When Poems of Resilience Get Twisted for Terrorism
The New Zealand shooter quoted Dylan Thomas and Rudyard Kipling in his manifesto, hijacking the language of bravery in familiar ways.
One of the U.K.’s propaganda films in World War II remixed portions of Leni Riefenstahl’s by overdubbing various Nazi leaders’ speeches at the 1934 Reich Party Congress at Nuremberg . In this version, Adolf Hitler and his lieutenants confessed to being pitiful and weak. “I grew into a discontented and neurotic child,” the führer said to rallying masses. “My lungs were bad. My mother spoilt me and secured my exemption from military service. Consider my triumphant path to power.”
