En onze kinderen? Die zijn op hun beurt lotgenoten van onze trauma’s, ons falen, ons intense verdriet, onze vervreemding van de naoorlogse wereld. Zij erven nu een volstrekt failliet systeem dat de Derde Wereldoorlog voorbereidt. “Such is Life.”
Toen Max van Weezel opmerkte ‘anoniem’ te hebben ‘meegewerkt aan een boekje, met een eerlijk verhaal over hoe het is om op te groeien tussen Holocaust-overlevenden. Daar wilde ik mijn naam absoluut niet bij hebben,’ en de interviewster vroeg: ‘Waarom niet?’ was het antwoord: 'Ik wilde niet zielig worden gevonden, geen mislukkeling zijn,’ waaraan Van Weezel toevoegde: "Ik heb me decennialang verscholen achter de faƧade van de geslaagde journalist. In Den Haag stonden de Mark Ruttes en Alexander Pechtolds van deze wereld me op de schouders te slaan, 'dag Max'. Daar was ik iemand."
Zijn hele werkzame leven lang streefde hij ernaar ‘iemand’ te worden, een identiteit op te bouwen, en daarvoor gebruikte hij de parlementaire politiek van de goyim, om tegen het einde van zijn leven te beseffen dat hij al die tijd eigenlijk iemand anders was geweest. Zieliger is nauwelijks denkbaar. Het intens vergeefse van zijn optreden sprak ook uit de volgende opmerking, tien maanden voor zijn dood:“Ergens denk ik: je had ook wel met een kalasjnikov op een heuveltop mogen staan om ons de vijand van het lijf te houden. Er zit toch ook een Leon-de-Winterachtige Max in me, zo van: timmer erop los als ze met hun poten aan ons lijf of goed komen.”
De nazit op dinsdag 16 april 2019 bij de herdenking van Max van Weezel. De parlementair journalist overleed op 11 april op 67-jarige leeftijd. Zowel de familie van Max van Weezel als minister-president Rutte waren bij de herdenking aanwezig,
Het zijn de woorden van een man die over zichzelf zei: “Ik probeerde mijn existentiĆ«le onzekerheid te compenseren door op alles ja te zeggen,” en die er nooit in slaagde precies te bepalen waar zijn loyaliteit lag. Was het de democratische rechtstaat Nederland, of de racistische apartheidsstaat Israel? Tegen het eind van zijn leven droomde hij ervan op een heuveltop in de bezette Westbank ‘de vijand van het lijf’ te houden ‘met een kalasjnikov.’ Dat die ‘vijand’ de legitieme bewoners betroffen van de bezette en belegerde Palestijnse gebieden, maakte de diep gefrustreerde Max van W. niet uit. In het kader van de zionistische behoefte aan 'Lebensraum' moest nog meer land etnisch gezuiverd worden. En ‘[a]ls ze met hun poten aan ons lijf en goed komen’ dan ‘timmer’ je als ‘joodse jongetje dat er van Adolf Hitler eigenlijk niet had mogen zijn,’ er gewoon ‘op los,’ en vermoord je met een Kalasjnikov-aanvalsgeweer iedere Palestijn die voor zijn of haar rechten opkomt, net zoals de nazi’s destijds deden tegen de verzetstrijders in het bezette Europa. Nog steeds wordt deze ziekelijke, agressieve mentaliteit in Nederland geaccepteerd, en zelfs bewonderd, zoals bleek toen Tweede Kamerleden collectief de dood van de in hun ogen ‘meesterjournalist en markante persoonlijkheid’ herdachten.
