DIRTY HARRY reviewed by Trevor Lynch: https://counter-currents.com/2021/02/dirty-harry/
Dirty Harry (1971), directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood as San Francisco Police Inspector Harry Callahan, is a classic of Right-wing cinema.
It has some right-wing tropes but ultimately cops out and settles for a conventional scenario and ending. This is true of SUDDEN IMPACT as well. Early in the picture, Callahan takes out a bunch of feral black criminals who try to kidnap a white woman for gang-bang rape, but then the rest of the movie is about a white woman taking revenge on white men as rapists. So, the black rapist angle merely serves to foreshadow the rest of the story which is about revenge against White Male rapists. (Of course, those into subtext could argue that those white rapists are actually stand-ins for black rapists in an 'anti-racist' cultural climate that simply wouldn't allow a black-rapist story.) So, DIRTY HARRY movies tease us with white right-wing sentiments but ultimately opts for what is permissible. None of the Dirty Harry movies had the balls to go where THE BIRTH OF A NATION did.
Along with THE FRENCH CONNECTION and DEATH WISH, it appealed to Liberals at the time because black crime had gotten out of control. And, old-time Liberals had difficulty making sense of the so-called New Left of the 60s with drugs, degeneracy, and sex. My haunch is that the older Jews who made ALL IN THE FAMILY agreed with Meathead on talking points but with Archie Bunker at the gut level. Older Jews were confused by boomer Jews like Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies. And when Altamont and the Manson Murders happened, many older Liberals were shocked. They'd been sympathetic to the Youth Movement, but things fell apart. The fiasco of the 68 Democratic Convention pitted Old Democrats with New Radicals. Richard Nixon couldn't have won so big in 1972 with conservative votes alone. Many Liberals were disheartened by new trends.
Also, there was a divergence between ideology(especially foisted from above as most people don't think for themselves) and instinct(formed by personality, family, and community). Many whites had become 'liberal' largely due to the New Deal and WWII era. They weren't exactly culturally or ideologically on the left but voted for FDR and Truman because they'd been through hard times. And WWII defined American Patriotism as rising to its greatest hour against the far-right regimes of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Therefore, it got seared into their minds: Liberalism = Patriotism.
Still, many of these 'liberals' were ingrained with 'racist' attitudes and Eurocentric worldview. After all, 80% of Americans polled in the 60s were opposed to race-mixing, which means a good number of Liberals opposed it too. It was only when Jews took total control of the gods that attitudes began to fundamentally change. To be sure, there was the Cold War that revitalized the Right against Godless Communism, but (1) Jews soon took control of the Narrative and made the 1950s about bad ole Joe McCarthy going after leftists who prize civil liberties (2) Vietnam War made anti-communism seem cruel and even genocidal (3) capitalism, though anti-communist, could hardly be a bastion of the Right and Traditionalism as consumerism and idolatry at their core tended to upend society, indeed more so than communism could dream of.
Dirty Harry was hugely popular with moviegoers, spawning four sequels and a whole genre of films about tough cops whose hands are tied by the system and are forced to go outside the law in order to protect the public.
Ironically, the most obvious precursor of DIRTY HARRY was HIGH NOON, a work of some controversy at the time. Though considered a classic(and even right-wing by some), it was produced by arch-Jewish-Liberal Stanley Kramer, and its script was by a communist sympathizer. And its hidden message or subtext was a dig at craven America during the Red Scare. It didn't occur to these Jews and Leftists that most Americans supported anti-communism out of conviction, not out of cravenness. Most Americans regarded communists and their spies as the Frank Millers of the World. Sure, there were craven types who named names, but they were fellow communists or leftists who wanted to keep working, like Elia Kazan and Sterling Hayden. In HIGH NOON, the entire town is cowed by the news of Frank Miller's return. (Miller, like Scorpio, has been freed because of the technicality of the law.) The town is meant to be a metaphor for America that is too cowardly to stand up to the likes of Joe McCarthy. Never mind that, at least for a while, many Americans sincerely regarded McCarthy as the sheriff with the guts to take on the communists.
Anyway, the sheriff in HIGH NOON has no recourse but to go it alone as all the individuals and institutions of the town simply refuse to stand by his side for one reason or another. The sheriff goes defacto vigilante. It's like Donald Trump was effectively all alone in the final months though without the character of Will Kane(Gary Cooper). And both HIGH NOON and DIRTY HARRY ends with the lawman tossing away his badge as a sign of contempt for the system. (John Ford's revisionist Western THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE also featured a system either too weak, inept, or corrupt to maintain law and order for children and womenfolk. No one dares to take on Liberty Valance who isn't merely an outlaw but a tool of Big Money. James Stewart's character finally musters the courage to take on Liberty Valance but he's no gun-man, and John Wayne's character, as the third man, secretly 'murders' Valance.)
