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Apocalypse       of       the        Psychopaths

June 17, 2009

By John de Nugent

John@JohndeNugent.com

In  the  January-February 2007 issue of TBR [The
Barnes Review],  John de  Nugent's   article  on
Psychopaths  and  History triggered  much
discussion of  which  specific  individuals  and
groups  in  history  have literally proven to be
psychopathic, i.e.,  those  who  go  beyond  the
usual human greed, ego and prevarication and, to
use   traditional   religious   language,    are
deliberately evil.

Psychopaths, as described in the bestselling The
Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout,  a  25-year
veteran  of  Harvard  Medical School, can deeply
scar or destroy the lives of  others:  they  lie
constantly, act sadistically and maliciously and
sacrifice  others  for  their  advancement   and
pleasure.

Why?  Because  they  have  an  unlimited will to
power   over   others,   and   possess   neither
inhibitions  nor  conscience  nor any ability to
truly love or feel compassion. Strikingly, Stout
claims   our  ruling  class  is  full  of  these
maneuvering monsters, with many at the very top,
and  that  they  enjoy clear advantages over the
decent and trusting  majority --that  is,  until
again and again the wrath of God and man strikes
them down. In this article,  de  Nugent  returns
with  an appreciation of Mel Gibson’s December
2006 worldwide hit film, Apocalypto–now out of
the  theaters  and  flying off the video shelves
around the globe.  He  claims  that  Gibson  has
consciously   set   out   to  do  a  film  about
psychopaths in power, paralyzing fear,  and  the
inner   turning   point   between   victim   and
patriot–and that he has succeeded in this,  de
Nugent  says,  his  greatest masterpiece. Barnes
Review  readers  seem   to   agree   with   this
assessment:   Some   of   our   most  thoughtful
correspondents  have  seen  this   movie–about
Mayans  in  Mayan, with subtitles–between four
and six times. And it turns  out,  Nugent  says,
that  there lurk in the subtitles some heretical
comparisons:

For months I had three objections to seeing this
film–all defanged by the film itself:

One, although a former Marine, I detest anything
that sounds like a “horror film,” and a film
about human sacrifice sounds appalling.

In  fact,  the violence in this film, which does
show human sacrifice and those escaping  it  and
fighting back, is not gratuitous but at the core
essence of the story, and Gibson shows only half
the   gruesome  Mayan-Aztec  reality  which  the
Spanish  terminated  after  1502.  It  may  make
professional   anti-racists  uncomfortable,  but
Apocalypto cleaves tightly to reality in details
both  large  and small, right down to the colors
of the plant dyes used in native  clothing,  the
jade  used by different classes of women and the
feather headdress of the great king.

(Using  artistic  license,  Gibson  does   blend
different  periods  of  Mayan  architecture  and
decor, and by the  time  the  Spanish  came,  as
shown  in  the  film,  the  jungle  Mayan cities
already had been mysteriously abandoned. It  was
actually  further north, in the very similar and
neighboring Aztec culture  with  its  own  human
sacrifices, that the Spanish would find the same
psychopathic atrocities, which  caused  them  to
eradicate  the Aztec regime root and branch with
the aid of oppressed local tribes.)

Two, I detest our national tendency to  mindless
action  movies.  Methinks Americans should break
with their  hyperactive  national  character  by
doing less and thinking more, perhaps precluding
further Ritalin kid-faux cowboys  in  the  White
House.

What   Apocalypto   represents,  however,  is  a
mindful  action  movie.  It   is   done   by   a
storyteller  worthy  of Homer, a director worthy
of Cecil B. DeMille (Gibson’s  movie  has  700
extras, all in differing accurate costumes), and
a deeply spiritual man (when not off the  wagon;
Mel  in  Australia used to drink two scotches in
beer, which he called “liquid violence”).

Apocalypto   transmits   via   entertainment   a
tremendous message, one that reflects the values
of  his  father,  Hutton  Gibson,  a  courageous
Holocaust     revisionist,     a     Traditional
Catholic–and an honored speaker  at  the  2003
conference held by this very magazine.

Not  many  Hollywood  “action  flicks” start
with  a  quote  from   historian   Will   Durant
(1885-1981),     author    of    the    Pulitzer
Prize-winning,  eleven-volume   The   Story   of
Civilization:  “A  great  civilization  is not
conquered from without until  it  has  destroyed
itself from within.”

