Stranger Things’ star Matthew Modine has compared Donald Trump with Hitler.
It comes after the former president used footage from Full Metal Jacket, which Modine starred in, for a recent campaign ad he shared on X touting the US military with the caption: “We will not have a woke military!”
This ad is contrasted with clips, apparently taken from TikTok, of modern military service-members dancing in drag.
“In the 1930s, Leni Riefenstahl directed the Nazi propaganda films ‘Triumph Of The Will’ and ‘Olympia,’” Modine told Entertainment Weekly in an emailed statement about Trump’s ad.
WE WILL NOT HAVE A WOKE MILITARY! pic.twitter.com/zpWZhSKcEs
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2024
“These two films are considered among the most effective propaganda ever made. Riefenstahl denied any knowledge of the Holocaust, repeatedly invoking the ‘how could we have known?’ defence. Ironically, Trump has twisted and profoundly distorted [Stanley] Kubrick’s powerful anti-war film into a perverse, homophobic, and manipulative tool of propaganda.”
He continued: “Shortly before Riefenstahl died, she acknowledged her connection to Adolf Hitler in a BBC interview. ‘I was one of millions who thought Hitler had all the answers. We saw only the good things; we didn’t know bad things were to come.'”
“It is no exaggeration to see Trump’s reflection in the terrible figure Hitler was. Please listen to Riefenstahl’s final warning: ‘…we didn’t know how bad things were to become.’ Trump has shown us who he is and made no secret of what he intends to do.”
Released in 1987 and adapted from the book The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford, Full Metal Jacket dramatises the horrors of the American military during the Vietnam War.
It begins at boot camp, where the strict drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) relentlessly bullies new recruits into conformity and obedience.
A publicist for Vincent D’Onofrio, who also stars in the film as Pvt. Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence, a main target of Hartman’s bullying, also told EW that “he did not provide any consent for this usage by the Trump Campaign.”
But Vivian Kubrick, daughter of Full Metal Jacket director Stanley Kubrick claimed that her father would have supported Trump’s use of the film’s footage.
“I feel very confident he would be a Trump supporter and would forgive using FMJ incongruously, if it helps the cause of freedom!” she wrote on X.
Donald Trump is yet to respond publicly to Modine’s comments.
Elsewhere, Rufus Wainwright has spoken out against Trump using his cover of Leonard Cohen‘s ‘Hallelujah’ at a campaign rally, labelling it “the height of blasphemy”.
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