In a way, DIRTY HARRY is like a urban Western, but it seems worse because, whereas the Wild West was understandably a hotbed of outlaws, one would expect civilization to be more orderly. But as DIRTY HARRY shows — MIDNIGHT COWBOY and TAXI DRIVER do also in greater detail — , the problem isn't merely the system of laws and politics but the climate of culture and values. There was always the wild/savage side of man, just like there is the inner-wolf in every dog. Still, prior to the youth-centric Sixties(defined by sex and drugs under the influence of blacks, the most savage of the races, and of Jews, the most radical of the races), the wilder side had been put in its place by forces of authority, tradition, and community.
Those controls fell apart, and the character of Scorpio is like the worst manifestation/embodiment of unmoored youth mentality. While most hippies were not killers or psychos(not even close), they created a cultural petri dish from which some foul fungi grew. Indeed, this is where TAXI DRIVER and DIRTY HARRY are different. Whereas Scorpio represents the figure of both degeneracy and mayhem contra the straitlaced(relatively speaking) Callahan represents order and decency, the character of Travis Bickle exhibits characteristics of both Scorpio and Callahan. Whereas Callahan's arch-foe, Scorpio, is indeed a real killer, there is no proof that Sport(Harvey Keitel) in TAXI DRIVER is a killer. He may have killed someone, but we can't be sure. But even if Sport never killed anyone, he is a soul-destroyer. He's a spoiler of values if not a taker of lives. In contrast, Bickle is sickened by the rot and wants to save the girl, but he does have the instinct of a real killer. He's both ultra-normal and ultra-psycho.
So, there are two issues at stake here. Criminal violence and cultural decadence. DIRTY HARRY would have us believe they make a natural pair. EASY RIDER, of course, begged to differ. In it, the 'decadent' hippie bikers, though peddling in drugs and loose in sexual mores, are certainly not killers whereas the deep-rooted Southerners are. They first kill the civil liberties lawyer played by Jack Nicholson, and later the two bikers are blown to kingdom come.
If indeed cultural decadence = criminal violence, things would be so much simpler. We could lock up all the pimps, pornographers, freaks, drug-dealers, and etc. and crime would screech to a halt. Though cultural decadence surely creates a more hospitable environment for crime, it itself isn't necessarily violent. If anything, decadence is problematic in its defenselessness against violence, i.e. too dazed to register what's really happening in society.
In DIRTY HARRY, the authority seems less decadent(or even weak) than naive in its decency and commitment to the Constitution(and thus could be called almost 'libertarian', and of course, libertarians were the biggest critics of the Patriot Act after 9/11).
At any rate, if the main issue of DIRTY HARRY is the problems of urban crime, the problem owed less to hippies and dippies than to blacks. Indeed, many blacks who never took part in the counterculture were nevertheless arch-criminals. Also, Japan has had a pretty decadent culture for awhile, but it's not a crime capital(though it will soon be as it begins to import lots of blacks from Africa). The problem of crime is black, and this is where DIRTY HARRY is least honest. By fixating on a degenerate freak, it creates the false impression that serial killers are the biggest threats to society when the average black street thug was the far bigger problem. While there will always be serial killers, they don't destroy an entire city. Serial killers didn't destroy Newark, Detroit, or Baltimore. Blacks did that. DIRTY HARRY movies focus on freaks, terrorists, or some conspiracy. They hook with scenes of black criminals, but the bulk of the stories deal with fantasies. Sure, psycho-freaks are bad, but they are few and far between.
Consider the Deep State. In another Eastwood film, IN THE LINE OF FIRE, the good decent men of the FBI and other US departments are tormented by some rogue lunatic, but as recent events have shown, the whole Deep State is compromised from top to bottom. It's not the oddball psychos who pose the most problem but the fact that the entire system is entrenched with craven careerists who will do anything for their masters, the Jewish Supremacists of course, to be part of the power-game. John Brennan and Mike Pompeo aren't foam-at-the-mouth clinical-psychos but, in some ways, are more dangerous because of their 'respectability'. So, if IN THE LINE OF FIRE really wanted to get to the heart of the sickness, it would have focused less on some agent-gone-rogue than how the system itself is rigged to serve the rich and powerful, indeed to the point where even those who signed up out of idealism are little more than errand boys for the Jews. (Oliver Stone's NIXON came closest to that.)