Third,  I  wondered  how  much  relevance  Mayan
Indios in 1502 had to me, a white man  in  2007,
except for the possible fact that my Washington,
DC area is now being flooded  by  illegal  alien
descendants  of  the  Mayans  and  Aztecs.  (The
greater DC area is now only 54% white.)

Actually, plenty of relevance: The entire  movie
delineates  how a tiny psychopathic ruling class
misrules,  lies   to,   entertains   with   mass
festivals,  impoverishes and oppresses an entire
nation–and how God and man  ultimately  thwart
them.

The title “Apocalypto” comes from one of the
very  many  utterly  unique   scenes   in   this
revolutionary   piece   of  film  making.  Mayan
manhunters  pass  through  an  orphan   girl’s
smoldering  shell  of  a village, not unlike the
pulverized  Ramadi  or  Fallujah  in  Iraq,   or
Dresden  in  1945  Germany or Gaza in Palestine.
They take  along  their  captives  destined  for
human  sacrifice,  neck-tied  to  a wooden rail,
heading  for  their  torture  and   death.   The
psychopaths  prod  her  aside;-they have no time
for starving orphans; the clock is  ticking  for
show time in the Yucatan.

She  dries  her  little-girl tears and thanks to
Gibson,  from   somewhere   real,   inside   the
character, come two riveting eyeballs trained on
them and a voice of doom that “spooks”  even
the  hardened enslavers. She then “reveals the
end” of all that they represent; in Greek, she
“apocalyptizes” the final things.

The   official   Apocalypto   poster  from  Icon
Productions (Gibson’s own  film  company  that
also  did  Braveheart),  depicts  a  Mayan  high
priest, with an obsidian knife in hand, striding
forth  from  his ziggurat where for years he has
been sacrificing trembling humans.

In  1486,  in  fact,  during  an  Aztec   temple
dedication  before huge and roaring crowds (just
16 years before Columbus’s fourth  expedition,
which  landed in Central America), in a four-day
festival twenty thousand live captives,  knowing
in  advance  what  was  going to happen to them,
consciously saw and felt their hearts, hands and
feet   being   surgically  sliced  away  by  the
glass-like but razor-sharp obsidian knives, this
before  their  heads  were  cut  off  and flung,
followed by the torsos,  bouncing  and  flipping
down  the  pyramid  steps–naturally  “as the
crowd roared.”

Other Mayans were used as  target  practice  for
various  elite weapons. Raids to small villages,
as depicted in Apocalypto  in  an  unforgettable
15-minute   sequence,   brought  a  never-ending
supply of fright-sickened new victims.

But the Mayans also fought wars  and  humiliated
captured  foreign  leaders; as Gibson relates in
the fascinating “Director’s Commentary” on
the  DVD,  they  spent  nine  interminable years
degrading, humiliating–and amputating  various
parts  off–a captured head of state. As Gibson
related, in  the  end  the  captives  were  just
“balls  of  nerve  endings.” It would appear
that  the  sociopathic  priests  enjoyed  making
fools  even  of their own kings; the Mayan heads
of state were persuaded  to  try  accessing  the
gods  by  driving a stingray spine through their
penis. (See sidebar: “Mel didn’t  show  half
of it.”)

It  reminds one of George Orwell’s description
in the novel
1984 of the  ultimate  psychopathic
regime.  Big Brother’s spokesman explains with
chutzpah to the captured Winston Smith: “Power
is  not  a  means,  it  is  an end. One does not
establish  a  dictatorship  [or  Mayan  priestly
rule] in order to safeguard a revolution [or new
order]; one makes the  revolution  in  order  to
establish the dictatorship.

“The object of persecution is persecution.

The object of torture is torture.

The object of power is power.”

–Part III, chapter three

Here  speaks  pure sociopathy from the summit of
the State. Vast swaths of forest were  also  cut
down   for  fuel  by  the  Mayan  ruling  class,
heedless  of  devastation  to  the   environment
(especially  of  the top soil), all this to bake
the  clay  bricks  used  for  these  ever-higher
ziggurats.[However, the Mayan and Aztec cultures
(and those of  the  Incas,  Apaches,  and  other
Amerindians)    never    even    invented    the
wheel--except as  a  child's  toy!--despite  all
those  round  logs  they cut down and rolled and
despite the vast distances  encountered  in  the
Americas.   Nor   did  they  possess  horses  in
pre-Columbian  America.  So  everybody   trudged
along,  carried  or  pushed something with human
power until Spain came in 1502.