Welnu, hoe kan een modale Jood, wiens verre voorouders twee millennia geleden uit het heilige land zouden zijn gevlucht, nu, als het ware van de ene op de andere dag een splinternieuwe identiteit kunnen ontwikkelen, terwijl toch algemeen bekend is dat “twee Joden altijd drie meningen produceren,” en de Joods-Israelische auteur Avraham Yehoshua mij meer dan drie decennia geleden erop wees dat als de fanatici onder de Joden steeds meer macht krijgen er opnieuw, net als twee millennia geleden, een burgeroorlog in Israel zal uitbreken, en de meerderheid naar het buitenland zal uitwijken, zoals nu ook het geval lijkt te zijn. Feit is namelijk dat de Joden nooit een gemeenschappelijke identiteit hadden, en dit is nog steeds het geval. Daarom is de kop boven Kleijwegt's artikel in de Groene Amsterdammerzo raadselachtig: “IsraĆ«liĆ«r zijn is iets anders dan joods zijn.” Dat is eenvlotte bewering, die iklater nog eens zal analyseren.Want als het “IsraĆ«liĆ«r zijn iets anders [is] dan joods zijn,” danluidt ogenblikkelijk de vraag waarom Margalith zich toch wel degelijk “Joods” voelt en langere tijd sympathiseerde met Israel. Immers, ook hier geldt dat het Nederlands zijn “iets anders [is] dan joods zijn.” Voordat de joodse kille deze “Gordiaanse Knoop” theologisch, sociaal, psychologisch, cultureel, politiek en anderszins hebben doorgehakt zijn we weer tweeduizend jaar verder. Als de mensheid dan nog Ć¼berhaupt bestaat. Vooralsnog is duidelijk dat de Joden deze knoop niet zelf kunnen doorhakken, met of zonder hulp van de Goyim. Ik zou dan ook willen voorstellen, deze materie met rust te laten, voordat de Joden, net als destijds de primitieve sicarii, andere Joden de keel gaan doorsnijden. Er is al genoeg bloed gevloeid. Het is Joodse hovaardigheid te menen dat de Joden wijs genoeg zijn om hun eigen wrede idioterie op te lossen. Zij hebben de afgelopen driekwart eeuw duidelijk aangetoond "liever barbaars dan verveeld te zijn." Ik kom hier later op terug.
Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a quick donation.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opens with a shot of the bard Demodocus — played by rapper Travis Scott — hitting a staff on a table for a beat. The movie then cuts to Sinon, an Achaean soldier in front of the Trojan Horse, who is played by transgender actor Elliot Page. Later, the hero, Odysseus (a somber Matt Damon) confesses that he is a war criminal. The blood on his hands stopped him from coming home.
The new film, which turns Homer’s epic into a critique of the West, started drawing the ire of right-wing critics before it even hit the screens. This version of The Odyssey calls out racism. It calls out patriarchy. It exposes the human cost of war and denounces the military machismo that Homer and the modern right-wing “manosphere” celebrate. It corrects the failure of empathy in the 8thcentury BCE epic. We are lucky to have a version of the Odyssey that portrays the real conflict within the story: how a scared and wounded man tries to heal his humanity so he can come home.
Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
In the film, Trojan soldiers on horseback gallop across a beach to the Trojan Horse, a giant statue, half-buried in sand. They see the scared soldier Sinon, who says the Trojan Horse is a peace offering. Hardened by war, they kill Sinon but wheel the statue into the city. In its belly, Odysseus and his men wait for nightfall to open Troy’s gates for their army to bring death and destruction.
Nolan’s The Odyssey cuts back and forth across time. In this way, Nolan is loyal to the structure of Homer’s poem, which tells scenes in flashbacks. The center of gravity is Odysseus, long-bearded, trapped on an idyllic island by the nymph Calypso (played by an ethereal Charlize Theron). She drugs him with a lotus flower that causes amnesia. Bit by bit, he remembers his journey after the Trojan War. He recalls his arrogance at guiding his men on a quick sail home. He got them lost and killed. Struck by guilt, he eats more of the memory-erasing lotus.
Memory is key in this movie. Memories of war are how a son, Telemachus (a stoic Tom Holland), learns of his father, Odysseus, and in turn learns how to “become a man.” Memories of war are also how Odysseus accepts the blood on his hands. At the high point in the film, the effects of the lotus fade. He remembers the sacking of Troy. Fire eating stone. Soldiers hacking people like butchers working sides of beef. Odysseus wanders around, stunned at the gore and death. Finally, he snaps out of it, and says to Calypso, “I didn’t want to go home.”
Nolan’s The Odyssey centers the inner conflict of a war veteran struggling with trauma. When Damon’s Odysseus returns to his castle in Ithaca, disguised as a beggar, he talks with his wife about the horror of war. Nolan’s focus is not original; in 2024’s The Return, actor Ralph Fiennes also played an Odysseus wracked by grief and guilt. Fiennes said in an interview it was “an antiwar film.” In that version, Penelope (played by a steely Juliette Binoche) yelled at him, “How many men did you kill? How many women, raped?”