Harry Callahan's 'vigilantism' is problematic because he is a cop who is sworn to uphold the law. But then, he's not the top cop but a street cop who takes orders. He's both a figure of authority and figure of rebellion. After 9/11, could we say the system went 'dirty harry' with the Patriot Act? Certain civil liberties were suspended to capture the 'scorpios' of the world, the dreaded terrorists. CIA used torture. The system trampled on the Constitution for the 'greater good' to keep us safe. Was this power-grab 'right-wing' or 'left-wing'? Many so-called 'liberals' lambasted Bush II as a Christo-Fascist who was taking rights from the people. But then, the very same people were utterly silent about Obama's even bigger push for the National Security State and relentless drone strikes to take out the terrorists. (Libs were silent even when Obama aided the terrorists to take down entire regimes deemed as the 'bad guys'.) In a way, Neocons have mastered the rhetoric of Dirty-Harry-ism. "We can't follow the letter of the Constitution because we must protect American lives and save innocents from foreign tyrants, the new scorpios." And under Jewpet Biden, we are now told the state must take extraordinary measures to clamp down on "Domestic Terrorists" who would be anyone who dared to speak truth to Jewish Power. Apparently, we are now all Scorpios. DIRTY HARRY was made by Jewish Don Siegel, and I wonder if he, on some level, sensed that the movie's style of rhetoric could be used to the advantage of Jews. DIRTY HARRY is a dangerous movie, for the right as well for the left, because it asks us not to think but just go with gut emotions(which can easily be manipulated). After the terrorist bombings of buses in London, many conservatives and rightists lauded the governments dirty-harry-like measures to clamp down harder on terrorism, but over the years, it has allowed the state to go after nationalists deemed as 'homegrown terrorists' or 'domestic extremists'.
The BOURNE movies came out during the Bush II presidency, and it had a deep state asset gone rogue(or 'vigilante') to take on the Secret Government. And yet, most people consider the trilogy 'leftist'. It goes to show that moral outrage is often colored by partisan politics. The very people who cheered Bourne against the Deep State were supporting Obama Administration's Deep State against Snowden. It also means vigilantism's ideology depends on the context. After WWII, bands of leftists went about lynching Fascists and collaborators in Italy and France. It was a bloodbath. Blacks in RAGTIME take the law into their own hands, and one could say it is 'right-wing' from a black nationalist perspective, but it's the sort of thing leftists would feel greater sympathy for. The Negro of RAGTIME was inspired by the story of Michael Kohlhass, whose vigilante uprising could hardly be called right-wing given the rebellion was against the aristocracy. Harriet Tubman violated the law to help runaway slaves, and National Review says she was a great hero because she was a Republican and carried guns.
Things are further complicated(or confused) because Scorpio is presented as both a rogue hippie lefty and a 'racist', 'sexist', & 'homophobic' white male. But then, Charles Manson, along with the Hell's Angels, was similarly contradictory as a hippie idol into drugs, sex, & rock-n-roll AND a white radical dreaming of a race war. (Hell's Angels were the darlings of the hippie movement, but they supported the Vietnam War and made made up mostly of druggy deplorables.) To what extent Scorpio's contradictions represent tortured psychosis or calculations on part of the film-makers to avoid controversy is anyone's guess. One thing for sure, in case anyone accused the movie of featuring a counterculture villain, the makers could say, "But, he's a racist!"
Anyway, if vigilantism is breaking the law for the greater good or one's personal sense of justice/vendetta, there's surely a difference when insiders do it and outsiders do it. When James Clapper lied about the surveillance state(and its violations of the US Constitution), was the system going rogue-vigilante for the greater good to keep us safe from terrorists? Or, was it violating the Constitution to amass more power for itself. And when Edward Snowden blew the whistle, was he the good guy for remaining true to the letter of the Constitution or a mush-head who thinks the world can run along libertarian principles? Who is the 'liberal' and who is the 'rightist' in that case? Was Snowden being overly idealistic in his commitment to the law, even to the point of endangering the US to terrorist attacks? Was Clapper and the Deep State justified?