Nor did the Mayans and Aztecs,  canoers,  invent
the sail in a hundred generations of feeling the
wind blow their  canoe  sideways.  Perhaps  they
were waiting for the "white gods" to return.

Ethnographer-adventurer  Thor  Heyerdahl of "Kon
Tiki" fame wrote in 2000  a  book  called  Ingen
Grenser--Norwegian for "No Boundaries"--where he
renews his thesis, shared by  many  Indians  500
years  ago,  that  ancient  whites,  the  "white
gods,"  had  very  long  before  founded   their
pre-Columbian  civilizations  before  vanishing,
along with their influence.)

All film dialogue  is  spoken  entirely  in  the
authentic  Mayan  of  the  Yucatan  peninsula in
Mexico where the film was made, and all  actors,
including  the  star,  Rudy Youngblood of Texas,
are Amerindians from North and Central  America.
(As  a  young  man  awakened  by  horror  to his
destiny and abilities, Youngblood's  performance
at  the hands of producer-writer-director Gibson
is superlative.)

It is said that in his 2004 The Passion  of  the
Christ,   the  "antisemitic"  (in  reality  "New
Testament"!)  remarks  are  left  only  in   the
Aramaic language and are not even printed in the
subtitles.   Interestingly,   in   the    French
subtitles  to his most recent movie, Apocalypto,
even more so than  in  the  English  or  Spanish
subtitles,  the murderous high priest makes many
Talmudic-sounding statements  during  the  human
sacrifice scene.

"These  are  the  days of our great lament," the
high priest intones to the crowds from atop  his
pyramid.  Then  he  asserts  to the overawed mob
(again,  this  is  in   the   French   subtitles
translating  the  Mayan):  "Notre peuple a été
choisi."  That  means:  "Our  people  has   been
chosen." (French, because of the Norman conquest
of England, is often similar  in  vocabulary  to
modern English.)

In  the  English  and Spanish subtitles, this is
prudently rephrased  as  "We  are  a  people  of
destiny"   (perhaps   in  dishonor  of  Franklin
Roosevelt's inaugural address: "This  generation
has   a  rendezvous  with  destiny.")[footnote2:
Hutton Gibson was strongly opposed to  Roosevelt
and  his  war,  albeit he was wounded in 1944 in
the Pacific as an Army officer.]

One recalls that when Apocalypto was released in
December  2006,  it  was  just four months since
Gibson’s famous July 28,  2006  “antisemitic
tirade.”    On    Gibson’s    website    one
sympathizer, a  born-again  Christian,  probably
expressed   best   why  the  movie-going  public
shrugged off Gibson’s “anti-semitic  rant”
and went to see Apocalypto:

“I’d  like to see what the Jews say about us
when they get drunk!”

We further learn from Gibson in the Director’s
Commentary  on  the  DVD  — which he dispenses
together with the film’s  Iranian  co-producer
and   co-writer,   Farhad  Safinia–  that  for
authenticity they had  all  the  actors  playing
Mayan rulers “wear curved nose prostheses.”

The  curvy-nosed  priest then continues with his
harangue: “We were chosen to be the masters of
time; we were chosen to walk with the gods.”

In  the telling closeup, the Mayan king and high
priest nervously  exchange  glances  during  the
high   point  of  the  killings.  We  know  from
archeology and temple architecture–when  beams
of light would fall on certain points–that the
Mayan priests knew exactly when  eclipses  would
take  place,  but  the  point  was to be seen as
miracle workers. But will the solar eclipse  yet
again   “do  the  trick”  and,  as  darkness
overshadows the great city, overawe the trusting
crowd,  striking a quasi-9/11-like fear in them?
Will the public  believe  forever  that  through
killings  their  leaders protect the nation from
ecliptic terror and doom?

