\ufeff<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re feeling hopeless and frightened about what\u2019s to come under Donald Trump<\/a>, I recommend two excellent fact-based podcasts with riveting stories about just how bad things have gotten in the past in the U.S., what we learned from those times, and how we moved forward. To find them, log into your favorite podcast provider and listen to Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra<\/a><\/em> (seasons one and two), and Oona Chaplin\u2019s Hollywood Exiles<\/a><\/em> podcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century, many anti-constitutional fascists held powerful positions in the U.S. government, both overtly and covertly. They used their power to badger, intimidate, blackmail, and destroy the lives of thousands of law-abiding people of all races and levels of power, fame, and influence. Federal government branches and agencies largely moved beyond using fascist tactics as a matter of course\u2014for a while. But people in power are using them again, and things are likely to get extremely ugly over the next four years. Understanding how long and hard we fought against fascism within our government in decades past, and how its power waxes and wanes over time and around the world, are essential. Learning this painful but necessary history reminds us what we have overcome before, and how important fighting against the encroachment of authoritarianism and fascism are to the health and strength of this\u2014or any\u2014nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Constitution\u2019s power will be tested again in the coming years. Our social safety net, national security, the immigrants within our borders, and our alliances with other nations will all come under fire. Safeguards against increasingly dangerous climate change will be impacted as we again step away from the Paris Agreement<\/a>, and we’ll lose the respect and support of allies we’ve relied on for decades, even centuries. Will we make it through this time as a democracy? I don\u2019t know. But I find it helps me to understand how the pendulum has swung back toward freedom and away from fascism throughout the history of the U.S. It can do so again\u2014but only if we are vigilant and brave enough to fight against the encroachment of authoritarianism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You may be familiar with Rachel Maddow<\/a>. She\u2019s been a broadcast journalist on radio and TV for decades, and is the most popular and respected news analyst on the cable news channel MSNBC<\/a>. After her years studying at Stanford University, she was a Rhodes Scholar, and then she went on to become a successful writer, progressive radio personality, and television news journalist. She\u2019s written several best-selling, well-received, carefully researched books on the oil and gas industry<\/a>, American military power<\/a>, the grift and scandals surrounding the vice presidency of Spiro Agnew<\/a>, and the history of fascism in America<\/a>. She\u2019s been on MSNBC only one night a week for a couple of years now as she works on her podcasts and works with Steven Spielberg\u2019s movie version of Maddow\u2019s podcast Ultra<\/em><\/a>. However, she\u2019ll be back on MSNBC at 9 p.m. Monday through Friday for the first 100 days of the Trump Administration. She\u2019s excellent at setting news into historical context, and explaining how events differ from those in the nation\u2019s past, and how our leaders compare to those of other times and other nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maddow\u2019s Ultra<\/em><\/a> is about the rise of fascism in America, particularly from the 1920s to the 1950s. The podcast details the stories of senators and congressmen, religious leaders<\/a>, supposed patriots like aviator Charles Lindbergh<\/a>, and even FBI head J. Edgar Hoover<\/a>. Hoover\u2014the most powerful lawman in the country\u2014and his henchmen blackmailed people, spread damaging lies about people\u2019s politics and actions, infiltrated legal gatherings, and hounded people\u2014sometimes to death\u2014with innuendo, subterfuge, threats, thugs, even physical violence. Hoover even had the FBI send Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an anonymous letter<\/a> encouraging him to kill himself. I\u2019ve read a great deal about the ugly underside of this period of U.S. history over time, but I still learned much from Maddow about just how extensively our government was infiltrated by fascists and even literal Nazis during the 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oona Chaplin<\/a> is a young (born in 1986) actress who comes from a storied family. Her mother\u2019s father was actor, director, producer, and early film production innovator Charlie Chaplin<\/a>, the most popular actor of the early 20th<\/sup>century, and perhaps the most famous man in the world in the 1920s. Her mother\u2019s grandfather was the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O\u2019Neill<\/a>, who won four Pulitzer Prize awards<\/a> for drama. She was named for her grandmother, Oona O\u2019Neill Chaplin<\/a>, Charlie Chaplin\u2019s fourth wife. Oona and Charlie Chaplin had a long and happy marriage despite Charlie having spent most of their life together being hounded by J. Edgar Hoover and anti-communist agitators in or related to the movie business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hoover\u2019s FBI threatened Charlie Chaplin with deportation while the actor was traveling outside of the U.S. Despite Chaplin having spent four decades living and working in the U.S., building up its film industry, paying millions in taxes and raising millions more in World War II war bonds, and never being part of or affiliated with the Communist Party, Chaplin was under constant surveillance and threat by the FBI. While on a trip outside the U.S. in the early 1950s, Chaplin was warned that he was not welcome to return to his home in the U.S. He did not set foot on U.S. soil again for two decades, and he never lived here again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oona Chaplin\u2019s deep investigation into communism in the film industry is fascinating and well told. Parts of her story are personal, including interviews with her mother, actress Geraldine Chaplin<\/a>, who moved abroad with her parents Charlie and Oona when her father was blacklisted while she was a child. But Oona Chaplin also dives at length into the stories of other film industry notables whose work and personal lives were ruined by the Hollywood blacklist. Her interview with the daughter of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo<\/a>, the most famous member of \u201cThe Hollywood Ten<\/a>,\u201d is riveting. The Hollywood Ten were ten movie screenwriters, producers, and directors who refused to answer questions about supposed or real (and completely legal) communist affiliations when questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee<\/a> during the Red Scare<\/a>. They were imprisoned for contempt of Congress for refusing to name names of others who were communists or who had attended communist meetings (which were, again, legal<\/em>), and were blacklisted by Hollywood for over a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dalton Trumbo wrote Academy Award-winning screenplays (including the classic Audrey Hepburn film Roman Holiday<\/a><\/em>) under pseudonyms during his years on the Hollywood blacklist. Oona Chaplin\u2019s interview with his daughter Mitzi Trumbo<\/a> is powerful. So is her interview with actress and professor of acting Ellen Geer<\/a>, the daughter of blacklisted actor Will Geer<\/a>, whose career was destroyed until the early 1970s, when he had a late-life resurgence when he played Grandpa Walton<\/a> on the TV show The Waltons <\/em>in the years just before he died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chaplin provides keen insights into her own fascinating family\u2019s experiences during the days of Hollywood\u2019s and the FBI\u2019s anticommunist witch hunts. But she also sets them in the context of their time, making their stories and those of other victims of Hollywood blacklists understandable and accessible to listeners unacquainted with this sad part of American history, while providing new details for those of us who have followed this saga for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the stories Maddow and Chaplin tell are often dark and frankly horrifying, they\u2019re important to resurface and re-examine if we want to learn from the nation\u2019s past mistakes, and to fight the encroachment of fascist tendencies into our government and our personal lives today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n At top:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Charlie Chaplin as The Little Tramp and Jackie Coogan as The Kid in Chaplin’s 1921 silent movie<\/em> The Kid<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Feeling hopeless about the rise of fascism in the U.S.? 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