One thing for sure, DIRTY HARRY isn't about a cop who violates the law because the system does so. It's about a cop who takes the law into his own hands because the system adheres to it because the law protects criminals with 'rights'. This is what makes Callahan a more disturbing figure. Now, if he discovered that the system is circumventing the law to favor criminals against decent people, his vigilantism might make more sense in a Machiavellian manner. When the system won't play by the law, why should the conscientious lawman? But DIRTY HARRY, while showing the system to be naive, does show its commitment to the Law. This puts Callahan at a considerable ethical disadvantage.
In current reality, the system is obviously on the side of BLM thugs and Antifa terrorists. Judges and lawyers, especially the Jewish kind, ignore the Constitution & ethical principles and take part in Lawfare to coddle thugs and louts favored by Jews while throwing the book at the likes of James Field whose crime was manslaughter than murder(and only because he was surrounded by people threatening his life). Under this scenario, one can understand an Oath-Keeper sheriff who takes the law into his own hands because the system is so corrupt and rigged in favor of certain groups over others. But that is NOT the ethical dilemma in DIRTY HARRY, in which, as far as we can tell, the system is committed to adhering to the law. A far more effective right-wing movie would have focused less on the fantasy of the gun — how many cops carry magnum 44's? — and more on the power of the law, i.e. what can conservatives, libertarians, patriots, and normal decent folks do to gain control of the law and use it for sane and sound policies based on truth and are fair to all? After all, while guns can kill bad guys, it is the power of the pen that decides the laws. If the current laws aren't working, it's because they are either unenforced or defective. If the former, they need to be enforced; if the latter, they should be changed. But too often, the Right falls for the fantasy of the gun, which can only be the last resort. Besides, guns don't win hearts and minds. Mao said, "Political Power grows out of the barrel of the gun", but he wasn't calling for militarism. It was just an admission of the brutal reality of power built on war and victory. Why did so many people want to follow Mao? Because Mao brandished a big gun? No, the Chinese Communists were effective in using words and propaganda to win hearts and minds in times of crises. So, while guns are crucial in any war, the art of propaganda decides how many people with guns are on your side. While American Right stockpiles guns, the Jews and globalists got the pens, cameras, mikes, and big tech. No wonder so many white Americans, who should be right-wing given their identity and interests, are soul-owned by anti-white enemies that control the pens and cameras. (THE ONION FIELD is more useful to the Right than DIRTY HARRY is. It shows what mastery of the law can do.) Also, in ZODIAC, it's the brainy guy who comes closest to solving the puzzle.
John Simon, in his review of PATTON(compiled in MOVIES INTO FILM), took issue with how the movie was promoted as a heroic tale of a general who was a counterculture rebel in his own right. Apparently, the ad campaign pandered to Youth and liberals. (The screenplay was by Francis Ford Coppola who claimed to be a Liberal.) Yet, Simon noted that if the general was a rebel, it was in the name of more war-mongering, more militarism, more mayhem, and more blood & glory. (I wonder if Uncle Victor in HAROLD AND MAUDE was a parody of Patton.) Patton may have taken war into his own hands, but it was to better serve the agenda of beating the Nazis. And after the war, he itched for another, this time against the commies. Callahan is like Patton in that he's part of the system but believes the system isn't tough enough to go all the way, later echoed by Rambo who's sure the gung-ho Americans would have won in Vietnam but for the backstabbing politicians. Thus, he's a rebel only because the Power isn't powerful enough for him. It's like an overseer berating the master for not allowing him to whip the slaves even more.
Also, like Will Kane of HIGH NOON, Callahan might even be called something of a fool. Why does Will Kane stick around to fight Frank Miller and the baddies when the whole town doesn't care? Why risk his own life to defend the honor of townsfolk who won't stand by his side? Likewise, why does Callahan care? After all, the good people of San Fran elected those officials who, in Callahan's eyes, aren't doing enough. So, if the voters of the city want those politicians and the 'liberal politics', the sane thing for Callahan is to walk away from the city not worth saving. And yet, both Kane and Callahan decide to fight. Why? In the end, it may come down more to sense of personal pride and vendetta than anything else. It's sort of what Jon Voight's criminal character says at the end of RUNAWAY TRAIN to the cop: "It's you and me."
DIRTY HARRY is, of course, a fantasy despite its New Hollywood credentials of heightened realism. It was discussed in the company of such films as THE FRENCH CONNECTION, but there were as many differences as similarities. Gene Hackman was very much an archetypal New Hollywood actor. He lacked the classic features of a movie star and looked very much like a hard-nosed New York cop on the beat, and that's what counted. Also, he's far from perfect. He cuts corners and often plays it dirty unlike Harry Callahan who, despite his reputation, is essentially a clean and even flawless cop. Popeye Doyle(Hackman) is trigger-happy and ultimately responsible for two dead cops due to 'friendly fire'. In contrast, Callahan is like an angel of death who never misses his target. And there isn't an hint of corruption or personal fault in him. Even his 'racism' is the ironic wink-wink kind, mere tough guy demeanor, whereas Popeye Doyle really loves to stick it to blacks. This makes him heroic and mythic but hardly believable.
