Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Daryl Zero (A) on October 01, 2011 at 21:43:47

In Reply to: RE: You consider it based on your desires, or facts? posted by Victor Khomenko on October 01, 2011 at 14:00:17

As has been mentioned, he was Jewish. The next thing is that he was a chess player who essentially lived at the Manhattan Chess Club where he had many relationships with Jewish people. I have supplied a link to an article that discusses this as per the article which reads in part:

Fischer has developed a straightforward narrative of a Jewish world conspiracy, but his antisemitism is more complex than first appears. In the strange pathology of Fischer’s hatred, his antisemitism has remained at a remove from his relationship with the many individual Jews who have populated his life and with whom he has maintained good relationships.

Denker continued an almost weekly telephone correspondence with Fischer during the 1970s. In the 1990s, when Fischer was on the run from American authorities, he lived for a time at the summer estate of the Polgars, a Jewish family in Budapest. The Polgar family had two beautiful daughters with whom Fischer would endlessly analyze chess matches. The older daughter, Susan, who in 1991 became the first female international grand master, remembers arguing with Fischer endlessly about his ideas on Judaism.

“It was very strange because a lot of his friends were Jewish” said Polgar, who now runs a chess center in Queens. “He would get around that by saying, ‘He is a nice person despite the fact that he is Jewish.’”

This disconnect has been on display in his recent pronouncements. Fischer rarely uses his antisemitic commentary to attack individual Jews. Instead, he uses “Jew” as a label against his enemies, whatever their ethnic background. Fischer called the American Chess Journal and Time magazine “Jew-controlled rags,” and has labeled Bill Clinton a “secret Jew.”

If you actually see the documentary, the later video of Fischer shows a man that is clearly insane to some extent. I have significant connections with autism and don't believe that autism has anything to do with Fischer's personality or problems. I see him more as paranoid and possibly schizophrenic.

Fischer is an enigma in that he was a hero to many of us who grew up during his years when he became champion and then he fell off the map and reappeared as a completely different person and not a person we would have wanted him to reappear. As I come from Jewish heritage, I would have every reason to be insulted and repelled by the man he became but I just feel sorry for the guy. He wasn't a leader of anyone. He didn't sway anyone with his rantings. He was just pathetic. Not what you expected from a guy who did so much decades earlier.

I read his books. I am a huge fan of his chess playing and his annotations to his games. Yes, I was a chess player in high school and a pretty good one (state champion as a senior and runner up as a junior).

You shouldn't view the guy as a little hitler because he had no credibility or following in his crazy state. He just was a broken man. The documentary shows this pretty clearly.

• http://www.forward.com/articles/5039/   (Open in New Window)