The whole scam behind their  grand  pleasure  in
killing  victims was that in this way the peuple
choisi  would  “save  the  harvests  and   the
nation.”  (Writer  Margaret  Huffstickler  has
commented: “The  eclipse  is  like  9/11,  and
invading  Iraq  and  establishing Guantanamo and
Abu  Ghraib   is   the   ‘necessary’   human
sacrifice.”)[footnote:   On   Columbus's  last
expedition, in 1503-04, he was stranded for over
a  year on Jamaica with wrecked ships. In a scam
designed to intimidate  the  Arawak  Indians  of
Jamaica  into  feeding  him and his men, he used
his trusty Ephemeris from the German  astronomer
Regiomontanus  to  correctly  predict  the lunar
eclipse of February 29, 1504.  It  worked;  they
kept feeding him.]

In  the  subtitle  of  the  official  Apocalypto
poster, above, we read the slogan: “No one can
outrun  their destiny.” This certainly applied
to  the  psychopathic  native  ruling  class  of
pre-Columbian  Central  America. At the very end
of the movie, ominously, the Spanish  arrive  in
power   from   their  great,  dark  ships,  with
soldiers, priests and brandished crucifixes,  to
eventually    overthrow   and   annihilate   the
murderous Mayan ruling  class.  How  interesting
for  Mel  Gibson  to introduce for the movie’s
final scene the Spain  that  exactly  ten  years
before,  in  1492, had not only sailed the ocean
blue but expelled the Jews and  fully  unleashed
the  Inquisition on the the marranos, the secret
Jews still in power in the background. (To  this
day, 515 years later, only one resident of Spain
in two thousand is Jewish.)

Through DVD technology, we can first  enjoy  the
artist’s   cinematic  work  and  then,  merely
pressing  the  remote   control,   consult   him
personally  through his commentary as to what he
was thinking, aiming at and enduring technically
trying  to  achieve  each shot and scene. We can
also appreciate his use  of  costumes,  history,
authentic  weapons,  makeup for men and women of
different classes, and see the scenes,  such  as
the one with the burnt and limping deer, that he
cut  for   brevity   or   distraction   of   the
storytelling flow.

Truly, in the hand of the masters, the cinema is
the premier art form of our time. In Apocalypto,
after  viewing  the  two-hour  masterpiece,  the
viewer therefore should spend another profitable
two  hours  on  another  day reliving each scene
with this truly  great  artist,  Mel  Columcille
Gibson,  and  his  brilliant  Iranian  colleague
Farhad  Safinia,  and  a  third  hour  with  the
“Special  Features” on the DVD of Apocalypto
to understand the secret ocean  of  detail  that
Gibson  has  channeled into this mighty current.
It  is  what  Wagner   would   have   called   a
Gesamtkunstwerk,  a total art form. Then–as my
Barnes Review-reading friends actually did–see
Apocalypto  another  four  to six times. That is
doable with a great work of art.

What stands out, finally,  is  what  the  father
says  in the jungle to Jaguar Paw: “Fear makes
you weak, and fear makes you sick.”  This  is,
as the Will Durant quote at its beginning shows,
a movie about now, about the psychopathic regime
now,  and  about  transcending the real fears we
face now. And, as the hero says after  he  takes
the  plunge  over  the  waterfall, “This is MY
forest.” See the movie.

Gibson Mayan Film on the  Cutting  Edge  Viewers
will recall the unforgettable scene at Eyipantia
Falls (in Veracruz, Mexico) where Jaguar Paw, to
escape  the  manhunters,  hurls  himself bravely
over the massive cataract. Pulling himself  from
the  water,  he has “found himself” inwardly
by this near-death act,  and  announces  to  the
pursuing  Zero  Wolf  and  his  fellow pursuers,
perched high on the cataract’s  edge:  “This
is my forest where my father hunted with me. And
this is where I will hunt with my  son!”  This
is  also  where Gibson his incredible dedication
to spectacular  new  photography.  Not  only  is
“Apocalypto”  one  of the first major movies
shot with digital movie cameras, the  Panavision
Genesis  model, and not with celluloid film, but
for the waterfall scene they used the innovative
“spider  cam.”  A  cable was extended like a
lip out over the fall, with the movie camera  on
it,  and  it  follows the stunt man out over the
edge and as  he  leaps  hundreds  of  real  feet
downward;  then,  still  in  the same smooth and
gliding shot, the cable pulls the  spider-camera
up  and  away from the falls and over toward the
far shore, as depicted in the  still  photograph
above.

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