More interesting are the compromised characters in TOUCH OF EVIL, PRINCE OF THE CITY, and INSOMNIA. The fat cop in Orson Welles' film is corrupt, but that's what makes him so good. He's so much a part of the swamp that he knows where the swamp creatures swim. His keen instincts cannot be divorced from his cynicism. He knows the heart of the crook too well because he himself has a crooked heart. He's one of the best precisely because he's one of the worst. He has some admirable qualities, but Welles regarded him as a tragic and evil character because, when the figure of authority violates the law, the foundation itself is corrupted. After all, what is the main difference between the cop and the crook? They both have guns and use violence, but the cop plays by the rules whereas the crook has no use for rules. But what happens when cops themselves ignore the rules? The cop in INSOMNIA is compromised but also virtuous in his own way. He's done shady things but sometimes to do what, in his mind, was the right thing. But using a lie to send a bad guy to prison means he had to cover up that lie to save his own skin, and then, the question arises, to what extent is the coverup(amidst new scandals) to keep the bad guy in prison or to save his own ass? Also, once cops can get away with doing their own thing, who's to say they'll always do so for reasons of virtue than vice? How many cops are saints like Harry Callahan?
In PRINCE OF THE CITY(the best film about police work), Danny Ciello(Treat Williams) gives his rationale as to why he and his partners break the rules: They can catch more criminals. And yet, what do these cops do with the money they take from the crooks? They keep some of it for themselves. Once adherence to rules begin to break down, there's no guarantee where it will lead. The characters in PRINCE OF THE CITY are recognizably human, whereas Harry Callahan is simply an Ideal. No wonder Pauline Kael called him something like a saint cop. Callahan breaks the rules only for the most laudable reasons and his gun always miraculously tags only the bad guys. Thus, DIRTY HARRY is a New Hollywood movie with Old Hollywood tropes. It's no wonder John Wayne was first approached for the role. A classic Western hero in the urban jungle. But then, that's not entirely accurate either as John Wayne and old Hollywood stars were recognizably human whereas Harry Callahan is nearly superhuman at times, especially the moment he jumps onto the school bus from a bridge. In some ways, he owes more to the nihilism of the Man with No Name of the Spaghetti Westerns than classic Westerns. For this reason, some have argued that DIRTY HARRY is about the hero and villain being two sides of the same coin, but that's pushing it. That's more like TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. Despite Callahan's knack for violence at opportune moments, he's totally a Good Guy whereas there isn't a single redeemable quality about Scorpio.
Liberalism holds that society can be ruled by impersonal laws, not men. Thus any film giving a favorable view of vigilantism—in which laws break down and individuals take justice into their own hands—is anti-liberal.
But that is the real problem with Liberalism. By the way, the emphasis on the Law has more to do with Libertarianism and its cult of 'Muh Constitution'. Liberalism failed in the late 60s and early 70s not because it upheld the law at all costs but because it undermined the (the rule of) Law with its sentimentalism, especially in relation to the Negro Problem. So, increasingly, the law was not applied to bad black behavior. And already by then, so-called 'liberal' Jews were manipulating the Law on the basis of "Is it good for Jews?"
Getting rid of racial discrimination was Liberal Constitutionalism, but Affirmative Action was not. Increasingly, so-called Liberals circumvented the Law to get whatever they wanted. Rule of Law became a game of Rule of Lawyers(backed with the Jewish-run media). However one may feel about abortion, Roe V. Wade was flimsy on Constitutional grounds, and of late, 'gay marriage' has NO standing in the Constitution whatever, but it became 'law of the land'.
So, it's wrong to characterize what goes by 'Liberalism' as a diehard commitment to the Law. Indeed, things wouldn't have gotten so bad IF so-called Liberals stuck by the Rule of Law.
Under Liberalism, Jewish crooks just got slap on the wrist. Today, while the FBI investigates signs "It's Okay to be White", Jews get to promote Jewish Supremacism at massive AIPAC rallies. Look how Jussie Smollett got off scot-free despite his 'hate hoax'.
