Gone ....

Leni Riefenstahl dies at 101. She was rather gorgeous ...











... but had some very dodgy friends ....



"Alright, Leni - it IS a Heinkel" "Told you so - thats 100 Reichmarks you owe me"


Leni was probably one of the last people on earth who can remember when being on the far right rather than the far left was cool - hip - trendy - whatever. First the Futurists in Italy then the Nazis in Germany had the same appeal as, say, the hippies of 1967 or the punks of 1976 - the appeal of youth and energy, of a total disregard for bourgeois convention.

"We intend to glorify the love of danger, the custom of energy, the strength of daring.
The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity, and revolt."

"There is no more beauty except in struggle. No masterpiece without the stamp of aggressiveness. Poetry should be a violent assault against unknown forces"

The far left has been the cool place to be ever since 1945. And that today is probably a very good thing indeed. We have an increasingly ill-educated and intolerant population, inhabiting a moral and cultural wasteland - what a good thing that hatred and ignorance mostly gravitates towards the left. It would be scary indeed if it became hip to be far-right, and people with the mentality of Seattle or May Day protesters were smashing foreign-owned shops - like MacDonalds ....