Sipsey Street Irregulars: "The flies have conquered the flypaper!" Two classic resistance reads, and two of my favories.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

"The flies have conquered the flypaper!" Two classic resistance reads, and two of my favories.

Rifleman Dodd by C.S. Forester. Originally published in 1932 with the title Death to the French.

The novel relates the adventures of a British rifleman of the 95th Regiment of Foot who is cut off from his regiment when the Allied army retreats behind the Lines of Torres Vedras. He is forced to survive for several months in territory that has been devastated by the Allies and occupied by the French. With some help from a few local Portuguese, Dodd wages guerrilla warfare against the French.[1] The story is told from both the perspective of Dodd and the Frenchmen he is fighting. Its picture of the hero's resolution and devotion to duty in dangerous circumstances caused it to be put on the official reading list endorsed by the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps. -- Wikipedia.

I first read The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck in high school and have always remembered the Nazi occupier who went off his nut and ran through the streets shouting "The flies have conquered the flypaper!"

The Moon Is Down, a novel by John Steinbeck fashioned for adaption for the theatre and for which Steinbeck received the Norwegian King Haakon VII Freedom Cross, was published by Viking Press in March 1942. The story tells of the military occupation of a small town in Northern Europe by the army of an unnamed nation at war with England and Russia (much like the occupation of Norway by the Germans during World War II). A French language translation of the book was published illegally in Nazi-occupied France by Les Éditions de Minuit, a French Resistance publishing house. Furthermore, numerous other editions were also secretly published across all of occupied Europe, including Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch and Italian versions; it was the best known work of US literature in the Soviet Union during the war. Without naming the occupying force as Nazis, references to 'The Leader', 'Memories of defeats in Belgium and France 20 years ago' clearly suggest it. Written with a purpose to motivate and enthuse the resistance movements in occupied countries, it has appeared in at least 92 editions across the world, proving its popularity. -- Wikipedia.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Two of my favorites also. I read both as a teenager. I remember fondly watching the black and white movie adapted from the book. Both Steinbeck and Forrester are favorite authors of mine. Our youth have not had the opportunity to read the literature written by good writers like these nor the stories of World War II written by our veterans. History is a "verboten" subject by the progressive public schools. Too much violence, guns and oh yes, independent thinking and action.; January 17, 2013 at 4:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Thanks for this.My huband and I are always looking for the next good read and are very partial to bygone eras.; January 18, 2013 at 1:38 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Thursday, January 17, 2013

"The flies have conquered the flypaper!" Two classic resistance reads, and two of my favories.

2 comments:

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