So, the big irony of DIRTY HARRY is that the so-called Liberals(led by Jews of course) actually took the law into their own hands and rigged everything for their benefit. According to DIRTY HARRY, the mushy Liberals are sticklers to the law(despite the danger to the public) while Callahan is willing to bend the law to get things done. Actually, Liberals have been more like Callahan. Jews and Liberals play fast and loose with the rules to get whatever they want. They were for Free Speech when it served their purposes, but now, they are for controlling speech because 'hate speech' is the Scorpio of our age. We are all 'domestic terrorists' for daring to name the Jew or far less.
Harry Callahan is another one of Eastwood’s taciturn Aryan heroes, a physically imposing and highly capable alpha male who becomes a protector of public order.
Given the connotations, there was precious little that was 'Aryan' about Eastwood. He's too deadpan and too American to be 'Aryan' with its implications of the Nietzschean Ubermensch. While John Wayne and Clint Eastwood usually played the alpha type, they weren't hung-up on their superiority and got along swell with the rest of mankind. And even in HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER where Eastwood plays a low-and-dirty anti-hero, it's purely a personal vendetta whereas an 'Aryan' hero has a higher vision.
Charlton Heston, in contrast, had something of the 'Aryan' thing going despite having played perhaps the two most famous Jewish characters in cinema: Moses and Ben-Hur. Heston was always brazen, intense, radiant. Despite his height, Eastwood always seemed to be slouching; in contrast, Heston stands tall even when sitting, as if self-conscious of his Arno-Breker-like monumental status.
Like most of Eastwood’s classics, the world of Dirty Harry is divided into sheep, the wolves who prey on them, and the sheepdogs who protect the flock, to borrow a scheme from American Sniper. However, despite their opposed roles, wolves and sheepdogs have more in common with each other than they do with sheep, and the flock starts bleating nervously when the dogs bare their fangs at the wolves.
But is Scorpio really a wolf? He's more like a rat or weasel. A wolf is at least a proud and fearsome predator. Scorpio is like a parasite or scavenger. Wolves bring down animals much bigger than themselves. Scorpio goes after easy targets.
AMERICAN SNIPER is pretty good but deeply confused(or maybe genuinely complex). Many saw it as a patriotic movie, but the 'hero' seems a rather mindless gun-nut who's only good for shooting people halfway across the globe. The most admirable character is the guy who thinks for himself and begins to question his role in the Middle East. Sadly, he gets shot. Interestingly enough, the 'hero' of the movie is a sniper, not unlike Scorpio. Sniping is perhaps the least heroic of all military roles, especially when one is a part of an invasive force and must seriously consider shooting women and children who are resisting the Occupation.
He is a widower. His wife was killed by a drunk driver. He does not appear to have children. His work is his life now.
One thing I like about Eastwood's role as Man with No Name and Harry Callahan is the near-celibacy. Also true of Charles Bronson. (Supposedly, there's a scene with Eastwood and a woman in bed in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY but it was cut out.) I never cared for James Bond jumping in the sack with every bimbo and don't care for the hanky-panky in Eastwood's EIGER SANCTION. Women and action movies don't mix. Put men and women together in romance movies.
Dirty Harry didn’t just pioneer the loose cannon cop genre, it also established the convention of pairing these white alpha males with non-white sidekicks.
Hardly. There was the Lone Ranger and Tonto. And Robert Culp and Bill Cosby on I SPY. And Bruce Lee as Kato as sidekick to the Green Hornet. And it goes as far back as THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS where the white man has a trusty Indian by his side.
But a white alpha male mentoring another white man as a guardian of society would make Don Siegel hallucinate the sound marching feet.
Did Siegel decide on the Mexican sidekick? I think he just directed, though the original script seems to be by a Jew named Harry Fink.
However, if Harry hates honkies, he can’t be a white racist. And if his name is Callahan, that makes him a self-hating Mick. In truth, Harry is merely what today we call politically incorrect.
Of course, the guy was just joking as to why Harry is called 'dirty'. All he meant is Harry is a tough cop and shows no favor to anyone. It's like the opening of FULL METAL JACKET where gunnery sergeant Hartman hollers "Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair. There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless."
Harry has more than just a touch of sadism, which is brought out in the movie’s most quoted scene.