I read Homer’s Odyssey. I taught Homer’s Odyssey. I can tell you that however soul-stirring and epic it may be, it is written for the elite ruling class. Homer’s Odysseus in no way shows how violence maims men’s souls. But as Damon’s Odysseus walks numb while Troy burns, you can imagine it not as Troy but as Tehran after U.S. and Israeli attacks, or Baghdad during Desert Storm, or Ukraine after Russian missile strikes.
Make Patriarchy Gross Again
In this new recasting of The Odyssey,feminist critiques also abound. The film shows the pressure of patriarchy on women characters such as Penelope (an embattled Anne Hathaway), Circe the witch (a haunting Samantha Morton), and also the unnamed women cut down by soldiers. The tragedy is that the film’s critique can only go so far to the degree that it remains loyal to the source material. Homer’s original, beginning to end, reaffirms male supremacy.
Mother and son fight over the future. Telemachus urges Penelope to marry. He pleads with her that this way, he can maneuver to the throne. She snarls at him, “I have sat on the throne for years! I have experience but none of it matters as much as the bristle on your beard.” She storms off, the point made that she is the most capable leader, but in a patriarchy, her young son has more authority than she does.
The sharpest feminist critique comes at the hands of a witch. During a flashback, Odysseus remembers sailing to island. His men are hungry and spot a farm house. They run to it and the grey-haired Circe, a witch in disguise, feeds them meaty broth that casts a spell. In a deliciously lurid scene, she reshapes each man into a pig, like a sculptor working wet clay. When Odysseus comes, he knows she is a witch. She accuses men of being animals, led by “base instincts” who rob and rape and kill. Only after Odysseus threatens to kill her sister, whom she transformed into a raven, does she reverse the spell, changing the pigs back into his soldiers. Bitterly, she says, “Back into your disguises.” Male self-image is a mask hiding their animal nature.
The Right-Wing Freak Out
Right-wing critics ripped their hair out over this film before it even hit theaters. They hated that Nolan actively diversified the cast. They saw it as evidence that this was a “woke” Odyssey. Once again, their argument goes, liberals stole another piece of culture from them and ruined it.
Exhibit number one: the rumor that Elliot Page would play Achilles. (Not true —again, he played Sinon the soldier.) MAGA critics discovered that Page was cast and got it into their heads that he was Achilles, the most famous warrior in all of literature. Achilles was played like a beefcake calendar model by Brad Pitt in 2004’s Troy. The idea of a transgender actor supposedly “desecrating” Achilles masculinity drove them to create AI videos showing Page as Achilles getting easily killed or stumbling over his shield.
Meanwhile right-wing critics also derided the casting of Black actor Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy as historically inaccurate. Really, they were grasping for an excuse to vent racism. Elon Musk called her casting an “insult.” Right-wing personality Matt Walsh posted on X: “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’” Again, the racist AI videos came, one showing Black actor Samuel L. Jackson as Helen of Troy, implying Nyong’o was ugly.
What spurred this right-wing freak out? A fetish for a “golden past.” Seen through the right’s political lens, the past is a time of law and order, in which natural roles in gender and class were strictly observed, which led to social harmony. In this illusionary past, the best ruled and the inferior obeyed. Professor Curtis Dozier dissects the right’s obsession with antiquity in his 2026 book, The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate. He argues that the ancient world is a mirror in which racists can see themselves, legitimized by academic prestige, and that history reflects their values. He summarized the right’s use of history in a New Books Network interview:
Look, this society, ancient Greece and Rome, which you respect and believe is a high point in human civilization, they excluded foreigners from citizenship. They excluded women from political rights. They regarded outsiders as a dangerous threat. They practiced eugenic measures. Plato said if any deformed infants are born, they should be taken away and put into a dark place and never seen again.
The fight over who owns history is the fight over legitimacy. Whoever owns the past owns the future. It is a fight you see in the reactions to Zack Snyder’s 2006 movie 300 compared to Nolan’s 2026 The Odyssey. Snyder’s Spartan warriors, lean and muscled, were idealized men. 300 became the war cry of the MMA-glorifying, manosphere-participating, testosterone-advocating MAGA man. Like Dozier said, it gave their male fantasies a fake Ph.D. in history. It gave them license to attack empathy and women’s rights and diversity.
