I was just rewatching the classic 1940 movie by Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator. It's a great humanist testament that mercilessly ridicules the fascist regimes that were then ascendant in Europe. For anyone who hasn't seen it, do. If you haven't seen it in a while, see it again. You'll be glad you did.
The reason for posting a diary about it, though, is not just to recommend a great movie but to highlight the speech, sometimes called the "Look up, Hannah" speech, which Chaplin delivers at the end of the movie. Chaplin plays a Jewish barber with an uncanny resemblance to Adenoid Hynkel, the anti-Semitic dictator of Tomania. A chain of cirumstances leads the barber to be mistaken for Hynkel, and in order to save his own skin and that of his friend Schulz he is compelled to deliver a speech to a gathering of victorious soldiers which will also be broadcast to millions of Hynkel's followers. For your edification, the speech follows. You can also watch it here.
Schulz: Speak - it is our only hope.
The Jewish Barber (Charlie Chaplin's character): Hope....
I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business - I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls - has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die liberty will never perish...
Soldiers - don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you - who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate - only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers - don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written " the kingdom of God is within man " - not one man, nor a group of men - but in all men - in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers - in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
....
Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.
The soul of man has been given wings - and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow - into the light of hope - into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up."
It is stunning to realize that this speech was given in 1940 in the early days of the war. It was a passionate attempt to change the tragic trajectory of Europe, to arrest its accelerating slide into brutality and mass murder so recently begun. The speech changed nothing. I doubt that Chaplin was under any illusions as to its potential efficacy, but he did it anyway. Neither could he nor can we stop repeating these truths and fighting for them in any way that we can. If we stop, we are lost. If we fight, we have hope.