I don't think the scene with Buckwheat is sadistic. And it's even less so at the end with Scorpio. It would have been sadistic IF Buckwheat was taunted by Callahan for no reason. In contrast, Callahan is trying to defuse the situation(and putting his own life at great risk because, had the Negro been better at math, he would have realized the whitey done emptied his gun in the melee). Buckwheat, eyeing the shotgun near him, is tempted to grab it and blow away the whitey's mothafuc*in' ass. But after hearing Callahan's lecture, a crude version of Professor Kingsfield's in THE PAPER CHASE — "you lie there with a skull full of Negro Mush, which I can blow clean off" — , Buckwheat makes the wise choice.
If there's a hint of sadism about the scene, it's AFTER the Negro decides to give up the gun. Buckwheat, being ever so curious, just 'gots to know, sheeeeeeeiiiiit', whereupon Callahan gleefully pulls the trigger knowing the gun's empty. The empty guns means Callahan was playing a game of San Fran roulette. If indeed Buckwheat had grabbed for the gun, he could have blown away the 'honkey-ass mofo'.
In the final encounter with Scorpio, it's not sadistic at all. If anything, Callahan is giving the punk one last chance to live. If Callahan really had a sadistic streak, he wouldn't have said anything and just shot Scorpio piecemeal by piecemeal: a hand, a heel, a knee, the balls, etc.
You wonder how many times he has done this. He enjoys killing scum.
But throughout the movie, we sense he prefers it easy than hard. When pushed to the edge, he can get riled up and kill with a cold heart, but he doesn't enjoy the thrills of police work. The thrill-maniac is the guy in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. who lives for the adrenaline of chasing and being chased.
The plot of Dirty Harry is a standard neo-noir police thriller.
Lots of things have been called 'noir', but DIRTY HARRY doesn't really count as one. There is an obvious bad guy in DIRTY HARRY, and the basic focus is between good cop Harry and bad freako Scorpio. Thus, it's more like a Western than a noir. CHINATOWN is noir, a genre where the dark, corrupt, and venal are part of the mundane. Seedy corruption could be in the heart of your next door neighbor who could be plotting with your very wife to have you murdered, and you, dark soul that you are, either deserve it or have something up your sleeve as well. Good and Evil are too clearly demarcated in DIRTY HARRY for it to be noir.
Scorpio is a Dostoyevskyian criminal Untermensch. He’s physically weak, unmasculine, and cowardly, palpably seething with resentment. He screams like a pig, blubbers like a child, and develops a severe limp after Harry stabs then shoots him in the leg.
Andy Robinson did a terrific job, and the reason why the first DIRTY HARRY is the only classic owes to the villainy. Still, Scorpio is a cartoon, more Batman-and-Joker than Dostoevsky.
(Scorpio) pays a black thug $200 to beat him to a pulp, then blames it on Callahan. This sequence is a viscerally powerful critique of modern liberal slave morality which rewards and weaponizes victimhood, creating an incentive to fabricate police brutality and hate crimes.
Is the current liberalism about 'slave morality'? Slave Morality, as I understand it, preaches to the masses to submit to their allotted roles without complaint. To be a Dalit or Untouchable is Slave Morality in the Hindu Context. Jesus preached love and brotherhood, and He sympathized with the poor & the powerless and told them to be meek & humble, and if this is Slave Morality, it was advantageous to the Powerful because the meek accepted their lowly state in This World in exchange for Eternity in the Kingdom of Heaven. If Christian Slave Morality is so dangerous to the elites and the powerful, why did they support the churches?
What is often called 'Slave Morality' is actually the Slave Rebellion Morality, quite a different thing. Slave Morality is about people accepting their slave roles in society. In contrast, Slave Rebellion Morality is about slaves throwing off their shackles and demanding their freedom or demanding their share of the power.
It's when Serfs are okay with being Serfs that they are part of Slave Morality. When Serfs want to be free, they are part of Slave Rebellion Morality, and it is what distinguished the West from the Rest where the great masses internalized Slave Morality and mostly bowed down before the Master Class.
Who do we respect more? Slaves who remain meekly as slaves or slaves who fight back and want to be free and masters of their own destiny? If anything, White People now need Slave Rebellion Morality more than ever because a Neo-Slave-Morality has come to define white mass psychology. So many whites are happy-sappy to cuck before Jews, blacks, and homos as racial, moral, and even spiritual superiors. Instead of joining the White Slave Rebellion against the Jewgromo Plantation, too many whites are happy to be like Mitt Romney, the total cuck, or Donald Trump, who talks big but when, push comes to shove, takes it up the arse from his Jewish Masters.
