenty of reason that empty-headed kitsch fits neatly in the authoritarian worldview. It's storytelling that imitates the gestures of emotion without actually engaging with real feeling. The Hallmark movie steers clear of the real passion or deeper emotion that tends to be the engine driving more artful fiction. Characters who have real feelings, after all, can prompt empathetic reactions in the audience, and empathy for others is the greatest single threat to the authoritarian mindset.

[…]

"In the Hallmark-Lifetime Cinematic Universe, Hanukkah and the characters who celebrate it exist only in relation to Christmas," Nancy Coleman of the New York Times complained, adding that the Hallmark movie "Holiday Date" could, with "remarkably little editing" turn into "a Jewish 'Get Out.'"

Britni de la Cretaz, writing for the Washington Post, not only complained that the Jewish Hallmark movies were "Christmas movies with Jewish characters," but also that the movies "rely on some of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes in the book," such as painting one Jewish character as the "perpetual outsider" who is "sneaky, untrustworthy."

[…]

Hallmark movies, with their emphasis on returning home and the pleasures of the small, domestic life, also send a not-at-all subtle signal of disdain for cosmopolitanism and curiosity about the larger world, which is exactly the sort of attitude that helps breed the kind of defensive white nationalism that we see growing in strength in the Donald Trump era.

I’m dying. I’m dying laughing because I have no clue if this is a parody, or if liberal America actually thinks this. The Hallmark Channel is akin to Nazi propaganda. Second, I live near an urban-based, cosmopolitan center. Does D.C. count? Either way, I’ve been to many and found that most of the people suck. Their politics suck. Their children suck. And as a person of color, you cannot criticize me for saying so because that’s racist. I honestly couldn’t care less about white people being in movies. Would I like to see more Asian-Americans in productions? Sure. Why not—but I don’t lose sleep over it. There is nothing wrong with rural life. There are good people out there who aren’t distracted by the rot and filth that inhabits cities; Thomas Jefferson was right about these centers from the get-go. Granted, rural America also has drug problems and issues of their own. At the same time, the New York elites, any elites that dot these deep blue cesspools, think that the entire nation should cater to their needs, their agenda items, and their way of thinking. Any deviation is met with mockery and hopes for destruction. That’s authoritarian. As for curiosity about the larger world, that’s rich. Most of these cosmopolitan snobs haven’t ventured one foot into a rural setting—and these people, again, want to lecture us about what’s ‘out there.’ My eyes cannot roll hard enough. They can’t. The 2016 election was the revenge of the rural voter. It was a slap to the face of these condescending insufferable scabs in the cities who thought America was just California, New York, and the Acela Corridor. Well, surprise! Not the case. Also, calling someone with whom you have a disagreement a Nazi is, well, not very inclusive, is it? You sound like a lunatic, though that’s the default setting for the progressive Left, who I would like to happily see drugged for an eternity on sedatives. There would at least be some peace and quiet around this time.

Anyways, even if Hallmark isn’t your form of entertainment, just keep it on as background noise next year. Do Christmas a solid and piss off a liberal. Do America a solid and piss off a liberal. Why? Because if you’re not a “Nazi” for watching Hallmark, they’ll call you a Nazi for something else. Screw these people. Piss them off. And vote Republican.