2004/08/05

See You At The Party Gustav! (a.k.a Triumph of The Will Redux)
I meant to post this up last night, but I clean forgot. :)
The Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has revealed that his father Gustav Schwarzenegger used to beat him up regularly. His old-time for-real Nazi party member father would demand that young Arnie 'conform'. Arnie said it wasn't just him, the kid next door and the kid next door were all treated this way; the German Austrian mentality. Sometimes old Gustav would use a belt for his whupp-ass:

Describing his upbringing to Fortune magazine, Schwarzenegger said: "My hair was pulled. I was hit with belts. So was the kid next door. And so was the kid next door.

"It was just the way it was. Many of the children I've seen were broken by their parents, which was the German-Austrian mentality.

"Break the will. They didn't want to create an individual. It was all about conforming." But he went on: "I was one who did not conform and whose will could not be broken.

"Therefore I became a rebel. Every time I got hit, and every time someone said, 'you can't do this,' I said, 'this is not going to be for much longer, because I'm going to move out of here. I want to be rich. I want to be somebody'."

Isn't that just like a scene out of one of his movies? A vicious NAZI-like villain whips the hero played by Arnie, senseless, but we see Arnie grit his teeth because we know he's going to come back and beat that old NAZI and every other evil bastard out there. To think he was fighting conformity all this time! Long live Arnold Schwarzenegger! Long Live the Governor of California.
If people think that wars in distant lands don't come back to haunt you one day, one ought to think about that young Austrian boy who was regularly beaten by his Nazi party father, who now rules over the state with the 10th highest GDP in the world in its own right. The kids of the old Axis powers have a lot of axes to grind. They ain't Nazis and Emperor-worshippers; they're just emotionally lean, mean and reified.

- Art Neuro

2 comments:

David said...

Heh! Just like the begining of Conan. Child of chaotic and violent beginings grows strong & survives pushing the wheel of pain. Then sets of into the world...

Go Arnie.

Art Neuro said...

They can write on Gustav's tombstone, 'The Man Who Regularly Beat Up Conan the Barbarian... When he Wasa A Kid'.

Actually, the notion of a streetful of kids getting beaten by their angry dads being somewhat cultural is a sickening thought.

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