And even though Scorpio exploits the talk of 'rights', those rights are the ONLY things that stand between us and the powerful. Jews got media, academia, law firms, courts, deep state, banks, big tech, and just about everything to crush us. Jews aim to take away our gun rights and speech rights. Are we into 'slave morality' for championing those rights or pointing to how whites are being victimized by Jews? Only if you're willing to submit to the Great Reset. If you want to resist, you're into Slave Rebellion Morality.
Also, the Master Morality is no better than Slave Morality. It should be obvious by now that the Master Class was never what it claimed to be. Most heirs to the throne were spoiled namby pamby brats. While those who gained power for themselves proved their will-power and mettle, their total obsession with domination blinded them to finer things. And just look at the so-called 'best and the brightest'. What a bunch of nasty Jews and craven cuck goyim.
Also, any system of Master Class surrounds itself with the Toady Class. The powerful don't want to be challenged, and so, they want pliable flunkies than honest and courageous people. Who did Bill Buckley choose? Rich Lowry. Who did Hilton Kramer choose? Roger Kimball. Second-rate toadies. This is the problem facing Russia. Vladimir Putin had what it took to maneuver himself to top position, but he chose too many flunkies, the kind of people who will always follow the strong horse without convictions of their own.
Now, one can argue that the current PC is a kind of 'slave morality' in that the liberated non-slaves still cling to their slave-identity, indeed as if past victimhood eternally defines who they are. So, blacks act like they're still slaves, and Jews constantly invoke the Holocaust, as if they're all a bunch of Anne Franks forever and ever. But this is clearly not the kind of 'slave morality' as preached by Jesus who told people to accept their miserable lot in life without complaint and look to Heaven for salvation.
If Jews and blacks were into genuine 'slave morality', they would be forgiving and resigned to the fallen state of the world. But, they are really driven by a fiery will-to-power to dominate, amass power, and be worshiped by others. They act like slave rebels who'd come into positions of the New Master Class, but they still yap about victimhood. But then, American History is about a people who built a new nation and became masters of the world but still invoke 1776 about how freedom-loving folks rebelled against British Tyranny. This kind of 'slavery morality' is merely a moral shield for the Will to Power. Ruthless Jews tell the 'slave' story to justify their master status over us. In a way, it's clever thinking. People naturally love power but also want to feel justified. "Our power was gained against tyranny" surely goes a long way to justify the new tyranny.
Harry has been living the zone of what Carl Schmitt called the “Ernstfall,” the emergency situation in which the reigning liberal norms are not capable of pursuing justice. Faced with the choice of law or justice, Harry chooses justice. It is the first step down the path to the vigilante—or the superhero.
Of course, the danger of tossing the Law is a people could end up with Adolf Hitler. Hitler did take on bad Jewish behavior and did bring some measure of justice to the German people with his restoration of territories, economy, and pride. But without independent due process of the law and rights of dissent, the New Boss can do whatever he wishes, and what if he's pathological beneath the respectable exterior? When individuals promising justice(in exchange for absolute power) replace the legal functioning of institutions, the cure can turn out to be worse than the disease. This aspect of DIRTY HARRY was called 'fascist', but the communists made the same promise: "The Liberal Bourgeois order is full of BS and only serves the rich. For true justice, give us communists the power to destroy the exploitative class and you shall have justice. Real justice than empty liberal-bourgeois promises." The result was Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism.
Whatever the current system in the West is, it is not liberal. It is Uberall, or Jewish Globalism Uber Alles. The White Right would be in much better shape if indeed the West was truly liberal and allowed free speech and open discourse for all under the protection of the law. But Jewish dirty harrys have decided to go rogue to destroy the 'scorpios' of the 'far-right' and of course BDS. Ricky Vaughn the 'domestic terrorist' is now in prison because of a prank meme. It's the time to be screaming about 'rights'.
Looking back, the 60s and 70s went badly not because of Liberalism's strict adherence to the Law but its selective application that increasingly favored Jews, blacks, and certain other groups over all others. The problem ultimately wasn't with hippies, a passing fashion. Or with serial killers, who will always be with us. The real problem was blacks whose rage Jews exploited to use against whites. But when Jews let out the panther to attack whitey, it also bit him in the ass. So, movies like DEATH WISH were both Hollywood's exploitation of white fears for profits and expression of Jewish disappointment that blacks dared to attack the Jew as well as Whitey.
The Dirty Harry Sequels: Deconstructing a Hero: https://counter-currents.com/2021/02/the-dirty-harry-sequels/
The best way to appreciate Dirty Harry is to compare it to its four terrible sequels.
There have been three major arguments against vigilantes.
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