Home, Sweet Home
The reaction to Nolan’s The Odyssey gives me hope. Yes, it’s flawed. Yes, Nolan’s loyalty to the text forces him to miss more daring interpretations. Yes, the theme of trauma as the obstacle to Odysseus coming home is overwhelmed by the spectacle of violence. In the end scene, it’s obvious the film relishes in Odysseus massacring the suitors. Even so, at the end, the old king exiles himself so his son Telemachus can rule Ithaca with clean hands, saying that Zeus’s Law (basically, the Golden Rule) means Odysseus must leave again, so that peace can come.
In part, Odysseus chooses exile because earlier in the film, he realizes that he was wrong. Everywhere he stopped, he was told about the “people from the sea” who came and stole and killed and ravaged. They broke Zeus’s Law. They brought darkness. Odysseus, in a moment of clarity, says: “We were the sea people. We were.”
In a time of war and poverty and global warming, we need this version of The Odyssey. We need to see a war veteran learning how to heal in order to belong again. The U.S. has committed so much violence in its short 250-year history. We have suffered from it and also sometimes caused it, and we feel lost. But we can get home. We have to recognize our complicity in the chaos we decry. We have to see the blood on our hands, clean it off, and then hopefully, when we reach out for forgiveness, we’ll receive it.
Fundraiser Deadline: Missed
Truthout is one of only a few platforms for justice-oriented, grassroots journalism. Today, as political censorship from the right intensifies, we have no choice but to ask for your help.
We missed our fundraising deadline, but there’s still time to help us meet our basic operating expenses before the end of the month. If you can support Truthout with a one-time or monthly donation, you will make a significant impact on our work. Anything you can do makes a difference — we appreciate your support.
Nicholas Powers is the author of Thirst, a political vampire novel; The Ground Below Zero: 9/11 to Burning Man, New Orleans to Darfur, Haiti to Occupy Wall Street; and most recently, Black Psychedelic Revolution. He has been writing for Truthout since 2011. His article, “Killing the Future: The Theft of Black Life” in the Truthout anthology Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? coalesces his years of reporting on police brutality.
Spain slams Israeli settler attacks on occupied West Bank
The Spanish government has reiterated its “strong condemnation of the ongoing violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers, who continue to act with impunity against the Palestinian population in the West Bank”.
“Yesterday, another indiscriminate settler attack resulted in the deaths of four Palestinian civilians and two Israeli settlers,” a statement said, referring to an incident on Friday during a settler assault on the village of Tal.
Spain called on Israel “to take the necessary steps to de-escalate the situation and ensure that those responsible for these attacks are brought to justice”.
It added Israel “must reverse its policies of settlement expansion and of shielding settler violence against the Palestinian civilian population, and fulfil its obligations as the occupying power in Palestine”.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson: “We don’t know what we’re doing. We simply don’t. We’re grasping at straws. We’re grasping at possibilities to keep ourselves in a region where we’re thoroughly being ousted. We’re being kicked out, and we’re being kicked out by somebody that we were supposed to go to war with and defeat.”
Wilkerson’s admission lays bare the terminal bankruptcy of the Anglo-American imperial system: a collapsing empire, stripped of any competent strategy, thrashing about in Southwest Asia while sovereign powers—Iran foremost among them—systematically expel it from the very region it once sought to dominate through permanent war and regime-change operations.
The post-Cold War unipolar moment has collapsed into strategic bankruptcy. Decades of deliberate interventionist regime-change warfare have destabilized entire regions and accelerated the disintegration of the old imperial order. The war against Iran, like the war in Ukraine, is driven by pure existential enmity—hatred substituting for statecraft.
Iran is a sovereign civilization occupying the indispensable geographic hinge linking Central Asia, China, the Caspian, and Europe. That position makes it central to any durable peace and development architecture for Eurasia. The attempt to destroy Iran is therefore an attempt to retain imperial control over the Eurasian land-bridge.
The nations of the Global South and the BRICS are already building the alternative: a new system of win-win economic cooperation that rejects geopolitics in favor of large-scale, railway-centred development corridors. Only that approach can replace the collapsing imperial order with stability and mutual benefit.
Wilkerson’s despair is accurate. The only remaining question is whether the empire’s collapse will be managed through a new just world economic order—or whether humanity will be dragged into the abyss.
